which the first man could have come to know what natural death was. His Divine instructor might have described it to him as a formidable evil, of which he might have consequently stood in undefined dread. The leaf which fluttered and fell at his feet was an emblem of death- was death. The ephemera which perished under his eye at the close of day, the insect which the pressure of his own foot unwittingly crushed, the animalcules which the larger animals unavoidably imbibed as they drank at the river's brink, and the destruction of those insects on which some animals are constructed to live, and without which they themselves would die, any, or all of these phenomena might have been employed to enable him to apprehend natural death as a fearful evil. 15. But that bodily dissolution not only falls short of the penalty denounced, but was not specified in it, appears probable on these considerations. First, that as the evil to be guarded against was of a moral nature, the penalty threatened might be antecedently expected to be connatural with it, and that natural evils would only follow incidentally. Secondly, that the unqualified and absolute form of the threatening is that which is employed in Scripture to denote spiritual death alone, quite irrespective of corporal death. Thirdly, that man's dissolution did not take place on the day of transgression, but was on that day predicted as a yet future event. Fourthly, that it was not named even on that day until after the promise of a Deliverer had been given, leaving it to be inferred that it had formed no part of the primal threatening. For with what propriety could a promise of entire deliverance from the original penalty be immediately followed by an intimation that a portion of it must yet be endured? And, fifthly, the death of the body is named as only one of a series of evils, including corporal toil, pain, and prolonged sorrow; and surely these latter were not directly included in the primal threatening, for the instant extinction of man's bodily life would have made them impossible. From all of which we infer, on the one hand, that the penalty threatened consisted of the death of the soul, the alienation of the heart from God, the loss of "His favor which is life," and the endurance of His displeasure; and, on the other, that bodily toil, pain, and dissolution ensued, on man's transgression, as-the appropriate exponents, and sensible mementoes of man's fallen * Deut. xxx. 15; Psalm xxx. 5; Prov. viii. 35, 36; John iii. 36; Rom. v. 17; &c. condition. Had his spiritual nature maintained its standing of love and obedience to God-its natural state-his physical nature would have continued to enjoy preternatural exemption from the laws of pain and death belonging to the whole animal economy. But having brought himself spiritually into an unnatural state, and so incurred the threatened penalty of spiritual death, he was allowed to fall physically from a state of preternatural exemption down to the pre-existing laws of animal suffering and death. ever 16. As to the question where, in the event of man's persevering obedience, his immortality would have been spent, or the objection, that he could not have continued to live here for an objection which is sometimes urged in a tone which almost implies that man must, sooner or later, have sinned, if only in accommodating compliance with that impossibility - we have only to reply, that the universe of worlds was open then for the localization of unfallen man, as it is now for redeemed man; that he might have spent his immortality where the unfallen angels are enjoying theirs; and that, without "tasting death," he might, like Enoch and Elijah, have been translated, generation after generation, to a nobler state of existence. A more interesting speculation would it be to follow him into that higher sphere, and to imagine what his attainments and distinctions might there have been: whether, for instance, he would not have been qualified and employed to become the exemplar, in knowledge, in purity, and in spiritual excellence, of other orders of intelligent beings, himself ascending from throne to throne in an ever-advancing career of glory. But this is to speculate on a hypothesis. It is enough for us to find that man was from the beginning destined to an immortality of existence, and that this sovereign appointment, implied in the sanction of the first law, harmonized with all the laws of the Divine manifestation. Such was the theology of innocent man a powerful, wise, and beneficent Creator, the object of worship; that Creator his equitable moral governor; and immortal life in prospect as the reward of his obedience, and a threatened death, standing for all that is opposed to life, as the deserved penalty of disobedience. - 17. Here, then, both in the constitution and condition of man is the progress sought. God has now first a representative on earth-a son.* And he, "fearfully and wonderfully made," * Luke, iii. 38. finds himself in circumstances suggestive of, and corresponding to, his high relation. Nature offers itself to his eye, a glorious picture-poem, waiting to be read. In relation to the pre-existing creatures, his every seat is a throne, and he walks to it through ranks of objects not made with hands. His unuttered inquiries are answered by hints and intimations from a Divine instructor. He is joined by one whose presence reveals to him the resources of his heart. Every word articulated was new to nature, and above it. Every voluntary act disclosed some wonder of his being: he can believe, he can love, he can obey, and still he is conscious of a reserve of wonders. Principles before at large are now lodged; his person encloses them. The Lawgiver speaks to him, and Eden becomes an anticipation of Sinai; and the mere purpose to obey a purpose till now unknown on earth, gladdens all nature, and sanctifies it. The dial of time was now first set for worship, that he might consecrate its moments. Divine properties in him are incarnated-humanized. He is in "the image of God." So true is this, that his conception of God is the only one which can satisfy his idea of perfect excellence. External nature cannot realize it. It suggests far more than it exhibits. This is its highest function, to make the mind conscious of its superiority to outward things, even to those which come direct from the Creator's hand, and so to make it aware of its connaturalness with Him. The "angel standing in the midst of the sun" did not occupy a prouder position than innocent man placed in the midst of nature. Through him everything pointed away, as in rays of light, to God. He was the informing spirit of the whole. A mind had come to fill up the vacancy between earth and heaven. While the invisible tribunal within him looked away to the unlimited sphere of the distant and the future, peopled, not with shadows, but with hardly concealed forms of glory or of terror. CHAPTER IV. CONTINUITY. 1. MAN is not an abnormal and unconnected part of the system in which he appears. Though "crowned with glory and honor," his "foundation is in the dust." He is the last member of the advancing and related series of which he stands at the head. In other words, through man, "the Divine manifestation, besides being progressive is continuous, or is progressive by being continuous." 2. Even the creative process, which ended in man's production, did not introduce a new system of nature. It took its place in the great plan as preceding changes had done; and as those epochs had been manifestly local, so the Adamic creation was no doubt compatible with the uninterrupted maintenance of life in places beyond its own immediate sphere. Preceding epochs exhibit a gradual increase in the number of species till we reach the multitudes of existing species; as well as the gradual conformity of the successive animal creations to the existing types. The human creation is only the most advanced part of a system of many preceding stages. * 3. Man stands also in chronological continuity with the past. According to the sacred historian, the production of man was the continuous and crowning act of a six days' series of creations. Of the different systems of sacred chronology - the Samaritan, the Hebrew, the Septuagint, and that of Josephuswe adopt the computation which results from the guidance of the latter two, as exhibited by Jackson, Hales, Russell, and Wallace; giving a period of from 5411 to 5478 years from the creation to the Advent of Christ. The difference of this time, indeed, as compared with the vitiated computations of the Hebrew text, (for doubtless its chronology agreed originally with that of the Septuagint rather, the chronology of the Septuagint was derived from it,) amounts to nearly 1500 years. But even this longer period makes the date of man's origin to be "but of yesterday." Whether or not any beings of other species may have been called into existence since the time of man's introduction upon the earth, is a subject which does not affect the question before us. We only affirm that man's creation was an event in chronological continuity with a series of creative acts: that in addition to the power, and wisdom, and goodness of the Creator previously displayed by these acts, man appeared as a manifestation of his Maker's moral character; and that his introduction dates from about the compara *See Jackson's "Chronological Antiquities;" Hales' "Analysis of Chronology;" Russell's "Connection of Sacred and Profane History," &c.; and Prof. Wallace's "True Age of the World." tively recent period which we have specified. The distance of the creation from the Christian era, indeed, is different as estimated by different systems of chronology. The Indian chronology, as computed by Gentil, would make the interval 6174 years; the Babylonian, by Bailly, 6158; and the Chinese, by Bailly, 6157. But this difference, considering the proneness of every early nation to antedate its existence, surprises by its minuteness rather than by its magnitude, and justifies our confidence in the Biblical chronology as interpreted by the Septuagint. Still further is the recency of man's origin confirmed by obvious inferences from the actual state and number of the species. How, for example, is the incipient state of many of the arts and sciences, compared with the progress of human discovery, to be accounted for; or the scantiness of the world's population, compared with its ever-multiplying and expansive power; or the absence of all remains of man and of his works, (as far as research has hitherto gone,) from even the latest of the tertiary beds, except on the supposition of his comparatively modern introduction on the earth? 4. The order of man's appearance exhibits him also in geological continuity with the classes of animated nature to which he stands most nearly related. Geology, indeed, affords no ground whatever for the hypothesis of a regular succession of creatures, beginning with the simplest forms in the older strata, and ascending to the more complicated in the later formations. The earliest forms of life known to geology are not of the lowest grade of organization; neither are the earliest forms of any of the classes which appear subsequently, the simplest of their kind. Still, the succession of the vertebral classes is remarkable. For, notwithstanding subordinate exceptions to regular progress, the geological order in which we find these classes is that of an ascending series — fishes, reptiles, birds, mammals; and, at the head of the last of these classes, and the latest in time, comes man. Among the subordinate exceptions to regular zoological The chronology of Egypt is still undetermined. M. Bunsen begins his exposition of it with Menes, whom he places, A. C. 3643. But even his friendly reviewer in the Quarterly questions the personal existence of Menes, observing, that there is no documentary evidence of it-that Menu among the Hindus, Minos, and Minyas among the Greeks, Minerva among the Etruscans, and Mannus among the Germans, are the traditional authors of civilization, and that the name is always linked with a root denoting mind as the faculty, and man as the agent. |