that it was not a reptile which was interested in man's ruin, but, if any outside agent, an evil spirit. Why, then, was the serpent punished? For the same reason that Jesus afterward cursed the fig tree. Just as in the old legislation the ox who gored a man or the ax that killed a man was destroyed, so in this old picture story was the serpent cursed that he might become a permanent witness, a standing memorial, a living warning against sin and disobedience. Just

as the rainbow and circumcision in the old covenant and as baptism and the Lord's Supper in the new covenant were set as signs to the people, so the serpent's posture and its mode of travel were made a sign and symbol of degradation. So that in the moral interpretation of this story the question need not even be raised whether the writer supposed the posture of the serpent to have been imposed upon it for the first time. That question was not in his mind. He simply used the symbol or hieroglyph of moral evil which was familiar to the surrounding nations and to himself. No curse was uttered against the man and woman. They were punished, simply. To the woman there came pain, to the man toil and sweat.

The marked result was upon the sinner. There are many who regard this account, if trustworthy, as recording not the fall but the ascent of man, and that his disobedience, to use the exact words of one of these scholars, was the most fortunate event in human history, although the writer through his own ignorance did not so understand it. Such writers, as we have seen, insist that the Bible writer meant to say that the eating of this fruit brought to Adam his first knowledge of morality; originating in him a moral nature, sharpening his wit so that for the first time he was able to tell good from evil. But the Bible does not say this, and if Adam had been so witless that he was not able to tell good from evil he would not have been guilty or deserving of punishment for his disobedience. Besides, it seems incredible that one who was made in God's image, and was created good (and the Bible writer understands this), would be rep

resented by this same thoughtful writer as being placed by a just God under a law while yet incapable of understanding the difference between right and wrong, and equally incredible that he would represent man receiving his greatest blessing from his greatest enemy and from disobedience to Jehovah's law. Man does not need to sin to attain the highest knowledge, as Jesus proved and as such a writer must have known. True, the man's eyes were "opened;" that is, he received new knowledge that day-knowledge of ill, sin, shame, and guilt such as can come to only two beings, one the eternal, all-knowing Creator, the other the sinning creature. In this sense Adam became as God when he sinned. He had known the good before, he now knew something of the heinousness and shame of evil. Perhaps he also became like God in this: that when he ate he virtually said, "I acknowledge no master; I acknowledge allegiance to no one;" but the expected blessing did not follow. Knowledge of the bad is not the best knowledge for man to have. If he had not eaten of the stolen fruit he might have had better knowledge. The knowledge of good and evil was not obtained by knowing himself as sinful, but through the law he obtained knowledge of good and evil.

The consequence of the fall, so far as Adam was concerned, is represented by the writer as separation from God, and therefore physical and spiritual decrepitude, which de crepitude is entailed upon his descendants. It is doubtful whether the original writer meant this picture to represent merely the sin of the first man. The word translated Adam in our version is once used by the Jehovist chronicler seemingly in a personal sense, but ordinarily it is the customary word for "man" (or mankind). However he meant it, one thing is certain: this does represent the exact genesis and culmination of sin in man-first man, last man, any man. So that if it were proved that the original writer had very coarse and low views of human nature, or that he was attempting here to set forth in bare literality the history merely of the first couple, or that he was simply seeking to

explain certain phenomena connected with the posture of the serpent or the toils of life, nevertheless, even then (especially then) we should have a most remarkable proof of the divine guidance and protection which so completely overruled natural ignorance that this account has come to us so thoroughly purged from all primitive misconceptions that if, to-day, a philosophical theologian wished to express in picture the profoundest truths concerning the origin of sin and its effect on universal humanity he would give this picture without subtraction or addition. Like another New Testament character, in that case he must have spoken much better than he knew. It is a picture into which every man may look and see himself and shudder at the terrible cost of sin. As has been well said, "It is the greatest sermon ever preached to man warning him against sin." It is a sermon which millions have read and millions more will read, a sermon which shall never cease to be read so long as man is man and God is God. "Is it allegory?" says Herder, "Is it history? Is it fable? And yet there it stands, the point from which all succeeding history the very kernel and kernel and germ of the most hidden history of the race. Without it mankind would be what so many other things are-a book without a title, without the first cover and introduction." Being what it is, let us acknowledge it to be worthy of the place it occupies as the opening leaf of the Book of books, the opening paragraph in the history of human redemption.

starts,

Camden M. Cobern

35

ART. II. THE GENESIS OF "EVANGELINE.”

THE season was fortunate. It was after he had tasted of love and of sorrow; it was after he had passed some dark and some golden milestones on his upward path, had struggled, striven, attained, in part, with foretaste of fame and forecast of a happier future; it was when he had partially outlived the restlessness, ferment of the blood, wild longing and dissatisfaction so often accompaniments of genius and of youth, that this poem was written. When it was complete, and ready for the press, Longfellow had attained his fortieth year; his sun of life was in the summer solstice, with all the heavier shadows yet far before him. He had recently been united with a beautiful, spirited, intellectual and affectionate woman, the bride of his choice. Rarer felicity have wedded hearts ever enjoyed? One of the historic mansions of his country had become his home and his possession, while its halls and chambers were brightened by illustrious friends, by the smiles of a sweet woman, and made glad by the voices of fair children. He was a member of an intellectual, virtuous family, loved and admired by pupils as professor of modern languages in America's principal university, laureled already as an accomplished poet, traveled in many lands, applauded by his peers at home and abroad, while intercourse with learned, gifted, and celebrated men had become the commonplace of his life.

One day during the year 1845 Longfellow had angels unawares at the Cragie House: Hawthorne ever welcome had come, and brought along with him the Rev. Mr. Conolly. Both remained to dine; for, as the magician of The Scarlet Letter confesses in one of his epistles, "The encounter of friends after long separation is but unsubstantial and ghostlike without a dinner. It is roast beef that gives reality to everything." At dinner the conversation ran upon suitable topics or subjects for literary composition, poems or romances. Mr. Conolly-who must have been a

man of some charm, or talent, or character, or all of these together, to have attracted one so shy and exclusively fastidious as Hawthorne-was at that time rector of a church in South Boston. He told Longfellow he could provide him with a subject which Hawthorne had declined, and then proceeded to relate a legend of the French Acadians which he said was told to him by Mrs. Haliburton, a member of his congregation. "It was the story of a young Acadian maiden who at the dispersion of her people by the English troops had been separated from her betrothed lover; they sought each other for years in their exile, and at last they met in a hospital where the lover lay dying." With what embellishment Conolly told this story we know not, but he told it effectively-for it went home to Longfellow's heart. Who can tell by what unerring instinct the true poet recognizes and appropriates that which belongs to him; seeing, when presented to his vision, the rude carbon that shall come forth out of his alembic a glittering diamond, all cut and mounted? The pathetic incident appealed to him, and, in particular, the constancy of the heroine; so that he said to his friend Hawthorne, "If you really do not want this incident for a tale let me have it for a poem." The Magician gave ready consent, and so the Poet had his theme.

Who, save the artist alone, knows the labor that attends his task; the pain, the toil, the waiting, the yearning, the continued, apparently ineffective effort that go before the birth of a great poem? To shape in the rough may be the frequent accomplishment, but to bring forth the mold of perfect beauty-that is reserved for the few. The gods, not mortals, bring to the birth with ease and laughter. I think the greatness of Shakespeare has its index in that placid face after the stormy passions of "Lear," the crimes and supernal horrors of "Hamlet" and "Macbeth," and the universal glories of "The Tempest." Where are his scars and wrinkles? How comes he by that complacent mask? How finely balanced and perfectly adjusted was that celestial instrument of his mind, microscopic or telescopic at will,