of conveying in those records a full description of the various methods which God may have employed for the purpose of establishing a belief of this doctrine in the minds of men? Had the accounts we possess relative to this point been more particular and copious, would not this, in its influence upon that people, for whose exclusive use the Mosaic records were primarily designed, have been nearly tantamount to a direct promise and a positive assurance?

We will now proceed to investigate the causes which may have operated to produce in the minds of mankind in general the belief of a future retribution in which inquiry we do not, however, calculate upon that deficiency of evidence which it was the design of the foregoing observations to supply.

I." And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Be"cause thou hast done this, thou art cursed above “all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon

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thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all "the days of thy life and I will put enmity be"tween thee and the woman, and between thy seed "and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou "shalt bruise his heel. Unto the woman he said, "I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy con"ception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; "and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he "shall rule over thee. And unto Adam he said, "Because thou has hearkened unto the voice of thy "wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I com"manded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: "cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt "thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also

" and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou "shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy "face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the

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ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust "thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return"."

On the foregoing passage, we have to offer the following observations.

The

First, The denunciation on the serpent would be construed by our first parents into a promise to themselves of future triumph over their enemy, to be achieved by the posterity of the woman. prospect thus afforded they would regard as given for their consolation under the miseries of their fallen state. With this prospect they would therefore associate the hope of a deliverance from the dreadful evil which they had now brought upon themselves. That evil being death, the notion of a deliverance must have been correspondent, and must have embraced in it the prospect of a rescue from mortality.

Secondly, Adam and Eve would regard themselves as the representatives, in this transaction, of all their future posterity. They could not but understand (for if they understood it not when the awful judgment was denounced, they would soon be taught by the event) that their descendants were comprehended together with themselves in the doom of returning to the dust. They would therefore view them as included alike in the promise of deliverance. The benefit they were taught to expect would not, in their contemplation, be limited to any portion of

Gen. iii. 14-19

mankind who might live either at the time of the victory over the serpent, or after it. For this would have been of slender avail for the consolation of those who were actually suffering under the consequences of the fall.

Thirdly, That the malediction of the serpent was thus designed to afford a hope of immortality for man, will further appear from considering the doom itself which was incurred by Adam and Eve. "The judgment," says Sherlock, " is awful and severe the woman is doomed to sorrow in concep"tion; the man to sorrow and travail all the days "of his life; the ground is cursed for his sake; and "the end of the judgment is, Dust thou art, and "unto dust thou shalt return. Had they been left

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thus, they might have continued in their labour "and sorrow for their appointed time, and at last "returned to dust, without any well-grounded hope "or confidence in God: they must have looked upon "themselves as rejected by their Maker, delivered "up to trouble and sorrow in this world, and as having no hope in any other. Upon this foot, I "conceive there could have been no religion left in "the world; for a sense of religion without hope is "a state of frenzy and distraction, void of all in"ducements to love and obedience, or any thing else "that is praiseworthyd." Such hope could not relate to the present life, because that would have been inconsistent with the nature of the penalty

d Sherlock's Discourses on Prophecy. Disc. III. The whole of that prelate's remarks on this subject are highly deserving of attention.

which had been denounced; it must therefore have related to a future. To this view it may indeed be objected, that the dread of God's omnipotence and the fear of falling into a worse condition, would have supplied the operation of a religious motive. But a notion of religion like this, in which fear alone prevails to the total exclusion of hope and love, is wholly foreign to all those characters under which religion is described to us in Scripture. "There is mercy with thee," says the Psalmist, therefore shalt thou be fearede." We consider our conclusion then unshaken, that religion, under the circumstances immediately connected with the fall, could never have subsisted in the world without the support of a future state.

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Fourthly, The penalty which had been threatened was not inflicted immediately after the transgression. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou "shalt surely dief." Here was an abatement of the divine severity, with which our first parents can hardly have failed to connect the hope of further mercy, and that in a way quite incompatible with the state of sublunary wretchedness on which they had just entered. The respite afforded them would be viewed in conjunction with the promise of a triumph over their adversary: and the continuance of life would naturally be regarded, as given with a probationary design, for the purpose of enabling them to become qualified for the benefits of the promised victory and deliverance.

II. Thus favourable to the expectation of a future state were the views unfolded to our first pa

rents immediately after the fall. Soon after this time, there occurs in the sacred narrative a very important event, which yields the strongest confirmation to the argument which is here maintained.

Cain and Abel, having each presented an oblation to God, we are informed that the former rose up against the latter and slew him. The motive which instigated the murderer is thus explained: "The "Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: "but unto Cain and to his offering he had not re"spectf." "Wherefore slew he him? Because his

own works were evil, and his brother's right"eous." It is further to be observed, according to the writer to the Hebrews, that the faith of the one was the reason of his being accepted, and the want of it in the other the cause of his rejection.

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By faith Abel offered unto God a more excellent "sacrifice than Cain." Now faith must be understood to denote a disposition of mind actuated by a firm reliance on the divine blessing promised to obedience. Less than this cannot be adequate to the meaning of the term. It must have been under the influence of this sentiment that he had been able to perform an acceptable homage to his Maker.

What feelings, then, must have been excited in the bosoms of the first parents of mankind by this tragical occurrence? when they beheld their son carried off by a premature death, in consequence of an act, which was acceptable to God, which had been performed in submissive conformity to his will, and with a confident reliance on his protection and blessing. Nothing but the belief in a future state

f Gen. iv. 4, 5.

81 John iii. 12.

h Heb. xi. 4.