HOW EVE LOST HOLINESS.

It has often been a wonder to speculative minds, to know how Eve fell from primitive holiness. Many have speculated as to the mental and moral steps downwards, the rapidity and order in which those steps were taken. True, the great question for us is not so much how sin entered the heart, as how to get it out; and yet the Scriptures have given us ample light on the former. If we turn to Gen. hi. 6, we find a condensed statement of the various consecutive steps in the downfall of our race. And if we have the description of the fall of one pure and holy person, it will furnish a key to interpret the fall of other souls from purity.

1. "The woman saw the tree." When the eloquent serpent called her attention to the tree, she stopped and looked upon it. The five senses form the gateways to the soul. Of all the senses, the eye is the one through which most objects pass into the mind. It is evermore the aim of Satan to blockade this eye with foolish, vain, or seductive objects. The eye is the camera-obscura through which external things are photographed on the mind. Fixing the gaze on wrong things has been the initial step to the falling of thousands. God makes a special promise to them that turn away their eyes from beholding evil.

2. " It was good for food." Very likely that Satan attacked her when she was hungry, as he did our Savior, and it would not require long looking at the luscious fruit before the appetite would be kindled to a flame. So far as the appetite per se was involved, it was natural, God- given, and innocent, and useful, but it was being rapidly attached to an unlawful object, and, owing to the principle of curiosity, it may have been more eager than ordinary.

The observing eye was filled with the spectacle, it was readily stamped upon the mind; then the mind began to act on the nervous system, and whet to keeness the delicate nerves of the stomach. Then there came in a third step.

3. "It was pleasant to the eyes." The un lawful object had now become fascinating and pleasing to the gazer. Here is where pollution began to form itself. The Holy Ghost tells us that "when lust or desire has conceived, it bringeth forth sin." When the forbidden object became pleasant to her eyes, and the mental revolution of it became pleasing to her mind, then impurity crept into the heart, thereby polluting the inner fountain of love and obedience; and this corrupting of the fountain of love would soon weaken the firm and virtuous choices of the will. There is no sin in any natural affection or appetite, and there is no sin in having a wrong object presented to the mind, but at the point where the wrong object be comes pleasing to the soul, is the entrance of evil, then the consent or yielding of the will brings guilt. So the natural history of sin is first impurity, and afterwards guilt. But between these two steps there generally lies an intermediate step, viz.:

4. The perversion of reason, "a tree to be desired to make one wise." First, the appeal came to the appetite of hunger, then to the fancy or imagination, then to the more serious and solid reasoning power, as a means of wider knowledge, broader scientific culture, etc. Man is a reasoning being, and the will does not act without having some real or imaginary form of reason for so acting. All sinners fancy they have some reason for doing as they do. Now sin in every form and degree is always and utterly unreasonable, and it would be next to an impossibility to get a virtuous will to consent to sin, without first so poisoning or perverting the reason, as to make it seem that the sinful act had some palliating excuse or reason for it. An overweening curiosity for various and unprofitable sorts of knowledge in every generation leads thousands into sin. And so blinded and foolish are mankind and multitudes in the Church, it is deemed that a love for science or mere physical knowledge is a sufficient excuse for certain sins.

Satan must needs get a spell on Eve's reason before he could dethrone her sanctified will, so he presented the physical knowledge of nature as more charming than the inward spiritual knowledge of the Creator. This device blinded and bewitched her reason — "desirable to make one wise" — there was the subtle false reasoning.

This old trick of Satan is being to-day plied with success on many Christians. This universal cry for scientific culture, sounding from pulpit and press, is a device of Satan to draw the attention of the Church away from the plain old- fashioned heart knowledge of holiness and God. On every side we hear the glorification of physical knowledge a thousand-fold more than of pure, humble piety. Many have fallen from holiness, by leaving the spiritual knowledge of God, and running after the transient knowledge of His works. God is insulted and grieved every day by having His professed children run away from Him for the sake of the toys of nature. It is the old trick of biting the apple for the sake of having a scientific knowledge of it.

When the reason is perverted by a semblance of wisdom, then it soon forms a plausibility for sin, and the next step is,

5. The revolt of the will. "She took of the fruit and did eat." It was the act of the will that gave birth to sin. Lust, when it hath conceived in the heart, very soon bringeth forth sin in the act of the will, and sin when finished in overt transgression brings guilt and spiritual deadness to the soul. This is the way Eve lost entire holiness, and those who lose entire sanctification to-day, lose it just about in the same mode that Eve did.

6. The next step after committing sin, is the communicating of it to others. "She gave to her husband and he did eat." If she had known the plan of salvation, as we now do, she might have, immediately after the act of sin, confessed it in deep penitence to God, and have been for given and saved. Even then she would have lost the Edenic state, and would have been a sinner saved by grace. Instead of this she began to scatter death.

Her act of sin soon sprouted into a duplicate crop of thorns. So it is to-day. If the child of God is overtaken in a fault, or commits one act of sin, and he does not fly immediately to Jesus with full confession, for pardon and cleansing, he will find, like Eve, that the one act of wrong is spreading into a terrible harvest. Now back of this verse, and these steps of falling, which have been specified, it seems to me that a little secret of Eve's fall is given us in verse 3, where she slightly changes and tones down the exact word of the Lord. God said in chapter ii. 17, that if she ate of the forbidden tree, "Thou shalt surely die." But when Eve came to repeat, these words to Satan she said, we shall not eat "lest we die."

There is some difference between "shall surely die," and "lest we die." This weakening of God's word may have been the open joint in her spiritual armor, into which Satan thrust his fiery dart. How many have failen from holiness be cause they took the liberty to misquote the Lord and tone down the word of God. Many a preacher has lost holiness, he hardly knew how, when the secret was he took the liberty of changing and toning down the exact Bible truth on holiness in his sermons and testimony. God means all He says, and for us to modify or change His word for any nice phrases of our own is a presumption that we are wiser than God, or else we secretly do not believe that God means what He says.

When we say "lest" where God says "surely," we are like Eve, on the verge of falling. There is not such a great mystery in the fall of Eve; it is being too often repeated almost in the exact manner by those who are falling away from the glory and power of entire holiness.

If Eve's faith had unwaveringly held to the exact words of her Lord in all their full meaning, she would never have fallen.

Let us watch, and pray, and trust, and con fess, that we fall not from holiness after the same example of unbelief.