THE LESSON OF THE AGES AS TO HOLINESS .
Genesis 4:

From the beginning of the world this history comes to us, a sample and a parable of its whole history since. It is a chapter, with all the gloom of it, of priceless value. No where does Scripture in its mere chronicle-character show itself more prophetic. No where do we see more plainly, as taught of Him who only can show it to us, the end from the beginning. No where is it more apparent that with Him what seems defeat is victory,-that He is " King of the ages," and all things perforce serve Him. Thus it reverses the prophet's experience for us:that which is bitter in the mouth, as we first taste it, is sweet in the belly, as it is well digested. Blessed be God that He is God !

The history is a type,-not merely a single, but a double one. It is fulfilled in the world at large. It is fulfilled in the lesser world of our own bosoms. The one fulfillment underlies the other. The lesson is one:the testimony is double. Each confirms the other; and for this reason we shall da well to look at both.

The seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head. Faith says this, and it says true:God has pledged His word for it. But because it is still faith that says it, this is even yet among the things unseen. What is seen is the other side of the prophecy,-the heel of the woman's seed bruised by the serpent. The cross is more than the central fact of history; it is, as to its human side, but the epitome of it,-its meaning concentrated and emphasized in one tremendous deed. The conflict between good and evil has been long protracted, and its issue, so far as the eye can take note of it, has been by no means victory for the good. Nor, so long as " man's day " lasts, does Scripture give any expectation of it. The coming of the Prince of Peace alone can bring peace. Until then, His own words remain applicable, " I came not to send peace, but a sword." Thus, when He asks, and the nations are given Him for His inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for His possession, His power must act in putting down the opposition :" Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; Thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel" (Ps. 2:8, 9). And this power His people too shall share with Him. (Rev. 2:26, 27.)

Till then, their portion is with Him the cross :"heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ; if so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together." (Rom. 8:17.)

God's present triumph over evil is thus in using it as the necessary discipline of His people, and in making it work out, spite of itself, His work:" Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee; the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain" (Ps. 76:10). Thus we may look evil in the face and fear not,-nay, rejoice to see in it all, as in the cross itself, God's mastery over it. What will not turn to praise, He suffers not to be. What is, is to glorify Him.

Abel is in this history a type of Him whose blood "speaks better things."In its efficacy Godward, it is seen in that sacrifice by which God declares him righteous, "testifying of his gifts" (Heb. 11:4). In its human side, it is seen in his own death at his brother's hand, as Christ received His at the hands of Israel, His kindred after the flesh. Cain is indeed the perfect type and pattern of those Pharisees who were ever His bitter antagonists:religious after his fashion, and by his very religion proving himself far from God,-a worshiper, and his brother's murderer. And this "way of Cain " the Jews have walked in to this day, like him, outcast from God, fugitives and vagabonds upon the earth, with the mark upon them which still manifests them as preserved of God, spite of their sin and its penalty. How strikingly in these national judgments is the handwriting of God "writ large" for man to read! and how inexcusable if he does not read it!

The world has got rid of Christ, and to-day it rejects Him still. Not Israel only; but in Christendom His rejection is as plain, and more terrible. They may keep His birthday, and build a pile over His sepulcher, and so did Israel, on the Lord's day, build the sepulchers of the prophets whom their fathers slew, and were witnesses to themselves, as He assures them, that they were the children of those who slew the prophets.

Meanwhile the progress is undoubted :the " many inventions" abound by which man's nakedness is successfully covered, and the cities of the land of Nod show by their adornment that the wanderers there mean to stay. Lamech, the " strong man," a title in frequent use to-day, is the common father of all these men of genius, and he, with the inspiration of a poet, prophesies, taking for his text Cain's security, to argue for himself greater security than Cain's. How unmistakable a picture of our civilized world to-day!

But then God comes in again, and Seth is appointed in the place of Abel whom Cain slew. And in the genealogy that follows, Cain and his descendants have no place. Enosh is born-" frail man "-the antipodes of the strong one, Lamech; but then men begin to call on the name of the Lord. The weakness of man, demonstrated and confessed, exalts God who is now so necessary to him; and man also finds his place of blessing in dependence, where it ever is.

This goes beyond present history, but prophecy is clear as to its fulfillment. It speaks of a day of manifestation, a day of the Lord, which shall be upon all the pride of man, bringing down all that is high, in order to exalt the lowly. "And then," saith God, "will I turn to the peoples a pure language, that they may all call upon the name of the Lord, to serve Him with one consent … I will also leave in the midst of them (Israel) an afflicted and poor people, and they shall trust in the name of the Lord." But when is this ? and when shall a Seth mighty to accomplish this replace in the history of the earth the murdered Abel ? Only Christ glorified can replace Christ crucified; and then it is that the humble Enosh shall displace the haughty Lamech. So the prophet goes to declare,-" Sing, O daughter of Zion! shout, O Israel! be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem ! The Lord hath taken away thy judgment; He hath cast out thine enemy:the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of thee; thou shalt not see evil any more." (Zeph. 3:).

Here, assuredly, is the true Seth, and the day to which the history in its typical character points us on. This is what alone fulfills for the earth the promise of woman's Seed in its reality. The serpent's head is now bruised.

All this, in its underlying principles, witnesses plainly to that lesson which we now go on to learn from it in its individual application. It is indeed the lesson of the ages; a lesson beginning before the ages, and the wisdom gained by which shall last eternally.
In the individual application, the same struggle between good and evil is revealed as taking place in the world within us as we have seen to take place in the world without us. " That which is first is natural, and after-ward that which is spiritual." Cain, therefore, is the first-born, and not Abel. The names too are significant. "Cain" is "acquisition," "possession," and he lays hold of the earth to retain it. " Abel " is "vapor," "vanity," significant to us at least in connection with the brevity of his life. Personally righteous, and though dead yet speaking, he seems to accomplish nothing, and leaves the evil in triumphant power. It is just the experience of the seventh of Romans-a hopeless incapacity for good in one who wills what is good:"the good that I would I do not; the evil that I would not, that I do."

Nor only so:he uses the strong word "death," as descriptive of his condition. Identifying himself with the good within, with that which desires and seeks this, he describes his state thus:"Sin revived, and I died. And the commandment which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. For sin, taking occasion by the commandment, deceived me, and by it slew me. Here is the interpretation of what is most perplexing in the type before us. We naturally ask, " How can that die in us which is of God and good? and how can the defeat of the desire for good be a lesson of holiness ?" Yet to how many traveling in this path would it be a ray from heaven indeed, could they believe it! Let us, then, seek earnestly to apprehend this strange experience, and see if in it God is not leading the blind by a way they know not to the very haven where they would be.

Before man was created, sin had been in heaven. The conflict between good and evil did not begin on earth. Strange enough, and terrible to realize, that beings created upright, in a scene where all bore witness to the goodness and love of God, could without temptation fall from purity, and become all that is expressed for us in the word "devils"! " How could it be?" we ask. Scripture may not afford us all the light we would desire upon such a question, but some light it assuredly does give, and that which is most needful for us. It assures us that the "condemnation of the devil" was for pride (i Tim. 3:6):"not a novice, lest being lifted up with pride, he fall into the condemnation of the devil." The "lifting up" of the creature is its fall. Forgetting its absolute dependence is the sure and speedy way to ruin. "Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall."

The process is given us in the twenty-eighth chapter of Ezekiel, in which we have, as it would seem, under the vail of the " king of Tyre," Satan himself before us. "Prince of this world," the Lord calls him; and in Revelation he is pictured as the "dragon," with the seven heads and ten horns of the empire, the power of which he wields. Thus the king of Tyre might well represent him in Ezekiel. And much of what is said seems in no way else really explicable.

" Son of man, take up a lamentation upon the king of Tyrus, and say unto him, 'Thus saith the Lord God, Thou sealest up the sum, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. Thou hast been in Eden, the garden of God; every precious stone was thy covering . . . thou wast perfect in thy ways from the day thou wast created until iniquity was found in thee. Thy heart was lifted up because of thy beauty; thou hast corrupted thy wisdom by reason of thy brightness.' "

We are indeed, in a world like this, familiar enough with such a process. The startling thing is, to find it as the account of sin in its beginning in a creature of whom God could speak in such a way. It is an intelligible account, however, of how when there was yet no evil, the contemplation and consciousness of what was good could become evil, the germ of all that has developed since. Here is the germ. Let us mark and lay it to heart, for we shall find here what will explain the mystery of God's ways with man ever since. A wonder of wonders it is that inasmuch as the consciousness of good has been to the creature the cause of evil, God will now in His sovereign wisdom make the consciousness of evil the cause of good! Simple this is too; but how great in its simplicity. The thought of it at once brings conviction into the soul, that so it is, and so it must be. And how important that we should realize it. Already upon this experience of the seventh of Romans a bright ray of light has fallen.

The next thing after the fall of the angels, so far as our knowledge reaches, comes the creation of man. And how clearly now we see that if Satan had fallen through pride, God would hide pride from this new creature of His. A spiritual being he must be, and in the image of God thus, His offspring. Only so could he respond aright unto God that made him. Only thus in any proper way could He be his God. Yet He does not now make another angel. He does not merely repeat Himself. Angels have fallen, and through pride. God takes up the dust of the ground, and wraps in it – one may almost say, hides-the spirit of man. All that materialism builds itself upon is just the evidence of this. Though the breath of the Almighty is breathed into him, he is yet a "living soul;" and the beast too is a living soul. He acquires his wisdom by the organs of sense; his mind grows with his body:there is ordained to him a long helpless infancy, beyond even the beasts. He needs food, and is constantly reminded of his necessity. He needs help, and it is not good for him to be alone. No independence can be permitted him; and yet every want is met in so tender a way,-every avenue of sense is so made to him an occasion of delight, that every where he is assured of One who cares for him,-to whom he is constant debtor. As independence to him would be plain ruin, so dependence is endeared to him in every possible way.

Evil is yet barred out from him:he knows as yet nothing of it. Though it exists, God does not suffer it to show itself as evil till he invites it in. The question by which the woman falls is as innocent as she is, and from a beast, -what is below her, not above. The prohibition of the tree, which the devil uses, is good also as a warning of their dependence, and the penalty as guarding the prohibition. Who would lose all this blessing to gain none could say what ?could there be indeed a gain?

Yet man falls, as we well know, and with the lust of the flesh and of the eyes, the pride of life gains possession of him. On the other hand, with sin, death enters into the world,-the great leveler of the pride of man. His eyes open upon his nakedness. Conscience becomes his accuser .In the sweat of his brow he must eat his bread, gathering it from the midst of the thorns and thistles, which are the sign of the curse. And when a man comes into the world, it must be amid travail and sorrow.

Thus his history begins, and for four thousand years 4 afterward, until the coming of the Deliverer, there is but one long sorrow-one tale of sin and misery.

The "due time" for Christ to die is when, after all this, man is still without strength and ungodly. (Rom. 5:6.) It is his trial-time, the period of his education under the school-master, and the one lesson to be learned is of spiritual nothingness. His sin is kept ever before him. "None righteous,-no, not one;" "none that doeth good, -no, not one;" and this applied to all,-Jew and Gentile, saint and sinner a like. In the book of Job, the best man upon earth,-a saint, surely,-is taken up to bear witness of this. His efforts to wash himself white are impressively told, and how God plunges him in the ditch so that his own clothes abhor him. It is a saint who learns the lesson:so it is a lesson for saints. And all the way through the centuries the burden is repeated, "There is not a just man upon earth that doeth good, and sinneth not" (Eccles. 7:20). "Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin ?" (Prov. 20:9.)

All the way through those ages, it is with the evidences of man's sin that God fights sin. To abase him, this is to exalt him. To wean him from himself, this is to make God his joy, his strength, his riches. " He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." God educates him in the knowledge of sin. His history begins as it ends, and ends as it begins-with failure. It seems the celebration of the triumph of Cain ; the strong men are of his line :that which is of God takes no root in the earth ; a Nebuchadnezzar is king of kings ; a little remnant return from the captivity in Babylon, only to exhibit their poverty, and to fail as thoroughly as before. There is no hope but in Another:when we are yet without strength, Christ dies for the ungodly.

(To be continued.)