James, Sexagesima Sunday.)
GENESIS iii. 8. And they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in
the garden in the cool of the day.
These words would startle us, if we heard them for the first time.
I do not know but that they may startle us now, often as we have
heard them, if we think seriously over them. That God should appear
to mortal man, and speak with mortal man. It is most wonderful. It
is utterly unlike anything that we have ever seen, or that any
person on earth has seen, for many hundred years. It is a miracle,
in every sense of the word.
When one compares man as he was then, weak and ignorant, and yet
seemingly so favoured by God, so near to God, with man as he is now,
strong and cunning, spreading over the earth and replenishing it;
subduing it with railroads and steamships, with agriculture and
science, and all strange and crafty inventions, and all the while
never visited by any Divine or heavenly appearance, but seemingly
left utterly to himself by God, to go his own way and do his own
will upon the earth, one asks with wonder, Can we be Adam's
children? Can the God who appeared to Adam, be our God likewise, or
has God's plan and rule for teaching man changed utterly?
No.
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