I. In forming this globe, God had prepared a suitable spot for the abode of Adam and the cradle of the human race. It was a garden of delights, abounding in all that was necessary for man’s simple wants, providing him with occupation for his faculties, and, we may be sure, more lovely than the loveliest spots that charm us now in this world of our trial and punishment. At this stage the earth was fully under the dominion of man, serving him without resistance to his efforts. “The Lord God had planted a paradise of pleasure from the beginning, wherein He placed man whom He had formed … to dress it and keep it” (Gen. ii. 8, 15). Hence we learn that idleness is not the lot of man even in beatitude. There is a curse upon our labour, but labour itself is a necessity for our good estate of body and mind, for our advance and happiness. In this we may see a figure of Our Lord’s Incarnation in the “Garden enclosed” (Cant. iv. 12) where He placed His tabernacle. It was an Eden of grace and delight, and it endured but a short time. Jesus had to go forth in consequence of sin to labour in the sweat of His brow and struggle with the thorns and thistles of human perversity. In His Church God has provided a garden of Eden for you, full of all necessaries and delights, with the tree of life in the midst thereof. Outside there prevail doctrinal difficulty, moral failure, deficiency of grace, frustration of well-meant effort.
II. Next we find Adam led by God to contemplate the wonders of creation, to show his supremacy over it, and to exercise his intelligence by naming things in accordance with their characters. “The Lord God having formed the beasts and fowls brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name” (Gen. ii. 19). Like the earth, all animals were then peacefully subject to the dominion of man, in virtue of the supremacy of his soul and its subjection to God’s authority. So now with us: absolute conformity to the divine law is the key to our complete mastery over ourselves and over the accidents of life. “To serve Him is to reign.” We may also remember that the whole human race passed before the eyes of Our Lord, especially in the agony of Gethsemani, to see what name He would call them. He saw our lives and deeds. He recognized some as His sheep and lambs, doves of innocence, or eagles who rise to the heights of divine contemplation; also wolves who rend the flock, and foul birds of night that delight in carrion and in deeds of darkness. See where you will place yourself; according to that, He names you.
III. Adam, as being the crown of God’s work, was necessarily complete and perfect in himself. Yet there was more required. He observed that amongst all creatures “there was not found a helper like himself” (Gen. ii. 20). He was alone; and the law of intelligent beings is society and not solitude. As in the Trinity, so there needed to be multiplicity as well as unity in the human image of God. In some wonderful way, therefore, God effected the separation of the sexes. He produced a second person from the first, and from these a third term, the completion and the bond of the primary human society. So is the family bound together in the unity of Matrimony, and the whole human race in unity of origin. Here is an emblem of the Church, the spouse of Christ, proceeding from the wounded side of the second Adam when He slept the sleep of death upon the cross; and from this union of Christ and His Church proceeds the spiritual life of mankind, who are born again in baptism. That holy spouse is separated from the world to be inseparably united with Christ, never to fall away or be supplanted by another. Only her children are recognized by Him as His. You are a child of that union. You help to form one term of that trinity, whereof Jesus Christ is the first, and the Church the second term. It is a mystical but most real relationship.
II. Next we find Adam led by God to contemplate the wonders of creation, to show his supremacy over it, and to exercise his intelligence by naming things in accordance with their characters. “The Lord God having formed the beasts and fowls brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; for whatsoever Adam called any living creature the same is its name” (Gen. ii. 19). Like the earth, all animals were then peacefully subject to the dominion of man, in virtue of the supremacy of his soul and its subjection to God’s authority. So now with us: absolute conformity to the divine law is the key to our complete mastery over ourselves and over the accidents of life. “To serve Him is to reign.” We may also remember that the whole human race passed before the eyes of Our Lord, especially in the agony of Gethsemani, to see what name He would call them. He saw our lives and deeds. He recognized some as His sheep and lambs, doves of innocence, or eagles who rise to the heights of divine contemplation; also wolves who rend the flock, and foul birds of night that delight in carrion and in deeds of darkness. See where you will place yourself; according to that, He names you.
III. Adam, as being the crown of God’s work, was necessarily complete and perfect in himself. Yet there was more required. He observed that amongst all creatures “there was not found a helper like himself” (Gen. ii. 20). He was alone; and the law of intelligent beings is society and not solitude. As in the Trinity, so there needed to be multiplicity as well as unity in the human image of God. In some wonderful way, therefore, God effected the separation of the sexes. He produced a second person from the first, and from these a third term, the completion and the bond of the primary human society. So is the family bound together in the unity of Matrimony, and the whole human race in unity of origin. Here is an emblem of the Church, the spouse of Christ, proceeding from the wounded side of the second Adam when He slept the sleep of death upon the cross; and from this union of Christ and His Church proceeds the spiritual life of mankind, who are born again in baptism. That holy spouse is separated from the world to be inseparably united with Christ, never to fall away or be supplanted by another. Only her children are recognized by Him as His. You are a child of that union. You help to form one term of that trinity, whereof Jesus Christ is the first, and the Church the second term. It is a mystical but most real relationship.
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