D 00 - CHAPTER IV Probation, Temptation
CHAPTER IV PROBATION, TEMPTATION, AND FALL OF MAN.
ORIGINAL STATE OF MAN. Our first parents were placed in Paradise as in a school and in a sanctuary. They were surrounded by all that was necessary for their comfort and well-being, and they were brought into contact with what was calculated to develop the faculties with which they had been endowed, and fit them for the high ends for which they were originally designed. They had to keep the garden and they had to keep themselves.
They had to unite wholesome and moderate labour with the exercise of their mental powers, and the discharge of those moral and religious duties imposed upon them by the rela tions they sustained to each other, to animate creation around them, and to their Creator and Benefactor in heaven. They were thus in a state of training as well as of enjoyment; there was something they had to become as well as something they had to possess and use. But there was a peculiarity, in a moral respect, in their position beyond this. By the appointment of God they were not only under training, but under probation. There were not only certain results to be developed by natural process, not only certain ends to be secured by appropriate means, but certain mighty issues were suspended upon certain contingencies in their conduct. They were put upon their trial as free agents, and their final happi ness was made to depend on the issues of that trial. By their own conduct was to be determined whether they should continue to enjoy blessing or be brought under a penalty.
They were thus taught from the first that they were not only the objects of the divine beneficence, but the subjects of the divine government; " the proper formal notion of government," as a great thinker has observed, being " the annexing of pleasure to some actions and pain to others, in our power to do or forbear, and giving notice of this appointment beforehand to those whom it concerns." J Such was the constitution and order of things under which our first parents were placed.
They were surrounded with blessing, but they were at the same time under law; and the test of their obedience was to be at the same time the criterion of their felicity. In considering this part of man’s primal history, we shall take up in order the following points: 1. The probation under which our first parents were placed; 2. The temptation by which they were assailed; and 3. The success of that temptation. i. The Probation.
(i.) This assumed the form of a restriction upon their 1 Butler, Analogy, Part 1. ch. 2. absolute right to do as they would with the place in which God had placed them. That garden was given to them as their own to use it as they pleased, with one limitation, of all the trees of the garden they might freely eat, excepting the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This they were peremptorily forbidden even so much as to touch; and on the day they ate of it they were assured that they should surely die. On their conformity, then, with this restriction depended their enjoyment of life and all the blessings of their favoured con dition; and the probation under which they were placed had for its design to test how far they were willing to submit to the will and authority of God as their Ruler and Law giver.
It is essential to the idea of probation that certain condi tions should be fulfilled in respect of the parties who are the subjects of it. First, they should clearly understand what is required of them; what they are to do or to refrain from doing; second, they should be perfectly free to do or to refrain from doing as required; and thirdly, that they should distinctly understand what will be the consequences of their failing of what is thus required of them. In the case of our first parents, all these conditions were complied with. They were placed under a single and most intelligible prohibition, respect ing which there could be no possibility of mistake or uncer tainty on their part; there was no power constraining them to do what they were thus positively forbidden to do; arid they had clearly before them the consequences to which they exposed themselves by a transgression of the divine prohibi tion under which they were placed in that terrible threatening of death, which was announced by God as the certain and immediate penalty of disobedience. Whether they understood all the consequences which such conduct would involve may be doubted. It may be doubted even whether they fully comprehended any of them. But this at least they knew, that all that then constituted life to them in the fullest and highest sense of that term would be forfeited by disobedience, and that all that was terrible in death not the less terrible because practically as yet unknown would thereby be incurred.
(ii.) To some it has appeared as if there was something in this arrangement unworthy of the dignity of the parties involved in it, or unbecoming the wisdom and beneficence of Him to whom it is ascribed; and hence doubts have been cast on the historical integrity of this part of the Mosaic narrative.
Why, it has been asked, make the fate of men depend on anything so trivial as the eating, or abstaining from eating, of the fruit of a particular tree? Would it not have been more becoming, more wise, more satisfactory, better in every way, if there was to be a probation at all, to have made it turn on obedience to some great moral principle, or the carrying out of some system of moral acting, such as was worthy of a being of intelligence and moral power like man, a being so highly endowed in these respects that he is said to have been made in the image and likeness of God? An objection of this sort it will not do to attempt to foreclose by the brief and objurgatory demand, " Nay, but, man, who art thou that repliest against God? " for those who advance such objections are precisely those who are least disposed to admit that it is God who has spoken here. We must therefore take up the objection on its merits, and obviate it by showing that the positions on which it rests are untenable. In the outset I have to observe that the objection is not the same with all by whom it is advanced. To refute it satisfactorily, therefore, it will be necessary to take it up Tinder different aspects, these being determined by the feature of the arrangement which has appeared to different parties the offensive one.
1. And, first, there are some who seem to stumble at the littleness of the trial to which man was thus exposed, and on which such mighty results were made to depend. Had some great thing been required of our first parents as the test of their obedience, these objectors would have been better pleased; but to make all depend on so small a matter as the eating of one kind of fruit rather than another, is to them offensive, and in their judgment unreasonable and absurd.
Now, let us understand those who urge the objection under this aspect. What is it exactly in the littleness of this test by which they are offended? Do they object to the making of great results flow from apparently little and trivial causes?
If so, they must be prepared to object to one of the most manifest of those laws under which this world is administered; for nothing can be more obvious and certain than that the mightiest and most permanent effects are constantly resulting from the most apparently trivial and transient causes. Or do they object to so feeble a test of man’s obedience being imposed? If this be their meaning, it is obvious to reply that so much the more was the arrangement favourable to man, and therefore beneficent and gracious. The more insig nificant the self-denial required in order to obedience, the easier the obedience and the more probable the success of the probationer. In appointing so easy a test, God dealt with man as one who was in many respects but a grown child; one who had no experience, however great his faculties; and one on whom, therefore, it was only some simple test like this that could have been laid so as to gain its end. Never, we may say, \vas a moral experiment conducted under circum stances more favourable to the subject of it. It was an experiment, if we may so speak, as nearly in vacuo as the necessary conditions of it would admit. If man could not abide a test so simple and so easy as this, we may safely rest assured that under one more difficult and severe his failure would have been only more prompt and perspicuous.
2. As others advance this objection, it assumes the shape of a protest against the dishonour which it is alleged is done to God by the representation of Him as a being who would make a condition of spiritual advantage dependent on an external act. But those who urge this objection seem to have forgotten altogether the real circumstances of the case. By an external act they obviously mean the physical process of taking and eating the forbidden fruit. Is there any one, however, who for a moment dreams of putting that forward as the essential and qualifying element in the test to which man was subjected in the garden of Eden? A mere physical act as such has no moral character at all; and though it may be the index of a man’s moral state or tendencies, it is not, nor ever can be, an adequate test of them. The test to which Adam and Eve were subjected was not so much whether they would eat or not eat this particular fruit, but whether they would respect and obey or neglect and transgress God’s prohibition. In itself the fruit of the forbidden tree may or may not have been noxious. This is of no importance as respects the probatory use to which it was put by God; it is the fact that as soon as God forbade our first parents to eat of it, their doing so became sin, which made it a fitting criterion of man s spiritual destinies. It was not, therefore, on any mere external act that man’s fate depended; it was on such an act as con nected with, flowing from, and giving evidence of a particular state of mind. The hinge in Adam’s testing turned really not so much on his eating or abstaining from this fruit or that, but on his obeying or transgressing God’s commandment. Was such a test unfair to man? Was it unworthy of God?
3. Another form in which the objection to the Mosaic account of the trial of our first parents is presented is that in which stress is laid on the purely positive and apparently arbitrary character of the test by which their obedience was to be tried. Why, it has been asked, should a duty which became such only because it was enjoined have been prescribed, instead of one of those duties which flow out of man’s position and relations as an intelligent and moral being? Now, to this it may be replied, on the one hand, that the appointment of a positive rather than a moral test was the only arrange ment possible in the case; and, on the other hand, that supposing another arrangement possible, this was the more favourable and advantageous to man. This was the only arrangement possible; for how is the virtue of a sinless being to be tested but by means of some positive precept? In such a being moral truth is so perfectly a part of the inner life, that it is only when a positive duty is enjoined that the mind comes to a consciousness of objective law and extrinsic govern ment so as to render obedience. Morality, in short, is for such a life, and not a law; it is part and parcel of themselves, and not something laid upon them by authority; and con tinuance in it, therefore, can no more afford a test of their obedience to God as a governor than the regular performance of the animal functions would be a test of a man’s loyalty or good citizenship. The necessity of the case, then, rendered the appointment of a positive test indispensable, if there was to be any real test at all. But even supposing a moral test could have been proposed, was it not much more in Adam’s favour that his obedience should have been tested by a positive enactment? What God required of him was thus clearly and unmistakably brought before him. There was no room left for doubt as to what was incumbent on him, and what he consequently had to do or to refrain from doing. One plain, positive law, simple in its enunciation, definite in its require ments, and easy of obedience, was all that was laid upon him as the test of his loyalty to his Sovereign and Lord. He had but to hear to understand: he had but to obey to live. The very simplicity of the constitution under which he was placed was an evidence of the divine benevolence towards him. While the test was fully sufficient for the end it was designed to answer, it afforded man, so to speak, the best possible chance of success in the probation under which he was placed.
4. Some profound thinkers have started the doubt whether it be possible for a limited intelligence, left to the freedom of its own will, to avoid transgressing the boundaries of duty, and so falling into sin. Without entering at present into so difficult a speculation, we may admit that a limited intelli gence is, from the very fact of its limitation, very likely to be exposed to a strong inducement from mere curiosity, not to speak of other motives, to pass beyond the limits within which it may be confined. What lies on the other side of this barrier which I am forbidden to pass? Why am I for bidden to pass it? What will be the result to me if I do pass it? These and such like questionings, working in the mind, are very likely to result in a daring attempt to remove the barrier, or to overleap it, and thereby, if it be a moral barrier, to plunge into sin. Obviously, therefore, the kindest and best arrangement for man in his state of primeval pro bation was one which should reduce the action of such provocative curiosity to the lowest possible form, which should hem him in by no vague, mystic, uncertain prohibi tion, but by one perfectly single and intelligible, and which should leave him in no doubt as to the certain misery into which he would bring himself if he suffered any motive to carry him beyond the limits which that prohibition prescribed.
Such an arrangement the wisdom and the goodness of God instituted for our first parents in their probationary state; their continuance in happiness was made to depend on their submission to one simple and most intelligible restriction; they had but to refrain from the fruit of one tree, while of all the others they might freely eat; and they knew beforehand what the consequences would be of their violating this restriction. Life and death were thus set before them, which they would choose; and whilst everything around them and belonging to them furnished them with induce ments to pursue the course by which they would secure the former, the motives that might work in them towards what would entail on them the latter were reduced to the lowest possible degree. Who shall say that in such an arrangement we have not an illustration at once of the beneficence and the wisdom of God?
How long our first parents continued in the state in which they were created by respecting the divine prohibition, we are not informed, and it is idle to conjecture. We may presume, however, that it was long enough to enable them fully to prove the fitness for them of the place which God had prepared for their habitation, and to make some advances in that process of culture and development of which it was adapted to be the sphere. We have now to turn to the contemplation of the circumstances which led to their fall from their original felicity and their banishment from that garden of delights which God had given them to enjoy.