of God, was one of the most beautiful creatures; and even now, some of the species in Egypt, Arabia, and other parts of the world, are of a golden colour, and reflect the sunbeams with surprising splendour. The fiery serpents are called by Moses (Numbers xxi. 6) seraphim, a name applied to a high order of angelic beings. Satan having thus entered into the serpent, endeavours to lead the woman to doubt whether God would punish her transgression; insinuates that God has himself deceived her, and that he knows that instead of dying through tasting that fruit, "they shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." Alas! where is impregnable perfection found? Not in human nature, in its best estate. There seems to be a tendency in all created beings to depart from the great centre of infinite perfection, and that only the attraction of infinite love, and the action of Almighty power, can keep moral beings fast in their allegiance.

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Need we state the success of the enemy of God in his attempt to draw our first parents from their obedience to the law they had received? He gained, through the ear, an 'entrance to the heart. His murderous lie tainted the soul hitherto perfect. The woman raised her eyes to the forbidden fruit, saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also to her husband with her, and he did eat." Thus the -senses, given for the most refined enjoyment, by this first perversion proved inlets to the direst evils, to themselves and their posterity. Immediately on disobeying the command. their eyes were opened to realize the falsehood of the tempter and their own ruin. "The woman was first in the transgres

sion." Instead of becoming a god, and rising in the scale of

existence by an increase of pure knowledge and divine enjoy ment, she found herself fallen from her original state of bliss and holiness. Her eyes were indeed opened to behold her sin and shame, to find that she had lost the image of her God, and forfeited his friendship. Now she fears to meet his eye, or hear his voice, and, with the partner of her guilt, attempts to hide herself among the trees of the garden. The same soft, refreshing shades remain, but they cannot cool the fever of the guilty soul; the warbling songsters can no longer charm the perturbed spirit. The inferior animals that grazed around her were more blest than she, for though no intellectual enjoyment could be theirs, yet, moved by the guiding instinct God had given them, they innocently pursued their course. How dreadful the effect of sin! The most beauteous object in creation contained a guilty, trembling, conscience-smitten soul, that had lost the image of its Maker, and was exposed to his curse. What thick darkness must sin have introduced to this once luminous mind, that there should remain so little knowledge of God, as to suppose the possibility of evading his all-penetrating eye! Soon was she undeceived. The voice which hitherto had been accustomed to utter untold blessings, now calls on the man to leave his fancied hiding-place, that he may give an account of his ungrateful conduct. How vain the plea that he was "naked and ashamed." How weak and insufficient the excuse, "the woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat." Was not he the stronger? Why did he bow to the weaker vessel? How ungrateful to him who gave her to cheer his solitude with social converse and guiltless pleasure. And the plea of the woman was no less weak and unworthy. The fruit of one tree only in the spacious, well-stocked garden, had been denied, but she

regards the voice of the serpent more than that of God! "The serpent (said she) beguiled me, and I did eat." Though the deceiver is not called on to give an account of his deception, yet he must receive his doom. "And the Lord said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat, all the days of thy life, and I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." The woman next receives her sentence, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." Adam's transgression originated in hearkening to the voice of his wife. His punishment is to be seen in the earth being barren of what he needs for sustenance, and prolific in thorns and briers, and the labour consequent on this terrene curse, together with the return of his body to the earth from which it had been taken. The death denounced as the penalty of man's transgression, includes the second death, that of the soul. And now the woman receives the name by which she is usually called, Eve, "because she was the mother of all living." The offspring of this fallen pair soon make it manifest that the seeds of corruption shall produce their corresponding degeneracy. The first-born, which the fond mother looked on as "a man from the Lord," bore strikingly the image of God's greatest foe. His employment was to till the ground, and to gain his bread by the sweat of his brow. Eve's second son, Abel, was a keeper of sheep, a good and righteous man. We doubt not the Father of mercies had given to the first family a command to

approach him with a bleeding sacrifice, for "without shedding of blood there is no remission." Cain neglects, or is opposed to such sacrifice, and brings (like some modern infidels) the fruits of the earth as a reluctant sacrifice to the God of nature. This uncalled-for offering is rejected. Abel "obtains witness that he is righteous," and obtains this witness by faith; "he offers a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain." His is the bleeding lamb, typical of the Lamb of God, "slain from the foundation of the world." It is most probable that the flock of Abel was used only for sacrificial purposes. And was the fond mother to see her untoward first-born improved and rendered faithful by the counsel and example of his pious brother? No, truly; her sorrows are to be increased in weight and bit. terness by the spirit and conduct of the murderous Cain. When he found that the Lord had respect unto Abel and his offering, "he was very wroth, and his countenance fell." Base envy filled his heart. Regardless of the admonition of the Lord, he seeks in the field his brother, talks with him to beguile him or excite him, and, unprovoked, " rises up and slays him." Here we have the fruit of Cain's infidelity; the foulest crime that had yet stained this earth, a brother murdered by a brother's hand! What a sight was this to meet a mother's eyes! Who can conceive the anguish which must have filled her heart, to see the bleeding corpse of one so much and so justly loved, and to know that the remorseless hand of her first-born had performed the deed! And to what source was she to trace this crimson stream? Her own unholy conduct in listening to the tempter's voice, forgetting, as she had done, the mild restriction contained in the just command she had received. Her sorrows must have increased a thousand fold, when memory traced to her individual disobedience the seeds

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of corruption and sin of which she now had this most emphatic evidence. All in her and around her, bearing the marks of imperfection and sin, loudly recalled her disobedience. The earth she trod was not the fruitful Eden, but a hard and barren soil. She had led her partner to transgress, and was the original cause of his labour and sorrow, his sin, its accompanying miseries and gloomy forebodings. The children that once rejoiced her heart, where are they? The righteous one slain, the other a wandering murderer, bearing the mark of Jehovah's curse. What a desolate heart, and what a cheerless home was hers!

How often have the worst scenes of this sad drama been reacted by her degenerate descendants! How many and how cruel have been the deeds of blood-the fields of carnage, and every private feud, as well as warlike wholesale slaughter that has stained this earth, we can trace to the same source. However true this statement, it would ill become us to forget that man was a guilty partaker of his fair partner's crime. That he reminded her not of the command they were about to violate, and its awful penalty! And well will it be for us to remember, "that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." Our sins are wilful, against the voice of conscience and the voice of God. It is quite probable that were any one of us perfect as was Eve, and placed in the same circumstances, we should prove ourselves no stronger than did she in the hour of trial.

Her future course is scarcely named. She had other children given her, and, among their descendants, the promised seed. He has "bruised the serpent's head." and "finished the work that was given him to do." His heel, or