also one standing, one life, one blessedness, one glory, with Him who is "the heir of all things!" It is here we see how the divine plan, which seemed at first to carry a frowning aspect toward man, is fraught in reality with the richest beneficence, and far more than provides for repairing the ruin of the fall. Let whoever will, then, cavil and dispute at the principle which binds men, as fallen members, to a fallen head, it shall be ours rather to rejoice in it, as that through which a way has been laid open for our natures into the sanctuary above, a fellowship secured for them with the highest beings in the universe, and a destiny prepared, which shall far exceed in glory what could have been enjoyed in an earthly paradise.

We could scarcely say less on the doctrine of headship, which was the first principle of grace typified, and was so from the necessity of the case that principle constituting, as has been said, what may be called the ground-floor of redemption, and providing the only opportunity or inlet, through which a scheme of salvation could have been brought in. Unless, therefore, the circumstances of man's early history had been so ordered as to give him some idea of such a principle, no other type or symbol, illustrative of any different feature of redemption, could have afforded him even the most imperfect view of this work of God. Its being of such a primary and fundamental character, is also the reason why we have given it so early a place in our investigation; for the means employed to impress it on the minds of our first parents, being not only of a typical nature, but of that class of types which consist of facts in history, it should not properly have been taken up, till we had finished what we might otherwise have discovered to belong to the religion of fallen man. But it was so essentially interwoven with his religion, as a religion of hope, and with his views of God's character as a God of grace, that we could not have exhibited the one, without including some consideration of the other. And though, as a portion of typical matter, it has on this account been brought in before its proper place, yet as it will be unnecessary to handle the subject again, we shall, before quitting it, simply notice a few other typical illustrations of the same principle appearing in the subsequent history of the human family, and doubtless intended to re-enforce and strengthen its hold upon their mind.

From the very nature of things, the principle of headship could have no such other development as it had in Adam, until Christ, the second Adam, should come to lay the foundation of a redeemed church. But we find various successive exemplifications of it, of a very important character, and the more fitted to carry forward the thoughts of believers to the coming redemption, that the principle appeared in each case connected with a blessing. It appeared thus in the transaction entered into with Noah after the destruction of the old world by the flood, when, for the sake of all flesh, God formed his covenant with that righteous man-the head, in a sense, of a new world, pledging his word, that no second deluge

should again sweep the earth of its inhabitants, but that seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, should not cease while the earth remained. It appeared again, and still more distinctly as a source of blessing, to many for the sake of one, in the covenant which God made with his servant Abraham, promising to be a God, not only to him, but also "to his seed after him,"nay, promising that "in his seed all the families of the earth should be blessed;" and connecting the promise, which originated in free grace, and came first to Abraham simply as an undeserved gift, with the righteousness of faith, which so pre-eminently showed itself forth in him, and rose to its highest exercise, when he offered up his much-loved son of promise on the altar, for then the word came to him, "Because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son, that in blessing I will bless thee,' &c. And finally, when the purpose of God had been so far disclosed as to render it manifest, that not only a chosen seed, but a royal house in that seed, a throne and a kingdom, were required for its execution, then the principle of headship again appeared in the covenant made with David, as the head of that royal house, pledging to his seed, and for his sake, a perpetuity to the throne and kingdom then erected. How easy and natural must it have been for the people of God, after all this, to connect the fulfilment of the great work of redemption with the person of Messiah, and from him, as emphatically "the Messenger of the covenant," to look for the fulfilment of all promise-for a world saved and rescued from every curse, a seed of blessing to inherit it, and an everlasting kingdom of glory for their final destiny? And for us, who stand midway between a redemption provided and the full experience of its blessings, how should our faith assure itself of the ultimate accomplishment of all that is promised, by seeing how the purpose of God, confirmed in covenant with each of those successive heads, has stood firm and sure? From the knowledge of what has thus been done in regard even to covenants far less intimately connected with any worth and sufficiency on the part of him, with whom they were respectively made, than in that sealed with the blood of Christ, we are taught the undoubted certainty of those better things, which are yet to be revealed in him, for the children of the covenant.

It appears from the preceding inquiry, that the first inhabitants of this world, as fallen, must, apart altogether from the institution of any symbols or religious rites, have possessed at least four religious ideas or principles embodied in the transactions connected with the fall: 1. The doctrine of human guilt and depravity; 2. Of God's righteous, sin-hating character; 3. Of salvation by grace; 4. And of a principle of headship, not less necessary to the bringing in of a general scheme of salvation, than it had been operative to the production of that universal ruin, which sprung from the first sin. Now, in order to complete our view of the religion pe

culiar to that first race of worshippers, and its connexion with the coming dispensation of the gospel, we must proceed to inquire how far the fundamental ideas just mentioned were represented in any symbols or instituted rites of worship, and whether by such means even other ideas may not have been superadded to those already acquired. The only appearances to be found of a symbolical kind in the inspired records of that early period, are the three following-those connected with the tree of life, with the cherubim and the flaming sword, and with the institution of sacrifice. To the consideration of which we now proceed, taking them in their order.

SECOND SECTION.

THE TREE OF LIFE.

The first notice we have of the tree of life refers to it as a part of the newly created world, in which respect it had an important end to serve connected with man's original condition, but had nothing mystical about it-neither symbolizing any higher truth, nor promising any future blessing. "Out of the ground," we are told, "made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil." The special mention made of these two trees distinctly marks them off from all the other trees of the garden, as having purposes to serve peculiar to themselves; and as the interdict of Heaven was laid upon no tree in the garden but that of the knowledge of good and evil, we have no reason to doubt, that the tree of life, equally with the rest, was given for the food of man. Nay, we are plainly taught, that while, like others, it was given for man's food, there were singular benefits to be derived from eating of it, effects to be produced by its fruit on the human constitution, which the fruit of no other tree was capable of imparting. But this more conclusively appears from the next notice we have of it, which relates to the period when, from being an ordinance of nature, this tree passed into a symbol of grace. "And the Lord God said, Behold the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever; therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubims, and a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

I think it impossible to read this piece of sacred history, and give credit to what is written, without holding by these conclusions: that the tree of life was at the first designed to be partaken of by man-that the eating of it would have conveyed to him the power of an endless life-that after having sinned, as he could no longer be the possessor of such a power, so he was debarred from the means of conveying it, by being himself driven from the garden

of Eden, and finding all access cut off to its tree of life. Wherein that tree, in its own essential nature, or in its outward appearance, might differ from the other trees of the garden, we know not; but in its relation to man, and its vivifying effects upon his frame, it undoubtedly differed in this, that while they could contribute to his daily support, it alone could preserve in undecaying vigour a being to be supported; as the pre-eminence was given to it over others, of being made to occupy the centre of the garden, so it possessed the singular virtue of ministering to human life, in its fountainhead, of sustaining it in its root and principle, while the others could only feed, as it were, the shoots and branches; they might have kept nature alive for a time, as the fruits of the earth do still, but it only could secure the vital powers of nature from the inroads of disease, and the approach of death.

All this unquestionably Adam knew, as it was implied in the very constitution of things in Eden; and if he had remained steadfast in his covenant with God, ever shunning the tree of knowledge, and partaking of the tree of life, he would have continued in the possession of life, incorruptible and blessed, as he received it from the hand of God. But preferring, as he did, to set at naught the appointment of Heaven by eating of that other tree of knowledge, he sold his noble birth-right of immortality, and with that also of the food of immortality, and became an heir of death. The tree of life, however, did not lose its life-sustaining virtue, because the other tree had put forth its deadly poison; it remained still what God had originally made it, as capable as ever of maintaining the principle of an undying life in man-if man only had been permitted to partake of it. But that could no longer be, since he had preferred the way of sin to the way of holiness, and chosen death rather than life; his right to the blessings of immortality had utterly perished.

But though all was lost with the loss of righteousness, which had been conferred in the first, the creation-grant of Heaven, it pleased God to permit hope to enter, by revealing a purpose of grace for the recovery of the fallen; and though, for the present, man was banished from the garden of Eden, and cherubim and a flaming sword kept the way to the tree of life, which he had once freely trodden, yet there the tree stood with its life-sustaining power untouched-intimating, that the privilege of feeding on it was only for a season withheld, not finally withdrawn; that those ministers of justice meanwhile defended the tree of life from the approach of man but only till a righteousness should be found, which might again open the way to its blessed provisions. For as an act of sin had blocked up the way, nothing, it was manifest, but a work of righteousness could again lay it open. And hence it became, as we shall see, a leading object in the dealings of God toward his church, to disclose the nature and conditions of that necessary work of righteousness, on which man's prospect of a restored immortality hung. The relation he now occupied to the tree of life, of itself could furnish no information regarding it; the whole that

could be gathered from that was, that the property of an immortal life was yet destined to be the inheritance of man, and that this could become his only by virtue of a work of righteousness hereafter to be revealed and made good in the person of some second head of mankind. In this one symbol, therefore, that is, in the tree of life, viewed in connexion with the position held in reference to it by the human family after the fall, there were continually presented to the reflective mind the ideas, 1, of man's guilt and depravity, on account of which he was excluded from the tree of life; 2, of God's righteous character, which testified its abhorrence of sin in thus excluding him; 3, of salvation by grace, in having the prospect set before him of a restoration to life; 4, of the principle of a new headship, as that through which alone this prospect could be realized, and the now barred way of life could be again opened up for a lost and dying race. All these ideas, which indeed were forced upon him by the other transactions connected with the fall, were now palpably and permanently embodied in this symbolical ordinance; which was pre-eminently fitted to keep alive in the heirs of salvation a just apprehension of its nature, as being a re-investment with the privileges of an undying life, and of a glorious work of righteousness, as the means by which it was to be procured.

It is obvious, however, that in these symbolical representations connected with the tree of life, two other doctrines were indicated with such plainness, that they must henceforth have formed part of the creed of God's believing people-viz. the hope of a future state of being, and of the resurrection of the dead. While the promise of a deliverance, and through that the prospect of immortality were brought distinctly into view, the new constitution of things clearly taught them, that this prospect was not immediately to be realized; that the purpose of God did not admit of the tree of life being approached during the present scene of existence; and that all was to be shut up in hope to a period of restitution, determined in the counsels of Heaven, to which soul and body must be alike kept by the power and faithfulness of God. This belief would naturally gather strength in the minds of all sincere worshippers, by the progress of events in the fallen world; especially by such facts as the untimely death of Abel, and the miraculous translation of Enoch, which seems to have been purposely designed to check the expectation, most natural in the circumstances of that period, of a speedy fulfilment of the divine plan, and an early return to the blessings of immortality. They saw, not only that death was in the first instance to be the common inheritance of man, but that even a lengthened existence, on this side of time, was no mark of divine favour; and the knowledge of this, coupled with the intimation, that the destroyer was yet to be destroyed, and a pathway opened to the lost, for possessing anew the region, and partaking of the food of immortality, must infallibly have produced the conviction, that death was not the destruction of being, either to soul or body, and that it too should one day