Ecclesiastes 7:29

Ecclesiastes 7:29

We may well look back on the garden of Eden as we would on our own childhood. Adam's state in Eden seems to have been like the state of children now: in being simple, inartificial, inexperienced in evil, unreasoning, uncalculating, ignorant of the future, or, as men now speak, unintellectual.

I. Adam and Eve were placed in a garden to cultivate it. How much is implied even in this! If there was a mode of life free from tumult, anxiety, excitement, and fever of mind, it was the care of a garden. If the life of Christ and His servants be any guide to us, certainly it would appear as if the simplicity and the repose of life with which human nature began is an indication of its perfection. And again, does not our infancy teach us the same lesson, which is especially a season when the soul is left to itself, withdrawn from its fellows as effectually as if it were the only human being on earth, like Adam in his enclosed garden, fenced off from the world and visited by angels?

II. Fenced off from the world! Nay, fenced off even from itself, for so it is, and most strange too, that our infant and childish state is hidden from ourselves. We know not what it was, what our thoughts in it were, and what our probation, more than we know Adam's.

III. Another resemblance between the state of Adam in paradise and the state of children is this: that children are saved not by their purpose and habits of obedience, not by faith and works, but by the influence of baptismal grace. And into Adam God "breathed the breath of life, and man became a living soul." What man fallen gains by dint of exercise, working up towards it by religious acts that Adam had already acted from.He had that light within him which he might make brighter by obedience, but which he had not to create. This gift, which sanctified Adam and saves children, becomes the ruling principle of Christians generally when they advance to perfection. According as habits of holiness are matured, principle, reason, and self-discipline are unnecessary; a moral instinct takes their place in the breast, or rather, to speak more reverently, the Spirit is sovereign there.

IV. What is intellect itself, as exercised in the world, but a fruit of the Fall, not found in paradise or in heaven more than in little children, and at the utmost but tolerated in the Church, and only not incompatible with regenerate mind? Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Adam had the gift of reason, but so had he passions; but he did not walkby reason, nor was he led by his passions. He, or at least Eve, was tempted to follow passion and reason instead of her Maker; and she fell. Reason has been as guilty as passion. God made man upright, and grace was his strength; but he has found out many inventions, and his strength is reason.

J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. v., p. 99.

References: Ecclesiastes 7:29. Homiletic Magazine, vol. ii., p. 36; Clergyman's Magazine, vol. iv., p. 84; J. Bennet, The Wisdom of the King, p. 358. 7 C. Bridges, An Exposition of Ecclesiastes, p. 132; J. H. Cooke, The Preacher's Pilgrimage,p. 101.