Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

“And when the woman saw.” She was now looking at the tree and its fruit from a far different standpoint from that in the morning. She beheld it now with a look made false by the distorted application of God’s prohibition by her tempter. In fact, she had become enchanted by the distorted construction put upon God’s plain commandment. The satanic promises seemed to have driven the threatening of that prohibition out of her thought. Now she beholds the tree with other eyes. Three times, it is said, how charming the tree appeared to her.

But where has Adam been all this time? Doubtless he was busy with his duties, for God had set him “to dress and to keep” the garden in which he had been placed. He may have seen Eve passing down one of the beautiful paths of the garden in her morning walk, beguiled by the splash of the fountains, the song of the birds, and the beauty of the flowers at her feet. He may have observed her stay longer than usual, and so turned aside from his duties to see what had become of her, and following down the path over which he had last seen her disappear among the trees and shrubbery of the garden, soon came to the place where “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil” stood, and then, from the lips of his own pure, sweet wife, learned what had taken place. Possibly she was holding the very fruit of which she had said, “neither shall ye touch it,” in her hands, admiring its beauty and wondering how it tasted. And, while examining the fruit, she told her husband what had passed between her and her tempter, and as she finished her story she said, “I do not think there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it, to see how it looks inside.” Prompted by womanly curiosity, she broke open the fruit, and, before she was really conscious, she “did eat!” “Why, how nice!” she exclaimed, at the same time handing the other half to her husband. As a good gardener, he would naturally share the curiosity of his wife to taste this fruit, “and he did eat!”

The next statement we have, “And the eyes of them both were opened.” But how were they opened? Each of them had two good eyes before eating the fruit; in fact, Eve had been admiring the fruit as it hung among the branches of the tree, and as she had turned it over in her hands. Before they tasted they saw with their natural eyes. Now they see with a higher knowledge of sense—there is added a con-sense—a conscience or self-consciousness. In the relation between the antecedent here and what followed there evidently lies a terrible irony. The promise of the tempter becomes half fulfilled, though, indeed, in a sadly different sense from what they had supposed. They had attained, in consequence, to a moral insight. Self-consciousness was awakened with their knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil. It belongs to the very beginning of moral cognition and development.

How strange it all is. Eden full of trees, fruits of every kind, luscious and satisfying, but, excited by false and wicked statements in respect to the prohibition of the fruit of one tree, she straightway desires to taste for herself, and that curiosity blasted her and blasted all nations. And thousands in every generation, inspired by unhealthful inquisitiveness, have tried to look through the keyhole of God’s mysteries—mysteries that were barred and bolted from all human inspection—and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach.

We may also learn that fruits which are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from paradise and years of sorrow and wretchedness and woe paid for that luxury.

Sometimes people plead for just one indulgence in sin. There can be no harm to go to this or that forbidden place just once. Doubtless that one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger. To find out the consequences of that one sin you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, open all the sepulchres and show the dead, open all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened, like a leech, famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it! Beware of entertaining temptations to first sins! Turn away and flee for thy life to the sure and only Refuge—Christ Jesus.

In the cool of the day, as the evening hours drew on, Adam and Eve “heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden.” They were used to hearing that voice walking in the garden in the cool of the day. Eden had become a dear spot to the heart of their Father, and doubtless He often came down to converse with them. So now He seeks companionship with the majestic human masterpieces of His creation. And why should he not?

But, passing strange! instead of running to Him out of their Eden home, as doubtless they had been wont to do, “Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God amongst the trees of the garden.” This act, no doubt, was prompted by self-consciousness and the shame and guilt which it brought. So we clearly see that sin separates from God. They had pronounced judgment upon their transgression by their very conduct. Instead of meeting God as they had been doing, a feeling of distrust and servile fear entered their hearts, and a sense of the loss of their spiritual purity, together with the false notion that they can hide themselves from God. And so it has come to pass that ever since the first transgression men have been hiding from God, running away from his presence.

“And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him, Where art thou?” The Lord is the first to break the silence; the first to seek erring humanity. Not for His own sake does God direct this inquiry, for He knew where Adam was, but that Adam might take courage and open his mouth in confession—it was an invitation to tell the whole sad story. But, instead, he multiplies the difficulties by his answer, “I was afraid, because I was naked.” That is to say, Adam, instead of confessing the sin, sought to hide behind its consequences, and his disobedience behind his feeling of shame. His answer to the interrogation is far from the real cause of the change that had come over his conduct, which was sin, and made his consciousness of nakedness to be the reason. To still make Adam see the true reason for his hiding, God farther asked, “Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldst not eat?” Observe this question is so framed as to contain in it the eating and the tree from which he ate, and could have been answered with, “Yes!” How easy God made it for Adam to confess. But, alas! How far from it. He answered, “The woman whom thou gavest unto me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” How deep the root of sin had taken hold upon Adam’s heart. What does he say in this answer? Why this, he acknowledged the guilt, but indirectly charges God as the author of the calamity. Eve is referred to as “the woman” who is the author of his sin, and, since she was given to him by the hand of the Lord, therefore it is the Lord’s fault, for if He had not given her to Adam, he would not have partaken of the forbidden tree! How passing strange is all this. And yet that is just what men are doing after six thousand years of experience with sin. Instead of breaking away from it, they say, God put it before them, and they could not resist the temptation to sin. The loss of love that comes out in this interposing of the wife is, moreover, particularly observable in this, that he grudges to call her Eve (Isha—married) or my wife.

Failing to return unto God by way of confession, the Lord next deals with Adam in judgment. “Cursed is the ground for thy sake ... thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee.” The very soil he had been sent to cultivate, and to carry forward in a normal unfolding, to imperishable life and spiritual glory, is now cursed for his sake, and therewith changed to that of hostility to him. Referring to the curse upon mankind, in consequence of the fall, Hugh MacMillan has called attention to the remarkable fact that weeds, the curse of the cultivator, accompany civilization. “There is one peculiarity about weeds which is very remarkable,” says this writer, “namely, that they only appear on ground which either by cultivation or for some other purpose, has been disturbed by man. They are never found truly wild, in woods or hills, or uncultivated wastes far away from human dwellings. They never grow on virgin soil, where human beings have never been. No weeds exist in those parts of the earth that are uninhabited, or where man is only a passing visitant.” And what is true of mother earth is in a sense true of the human heart. The youthful mind no sooner awakes to thought and reason, than it gives evidence of abundance of weeds. In surprise the mother asks where the little one has learned disobedience and questions how so young a mind can assert such strong opposition to wholesome discipline.