My meditation of him shall be sweet when I consider him as my Deliverer.

How dense the gloom that gathers round the record of Adam's sin and fall! Reading this chapter without the cross before our eyes, it seems the saddest in all the inspired volume. Issuing from the abyss of woe, Satan has found an entrance into a newly-created world. Sin and death have bridged the gulf that separated earth from hell, and are swift to follow in Satan's track, eager to complete the ruin his hellish hate devised. Fiends from the pit rejoice, while angels, with grief-clouded faces, gaze upon the guilty pair. "Adam, where art thou?" Sinful man hears the summons, and, compelled by power divine, appears in the presence of his offended Maker. "Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord." "Though they hide themselves in the top of Carmel, I will search and take them out hence." Truly, "there is no darkness, nor shadow of death, where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves."

But when we read this record in the light of the cross, our grief speedily changes into gladness. That the promise made to Satan, "Thou shalt bruise his heel," has not been retracted, each disciple of Christ can testify. The old enmity hissed forth by the arch-apostate and his followers when the almighty Arm hurled them into their own place, has not yet been destroyed. The conflict, begun in Paradise, between the seed of the woman and the serpent—that conflict darkly shadowed forth in the mythology of heathen nations and painfully experienced by each regenerate heart—is raging still. "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" cries the Christian. "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!" prays the Christian's Lord and Master. That the bruising is not light, Gethsemane and Calvary bear mournful testimony. Nevertheless, it is not vital. Thou mayest bruise his heel, Satan, but not his head. From the abode of demons a yell of triumph must have risen when the Light of Life was extinguished on the cross. But the triumph was short-lived. "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy; when I fall, I shall arise." "That which thou sowest is not quickened except it die." "Thou shalt bruise his heel" because Omnipotence allows it, for "it pleased the Lord to bruise him," but "it shall bruise thy head." "Traveling in the greatness of his strength," Jesus plants his feet upon the necks of his enemies and chains the captives to his triumphal car. The Lion of the tribe of Judah has seized the prey. "Judah, thou art he whom his brethren shall praise." "Let all the people praise thee, O God; let all the people praise thee." And those who will not render him willing homage shall be trampled under the wheels of his advancing chariot. "But these mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me."

Shiloh, the Pacificator, has come; and though the conflict has not ceased, the combatants are already singing the conqueror's song. What meaneth this shout of triumph that cometh up from the battle-field? It is the voice of them that shout for the mastery. They go forth singing, "Thanks be unto God, which giveth us the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ." We hear their song above the clash of arms; amid the smoke of the battle-field we see their look of quiet confidence; and as they fall in the conflict they shout, "O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory?"

From heaven above is now proclaimed the blessing above the curse; and though Eden was lost through the disobedience of Adam, Paradise shall be regained through the obedience of Christ.

Mercy closed Eden's gate. "Behold, saith the Lord, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden." Life everlasting, even in the garden of Eden, would be no boon to a sin-stricken race.

The gates are open now not only "that the King of Glory may come in," but also for "the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O God of Jacob." "They shall ascend into the hill of the Lord;" they "shall stand in his holy place."