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 proecreations? 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 reunion 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 coecreation; 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.