For now the Sacred Narrative, while it refuses to gratify our curiosity respecting a subject which doubtless passes our understanding, proceeds to do what is for us of far greater practical importance, namely, to place the inroad of sin in immediate connection with the Divine Counsels of Redemption. We learn that God in infinite mercy now intervened between His creatures and their Tempter. For them, indeed, it remained to taste the bitter fruits of their disobedience and mistrust. Eve was informed that sorrow and pain must henceforth be the condition of her existence; _in sorrow should she bring forth children, her desire should be to her husband, and he should rule over her_ (Gen. iii. 16). Adam learnt that with himself henceforth nature too must undergo a change; _thorns and thistles_ must grow upon the face of the earth, toil must be the price of his existence, and his end the silence of the grave, for _dust he was, and unto dust he must return_. Even thus, however, Justice was tempered with sweet Mercy, and Love mingled blessings with the bitterness of man’s cup. If pain and multiplied sorrow was to be woman’s lot, yet through pain she was to know a mysterious joy, and her anguish should be no more remembered, when she knew that _a man was born into the world_. And if grievous toil and irksome labour were to be the conditions of man’s existence, yet in the provision of these effectual antidotes to idleness and many other sins was truest mercy. But these gracious purposes extended only to man, they tempered not the judgment denounced on his Seducer. Utterly _cursed was he above all cattle, and above every beast of the field_. The very creature, over whom he had seemed to triumph, should prove his ultimate Conqueror. _I will put enmity_, said the Almighty to the Tempter, _between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel_. In these words we trace the _first_ distinct _Promise_ of man’s ultimate Redemption. The state of degradation, into which he had suffered himself to be seduced, was not to last for ever. “In conformity with the Divine Equity, the deceiver was to be judged by the deceived, the Conqueror was to be overcome by the conquered[5].” Man need not give himself up to despair; there was still room for hope; in infinite mercy the Almighty had espoused his cause, and He would Himself provide a remedy for his fall.