kinah" and "the cherubim," as well as "Eden " or " Paradise," are shut against his access. The ruler of God's earth could at all times approach to God's tabernacle, and his joy was to stand with angels before "the flame" of deity, and adore, unscorched and unawed, the Eternal One. But "driven out" of " Paradise" and "Eden," out from "the holy place," and the very "outer court," Adam leaves "the holiest of all,” where blazed the effulgent regalia of the Great King; and he is sundered and cut off from angels and God. Yonder "the Shekinah" flashes, and here "the cherubim" touch wings; but he can no longer mingle with the one, nor gaze upon the other. He is hurried away from the vestibule of heaven; and the glorious society he loved so much, regards him with alarm. "Honour and majesty are before Jehovah; strength and beauty are in His sanctuary." But no more can Adam lift his eye to "the place where Jehovah's honour dwelleth." Exiled from the court, he is excommunicated from the temple. The crown has fallen from the head of a king; the priest's hand has dropped the censer; the worship of Eden is at an end, and the worshipper is an

outcast.

If we would know what it is we are delivered from through grace, we must know what we were delivered up to because of sin; and let us not turn away from the judgment inflicted upon Adam, as it is compendiously but awfully declared in Scripture. He was "driven forth" from all good; and he was "driven forth" amid all evil. And was there ever, or could there be, a reverse so grievous and so reproachful, so sudden, so utter, and so conclusive? Here are two scenes, -one of man in "Eden," another of man "thrust out ;" and the contrast is almost more than we can steadily look at. Ah! it is summer, delicious and fragrant there! but here it is winter, with its loud winds and chilling snows. Paradise unseared and Adam erect; it is the inheritance and the heir, the prince and his realm! The wilderness, haggard and angry, man without a home or sanctuary; this is the curse and the culprit, the prison and the outlaw !

Yet this contrast is not to be viewed simply with reference to the first transgressor; for the solemn truth is, that ourselves are both parties to Adam's revolt and partakers of his punishment. It was not "the man," but the race, who ate of the interdicted tree, and it is the race who have been ejected from the illuminated “garden." It is mankind as well as "the man" with whom God is wroth, and from whom He has recalled the light of His countenance. The palace of " Eden," how superb it was

but that we all have lost in Adam. The desert of the

fall, how miserable! but this is what we inherit through Adam. The judgment was pronounced upon the first man, but it redounds on all men.

What had we to do with Adam, or Adam with us? the fretting heart of unbelief may ask if it choose. We may say, Which of us had any intention of leaving Paradise? and we will hesitate and argue ere we admit that we are in ruins. If God do banish us, without giving us the chance of staying, we will protest against the harsh anomaly as iniquitous, and frown back on Him who has the heart to frown at us. Yet what avails such sullenness and clamour? The judgment is in course of execution; and we neither can deny the fact nor evade the stroke. Our doom may be repealed, but certain it is that the sentence has gone forth, and the whole race were driven out of Eden when Adam left it, six thousand years ago. "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners; and by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation." We all are removed afar off from the splendour of " the Shekinah," and rejected from the fellowship of "the cherubim ;" neither God nor angels will make us welcome to their seat.

The voice of Judgment is exceeding loud in the event of the fall, but not louder than the voice of Mercy, which was revealed in such sweet sounds as these: "The Lord God sent him to till the ground from which he was taken and He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

The word "therefore" at the commencement of the 23d verse, and which accurately expresses the original, connects that verse with this clause in the previous one. "Lest he now put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat and live for ever,"-ushers in the first accent of mercy; for it intimates that one end God had in "driving out the man," was to prevent him becoming an immortal sinner " by eating of the tree of life." Adam had eaten of one sacramental tree, in contradiction to the divine will, and had incensed the Almighty. But let him eat of the other sacramental tree, and he is sealed in guilt, he is fixed in ruin, and his overthrow cannot be retrieved. "Therefore" did the Lord thrust him out from where the tree of life stood, and made the bolt of judgment the means of salvation.

And did it not betoken mercy that, at the moment of provocation, God did not resort to compulsion, but "sent" the man quietly away, as if He would not shake a leaf in carrying out the inevitable sentence, It was found that, in the end, the rebel must "be driven out," must be sawed off, as is done with a

withered branch, must be amputated, as is done with the diseased limb; but such was the Father's commiseration for His child, now that there was terror on every side, that He gently signifies to him, with a tear, that he must prepare to leave his bright habitation. "He sent him forth," simply setting open the gate and showing him the way.

The Lord "sent Adam out;" but let it be noticed, it was "to till the ground." And there was a ray of mercy in this too, for it said, that there was blessing in the soil after all, and that God had use for Adam in the world still. The indignant Sovereign might have broken in pieces the earthen vessel which was no longer fit to serve in the tabernacle, or have left it in its emptiness to the scorn of all. But when man has ceased to be a servant in the house, he is made a husbandman in the vineyard. He" tills," if he is afraid to worship.

It was in mercy, besides, that God did not lay "Eden" waste, and turn it into a desert, when it was lost, but only banished its lord. He could have sunk it under many waves, as He afterwards did with the old world, or burned it to ashes like Sodom. But He spared it, and bade it yet remain, as if to let Adam know that a day might come when it would be his again.

In another way God whispered mercy to our first parent when tempted and overthrown; for He detained him in the neighbourhood of his old abode, and still the broad rivers and massive trees of Paradise were within sight. Cain was dismissed into Nod, for he had refused to expiate as well as dared to transgress. But in His forbearance God suffers Adam to linger near the skirts of "Eden;" and as he strayed along the Pishon, or the Gihon, or the Hiddekel, or the Euphrates, he felt that he was not, after all, very far off from the garden. whence they issued. The swallow has been scared from its nest, but the nest hangs beneath the ledge.

All these tokens of mercy that we have glanced at must have alleviated the anguish of the fall; yet were they merely prelusive, and the mercy which transmuted despair into hope was that which shone from "the cherubim placed at the east of the garden, with a flaming sword, which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life;" read in connection with the 21st verse, which relates, that "the Lord God made for the man and his wife coats of skins, and clothed them."

The idea most commonly attached to the statements just quoted is, that when God sent Adam with Eve away from Paradise, he stationed powerful creatures at the gate to scare the rebels, by fire and sword, from attempting to return; and these powerful creatures are just what each one's fancy can

elicit from the scanty narrative. Theodorus Mopsuestenus would have them to be savage animals, who stood at the avenues of Paradise; and according to Rashi they were supernatural ministers of terror. The Egyptian sphinx, and the Persian griffin, both of which are derived from the cherubim of Moses, are always represented as guarding their temples, and warding off intruders or assailants with remorseless alacrity. We trace the facts of Moses not less in the legend of Argus, who kept watch with a hundred eyes, and in the fable of the Hesperides, whose garden, with its golden apples, a sleepless dragon guarded night and day. But still the view that meets us is one of jealousy and fierceness.

Such a conception of "the cherubim," however, is, to say the very least, both unlikely and unnatural; for surely neither angel, nor sword, nor fire, was needed to deter and keep back two lone fugitives who were shaking with fear all over, and who would only be too anxious to get as far as their strength would carry them from the presence and the vision of their offended Judge?

Most inconsistent, too, would it have been with the feelings and the design of Him who had borne with Adam thus far in infinite clemency, and had not slain him on the sward where he shook the fatal tree, to aggravate the terrors of the palpitating outlaw, and quench his light for ever, by letting down before him nothing but the thick bosses of his adamantine buckler.

And what can be more improbable than to fancy that it was angels who were intrusted with the dire office of excluding man from Paradise, when we call to mind that their certain employment and best delight are to "minister in love to the heirs of salvation," and cheer them on to glory and honour and immortality?

There does not seem, then, any feasibility in the usual rendering of "the cherubim," and anything so harsh and ungracious seems excluded by what we know alike of Adam, and angels, and God. But it will go to confirm us in our rejection of such a view if we explain further that the word, "keep the way," does not necessarily or uniformly signify to "keep from," but not seldom to keep it open.

Thus, in 1 Samuel ix. 24, we read, "It hath been kept for thee;" in Judges ii. 22, we read, "Prove whether they will keep in the way of the Lord;" in 2 Chronicles xxxiv. 9, we read, "The Levites kept-kept open-the doors;" in Proverbs ii. 20, we read," Keep the paths of the righteous," and abide in them; and in 1 Samuel ii. 9, we read, "He will keep the feet of His saints." In Genesis ii. 15, we read, "He put him into

the garden to dress it and keep it," so that it might serve its purpose; in Genesis xviii. 19, we read, "They shall keep the way of the Lord," by walking in it; in Genesis xxviii. 20, we read, "If God will keep me in this way that I go;" in 1 Samuel ii. 9, we read, "He will keep the feet of His saints," so that they shall not miss the road; in 2 Samuel xvi. 21, we read, “Which He hath left to keep the house" in order for His return; in Proverbs viii. 32, we read, "Blessed are they that keep my ways," in the sense of treading them; in Ecclesiastes, v. 13, we read of "riches kept for the owners;" in Psalm xxxvii, 34, we read, "Wait on the Lord and keep His way," in the love and use of it. All these passages show that to "keep a way" is not to keep it shut, but may mean to "keep it open," if the context should require. If the Levite "keep the charge of the Lord," it is not to prevent, but to promote the worship; and if Jehovah "keepeth covenant and mercy," it is surely not to deprive but to make good. And so we are And so we are quite warranted to interpret, "keep the way of the tree of life. as meaning that it would be maintained as a highway or thoroughfare, should such an exegesis fit into the narrative, and throw light upon the passage.

That the context, however, in the present instance, necessitates this exposition, is obvious from what is said at the 21st verse as to "the skins;" for these "skins" being "the skins" of beasts, these beasts must have been slain by permission; but as yet no permission had been given to use animals for food, and therefore the beasts in whose "skins Adam and Eve were "clothed" must have been slain by permission, if not command, for sacrifice. If, however, even at the moment when "the cherubim" were first discerned beyond Paradise, the blood of sacrifice, divinely instituted and typically significant, had flowed for the atonement of sin, it is evident that "the way to the tree of life" was not blocked up, and that "the cherubim" were not appointed either to intimidate or avenge.

With these explanations as a basis, there cannot be much difficulty in recognising the Mercy that radiates from the scene depicted by the words, "And He placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life."

In regard to "the cherubim," the commonest idea is, that they were celestial existences, or superhuman creatures, of some form, though it may not be easy either to define their nature, or describe their appearance. There is not, however, a single passage or expression in Scripture which would countenance