"He that cometh unto God must believe that He is and that He is the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." Hence Holy Scripture, which contains the revealed record of God's dealings and purposes with man, commences with an account of the creation. "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power.

It is also of far greater importance for us, however, to know that God "created all things by Jesus Christ and further, more that "all things were created by Him, and for Him," and that "of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things were made. This gives not only unity to all creation but places it in living connection with our Lord Jesus Christ the author and finisher of our faith. At the same time, we should also always bear in mind that it is "through faith we understand that the worlds were formed by the word of God so that things which are seen were not made of things which had existed".

Everything, as it proceeded from the hand of God, was "very good," that is, perfect to answer the purpose for which it had been destined. "And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had made, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had made. And God blessed the seventh day and sanctified it: because that in it He had rested from all His work which God created and made.
Of all His works God, only "created man in His own image: in the image of God created He him." This expression refers not merely to the intelligence with which God endowed man, and the immortality with which He gifted man, but also to the perfect moral and spiritual nature which man at the first possessed. And all his surroundings were in accordance with his happy state. God "put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it", and gave him a companion in Eve, whom Adam recognized as bone of his bones, and flesh of his flesh. Thus as God had, by setting apart the Sabbath day, indicated worship as the proper relationship between man and his Creator, so He also laid in Paradise the foundation of civil society by the institution of marriage and of the family.
It now only remained to test man's obedience to God, and to prepare him for yet higher and greater privileges than those which he already enjoyed. But evil was already in this world of ours, for Satan and his angels had rebelled against God. The scriptural account of man's trial is exceedingly brief and simple. We are told: that "the tree of the knowledge of good and evil" had been placed "in the midst of the garden" and of the fruit of this tree God forbade Adam to eat, on pain of death. On the other hand, there was also "the tree of life" in the garden, probably as symbol and pledge of a higher life, which we should have inherited if our first parents had continued obedient to God. The issue of this trial came only too soon.

The tempter, under the form of a serpent, approached Eve. He denied the threatening of God, and deceived her as to the real consequences of eating the forbidden fruit. This, followed by the enticement of her own senses, led Eve first to eat, and then to introduce to her husband to do the same. Their sin had its immediate consequence. They had aimed to be "as gods," and, instead of absolutely submitting themselves to the command of God the Father, acted freely of Him. And now their eyes were indeed opened, as the tempter had promised, "to know good and evil;" but only in their own guilty knowledge of sin, which immediately prompted the wish to hide themselves from the presence of God.