The Tree of _the Knowledge of Good and Evil_, implies that Evil was already present in God’s world, and therefore in part prepares us for the dark shadow that now gathers round the sacred page. The creation of man had been watched by a supernatural Being of infinite subtilty and malignity, the Enemy of God and of all goodness. Respecting this mysterious Being, though the Sacred Narrative does not gratify our curiosity with any lengthened details, yet to his existence and his unceasing hostility to man, it bears direct and explicit testimony. The name under which the supernatural Tempter appears in the earliest and latest portions of the Bible is the same (comp. Gen. iii. 1, with 2 Cor. xi. 3; Rev. xii. 9, xx. 2), and though but seldom mentioned in the Old Testament (Job i., ii.; 1 Chron. xxi. 1; Zech. iii. 1, 2), the same attributes are uniformly ascribed to him. Created originally good, like all the works of God, he _abode not in the truth_ (Jn. viii. 44), but rebelled against his Maker and fell from his high estate (1 Tim. iii. 6), and henceforth, at the head of numerous other spirits (Matt. xxv. 41), whom he had dragged down with him in his fall (2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6), he arrayed himself in conscious hostility to the Supreme. This Being, then, here called the Serpent, in other places Satan, i.e. the _Enemy_, and the Devil, i.e. the _Slanderer_, approached the woman, as being the weaker vessel, for the purpose of seducing her, and so her husband, from their allegiance to their Creator. With affected solicitude he began by enquiring, _Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?_ To this the woman replied by repeating the Divine prohibition respecting the fruit of one particular tree. Thereupon the Tempter proceeded to declare that the penalty of death would not follow the eating of this fruit, nay that the Almighty knew that in the day they ate thereof, her eyes and those of her husband would be opened, and they would _become as gods_, knowing good and evil. A more subtle scheme for shaking her allegiance to the Almighty, and her confidence in His goodness and His love, could not have been devised. A prohibition hitherto regarded as a solemn but merciful warning was now invested with an arbitrary character, and a selfish motive. In mere envy, so the Tempter affirmed, the Almighty had denounced an impossible penalty; what she had been taught to observe as the condition of innocence and happiness was nothing more than the expedient of One, who grudged His creatures their rightful advancement, lest they should approach too nearly to Himself[2]. The idea of an envious God, of a _hard taskmaster_, was thus instilled into the mind of Eve, sapping the foundations of all real faith and trust, and rendering the more irresistible the temptation to disobey the command of Him, who had thus enviously set these bounds to her freewill. In an evil hour she believed the Tempter’s words, and seeing that the _tree