CHAPTER VII.

Of the Fall of our First Parents.

THE most remarkable and perplexing part of the Mosaic narrative of the early history of the human species is that which refers to the original condition in Paradise of our first parents, and to their subse quent fall. As this event constitutes the very foundation upon which the whole structure of Christianity is built, and as it has afforded not only the great object of attack to Infidels, but has also been a source of the most discordant opinions among the various denominations of Christians, it will be expedient to examine it in some considerable detail. On a subject, indeed, so profoundly mysterious, it would be absurd in the extreme to hope that any examination of ours could suggest any satisfactory explanation of what is manifestly beyond the reach of human reason. All that we can attempt to do is, to take the few facts related by Moses in as literal a sense as possible, keeping out of sight, at the same time, all the tradi tional notions which, without any authority of Scrip ture, have, in the course of ages, been attached to them by human ingenuity; and then to inquire how far what we find to be actually stated as matter of fact accords with the established and acknowledged phenomena of human nature, In order to come to a perfect understanding on this point, it will, of course be necessary to examine our moral constitution, such as, from our own internal consciousness and our intercourse with mankind we know it experimentally to be, and to observe how far it bears any traces of that degradation which we are told has been thus inflicted upon it, subsequently to its first production by its Creator. Now there is not, perhaps, a single Theist, or even Atheist, who will not, on this subject,

assent implicitly to the definition of our nature as afforded by revelation. "The heart of man is evil from his youth." Is this, we ask, or is it not, the strict truth? It matters not for the present argument how such happened originally to be the case. The question is one of practical experience. "The good that I would, I do not," says St. Paul, "but the evil which I would not, that I do." Here is the assertion of an abstract perception and preference in our minds of what is good and honest, continued with an actual practical bias and predisposition in our carnal feelings, to act directly in contradiction to our better judgment, which we have no hesitation in asserting, that every human being has occasionally perceived within himself from his first infancy. Is, then, this strange collision, which we all feel, between our moral sense, and the suggestions of our animal nature, curable by any inherent power of spiritual exertion lodged within ourselves? The very terms of the proposition already stated, supply at once an answer to this question. If the preponderance of our nature is evil, it cannot be supposed to supply any effectual medicine for its own cure; and if so, the necessity of some external dispensation, like that of the Gospel, for the removal of this original, and, by us, incurable taint, would appear to follow as a matter of course. It would signify nothing, we repeat, as to the argument of our need of some express mode of reconciliation with God, how this disease of sin was originally introduced into man's constitution, f the fact of its actual existence there be once well established. Let it have been impressed upon each individual distinctly and specially at his birth; let it have been the original modification of the human heart; or let it have been the acquired consequence of some act of indiscretion in our first parents, the consequence to ourselves will, at all events, be precisely the same. The fact that we are all of us far gone from righteousness will still remain unimpeached.

In this point of view, then, the recorded history of the fall of our first parents is a matter of speculative curiosity rather than of real moment. We might naturally wish to know whence this strange and anomalous moral arrangement took its origin, but the practical result to ourselves would remain the same, be our theory with regard to that origin what it might. Man, undoubtedly, as a moral agent, prefers evil to good. This is more or less true with this or that individual, but it is still, in a great degree, certainly true of all. Even the best men will occasionally recognise, within themselves, a kind of inconsequential reasoning, which they know to be false, whilst they yield to it: a species of morbid appetite to do precisely that which conscience tells them to be sinful. But with regard to the great mass of mankind, it is truly fearful to think how vast is the extent of depravity, which is kept within tolerable limits, and is rendered compatible with the existence of social order, only by the restraints of public opinion, or by the fear of the magistrate. It is true, indeed, that to the eye of the careless observer, the external aspect of society, for the most part, appears sufficiently smooth; but it is because in every civilized country the superincumbent weight of civil government and conventional decorum keeps down that tendency to resistance which is sure to manifest itself the moment that, by change of circumstances, an opportu nity for so doing is afforded. But the principle of morals, we should recollect, has much less to do with external actions than with internal motives. follows, therefore, as a necessary consequence, not only that a man may be a grievous sinner before God, whose conduct in society has afforded no handle whatever to actual censure, but, also, it is an obvious proposition, that his internal and substantial guilt This external actions continuing precisely the same) will ever advance progressively in atrocity, precisely in proportion to the degree of positive better know.

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ledge against the dictates of which he shall be deliberately offending.

This proposition being admitted, the conclusion is inevitable; namely, that, so long as the original corruption of the heart continues undiminished, every advance in moral and religious knowledge will necessarily be an advance in guiltiness. Precisely on the same principle by which we blame that ferocity in the uncultivated savage, which we consider a mere animal instinct in a beast of prey, and excuse that conduct in a savage which would be deemed unpardonable in a civilized heathen; so, the same deadness of spiritual feeling, which would be a matter of course in the latter character, would attach an awful responsibility to the well-instructed Christian.-Knowledge, then, is the source of guiltiness: increase of knowledge to any class of beings, whose instinctive predisposition is such as to incline them to prefer knowingly the worse to the better principle, is virtually and substantially an increase of guilt. Such, then, is the fallacy of the argument which would attribute to man the faculty of healing by his own natural powers of moral exertion, with no better guide than his intuitive perceptions of right and wrong, the evil which we find to have been, in some way or other, inflicted upon his spiritual nature.

Having made these preliminary observations, let us now consider the narrative of the fall of our first parents as given in the Mosaic writings, and observe how far it accords with the anomalous constitution of the human heart, as established by our own experience. In discussing this subject, it is no easy matter to detach ourselves from the associations arising from early oral expositions, and the theories of rival controversialists, and to fix our attention singly and exclusively upon what has been actually revealed. Perhaps no one theological fact, in conse quence of the momentous interests connected with it, and the train of poetic ideas which it is so well

calculated to suggest, has suffered more from the admixture of extraneous human theories than the one before us. The very small space occupied in Scripture by the narrative of the fall of man, when compared with our own multifarious conceptions on the subject, may afford a salutary hint to the mind of every well disposed person, of the danger incident to us all, of mistaking our peculiar intellectual speculations and the traditions of our infancy for revelation tself, if we do not take care to secure the accuracy of our notions, by measuring them carefully from time to time, with what we and to be expressly written. It is obvious, that if we would discuss this, or any other mysterious theological question, with accuracy and fairness, we can do so only by abiding, as closely as possible, by the strict letter of Holy Writ, interposing our own speculations solely where they appear to follow as necessary inferences from the acknowledged language of the original document.

In the first place, then, we may observe, that the Book of Genesis does not seem to assert that our first parents were created in their own proper nature, immortal, though it appears certain that, had they retained their obedience, they were not only capable of, but actually destined for, an incidental and conditional immortality, the consequence of their repairing the decay of their bodies by the fruit of the tree of life. This last species of immortality, though a real and effective one, is still different in kind from that which would result as a necessary consequence from the original constitution of the corporeal frame. In the one case mortality would follow, from the mere circumstance of withholding the necessary aliment: in the other it could be superinduced only by introducing an entire change of the animal habits and functions. What, therefore, would have been the ultimate allotment of mankind had the fall never taken place, or had some occasional individuals amongst the descendants of Adam only fallen into