The train of thought that the apostle resumes here he followed in 1 Corinthians xi. 3-12: “I would have you know that the head of every man is the Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head of Christ is God.... Man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.” So it is with Christ and His bride the Church. “The LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib which the LORD God had taken from the man, made He a woman, and brought her to the man. And the man said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: She shall be called Woman [_Isshah_], because she was taken out of Man [_Ish_]. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: And they shall be one flesh” (Gen. ii. 21-24). Thus the first father of our race prophesied, and sang his wedding song. In some mystical, but real sense, marriage is a _reunion_, the reincorporation of what had been sundered. Seeking his other self, the complement of his nature, the man breaks the ties of birth and founds a new home. So the inspired author of the passage in Genesis explains the origin of marriage, and the instinct which draws the bridegroom to his bride. But our apostle sees within this declaration a deeper truth, kept secret from the foundation of the world. When he speaks of “this great _mystery_,” he means thereby not marriage itself, but _the saying of Adam about it_. This text was a standing problem to the Jewish interpreters. “But for my part,” says the apostle, “I refer it to Christ and to the Church.” St Paul, who has so often before drawn the parallel between Adam and Christ, by the light of this analogy perceives a new and rich meaning in the old dark sentence. It helps him to see how believers in Christ, forming collectively His body, are not only grafted into Him (as he puts it in the epistle to the Romans), but were derived from Him and formed in the very mould of His nature. What is affirmed in Colossians i. 16, 17 concerning the universe in general, is true in its perfect degree of redeemed humanity: “_In Him_ were created all things,” as well as “through Him and for Him.” Eve was created in Adam; and Adam in Christ. We are “partakers of a Divine nature,” by our spiritual origin in Him who is the image of God and the root of humanity. The union of the first human pair and every true marriage since, being in effect, as Adam puts it, a restoration and redintegration, symbolizes the fellowship of Christ with mankind. This intention was in the mind of God at the institution of human life; it took expression in the prophetic words of the Book of Genesis, whose deeper sense St Paul is now able for the first time to unfold.