haustible: nor had they any physical need for which the prodigal bounty of their Creator had not provided. They needed the shelter of no roof save the clear canopy of the sky, no covering but the innocence that enwrapped them as with a robe of light. Pure and serene, as the heaven around and above them, was their life before God and in each other.

Thus was this first example a perfect model of the true conjugal life, contemplated in its original constitution-grounded in the favour of God, embracing all the members of the family in its expanding circle, and furnishing an exhaustless spring of joy in the unselfish aspirations of each for the other, towards the Source of all happiness. The Love which is the essential being of God, and shineth ever in the zenith of eternity, was the life and light of the limited sphere in which were placed the ancestors of the race of mankind. They breathed and moved in a benignant atmosphere; the smile of Divine benevolence encircled them; there was naught to mar their complacency in each other, and the inferior creation rendered involuntary homage to the image of God in which they were made. So attractive has this picture of primitive innocence and virtue been found, that in different ages poets have delighted to throw around it the graces of fancy, and dwell lovingly on the ideal of a happiness such as the world has never seen since—such as has never since been delineated by the imagination. The descriptions given by Milton of the purity and felicity of the first pair, which linger so pleasingly in the memory, were but expressions of the idea we gather from the Bible; as were the pictures of elder poets. In the "Adam" of the Italian poet, Andreini, the Mystery or Sacred Drama which first suggested to Milton the idea of Paradise Lost, the Scriptural delineation is gracefully drawn out; the utterance of affection and grateful happiness being most appropriate to the pure peace of a state of innocence, while the evil spirit who looks on, "with jealous leer malign," can but envy the joy he is yet unable to disturb,

and fly in shame and rage from the hateful spectacle of human piety.

By the first sin, this pure atmosphere of love was troubled—this cloudless heaven overcast. With the desolation of that first spiritual bereavement, when aspiration failed to reach the high companionship from which they had fallen, and the orphaned soul "all mournfully sat down among the senses," came another strange and not less bitter experience of fallen humanity, the interruption of confidence in themselves and in each other, The shame which was the first consequence of their guilt expressed this reproach and remorse, as did their hiding from the presence of the Lord their consciousness of separation from him; the two-fold and wide-extending consequence of transgression thus being made known by anticipations of coming woe, felt through the two strongest principles of their nature!

Their expulsion from the garden where they had enjoyed intimate communion with their Maker, to wander in search of shelter, and wring subsistence by toil from the earth cursed for man's sake, was in appropriate significance of their spiritual exile. Divine mercy did not abandon the fallen pair. But the original beauty and glory of their state, in their relations to one another, were lost for them beyond the hope of recovery. The fatal jarring, by the forfeiture of innocence, of the chord from which had sounded the sweetest music of humanity, brought discord into their life; the man accused the woman before the Judge, as the cause of his disobedience; and for the perfect unity for which their nature had been formed, and which was now broken and destroyed by sin, were substituted the relations of authority and subjection. Their new condition, so sadly contrasted with the first, was to be

"A monumental, melancholy gloom,

Seen down all ages;"

although pleasures as well as sorrows belonged to it, and a way

was pointed out to prevent the ultimate tendencies of sin and loss. The mother of our race taking in all humility her lot of self-sacrifice and submission, and Adam tilling the ground whence he was taken, saw the gradual development of the consequences of the Fall. The birth of sons completed the circle of the first family, and religious hope, founded on the promise of a Seed that was to bruise the Serpent's head, sprang up in the heart of Eve with the sight of her first-born. But righteous Abel fell by the hand of Cain, and the murderer became a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth. Deep must have been the anguish of those parental hearts, and bitter the remorse with which they watched the fearful unfolding of the curse their guilt had drawn down-with which they listened to "the first audible gathering" of the groans of a ruined posterity.

Their struggles or sufferings are not recorded. Only in the brief outline of their history that follows are we permitted to see that the hope, almost extinguished at Abel's death, was renewed at the birth of Seth-the gift of God in his stead-the progenitor of the Seed in whom was to be accomplished the work of man's restoration.

II.

THE FAMILY OF NOAH.

THE families of the earth had grown corrupt before God, and filled with violence; but Noah found favour, because he was a just man, and lived in obedience to his Maker. He was given at his birth a name that signified repose, or refreshing, perhaps by the spirit of prophecy, revealing his extraordinary destiny, and the blessings that were to flow through him to his posterity. Having the "righteousness of faith," he enjoyed the Divine protection and support, both during the progress of human corruption, and when, by reason of the great wickedness that filled the earth, the end of all flesh was come, and everything wherein was the breath of life was to be destroyed from under heaven. Noah and his wife, and his sons, and his sons' wives, were appointed to be saved in the Ark, when the windows of heaven were opened, and the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and all the high hills under the whole heaven were covered. In the enumeration of the persons who took refuge in the Ark, it should be remarked that Noah and his three sons had each but one wife; although the destruction impending over the whole race of mankind, and their want of children as yet-for their sons were not born till after the flood-might have excused polygamy, could it have been excused. They acted, doubtless, under the immediate direction of the Deity, who thus testified his regard for the sacredness of the institution He had established in Paradise.

After the warning given so many years before, the tedious building of the vessel, and the preparations at which the unbelieving scoffed and sneered-while Noah "did according to all