We need not venture on any profitless speculations touching the precise amount of hope the early generations of the human family were likely to have derived from this first Gospel, this “first Promise” of a Saviour. In terms it was undoubtedly indefinite. Neither the time, nor the method, nor the precise mediating cause of man’s deliverance was made known. It was not revealed whether the promised “Seed” should be one or many, the collective Race, or a single Deliverer. On these points greater light was to be shed as time rolled on, and many things were to be revealed, which now man could not comprehend. But of the final _Victory_, and of its _certainty_, direct and explicit assurance was given. “Since religion cannot so much as exist without _hope_, the earliest intimation of Prophecy was adapted to the support of that essential feeling in the heart of man. It was clearly a promise of relief, an antidote to perfect despair. It contained the prediction that some one should be born of the Seed of the Woman, who ‘should bruise the head of the Tempter,’ by whom, therefore, the penal effect of man’s transgression should be in some way reversed. With all its uncertainty as to the mode in which this End should be effected, the Promise had within it a principle of _Hope_ and _Encouragement_, and the materials of a religious trust fitted to keep man still looking to his Maker[6].” In the encouraging assurance thus given to Adam, in this first Promise of a Saviour, Sacred History finds its definite starting-point, and the Old Testament becomes a true introduction to the New, because it reveals the several steps whereby the Divine Wisdom provided for its fulfilment. From first to last Sacred History is “instinct with life and hope;” it ever points onward to the future; its key-note is ever preparation for the Coming of HIM, who was to be the true “Seed of the Woman,” in whom the Father counselled before the worlds to _gather together in one all things, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth_ (Eph. i. 10; Phil. ii. 9, 10). CHAPTER III. _THE FLOOD._ GEN. IV.–IX. B.C. 4004–2348. THOUGH thus assured of ultimate restoration, the first man, as a fallen being, could not be permitted to remain in the region, which had been the scene of his trial and his failure. He might take of the fruit of another Tree, that grew in the midst of the Garden, the _Tree of Life_, and eat, and live for ever, and thus prevent the possibility of his recovery. Accordingly he was sent forth from the Garden, at the east of which were stationed Cherubim, a particular order, in all probability, of Angels (Comp. Ex. xxv. 17–22; Ezek. i. 5, Rev. iv. 6), while a _flaming Sword which turned every way_ guarded the approach to the Tree of Life.