“What does a covenant mean?” inquired Emma.
“I shall tell you, my child,” said her grandmamma. “It is an agreement, or bargain, between two people. In the garden of Eden, the two parties were God and Adam; their covenant or agreement was this;—God said to Adam, ‘If you do what I ask you, you shall live and be happy. If you disobey me, you must “surely die.”’
|Of the Fall.| “God told him not to eat of the fruit of one of the trees in the garden; but though Adam had all the rest of the trees in Eden to eat of, he forgot God’s command, and took of the forbidden one; and he was driven out of his happy home, and became a lost and ruined creature.”
“How sad for poor Adam,” said Emma, “to be banished from his beautiful garden!”
“Yes,” said the other; “and sadder still to be banished from his God, with nothing before him but certain death!”
“But how was it, grandmamma,” inquired Emma, “that Adam did not die all at once? How did he continue to live after God had said that, if he disobeyed Him, he should ‘surely die’?”
“I was just going to explain this to you, my dear,” said Mrs Allan. “Our first parents could not have lived for one moment after their ‘Fall,’ if it had not been for another and more glorious covenant the Bible tells us of.”
“And what was the name of that covenant?” inquired Emma, eagerly.
“It was called the Covenant of Grace,” replied her grandmother. “I shall try, my dear child,” continued she, patting her grandchild on the head, “to make this very great and glorious subject as simple as I can to you; and after you hear me, you will, perhaps, be able to explain it to others.”
Little Emma was again very attentive, and her grandmamma proceeded: