The First Interview

Our last look at our first parents was immediately after their transgression, and when they were plunged in despair. They fled from the first indications of the divine presence -the very sound of his footsteps whose light and love had never failed to cheer them, now filled them with alarm. They were dark shadows that encircled them, that settled upon them like midnight. In that fearful threatening, “In the day thou eatest thereof thou Shalt surely die,” they had heard the voice of him who could not look on sin. He was their Maker and their Lawgiver; he was the Lord God omnipotent; and he had expressed his mind and will to execute the penalty they had incurred, in language well fitted to sink them into utter despair of mercy. “What now had man to look for? Will the dreadful denunciations of the law have their course? Will the flames of divine wrath break forth upon him, and he himself and the long line of his descendants remain forever the monuments of that spotless rectitude of the divine nature that cannot connive at wickedness? Will his future history be written in mourning, lamentation, and woe; or will it record some new and unexpected manifestations of the all-sufficient Deity, more resplendent even than his infallible justice, and so bright that while they leave his rectitude stainless, they shall still more illustrate his unsearchable mercy?

Our first parents did not know that the invitations of heavenly mercy would ever reach them in their gloomy exile. They had no reason to hope and could not hope to escape the punishment their sin deserved. WJiy the threatened penalty was not promptly executed to the full extent, is one of the difficult problems in theological science, because the divine justice was most solemnly pledged to destroy them. Our only solution of this problem is, that as the supreme Lawgiver, God had a right to remit the penalty of his law, provided there was any method by which it could be remitted consistently with the claims of his punitive justice. Such a method it was not in the power of human reason to devise, though it was not beyond the province of God’s unsearchable wisdom and love. He had indeed thought of it “before the foundation of the world;” he had arranged it all in the eternal covenant of redemption with his Son; and therefore, in the interview lie sought with our fallen parents, his great object was not to harden them in despair, but to elevate them from the depths of their hopeless depression, and invite them, wanderers as they were, back to their heavenly Father’s house. God himself was thus the first preacher of the gospel, and himself proclaimed this first call to repentance.

Before their expulsion from the garden, there was an affecting and instructive interview between him and them, which reads lessons of wisdom and experience to those who are authorized in his name to call sinners to repentance, and to sinning men themselves to whom this divine call is addressed. The more we study this chapter in the early history of our race, the more we shall find it contains those treasures of truth and grace with which we are entrusted as ministers, and in which we all have so deep an interest as sinners. Thoughts are presented here which furnish the means of conviction to the thoughtless, of detection to the disingenuous, of humiliation to the proud, of support to the humble, of alarm to the stout-hearted, and of comfort to the broken in spirit.

The narrative of this interview is in the following words: “And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day; and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord, amongst the trees of the garden. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him. Where art thou? And he said, I heard thy voice in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself. And he said. Who told thee that thou wast naked? Hast thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest not eat? And the man said, the woman that thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat. And the Lord God said unto the woman, what is this that thou hast done? And the woman said, the serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

The interview was a most solemn and serious interview. Our first parents had become alienated from God. The bond which had hitherto connected them was sundered; they had no sweet fellowship with their Maker; they knew that he looked upon them as criminals, and felt that they deserved his displeasure. They were alarmed, but saw no way of averting the judgment they deserved, but to flee from him, and “go forth like Cain with God’s mark upon them, and under his eye in all their wanderings.” Never were creatures more anxious to put themselves far from the being they had so offended. Left to themselves, they would never have welcomed another thought of God to their bosoms. How diffei-ent their present state of mind from their wonted affection and confidence! What chilling alienation, what bitter jealousy! What a mournful character to be thus the enemy of the living God! There was that in their intelligent and moral nature, and in their remembrance of the past, which reminded them of what they lost in departing from him; but there was that within their own bosoms which drove them from the divine presence.

In order to reclaim and restore them, and before he would give them any intimations of pardoning mercy, God’s first object was to convince them of their wkedness. And he did this with so much tenderness, and faithfulness, and heavenly wisdom, that we may well feel that his ways are not as our ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts. He held up before their minds the mirror in which they might distinctly see their own character and condition; well knowing that they would be strangers to true repentance, if they had no sense of their sin; that they would have no reason for hope, unless they themselves saw that they had reason to fear; and no refuge, unless they had some just view of their danger.

The Lord God came into the garden as though he knew nothing of what they had done, and would know nothing but from these offenders themselves. He did not forestall the convictions of their own conscience by first charging their wickedness upon them; he would rather that they should fill their own bosoms with self-reproach, and voluntarily make an ingenuous confession of their sin, than be driven to that confession by constraint.

He was accustomed by some well-known symbols to manifest himself to them, and most 23robably at those seasons when they were employed in their more solemn acts of religious worship. The season once more returns when, at the decline of the day, he was wont to bless and accept their sacrifice; but they were not there to greet the apyroach of their once-loved Maker. Their affectionate and filial character was gone. They fled fi*om the being they so lately venerated, and were filled with dismay as they heard his voice walking in the garden. Even before they had seen or heard anything of God, they had lost all solid foundation for inward peace and serenity of mind, and trembled at the premonitions of his displeasure which they found within their own bosoms. Mournful evidence of their apostasy! Sad indication of a disruption of those ties which had bound them to him who was once their highest joy! He who but yesterday looked upon the Creator as his father and friend, and regarded him with supreme complacency and confidence, now looks upon him as his enemy, and with suspicion and fear. He who but yesterday delighted in acts of grateful homage and loyalty, has now become the first human apostate, and the father of rebellion.

God was not ignorant of the melancholy events that had occurred in the history of his ruined creature; but he condescends to inquire after him, as a father inquires after his lost and wandering child. “The Son of Man” “came to seek;’ as well as to save “that which is lost.” And it is a beautiful exemplification of this truth which is thus presented in this first call of God to our first parents. He would have conscience do its ofiice, and leave it for a while unpacified, until “their sin had found them out,” and their own convictions testified against them.

But with all this tenderness, there was great faithfulness on God’s part, in setting their sin distinctly before their own minds. They had wilfully and criminally gone out of the way. They had voluntarily disobeyed the known will of God, and violated his infinite authority. God designed not only to awaken them to a sense of their lost condition, but to arouse within their bosoms the sentiments of shame and remorse. He designed by the solemn demand he made upon them, to make them see what they had done, and to show them that they were without excuse. He would press the inquiries upon them. What fatal enticement has allured you from your rightful Lord, and affectionate Parent? What strange event has taken place to induce you to shun my lately desired presence? What hast thou done? They must be made to feel that they were guilty. They had seen their destiny suspended upon a prohibition that was perfectly intelligible and explicit; the consequences of disobedience had been spread before them; no necessity was laid upon them to sin, but they were free to stand, and free to fall. And they were guilty; there was no cloak for their sin; no apology in the world could exculpate them. These offenders themselves knew this, and felt condemned. A guilty conscience gave force and energy to the first and most gentle accents of God’s displeasure; they could not bear the rebuke of injured Deity.

Though God’s ultimate design was to call them to repentance, yet he does in fact arraign them before him as their Judge. They had j ust received law from his mouth, and recognized him as their Lawgiver. They had tampered with the foe, and believed the serpent rather than God; they had broken through the restraints which their rightful Proprietor and Lord had thrown around them; and now, wisdom, benevolence, justice, all combined to bring these bold offenders to feel the force of the authority on which they had so wantonly trampled. They themselves would have secretly reproached their Maker if they had not been called to a solemn account. Nor could he do otherwise than thus make them see the equity of the procedure, should his justice exhaust its rigor on their devoted head. How reproachful the remonstrance, and how cutting to the conscience of this first transgressor, when the God of heaven thus called him by name and required him to answer to the call! With what shame, with what deep confusion must he have been dragged from his hiding-place, and forced to reply to the upbraiding inquiry, “Adam, where art thou?”

The immediate effect of this call was much the same on their minds, which the call to repentance ordinarily produces upon the minds of their descendants. It was not a prompit return to God; rather did they turn from him with a mind averse to holiness, a defiled conscience, and a face covered with shame. They were conscious of their crime; and the deeper and more painful the consciousness, the more deeply did they entrench themselves within their gloomy retreat. There was also great disingenuousness on their part. They hesitated to make a full and frank confession of their sin; nor did they do so, until it was extorted from their lips. An ingenuous and honest spirit would have led them to flee, not from God, but to him; not to cover their sin, but to spread it all out before him in all its black deformity.

Instead of this, they try to extenuate its turpitude. “The woman that thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree and I did eat.” There was something ungenerous and unmanly in this assault upon the woman; while there was more that was impious in the imputation upon God himself, for giving him the woman to be his tempter. Yet how much is this like fallen man! If Adam had not been conscious of what he had done, and had not been sensible that his conduct needed some excuse, he would have laid his hand upon his mouth. Right conduct needs no excuse, and deserves no condemnation. It is only when men know they have done wrong, that they have any occasion for pretexts to excuse their wrong-doing. Our first father’s state of mind was not what it ought to have been; nor was he willing to see and confess his wickedness, and abase himself before God; else would he not have allowed himself so dexterously to throw the blame upon others. The tendency of this state of mind was only to fortify himself in his disobedience, and provoke still more the displeasure of God. God did not suffer him to be in doubt as to his real object in coming into the garden, but brought his thoughts directly to the cause of all his trouble. The human heart is “deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” This transgressor was not willing to see his sin in its true light. “He that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved.” He could not bear to look his own wickedness in the face, and fix his thoughts upon the dreadful evils of his presumptuous and reckless deed. He shrunk back from it, and endeavored to wrap himself up in hia own delusion. He was not the gainer by his excuses, but the loser by all the turnings and windings of his benighted and deceived mind. His duty was obvious. He ought to have stood speechless, or if he opened his lips, it should have been only to make the ingenuous confession. My Father, I have disobeyed thee; I have eaten of the tree and a/m without excuse. Instead of this, the confession that was extorted from him is prefaced and incorporated with the most flattering extenuation of his crime. And the same is also true of his confused tempter, and the guilty partner of his crime; “The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.”

There was much in all this early conduct that evinced obdurate impenitence. Why did they not at once confess and bewail what they had done? and as soon as they heard the voice of their Maker, throw themselves at his feet, and say, “We have sinned against heaven and before thee!” Did they wish to capitulate with God, or suppose that he would capitulate with them, while they were in a state of rebellion? It was no great proof of penitence, that they were fugitives from law and justice; nor that during the whole of this interview, we hear not a word of lamentation from their lips, nor one heart-felt expression of sorrow for their crime.

Yet, wondrous mercy, God’s ways are not as oui* ways, nop are his thou’ghts as our thoughts. It is ordinarily the method of his grace, to arrest the subjects of it in their greatest obduracy, and when distress and anguish come upon them; that they and others may know and record that it “was not for their sakes, but for his own great name’s sake” that he “took them from the horrible pit and the miry clay, and set their feet upon a rock, and put a new song in their mouth, even praise to our God.” His way of leading men to appreciate the interpositions of his mercy, is first to make them feel their need of it. Such are the teachings of his truth and Spirit, that they are brought to despair of help from themselves and creatures, before they will be induced to place their hope in God. The call to repentance is never welcome, never indeed well understood, till the sinner feels that he is lost and helpless. The self-righteous, the self-deceived, and the self-hardened, are in no fit state of mind to repent and believe the gospel. It was not until the jailer of Philippi “called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, and brought them out, and said. Sirs, what must I do to be saved,” that his anxious heart caught at the answer, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thine house.” It was not until the woman of Canaan bowed her proud heart to the reproachful words, “W6man, it is not fit to take the children bread and give it to dogs,” and meekly replied, “Truth, Lord, yet the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from their master’s table;” that the Savioui* said to her, “O woman, great is thy faith, be it unto thee, even as thou wilt.” It was not until the early Christians saw and felt that “they had the sentence of death in themselves, that they should not trust in themselves,” that they “trusted in God.” God led our first parents to a just view of their sinful conduct; he made them sensible of the bond between their sin and his own displeasure, before he gave them even the most distant intimations of his mercy. They were overwhelmed in view of what they had done, and God had threatened. It was the hour of alarm. Everything concurred to excite their fears. They knew no way of escape, and were apprehending nothing but death. Thus arrested, tried, convicted, and forced to come forth from their hiding-places, nothing seemed to remain to them, but “a certain fearful looking for of judgment.” Well might they feel that “they were naked;” that nothing could cover them from the omniscient eye, nothing hide their shame, and that they had no refuge from the coming wrath.

The time had come, therefore, when with the language of rebuke and judgment, were mingled the whispers of love. Notwithstanding all their vileness, the Father of mercies had t’liouglits of kindness toward these his ruined children. The Son of God had already taken the initiatory steyps to his mediatorial work, and himself interposed to deliver them from going down to the pit. God had been preparing their minds to understand and appreciate those disclosures which, in the fulness of time, would be more emphatically proclaimed as “glad tidings of great joy to all people.” And he hasted to unfold his compassionate design, and invite them to repentance. There was some obscurity in this disclosure; it was, but a glimpse of him in whom all fulness dwells; but it was enough to keep them from despair. “To the serpent he said, I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This was an enigma which their darkened minds could not at once solve; yet it threw a beam of light across their future path. They caught the intimation, as a drowning man catches at a straw, and as many a convinced and despairing sinner catches at the first thought of God’s pardoning mercy. They were assured, at least, of some suspension of the fearful sentence; who could tell but it might be the plenitude of pardons, and the glad hope of their restoration to the favor of God!

God then proceeds to unfold some of the consequences of their sin; but O, how tempered with mercy! how far short of the curse of a violated law! Enough was denounced and felt to teach them the greatness of their sin, and to impress upon their mind the inviolable claims of divine justice; but enough was disclosed to teach them that the complete execution of the penalty was deferred, and that time and opportunity were furnished them to obtain mercy, through the promised mediator.

Thus in the whole of this solemn and affecting interview, the great object seems to have been, not only thus early to announce to our first parents that there was forgiveness with God that he might be feared, and to reveal the method of forgiveness; but to bring them to true repentance, and to an humble apprehension of the mercy of God in that Saviour who is the serpent’s foe, and the sinner’s friend.

What the vltiinate effect of this disclosure was upon their minds, we are not distinctly informed; while from the whole interview itself, from the comprehensiveness of the promise, and from the subsequent conduct of Eve on the birth of her first son, there is reason to believe, that what they had heard about the seed of the woman bruising the head of the serpent, was the means of their saving faith in the promised Saviour; was ultimately the source of consolation and hope, and that they became penitent and pardoned.

It is somewhat remarkable that their history closes here at the termination of this interview with God after their apostasy. We are simply informed, after this, that Cain, Abel, and Seth were their children; and then their names and history, with a bare allusion to them as the parents of the race, are dropped from the sacred record. Their sin had been great; they were the fii*st transgressors; they had covered the world with mourning; and although they found mercy, it was fitting that their history should here be brought to a close, and terminate with the bald record, “All the days that Adam lived, were nine hundred and thirty years, and he died.”

Such was the first call to repentance ever issued from the God of heaven to guilty men. There are several important lessons which it inculcates; the first of which is, that it discloses those great laws of rectitude and of mercy wliicli for in the imchanging ‘principles of the divine govermnent. It was, in substance, the same call which is now made to Adam’s posterity, and based on the same great moral principles. In man’s redemption from sin and hell, there is a union of those properties of the divine nature, which seem to be irreconcilable. On the one hand, there is a rectitude that is perfect and unerring, and that is the strong support of rectitude in heaven and on earth. There is that even justice which punishes the

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fallen, and cannot do otherwise than ignite the flame of holy indignation against all wickedness, and express its abhorrence of iniquity in those everlasting terrors which are consuming fire. And on the other hand, there is that mercy and peace, which fully to comprehend, we must dive deeper into the heart of God, and explore the depths of his love more fully than it is for mortals to attempt. There is that self-originating and self-moved mercy which has wrought such wonders in our world, and made so many the partakers of the “exceeding riches of his grace.” How these seemingly jarring attributes of the divine nature, and these conflicting principles ever could be reconciled in the government of fallen men rather than fallen angels, is the great mystery of godliness. How to bring about such an arrangement, that a being of inflexible justice could show mercy; that the punisher should become the pardoner; is a problem which could find no solution but in the uncreated Mind. When man had once sinned, everything, in reason and nature, in the divine works and providence, and in the history of other worlds, pointed to the wrath to come, and seemed to demonstrate that the transgressor must perish, or God be unjust.

Yet among the first lessons inculcated by the early history of our race, is the fact, that God is just in being the “justifier of every one that believeth in Jesus.” Love the most exacting, and justice the most inflexible, were alike satisfied with the first promise. In that early intimation, obscure as it was, were wrapt up the unchanging piinciples of that mediatorial government, where mei’cy and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace have kissed each other. The suffering Saviour was there — the seed of the woman, that he might die as a Sacrifice. And the Son of God was there, that he might survive the flames of the altar; that he might impart a consideration to his sacrifice that would render it capable of answering the ends of love that passeth knowledge, and of justice as terrible as ever hurled angels from their thrones, or kindled the flames the smoke of which ascends forever and ever. Behold, therefore, the goodness and the severity of God! thus early disclosed as combining their influence in the government of this fallen world, and thus adorning and giving eflficacy to that government till the heavens be no more. “Toward thee goodness, if thou continue in his goodness; otherwise, thou also shalt be cut off*.”

There is another lesson also to be learned from this early interview between God and our fallen primogenitors: it is, that no ouhvard condition can make a sinful cTeature liafppy. Our apostate parents were miserable even in the garden of Eden. That garden of delights had not altered, nor were its beauty and loveliness as yet blighted by the curse. Its sylvan scenery was still cheerful, its air soft and fragrant, its ground fertile, its songs and smiles were sweet, and everything was full of God. Yet its once happy occupants were to the last degree miserable. We need not ask why? It availed them nothing now that they still dwelt in Paradise, and that “the Lord God still walked in the garden in the cool of the day.” Every path they trod, every tree and flower rebuked them; God’s presence only filled them with dismay.

Let us bring the lesson home then, that no man can be tranquil and happy, and live in sin. Crowns cannot make him happy. Wealth and honor, health and friends cannot make him haj)py, so long as he has a guilty conscience, and an aching, bleeding heart. He cannot be happy even when alone; in the deepest solitude, he cannot forget that he is a dying man; that he is an immortal being, and that there is a God to whom he is accountable. He cannot look up at God’s sun in the heavens; he cannot hear his voice in the storm, or in the zephyr; he cannot feel the darkness of the night covering him, without having his existence embittered by fears. He has no almighty Friend, no Father in heaven to whom he can look with the confidence of a child, and of whom he can say, “The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?” What is there to be envied in all this world can give, if one view of God, or one retrospective, or introverted thought can spoil the joy? Give a wicked man the material universe; conduct him even to that heavenly Paradise where God dwells in his ineffable glory; and, if still in love with sin, he would be the most miserable of men. Just as our guilty first parents fled from God to hide themselves amid the trees of the gai’den, would wicked men cry “to the rocks and the mountains to fall on them, and hide them from the face of him that sitteth on the throne.”

With what force and tenderness, then, ought these thoughts to address themselves to all who live in sin. Their language to them is, “Repent of all your transgressions, so iniquity shall not be your ruin.” They utter the gospel call — repentance toward God, and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not the stern call of justice merely; it is the call of heaven’s proffered and tenderest mercy. And what is its language, if it does not say. Dismiss this spirit of alienation from God; away with this disingenuousness, and make a frank and humble confession of your wickedness. You have eaten of the tree, whereof he hath said, Thou shalt not eat of it. You cannot undo the deed; nor can you expiate the justice of a violated law. Yet may you rejiair to him who “came to seek and save that wliicli is lost,” and who lias said, “Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out.” Flee to God, and wot from him. Flee to the arms of his mercy; flee to the heart of his bleeding Son. Perhaps the reader lias fled thither, where grace triumphs and extends its triumphs. Let him learn, then, to appreciate that goodness of God which has led him to repentance. After om’ fii’st parents had fallen, nothing was farther from their thoughts than a true return to the God they had offended. They would have remained strangers to him always — forever undone, but for that condescending grace which pursued them in their flight, brought them forth from their hiding-place, not to confound and destroy them, but to convince, humble, and forgive them. Thus it is that the God of infinite mercy draws the sons and daughters of men with “cords of love, as the bands of a man.” We “love him because he first loved us.” It is God who first seeks the sinner, and not the sinner who first seeks God. It is only thus that the miserable and guilty exile is brought back to his father’s house. No man makes the first advances. God meets him in his wanderings with the treaty of reconciliation in his hands, and counsels him to retrace his steps. Precious truth!

“Jesu3 sought him, when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God.”

How touching is that memorable appeal, Adam, where art thou? Whence is it that thou hast fied from me thy Makei thy Father thy Shepherd thy Saviour? What hast thou done f Never can these expostulations be forgotten by his people, and never can they give him the full glory which his grace deserves. Though they spend an eternity in praising him, it will be but to acknowledge that he alone is worthy to be praised; that all honor and glory are his due; and to unite their hearts and combine their efforts in “forming one refulgent, unequalled crown, not to be placed on his head, for it would be unworthy, but to be cast at his feet.”