Women in white raiment

by John Lemley

And now, lest a worse calamity should fall on Adam and his wife, by stretching forth their hands “and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live forever,” God “drove out the man” from Eden, and placed “cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.” The act of driving Adam and Eve out of Eden has always been looked upon as a harsh measure. If, however, we stop to reflect what awful consequences would have followed the rash act of eating of the tree of life, we shall see that it was an act of mercy. For, after placing himself under the law of sin, what endless sorrow would have come upon the race, if men could not be removed by death. Think of such human monsters as history has time and again produced. Men and women degraded by thousands of years in sin would indeed be dangerous characters. So God cut off this possibility by guarding the tree of life.

But there came a great change over all life. Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw and sting and tooth and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey, clouds troop in the sky, sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass, blastings are on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the broken-hearted myriads of a ruined race.

THE ACCEPTED OFFERING.

When Eve looked into the face of her first-born, she remembered the words of the Lord, in His judgment upon Satan, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shalt bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,” and, misunderstanding the meaning of the promise, she called him Cain, meaning, “I have gotten a man from the Lord,” mistaking him for the Redeemer. But how bitter must have been her disappointment as she saw the child grow up, saw his characteristics manifest themselves in acts of hatefulness and revenge. However, but little is said of Cain and his younger brother Abel, until they bring their offerings to the Lord. We read that Abel was a “keeper of sheep,” and Cain was a “tiller of the ground.” While it is not stated, we must believe these brothers knew what was, and what was not, an acceptable offering to the Lord, that Cain could easily have exchanged his fruits of the soil for a lamb of Abel’s flock. Evidently Cain was lacking in that fine moral insight which would lead him to have respect as to the nature of the sacrifice necessary to atone for sin. There must be the shed blood of the victim, for, “without shedding of blood,” there is no remission. Either Cain did not regard himself a sinner, or, if he did, he thought one sacrifice as good as another, and so he brings “of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord.” God could not accept this act of disobedience. Because his offering was rejected, and seeing Abel’s offering accepted, Cain rose up and slew his brother. He failed to shed the blood of a lamb for his sin, but was quick to shed the blood of his brother, and thereby add to his sin. But what a crushing blow was this to the hopes of the mother heart who had supposed that her first-born was the promised “seed.” How she must have broken down under her sorrow, as she saw the blood dripping from Cain’s fingers, and that, too, the blood of his own brother. And sadder still as she looked upon the face of death for the first time. However she might have understood the lying words of her tempter, “Ye shall not surely die,” she now sees in the lifeless body of her second child, the awful reality of death. And when the first grave was made, how she must have daily wept over the precious mound, not only over this her first experience in bitter bereavement, but also over the circumstances under which it was brought about, and as she plants the flowers on the tomb, she fancies she hears the blood of the innocent victim continually crying unto heaven to be avenged. Oh, the bitter, bitter fruits of disobedience, who can know to what misery they bring us?

And then also observe Cain’s conduct in this awful crime. God’s arraignment of this fratricide was analogous to that of Adam and Eve. But Cain evades every acknowledgment of it. He not only tells a barefaced falsehood, but in a most impudent manner asks, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” What a fearful advance on the timid explanations of Adam’s transgression as he spoke to the Lord out of his hiding place. How men should tremble at the very thought of sin.

But the sorrowing Eve took heart once more in the birth of Seth, “for,” said she, “God hath appointed another seed instead of Abel.” So hope in the heart, like the perpetual altar fires in the sacrifices of the temple, seemed to sing a sweet song of comfort, and every child born seemed to outweigh the bitter disappointments in the realization of the promised Redeemer.

With this hope in the heart of Eve, and this beautiful language upon her lips, the Scripture account closes. How long she lived after the birth of Seth we are not informed, but of this we are assured, she believed God in His promise of the Messiah. That she misunderstood when that promise was to be realized, is quite evident, but there is every reason to believe she died in the faith of its ultimate realization, for she judged God to be righteous in the promise.

What is the lesson the loss of Paradise has for us? Plainly this: The perverted use of things good in themselves. Eve saw that the tree was pleasant to the eyes. From that day to this there have been women who would throw their health, their home happiness, their chance of training their children for God, their life, their honor, their hope of heaven, into a cauldron out of which might be brought something pleasant to the eyes. Eyes are good, useful and necessary, but we need to make a covenant with them not to see more than is good for our souls.

After she saw, she “desired.” This would seem to imply that the real source of all sin is in the spirit of our own desires. The last of the Ten Commandments strikes down to the very tap-root of all evil, “Thou shalt not covet.” All sin commences with the kindling of desire. The apostle James gives us the pedigree, “Every man is tempted when he is turned away of his own lust and enticed; then, when lust and desire hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin, and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.” The secret of victory, therefore, is not to allow the mind and heart to dwell for a moment upon any forbidden thing. The whole modern life is terribly fitted to stimulate unholy desire. The little child is taught from infancy to covet the vain and glittering attractions of the world—dress, equipage, pleasure, praise, fashion, display and a thousand worldly allurements. The city bill boards are covered with nude harlots. There are no less than 200,000 houses for these social outcasts in our fair land. These open gateways to immorality, where the virtue of the nation is ground out, are not only guarded by police force, but young girls by the 100,000 a year are stolen from country homes by the paid agents, and sold into these open dens of vice and crime, where these poor girls die in a short time, the average length of this life of sin being only five years. And still the people have not a word to say for the suppression of these crime-breeding dens of vice, but legalize and protect them by law to the ruin of our homes. These are the things that are eating out the spiritual life of the nation, and for that reason many do not want to retain the thought of God in their hearts. Hence the responsibilities of life are pressing upon us. As you have seen the child trundling its little hoop by touching it on both sides alternately to keep it from either extreme, so God teaches us both with warning and with promise, as our spiritual condition requires. Sometimes it is warning we need, and He shouts in our ear the solemn admonition, as a mother would cry to her babe in wild alarm if in danger of falling over the precipice. But, again, when we are in danger of being too much depressed, He speaks to us with notes of encouragement and promise, and tells us there is no real danger of our failing utterly, and that He will never suffer us to be tempted above what we are able. And so we hear Him saying on one hand, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall;” but immediately after adding on the other side, “God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able, but will, with the temptation, make a way of escape that ye may be able to bear it.”