Scriptures! Who but He who knoweth the end from the beginning could have given such an accurate outline of subsequent history, and packed it within the limits of this one verse?

"Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make coats of skins, and clothed them" (Gen. 3:21). In order to adequately explain and expound this verse many pages might well be written, but perforce, we must content ourselves with a few lines. This verse gives us a typical picture of a sinner's salvation. It was the first Gospel sermon, preached by God Himself, not in words but in symbol and action. It was a setting forth of the way by which a sinful creature could return unto and approach his holy Creator. It was the initial declaration of the fundamental fact that "without shedding of blood is no remission." It was a blessed illustration of substitution-the innocent dying in the stead of the guilty.

Before the Fall, God had defined the wages of sin: "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." God is righteous, and as Judge of all the earth He must do right. His law had been broken and justice cried aloud for the enforcing of its penalty. But is justice to override mercy? Is there no way by which grace can reign through righteousness? Blessed be God there is, there was. Mercy desired to spare the offender and because justice demands death, another shall be slain in his place. The Lord God clothed Adam and Eve with skins, and in order to procure these skins animals must have been slain, life must have been taken, blood must have been shed! And in this way was a covering provided for the fallen and ruined sinner. The application of the type is obvious. The Death of the Son of God was shadowed forth. Because the Lord Jesus laid down His life for the sheep God can now be just and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.

How beautiful and perfect is the type! It was the Lord God who furnished the skins, made them into coats and clothed our first parents. They did nothing. God did it all. They were entirely passive. The same blessed truth is illustrated in the parable of the prodigal son. When the wanderer had taken the place of a lost and undone creature and had owned his sin, the grace of the father's heart was displayed. "But the father said to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him" (Luke 15:22). The

prodigal did not have to furnish the robe, nor did he have put it on himself, all was done for him. And so it is with every sinner. "For by grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God" (Eph. 2:8). Well may we sing, "I will greatly rejoice in the Lord, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He hath clothed me with the garments of salvation, He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness" (Isa. 61: 10).

"So He drove out the man; and He placed at the east of the Garden of Eden cherubim and a flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the tree of life" (Gen. 3:24). This was the immediate climax in the Divine condemnation of the first sin. After sentence of judgment had been passed first upon the serpent, then upon the woman, and finally upon the man, and after God had acted in mercy by giving them a precious promise to stay their hearts and by providing a covering for their shame, Adam and Eve were driven out of Paradise. The moral significance of this is plain. It was impossible for them to remain in the garden and continue in fellowship with the Lord. He is holy, and that which defileth cannot enter His presence. Sin always results in separation. "But your iniquities have separated between you and your God, and your sins have hid His face from you" (Isa. 59:2).

Here we see the fulfilment of God's threat. He had announced, "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Die, not only physically-there is something infinitely worse than that-but die spiritually. Just as physical death is the separation of the soul from the body, so spiritual death is the separation of the soul from God.-"This my son was dead (separated from me) and is alive againrestored to me. When it is said that we are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins," it is because men are "alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart" (Eph. 4:18). In like manner, that judicial death which awaits all who die in their sins-the "Second Death"-is not annihilation as so many are now falsely teaching, but eternal separation from God and everlasting punishment in the lake of fire. And so here in Genesis 3 we have God's own definition of

(*Note in Rev. 20 after the unsaved are resurrected, they are still termed "dead"-dead for ever, dead to God even while they live).

death-separation from Him, evidenced by the expulsion of man from Eden.

The barring of the way to the tree of life illustrated an important spiritual truth. In some peculiar way this tree seems to have been a symbol of the Divine presence (see Prov. 3:18), and the fact that fallen man had no right of access to it further emphasized the moral distance at which he stood from God. The sinner, as such, had no access to God, for the sword of justice barred his way, just as the veil in the Tabernacle and Temple shut man out from the Divine presence. But blessed be God, we read of One who has opened for us a "new and living way" to God, yea, who is Himself the Way (John 14:6). And how has that been accomplished? Did justice withdraw her sword? Nay, it sheathed it in the side of our adorable Saviour. Doubtless that solemn but precious word in Zechariah 13:7, "Awake, O sword, against My Shepherd," looks back to Genesis 3:24. And because the Shepherd was smitten the sheep are spared, and in the Paradise of God we shall eat of the fruit of that tree from which Adam was barred (see Rev. 2:7).

Summing up, then, this important division of our subject-God and the Fall-we discover here: An exhibition of His condescension in seeking man; an evidence of His mercy in giving a blessed prophecy and promise to sustain and cheer the heart of man; a demonstration of His grace in providing a covering for the shame of man; a display of His holiness in punishing the sin of man; and a typical foreshadowment of the urgent need of a Mediator between God and man.

6. THE FALL, CONCLUDED

The philosophy of life as interpreted by the Darwinian school, affirms that sin is merely a present imperfection and limitation which will gradually disappear as the human race ascends the hill of life. The evolutionary hypothesis, therefore, not only denies the teaching of Genesis one, but it also repudiates the facts recorded in Genesis three. And here is the real point and purpose of Satan's attack. The specious reasoning of our modern theologians has not only attempted to undermine the authenticity of the account of Creation, but it has also succeeded in blunting the point of the Gospel's appeal.

By denying the Fall, the imperative need of the new birth has been concealed. For, if man began at the bottom of the moral ladder-as evolutionists ask us to believe-and is now slowly but surely climbing heavenwards, then all he needs is education and cultivation. On the other hand, if man commenced at the top of the ladder but through sin fell to the bottom-as the Bible declares-then he is in urgent need of regeneration and justification. The issue thus raised is vital and fundamental.

V. The Fall and Human History

While we are entirely dependent upon the revelation which God has given us in His Word for our knowledge of the beginnings of human history, and while His Word is absolutely authoritative and to be received with unquestioning faith, and while the Holy Scriptures need no buttressing with human logic and argument, yet an appeal to history and experience is not without interest and value. This is the case in respect to the "Fall." And we would now submit that the teaching of Genesis three is substantiated and vindicated by the great facts of human history and experience.

1. The Teaching of Human Experience

Read the annals of history, examine the reports of our police courts, study life in the slums of our large cities, and then ask, How comes it that man, the king of creation, designed and fitted to be its leader and lord, should have

sunken lower than the animals? Illustrations are scarcely necessary to show how low man has sunk, for all who know vice as it really exists beneath the thin covering provided by the conventionalities of modern civilization, are only too painfully aware of the degradation and desolation which exist on all sides. A beast will not abandon its young as is now so frequently the case with the parents of illegitimate children. The beasts of the field put multitudes of human beings to shame, for in the breeding season they confine themselves to their own mates-exceptions being found only among those animals which man has partially domesticated! No animal will drink foul and poisoned water, yet thousands of well educated men and women are annually poisoned with alcohol.

But what is the cause of these effects. What is the true explanation of these sad facts? How comes it that the king of creation has sunken lower than the beasts of the field? Only one answer is possible-SIN, the FALL. Sin has entered the human constitution; man is a fallen creature, and as such, capable of any vileness and wickedness.

2. The Discords of Human Nature

Man, the unregenerate man, is a composite being. Two principles are at work within him. He is a self-contradiction. One moment he does that which is noble and praiseworthy, but the next that which is base and vile. Sometimes he is amenable to that which is good and elevating, but more often he abandons himself to the pleasures of sin. In some moods he seems closely akin to God, in others he is clearly a child of the devil.

Whence comes this conflict between good and evil? Why this perplexing duality in our common make-up? Only one explanation meets all the facts of the case. On the one hand, man is "the offspring of God"; but, on the other, sin has come in through the Fall and marred the Creator's handiwork.

3. The Universality of Sin

Why is it that the king's son in the palace and the saint's daughter in the cottage, in spite of every safeguard which love and watchfulness can devise, manifest an unmistakable bias towards evil and tendency to sin? Why is it that heredity and environment, education and civilization are