THE FIRST WOMAN
by Dr. Thomas De Witt Talmage
"And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof and did eat and gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat." Genesis 3:6
It is the first Saturday afternoon in the world's existence. Ever since sunrise Adam has been watching the brilliant pageantry of wings and scales and clouds, and in his first lessons in zoology and ornithology and ichthyology he has noticed that the robins fly the air in twos, and that the fish swim the water in twos, and that the lions walk the fields in twos, and in the warm redolence of that Saturday afternoon he falls off into slumber; and as if by allegory to teach all ages that the greatest of earthly blessings is sound sleep, this paradisaical somnolence ends with the discovery on the part of Adam of a corresponding intelligence just landed on the new planet. Of the mother of all the living I speak, Eve, the first, the fairest, and the best.
I make me a garden. I inlay the paths with mountain moss, and I border them with pearls from Ceylon and diamonds from Golconda. There are woodbine and honeysuckle climbing over the wall, and starred spaniels sprawling themselves on the grass. And yet the place is a desert filled with darkness and death as compared with the residence of the woman of the text, the subject of my story. Never since have such skies looked down through such leaves into such waters! Never has river wave had such curve and sheen and bank as adorned the Pison, the Havilah, the Gihon, and the Hiddekel, even the pebbles being bdellium and onyx stone! What fruits, with no curculio to sting the rind! What flowers, with no slug to gnaw the root! What atmosphere, with no frost to chill and with no heat to consume! Bright colors tangled in the grass. Perfume in the air. Music in the sky. Great scene of gladness and love and joy. Right there under a bower of leaf and vine and shrub occurred the first marriage. Adam took the hand of this immaculate daughter of God and performed the ceremony when he said:
"Bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh."
(1.) She examined the fruit. She said: "I do not think there can be any harm in my just breaking the rind of it." She put the fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she allowed Adam also to taste the fruit, the door of the world opened, and then Sin entered. Let the heavens gather blackness, and the wind sigh on the bosom of the hills and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep, hell-rending howl - "The world is lost!"
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"And when the woman saw that
the tree was good for food, and
that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make
one wise, she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave
also unto her husband with her;
and he did eat. Genesis 3:6 |
A forbidden tree stood in the midst of that exquisite park. Eve sauntering out one day alone, looks up at the tree and sees the beautiful fruit, and wonders if it is sweet, and wonders if it is sour, and standing there, says: "I think I will just put my hand upon the fruit; it will do no damage to the tree; I will not take the fruit to eat, but I will just take it down to examine it."
Beasts that before were harmless and full of play put forth claw and sting and tooth and tusk. Birds whet their beak for prey. Clouds troop in the sky. Sharp thorns shoot up through the soft grass. Blastings on the leaves. All the chords of that great harmony are snapped. Upon the brightest home this world ever saw, our first parents turned their back and led forth on a path of sorrow the brokenhearted myriads of a ruined race.
Do you not see, in the first place, the danger of a poorly regulated inquisitiveness? She wanted to know how the fruit tasted. She found out, but six thousand years have deplored that unhealthful curiosity.(2.) Healthful curiosity has done a great deal for letters, for art, for science, and for religion. It has gone down into the depths of the earth with the geologist, and seen the first chapter of Genesis written in the book of nature illustrated with engraving on rock, and it stood with the antiquarian while he blew the trumpet of resurrection over buried Herculaneum and Pompeii, until from their sepulcher there came up shaft and terrace and amphitheater. Healthful curiosity has enlarged the telescopic vision of the astronomer until worlds hidden in the distant heavens have trooped forth and have joined the choir praising the Lord. Planet weighed against planet and wildest comet lassooed with resplendent law. I say nothing against healthful curiosity. May it have other Leyden jars and other electric batteries and other voltaic piles and other magnifying-glasses with which to storm the barred castles of the natural world, until it shall surrender its last secret. We thank God for the geological curiosity of Professor Hitchcock, and the chemical curiosity of Liebig, and the zoological curiosity of Cuvier, and the inventive curiosity of Edison; but we must admit that unhealthful and irregular inquisitiveness has rushed thousands and tens of thousands into ruin.
Eve just tasted the fruit. She was curious to find out how it tasted, and that curiosity blasted her and blasted all nations. So there are clergymen in this city, inspired by unhealthful inquisitiveness, who have tried to look through the key-hole of God's mysteries - mysteries that were barred and bolted from all human inspection, and they have wrenched their whole moral nature out of joint by trying to pluck fruit from branches beyond their reach, or have come out on limbs of the tree from which they have tumbled into ruin without remedy. A thousand trees of religious knowledge from which we may eat and get advantage; but from certain trees of mystery how many have plucked their ruin! Election, free agency, trinity, resurrection - in the discussion of these subjects hundreds and thousands of people ruin the soul. There are men who actually have been kept out of the kingdom of heaven because they could not understand who Melchisedec was not!
Oh, how many have been destroyed by an unhealthful inquisitiveness! It is seen in all directions. There are those who stand with the eye-stare and mouth-gape of curiosity. They are the first to hear a falsehood, build it another story high and add two wings to it. About other people's apparel, about other people's business, about other people's financial condition, about other people's affairs, they are over-anxious. Every nice piece of gossip stops at their door, and they fatten and luxuriate in the endless round of the great world of tittle-tattle. Whoever hath an innuendo, whoever hath a scandal, whoever hath a valuable secret, let him come and sacrifice it to this goddess of Splutter. Thousands of Adams and Eves do nothing but eat fruit that does not belong to them. Men quite well known as mathematicians failing in this computation of moral algebra: good sense plus good breeding, minus curiosity, equals minding your own affairs!
Then, how many young men through curiosity go through the whole realm of French novels, to see whether they are really as bad as moralists have pronounced them! They come near the verge of the precipice just to look off. They want to see how far it really is down, but they lose their balance while they look, and fall into irremediable ruin; or, catching themselves, clamber up, bleeding and ghastly, on the rock, gibbering with curses or groaning ineffectual prayer. By all means encourage healthful inquisitiveness, but by all means discourage ill-regulated curiosity.
This subject also impresses me with the fact that fruits that are sweet to the taste may afterward produce great agony. Forbidden fruit for Eve was so pleasant she invited her husband also to take of it; but her banishment from Paradise and six thousand years (2.) of sorrow and wretchedness and war and woe paid for that luxury. Sin may be very sweet at the start, and it may induce great wretchedness afterward. The cup of sin is sparkling at the top, but there is death at the bottom. Intoxication has great exhilaration for a while, and it fillips the blood, and it makes a man see five stars where others can see only one star, and it makes the poor man think himself rich, and turns cheeks which are white red as roses; but what about the dreams that come after, when he seems falling from great heights, or is prostrated by other fancied disasters, and the perspiration stands on the forehead - the night dew of everlasting darkness - and he is ground under the horrible hoof of nightmares shrieking with lips that crackle with all-consuming torture? "Rejoice, O young man, in thy youth, and let thy heart cheer thee in the days of thy youth; but know thou that for all these things God will bring thee into judgment!" Sweet at the start, horrible at the last. Go into that hall of revelry, where ungodly mirth staggers and blasphemes. Listen to the senseless gabble, see the last trace of intelligence dashed out from faces made in God's own image. "Aha! aha!" says the roistering inebriate; "this is joy for you; fill high your cups, my boys. I drink to my wife's misery and my children's rags and my God's defiance." And he knows not that a fiend stirs the goblet in his hand and that adders uncoil from the dregs and thrust their forked tongues hissing through the froth on the rim. Sin rapturous at the start, awful at the last. (3.)
That one Edenic transgression did not seem to be much, but it struck a blow which to this day makes the earth stagger. To find out the consequences of that one sin, you would have to compel the world to throw open all its prison doors and display the crime, and throw open all its hospitals and display the disease, and throw open all the insane asylums and show the wretchedness, and open all the sepulchres and show the dead, and open all the doors of the lost world and show the damned. That one Edenic transgression stretched chords of misery across the heart of the world and struck them with dolorous wailing, and it has seated the plagues upon the air and the shipwrecks upon the tempest, and fastened, like a leech, famine to the heart of the sick and dying nations. Beautiful at the start, horrible at the last. Oh, how many have experienced it!
Are there among us those who are votaries of pleasure? Let me warn you, my brother. Your pleasure boat is far from shore, and your summer day is ending roughly, for the winds and the waves are loud-voiced, and the overcoming clouds are all awrithe and agleam with terror. You are past the "Narrows," and almost outside the "Hook," and if the Atlantic take you, frail mortal, you shall never get to shore again. Put back! row swiftly, swifter, swifter! Jesus from the shore casts a rope. Clasp it quickly, now or never. Are there not some of you who are freighting all your loves and joys and hopes upon a vessel which shall never reach the port of heaven? You near the breakers. One heave upon the rocks. What an awful crash was that! Another lunge may crush you beneath the spars or grind your bones to powder amid the torn timbers. Overboard for your life, overboard! Trust not that loose plank nor attempt the wave, but quickly clasp the feet of Jesus walking on the watery pavement, shouting until he hear you: "Lord, save me, or I perish." Sin beautiful at the start - oh, how sad, how distressful at the last! The ground over which it leads you is hollow. The fruit it offers to your taste is poison. The promise it makes to you is a lie. Over that ungodly banquet the keen sword of God's judgment hangs, and there are ominous hand writings on the walls.
Observe also in this subject how repelling sin is when appended to great attractiveness. Since Eve's death there has been no such perfection of womanhood. You could not suggest another attractiveness to the body or suggest any added refinement to the manner. You could add no gracefulness to the gait, no lustre to the eye, no sweetness to the voice. A perfect God made her a perfect woman, to be the companion of a perfect man in a perfect home, and her entire nature vibrated in accord with the beauty and song of Paradise. But she rebelled against God's government, and with the same hand with which she plucked the fruit she launched upon the world the crimes, the wars, the tumults that have set the universe a-wailing. A terrible offset to all her attractiveness. We are not surprised when we find men and women naturally vulgar going into transgression. We expect that people who live in the ditch shall have the manners of the ditch; but how shocking when we find sin appended to superior education and to the refinements of social life! The accomplishments of Mary Queen of Scots make her patronage of Darnley, the profligate, the more appalling. The genius of Catherine II of Russia only sets forth in more powerful contrast her unappeasable (4.) ambition. The translations from the Greek and the Latin by Elizabeth, and her wonderful qualifications for a queen, make the more disgusting her capriciousness of affection and her hotness of temper. The greatness of Byron's mind makes the more alarming Byron's sensuality. Let no one think that refinement of manner or exquisiteness of taste or superiority of education can in any wise apologize for ill-temper, for an oppressive spirit, for unkindness, for any kind of sin. Disobedience Godward and transgression manward can have no excuse. Accomplishment heaven-high is no apology for vice hell-deep.
My subject also impresses me with the regal influence of woman. When I see Eve with this powerful influence over Adam and over the generations that have followed, it suggests to me that great power all women have for good or for evil. I have no sympathy, nor have you, with the hollow flatteries showered upon woman from the platform and the stage. They mean nothing; they are accepted as nothing. Woman's nobility consists in the exercise of a Christian influence; and when I see this powerful influence of Eve upon her husband and upon the whole human race, I make up my mind that the frail arm of woman can strike a blow which will resound through all eternity down among the dungeons or up among the thrones. I am not now speaking of representative women - of Eve, who ruined the race by one fruit-picking; of Jael, who drove a spike through the head of Sisera, the warrior; of Esther, who overcame royalty; of Abigail, who stopped a host by her own beautiful prowess; of Mary, who nursed the world's Savior; of Grandmother Lois, immortalized in her grandson Timothy; of Charlotte Corday, who drove the dagger through the heart of the assassin of her lover; or of Marie Antoinette, who by one look from the balcony of her castle quieted a mob, her own scaffold the throne of forgiveness and womanly courage. I speak not of these extraordinary persons, but of those who, unambitious for political power, as wives and mothers and sisters and daughters, attend to the thousand sweet offices of home.
When at last we come to calculate the forces that decided the destiny of nations, it will be found that the mightiest and grandest influence came from home, where the wife cheered up despondency and fatigue and sorrow by her own sympathy, and the mother trained her child for heaven, starting the little feet on the path to the Celestial City; and the sisters by their gentleness refined the manners of the brother; and the daughters were diligent in their kindness to the aged, throwing wreaths of blessing on the road that leads father and mother down the steep of years. God bless our homes!
Yes, even I have an opinion.
(1.) Hey, where's that *##** bloomin' snake? Ah, I think he in the verse previous to the one noted above. I refuse to let Eve be given the credit for the entire fall!
3:1 - Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?
2 And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:
3 But
of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
4 And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:
5 For
God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be
opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Genesis 3:1-5
(2.) I don't know where Dr. Talmage came up with the figure of 6 thousand years, but I've got news for him, we've been sinning alot longer than six thousand years.... Oh, well, I guess he knows that now!
(3.) Finally, the snake shows up in this sermon. But, not until alcohol gets mentioned, eh?
(4.) Addiction...
