I. We see from this text that it was the will of God that there should be between man and the other creatures He had formed an enormous gulf; that men were intended to be raised above the beasts altogether in kind; that they were to be not merely superior but different, as having a likeness which no other creature had, as being the image of God.
II. There can be no doubt that one great gift which Adam received from God was a highly intelligent mind, a mind capable of very great things; for we know what wonders the human mind is capable of now, and we cannot suppose that the mind which was given to the first man was of a lower order than that with which his fallen children have been blest. Adam also received from his Maker a heart pure and spotless, a heart which loved what was good because it was good; and in this respect his mind would be a reflection of the pure, holy mind of God.
III. Adam's spiritual life appears to have been supported by communion with God. His natural life, too, seems to have been continued by supernatural means. Man lost by sin those supernatural means of support which he had enjoyed before. The tree of life may have been the sacramental means of preserving man from decay; so that as long as Adam and Eve were sinless and had access to the tree of life, so long, though not by nature immortal, death had no power over them. Adam held all that he possessed upon a certain condition, and that condition was obedience to God. The command was simple and easy to obey, and yet Adam broke it and lost those blessings with which he had been endowed, and that life which God had breathed into him.
Bishop Harvey Goodwin, Parish Sermons,2nd series, p. 83.
(with Genesis 1:27).
In studying these Chapter s carefully, we find some degree of difficulty in the form of the sacred story itself. There appear to be, and in a certain sense there are, three different narratives, three distinct records of creation. We have one in the first, one in the second, and one in the fifth chapter. Why is the narrative of the creation repeated three times over?
Because man needs an account of the creation from a physical, from a moral, and from a historical point of view. The physical account we find in the first chapter of Genesis. It tells us that matter is not eternal that, go back as far as you will, at last the world which God created came from its Maker's hand. It stands alone in its sublimity, alone in its impressive greatness, alone in its Divine and miraculous reserve. We must cling to the truth contained in the text: (1) for the answer it gives to the questions which are pressed upon every one of us by the mystery of existence; (2) for the solid hope which it gives to every one of us of a distinct, a personal and individual immortality; (3) in order to guard ourselves from the great peril of desecrating that nature which God Himself gave to us.
Bishop Alexander, Man's Natural Life("Norwich Cathedral Discourses," 4th series, No. 1).
References: Genesis 2:7. S. R. Driver, Oxford and Cambridge Undergraduates' Journal,Oct. 25, 1883; J. Keble, Sermons for the Christian Year,vol. iii., p. 108; J. Laidlaw, The Bible Doctrine of Man,p. 48; J. Van Oosterzee, The Year of Salvation,vol. ii., p. 323; B. Waugh, Sunday Magazine(1887), p. 134; H. J. Van Dyke, The Reality of Religion,p. 49; R. W. Evans, Parochial Sermons,p. 293; Bishop Walsham How, Plain Words to Children,p. 29; J. E. Vaux, Sermon Notes,3rd series, p. 76. Genesis 2:8. T. Chamberlain, Sermons for Sundays, Festivals and Fasts,2nd series, vol. i., p. 265; W. E. Boardman, Sunday Magazine(1876), p. 676; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 406.