Expositions of Holy Scripture | Page 4

Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou? And
he said, I heard Thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I
was naked; and I hid myself. And He said, Who told thee that thou wast
naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree, whereof I commanded thee that thou
shouldest not eat And the man said, The woman whom Thou gavest to
be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God
said unto the woman, What is this that thou hast done? and the woman
said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat. And the Lord God said
onto 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.'--GENESIS iii
1-15.
It is no part of my purpose to enter on the critical questions connected
with the story of 'the fall.' Whether it is a legend, purified and elevated,
or not, is of less consequence than what is its moral and religious
significance, and that significance is unaffected by the answer to the
former question. The story presupposes that primitive man was in a
state of ignorant innocence, not of intellectual or moral perfection, and
it tells how that ignorant innocence came to pass into conscious sin.
What are the stages of the transition?
1. There is the presentation of inducement to evil. The law to which
Adam is to be obedient is in the simplest form. There is restriction.
'Thou shalt not' is the first form of law, and it is a form congruous with
the undeveloped, though as yet innocent, nature ascribed to him. The
conception of duty is present, though in a very rudimentary shape. An
innocent being may be aware of limitations, though as yet not 'knowing
good and evil.' With deep truth the story represents the first suggestion
of disobedience as presented from without. No doubt, it might have by
degrees arisen from within, but the thought that it was imported from

another sphere of being suggests that it is alien to true manhood, and
that, if brought in from without, it may be cast out again. And the
temptation had a personal source. There are beings who desire to draw
men away from God. The serpent, by its poison and its loathly form, is
the natural symbol of such an enemy of man. The insinuating slyness of
the suggestions of evil is like the sinuous gliding of the snake, and truly
represents the process by which temptation found its way into the
hearts of the first pair, and of all their descendants. For it begins with
casting a doubt on the reality of the prohibition. 'Hath God said?' is the
first parallel opened by the besieger. The fascinations of the forbidden
fruit are not dangled at first before Eve, but an apparently innocent
doubt is filtered into her ear. And is not that the way in which we are
still snared? The reality of moral distinctions, the essential wrongness
of the sin, is obscured by a mist of sophistication. 'There is no harm in
it' steals into some young man's or woman's mind about things that
were forbidden at home, and they are half conquered before they know
that they have been attacked. Then comes the next besieger's trench,
much nearer the wall--namely, denial of the fatal consequences of the
sin: 'Ye shall not surely die,' and a base hint that the prohibition was
meant, not as a parapet to keep from falling headlong into the abyss,
but as a barrier to keep from rising to a great good; 'for God doth know,
that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods.' These are still the two lies which wile us to sin: 'It
will do you no harm,' and 'You are cheating yourselves out of good by
not doing it.'
2. Then comes the yielding to the tempter. As long as the prohibition
was undoubted, and the fatal results certain, the fascinations of the
forbidden thing were not felt. But as soon as these were tampered with,
Eve saw 'that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the
eyes.' So it is still. Weaken the awe-inspiring sense of God's command,
and of the ruin that follows the breach of it, and the heart of man is like
a city without walls, into which any enemy can march