Chapter 3—The Eden Home a Pattern
God Prepared Man’s First Home—The Eden home of our first
parents was prepared for them by God Himself. When He had fur-
nished it with everything that man could desire, He said: “Let Us make
man in Our image, after Our likeness.” ...
The Lord was pleased with this last and noblest of all His creatures,
and designed that he should be the perfect inhabitant of a perfect world.
But it was not His purpose that man should live in solitude. He said:
“It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help
meet for him.
God Himself gave Adam a companion. He provided “an help meet
for him”—a helper corresponding to him—one who was fitted to be
his companion, and who could be one with him in love and sympathy.
Eve was created from a rib taken from the side of Adam, signifying
that she was not to control him as the head, nor to be trampled under
his feet as an inferior, but to stand by his side as an equal, to be loved
and protected by him. A part of man, bone of his bone, and flesh
of his flesh, she was his second self; showing the close union and
the affectionate attachment that should exist in this relation. “For no
man ever yet hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it.”
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave
unto his wife: and they shall be one.
First Marriage Performed by God—God celebrated the first
marriage. Thus the institution has for its originator the Creator of the
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universe. “Marriage is honourable”; it was one of the first gifts of
God to man, and it is one of the two institutions that, after the fall,
Adam brought with him beyond the gates of Paradise. When the divine
principles are recognized and obeyed in this relation, marriage is a
blessing; it guards the purity and happiness of the race, it provides for
1
The Youth’s Instructor, August 10, 1899
.
2
Patriarchs and Prophets, 46
.
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