e world around,
and time through, has been and is _most sensitive to suggestion of evil_
there is with this first man the utter absence of any thought of evil.[1]
In the light of after history there could be no subtler, stronger
statement than this of his holiness, his purity, at this stage.

And in his _capacity for holiness_, in that intensest longing for purity,
and loathing of all else, that comes as the Spirit of God is allowed
sway, is revealed again the capacity for God-likeness. It is the prophetic
dawn within of that coming Eden when again we shall _see His face_, and
have the original likeness fully restored.

God is _wise_, all-wise. Among the finest passages of the' Christian's
classic are those that represent God as personified wisdom. And here
wisdom includes all knowledge and justice. That the Spirit of God breathed
into man His own mental life is stated most keenly by the man who
proverbially embodied in himself this quality of wisdom. "The spirit of
man is the lamp of the Lord searching out the innermost parts." The
allusion is clearly to intellectual powers. There is in man the same
quality of mental keenness that searches into things as is in God. It is
often dulled, gripped by a sort of stupor, so overlaid you would hardly
guess it was there. But, too, as we all know, it often shines out with a
startling brilliance. It is less in degree than with God, but it is the
same thing, a bit of God in man. This explains man's marvellous
achievements in literature, in invention, in science, and in organization.

Two light master-strokes of the etching point in the Eden picture reveal
the whole mental equipment of the man. The only sayings of Adam's
preserved for us are when God brought to him the woman. She is the
occasion for sayings that reveal the mental powers of this first man.
Fittingly it is so. Woman, when true to herself, has ever been the
occasion for bringing out the best in man. "And the man said, _this time_
it is bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh; _this_ shall be called
woman, because out of man was this one taken. Therefore doth a man leave
his father and his mother and cleave unto his wife, and they become one
flesh." ... "And the man called his wife's name Eve; because she was the
mother of all living." Here is revealed at a glance the keen mental powers
at work. Here is the simplicity of statement that marks the speech of
strong men. The whole forest is in a single acorn. The whole of