sant to the sight, and good for food."

Man how

ever having come, the earth is no longer subject to the same law of spontaneous production, as before his formation;-but he is told "to dress and keep the garden." Permission is now given him to eat of every tree and herb. But this licence has already been given in the first chapter, supposing the two chapters to refer to one event; and the repetition, (taking it in that light alone,) seems useless and without point; but the permission is now coupled with a prohibition, which was not the case in the first instance, but which is the peculiar law of the new race; and therefore it is now added, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat.”

Adam then, having received all the laws of his existence, is supposed to range through Eden in communion with the Deity; but, in regard to outward things, in silent and solitary majesty. God therefore says, "It is not good that the man should be alone." The beasts and fowl are made out of the ground and brought to Adam; not, as it has been before observed, in pairs, two by two, as painters used formerly to paint animals accompanying Noah to the ark, Adam being inspired, as they passed in review before him to give them names appropriate to their several qualities: but that the new Creation in all its branches was placed within the precincts of Eden; which appears by the description of Moses, to have covered a very large space of ground; and that Adam, moved by a divine impulse, sought through Creation for one like unto himself, and gave names to the new species as they met his sight.

This may have occupied many days. Moses clearly gives us an idea of Adam searching amongst the various genera for one made after his own form. We imagine him, as we conceive, in full accordance with his history, ranging through Paradise; noting the peculiarities of form, colour, or some action indicative of their habits, and embodying each a name: feeling vividly in his wanderings the goodness and bountifulness of God; but conscious, that in his own person, he is solitary and alone.

It was therefore after long and ineffectual research, that God caused a deep sleep to fall upon him, and formed Eve, in the manner related. Indeed the first exclamation of Adam, after he had received her, seems to denote a degree of joyousness in receiving an object who had been long sought after in vain; a sense of happiness in one who had known the pain of solitude. "This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh, &c." As if he had said;—I have sought to no purpose amongst the animate works of God for one formed after my own likeness. Glorious as they are, they partake not of my nature; but lo! at length I have found one formed in my own image! This, now, is truly bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife; and they shall be one flesh.

It is under this view, that we can see a singular force and propriety in the fact that Satan should have tempted Eve in preference to Adam. Not merely because she may be considered as the weaker vessel :-we doubt much whether this be a valid

reason, seeing that she was created upright and perfect as the man; it seems at least to lean rather too closely to an attribution of the properties of the fallen to the unfallen;-but because while Adam received the command by immediate communication from God,—Eve only received it through discourse with her consort. Adam had been placed alone in Eden ; and had felt his entire dependance on God. He had been in frequent and close communion with the Deity; had received from him both the laws of his being; and having listened-personally-to the fearful evils which would follow an infringement of the one great prohibition, his mind was deeply impressed, -if not with the terrors of the Lord, at least with a holy sense of awe and reverence. We can therefore easily conceive, that success would seem less probable to the mind of Satan in beguiling one so impressed, than one, whose belief, however strong, had been raised by a being like herself. With the subsequent fall of Adam, and the apparent felicity with which he yielded to the instances of the woman, this question has nothing whatever to do. He might in reality have fallen into the same snare, and by the same motives as Eve did. Of that we cannot judge. We speak only of the motive of Satan in selecting Eve; and we repeat, it seems to possess a singular force, when resting on the fact, so consistent with the second chapter, that Adam had received and obeyed the Law in his solitary state; before Eve had been given to him as an helpmate.

There is also another point, which falls within the range of this analysis; which seems not sufficiently to have been explained by writers on Scripture and

:

which, if unequal to be adduced as a direct argument, is yet so much in accordance with our present views, that with due caution it may reasonably be touched upon. In the opening portion of his history, Moses has uniformly, without a single exception, made use of the term "God,"-Eloheem,-when designating the Deity. In the beginning "God" created the heavens.-And "God" said, let there be light. Indeed he has adhered to this form in so marked and pointed a manner, that even in the mention of the third person in the Trinity, he has denoted his union with the Godhead by precisely the same word "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters."

At a certain period, however, of the narrative he has varied his language, and substituted for Eloheem, JEHOVAH ELOHEEM,-the Lord God;-which mode is for the most part continued in the subsequent history. But when does this change take place? Not on the occasion of any great act of power, when the mind of the writer might give the more complete denomination, as in a sudden outburst of praise and reverence; -nor by any apparent chance; but precisely at the division which we have just discussed: the supposed separation of the two systems. The six days work having been accomplished, the seventh is sanctified, because that in it, God rested from all his work which he had made. The very next sentence opens thus: Here are the generations of the heavens and of the earth, in the day that the LORD GOD made the earth and the heavens." It seems next to impossible that the mind of any reader of Scripture can receive this

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alteration, made as it is, at that particular juncture, and not receive it as made with a design. This point indeed is acknowledged. But how explained? "The Hebrew doctors observe," says Bishop Patrick, "that Jehovah Eloheem (Lord God) joined together, is the full and perfect name of God; and therefore fitly reserved till this place, when the works of God were perfected.”

We shall however be much inclined to suspect, even were there no positive argument against it, that this was far too Rabbinical to be altogether true. It seems to my own mind rather a fanciful conceit upon words, than a sublime and majestic idea of the Deity; an exposition in short, which is too remote and inventive to be implicitly received. But there is a direct, and as it seems, a forcible objection to it. It is said, that the name of "God" is used until the time when Creation is complete, and that then the perfect designation is used of "Lord God." This is true in the first chapter; but not true in the second. Moses is supposed to recapitulate his history, and to give a distinct and minute account of Creation. If there were any force in the interpretation of the Rabbies, the perfect term should not, in consistency, be used in the second narrative, more than in the first. The account is the same. The term "God". is used originally, while, and because the work is imperfect and incomplete ;-how is it less imperfect in the recapitulation? Why is not the same term appropriated to the Deity in detailing the progress and minutiæ of the same imperfect work, which was designedly made use of in the first. The work is not more perfect in the early part of the second