it (Christ) shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.

"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception, in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

"And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it; cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field: in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."

We are next informed, that "Adam called his wife's name Eve, because she was the mother of all living." By this name, Adam set the seal of his faith to the promise of his Creator, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, although it is most probable, that the position in which Eve

stood with respect to her being the general mother of mankind, had induced her husband to put the same erroneous and unjustifiable construction as herself, on the enigmatical language used by the Mediator of the new covenant when he virtually declared his own purpose of becoming Immanuel, by asserting, that the seed of the woman should bruise the head of the serpent, and which expression induced Eve to adopt on the birth of Cain (signifying a possession) this exclamation, " I have gotten the man from the Lord."

We will now return to Genesis i. 27, and examine that unity of sense which is expressed alike in the word "image," and in the words "seed of the woman," in order to show that the human or natural person of our Lord Jesus Christ, was individually spoken of in both instances, when we are told.

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him: male and female created he them."

Now, when the Lord God says to the serpent, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed," he speaks of Christ as exclusively the seed of

the woman; for when Abraham, the descendant of Heber, was called and appointed to be the head of the Hebrew nation, and the progenitor of Christ, he was assured, among other things which contained a confluence of blessings, " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." And genealogies were in their highest sense instituted to show us, that this woman was by descent a daughter of Abraham, and possessed of her father Abraham's faith; and the apostle speaking of this "seed," Gal. iii. 16, says, "Now to Abraham and his seed were the promises made." He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, and to thy seed which is Christ." And Isaiah, vii. 14, makes this exceeding positive declaration, "Behold a virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel." This prophetical declaration relates to the seed of the woman, and informs us, by the meaning contained in the name to be given to this child, that the issue of that virgin, in the particular instance here* recorded, should be God and man in his own one and the same person.

The more diligently that we trace this child

*The Mother of our Lord is said to have borne other chil- . dren besides Christ.

"Immanuel" through every progressive and natural stage of his human life, the more abundantly shall we find all those infallible proofs of the humanity of him, who became an infant of days, and who increased in wisdom and, in stature, and in favor with God and man; and who was, moreover, according to the nature of ordinary men, pre-eminently possessed of all those amazing mental qualities, which are common to the human race; and who finally became despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, the object of whose incarnation and death the just for the unjust, was, that he might bring us to God; which is manifest from his title of "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world: and of whose eternity, Isaiah xliii. 13, thus speaks, "Yea, before the day was, I am he.”

After these remarks, which it is most earnestly hoped may be found sufficient to answer all reasonable purposes to the reader, we will return to the word "image," and consider its scriptural meaning. It has been before observed, that when Jehovah said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness," he

commenced his revelation by beginning with the co-equal and triune divinity of the Godhead, and the sacred record has been furnished to confirm that amazing, momentous, and glorious truth. It has been further added, that in proposing to make man in the "image" and "likeness" of God, the word "image" was placed first, in order to show-not a change in the divinity of God, for God is a spirit, and immutable in his divine nature; but to point out the astonishing condescension of God the word made flesh, as that ever-gloriously personage eternally designed (for there can be nothing new to a mind infinite) to unite the divine and human natures in his own particular person.

To this recapitulation of matter will be added some reflections and comparisons of those scriptures already cited to establish this fact, that the word "image" related alone to the material and bodily substance of Adam and of Christ. The psalmist, in psalm xl., when prophetically personating Christ, makes the newly begotten God-man speak after this manner, "Sacrifice and meat offering thou wouldest not, but mine ear hast thou opened.