3. Could such a help be found among the creatures which God had already made?
“And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.” Verse 20.
4. What, therefore, did God do?
“And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.” Verses 21, 22.
Note.—How beautiful, in its fulness of meaning, is this simple but suggestive story, at which skeptics sneer. God did not make man after the order of the lower animals, but “in His own image.” Neither did He [pg 706] choose man's companion, or “help,” from some other order of beings, but made her from man—of the same substance. And He took this substance, not from man's feet, that he might have an excuse to degrade, enslave, or trample upon her; nor from man's head, that woman might assume authority over man; but from man's side, from over his heart, the seat of affections, that woman might stand at his side as man's equal, and, side by side with him, together, under God, work out the purpose and destiny of the race,—man, the strong, the noble, the dignified; woman, the weaker, the sympathetic, the loving. How much more exalted and inspiring is this view than the theory that man developed from the lower order of animals.
5. What did Adam say as he received his wife from God?
“And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Verse 23.
6. What great truth was then stated?
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.” Verse 24.
7. In what words does Christ recognize marriage as of God?