and not as merely saying "Let there be.” He "formed man out of the dust of the ground." "Thy hands," it is said elsewhere, "have made me and fashioned me." Thou hast fashioned me behind and before and laid Thine hand upon me." Nay, the Almighty is represented in mystery, as though communicating to man something from Himself, some principle of life, or being, from His own ineffable essence. God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life." And, though these expressions do, doubtless, among other things, describe the wonderful constitution of man, in his being endowed with the reasonable and immortal soul which distinguishes him from all other beings of the visible creation; yet, when we remember the infinitely higher mystery involved in the creation of our highly favoured race, we can scarcely suppose expressions so awful to have no

further scope or meaning. Undoubtedly, in addition to this, as it may be called, the natural mystery of man's constitution, they shadow forth that surpassing and supernatural mystery, whereby the eternal Creator united for ever His own Almighty and Spiritual essence to matter; to the Incarnation of our Lord; to the assumption, by the second Person of the All-holy Trinity, of flesh and blood, with its result, the communication of that Flesh and Blood to the faithful in the elements of the Eucharist. God breathed into man's nostrils the breath of life. "The Holy Ghost," said the Angel to the blessed among women, "shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God:" even He Who is called by the prophet Jeremiah “the breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the

Lord":" He, by Whose presence we become living souls, and on Whose going forth from us we perish for ever.

O holy and adorable mystery of Christ's Incarnation! easy to be believed in name, but hard indeed to be really and practically received into the mind! God, the Almighty, the Eternal, the Maker of the immeasurably great universe which we see around us, and of which we can nowhere perceive the bound or limit, the Allpresent, All-seeing, All-governing, Allpreserving, One, deigning to become man, man, not in form or appearance, but in reality and for ever, the Son of a human mother, experiencing human wants and human feelings, labouring, suffering, and dying; and then, after rising again from the dead, ascending with "His body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of man's nature," to

u Lam. iv. 20.

reign as man for ever on the throne of the Most High.

And, O mystery not less deep and unfathomable, whereby our ascended Lord gives that His glorified Flesh and Blood, from day to day, under the form of bread and wine; thereby uniting and incorporating us with Himself, associating us with His own eternity, and communicating to us, so to speak, His own otherwise incommunicable glory.

Great, indeed, are these secrets of the heavenly kingdom; into these things, we are told, the Angels themselves desire to look*, and, as no created being can conceive the full greatness of the Godhead, it seems not too bold to say, that even they cannot fully fathom the depths of love contained in these marvellous dispensations. Man therefore has but to believe, to reverence, and to adore.

* 1 Pet. i. 12.

8. AND THE LORD GOD PLANTED A GARDEN EASTWARD IN EDEN; AND THERE HE PUT THE MAN WHOM HE HAD FORMED.

Here, as elsewhere, the beginning of a Divine work foreshews, and, as it were, contains in itself, the undeveloped end. Man was planted, at the first, in a garden; even as the abode destined for Him, in the fulness of time, was the Church, that

garden of the Lord," selected out of a world of wickedness, as a garden is chosen out and separated from the waste and unornamental ground about it, cultivated with care, and set with plants of beauty and sweetness to be a place of pleasure to its owner. Of her it is said, in the Song of Solomon, "a garden inclosed is my sister, my spouse." And again, the same image is used to express her domain and territory, the extent, length, and breadth of the heavenly kingy Chap. iv. 12.