Adam, in his beginnings of sin, furnishes an example to sinners, which has been abundantly copied.  He says, “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”  He finds fault with God the giver, and fails to condemn woman the sinner.  The passage is sometimes falsely interpreted, as an unworthy attempt of the man to cast the blame of his offence on the woman.  But the emphasis lies on the words whom thou gavest to be with me, by which utterance he seeks to transfer the responsibility from himself to God, who gave him the companion by whose example he was betrayed into sin, instead of placing it upon the woman, who was the guilty cause.  Thus he refuses or neglects to denounce the sin; but takes for granted that woman was as God made her, and acted in accordance with her mechanism.  Hence, Adam argued, if any one was responsible, it was her Maker.  She acted in accordance with the nature which had been given her.  We hear this doctrine advanced daily.  “I am what God made me.”  A cotton mill weaves cotton because it was made to weave cotton.  It is not responsible.  It weaves well or ill in accordance with the skill of the mechanism, and not in accordance with the desire of the proprietor.  If it weaves ill, you blame the maker.  If well, you praise the maker.  Adam, in his reply, ignored woman’s moral nature, and talked of her as though she had been a machine.  “The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate.”  He forgot his own higher nature, forgot his position, and fell.  How he differed from the second Adam we shall see before we are done.

It is noticeable, not only that Adam ignored woman’s moral nature, and the ruin wrought by sin, but he asserts a truth.  Woman was given to man to provide him with food, to spread the feast, and to keep the house; and in her vocation, and while performing the duties assigned her, she led him astray.  It is noteworthy that God does not reply to Adam, but turns to woman with the question, “What is this that thou hast done?” recognizing the fact that she turned from God, and turned towards God’s enemy, and in listening, sinned; and in sinning, fell; and in falling, carried with her man; and in carrying man, whelmed the race in the ruin of the fall.

In speaking of woman as a tempter, we are not to forget that she is woman.  The serpent beguiled her, and she ate.  Satan found in her an ally; an so pleased was he with the results of the partnership he has never dissolved the firm.  While woman, as a helpmeet, becomes an ally of Christ, as a tempter she is the ally of Satan.  Not as a woman, but as a tempter, she is the ally of the evil one.  Satan works in her, as a tempter, both to will and to do according to his good pleasure, whenever she submits to his sway.  The reason for this is recorded in the Word of God.  Some sneer at the reference to this time-honored record; but we reassert the truth.  The Bible is the revealed will of God, and it declares the God-given sphere of woman.  The Bible is, then, our authority for saying woman must content herself with this sphere, and try to meet its responsibilities, or she will lose self-respect and cast away the regard of the community.  Without the Bible, her life is everywhere proven to be gloomy.  With it, and beneath its protection, she becomes an heir of hope.