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Gen 2:18-25

When there dawns upon the mind the true spiritual character of these early chapters of the book of Genesis, one feels less and less inclined to call attention to the difficulties standing in the way of one who attempts to invent theories of a merely literal interpretation. God's purpose, in the very structure of these early records, is so apparent that the mere calling of attention to their literal contradictions seems almost sacrilegious; and for that reason we have not dwelt at all with that phase of the subject but have held the mind on the high plane of their spiritual meaning. It is not a destructive, but a constructive work the church has been called to do. We need therefore, to come directly to the Lord's own opening of the internal sense of the story of Adam's sleep and the creation of Eve.

The Adamic Church gradually rose to the very fullest enjoyment of all the love and intelligence that belong to the highest state of regeneration. The deepest heavenly love filled the heart of the church. That love was Eden. The highest heavenly intelligence illuminated the mind of the church. That intelligence was the beautiful garden planted eastward in Eden. The deep perceptive faculty this Most Ancient Church was endowed with, enabled it to receive instruction from the Lord in an internal way. The voice of the Lord was heard in the garden, that is, the guidance of the church was not effected by following an outward rule of life, but by an inward listening to the Lord's voice as it uttered its message in their souls.

It was a beautiful life, too beautiful, indeed, for us, to whom the Lord must come in such a different way, to form any adequate idea of it. The man - the Adam, dwelt alone in the garden. How significant this is when once we learn what is meant in the Bible by living alone!

Think. Those who look to the Heavenly Father and trust in all things to His guidance, are, in the Bible, said to be alone. External things of mere doctrinal knowledge - things that make one conscious of one's individuality - are not in the affections and thoughts of such highly developed people. They live alone with the Lord. Balaam , in speaking of the future of Israel as the Lord's people said: "Lo the people shall dwell alone." Moses, on one occasion, in speaking of Israel said: "Israel shall dwell in safety alone." A prophet of the olden time, exhorted Israel, saying: "Arise, get you up to the wealthy nation, that dwelleth without care, saith the Lord, which have neither gates nor bars, which dwell alone." Of course, we all see that by dwelling alone was not meant individual solitude. So of Adam. As Adam is the name of the church of the childhood of the race, his being alone means that the celestial church lived alone with the Lord. That it was led and influenced solely by the Divine guidance from within.

We have no means of determining how long this single leadership of the Lord - this dwelling alone with Him - lasted. A very considerable length of time must have elapsed before the Adamic people began to turn to self and thus away from the Lord; but there ultimately came a posterity of the Most Ancient Church that inclined to their proprium or ownhood - that entertained the thought of and desire to possess the consciousness of an individuality apart from the Lord.

This thought - this desire, grew from generation to generation, until finally the ownhood, the personal individuality, had such prominence given to it that the sole leading of the Lord was no longer possible. This state, when it was formed, is what is meant by the words: "And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man should be alone."

This does not mean that in the original creation the Lord had failed to supply all the needs of man and that upon the discovery of man's need for human companionship He set to work to remedy the defect. It means that a state had arisen in the Adamic Church in which the church no longer felt that it was good to live alone with the Lord.

The Lord respects, in all the dispensations of His providence the freedom of man. So when the Adamic Church no longer desired to be led solely by the Lord, He did not interfere with the church's freedom. It would not have been for the good of the church if the Lord had compelled it to live alone with Him.

But while the Lord permitted the Adamic people to descend into this more external state, He did not turn away from them. He followed these most ancient people in their decline and raised up the means of regenerating them on the plane to which they had fallen. Hence we read that the Lord said: "I will make an help meet for him." Here we come to the story of Adam's deep sleep. Don't think of a man going to sleep physically. The sleep described here was a spiritual sleep. St. Paul exhorts spiritual sleepers where he says: "Awake, thou that sleepest, and Christ shall give thee light."

The mind is not simply a thinking faculty; it is a spiritual organism, created in discrete planes of consciousness. This was true of the people called Adam. Now, when the Most Ancient Church ceased to desire to be alone with the Lord, the very highest plane of life in that Adam fell into a state of spiritual sleep. The Lord's love was no longer active on that plane. Deep sleep brooded over it. This was Adam's sleep. Falling into this sleep, the Adamic people would have utterly destroyed all heavenly life in themselves if it had not been for the tender mercy of the Lord. They inclined to their selfhood, and it would have swallowed them up. Think of the Lord's mercy! Adam sleeps; the highest life of the church has ceased; but while Adam sleeps, the Lord takes one of his ribs and closes up the flesh instead, and that rib, He builds into a woman. So runs the allegory. What does it mean? Remember, it is the religious condition of the Most Ancient Church that is treated of in this story of the rib built into a woman - remember that, and the whole narrative becomes clear.

The rib of Adam stands for the ownhood - the individuality, of the earliest people. This ownhood, in itself, was dead - without any spiritual life; but it was capable of being vivified with life from the Lord. Thus taken out of the most ancient man, as the means of arresting his spiritual ruin, and raised into a new condition and animated by another life, it could come to see that what is good and true are to be believed and practiced in daily life, by man as of himself, yet with the acknowledgment that the will, the understanding and the power to do so are from the Lord alone.

When the ownhood is thus vivified, it is no longer a hard bone - no longer a rib. It becomes soft, pliable, fair, yielding and lovable. These qualities are meant by the woman, beautiful and innocent.

This is not, therefore, the story of the origin of woman; but the woman is introduced into the story because, in all the tenderness and beautiful qualities of high and noble womanhood, she represents what was true of the ownhood of the most ancient people after it was taken out of them and raised to newness of life by the Lord. They could love this proprium, and the Lord could still retain His hold on them. It was, of course, a more external state than the one pictured by Adam alone in the garden; but it was not an evil state. In coming into it, this posterity of the Adamic Church, forsook many internal things. This is what is meant by the forsaking of father and mother. But the church could cleave to the wife - to the pure and the good, as it saw them, on a more external plane.

To teach us that while what we have described was a more outward state of the Most Ancient Church, yet not an utterly fallen and evil state, it is said: "And they were both naked and were not ashamed." There was no guilt up to this point. It was only the beginning of the fall that went on until the Lord came.