will suffice. The word "Cush," in ver. 13, would inevitably convey to the Hebrew reader the meaning of "Ethiopia"; but it is evident that no river near the Tigris and the Euphrates could be associated with Ethiopia, and the suggestion is possible that the Hebrew word "Cush" was here used in consequence of a confusion, between Cas, a district in Babylonia, or the Cossaei, the dwellers of Southern Babylonia, and Cush, the well-known name of African Nubia. Thus, even supposing, as I for one should not be prepared to do, that the language of the original tradition indicated a well-known locality in Western Asia, the transmutation of the Assyrian proper names into similarly sounding Hebrew names has made all attempts at recognition doubtful guesswork. But, surely, accurate geographical description is not to be expected from even the original form in which this Semitic tradition was known to the dwellers in Mesopotamia. And are we to expect a greater degree of accuracy from its later forms, whether Assyrian or Hebrew, after they had been altered and modified in order to be brought into harmony with the religious thought of a more advanced period in the history of the race?

Is not the real conception of the locality to be inferred from the language in which it is described? It is a garden in which the Almighty walked, and in which the serpent spoke. It is a place where man, after the Fall, could no longer remain. It is a garden

at whose gates Cherubim, those winged and legendary dragons, at once the guardians of the Divine Majesty (Ezek. xxviii. 13-16, cf. Ex. xxv. 18) and the personification of the thundercloud that declared the Divine anger (Ps. xviii. 11, 2 Sam. xxii. 11), were stationed to prevent the man from attempting to re-enter it.

(c) Religious Teaching.-The description belongs to the poetry of the early Israelite legend. The spiritual teaching which the narrative conveys comprises some of the "deep things" of the Israelite religion.

It taught how in the ideal state, before sin came into the world, man could dwell in the sunlight of the Divine Presence. The true Paradise was the place where God had put him; there he enjoyed the ideal existence. He lived in the exercise of his physical powers; he tended the garden. He enjoyed the command of his intellectual faculties; he named and discriminated the animals. He was a social being, and received, in the institution of marriage, the perfecting of human companionship.

But the blessing of the Divine Presence was conditional upon obedience to the Divine will. Paradise was forfeited by the preference of selfish appetites over the command of God. The expulsion from Paradise was the inevitable consequence of sin; the desire of man for the lower life was granted. He who asserted his own against the Divine will had no place in the Paradise of God.

The very powers of the sky, which testify to His might, seemed to bar the way to the Most High, and to exclude the fallen ones from all hope of return.

The very simplicity of the offence, which stands in such startling contrast to the tremendous character of its consequences, is not uninstructive. For it taught how the purpose, even more than the act, is judged in God's sight. It was, not the harmfulness of the act, but the rebellion and disobedience against God that brought the condemnation.

The motive impulse to sin was not inherent in man's nature. The temptation came from without him. He was not doomed by nature to fall, but he was gifted with the Godlike faculty of free-will. The submission of man's will to something lower than the Divine Will led to the Fall.

The Fall brought sin and evil in its train. It was no isolated act of wrong-doing. It was infinite in its results. Its effects were felt in the Universe, shared by the creatures, and transmitted to all generations among men. Thus does the narrative illustrate the solidarity of the human race. Modern investigations into heredity have strangely and unexpectedly confirmed its teaching. The thought of such "original sin" were enough to overwhelm us in despair, were it not that in the Person of the Second Adam we have a far more exceeding hope of glory-not the self-preservation, but the corporate reunion, of our race in Christ Jesus our Lord.

CHAPTER IV

THE STORY OF PARADISE―continued

I DWELT, in the last chapter, upon the narrative of the Fall, and upon its religious significance. There remain, however, two or three points of great importance arising out of the narrative, which I have reserved for a separate consideration.

In the account of the Fall, we have the picture of man's disobedience, and the penalty in which not only he is involved, but also all his descendants. Sin is represented as the cause of separation from God's presence; suffering, pain, death, as its penalty.

The great problem arising from the universality of suffering is thus presented to us in its simplest light. It is the consequence of sin, it is the chastisement for disobedience. In the third chapter of Genesis, suffering and death are very naturally regarded, according to the first and most obvious explanation of the passage, in the light of a punishment alone. But it is only a superficial view of the Israelite narrative that can regard the penalty of physical death (Gen. iii. 19), and all the woes

attendant upon our earthly frame, in the light of the curse. The only "curse" actually uttered in the narrative is pronounced upon the serpent and upon the soil (Gen. iii. 14, 17). The curse under which humanity lies, is the sentence pronounced upon the sinner, that of his expulsion from the presence of God. Physical death is but its type, the memorial of the power of sin, the emblem of its influence. In a colloquial sense, "death" may be "the curse of the human race; but it is not truly so, and certainly not according to the teaching of our Genesis narrative. We know now that even the penalty of death was not without its mercies. That could be no curse alone which, not only in the Hebrew race, but in every nation under the sun, has been the supreme witness of love, and the highest possible offering of self-sacrifice. That could be no curse alone which leads us in thought to the foot of the Cross, where the Saviour died.

No; physical pain, suffering, and death, these are the witnesses in our flesh to disobedience—a physical penalty, indeed, but a penalty incommensurable with moral guilt. The curse rests upon the sin of our nature, upon all that prompts to it (iii. 14), and all that shares in it (iii. 17). But man is not without hope. Even in death the penalty is a pledge of victory (iii. 15). And even the sorrow and pain, the outward memorials