demned to the lowest forms of labour, oh, how full of toil is this our world! Rest and leisure for enjoyment are the rare exceptions, the stern, rarely relaxed rule is toil, labour in the sweat of the brow!

"If little labour little are our gains,

Man's fortunes are according to his pains."

So do men realize this, that multitudes die of over-work, over-wrought brains, or worn-out bodies. Some of this is doubtless self-inflicted and needless, but for all that, the curse of labour presses heavily on the race, and always has done so everywhere. There may be some lovely islet of the southern sea where no more of labour than is healthful and pleasant is needed to secure sustenance. But such spots are as much exceptions in the earth as men rich enough to afford idleness are exceptions in the race. It is a fact proved by carefully compiled statistics, that in the State of Massachusetts alone 72,700 lives were lost in their prime, in the manufacturing towns, in the course of the five years, 1865-1871,-the vast majority from excessive labour, which soon destroys women and young girls especially. What hundreds of thousands of such perish annually in England, and die premature deaths from the same cause! Is not this a heavy penalty? Does it not press painfully on the human family the world over to this day as predicted? Was not the foreview of human history given to Adam correct in this particular? Let the great mass of mankind—straightening their weary backs and wiping the sweat from their brows with stiffened, aching hands -reply.

But the heaviest burden of this Eden prophecy fell not on the man. It fell where the sin was greatest, on the first transgressor-woman. Hers was a double guilt, for she not only yielded to temptation, but became in her turn a tempter. She fell not alone, but drew her husband down with her. The natural, inevitable consequences were foretold, and them

selves constituted to a large extent woman's peculiar curse, though there is superadded a Divine infliction of punishment. Given to be man's helpmeet and companion, woman became first his tempter and then his slave; for man, in becoming a sinner, became of course selfish. Might took the place of right, and the weaker vessel, instead of being honoured and cherished, was oppressed and degraded. "Thy desire will be to thy husband," or, as it is better rendered, "thou wilt be in subjection to thy husband, and he will rule (or tyrannise) over thee."

Has this prediction been verified in the history of the sex? Alas! alas! almost too terribly for description. The shameless, brutal, cruel degradation of woman by the stronger sex has been perhaps one of the very darkest results of the fall, and one of the plainest proofs of the ruin which sin has wrought in the nature of man. Save where Divine revelation has shed its beams of healing light, woman is to this day a slave, or a captive, or a victim. The Indian loads his wife like a beast of burden, with all his goods and chattels, drives her before him with her infant on her back as he would drive a brute, and walking unburdened by her side, flogs her when her strength fails. The Bantu chief in Central Africa dies; straightway a dozen of his living wives are forced into the great square pit which is to be his grave, to make a couch for the corpse, and be buried alive to keep the dead man company. How often, when the Hindu husband has died, has the wife been burned on his funeral pile as a compliment to his memory! One hundred millions of women and young girls-fellow-subjects of our own-are immured as prisoners to this day in the dark and loathsome zenanas of India, doomed to a wretched, cruel, dreary lifelong captivity, and to an ignorance which degrades them into mere talking animals; and this by the laws and customs inventedand established by men. They may never eat with their own husbands, or share any of his pleasures or pursuits,

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never walk abroad for exercise, or travel for health, instruction, or amusement. They are simply slaves, lifelong prisoners, defrauded of the first right of a human being, and worse off than any negro in the West Indies in days gone by. Such is the portion of woman in heathendom, and it is not much better among the hundred and twenty millions of Mohammedans. Woman is denied her just rights by the degrading custom of polygamy, denied education and culture, denied even the possession of a soul! Even the Jews in their daily ritual thank God that He has not made them women, and do not permit wives and mothers to worship God with their husbands and sons in the synagogues, but assign to them a separate gallery. Everywhere and in all ages, savage or civilized, man-black, white, red, yellow, or brown-has tyrannised over and oppressed his weaker companion, degraded her into his servant, regarded her as proberty to be bought and sold, and imposing on her his share of the curse-excessive toil-in addition to her own of excessive suffering in child-bearing and fatigue in child-rearing, has inflicted on her, in wanton wickedness, multitudes of other sufferings, both physical and mental.

Christianity, as we have seen, makes men new creatures in Christ, and does away with all this; and even where it is a mere profession instead of a reality, it still makes men ashamed of this undisguised brutality and selfishness, so that some forms of the degradation and oppression of the weaker sex have disappeared in Christendom. But we must not think they have ceased to be because we see them not! By very far the largest part of the sex are still-after six thousand years-victims to these terrible sufferings, so awfully wide and long continued has been the fulfilment of this part of the Adamic programme.1

Even in professing Christian countries there exist still many cruel and oppressive laws and customs, indicating that the original Divine ideal of the equality of the sexes is not even yet, after eighteen hundred

As to the remaining portion of the prediction, the more direct infliction of penal suffering, "in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children," it is needless to dwell on its mournful worldwide and still-continued fulfilment. The sufferings of childbirth are the severest known. They are used throughout Scripture as a similitude for the extremest and most distressing pain and danger. The fact that in all lands and ages large numbers of mothers actually die in them, and the fact that this process is merely a climax preceded and followed by a vast variety of related sufferings, so that the greater part of every woman's life is chequered at intervals by sickness and pain unknown to the other sex, leave no room to doubt the long-continued and universal realization in human experience of this part of the prediction.

It may of course be argued by unbelievers that phenomena so conspicuous as death and toil and female suffering could not but have been noted and pondered by Moses, and that their existence and universality in his day accounts for the "legend," or "myth," of the predictions in Genesis iii. To this we reply that it is vain to contend that the second part of the Adamic foreview of the future may have had a natural origin in the days of Moses, when it is perfectly clear, as we have shown, that the first part cannot be similarly accounted for. If a portion of the prophecy evinces supernatural fore

years of Christianity, fully recognised. Only a year ago were the abominable laws which sanctioned the vilest form of female slavery abolished, and the same personal liberty secured to women as to men. And these laws are still in full operation in India, in our colonies, and in most of the countries of Europe-laws that condemn the young and feeble of one sex to assault and infamy, to degradation and imprisonment for the sake of securing to the other immunity from the natural penalties of vice! It is only a year or two since the law of our land shielded tender, helpless female children from the worst form of brutal assault by men, and even now it gives no protection to girls after sixteen. Thus too wife-beating and wife-murder are lightly esteemed if men can plead intoxication as an excuse; and the judges in cases of divorce may give the custody of chil dren to a bad father, and refuse recognition to the mother's rights,

knowledge, it is safe to conclude that the whole is an inspired prediction.

To conclude. This first section of the Divine programme of the world's history is, as befits its early and primitive character, fundamental and moral. It has no ethnographic nor political features; it does not distinguish between one part of the human race and another; it alludes to no special occurrences of history, gives no order of events, and no indications of chronology. Later predictions do all this, but not so the grand primitive Genesis outline. The general course of providence under the government of a righteous and holy but merciful God, the consequences of Satanic temptation and human sin, and the existence of a Divine plan for the ultimate destruction of moral evil and for the redemption of the fallen race by means of a suffering yet triumphant member of it-these were the broad, fundamental, all-important particulars contained in it. It was not a detailed foreview of any one section, but a general programme of the whole. It covered all lands and all ages, stretching in its geographical sweep to the uttermost ends of the earth, and in its chronological range from the days of Eden to a still future time. The experience of every single descendant of Adam has harmonized with it, and the great central event of all history-the first advent of Christ-has already to a large extent fulfilled its promise, and many infallible signs indicate its perfect accomplishment in days to come.

Nothing of a similar character can be found in all the range of literature; it arches over the guilty and suffering human race like the grand vault of heaven, simple, abiding, all-embracing, vast, unutterably lofty, and illuminated by a glorious central sun-the promise of the Redeemer. Whence came it? Is this the manner of man?