"YE SHALL BE AS GODS, KNOWING GOOD AND EVIL." NEW YORK: PUBLISHED BY M. W. DODD, BRICK CHURCH CHAPEL, CORNER OF PARK ROW AND SPRUCE ST., Opposite the City Hall. MDCCCXLVII. ENTERED ACCORDING TO ACT OF CONGRESS, IN THE YEAR 1847, BY JOSHUA H. M'ILVAINE, IN THE CLERK'S OFFICE OF THE DISTRICT COURT FOR THE NORTHERN ROBERT CRAIGHEAD, PRINTER, PREFACE. THE writer of this little volume would gladly apologize for its publication, but he well knows that the only apology which can be satisfactory must be found in the book itself; that, if it be not found there, it were vain to offer it here. Yet, perhaps, it may be of advantage to know something of the character and object of the following pages before they are read. To some the views presented in this brief treatise may bear an appearance of originality to which they are not entitled ; others may be offended by a seeming novelty in that which is not new. For they exhibit those events in the Scriptural history of man which are connected with the fatal "tree of the knowledge of good and evil," not merely as facts, but also as facts which are immensely significant. But it must be remembered that there is hardly any commentary, ancient or modern, in which it is not assumed that most of those events have a symbolical and significant character. Every Christian child is taught to regard the curse pronounced upon the serpent as a symbol under which is set forth God's judgment upon "that old serpent, that is the devil;" and under which is given the first promise of redemption through the "Seed of the Woman." In the following pages an attempt is made to justify upon acknowledged principles this way of viewing those events; and at the same time to vindicate their claim to be facts which actually occurred as they are recorded. But this little volume is principally the fruit of an earnest desire to relieve the minds of sincere people from difficulties in respect to some of the mysteries of the Word of God-difficulties from which the writer himself has greatly suffered, and from which so many suffer in this age of rationalistic and infidel philosophy. This he has sought to do, not by explaining them away, but by exhibiting as clearly as he could, the principle by which they are to be justified as mysteries. The fundamental idea of all the views presented is that the wisdom of man, as a criterion of distinction between good and evil, is, of itself, foolishness; and that the Wisdom of God alone is true wisdom. But in order to set forth and illustrate this truth, it was necessary to discuss other subordinate topics, each of which is intended to have a practical moral and spiritual effect of its own. Indeed it is the hope of the writer that the book may be judged by its spirit rather than by the intellectual form in which that spirit is embodied. If then the reader has ever found himself embarrassed by the Scriptural use of types and symbols; if it has ever occurred to him that the account of a "talking snake" in the temptation of man, is an improbable story; if the blasphemy of the infidel sneering at the account which God has given of the sin and fall of man, has ever disturbed him; if the mystery of the atonement, made by the sacrifice of the Innocent for the guilty, has caused him to offend ;-perhaps upon these and other points he may find some relief from the following pages. And if, on rising from their perusal, he sees more clearly, and feels more deeply, than before, that his own views of things are to be thrown away as folly, and those which God gives in his Word to be adopted as the right ones in their stead; that the law of God is holy, just and good; that the practical wisdom revealed through the conscience, distinguishing between right and wrong, is paramount over all other forms of the wisdom and prudence of man; that the Eternal Spirit, in his and agency, power is a very present God," upon whom he is dependent in a most vital sense; that all earthly and visible things are unsubstantial and fleeting shadows compared with the substantial being and eternal permanency of the unseen and spiritual things of the kingdom of God; that the 66 t PREFACE. mutual relations between the parent and child, and of marriage, are hallowed, purified and exalted in his eyes; that children are to be trained up in the submission and obedience of faith, reverence and love, and not in that of sight and reasoning; that "the carnal mind" is an accursed enemy of God; that the chastisements of labor, sorrow and death are holy things, to be submitted to in penitence and in faith; that the atonement of Christ is the only salvation for him; that he must be crucified with Christ in order to live and reign with him; that his own strength, or the obedience of his own agency, is utterly in vain to save him from the curse and power of sin; that the agency and obedience of Christ in and for him are all-sufficient to restore and perfect his . spiritual life, and to bring into him an everlasting righteousness;"-if he finds any of these effects produced upon his mind and heart, let him give the praise and the glory to Him whose blood cleanseth us from all sin. 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