The Patriarchs. Bellett John Gifford

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СКАЧАТЬ she listened to the devil; for the soul that gives up God must find out other masters, and other resources. And this is the world. The world has no confidence in God, nothing to bind it to Him, nothing to give it rest in Him, no sense of His love and truth. Such has it been since this hour, when man gave ear to the accuser of God. It has therefore found out other objects. God made man upright; but he has sought out many inventions. Eccles. vii. 29.

      Conscience, too, is quickened into being. Sin did this. "They knew that they were naked." And it was then, at the hour of its birth, as it is to this hour, an uneasy conscience, a conscience that makes cowards of all who carry it. "I was afraid," says Adam (unable to look at God), "because I was naked." Conscience in man must be of this quality, for it owes its existence to sin. There was no sense of good and evil in him till he sinned; and this sense, thus acquired, must leave him a coward in the presence of the righteous One.

      Instinctively they make themselves aprons. This is our doing still. Our common state of guilt makes us shun even our fellow-creatures. We cannot stand inspection even from them. One great and constant effort, in the scene around us every day, is to escape full notice. The apron is still invented. The social system understands and allows this. Indeed, it is maintained by a common consent of this sort. And religion, in its way and measure, as well as the rules and common understanding of society, helps in all this. But "the presence of the Lord God" is a different element from that of the presence of our fellows. No rules which sustain the social system will make that tolerable for a moment. The clothing and the ceremony, the inventions of society, or the good manners that array and adorn it, will be found vanity. All have come short of His glory. Let but the conscience hear the tread of His foot, or the sound of His voice in the garden, and no attempt will be equal to that moment. Even religious inventions will all be vain. They can give no confidence with God, nor turn the current of the heart. With his apron upon him, Adam hides himself among the trees of the garden.

      This teaches holy and solemn lessons. But with all this cowardice there is effrontery. "The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree." Man lays the mischief down at God's door. He says in effect, "Let God see to it; for the woman is His creature, and He gave her to me;" as he still, in the spirit of his mind, says, "Let God see to it; for the world is His, and He made it." A strange and horrible union! The insolence of the heart charging God, and yet a coward conscience unable to meet Him. The sinner may talk big, and make a noise; he may reason upon God and his own condition, and frame speeches and arguments as well as aprons; but in spite of all he can surround himself with, there he is, like Adam, ashamed of himself, and afraid of God. Man has wronged the blessed God, and avoids Him. He charges Him, and yet is afraid to look in His face while he does so. All this, in spite of himself, witnesses against him. "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee," the Lord has but to say. And then, as again in the parable, he must be speechless.

      Such was the mind of Adam then, and such is human nature still. But if this were his moral condition, what were his circumstances? Just those of man to this hour also. By the sweat of his face he was to get bread, and in the sorrow of his heart to eat of it; and that too in the place of thorns and thistles. And in like sorrow the woman was to bring forth children; and all this till they both returned to the dust, out of which they had been taken. And man is still after this manner, outside the garden, conversant with toil and sorrow. Dressing and keeping a lovely surface and a fruitful soil is not the thing or the allotment now. Thorns and thistles and an unkindly reluctant ground are to be contended with, and life to be had by the sweat of the face in the contest.

      God alone is above this water-flood, able to manage this mighty catastrophe. And His supremacy is such that He will make even such an eater yield meat, and get sweetness out of even this strong one.

      In a glorious sense, however, redemption is far more than remedy of a mischief, or relief, even with advantage, for an injured, ruined creation. Creation, rather, is the servant of redemption; for "redemption is no afterthought." For the pleasure of Him who sits upon the throne all things are and were created. But that very throne has the rainbow round about it (Rev. iv.), the sign of covenant faithfulness, and that all things were to stand in redemption, or in the value of the blood of Jesus. So that when sin entered, the Lord God was at once prepared for it (I speak as a man); prepared to meet it by covenant arrangements made before the world began, as His very first word to the serpent tells us, "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."

      Here the great way of God opens upon us. This promised Seed of the woman, here revealed, is God's provision for dead and ruined man, in the face of all the malice and wrath of the enemy. And He is this at all personal cost; for the serpent was to bruise His heel. But though bruised, He was to achieve a glorious victory; for He was to bruise the serpent's head.

      These are the holy, august characters of this mysterious stranger-this promised Deliverer or Kinsman. Such was the truth revealed on the first moment of our sin, and such has been the truth ever since. This gospel, published in the first promise in the face of the devil himself, is maintained in these last days by the apostle, in the face of men on earth and angels in heaven. Gal. i. 8. Whether it be the earliest or the latest preaching of it, this glorious gospel is still the same. It is "the witness of God which He hath testified of His Son." It is the gospel of the bruised and yet victorious Seed of the woman. In the bright and perfect idea of it man is silent and passive. Abram had only to believe, and righteousness was imputed to him. Israel had but to stand by and see God's salvation. Joshua in Zechariah iii., the prodigal, the convicted adulteress, are all in like case. And here, at the beginning of our sin, and the beginning of God's gospel, it is just the same. Adam has only to listen, and through hearing to believe and live. The word is nigh us, and we have but to receive it without working anything in the heights above, or in the depths beneath. The activities are God's; the sacrifices are God's. The profoundness of our silence and passiveness in becomingrighteousness is only equalled by the greatness of the divine activity and sacrifice in acquiring righteousness for us. In the sight of such a mystery we may well stand and say, "What hath God wrought!" "Simple indeed it is to us," as one once said, "but it cost Himeverything."

      There is nothing in the heart of man like faith in this gospel. The faith of a poor sinner in the redeeming grace of God is the most beautiful condition the soul can be in. As saints, beloved, we may trust God for our need. We may look to Him for counsel, or for provision. We may trust Him to vindicate our doings, comfort us in sorrow, and strengthen us in difficulties. But the faith of a sinner, in the justifying grace and work of His divine Saviour, transcends them all. Nothing is so precious, for nothing apprehends God in so glorious a character, or gives Him to the soul in so wondrous a relationship. This faith it is which uses the richest resources in God, and acts upon the most blessed discoveries of Him. For while all the ways of His glory shine brightly-His strength, and comfort, and wisdom for His needy saints-yet, that He has grace and salvation for sinners, this excelleth them all.

      The Spirit of God, in these early times, gives us some most precious samples of this most precious faith; as though (may I say it?) delighting in such a thing, He produced an impression of the finest character at once, as soon as occasion served.

      Thus Adam, in his faith, talked only of life, though in the midst of death-death, which he himself had brought in, a standing witness against him. He was doomed to be an outcast in a scene of ruin which his own sin had produced. He knew this and allowed it. But he had listened to the story of the conflict between his destroyer and the woman's Seed. In the very place of judgment-from among the trees of the garden, where conscience had driven him-his ear had caught the sound of the sweet gospel, not of mercy merely, but propitiation and victory, and forth he comes, talking of life. He called his wife "Eve," the mother of all living. All life was in the promised Kinsman-Redeemer. In creation Adam himself had been constituted head of life-"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth;" but that, in his esteem, was now forfeited and gone. Life must flow in a new channel-"He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life."

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