ted he them."-The latter part of the verse, however, does not necessarily imply that Eve was immediately formed after Adam, or on the same day, as the male and female of the other living creatures were, but refers to the after creation of an help meet for him, when God saw that it was not good for man to be alone. A part of the verse, too, is omitted by Mr. Paterson, or, "in the image of God created he him," which adds to the probability of the formation of the man alone at that time. The formation of the female, then, when -first mentioned by Moses, seems prospective, which is the only way of rendering it consistent with the account of her creation in the second chapter. The division of Scripture into chapters and verses, sometimes occasions not a little confusion, from parts being thus disjoined which the writers did not mean to be so. In the instance now under consideration, the first chapter seems to be a summary relation of the whole creation, and the second goes over the whole again, but entering more into the details ;-a mode frequently adopted by the sacred authors. We are, in short, first told that God made human kind male and female ;-then, it is explained that the man was first created-lived in Eden while a garden was preparing for him,—into which after he had been admitted, he had an employment, which must have taken him up a considerable time; and afterwards, that he also received a companion suited to him.

Adam, therefore, was for a while the sole being of human kind on the earth, and he may have been so for months or years before the creation of Eve. The origin of the female was very remarkable, inasmuch as it was totally different from the account we have of that of any other living creature; all with her sole exception having been taken directly from the earth, as was the body of Adam; his partner was formed from a part of his living body while he was senseless in a trance; but God must have communicated the fact to him, since he knew it. It has been objected to this relation that if it had been so, his male descendants would have also

Volume I. p. 5.

had a rib less on one side, which is not the case; but this is no solid objection, for children do not inherit such mutilations.

We can find no reason for rejecting a literal interpretation of the Scriptural description of Eve's formation. There can be no doubt that it would have been as easy for the Creator to have taken her outward frame from the ground as it was to produce that of the man's, and of all the lower animals from it. There must therefore have been some strong reason for her being made in quite another way from all the rest of animated beings. What it could have been, we can scarce even conjecture. We are told that there are to be no such unions as marriages in heaven, and we may therefore naturally conclude that the glorified or heavenly bodies of all the saints from the earth shall there be of a like form, although each may be distinguishable by peculiar features. Since we have no cause to believe that the female of any other species was originally taken from the male, none appear to have so close a tie between them as the human kind, who were evidently formed as the sovereigns of this globe, all things on it tending, directly or indirectly, to their subsistence, comfort, or pleasure.

The mortal body of man was formed of the earth, as the inferior animals were, and all bodies are so constituted as to resolve themselves into earth again when life leaves them. Man, we are told, became a living soul; but the original word in the Hebrew ( haia, translated by the Seventy into Greek, Zon or Life) would seem simply to refer to the animal life, as it is also used by Moses in relating the creation of the beasts. There can be no doubt but that on man's creation, his body received an immortal soul from God of a much superior nature to that of the beasts, if they (or any of them) have some such intellectual power which actuates them, but the only distinction made by Moses, while nar

*

Many beasts love, hate, contrive, remember, and acquire knowledge in a certain degree. Are these faculties to be considered qualities impressed upon mere matter? Some of the best metaphysicians and physiologists,

rating the animating of Adam's body, is by applying the same word in the plural number, to express his becoming a living creature, or soul, as he uses in the singular, to denote the same of beasts. The first has been thought by some likely to signify both natural and spiritual life, at least that it may indicate more than mere animal existence. With regard to the immortal spirit within us, we know little from this author, but he seems to be alluding to it when he speaks of our being created after the image of God, which may mean nothing more than that we were at first formed pure and spotless in our spirits. That the image of God mentioned in the 26th verse of the 1st chap. of Gen. consisted principally in righteousness and true holiness, seems evident from Ephes. iv. 24.-" and that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness," and from Coloss. iii. 10. "And have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him who created him.”*

The tradition of man's being created in the image of God, or of the Gods, was preserved among the Roman heathen till the coming of Christ. Thus Cicero † says "He who knows himself, will in the first place perceive that he is possessed of something divine, and will think that the mind within him was dedicated like a sacred image." And Ovid, who lived till A. D. 17, in still plainer terms, tells us, that Prometheus, (that is, the Divine Counsel,) formed man after the image of the Gods who govern all things.

when reasoning with regard to man, entirely discredit the idea of matter itself thinking, resolving, &c. How then can beasts often even reason in their own minds, and act in consequence? Thousands of anecdotes in support of this might be cited. Archbishop Tillotson discusses, in one of his Sermons, the question, as to whether beasts have souls, and shows that there can be no difficulty in believing that they have some such immaterial principle, although of a very different nature from that of man-but that it is a matter on which, he says, we cannot decide.

* The image of God in which man was created, besides what is above stated, has been held to have a reference to the form in which the Redeemer was afterwards to be manifested to the world. See Philip. ii. 6, 7, 8.

+ De Leg. Lib. I. cap. 22.

We are still ignorant what manner of spirits we are of; -whether our souls existed before, or were created at the time when our bodies were; on which point, the Scriptures are silent, but some obscure passages in them might perhaps lead us to infer, that we, that is, our souls, had formerly existed in a previous state and condition of being: But this we are sure of, both from Scripture and reason, that we have some such nature in our composition, distinct from mere animal life, or animal matter, and that it will continue its conscious existence when the latter is again mixed with the ground.

The existence of human souls in a state prior to their entrance into mortal bodies, has been a favourite theory with many, and has been ably supported. They are supposed by some to be those of fallen angels, who by passing through this life are to have another opportunity given to them of regaining heaven by faith and obedience here to the will of God; but, that none may glory in they themselves having regained that region from which they fell, their faith and good works only conduce to give them an interest or participation in the mercy of God, which he has promised to extend to those who believe in his Son, and avail themselves of the merit and reconciliation mysteriously emanating from the sacrifice of his mortal life, and his having been a man as we are, subject to death. The question of the exact nature of the spirit in its supposed former state must be very uncertain even to conjecture, for there may be many orders of spiritual beings of whom we know nothing, and the probability of our prior existence, therefore, does not in the least depend upon our being able or not to describe the particular species of spirits as they were known in that state. I must confess having a great inclination to believe in a prior state, not only from the probability of it, and from no contradiction being to be found in Scripture, but also from several passages which would seem to imply it. God created the body of man out of the ground at the time Moses speaks of, and breathed into it an animating principle, the same as the beasts have, (for, as I have before observed, Scripture ap

plies the same term to both,) but the immortal soul may have existed previously. If man, or rather the soul of man, did not live in a former state, then the Almighty creates a new soul for every person who is born. There is, in short, a constant creation of souls. Our material frames may continue their kind—similar bodies to themselves, by the delegated power of God, but they cannot be supposed to create souls. We commonly believe that God creates souls at the time these bodies are produced, which they are to inform. The Jews, on the contrary, think that God created them all at the beginning, and that they come by command of some superior power to join themselves to bodies. When the Apostles saw a man who was born blind, they asked their master, if it was by reason of this man's sin, or that of his parents, that he was born blind. Christ did not contradict their idea that a man might sin before he was born into this life, (or, more correctly-that his soul might do so,) but merely answered, that it was owing neither to his own sin, nor to that of his parents, but for the manifestation of the power of God. The Lord said to Jeremiah-" Before I formed thee in the belly, I knew thee, and before thou camest out of the womb, I gave thee wisdom."* The author of the Book of Wisdom says "Yea rather being good," (meaning comparatively so,) "I came into a body undefiled." Wherein he manifestly declares himself to have been a moral agent in a state prior to his abode here. When the disciples were asked by our Saviour-" Whom do men say that I am ? ”they answered “ Some say that thou art John the Baptist, some Elias, or one of the Prophets." A sufficient demonstration this, that a descent of the human species upon earth from a prior state, was a prevailing opinion among the Jews at that time, which Christ seemed rather to acquiesce in,

* Ch. i. 5. The above text would seem to imply rather more than the declaration of St. James in the Acts does, where he says-The divine prescience and omniscience "known unto God are all his works from the be-ginning of the world," chap. xv. 18. + Wisdom, viii. 20.

t Josephus, de bell. Jud. Lib. II. c. 12.