ALL the truth and all the experiences of the gospel of salvation from sin find their center in God’s gift of his Son for and to the human family. He “spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all.” “Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf.” “What the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh.” “Herein was the love of God manifested in our case, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” The promises of God concerning this gift of his love, the failure of the people to believe and act upon these promises, the renewal of these promises from time to time in various forms and under varied circumstances, the fulfilment of the promises, and the instruction to believers concerning their personal relation to these promises, constitute the warp and the woof of the Scriptures. Here will be found the main current of the river of the water of life, although the river has many branches. In the object lesson of the sacrificial offerings, in the utterances of the patriarchs, in the declarations of the prophets, and in the songs of the psalmists the gift of the eternal Son was the great central theme. During all the centuries since sin entered into the world, the voice of patriarchs, prophets, priests, and psalmists has been proclaiming that “God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him should not perish, but have eternal life.”4Faith in the provision thus made for deliverance from sin and its consequences has brought hope to the hopeless, and joy to the joyless. For the complete realization of all the blessed results of this unspeakable gift the faithful in every age have looked forward to the time when “the Son of man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels.” This gospel of the gift of the Son of God to the human family as their sacrifice, substitute, and surety was first preached in the garden of Eden. Addressing the serpent in the presence of those whom he had led into sin, the Lord himself made the first announcement of that plan for the redemption of the transgressors of his commandment, setting forth his provision for the carrying out of “the eternal purpose which he purposed in Christ Jesus our Lord.” “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed: he shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” In these brief statements the whole gospel is bound up. All that has been developed to our minds of the fulness of the gospel in the centuries intervening between that time and the present was present in the mind of God and included in the original promise. Through disobedience man had cut himself off from God, rejecting the mind of God, and accepting the mind of Satan; but the Creator, against whom he had sinned, did not leave him under the absolute sway of the deceiver who had taken him in the snare. He implanted in the darkened mind of humanity a dissatisfaction with sin, a longing for restoration to holiness, a desire which could be satisfied only by receiving the gift which divine love provided. It would be possible for man to smother and to deaden this desire, but he could never satisfy it in any other way than by accepting him who is the Desire of all nations. The enmity between the serpent and the woman, thus implanted, saved the family from the abyss of total depravity into which it had fallen. It was further declared in this first statement of the gospel of salvation and hope, that the deliverance would come through one who would himself be a member of the human family. The Deliverer would be the seed of the woman. Looking back to the fulfilment of this promise, the apostle Paul wrote, “But when the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.” It was of this same promised Seed that the Lord spoke through Moses, saying, “I will raise them up a Prophet from among their brethren, like unto thee, and will put my words in his mouth; and he shall speak unto them all that I shall command him.” That union of divinity with humanity which is the vital experience of the gospel was thus set forth in the original promise. And the hope of humanity depended upon the coming of the Seed. So vivid was this promise to our first parents, that they looked for the Deliverer in their day; and when the first son was born, the hope was cherished that he was the promised Seed. One translation of the last clause of Gen. 4:1 expresses this idea clearly: “I have gotten the man Jehovah.” How bitter must have been the disappointment, and how terrible must have been the sting of sin, when the first son became a murderer rather than the Deliverer, a taker of life rather than a giver of life. But there was to be no failure in God’s word, and so “to Adam was given another son, to be the inheritor of the divine promise, the heir of the spiritual birthright.” That which is included in this original promise is thus stated by the apostle Paul in his letter to the Ephesians: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ: even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, which he made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence, making known unto us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure which he purposed in him unto a dispensation of the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the earth.” The hope of salvation for the world is in Christ, the eternal Son, the Seed of the woman. The coming of the Seed is the great fact of the gospel. This theme we will study in later articles.