imagination is sin’s brooding and birth-place.  An inner picture, a lingering glance, a wrong desire, an act—­that is the story of every sin.  The first step was disobedience.  That opened the door.  The first suggestion of wrong-doing that followed hot on the heels of that first step, through that open door, struck at the very vitals of the race—­both its existence and its character.  That first suggested unnatural action, with its whole brood, has become the commonest and slimiest sin of the race.

Here, in the beginning, the very thought shocked them.  In that lay their safety.  Shame is the recoil of God’s image from the touch of sin.  Shame is sin’s first checkmate.  It is man’s vantage for a fresh pull up.  There are only two places where there is no shame:  where there is no sin; where sin is steeped deepest in.  The extremes are always jostling elbows.  Instantly the sense of shame suggested a help.  A simple bit of clothing was provided.  It was so adjusted as to help most.  Clothing is man’s badge of shame.  The first clothing was not for the body, but for the mind.  Not for protection, but for concealment, that so the mind might be helped to forget its evil suggestions.  It is one of sin’s odd perversions that draws attention by color and cut to the race’s badge of shame.  It would seem strongly suggestive of moral degeneracy, or of bad taste, or, let us say in charity, of a lapse of historical memory.

Mark the sad soliloquy of God:  “Behold the man has become as one of us:  He has exercised his power of choice.”  He tenderly refrains from saying, “and has chosen wrong! so pitiably wrong!” That was plain enough.  He would not rub in the acid truth.  He would not make the scar more hideous by pointing it out.  “And now lest he put forth his hand and take of the tree of life.” “Lest!” There is a further danger threatening.  In his present condition he needs guarding for his own sake in the future. “Lest”—­wrong choice limits future action.  Sin narrows.

With man’s act of sin came God’s act of saving.  Satan is ever on the heels of God to hurt man.  But God is ever on the heels of Satan to cushion the hurt and save the man.  It is a nip-and-tuck race with God a head and a heart in the lead.  Something had to be done.  Man had started sin in himself by his choice.  The taint of disobedience, rebellion, had been breathed out into the air.  He had gotten out of sorts with his surroundings.  His presence would spoil his own heaven.  The stain of his sin would have been upon his eternal life.  The zero of selfishness would have been the atmosphere of his home.  The touch of his unhallowed hand must be taken away for his own sake.  That unhallowed touch has been upon every function and relationship of life outside those gates.  Nothing has escaped the slimy contact.