ADAM.
Remembering, then, that these are probabilities, and that the whole treatise purports to be nothing but a sketch, and not a finished picture, we have suggestively thus thrown out that the material world, man's home as man, was likely to have been prepared, as we posteriorly know it to be. Now, what of man's own person, circumstances, and individuality? Was it likely that the world should be stocked at once with many several races, or with one prolific seed? with a specimen of every variety of the genus man, or with the one generic type capable of forming those varieties?—Answer. One is by far the likelier in itself, because one thing must needs be more probable than many things: additionally; Wisdom and Power are always economical, and where one will suit the purpose, superfluities are rejected. That this one seed, covering with its product a various globe under all imaginable differences of circumstance and climate, should, in the lapse of ages, generate many species of the genus Man, was antecedently probable. For example, morality, peace and obedience would exercise transforming powers: their opposites the like in an opposite way. We can well fancy a mild and gentle race, as the Hindoo, to spring from the former educationals: and a family with flashing eyes and strongly-visaged natures, as the Malay, from a state of hatred, war, and license. We can well conceive that a tropical sun should carbonize some of that tender fabric the skin, adding also swift blood and fierce passions: while an arctic climate would induce a sluggish, stunted race. And, when to these considerations we add that of promiscuous unions, we arrive at the just likelihood that the whole family of man, though springing from one root, should, in the course of generations, be what now we see it.
Further. How should this prolific original, the first man, be created? and for a name let us call him Adam; a justly-chosen name enough, as alluding to his medium colour, ruddiness. Should he have been cast upon the ground an infant, utterly helpless, requiring miraculous aid and guidance at every turn? Should he be originated in boyhood, that hot and tumultuous time, when the creature is most rash, and least qualified for self-government? or should he be first discerned as an adult, in his prime, equal alike to obedience and rule, to moral control and moral energy?
Add also here; is it probable there would be any needless interval placed to pröcreations? or rather, should not such original seed be able immediately to fulfil the blank world call upon him, and as the greatly-teeming human father be found fitted from his birth to propagate his kind? The questions answer themselves.
Again. Should this first man have been discovered originally surrounded with all the appliances of an after-civilization, clad, and housed, and rendered artificial? nor rather, in a noble and naturally royal aspect appear on the stage of life as king of the natural creation, sole warder of a garden of fruits, with all his food thus readily concocted, and an eastern climate tempered to his nakedness?
Now, as to the solitariness of this one seed. From what we have already mused respecting God's benevolence, it would seem probable that the Maker might not see it good that man should be alone. The seed, originally one, proved (as was likely) to resemble its great parent, God, and to be partitionable, or reducible into persons; though with reasonable differences as between creature and Creator. Woman—Eve, the living or life-giving—was likely to have sprung out of the composite seed, Man, in order to companionship and fit society. Moreover, it were expectable that in the pattern creature, composite man, there should be involved some apt, mysterious typification of the same creature, after a fore-known fall restored, as in its perfect state of rëunion with its Maker. A posteriori, the figurative notion is, that the Redeemed family, or mystical spouse, is incorporated in her husband, the Redeemer: not so much in the idea of marriage, as (taking election into view) of a cöcreation; as it were rib of rib, and life woven into life, not copulated or conjoined, but immingled in the being. This is a mystery most worthy of deep searching; a mystery deserving philosophic care, not less than the more unilluminate enjoyment of humble and believing Christians. I speak concerning Christ and his church.
THE FALL.
There is a special fitness in the fact, long since known and now to be perceived probable, that if mankind should fail in disobedience, it should rather be through the woman than through the man. Because, the man, quâ man, and the deputed head of all inferior creatures, was nearer to his Creator, than the woman; who, quâ woman, proceeded out of man. She was, so to speak, one step further from God, ab origine, than man was; therefore, more liable to err and fall away. To my own mind, I confess, it appears that nothing is more anteriorly probable than the plain, scriptural story of Adam and Eve: so simple that the child delights in it; so deep that the philosopher lingers there with an equal, but more reasonable joy.
For, let us now come to the probabilities of a temptation; and a fall; and what temptation; and how ordered.