The secondary results of the fall appear in the curse severally pronounced of God upon the serpent, upon the woman, and upon the ground for his sake.――――As to the serpent, since he stands before us in this entire transaction as a double character, so the curse upon him comes in a sort of double meaning. The most obvious sense of the passage assigns a measure of this curse to the literal serpent――the animal under the guise of whom Satan beguiled his victim. But the responsibility and guilt being upon the very Satan, this curse falls chiefly on him. He is degraded, doomed to eternal shame; and in his great conflict against God and goodness, to disgrace, defeat and damning ruin. Words of telling significance were these;――“I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel.” The serpent guilefully assumed to be your friend. I tear off his mask and expose him in his true nature; I ordain eternal enmity between serpent and woman, and pre-eminently between the serpent’s seed――the children of the devil――and the great, distinguished Personage known as “the seed of the woman.” This enmity underlies the mighty conflict of the ages――Christ and Satan each leading on his host to battle and no peace or even truce arresting hostilities till the victory of the King of Kings shall be complete and ineffably glorious. Thus the first relation between serpent and woman――that of assumed but treacherous friendship――develops into everlasting enmity――God, her real friend, becoming in the person of his incarnate Son, born of woman――her champion and the mighty antagonist of Satan and all his offspring. Here and thus mercy breaks in upon this scene of sin and ruin, and God begins the wonderful process of making the wrath of Satan the occasion of his own infinite glory.――――The words which put so tersely the result of this great conflict take their shape and borrow their drapery from the guise under which Satan here appears――that of the crawling serpent. He shall wound the heel of his opponent――the natural place for the serpent’s bite; but his own head bruised and crushed, shall end the fight.――――This first promise of God to our fallen race sweeps the eye over the whole vast field of moral conflict between Christ and Satan, and testifies of glorious victory over Satan as the sublime result. It was inexpressibly kind in the Lord to bring in these gleams of light and hope upon the trembling souls of the first sinning pair before he proceeded to speak of the specific forms of suffering that must righteously come upon them and their offspring as the testimony of God’s displeasure against sin. Having said this, he proceeds to the curse upon woman――sorrow in the birth of offspring; and the curse upon man――toil and struggle for subsistence on a soil prolific in noxious growths and demanding labor as a condition of fruitfulness.