Just as those sinless animals are slain and die a sacrifice on account of your sin, so that you may be clothed, so the promised Saviour also will be sacrificed because of your sins, in order that your sins may be forgiven and that you may be clad in the precious robe of His spotless righteousness¹ and holiness, and may thus once more be accepted before God'.

After giving the promise of the corning Saviour² God proceeded to punish Adam and Eve and the serpent, for punishment is always attached to sin and cannot be escaped. As we have seen, God condemned the serpent to a position of degradation and placed enmity between serpents and men.³ This enmity which the serpent entertains for men, its power of fascination, and its deadly poison, are all types of the hatred which animates Satan against men, and of the attractive force of sin, and of the poison of sin, by means of which Satan slays men. With regard to Eve's punishment it is written that God said to her, 'I⁴ will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'. To Adam God said, 'cursed⁵ is the ground for thy sake; in toil 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.' That is to say, the ground shall be comparatively unproductive and man shall earn his daily bread with toil, hardship, scarcity and difficulty, and his body, becoming weak and sickly, will finally die, dissolve and turn to dust. And, lest Adam and Eve should stretch out their hands and take and eat of the Tree of Life, which was in the Garden of Eden, and continue alive for ever in a state of sin and alienation from God, He expelled them from the Garden of Eden and did not permit them to return to it.¹

If you ask of what sort was the Tree of Life, and how long Adam remained in the Garden of Eden—to the first question the answer is that, as that tree is not described in the word of God, we can say nothing in the way of giving a description of it. But, from the verses in Gen. iii which mention it, we learn that its fruit had such a property and effect that, if Adam and Eve had eaten of it, they would have remained alive and would not have died. But, since God did not wish that, and moreover, because, if man had continued to live always in that evil state and in this transitory world, his condition would not have become better but worse, therefore the merciful and all-wise God drove our first parents out of the Garden of Eden to