GENESIS HI. 15 99
and crushed ; he should not have been placing his foot delicately upon his frustrate foe, but pressing it down hard as if his very life depended upon the result.^
0 bird that fights the heavens, and is blown beyond the
shore, Would you leave your flight and danger for a cage, to fight
no more ? No more the cold of winter, or the hunger of the snow, Nor the winds that blow you backward from the path you
wish to go ? Would you leave your world of passion for a home that knows
no riot? Would I change my vagrant longings for a heart more full
of quiet ? No ! — for all its dangers, there is joy in danger too : On, bird, and fight your tempests, and this nomad heart with
you.*
IL
The History of the Confuct.
It is a conflict which every man must enter. If any man refuses to engage in the struggle, he declares himself to be no man. The gospel that is in the words, " It shall bruise thy head," does not take away from any man the necessity of entering into this affray and facing this foe. The gospel gives the assurance of victory ; it does not prevent the strife. It is impossible, therefore, to write the history of the conflict fully. All that can be done is, under the guidance of the Old Testament, to select outstanding events in it.
1. Eve seemed to think that it was to be a short struggle. When her first-bom came she said, " I have gotten a man from the Lord." But Cain grew up to manhood, and Abel his brother ; " and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him." The hoped-for victor is man's first murderer.
2. Lamech thought he had found the Deliverer. " This same
* 6. Milligan. • Dora Sigereon Shorter.
lOo THE CONFLICT OF THE AGES
shall comfort us concerning our work and toil of our hands, because of the ground which the Lord hath cursed." And he called his son's name Noah. Now in the conflict Satan has so steadily won that it is needful to sweep man from off the face of the earth, and make, as it were, a new start. But Noah cannot save his brethren. He barely escapes with his own family. And the flood is only past when even Noah himself has suffered from the bite of the Serpent.
3. Men have got a new start, however. Will they cope with Satan now ? Not so. Steadily again Satan wins. And the earth grows so corrupt that God chooses one man and takes him out of the surrounding abomination, to keep him apart and train him and his family for Himself and His great purpose. That man is Abraham. Not that God now leaves the rest of the human race to the unresisted will of Satan. In no place, and at no time, has God left Himself without witness. Or, as another apostle more personally puts it, He kept coming amongst men in the Person of the Word, and whenever any one was found willing to follow the Light, power was given to him to become a child of God. This choice of Abraham and his family is a new departure, that through him and his seed all the families of the earth may be blessed. Is this new departure successful ? Does the family of Abraham now gain the victory over Satan, and gain it always ? No ; not even for themselves ; still less for the rest of mankind. As the same evangelist has it, "He came unto his own and his own received him not." But God's purpose is not in vain, nor even thwarted for a moment. Man will be redeemed, and the redemp- tion is delayed only that it may be to love and new obedience, the will to choose being still left frea
Y 4. And now we can trace the gradual closing of the promise on a single Person. " A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you." " Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." " The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple." " Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Meanwhile, the world is suffering more and more from the low cunning and bite of the serpent. Eead that terrible yet true description of the morals of men which St. Paul gives us
GENESIS III. 15 loi
in his Epistle to the Komans. Bead also the scathing exposure in the Gospels of the irreligiousness of the religion of Israel, the hypocrisy and greed of the leaders and rulers of the people. Satan seems to have gained the victory along the whole line.
^ It is the strength of the base element that is so dreadful in the serpent; it is the very omnipotence of the earth. . . . Watch it, when it moves slowly, with calm will and equal way — no contraction, no extension ; one soundless, causeless march of sequent rings, and spectral procession of spotted dust. Startle it ; — the winding stream will become a twisted arrow, the wave ojf poisoned life will lash through the grass like a cast lance. It scarcely breathes with its one lung ; it is passive to the sun and shade, and is cold or hot like a stone ; yet it can outclimb the monkey, outswim the fish, outleap the zebra, outwrestle the athlete, and crush the tiger. It is a divine hieroglyph of the demoniac power of the earth — of the entire earthly nature. As the bird is the clothed power of the air, so this is the clothed power of the dust ; as the bird the symbol of the spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death.^