Accordingly, though distinguished by Moses in the beginning of his narrative by designations which specially relate to the Divine nature in his person, acts are ascribed to him which denote his complex official person; such as walking in the garden of Eden, and conversing face to face with Adam. As his official work is in Scripture referred to as one comprehensive undertaking, though involving a long succession of acts and events, so his official person is ever referred to as the same, though in the succession many events preceded that of his taking man's nature into union with that person. By appointment and covenant, virtually and officially he was the same from the beginning; and on that ground, and because his expiatory death in man's nature was essential to his undertaking as a whole, and its effect as necessary to the earliest as to any succeeding portion of man's race, he is spoken of as "slain from the foundation of the world." Had no apostasy of man taken place, we are warranted in believing that he would have continued that local, visible presence and intercourse with Adam and his descendants which characterized the earliest period of their existence. For as Creator of all things he was the Heir and Lord of all, and would have been Lawgiver and King of the race, the medium of their relations to God and of their homage, as he is to be hereafter at the restitution of all things to their primeval condition, when all the evil consequences of the fall shall have been superseded, death itself destroyed, and the earth delivered from the curse and restored to its original perfection. But no such course of things could have been possible had the earth, at the epoch of man's creation, been in its present imperfect condition, the scene of disease and death. Nor can there, if it was at the outset so imperfect and so fraught with physical evils, be a restoration of it hereafter to its pristine state. If it is to be renovated, remodelled, new-made, it is because it has been degraded from its primeval condition. If it is to be restored by the instrumentality of fire, that is to happen as the counterpart of its destruction by water. If its renovation is to be one of the consequences and concomitants of his perfect triumph over the evils of the apostasy, its subjection to its present state is no less certainly a consequence of the apostasy. In view of this scheme and course of administration, we may perhaps discern some of the reasons why this earth and the human race were selected. We may suppose that of all the orders of intelligent creatures, man, with his material body, is the least exalted, and for that reason, in such a course of manifestation to all orders, alliance with his nature would be selected. The visibility required in such a scheme would require union with a visible body.