Genesis 1 - 9. "Out of the eater came forth meat, and out of the strong came forth sweetness." Samson's riddle--God's riddle. (Judges 14: 14.)
This has been abundantly illustrated in the story of this world. May I not say it is the key of the whole of it. It figuratively shows us God and the Enemy at their several work--the Enemy doing his work as the Strong and the Eater, and God, in gracious, victorious power, forcing him to yield both meat and sweetness--constantly and ever bringing good out of evil, and building new systems of wonder and glory and joy out of the ruins Satan has wrought.
I am now, however, looking at this only as it is presented to us in the earliest chapters of Scripture--I mean in Genesis 1 - 9.
Man in innocency is set in the garden of Eden--and there, (as in His whole creation,) God is glorified and has His joy, while the creature is blest and happy.
But man loses this goodly estate. He forfeits his innocency under the temptation of the Serpent, and with his innocency he loses everything.
This leads at once into a new scene. To be sure it does. But we have to ask, What do we see of man, and of the blessed God Himself there?
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John Gifford Bellett was an Irish Christian writer and theologian, and was influential in the beginning of the Plymouth Brethren movement. Bellett was born in Dublin, Ireland. He was educated first at the Grammar School in Exeter, England, then at Trinity College Dublin, where he excelled in Classics, and afterwards in London. It was in Dublin that, as a layman, he first became acquainted with John Nelson Darby, then a minister in the established Church of Ireland, and in 1829 the pair began meeting with others such as Edward Cronin and Francis Hutchinson for communion and prayer.
Bellett had become a Christian as a student and by 1827 was a layman serving the Church. In a letter to James McAllister, written in 1858, he describes the episcopal charge of William Magee, Archbishop of Dublin, that sought for greater state protection for the Church. The Erastian nature of the charge offended Darby particularly, but also many others including Bellett.
The pair bonded particularly over prophetic issues, and attended meetings and discussions together at the home of Lady Powerscourt, and Bellett and Darby (along with the Brethren movement in particular) were particularly associated with dispensationalism and premillenialism.
Bellett wrote many articles and books on scriptural subjects, his most famous works being The Patriarchs, The Evangelists and The Minor Prophets.