the body. Therefore, as the Church is subject unto Christ, let the wives be to their own husbands in every thing." And, even had not the authoritative explanation of this high mystery been thus graciously vouchsafed to us, the thoughtful and pious mind, accustomed to trace the invisible things of God in the things that are made, could scarcely fail to imagine that a Sacramental mystery of some kind must be connected with that order of things, through which the filial bond-the manifest type of man's relation to God, as creature to Creator-is systematically, in the order of nature, superseded by a bond of another kind; a bond in which we are not born, but into which we are allowed to enter: even as we are called, through a new birth, other than our natural one, to that ineffable oneness with Christ which is the privilege of His Church. 25. AND THEY WERE BOTH NAKED, THE MAN AND HIS WIFE, AND WERE NOT ASHAMED. Freedom from sin was accompanied by freedom from shame. In this verse we have an illustration of that purity, that simplicity, that absence of disguise, which characterised our first parents, while they remained in that state of primal but transient innocence, which foreshadowed the ultimate and eternal holiness of the Church, even as the imperfect, and in some respects shadowy, innocence of childhood represents the purity of the saints, who have finally triumphed over the assaults of the evil one. They saw not that they were naked; for they looked not on themselves. They considered not themselves, obeyed not their own wills, and walked not in their own ways. Their eyes were fixed on God; their wills were bound up in His. And it was only when, in tasting K of the forbidden tree, they looked, as it were, away from Him, that "the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked;" that they felt, in shame, the first sad consequence of sin. OXFORD: PRINTED BY I. SHRIMPTON. |