HOW EVE LOST HOLINESS
The wisdom of the fathers
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 Genesis, 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.
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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 keenness the delicate nerves of the stomach. Then there came in a third step.
3. "It was pleasant to the eyes." The unlawful 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 brings 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... ?to be continued??(by G.D. Watson)