What an example for the faithful, under all their circumstances! Jesus kept close to scripture, and thus conquered: without any other weapon, save the sword of the Spirit, he stood in the conflict, and gained a glorious triumph. What a contrast with the first Adam! The one had every thing to plead for God: the other had every thing to plead against him. The garden, with all its delights, in the one case; the wilderness, with all its privations, in the other: confidence in Satan, in the one case; confidence in God in the other: complete defeat in the one case; complete victory in the other. Blessed forever be the God of all grace, who has laid our help on One so mighty to conquer, mighty to save! Let us now inquire how far Adam and Eve realized the serpent's promised advantage. This inquiry will lead us to a deeply-important point in connection with the fall of man. The Lord God had so ordered it, that in and by the fall, man should get what previously he had not, and that was _a conscience_,--a knowledge of both good and evil. This, man evidently could not have had before. He could not have known aught about evil, inasmuch as evil was not there to be known. He was in a state of innocence, which is a state of ignorance of evil. Man got a conscience in and by the fall; and we find that the very first effect of conscience was to make him a coward. Satan had utterly deceived the woman. He had said, "your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." But he had left out a material part of the truth, namely, that they should know good, without the power to do it; and that they should know evil, without the power to avoid it. Their very attempt to elevate themselves in the scale of moral existence involved the loss of true elevation. They became degraded, powerless, Satan-enslaved, conscience-smitten, terrified creatures. "The eyes of them both were opened," no doubt; but alas! to what a sight! It was only to discover their own nakedness. They opened their eyes upon their own condition, which was "wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked." "They knew that they were naked,"--sad fruit of the tree of knowledge! It was not any fresh knowledge of divine excellency they had attained,--no fresh beam of divine light from the pure and eternal fountain thereof,--alas! no: the very earliest result of their disobedient effort after knowledge was the discovery that they were naked.