The Spirit of God, in these early times, gives us some most precious samples of this most precious faith; as though (may I say it?) delighting in such a thing, He produced an impression of the finest character _at once_, as soon as occasion served. Thus Adam, in his faith, talked only of life, though in the midst of death--death, which he himself had brought in, a standing witness against him. He was doomed to be an outcast in a scene of ruin which his own sin had produced. He knew this and allowed it. But he had listened to the story of the conflict between his destroyer and the woman’s Seed. In the very place of judgment--from among the trees of the garden, where conscience had driven him--his ear had caught the sound of the sweet gospel, not of mercy merely, but propitiation and victory, and forth he comes, talking of life. He called his wife "Eve," the mother of all living. All life was in the promised Kinsman-Redeemer. In creation Adam himself had been constituted head of life--"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth;" but that, in his esteem, was now forfeited and gone. Life must flow in a new channel--"He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." How grand in its very simplicity all this was! And there was recovery also of _moral_ glory, in a great sense, in all this. Adam had not _submitted_ himself to the _majesty_ of God, but affected to be as God. But now he does _submit_ himself to the _righteousness_ of God. His shoulders bowed themselves to receive the covering wrought for his nakedness by God’s own hand. See Rom. x. 3. He was now honouring God the Redeemer, though he had just before been doing all he could to dishonour God the Creator--so simply was he led by the Spirit to value the divine provision for a sinner in the promise of our bruised but victorious Kinsman.