Our first notion on reading these words, “_Cursed is the ground for thy sake_,” is naturally that part of the curse on man has fallen on the ground. It is cursed “_for thy sake_,” by transition of the curse from thee. But the word bears a nobler meaning. “For thy sake” may as well, nay better, mean “with a view to thy good.” The root of the sentence would still be transgression. There had been no need of toil, care, and pain, had not sin entered into the world. But sin having entered, toil, care, and pain are ordained for the sake of man in the loftiest sense; they are the most perfect ordinance which could be framed to bless him (or rather with a view to his full and perfect blessing, for they only begin what higher influence must complete), by the Almighty Father’s wisdom, power, and love. I am very anxious that the full force of this statement should be understood. It is quite possible to take the following view of it:—Man having placed himself before God in the attitude of a sinner, justice demanded that he should be sentenced: toil, care, pain, and death _are_ the sentence, the expression of God’s anger against the transgressor, making man the outcast of His love; that then, in pity, God took compassion on the outcast, and began a remedial work, which, while leaving him still for the present under the action of the sentence, sought to rescue him ultimately from its final doom. This would appear to me a very imperfect and partial statement of the truth. To me it seems as if the whole sentence were the expression of the tenderness which began to work in the Father’s heart in the very moment of the transgression. The death which is the righteous doom, the inevitable fruit, of sin, is in the very moment of the sentence held in suspense as it were by the promise; and the toil, care, and pain which are expressed in the sentence are the very first steps of the remedial work. The sinner in the very moment of transgression is drawn to the bosom of God’s mercy. Since the first promise was spoken, the death which was the sinner’s doom can only be tasted in its bitterness by the man who treats the promise as a thing of nought. And all the hard and stern conditions of man’s present lot, instead of being the doom of a judgment from which mercy is moved to rescue him, are themselves the motions of mercy by which the work of rescue is begun. This is the principle on which alone it appears to me that the text can be understood.