A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Eve
EVE,
The crowning work of creation, the first woman, the mother of our race. Her history, in the sacred Book, is told in few words; but the mighty consequences of her life will be felt through time, and through eternity. We shall endeavour to give what we consider a just idea of her character and the influence her destiny exercises over her sex and race.
The Bible records that "the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." Yet he was not perfect then, because God said, "It is not good for man to be alone." Would a perfect being have needed a helper? So God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam; and while he slept, God took one of the ribs of the man; "And the rib which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said. This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called woman, because she was taken out of man." It was this twain in unity, to which allusion is made in Genesis i., 27, 28. The creation is there represented as finished, and the "image of God was male and female;" that is, comprising the moral excellence of man and woman; thus united, they formed the perfect being called Adam.
It is only when we analyze the record of the particular process of creation, and the history of the fall, and its punishment, that we can learn what were the peculiar characteristics of man and woman as each came from the hand of God. Thus guided, the man seems to have represented strength, the woman beauty; he reason, she feeling; he knowledge, she wisdom; he the material or earthly, she the spiritual or heavenly in human nature.
That woman was superior to man in some way is proven, first, by the care and preparation in forming her; and secondly, by analogy. Every step in the creation has been in the ascending scale. Was the last retrograde? It must have been, unless the woman's nature was more refined, pure, spiritual, a nearer assimilation with the angelic, a link in the chain connecting earth with heaven, more elevated than the nature of man. Adam was endowed with the perfection of physical strength, which his wife had not. He did not require her help in subduing the earth. He also had the large understanding which could grasp and comprehend all subjects relating to this world—and was equal to its government. "He gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field;" and that these names were significant of the nature of all the animals thus subordinated to him, there can be no doubt. Still, the sacred narrative goes on—"But for Adam there was not found any help meet for him;" that is, a created being who could comprehend him and help him where he was deficient,—in his spiritual nature. For this help woman was formed; and while the twain were one, Adam was perfect. It was not till this holy union was dissolved, by sin, that the distinctive natures of the masculine and the feminine were exhibited.
Does it not mark Eve's purer spiritual nature that, even after the fall, when she was placed under her husband's control, she still held his immortal destiny, so to speak, in her keeping? To her what a gracious promise of future glory was given! Her seed was to triumph over the tempter which had deceived her. She was not only to be delivered from the power of the curse, but from her was to come the deliverer of her earthly ruler, man.
After the sentence was promulgated, we find instant acknowledgment that the mysterious union, which had made this first man and woman one being in Adam, was altered. There was no longer the unity of soul; there could not be where the wife had been subjected to the husband. And then it was that Adam gave to woman her specific name—Eve or the Mother.
Thus was motherhood predicated as the true field of woman's mission, where her spiritual nature might be developed, and her intellectual agency could bear sway; where her moral sense might be effective in the progress of mankind, and her mental triumphs would be won. Eve at once comprehended this, and expressed its truth in the sentiment, uttered on the birth of her first-born, "I have gotten a man from the Lord." When her hopes for Cain were destroyed by the fratricidal tragedy, she, woman-like, still clung to the spiritual promise, transferring it to Seth. The time of her death is not recorded.
According to Blair's chronology, Adam and Eve were created on Friday, October 28th., 4004 B.C.