IBRARY
DIVERSITY
*N DIEGO
o
THE
EISE AND THE FALL;
OK, THE
ORIGIN OF MORAL EVIL.
IN THREE PARTS.
PAET I. THE SUGGESTIONS OP REASON.
H. THE DISCLOSURES OF REVELATION.
HI. THE CONFIRMATIONS OF THEOLOGY.
NEW YORK:
PUBLISHED BY HURD AND HOUGHTON.
459 BKOOME STREET.
1866.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by
HURD AND HOUQHTON,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the Southern District of
New York.
RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE:
STEREOTYPED AND FEINTED BT
H. 0. HOUGHTON AND COMPANY.
PREFACE.
IT is not intended in the following pages to di-
rectly answer the age-old and still vexed problem,
" Why must and does evil exist under the govern-
ment of a benevolent God ? " With whatever of
mystery that inquiry may be obscured, the two
great facts remain unquestioned, God is benevo-
lent, and yet evil exists. Perplexing, then, as our
reason may imagine the explanation to be, the two
cannot be incompatible ; yet how is it that after so
many centuries of discussion there is as yet no
universally accepted solution ? Can it be that the
premises, upon which the thousand theories pro-
ceed, need re examination ? No harm can be done,
at least, by such review, if it is conducted in a
proper spirit ; and it is such a discussion that we
have here attempted.
The first inquiry that meets us is one of histori-
cal fact. In what way, and under what circum-
stances, was moral evil originated in, or introduced
into, the world ? And the only authentic informa-
iv PREFACE.
tion which we possess upon this question is con-
tained in that remarkable narrative, the first three
chapters of Genesis. To this (having no higher
authority) we must refer as an infallible record,
and seek, through a critical examination, its real
meaning and purport. Should the result of our
studies seem to differ from the customary interpre-
tation, it will be proper to test our view farther by
scrutinizing it in the light of rational and theo-
logical principles. Should it prove consistent with
and even confirmed by these, we shall be more
likely to accept it as truly setting forth the real
meaning of the story.
Accordingly, in these pages the train of reason-
ing which precedes the exposition of our view, for
the purpose of suggesting in advance its probabil-
ity, and also the brief and imperfect comparison of
theological doctrines by which it is followed, are
both to be regarded as of no higher importance
than as attempted corroborations of the view itself,
as deduced from the narrative in Genesis. How-
ever unsatisfactory, therefore, they may prove, in
whole or in part, their imperfection should not
prejudice the main argument, which is contained in
Part II, and to which they are only subordinate.
October, 1857.
PREFACE. V
EIGHT years have passed since the above Pref-
ace was written with the expectation that the fol-
lowing pages would then be shortly published, and
they have not yet been given to the public. The
delay has arisen from various causes, but princi-
pally from the author's unwillingness to put forth
a work advancing views or suggestions which more
mature reflection might make him desirous to with-
draw. Having come, however, to find himself
strengthened by subsequent thought, in the views
herein set forth, and to see the course of Biblical
criticism and of theological discussion (both of
which have greatly improved in character during
the last ten years) more and more tending to their
support and confirmation, he ventures to believe
that their presentation now will not be destitute of
interest and value. The book is printed without
material change : a very few paragraphs and two
or three references to authorities met with since
the original writing, are all that have been added.
This will explain the absence of all reference to
many recent and valuable works which might have
been cited or quoted with advantage, had the book
been rewritten.
January, 1866.
CONTENTS.
PART I.
THE SUGGESTIONS 01? REASON.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY 1
CHAPTER II.
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY .... 6
CHAPTER III.
OF THE OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY IN THE MENTAL
ECONOMY 17
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY . . 30
CHAPTER V.
THAT THE MORAL FACULTY IS A DISTINCT AND INDEPEN-
DENT FACULTY 41
CHAPTER VI.
THAT MAN HAD NO OCCASION FOR THE MORAL FACULTY AT
THE OUTSET OF HIS EXISTENCE 50
CHAPTER VII.
THAT GOD MIGHT PREFER TO MAKE MAN'S MORAL AGENCY
THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS OWN ACT 59
Viii CONTENTS.
PART n.
THE DISCLOSURES OF REVELATION.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
MAN'S CREATION AS A MORAL BEING NOT ASSERTED IN REV-
ELATION 71
CHAPTER II.
INDIRECT EVIDENCE THAT MAN WAS NOT ORIGINALLY A MORAL
BEING, DRAWN FROM THE ACCOUNT OF HIS CREATION
AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY 80
CHAPTER III.
DIRECT EVIDENCE TO THE SAME EFFECT DRAWN FROM THE
SAME NARRATIVE. THE COMMAND 93
CHAPTER IV.
EFFECT OF THE FOREGOING, AND OBJECTIONS TO IT CONSID-
ERED 104
CHAPTER V.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE DISOBE-
DIENCE 114
CHAPTER VI.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE EFFECTS
OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT 128
CHAPTER VII.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE SEN-
TENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS 139
CHAPTER VIII.
THE SENTENCE OF EVE ... . . . . . . 151
CHAPTER IX.
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM 170
CHAPTER X.
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS .187
CONTENTS. IX
CHAPTER XI.
PAGE
REVIEW OF OBJECTIONS FROM THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF
ROMANS 200
PART HI.
THE CONFIRMATIONS OF THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED .... 223
CHAPTER II.
DIFFICULTIES ENCOUNTERED BY THE COMMON VIEW, AND THEIR
SOLUTION 240
CHAPTER in.
THE COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED WITH RE-
SPEC." TO THE METHOD OF ITS INFLUENCE UPON THE
RACE 257
CHAPTER IV.
THE COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED WITH REFER-
ENCE TO ITS DOCTRINE THAT MANKIND IS A FAILURE . 275
CHAPTER V.
OUTLINES OF THE PROGRESSIVE MORAL SYSTEM . . . 288
APPENDIX . .... 305
THE EISE AND THE FALL;
OR,
THE ORIGIN OF MOEAL EVIL.
PART I.
THE SUGGESTIONS OF EEASON.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
IT is no wonder that in all ages the presence of
Moral Evil in the world has confounded the minds
of men. When they looked forth upon the mate-
rial universe, whether with the searching ken of
the philosopher, or the superficial glance of the
ignorant, they beheld its grandest and its minutest
phenomena alike obedient to general, defined, and
immutable laws. In systems and in atoms, from
Nature's farthest verge to the depths of her most
secret cells, was manifested the truth, irresistible by
the most stupid or the most perverse, of a single
Creator, and an all-pervading and wondrous unity
of design and government. Recognizing with rev-
erent awe in this sublime harmony of creation the
1
2 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
presence of that Eternal Mind, which, sole and
almighty, in the depths of his benevolent wisdom,
fashioned and controls it, they have turned to the
contemplation of his moral kingdom, to view there
a spectacle, how different ! Instead of an adjusted
plan, whose beneficence and perfection should be-
token God's goodness and love, even as the voice
of Physical Nature proclaims his wisdom and power,
there seems to be disclosed only a chaos of chance,
of disorder, of injustice, and of woe ; a sight, indeed,
in appearance so unworthy of a good, or even an
intelligent ruler, that its observers have fallen back,
bewildered and alarmed, to the physical creation, to
vindicate their belief in even that ruler's existence.
To reduce this mingled mass of contradictions to
a system, and to reveal the harmonious principles
which the mind instinctively feels must be hidden
beneath it, just as all apparent confusions in the
material universe are constantly unfolding them-
selves into order, are the true aims of moral philos-
ophy, and have worthily engaged many of the no-
blest intellects of all time. Yet strangely diverse
has been the success of ethical from that of physical
investigation ; for, while the researches of the latter
have discovered only light and beauty and uni-
formity of plan, in the former, the more extended
the labors, the more various have become the theo-
ries, and the deeper the confusion. Even the rev-
elations from the Deity himself, which declare the
main principles and general outline of his moral
INTRODUCTORY. 3
government, have not dispelled the difficulties which
surround it, nor shown in clear though distant vis-
ion, the range of its eternal truths, in their bright,
connected chain, towering above the mists of soph-
istry and prejudice. Still, the admitted facts are
unreconciled with each other ; still, the essential
facts themselves are differently understood or pos-
itively denied ; for still, the origin of SIN, the dis-
turbing element, and the mode, effects, and purpose
of its introduction, remain the topics both of funda-
mental importance, and of irreconcilable diversity.
May it not be that in these inquiries the same
error has prevailed which for so many generations
retarded the advance of physical science and phi-
losophy, the resort to speculation rather than fact,
as the basis of theory ? May not the philosophy
of Moral Evil be elucidated in some degree by
a more careful examination of the circumstances
connected with its origin, as these are revealed in
the only authentic relation of them, the inspired
narrative in Genesis ? It is true that this story,
under an exposition established by venerable au-
thority and the general acquiescence, has been
almost excluded from the domain of ethics, and
abandoned to the theologians, as if here, at least,
Reason and Revelation had but doubtful accord-
ance. Even so Science and Genesis were supposed
to be antagonistic, until traditionary interpretation
ceased to becloud the Mosaic cosmogony. Then,
that remarkable narrative of the Creation, so long
4 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
scoffed at as unscientific and absurd, was seen to be
radiant with the light and truth of Him who is the
great Author both of Nature and of Inspiration,
and whose word is ever consistent with his works.
We are not without hope that, by a like means, a
similar mutual support and illustration may be dis-
covered between the established principles of Moral
and Mental Philosophy and the Scripture account
of " the Origin of Evil."
It is with such a view that we propose to exam-
ine, in some of the few pages that follow, that por-
tion of Genesis in which are related the facts
attending the origin of Moral Evil in our world.
Our argument rests chiefly in the construction of
the historical record ; but since it is plain that the
existence of sin must depend upon the existence of
the moral agency or capabilities of man, our brief
investigation into the manner of its birth may be
properly introduced by tracing the sources, office,
and effects of the moral element in the mental
economy. We will look for its sources, by inquir-
ing what other mental qualities or powers demand
it as a desirable and even an essential attendant,
thus discovering the necessities of man's nature
from which it springs ; its office, by remarking the
manner in which it supplies these necessities, through
the salutary influence which it is designed to exert,
and does exert, upon the whole mind and charac-
ter ; and its effects, by showing that while it is the
chief means of preserving the entire physical and
INTRODUCTORY. 5
mental being of man from lapsing into speedy and
inevitable ruin, it also expands and ennobles it,
alone enabling it to rise to the glorious destiny of its
highest exaltation.
These preliminary discussions will, of course,
treat of the moral faculty simply as a part of the
natural constitution of the mind, and will have no
regard to man's connection with the Divine Gov-
ernment, or to his future moral accountability.
Our purpose is simply to show that Conscience
is a natural and necessary part of the creature
Man, without which his being would be incom-
plete, and the analogies of nature, in the laws of
animal being, violated. We shall remain, there-
fore, within the province of Mental Philosophy, and
repose therein upon principles universally admitted
or thoroughly established.
THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER H.
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY.
IN seeking the sources of the moral faculty, our
plan leads us to notice the identity of Mind, and
the uniformity of its laws in all creatures, so far as
it is developed in them respectively. Our attention
will be directed more especially to those depart-
ments of it in which originates conduct, and which,
therefore, occasion the necessity for the moral fac-
ulty (or conscience), by giving rise to the thoughts
and acts of which this has jurisdiction.
There has been little variance among mental
philosophers in their general analyses of the mind,
and probably its division into the three departments
of the Sensibilities, the Intellect, and the Will, as it
is the most usual, will be seriously objected to by
none. Of these, the Sensibilities, which include
the appetites, desires, and affections, lie at the basis
of the mind, and are the springs of its every move-
ment. There can, in fact, be no mental operation
which does not originate in the Sensibilities ; for
there must be a desire to act before action can be
put forth. Some appetite or desire is awakened,
prompting to a particular course of conduct : the
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 7
Intellect considers upon the effect of such suggested
conduct, and the Will determines for or against its
pursuit. Such is the history of every conceivable
human act or thought, whether for good or for
evil.
Nor is it the history of every human act merely,
but of every act of every other creature as well.
At this day, doubtless, the analysis we have refer-
red to will generally be agreed to be as applicable
to the psychology of brutes as of men. Such an
organization of mind, indeed, seems from the nature
of things unavoidable, and these three departments
or agencies, inseparable from any mental constitu-
tion, however imperfectly developed. We do not
mean that they should be displayed in all creatures
in similar proportions, for it is in great measure the
dissimilarity of their relative development that con-
stitutes the mental diversities of races and of indi-
viduals. Thus, in the brute creation the Sensibil-
ities, or lowest department of the mind, predominate.
The Intellect and Will, though manifest, are feeble
in their operations. Brutes reason little, and are
not capable of forming settled mental purposes.
With Man, on the other hand, though his Sensibili-
ties are far more powerful than those of the creat-
ures below him, yet the Intellect (the next higher
department of the mind) is expanded in a vastly
greater ratio, and is in him the characteristic mental
feature. His Will, also, is greatly developed and
strengthened beyond that of the inferior creatures,
8 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
but not in the same degree as the intellectual pow-
ers. Few of the race have that firmness of purpose
in any endeavor or course of action, that they are
constantly through life superior to every enticement
from its pursuit. What we call human greatness,
or a mental elevation above the average scale of
humanity, is generally marked by an extraordinary
power of Will. We may suppose, therefore, that in
another and higher stage of being, here will be the
principal change that the soul will undergo. It will
rise to the full development of the Will, (the last
and highest department of the mind,) and through
the ages of eternity will know no temptation or
allurement strong enough to beguile its affections,
for an instant, from the conduct which it loves, or
its gaze and efforts from the destiny to which it
aspires.
We may assert, therefore, as a general truth, so
far at least as our observation can extend, that, in
the natural history of mind, Nature observes her
usual analogies, and that its development in the dif-
ferent races of creatures maintains a correspondence
with the progressive steps of their physical organ-
ization. Consciousness, instinct, reason, all are mind,
either in the germ, the bud, or expanded growth ;
and though some would believe that the difference
is both radical, and almost boundless, between the
human and brute intelligences, yet, when we follow
down the scale of human intellect through the va-
rious classes and races of men to its lowest limit,
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 9
such imaginings are dissipated. We only find, as
between man and the brutes, just as in their physi-
cal structures, a wide distinctioa in perfection of
organization and degree of capability, but none that
is apparent, in their nature or general principles of
psychological constitution.
Descending now from the general identity of
mind in all creatures, to that particular department,
in which, as we have seen, originates conduct, we
discover, as might be expected, that in this, the
lowest department of mind, this similarity between
man and the brutes is most marked. A careful
examination into the habits of animals reveals the
truth, now generally admitted, that there is probably
not one of the sensibilities, not one of the " springs
of action " to any conceivable human act, which
is not also implanted, in some degree, in the minds
of the brutes. These springs of action, indeed,
these emotions, desires, and affections, (including the
bodily appetites,) are a necessary part of the animal
nature of the creature, inseparable from its consti-
tution, and essential to its mental being. They
have been divided into two classes, the benevolent
and malevolent affections. Of these, (though writ-
ers differ somewhat in their enumeration of the sim-
ple affections,) among the former class have been
placed love, friendship, patriotism, gratitude, pity,
&c. Among the latter class, hatred, jealousy, envy,
resentment. Probably these lists might be reduced
in number by a closer analysis ; but this is imma-
10 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
terial to our present argument. Even taking the
enumerations we have given, we think it would be
easy to show, by multiplied instances if necessary,
that whatever appetites, sensibilities, or emotions
are implanted in man, will be found also in the
mental economy of the brutes, performing their
more humble, yet similar, appropriate, and neces-
sary functions.
The distinction has been made, indeed, as be-
tween the lower animals and man, that these natu-
ral propensities are possessed by them for the sole
purpose, and only to the degree, necessary for self-
preservation. Such a view, however, is not sanc-
tioned by even our daily observation. On the con-
trary, they are constantly seen exhibiting themselves
in the brutes, in manifestations closely resembling
the qualities and actions of men. We refer not
now to the peculiar instincts of species, such as the
ferocity of the tiger, the cunning of the fox, &c. ;
but to those features of mind or disposition which
mark individual character. We behold such in the
brutes, displayed in their mutual friendly intercourse,
or their outbreaks of enmity, variously developing in
them from the moment of birth, as individual pecu-
liarities, and even perpetuated, as family traits, by
hereditary transmission. So we speak of " the vir-
tues " and u the vices " of animals, with a meaning
not very different from that of the same language
when applied to men. Nay, we often seem to dis-
cover in them a sort of dim foreshadowing of the
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 11
moral sense, in an apparent vague perception on
their part, of the praiseworthiuess, or blame worthi-
ness of certain actions. Of such impressions, how-
ever, if such in fact exist, we can only say that it is
doubtful whether they are instinctive, and is certain
that they are not of a kind to entail moral respon-
sibility, and that they cannot be abstracted from
particular acts into general ideas of duty. Hence,
though they may suggest and foreshadow the human
conscience, they come far short of it in nature and
essential characteristics. They are analogous, in-
deed, it would seem, to those rudimentary organs
which philosophers tell us are sometimes found in
lower animals, useless in them except as represent-
ative of serviceable members in higher organiza-
tions. 1 As such, they are an interesting object of
notice in tracing the similarity between human and
brute emotions.
But though it is thus true that the springs of
action (the sensibilities) are in all creatures sim-
ilar, and produce similar manifestations, it would
of course be the case that in degree of development
1 Man, in short, is preeminently what a theologian would term the
ante-typical existence, the being in whom the types meet and are ful-
filled. And not only do typical forms and numbers of the exemplified
character meet in Man, but there are not a few parts of his framework
which, in the inferior animal, exist as mere symbols of as little impor-
tance as dugs in the male animal, though they acquire significancy
and use in him. Such, for instance, are the many-jointed but move-
less and unnecessary bones, of which the stiff, inflexible Jin of the du-
gong and fore-paw of the mole consist, and which exist in his arm as
essential portions, none of which could be wanted, of a flexible instru-
ment. Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Hocks, p. 231.
12 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
they would vary with the different grades of mental
organization. The higher the nature and intelli-
gence of the creature, and the more expanded and
diversified its faculties and relations, by so much
the more powerful would be its emotions, and the
more varied and complex their combinations, as
well as the actions in which they would result.
Herein lies the difference between man and the
brutes in respect to the sensibilities, and their man-
ifestations in conduct, except so far as these differ
in the moral characteristic. Man, with a similar
animal nature, has a thousand-fold more capabilities
for passion, and a thousand times more forms of its
expression. Accordingly, as a mere animal, had
he no moral nature whatever, whatever of good or
evil could come from his sensibilities would be ex-
hibited in vastly greater force, and with vastly
greater extent and variety of good or evil effects.
Acting out his mere animal nature, therefore,
without restraint, Man is a much more dangerous
creature, both to himself and to the Universe, than
any other ; and this, not from any peculiarity of
plan in his mental constitution, but because his
superior development creates an increased capacity
for passion, and a more tremendous scope and power
in its exercise.
The application of these remarks becomes ob-
vious when we pass to consider the range of the
Sensibilities in the different animal races, with the
similar forms of action and conduct which they
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 13
develop in all. As we have suggested, the danger
from these " springs of action " arises from their
active and expansive nature. Implanted for neces-
sary and benevolent purposes, they are, in their
normal and balanced action, not only essential to
the existence of the creature, but conducive to its
happiness. Yet, as in the material universe we be-
hold the same forces at one time gently wafting
fragrance to the flower, and moistening with dew
its delicate petals, and at another, rising into fear-
ful agencies of evil to sweep the earth with ruin
and terror ; so the kindly and healthful appetites, at
times advancing with unregulated energy, expand
into raging passions, and draw havoc and destruc-
tion in their train. Nor are these tendencies and
results peculiar to human sensibilities. Thus it has
ever been since sentient beings were first created.
The records of Earth's historic tablets teach us, that,
thousands of ages before man waked into exist-
ence, nature had armed insects and rejptiles with
weapons of warfare and torture, which they wielded
against each other in the deadly encounters of pas-
sion. Epoch on epoch came and went while the
slow-forming world was preparing for its human
tenants, which saw its seas daily lashed with mortal
conflicts, and heard amid its primeval forests the
fearful cries of rage, of suffering, and of violent
death. So from those distant periods down to the
present hour, passion, with the thousand miseries it
occasions, has marked the history of all creatures,
14 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
human and brute alike, in proportion to their re-
spective capacities and opportunities for its exer-
cise. Hence it appears that man is not alone in
the distress, ruin, and death which he suffers from
natural appetites, and which we frequently, and in
one sense properly, speak of as the effects of sin.
The same evils prevailed long before sin became
an inmate of creation, and still prevail among the
animals which never sinned, and upon which no
curse was ever denounced. Man's experience in
these respects, therefore, is the same with that of
all sentient beings, and in entire accordance with
the laws of life, established with its first awakening
in the universe. 1
1 In Hugh Miller's Testimony of the Rocks occurs the following
passage (page 102):
" This early exhibition of tooth, and spine, and sting, of weapons
constructed alike to cut and to pierce, to unite two of the most
indispensable requisites of the modern armorer a keen edge to a
stiff back nay, stranger still, the examples furnished in this prime-
val time of weapons formed not only to kill but also to torture, must
be altogether at variance with the preconceived opinions of those who
hold, that, until man appeared in creation and darkened its sympa-
thetic face with the stain of moral guilt, the reign of violence and
outrage did not begin, and that there was no death among the inferior
creatures, and no suffering. But preconceived opinion, whether it hold
fast with Lactantius and the old Schoolmen to the belief that there
can be no antipodes, or assert with Caccini and Bellarmine that our
globe hangs lazily in the midst of the heavens, while the sun moves
round it, must yield ultimately to scientific truth. And it is a truth as
certain as the existence of a southern hemisphere, or the motion of the
earth around both its own axis and the great solar centre, that, untold
ages ere man had sinned and suffered, the animal creation exhibited
exactly its present state of war : that the strong, armed with formid-
able weapons, exquisitely constructed to kill, preyed upon the weak;
OF THE SOURCES OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 15
The only difference, then, between man and the
brutes, in regard to these phenomena of the pas-
sions, lies in the circumstance that in him their
allowance is invested with a moral character, which
in them it does not possess. It is now generally
agreed by moralists that it is the act of the Witt,
permitting the undue sway of passion, to which the
moral quality attaches, and not to the passions
themselves. We should carefully distinguish, there-
fore, between the passions with their evil conse-
quences, (which are common to all creatures,) and
the moral character, with which, in the human race,
their permitted supremacy is associated. Disturb-
ance, suffering, and death, their usual attendants,
as we have seen, are not peculiar to man, nor
ascribable to his moral relations. Strictly, there-
fore, these evils are not the consequences of Sin^
if by sin we mean that feature connected with the
propensities which is peculiar to man, to wit, the
and that the weak sheathed, many of them, in defensive armor,
equally admirable in its mechanism, and ever increasing and multi-
plying upon the earth far beyond the requirements of the mere main-
tenance of their races were enabled to escape as species the assaults
of the tyrant tribes, and to exist unthinned for unreckoned ages. It
has been weakly and impiously urged as if it were merely with the
geologist that men had to settle this matter that such an economy
of warfare and suffering of warring and of being warred upon
would be, in the words of the infant Goethe, unworthy of an all-
powerful and all-benevolent Providence, and, in effect, a libel on his
government and character. But that grave charge we leave the
objectors to settle with the great Creator himself. Be it theirs, not
ours, to
" Snatch from his hands the balance and the rod,
Kejudge his justice, be the god of God."
16 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
guilt attending their permitted excess. They are
the effect of passions, the yielding to whose sway
is sinful, but not the effect of this sinfulness ; of pas-
sions whose existence, operation, and results are
independent of moral accountability ; and which in
man, as in the brutes, would be undistinguished
from the rest of his animal nature, but for a new
perception implanted in his breast, through which
he recognizes them as entailing upon him a moral
responsibility for their government.
Here, then, is where Conscience (this new per-
ception) has its sources : since its functions relate
exclusively to the right regulation and control of the
human Sensibilities. We have established the fact,
that in that department of the mind which thus gives
occasion for its exercise, and over which, therefore, it
in a manner presides, Man is organized substantially
like other creatures, and under similar conditions
of existence. We shall next inquire into the office
which the conscience thus performs in the natural
(not the moral) economy, and how far the anal-
ogies and necessities of being demand it, or some
equivalent for it, as a part of the animal nature.
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 17
CHAPTER III.
OF THE OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY IN THE
MENTAL ECONOMY.
HITHERTO we have considered the active powers
of the mind, the energies which give it movement
and direction. We have seen that these are, in plan
and operation, the same in all creatures ; that they
are both necessary, and, in their legitimate use, pro-
motive of happiness ; but that when in any being
they transcend this limit, they become the baleful
agents of misery and ruin. We shall now inquire
after the forces, if any, which Nature has provided
as offsets and safeguards against these liabilities to
passionate excess, for the preservation of the creat-
ure ; what influences of a restraining tendency she
may have furnished to check the rising excitements
of the susceptibilities, and to control their ordinary
movements within safe and natural bounds.
We assume at the outset the existence of such
provisions ; for, from the phenomena which Nature
displays in the material creation, we are led by the
laws of her usual analogies to look for a system of
forces and balances, of impulses and counteractions
in the mental universe. In the motions of the
spheres, in the changes and influences of the differ-
18 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
ent seasons, in the action of the elements, in the
development and laws of animal and vegetable
existences, wherever, in fact, we behold life and
movement in the physical domain, we see energies
working under the control of counter-energies,
a system of forces and counter-forces, whose mutual
regulation educes general harmony. Yet not here,
more than in the field of mind, are the adjustments
so perfectly preserved as to preclude all irregulari-
ties ; for often some element or force will break like
a swelling passion through its surrounding barriers,
and sweep creation with havoc, until its power is
spent, or it is brought again under control.* Where
then, in the universe of mind, do we find these
restraining forces for which we inquire ? What in-
fluences do we discover which operate as checks
and brakes upon the onward driving propensities,
serving to moderate and determine their otherwise
headlong course ? The inquiry relates not to the
being of man merely, but to that of all creatures
in which these propensities subsist.
We should expect, in conformity with a general
principle of Nature, that such checks in the differ-
ent classes of being would be proportioned, in num-
ber and strength, to the degree of necessity which
they might respectively require ; in other words,
that they would be provided, in different creatures,
in increased or diminished ratio, according to the
power of their respective appetites, and the circum-
stances surrounding them, which are likely to draw
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 19
out those appetites in passionate excess. Thus the
insect or the worm which feels probably little more
than the mere consciousness of existence, and is, so
far as we know, almost isolated from its fellows, as
regards the interchange of sentiment, needs few in-
fluences to restrain 'passions which it can hardjy be
thought to possess. And even with the brutes of
the higher grades, so few and simple, at best, are
the emotions of which they are capable, so limited
and vague are their relations to each other, and so
few their opportunities, means, and topics of mutual
communication, that their intercourse is reduced to
the simplest character, little likely, to elicit or foster
the passions beyond their natural and proper growth.
Add to these natural limitations, their temperate
and equable habits and modes of life, their plain and
natural diet, and the facility with which their few
wants are satisfied, together with their various in-
stincts, and the effect wrought by changes of the
seasons upon their feelings and desires, and we can
readily perceive that in these provisions, together
with others of a general character, to which we shall
hereafter advert, Nature has amply guarded against
the perversion and overgrowth of the propensities,
hedging them in as she has, by so many circum-
stances unfavorable to their expansion. Accord-
ingly, we find that animals in their natural sphere
of life, are generally more noble in their natures,
and much more free from indulgence in the grosser
passions, than when brought into an artificial condi-
20 THE EISE AND THE FALL.
tion of existence, and surrounded by unnatural in-
citements. Yet, even in their best estate, in their
mutual intercourse, however simple it may be, clash-
ings of interest, or promptings of opportunity occur
to disturb the nicely poised balance of restraint, and
to excite the energies of passion to vigorous and
destructive activity.
Thus carefully, then, has Nature guarded the sus-
ceptibilities of the brutes, but what protections has
she provided for man, who, as regards danger from
his passions, stands in a vastly more exposed and
perilous situation ? For him, scarcely one of the
natural barriers to which we have before referred
exists. His active and enlarged faculties ; his bound-
less capabilities of imagination and feeling ; his ex-
tended, complex, and ever-varying social and politi-
cal relations; his intimate associations and intercourse
with his kind, with their various and controlling in-
fluences on his character, involving him in a constant
struggle of emulation, rivalry, and antagonism ; his
quick and powerful appetites, unrestrained by any
natural checks, but fanned and fed into ceaseless
flame by artificial and irregular modes of life, by
the thousand excitements and allurements by which
he is surrounded, by the desires which they gener-
ate, and the proffered means of their gratification,
all conspire to render almost impossible an equable
or tranquil existence. They create the most immi-
nent danger that he will succumb to unregulated
passion, and the highest necessity for safeguards far
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 21
snperior, both in number and in kind, to those of
the creatures below him. How far Nature has re-
sponded to this necessity, will be best understood by
enumerating the more important of the protections
which she has provided.
First. One protecting influence is derived from
the sensibilities themselves, in the counterpoise of
the emotions against each other, so that the strength
of one class of affections oftentimes counteracts the
rising violence of another class. Thus anger could
o o
hardly grow inordinate against a being who was at
the same time deeply loved, reverenced, or pitied ;
or whose favor was necessary to be acquired or re-
tained for some ulterior end. These influences are
common to both man and the brutes, (though affect-
ing the latter, of course, to an inferior degree,) since
the mutual intercourse of all creatures is based on
their common sympathies, necessities, or interests.
In human society, how often is cruelty, or greed, or
lust, restrained in its inception by self-interest, or
pride, or some other, perhaps more honorable, senti-
ment ! How many severe and rugged natures, how
many selfish and depraved hearts, invulnerable to
all other influences, have been softened and reformed
by the gentle power of companions or friends, lov-
ing and beloved! In these, as in other cases of
opposing sensibilities, man's social relations, while
they enhance the danger, also greatly strengthen
the preventives of evil.
The sensibility, however, which merits special
22 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
notice, as perhaps the most important of these checks
upon the appetites, is fear. In all creatures, whose
passions crave undue gratification, the fear of con-
sequent inconvenience or suffering of some sort, of
retaliation or retribution from some quarter, operates
as a powerful restraint. Even in the lower animals
its effect is marked, but in Man, with whom expe-
rience and forecast have a distinguished influence
upon conduct, it becomes an eminent bulwark of
virtue. It is to this that human codes universally
appeal, and it is through this, in great measure, that
the Divine law enforces its authority. For, apart
from the apprehension of punishment in a future
state, experience shows that morality cannot be
sacrificed to passion with impunity, even in this life ;
since diseases, pains, and suffering, in a thousand
forms, follow inevitably and naturally the violation
of Nature's laws. In this conspicuous and tremen-
dous truth, we find the solution of the mystery
attending the presence of physical suffering in the
world of a benevolent God. The sensitive nerves
of our bodies are formed that their exquisite powers
of torture may keep us from violating the rules of
health, thus to secure through the soundness of our
systems, the mental and physical preservation of the
race. Hence the physical woes, of which the world
is full, whose wide-spread evils affect even remote
posterities, are designed to warn and deter man-
kind by an appeal to every natural affection and
motive, from the fatal indulgence of the passions,
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 23
of which such evils are made the inevitable conse-
quence. How many would there be, temperate,
continent, or cleanly, were not the frightful fruits
of opposite conduct confronting men on every side,
in blighted intellects and defective bodies, in diseases
and death, whose flying shafts find victims among
the innocent as well as the guilty ? Where would
be the civilization, the progress, nay, the very exist-
ence of the race, were there no stronger incentives
to purity, to industry, and to mental cultivation,
than to filthiness, ignorance, and sloth ? If exist-
ence, with health and advancement, be a blessing,
and cannot be so without these conditions, then
there can be no more real benevolence than that
which seeks to prevent, by the penalty of physical
suffering, the far greater evils of the debasement or
extinction of the race. Nor does the fact, that the
unoffending are often involved in the effects of guilt,
offer any refutation of this principle. The execu-
tion of human laws is not stayed, because it will
bring affliction and distress to others besides the
criminal; and it is the consideration of this very
truth, both in the human system and the divine,
that keeps men back from crime, who might other-
wise think to brave merely personal calamities, or
elude them by self-destruction.
Secondly. A farther restraint upon the appetites
is derived from the intellectual powers of man, in
the suggestions of his reason. The mind, contem-
plating the passions in the light of experience, and
24 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
under the conviction of its own high nature and
destiny, recognizes them, if not controlled, as not
only dangerous to the individual and society, but as
impediments in the way of man's advancement to
his highest development and happiness. As the
dictate of reason, therefore, he is interested to re-
linquish their present gratification for a higher good,
and even to engage in many a painful struggle to
attain to their discipline and conquest. Upon this
principle were based some of the most prevalent
systems of ancient philosophy, and even with the
most imperfect reasoners, something of the same
conviction has its influence. So, too, carrying the
principle still farther, we not only endeavor to con-
trol ourselves, but, organizing Society in order to
promote the general progress, we make laws to
regulate those who will not exercise a due self-
government ; not only punishing crime, but exclud-
ing from our midst the sources of temptation to its
commission. Thus reason, rightly employed, ren-
ders valuable counsel for the control of the passions ;
yet experience has shown that it exerts but an
imperfect efficiency over mankind for virtue, since
human tempers are in general too gross to be com-
pletely swayed by its refined and elevated teach-
ings.
Indeed, we hardly need look abroad upon the
actual moral condition of man, to see, were there
no other guards over the human passions than those
we have enumerated, how inadequate they would
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 25
prove in experience. Beneficial as they have been,
and considerable as has been the evil they have
prevented, how small is the relative degree of their
control ! How vast is the proportion of human
folly and wickedness which would break over the
better impulses of the heart, and the strongest ap-
peals of reason and interest ! Nay, how often is
it that reason and self-love themselves, beguiled,
blinded, and depraved, are enlisted by passion in
its service, and do battle in its behalf! Surely,
He who had so carefully guarded the half-formed
appetites of the brutes, would not leave man with-
out more adequate protection against their untram-
melled energies.
Far indeed has been the Divine Author of man's
being from overlooking this necessity. With spe-
cial provision for it, he has implanted in the hu-
man mind a new and wonderful faculty, whose
express purpose is the regulation of the mind's in-
ferior principles ; and this, the most important of
its restraining forces, lying-in fact at the basis of
all others and imparting to them their influence,
occupies the governing seat in the soul. It is
" the conscience," or " the moral sense ; " a faculty
which we shall hereafter discuss from other points
of view, but which we here refer to, simply as the
great conserving element in man's mental organiza-
tion. It is this, as before suggested, upon which
repose, more or less immediately, (at least for their
strongest bearings on human conduct,) those influ-
26 THE RISE AND THE X F ALL.
ences of control to which we have already ad-
verted, affection, fear, and reason. But its direct
action on the mind is far more important and infal-
lible than that through any subordinate agencies.
Unlike these, it keeps constant and vigilant guard
over the first movements of the appetites, not
waiting until they have so far attained mastery over
the creature as to be planning some open and
flagrant demonstration. While thus watching the
germs of evil, it is yet not incapable of grappling
with the more formidable forms of passion, but en-
counters them with a potent and unyielding resist-
ance. Instinctive in its nature, and independent in
its judgments, it acts with the rapidity of thought,
and with the force of a divine mandate. Of all
the mental faculties it matures the earliest, and
though by a long course of opposition and neglect
it may be perverted or stupefied, it is never entirely
blinded or destroyed ; but sooner or later it will
start from the dust to exact against its betrayer a
terrible vengeance. Thus the soul hears its admo-
nitions and obeys them alike with reverence and
with fear, its still but solemn whisper, at once
breathing the Divine affection, and suggesting the
terrors which it reserves for disobedience in the
agonies of remorse.
It may Be thought that we have overstated the
influence of conscience as a natural restraint on
the passions, inasmuch as among races or classes
destitute of moral training, its teachings are neither
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 27
so powerful nor so unerring as we have implied.
Undoubtedly man has more capability than any
other creature, by education or habit, to affect the
development of his faculties, and of this among the
rest ; and it cannot be denied that he may become
so imbruted by barbarism or vice, as to be almost
unconscious of any better nature within him. So
particular tribes have their reasoning powers so
blunted by disuse and degradation, that they seem
little if any, superior to the brutes ; yet it is none
the less true that the intellectual faculty is the dis-
tinguishing and exalted characteristic of man. And
it would also be wrong to say, even of the most
hardened votaries of vice, that they are quite be-
yond the actual influence of the moral sense.
There are few human beings, however degraded
or depraved, that do not recognize with the com-
mon approbation some acts to be emulated, as no-
ble, generous, and just, and despise others as to be
avoided, because they are base, atrocious, or vile.
Thus such distinctions more or less affect their
conduct : but it is not merely by its power within
the individual breast that this faculty operates to
repress the evil outgrowth of the passions. Its
influence pervading society, gives rise to laws, how-
ever rude and imperfect, and creates that right
public sentiment more powerful than laws, which
men fear more than death itself, for who dare face
the conscience of the World ? Even the moral
sense of a single honored friend will often have
28 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
more strength than the strongest temptation ; and
men whose elevated position places them as if
above the control of human influence, nay, even
communities and nations in their collective capac-
ity, whose united passions might seem able to
create a sustaining public sentiment in behalf of
some evil course, tremble and pause before the
apprehended verdict of a distant posterity !
The conscience, then, the moral sense, is incom-
parably the strongest influence in the human mind
to protect it from the excesses of appetite. If we
doubt it, let us suppose for a moment that this fac-
ulty were obliterated, and the distinction between
right and wrong abolished in every human breast.
Where then would be reason and the kindly affec-
tions as effectual resistants to the passions ? What
would there then be to awaken against temptation
the emotion of fear ? How long would opposing
laws continue to be enacted, or if enacted, ob-
served ? But the mind refuses to dwell on the
supposition. The imagination shudders to contem-
plate the flood of horror and desolation which
would then sweep over the earth and change its
face to the semblance of Hell ; before which, what-
soever is true, is lovely, or of good report, every-
thing which gives us pleasure to behold or joy to
experience, learning, art, civilization, even the
race itself, would be swept through terror, anguish,
and despair into inevitable extinction.
Thus it appears that when the Creator, having
OFFICE OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 29
organized the inanimate universe with its method
of forces and counter-forces, and formed the lower
orders of animals, grade after grade, under the like
system of impulses and checks in their subjective
and objective conditions of being, came to create
man, he constituted him upon no new principles,
but, both in his bodily structure and in his psy-
chological system, in pursuance of this uniform and
well-considered plan. Even his distinguishing
characteristic, the moral faculty, is in strict con-
formity with its requirement of a regulating and
balancing force in the mind. But as the whole
physical and mental being of man is upon a vastly
more noble and perfect scale than those of the ani-
mals which preceded him, so this new conserving
force is of a nature far different from and superior
to any ever before implanted, not performing that
office merely, but affecting the soul with other and
grander influences peculiar to humanity. These
peculiar effects and influences of the moral faculty
it devolves upon us now to consider.
80 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER IV.
OF THE ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY.
APART from Man's moral history there is, as we
have seen, nothing to indicate that he exists under
different relations or laws of being from the races
which preceded or surround him. Up to this point
we have viewed him simply as an intellectual ani-
mal, the latest formed in the historical series, and
the highest in the ascending scale. We have re-
garded his moral faculty merely in its aspect of a
natural curbing force on his passions, and as such in
exact correspondence with similar provisions in other
creatures. But when we come to consider the na-
ture of that curbing force, the new relations and
responsibilities in which it involves its owner, and
the other ulterior consequences of its possession, we
enter a field beyond the line of discoverable analo-
gies, and exclusively pertaining to Man.
Of the nature of the moral faculty or conscience
(of which, more hereafter) we need only say, in
this place, that it is \vell defined by Webster to be
that " faculty, power, or principle within us, which
decides on the lawfulness or unlawfulness of our
own actions or affections, and instantly approves or
condemns them." We have already discussed the
ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 31
identity of " the springs of action " in all creatures,
and seen that the feelings and actions which they
inspire have a common resemblance. Hence any
pernicious indulgence of passion is the same act in a
brute as in man, and is attended with the same evil
natural results, and yet, by a common and in-
stinctive impulse, we view the act in the two cases
in totally different lights. In the human animal we
regard it as abhorrent, censurable, and degrading,
while in the other, we contemplate it with no such
emotions. The reason is familiar. The moral sense
which the man is known to possess, invests the act
in him with a character, which, without such a
faculty in his breast, it could not have ; and we intui-
tively feel that it is the possession or non-possession
of the moral sense that makes the act in the perpe-
trator criminal or blameless. Thus, through the
moral faculty, man comes to recognize the unregu-
lated movement of appetite within himself, under a
new and revolting aspect, and denominates it SIN.
Much obscurity, and confusion has arisen, we con-
ceive, in moral and theological discussions, from a
neglect to observe the distinction between the ab-
O
stract and the concrete meanings of this word, Sin.
A full consideration of the foregoing principles leads
us to conclude that SIN, strictly speaking, is neither
the unduly indulged human desires or affections, nor
even their undue indulgence, but the. criminality or
guiltiness attaching to such undue acts or course of
conduct, or rather the criminal or guilty principle
32 THE EISE AND THE FALL.
which invests them. Thus if we can conceive of
such undue indulgence under such special circum-
stances of ignorance or other exculpation, as divest
it of its criminality, it ceases to be sin. We may,
perhaps, find examples of this, in practices common
in less enlightened ages, among even the holiest of
men, as polygamy among the Patriarchs, a prac-
tice of intolerable turpitude in a Christian age and
country, but which, in those earlier days, did not
partake of sin. So, too, we speak of men refrain-
ing from certain pleasurable acts through dread of
the sin involved in them, and of all men as tainted
with sin, though all be not at this moment engaged
in its commission. This then is sin in the abstract,
or that which gives its character to the actual deed.
Sin in the concrete is the act thus criminally charac-
terized ; and is the voluntary undue indulgence by
a moral agent of any of those natural affections or
desires which are common to all created beings.
The commission must be by a moral being, and must
also be voluntary ; because without both these con-
ditions it could not be criminal, and hence could not
be imbued with the character of sin.
It will be observed, too, that the undue expres-
sions of emotions or affections in acts which become
sins, are such as are or may be displayed by all
creatures, and are sinful only when put forth by mor-
ally accountable beings. 1 Had there never been, and
1 We here assume, what we have before suggested, that every sin is
resolvable into the undue action of some natural and innocent propen-
ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 33
could there never be, any such over-indulgence, ex-
cept by moral beings, and so, none unattended with
sin, the distinction might be of little moment ; but
in view of the actual history of all created beings,
an inquiry into the origin and effects of sin, finds it
a wide and important distinction, and one that should
be clearly recognized. $m, says Webster, (though
the definition is applicable only to sin as a concrete
term,) " is the voluntary departure of a moral agent
from a known rule of rectitude " ; but perhaps it
might be more fully expressed to be " the voluntary
neglect of a moral agent to control any natural pro-
pensity within the limits prescribed by conscience,"
or, in other words, "the voluntary disregard by such
being of the admonitions of his moral sense, prompt-
ing to the due regulation of any natural appetite."
Hence, it consists in the disobedience of the moral
sense, and cannot be predicated of any indulgence
of passion, however gross, extensive, or deliberate,
where the moral sense is wanting, to interpose its
light and remonstrances.
Now, while it is this disobedience of conscience
sity. This is not only sustainable on philosophical grounds, but is
sanctioned by Scripture authority. Thus the Apostle James (i. 14, 15)
says: " When lust (ewieu/xia, which means any strong desire, generally
used in the New Testament for innocent desire) hath conceived, it
bringeth forth sin," making sin to be the final result of a preexisting,
and, of course, innocent propensity or affection. ( See Scott's Commen-
taries on this passage.) As an illustration: the sin of doing evil that
good may come, where the inspiring motive or desire might seem to be
disinterested, consists in the indulgence of pi-ide, in preferring our own
ideas of policy to the plain teachings of conscience and Revelation.
3
34 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
which imparts a moral character to the commission
of any act of passion, it is, nevertheless, the act
itself, irrespective of its moral character, the pas-
sions themselves, thus predominating over rational
self-control, which bring discord and suffering into
the natural world. Such evils, it may therefore
be said, are the result of passions which, as devel-
oped and expressed in action, are indeed sinful,
but not of their sinfulness. While then it is in
one sense true that Sin (i. e., Man's voluntary
over-indulgence of appetite) produces human mis-
ery and ruin, it is no less true that, just as the same
evils did prevail as the fruits of the same passions
before man was formed, and do still prevail among
the inferior and sinless creatures, so they would
doubtless have existed among men to a still greater
degree than they do, had the turpitude of these pas-
sions continued unrevealed to the eye of a moral
sense, and so, sin never have become an inmate of
creation.
It will not be inferred that these remarks repre-
sent sin in any sense as a blessing, or even as the
mitigation of other evils. On the contrary, it ap-
pears that Sin itself, even in the concrete, (man's
actual voluntary self-subjection to appetite against
the appeals of conscience,) involves the soul in a
degradation and guilt, additional to, and infinitely
more sad and fearful than the merely natural evils
which result from inordinate passions. Sin, there-
fore, in its commission, so far from diminishing the
ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 35
amount of evil and sorrow in the world, vastly
enhances it ; for it adds a new woe to the natural
miseries that spring from the acts to which it apper-
tains, and so, wherever it exists as a realized actual-
ity, is a curse and only a curse to the universe. Yet
the origination of Sin in its commission, as an actual
thing is to be distinguished from its prior origina-
tion as a possible thing ; or, to change the order of
the terms, its first appearance as a mentally con-
ceived abstraction, from its first appearance as an
accomplished fact. And we shall perceive, with little
reflection, that while the latter event, effected by
Man, was a dreadful and sorrowful epoch in the
history of the race, the former, prior in time, and
effected by the Creator when he conferred the moral
faculty, though momentous in its nature and effects,
yet tended to the benefit and elevation of humanity.
First ; we say it tended to the benefit of humanity,
and in a previous chapter we have shown that it
does, in fact, immensely promote such benefit as a
curb upon unlawful appetite. Sin, terrible and
hateful foe as it is to our happiness and welfare, is
brought to our view and comprehension not as a
hideous yet harmless phantom, powerless, therefore,
for good as well as evil, but as a real and dangerous
destroyer, in order, doubtless, that both by its de-
formity and the reality of our peril, it may deter us
from self-ruin, and promote our advancement. Thus
sin in the abstract, (by which we mean sin existing
as an object of mental conception,) like threatened
36 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
diseases and death and other recognized punish-
ments of passion, is designed and calculated to aid
toward our permanent and highest well-being, and
\vas doubtless for this end introduced as a possibility
into the world.
In accordance with this benevolent purpose, we
find the moral instinct, which, like a divinely lighted
beacon, reveals sin only to warn from it, exerting its
beneficent office in every human breast, even in
those to which in their ignorance and darkness its
nature and its objects are an unregarded or an un-
fathomable mystery. Though greatly assisted and
enlightened by the revelation of man's relations and
duties to his Creator, it is yet not dependent on this
for its awakening ; for it shines, dimly perhaps, but
really, in minds which never heard of God, and
never conceived a system or even an idea of duty.
Every man recognizes not only in the world, but
more or less clearly within himself, two great antag-
onistic elements or forces, in constant contention for
the supremacy, " the law of his members, warring
against the law of his mind," till the agonized soul,
not of the Christian apostle merely, but even of the
uninstructed Pagan, exclaims in dismay, " Oh,
wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from
the body of this death ! "
" Si possem sanior essem,
Sed trahit invitum nova vis : aliudque cupido,
Mens aliud suadet. Video meliora proboque,
Deteriora sequor." i
i Ovid.
ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 37
Again, we say it tended to the elevation of hu-
manity, for so far as man avails himself of his moral
faculty for its intended purposes, and submits him-
self to its control, it exalts him in the scale of being.
No less true is it, that when he neglects its use and
yields to the cravings of lawless appetite, he de-
scends^ in consequence of its possession, to a level
more degraded than if he had never been capable
of moral distinctions. That he fails, however, so
far as he does, to use it rightly, does not militate
against the benevolence of its design, nor make it
other than the most glorious of his attributes. That
it is an elevating endowment, indeed, would seem
to follow from the very fact that it awakens the
mind to new perceptions and powers, and thus en-
larges the scope of the human nature. But in addi-
tion to this, it opens to man, through these new
perceptions and powers, the loftiest honors, and the
purest delights of which he is capable. It places
him upon the same high stand-point from which
God himself views his moral creation, and there
brings him into communion with his Maker, and
into sympathy with his plans. It raises his soul to
the contemplation of those infinite subjects, and to
participation in those exalted joys, that throng around
such divine revelations. It expands his mental vision,
to take in a new Universe of Truth, and like the
celestial inhabitants, to behold its great and radiant
orbs, wheeling their everlasting circuits about the
Right, and steadfastly obeying its immutable laws.
38 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
To no eyes but to those endued with moral percep-
tions, can these sublime harmonies be revealed ; and
his will be the highest joys, and the loftiest eleva-
tion of soul, who shall most clearly comprehend the
order and method of these eternal Systems, even as
He understands and rejoices in them, who presides
over their perfect, yet often mysterious workings.
It appears, then, that " the introduction of Sin
into the World " was a blessing or a curse, accord-
ing as we refer to one event or another, by the ex-
pression. If we conceive of man as at the outset
created, and for a time continuing, a noble intellect-
ual being, indeed, but like all other earthly creat-
ures, destitute of the faculty which distinguishes
between right and wrong, then we imagine a world
" without sin " in every sense of the term. It is
obvious, that whatever might be under such circum-
stances, his course of life, whether he should pre-
serve his normal purity and rational self-government,
or become like the brutes, selfish, grovelling, and
beastly, still like them, he must be innocent, with-
out sin, because without responsibility. As his obe-
dience to any law of God, whether speaking within
him by the voice of nature and reason, or uttered
to him by direct revelation, would be without merit
as holiness, so his disobedience of any such com-
mand would be without turpitude as sin. And so,
neither holiness nor sin could be found in the world,
either in actual or possible experience, nay, even in
possible conception. We do not mean, of course,
ULTERIOR EFFECTS OF THE MORAL FACULTY. 39
that they would not exist as recognizable principles
in the mind of God, and of other moral beings. We
only mean that they would have no place in the
lower world as actual or possible facts or influences,
just as gravity may be conceived of as an existing
force in some other Universe, and absent from ours.
Upon such a creature, let now the moral sense be
suddenly conferred, and his mind opened at once to
the recognition of right and wrong, both in the ab-
stract, and as capable of being illustrated in his own
thoughts and conduct. It is apparent that imme-
diately a new force, influence, or principle, is brought
into the world. Sin, as a possibility in experience,
and hence a reality, to the extent of exciting appre-
hension, and of exerting influence, becomes an in-
mate of creation ; and this, none the less truly,
whether man avoid or not its actual commission,
just as gravity is an actual force, a reality, produc-
ing effect, (and what but a reality can produce
effect .?) as well upon the balloon which overcomes
it, as upon the stone which it enchains. Hence,
even though man should still hold himself pure and
intact from sin's contamination, yet he begins to re-
gard those natural outgoings of passion which, under
the guidance of conscience, he resists and controls,
as the innate tendencies of his nature to " corrup-
tion " and " depravity," and bemoans their terrible
force. But though the applicability of these sad
terms to his nature is thus consequent upon the re-
ception of the moral faculty, that new gift has not
40 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
debased but exalted him in the scale of being and in
the means of happiness. It is not until, in his weak-
ness and folly, he suffers passion to override the ap-
peals of duty, and falls into the actual commission of
Sin, that degradation begins. 1 Then, and only then,
enters the curse of Sin, and to a vast and woful
curse, alas ! has man allowed it to grow, notwith-
standing the immense and blessed influence of the
moral sense for its prevention and restraint.
It is this mournful result, perhaps, thus following
the conferment of the moral faculty upon mankind,
which has tended, more than anything else, to ob-
scure the distinction between the first appearance
of sin as a thing comprehended, and its first appear-
ance as a thing committed. And, indeed, (if the
distinction is fairly borne in mind to prevent confu-
sion,) the unhappy fact, no less than a correct phi-
losophy, will justify us in speaking of sin as being
first introduced into the world by the bestowal of
the moral sense ; for as it could never have been
manifested in man without that previous gift, so
it was then that he began to feel and recognize its
presence and power within him ; and finally, its
subsequent prevalence has been, though not by a
logical necessity, yet by historical result, the conse-
quence of such bestowal.
1 See Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 226.
MORAL FACULTY DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT. 41
CHAPTER V.
THAT THE MORAL FACULTY IS A DISTINCT AND INDE-
PENDENT FACULTY.
THE object of the foregoing chapters has been to
show that the moral sense exists as a part of man's
natural constitution, subserving a necessary and use-
ful purpose in his animal economy, and that its
presence within him is in strict conformity to Na-
ture's laws and analogies ; also, that it is an elevat-
ing and beneficent endowment, preventing a vast
amount of sorrow, suffering, and evil, which would
otherwise prevail ; and finally, that while without it,
man would not have possessed his present opportu-
nities for the highest progress and happiness, neither
would he, on the other hand, have been a being
capable of sin, or in any way morally responsible.
We are now prepared to enter on another inquiry,
namely, Does Philosophy offer any suggestion as
to the period of Man's career when he was first in-
vested with this noble, yet solemnly momentous gift ?
In response to this inquiry, probably the first im-
pulse of every mind would prompt the answer which
accords with the general idea, that doubtless the
progenitor of the race received the moral faculty
at his creation, as a part of his original constitution,
42 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
and so transmitted it to his descendants. Scripture,
perhaps, would be appealed to in support of the
theory. The teachings of Scripture, however, will
be the subject of future examination. That they
do not support such a doctrine, we think we shall be
able to show. We are now seeking the intimations
of Philosophy alone, and shall attempt to prove that
if these do not (as indeed they cannot) establish,
they at least do not discountenance the supposition
that the moral faculty may have been conferred upon
Man (that is, upon the first or representative man
of the race) at a period subsequent to his creation,
and after the reception of his other mental powers.
If we recall in this connection the fact, that in every
child, other mental faculties unfold, in a considera-
ble degree, before we discover the conscience, (z. e.,
the capability of distinguishing the moral difference
between right and wrong,) although this faculty
once awakened, matures more rapidly than the rest,
we shall, perhaps, perceive in the outset an argu-
ment of analogy in favor of such a theory. We
shall further support it by maintaining three propo-
sitions, viz. :
1st. That the moral faculty is a distinct and inde-
pendent faculty of the mind, not growing out of,
nor necessarily associated with, its other powers ; but
separable, and therefore capable of being conferred
at a period subsequent to the rest, just as we
might suppose the faculty of sight imparted to a
blind man, or of reason to an idiot.
MORAL FACULTY DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT. 43
2d. That this faculty was not required for man's
use at the outset of his existence, and there is there-
fore nothing improbable or derogatory to his origi-
nal nature in supposing him at first destitute of it.
3d. That reasons connected with the moral re-
sponsibility which became imposed on man through
his reception of the moral sense, and the other mo-
mentous consequences which necessarily, or in fact,
hung upon it, may lend strong ground for an in-
ference that his Maker would prefer to impart this
faculty to man, at a period subsequent to the recep-
tion and partial cultivation of his other mental powers.
Of these propositions, the first will, in this chap-
ter, receive our attention.
The theory that the moral sense is a distinct and
independent faculty of the human mind, and one
not capable of being developed from its other pow-
ers, is one so generally accepted by moral philoso-
phers, and so fully and ably established in many
works, that it need hardly be discussed in these
pages. That our argument, however, may be com-
plete, we will endeavor to enforce it by a few sug-
gestions.
1st. The moral sense, as we have before remarked,
has but a partial resemblance to, or connection with,
the other mental faculties in its development and
operations. It matures more rapidly than any other,
and with less cultivation, and as a general rule, it
survives the decay of all the rest. We would not
be understood as asserting that the conscience is
44 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
totally dissimilar from the rest of the mind in its
phenomena, or entirely independent of its influences
and laws. Yet it undoubtedly does act, to a certain
degree, upon distinct principles, and in a manner
diverse from the other faculties of the mind. It
stands apart from them in the motives which it
urges for conduct, and draws its arguments and its
appeals from sources exterior to the man, as if it
belonged not to himself, but were the embassador
and functionary of some external power. Hence it
often, nay generally, finds itself in opposition to the
other faculties of man's being, and though, like 3,
minister resident at a foreign court, it is too often
affected by the influences and bribes of those with
whom it has to deal, yet there still remains enough
of general fidelity to its mission to vindicate at least
the independence of its origin.
2d. That the discernment exercised by the moral
faculty, or the distinction it recognizes between right
and wrong, can be reached by it alone, and is not
attainable by the Reason, is another evidence of its
distinctness of nature. This distinction is one so
peculiar and so unlike any of the deductions of In-
tellect, that not even when clearly perceived and
comprehended, can it be explained or illustrated by
the Reason, or even be reasoned about, without mak-
ing use of terms that imply a previous conception
of it, and which are incapable of definition without
such previous conception. The intellect, indeed,
pronounces upon acts or thoughts simply as accord-
MORAL FACULTY DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT. 45
ant or inconsistent with reason. Single deviations
it pronounces errors ; habitual and systematic aber-
rations, insanity ; but here the intellect stops, and
the moral sense alone is put in requisition to affix to
such errors or insanity the character of innocence
or guilt. We can lay down no series of premise
and inference, whereby this distinction between right
and wrong, even with our present instinctive appre-
hension of it through the conscience, can, without
its aid, be reached by the other intellectual powers.
Still less can we conceive any by which it might
have been by them alone originally discovered. That
the unchecked sway of the passions in man must
be a source of disorder to himself and the universe,
and that true self-interest required their restraint,
man might doubtless have perceived upon sober and
just reflection. Yet even this conviction would
require the teachings and the test of experience, as
well as some previous cultivation and practice of the
reasoning powers. Even when attained, he could
only regard it as the result of speculative conject-
ure, or as the deduction of logic, which, if pursued
further or with more acuteness, might have brought
him to a different conclusion. How conflicting, im-
perfect, and unsatisfactory, would be merely intel-
lectual searchings for moral truth, is strikingly illus-
trated in the benighted gropings in that direction of
the ancient philosophers. Centiiry after century,
men of the brightest intellectual powers and culti-
vation, with all their zeal and interest to discover
46 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
new foundations for peculiar schools, and with the
light of the natural moral sense besides, disputed
and doubted whether between right and wrong
there existed any genuine distinction or no. Socra-
tes and Plato, indeed, seemed almost to walk in the
light of a true moral and spiritual illumination, yet
even these discerned their way but doubtfully ;
while others, though with the benefit of their teach-
ings, could scarcely agree that there existed between
virtue and vice any more definite distinction than
marks the difference between " the beautiful " and
" the deformed."
3d. That the moral sense is not the offspring of
the intellect further appears, from the fact that its
movements are instinctive, or, in other words, that it
acts without the intervention of reason. Indeed,
necessity requires that such should be its character,
in order to answer its design as a conservative force
over the passions. That it is instinctive, we gather
from our own experience of its movements, and
from our observation of it in children, at a period
of their lives too early for it to be possibly suggested
by the reasoning powers. Nor is this all. We see
it often act with energy and influence in opposition
to the efforts of Reason. It repudiates the conclu-
sions of logic which would philosophize away the
distinctions of right and wrong, and has saved many
an honest soul from ruin by the sophistry which he
could not refute. The reasoning of temptation may
satisfy the intellect, yet there is an internal, an in-
MORAL FACULTY DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT. 47
stinctive conviction, which rejects and defies its re-
sults. That as a conservative power it needs to be
instinctive, is plain, when we consider the nature of
the forces with which it has to do. An intellectual
process, however conclusive, would be useless to the
soul as a defence against the electric and shifting
attacks of passion. While bringing out its slow
machinery of premise and inference, the victory
over it would be won. The instinctive and active
appetites must be combated not only, they must be
unremittingly watched by a sentinel of equally in-
stinctive vigilance, one that will start at their
slightest movement, and thunder its warning voice
in the ear of the soul with the commanding tone of
Divine authority.
4th. Another essential difference is thus sug-
gested between the conscience and the judgment,
in that it speaks, not as from its own convictions,
however conclusive, but as an echo of the awful
voice of Deity itself, commanding obedience, enforc-
ing it thus with the whole weight of his law, and
with all its tremendous sanctions. Without this
idea of obligation, there might be such terms as
" expedient " and " inexpedient," but none like
" ought " and " duty," right " and " wrong."
Even the direct command of God, enforced by a
threatened penalty, could not suggest this " duty "
of obedience, unless addressed to a moral concep-
tion. 1 Man might submit from fear, from love,
1 See McCosh On Divine Government, p. 300, &c., &c.
48 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
from discipline, from disinterested desire for the
general good, or from all combined ; but there is
nothing in these that resembles that controlling
<J O
principle of action which prescribes a line of con-
duct because it is right, regardless of consequences,
and though neither God nor man should ever know
or be affected by an opposite course. Still less is
there anything in them which could refer back the
commands and laws of God himself to an abstract
standard implanted in the human breast, by which
these laws, and even their Maker's character, might
be judged. Such a standard there exists, not pre-
sumptuously established by man's device, but fixed
within him by God himself, and by Him appealed to
when he reasons with his creatures, " Hear, O
Israel ; Are not my ways equal ? are not your ways
unequal ? "
These moral ideas then, clearly as the mind now
receives them, are attainable through the moral
sense alone ; and the perceptions thus acquired are
as distinct from those of the intellect as are the
discernments of physical sight, without which we
could have no realizing conception of natural forms,
however accurately we might be able to describe
them in the terms of geometry. And so, even as
the intellectual faculties may subsist in the high-
est perfection without the bodily vision, is there
equally no such intimate connection between them
and the moral sense, that man must necessarily have
received them together. The latter, distinct, sep-
MORAL FACULTY DISTINCT AND INDEPENDENT. 49
arable, and subsequent in order of action to the other
mental powers, depending, therefore, upon them for
its movements, but not needful to them, may have
been, so far as Philosophy can judge, conferred upon
the first man, (even as it develops itself in each
of his descendants,) after he became a reasoning
creature.
4
50 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER VI.
THAT MAN HAD NO OCCASION FOR THE MORAL FAC-
ULTY AT THE OUTSET OF HIS EXISTENCE.
IN maintaining the possibility that the moral fac-
ulty may have been conferred upon Man at a period
subsequent to his creation, we now arrive at the
second proposition in the preceding chapter, viz.:
That this faculty was not required for man's use at
the outset of his existence, and that there is there-
fore nothing intrinsically improbable or derogatory
to his original nature in supposing that he was then,
for a time, destitute of it.
We scarcely need premise that in this portion, as
in the whole of our argument, we assume the early
history of mankind to have been truly narrated in
the Book of Genesis. We suppose Adam, whether
the sole progenitor of the race or not, to have been
in the outset its representative, and the founder of
its whole subsequent moral condition and career.
In speaking, then, of the primal or original state of
Man, we refer, of course, to the primal or original
state of Adam, as the representative of the race at
that period. Let us, then, in support of our propo-
sition, consider for a moment how far a moral sense
MORAL SENSE AT FIRST UXSTECESSARY. 51
could have been requisite or even serviceable to
Adam in the dawn of his existence.
Let us suppose him, in accordance with our view,
created with a nature in no way differing from that
of his descendants, except in the absence of that
distinct, independent, and separable faculty, the
moral sense, a creature of noble intellectual fac-
ulties, suddenly awakened into life in the midst of
scenes which, to his fresh and vigorous senses, must
have been so strange, so exciting, and so beautiful,
as to long absorb his whole being with astonishment
and delight. The varied and transcendent charms
of Nature, with her ever - changing aspect; the
movements of the elements, the myriad differing
forms of living creatures about him, expressing with
their thousand acts and voices the joy of existence,
and, most mysterious of all, himself, with all his
faculties, these, and all the questions connected
with them, were ever presenting to his active and in-
quiring mind new subjects of pleasing contemplation.
" About me, round, I saw
Hill, dale, and shady woods, and sunny plains,
And liquid lapse of murmuring streams : by these,
Creatures that lived and moved and walked or flew:
Birds on the branches warbling, all things smiled.
With fragrance and with joy, my heart o'erflowed.
Myself I then perused, and limb by limb
Surveyed ;
But who I was or where, or from what cause,
Knew not.
" Thou Sun," said I, " fair light,
And thou enlightened earth, so fresh and gay,
Ye hills and dales, ye rivers, woods, and plains,
And ye that live and move, fair creatures, tell,
Tell if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? "
52 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
Nor was he destitute of companionship, which
might add to his enjoyment, as well as guide and
instruct him in his investigations. Both before and
after the creation of Eve, the society of his Maker
attended him in his daily walks, instructing him how
to dress and to keep the garden, bringing to him the
inferior creatures, and informing him, doubtless, of
their habits and dispositions, that he might give
them appropriate names ; and in other ways which
we can now only imagine, paternally imparting to
him necessary information with regard to the earth
and its inhabitants, over which he was to have do-
minion, teaching him the facts, the laws, and the
phenomena of that great kingdom of Nature, whose
ruler he had been constituted. Day after day, new
discoveries and new delights crowded the hours in
this intimate intercourse of creature wdth Creator,
his growing powers expanding to an ever-wider and
deeper range of thought and intelligence. In this
early and tranquil period of isolation from all so-
ciety but that of his God ; approached by none of
the allurements or excitements to passion, and with
the cultivation of the nobler powers absorbing his
soul, it is inconceivable that the protection of a
moral sense should have been necessary to Man,
(especially to the first and only man, and during the
earlier portion of his existence,) in order to repress
the inordinate growth of his baser passions. Infi-
nitely, the greater part of men's follies and sins
spring directly or indirectly out of their connection
A MORAL SENSE AT FIRST NEEDLESS. 53
with human society, its demands, its excitements,
and its struggles. The wanderer on a desert island
is almost inevitably weaned from vicious propensi-
ties to a virtuous life by the mere absence of temp-
tation, and so much more must the first man, icjno-
* ' O
rant of the name, the nature, or the experience of
evil, and resting constantly under the immediate
guidance and supervision of his Creator, of neces-
sity, and without the influence of a moral sense,
have preserved the elevation, simplicity, and dignity
of character with which he was created, the per-
fection of purity and innocence. So far as his bodily
propensities, or his natural sensibilities were con-
cerned, there was certainly no call for an instinctive
and powerful check upon the passions ; since these
were amply controlled by his Divine society, his rea-
son, and the circumstances which surrounded him.
Equally premature would be the possession by
man, at this period, of the moral sense, as a means
of mental growth and development. The considera-
tions which we have just advanced against its neces-
sity for his protection, are equally applicable here.
Coming into the world animate and inanimate, over
which he had been constituted the ruler, the fun-
damental injunction resting upon him " to subdue "
nature, which he could do alone by the study of
its phenomena, his first necessity would be, as
it still is of his posterity, to bend his mind to the
contemplation of the natural facts and laws under
which he was to live. The supervision of his Maker,
54 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
if not his reason and circumstances, would, as we
have seen, amply suffice to keep him in the path of
rectitude, (were there any opportunity to deviate,)
and it is difficult to conceive how, with his ignorance
of the future experiences of life, and of the ques-
tions which they alone could suggest, his intellect
could in any case have wandered from the practical
matters before it, into abstract speculations in moral
philosophy. The true and natural development of
his mind would be, as it is in the infant, not through
the study of moral laws, but by the contemplation
of nature, and by intercourse with superior intel-
ligence. Whether moral injunctions or principles
were, in fact, prescribed to him at this period, we
shall have occasion to examine hereafter. At pres-
ent, we are only aiming to show that they need not
necessarily have been, as essential to his mental
advancement.
It would seem, of course, to follow, if the moral
faculty was neither necessary to primeval man for
his safety and innocence, nor requisite or available
for his intellectual growth or greatness, that the
supposition of his not then possessing it involves
no imputation on the dignity or purity of his original
nature. He was still the noblest of earth's creat-
ures ; and in such an estate of mind and body, his
whole being under the control of his pure and just
reason, the innocence of infancy combined with the
mature powers of manhood, as he walked among
the reverent brutes in the superior grandeur of his
A MORAL SENSE AT FIRST NEEDLESS. 55
nature, not obscurely, nor in his aspect and relations
alone did he reflect God's image. For, unstained
by a single passion, ignorant of the name, and even
or" the nature of sin, his spiritual being was divinely
spotless in its purity. Man, thus conceived,
" Erect and tall,
Godlike erect, with native honor clad,
In naked majesty seemed lord of all,
And worthy seemed ; for, in his looks divine,
The image of his glorious Maker shone,
Truth, wisdom," innocence, " severe and pure."
Without the moral sense, indeed, there could not
be that highest form of holiness which grows out of
the struggle with, and the victory over, the allure-
ments of evil ; but so far as mere sinlessness, and the
normal quietude of every evil passion could impart
beauty to his soul, he retained, unimpaired, the per-
fection with which he came from his Maker's hands ;
and exhibited that innocence which we now behold
in those only whose tender minds, inexperienced in
temptation and untainted by guilt, are as yet un-
conscious of moral distinctions. How justly to man,
such as we have supposed him, might Hamlet's pan-
egyric be applied : " What a piece of work is man !
How noble in reason ; how infinite in faculties ! In
form and moving, how express and admirable ! In
action, how like an angel ; in apprehension, how like
a God ! The beauty of the world ! the paragon of
animals ! "
Had man then continued to be limited to a sin-
56 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
gle individual or pair, and had his original position
and circumstances remained his permanent condi-
tion, it might, perhaps, never have been requisite
that he should possess the moral faculty. Amid the
few perils to which he would thus have been liable,
possibly his reason and the Divine society might
have sufficed for his safety and progress. But it was
not purposed to confine him to so narrow a circle of
action, thought, and influence. Far wider relations
and spheres of life were intended for the race, and
for these his mental constitution was not yet ade-
quately furnished. For, tranquil as he then seemed,
within him and enwrapped in the spotless perfection
of his nature, were the slumbering propensions ;
and these though necessary, and harmless as yet,
would, as his Maker could well foresee, when per-
verted in future and different conditions of existence,
and strengthened by repeated exercise, unless regu-
lated by more efficient guards, overwhelm the re-
straining Reason, and drive the beautiful work into
o *
ruin. Nor was this all. His soul was intended for
higher development and destinies than were attain-
able with its then merely intellectual capabilities.
Man was not purposed to be a mere reasoning ani-
mal, however nobly constituted, nor to rest in mere
intercourse with the superior intelligences. He had
been created that he might rise into communion and
sympathy with the inhabitants of heaven, yea, even
with God himself, through the apprehension of
moral truths, with all their elevating and inspiring
A MORAL SENSE AT FIRST NEEDLESS. 57
influences, and thus, from sharing the divine nature,
be qualified to enjoy with God, and like him, through
the ages of eternity, a life resembling his divine
and spiritual existence. The imparting to him,
therefore, of the moral faculty, before his primal
state should be impaired, that it might serve to pro-
tect no less than to elevate his being ; to check his
appetites, yet not prevent that liberty of action essen-
tial to a free agent ; to guard with increased securi-
ty the rank into which he had been created, and to
promote his advancement to still higher dignity and
character, followed his endowment with vitality and
a reasoning soul, not merely as a work of benefi-
cence. It was precisely what might have been ex-
pected, in accordance with the principle of progres-
sive action, invariably displayed by the Creator in
his natural and moral systems.
It is true that the grant of the moral sense intro-
duced the possibility, and as He must have foreseen,
who knew all things from the beginning, the cer-
tainty of guilt, as w r ell as holiness, thus exposing
man to the misery resulting from wilful sin, no less
than to the joy consequent on voluntary holiness.
And thus the inquiry has arisen, " Why did not
God make this faculty of such a nature and power,
that it would infallibly deter man from disregard-
ing its admonitions ? " In other words, " Why
was man made a free moral agent ? " a topic upon
which our plan does not permit us to enter. We
are not discussing what moral system God might.
58 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
or should have adopted, but the method and origin
of that actually established. At present, therefore,
we must assume (what we think susceptible of
proof, and partially will appear in subsequent pages)
that the plan adopted was the best and most benev-
olent, and that free moral agency was requisite for
man's highest happiness and advancement. 1
1 See Stewart's Moral Philosophy, Vol. IL
MORAL AGENCY, MAN'S OWN CHOICE. 59
CHAPTER VII.
THAT GOD MIGHT PREFER TO MAKE MAN'S MORAL
AGENCY THE CONSEQUENCE OF HIS OWN ACT.
WE have inquired, in the last two chapters,
whether Reason or Philosophy suggests any improb-
ability that the moral faculty was conferred upon
man at a period subsequent to his reception of the
other mental powers. We have attempted to show
that no such intrinsic improbability arises either
from the nature and purposes of the moral faculty
itself, or from any supposable necessity for such a
faculty to man at the outset of his existence. Con-
tinuing the support of the same view, we now arrive
at the third of our preceding propositions, namely,
That reasons connected with the deep responsibilities
imposed by the moral faculty upon man, lend strong
support to the supposition that his Maker would
prefer to impart this faculty to him subsequently
to the other mental powers, and to make its acquire-
ment the result of man's own intelligent choice and
voluntary action.
It is universally conceded, as the basis of every
theory relating to the moral system of this world,
that it originated in some great act of choice by
the progenitor or representative of the race. What
60 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
was the nature, and what the effect of that choice
on this representative and his posterity, have in-
deed been the subjects of endless discussion ; and
the ordinarily received doctrines on these points, it
will be generally agreed, are invested with no small
difficulty. But that the present moral system was
ushered in by some voluntary act of the first man,
affecting in some way not only himself, but all man-
kind after him, is recognized as not only taught by
inspiration, but as consistent with reason and philos-
ophy. Our object in these pages is to ascertain
what that choice really was, and to show that in-
stead of being what the common view represents
it, Man's deliberate descent from virtue to diso-
bedience, sinfulness, and ruin, it was simply his
choice and reception of a moral sense, and the
engrafting of the latter with its opportunities and
responsibilities upon a nature previously innocent
but ignorant of moral distinctions. In subsequent
pages we shall investigate the proof which estab-
lishes the facts. Our present inquiry is whether
such a theory is intrinsically objectionable.
That the act of choice thus admitted to have been
made by man shortly after his creation, might have
been his adoption of a moral nature, has been shown
to be at least possible in demonstrating the separa-
bility of the moral faculty, and that man might have
been created, and for a time left without it, without
any real deficiency in his mental power and dignity.
This being so, what even probable reason is there to
MORAL AGENCY, MAN'S OWN CHOICE. 61
believe that it was developed in him simultaneously
with his birth, especially when there seems to have
been no opportunity for such development to be
manifested? His other mental faculties were, in-
deed, created in him in a state of maturity, ready
for immediate use, because they were required to
be used immediately in their full vigor and strength.
So the lower animals exhibit complete, at birth, such
faculties as their immediate necessities require, while
the rest waken gradually into action. Had Adam
had no immediate occasion for the employment of
any of his intellectual powers, who shall say that
they would have sprung at once from his brain in
full panoply for service ? Such has not been their
mode of development in any instance that has oc-
curred since our first progenitor. The infant, hav-
ing no urgent need of their immediate use, is born
with a mind, to all appearance blank ; and waits a
considerable period for its first intellectual concep-
tion, still longer for the awakening of its moral
capacity. The possession by Adam, to any degree,
at the moment of his birth, of mental faculties ac-
tive and perfect, was a miracle. Who shall say that,
unlike other miracles, it was extended so far as to
embrace more than necessity required ?
But the inquiry relates not merely to the time,
but also to the manner of attaining this moral sense.
It is not only whether man might not have acquired
it subsequently to his birth, but whether his Maker
might not have chosen that he should come into its
62 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
possession by his own voluntary act, rather than im-
plant it in his mind without his own consent or
agency. An affirmative reply to this inquiry, we
should premise, can be in no way essential to our
argument. Should we hereafter succeed in estab-
lishing, by proof of the fact, that the Almighty did
thus leave man to choose between a moral sense or
not, it can be a matter of no consequence whether
our reason would have suggested such a course, or
can see any sufficient motive for it. At the same
time, if there are any considerations why it seems a
rational and natural mode of inducting man into
his moral station and career, it is proper that these
should be presented, to receive as much weight as
they may deserve.
Let us ask in the first place, Why should God
not leave the matter to be effected by Man's own
act ? Certainly, there is nothing in the mere na-
ture of such a supposition that renders it improbable ;
for if every man can have, as he doubtless does, the
decision of his own eternal destinies as a moral being
confided to his own hands, and especially if the
first man could have, as every view supposes, the
determination of the moral nature, character, and
career of himself and the whole succeeding race,
devolved upon him, why may he not be conceived
to have been allowed to be the voluntary instrument
of acquiring for himself and for posterity the moral
faculty itself? We say the voluntary instrument of
its acquisition, for since the Creator must have fore-
MORAL AGENCY, MAN'S OWN CHOICE. 63
seen from the beginning, that man would in fact
become the moral being which he designed, it was
only a question of modes, and not of results. Neither
is the idea that he adopted the particular mode in
question, rendered improbable by analogies ; for it is
only to suppose that the Almighty pursued his ordi-
nary method of accomplishing his purposed changes
in the history of mankind, the method of human
agency. How otherwise has he transmitted his
laws and revelations to the world ? How other-
wise did he effect that most awful of all human
transactions, the sacrifice and death of the Divine
Redeemer? It is only on rare occasions, as when
he would destroy the race by a deluge, that God is
seen to employ his own direct interposition to ac-
complish his designs, and even then he makes use
of human agency in the principal feature of the
event. Admitting, then, that man might have re-
ceived his moral sense as a separate endowment after
his creation, there seems no reason to doubt, but on
the contrary, good ground to expect, that it would
come to him upon occasion of some act of his own,
rather than without his own assent or cooperation.
But there are other and stronger considerations
which bear upon the subject.
We have seen that a conscience, though not req-
uisite for man's use at the outset of his existence,
was yet necessary to complete his nature, as a pro-
vision against the future dangers from passion in the
coming circumstances of life. Now did the moral
64: THE RISE AND THE FALL.
sense affect his state and relations in no other way
than would any mere natural instinct answering the
same regulating ends in the animal economy, there
might be no reason why it should not be implanted
in him at the outset, or subsequently, like any other
endowment of nature, without his own choice or
agency. But such is not the sole method or meas-
ure of its influence. In the question of its posses-
sion or non-possession, is involved the momentous
scheme of moral accountability ', by which, upon his
own faltering hands, is thrown the charge of his
eternal interests. Nor can we assert that this
change in his situation, tremendous as it is, is all
that was involved in it, since we can have no
knowledge under what conditions he might have
been permitted, as an intelligent but not a moral
being, to inhabit the universe. Had we definite rev-
elation on this point, it is possible that thereby the
most conclusive reasons might appear, why man's
adoption of moral agency should be his own act
alone. But even if it be a question of moral account-
ability only, does not our knowledge of the Divine
character render it probable that God would devolve
upon man himself the responsibility of the change,
rather than force him unconsenting from a state of
innocence and peace, into one of such momentous
struggles and perils ? one too, as the Divine pre-
science must have foreseen, of his certain sinfulness
and woe ! If not, and it we are to believe that the
transition was occasioned by the act of God alone,
MORAL AGENCY, MAN'S OWN CHOICE. 65
how, in view of the certain foreknowledge just re-
ferred to, could it ever be insisted that the Almighty
had no hand in the introduction, into the world, of
sin and moral evil ? For though it might be justly
urged that man alone was guilty of the actual com-
mission of sin, yet it would still be necessary to ad-
mit that it was the Creator's act which insured its
entrance, and thrust man, an involuntary victim,
into the range of its fatal allurements.
It was probably in view of such reflections as
these, that one of our profoundest theologians 1 was
accustomed to remark : " Only show me God's
right to create a moral being, and the rest is clear ! "
There seems, indeed, but little real difference be-
tween the placing of a being in a state of moral
agencv, the results of which are certainlv foreknoAvn
O * ' *
to be the triumph of sin within him, and the actual
introduction of moral evil. If, then, God's justice
and benevolence confessedly require us to believe
that he left the latter to be effected by man, why
may not equally strong reasons be believed to have
existed for making man the responsible introducer
of moral agency also ? Why would not this, as well
as the other, be a proper subject for human choice
and action ?
It may be inquired whether the same considera-
tions do not apply to the question of creating each
individual after Adam, a moral agent without his
consent, and to the theory that Adam's act was
1 The late Professor Stuart of Andover.
5
66 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
made to decide the condition of his posterity in this
respect. To this we may reply, that if there is any
such difficulty, it is one incident to every supposi-
tion that Adam was constituted the representative
of the race for any purpose whatever. It is, there-
fore, a difficulty incident to every conceivable theory
of the moral system, and unavoidable upon any in-
terpretation of Scripture. The only question we
are seeking to decide is, for what purpose was Adam
thus placed in a representative relation ? And our
aim is to show that he thus represented his posterity
in respect to the attainment of moral agency,
the acquisition of the moral faculty, and not in re-
spect to a moral ruin, the degradation of moral
position or character. Of the two views, that which
we sustain seems to us the more rational, at least in
appearance, and less open to objection, as we shall
hereafter take occasion to show with some particu-
larity.
We do not admit, however, that there is, in fact,
any difficulty in supposing Adam to have been thus
made the representative of the race, its moral
head, in any manner that does not require the
entailment upon them of any moral responsibility
for his personal act, and that affords a reasonable
explanation of the mode in which they participate
in its consequences. The theory just suggested as
the one supported in these pages is, that through
that representative act of Adam the race entered
into a state of moral agency, affecting, of course, its
MORAL AGENCY, MAN'S OWN CHOICE. 67
moral position, relations, and history, yet not identi-
fying other members of it with him in any common
accountability for his acts ; and it exhibits the effects
of his act as merely those which passed upon his
descendants by the hereditary transmission of natu-
ral faculties.
Having thus suggested the outlines of the view
which we are endeavoring to sustain, we are now
prepared to examine, in its light, that portion of
Man's history, which will form the subject of the
remaining pages. We have just considered the
possibility of Man's being permitted, by his Maker,
to determine his own moral relations, in the choice
of acquiring or not the possession of a moral faculty
and character. We now proceed to show that this
very choice was fairly set before him soon after his
creation ; that this truth is distinctly disclosed as a
historical fact by Revelation, and that the third
chapter of Genesis, commonly supposed to reveal a
FALL of Man from a state of conscious holiness and
consequent happiness to an opposite one of sinful
corruption and consequent misery, is of an entirely
different purport; narrating, in fact, his PROGRES-
SION and ELEVATION from the condition of an inno^
cent but not a moral being, to the rank of a moral
agent, by his own free choice and action.
PART II.
THE DISCLOSURES OF EEVELATION.
KOTE.
THE account of Man's creation and history in the Garden of Eden,
which is examined in the following pages, is contained in the first,
second, and third chapters of Genesis. For convenience of reference
the narrative is appended complete at the end of the volume.
PART II.
THE DISCLOSURES OF REVELATION.
CHAPTER I.
MAN'S CREATION AS A MORAL BEING NOT ASSERTED
IN REVELATION.
IN an examination of the record in Genesis, for
the purposes we have mentioned, it would be irrele-
vant to discuss the historical origin or literary char-
acter of the Document. Whether Moses was its
author or merely its compiler ; from what source he
procured his information or materials ; whether it is
of single or of fragmentary origin, and whether in-
tended as a literal or an allegorical relation, we need
not stop to consider. However any of these ques-
tions may be answered, it will not affect its nature
or authority as an inspired revelation, disclosing
under some guise or other the origin of the human
race, and the manner of its entrance into its pres-
ent moral relations. Whether a myth, therefore,
or a history, we are justified in scrutinizing closely
its every statement and feature, in order that we
may correctly apprehend its purport.
Our plan will lead us first to inquire what light
72 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
is afforded by the narrative, and by other portions
of Scripture, upon the primitive character of man.
We shall examine whether, as is commonly taught,
they reveal that he was, at the outset of his exist-
ence, a moral being ; whether he was created holy,
(as implying a moral agency and a voluntary course
of moral rectitude,) and so continued until he wil-
fully, criminally, and recklessly abandoned this high
and happy state to plunge into sinfulness and mis-
ery ; or whether, on the other hand, and as we shall
attempt to show, they teach the following as the
facts concerning him : That he was created sim-
ply a noble and pure intellectual being, with a char-
acter stainless indeed, but in no sense holy, being
like that of the brute, or the infant, unattended by
a moral sense ; that he afterward voluntarily ac-
quired this moral sense by an act of some kind,
represented in the story as a partaking of forbidden
fruit ; that this act, however, being committed prior
to that acquisition, and hence, before he became a
moral agent, was not in itself sinful, and did not
necessarily render him so, but only capable of sinful-
ness, and of holiness, as well ; that by this act, in
itself considered, therefore, his original nature was
in no way altered, except as it was enlarged, en-
lightened, and elevated, by the new faculty acquired ;
and that his condition was thus simply changed, to-
gether with that of his posterity in him, from the
condition of moral irresponsibility, to that of free
but accountable moral agency.
WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT TEACH. 73
It is remarkable that the idea of man's original
holiness has no other foundation whatever in the
Scriptural account of his creation, than what may
be inferred from the general and indefinite state-
ment that he was " created in the image of God."
Yet there is nothing in this expression, or in the
context which is plainly explanatory of it, that inti-
mates any other resemblance than that involved in
physical and intellectual excellence, carrying with it
preeminence and dominion over the lower creatures.
The passage is as follows :
" And God said let us make man (ADAM) in our own im-
age, after our likeness : and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the
cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing
that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man (ADAM)
in his own image, in the image of God created he him : male
and female created he them. And God blessed them, and
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish
the earth, and subdue it : and have dominion over the fish of
the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living
thing that moveth upon the earth." (Genesis i. 26-28.)
Here the whole purport of the passage plainly is,
that " the image of God " wherein man was made,
consisted in his physical and mental preeminence
merely, and this (as Professor Bush admits in his
" Notes on Genesis ") is, without doubt, its primary
sense. The same figure is used in application to
man, in other parts of Scripture, where it refers to
his present nature and condition. Thus, (Genesis ix.
6,) " Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall
74 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he
man ; " which reason would have no force, were not
the image still subsisting ; and again, St. James,
speaking of the tongue, says: "Therewith curse we
men which are made after the similitude of God."
From these instances, it is evident that the descrip-
tion is applied in Scripture without reference to
moral resemblance. Nor is this surprising ; for
surely there are points of resemblance in man's
natural constitution, sufficient to justify the figure in
reference to that alone. Let us quote the remarks
of one sufficiently able, learned, and orthodox, to
make his views weighty with authority : l
" Man is the great creature worker of the world, its one
created being that, taking up the work of the adorable Crea-
tor, carries it on to higher results and nobler developments, and
finds a field for his persevering ingenuity and skill in every
province in which his Maker had expatiated before him. He
is evidently (to adopt and modify the remark of Oken) ' God
manifest in the flesh.' " . . . . "I must hold that we receive
the true explanation of the man-like character of the Creator's
workings ere man was, in the remarkable text in which we
are told that ' God made Man in his own image.' " "As
a geometrician, as an arithmetician, as a chemist, as an astron-
omer, in short, in all the departments of what are known as
the strict sciences, man differs from his Maker, not in kind but
in. degree, not as matter differs from mind, or darkness
from light, but simply as a mere portion of space or time differs
from all space and all time." And he adds that not merely in
mechanical capabilities, but as well in the musical and poeti-
cal faculty, " we bear the stamp and impress of the Divine im-
age." 2
1 Hugh Miller, Testimony of the Rocks, p. 239. 2 ]Ud. p. 259.
WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT TEACH. 75
If this is true of human nature as it is, with how
much greater force might it be said of man in his
normal state of intellectual perfection, that, without
reference to a moral constitution, he was made in
the image and likeness of God. In the passage of
Genesis just quoted, it is remarkable that so general
an epitome of man's qualities and prerogatives, and
of his points of superiority over the antecedent
creatures, should not contain a word in allusion to
the all-important and essential distinction between
him and them of a moral nature. Had that distinc-
tion existed, it would undoubtedly have been referred
to, and hence it is going too far, especially when
there is nothing in the force of the Hebrew itself to
favor the interpretation, to infer a moral character
in man, from the expression we have quoted.
Accordingly, few commentators will claim to de-
duce from the phrase in question (if it can be sup-
posed to imply anything with regard to man's moral
character) any more than the doctrine that he was
created with a pure and innocent nature, untainted
by depravity or sin. Such a character, as we have
heretofore seen, would amply justify the application
to him of the figurative description, " image of
God." We say the figurative description, for it
cannot be supposed that such language is other than
figurative, since it is impossible that man in any
conceivable state could be literally " the image of
God," (i. e., his reproduction in miniature,) with all
the attributes of Deity ; and if he could not, then
76 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the expression we are considering need not neces-
sarily imply the possession of God's moral faculties,
any more than of his omniscience, omnipresence, or
other qualities of his being. Even with the pres-
ence of the moral sense, man would not be the real
image of God ; for as Scott, in his commentaries, truly
observes, "Conscience, will, and understanding,
do not compose God's image, since fallen angels have
the same." Nor, as we have already seen, would
the absence of this moral sense in the outset of man's
existence, destroy the likeness, or imply any imper-
fection in his nature. In the situation in which he
at first found himself, under the immediate care of
his Creator, with nothing to call his passions into
play, a conscience and moral sense were as useless
to him as to the brutes. How often are we our-
selves in circumstances where, absorbed in the inter-
est of our situation, happy and self-forgetful, our
moral faculties lie inactive, and without our being
conscious of their existence ! It is no derogation,
therefore, from man's high rank and dignity at the
outset, to suppose him originally " destitute of fac-
ulties which he did not require," 1 and the total ab-
sence of all allusion to such faculties in any part of
the story of his creation, primitive state, and his-
tory, the very place where we should look for such
information, is at least a strong presumptive argu-
ment that he did not then possess them.
As two or three passages, however, from other
l Bishop Butler.
WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT TEACH. 77
portions of Scripture, are usually cited in support
of the doctrine of man's primitive holiness, it is
proper that we should notice them here. They are
the following :
" Behold, tins have I found, saith the preacher, counting
one by one to find out the account : which yet my soul seek-
eth, but I find not : one man among a thousand have I found ;
but a woman among all those have I not found. Lo, this
only have I found, that God hath made man * upright ; but
they have sought out many inventions." (Ecclesiastes vii.
27-29.)
" That ye put off concerning the former conversation the
old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts ; and
be renewed in the spirit of your mind ; and that ye put on
the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and
true holiness (OCMTTITI TIJC uhrideiaf, i. e., holiness of the truth).
(Ephesians iv. 22-24.)
" Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the
old man with his deeds ; and have put on the new man, which
is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created
him." (Colossians iii. 9, 10.)
As regards the first of these passages, (that from
Ecclesiastes,) it will hardly be claimed to assert
anything more than man's native innocence, and that
his natural uprightness in his actual rather than in
his primeval state. For the Preacher expressly
declares his conviction to be the result of his own
observation and reason applied to his contemporaries,
(verse 27,) " counting one by one to find out the
account ; " or, as the margin gives it, " weighing one
1 The word " man," in this passage, is accompanied by the article,
and should be taken genetically, as " men," or " mankind." (Stuart.)
78 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
thing after another to find out the reason." What-
ever value, therefore, may be attached to Solomon's
observation of human nature, as it is, this passage
affords no divine explanation respecting its original
character.
Nor will the exhortations of Paul be found any
more relevant to this discussion. They are merely
appeals to his hearers to forsake their former worldly
manner of life, for the new standard of holiness
which Christ's example afforded. That he should
refer to that example by the natural figure " image
of God," is of no more importance in this argument
than his use of the same expression in 1 Corinthians
xi. 7, " For a man, indeed, ought not to cover his
head, forasmuch as he is the image and glory of God :
but the woman is the glory of the man." Indeed, the
very phrase " new man," which Paul makes use of,
indicates that he made no allusion to man's original
nature, since to put on that, would be to assume an
older man (or nature) than that which he was urg-
ing to forsake. We shall have occasion to show,
hereafter, that upon our view of man's successive
steps in moral growth, from moral ignorance up to
moral perfection, these figures of the Apostle in
illustration of the Christian nature, have a peculiar
fitness and power, far beyond that which the com-
mon interpretation affords them.
It will appear strange to those who are new to this
discussion, to be told that we have now exhausted
the entire Scriptural authority for the important
WHAT SCRIPTURE DOES NOT TEACH. 79
doctrine of man's primitive holiness, righteousness,
or rectitude, as a moral being. Its insufficiency
to sustain such a doctrine must be obvious ; nor, in-
deed, does it even appear that the sacred writers
we have quoted had ever conceived such an idea.
Whatever may have been their individual belief,
however, certain it is that, while their pens were
guided by inspiration, they have not suggested it.
All that can be gathered from them as authorities,
is clearly the same general view which is expressed
by the Psalmist in that sublime apostrophe to Deity,
wherein referring to man, (like the writers we have
already cited,) not in his original state, but as he
actually exists, he exclaims, with mingled awe of
the Creator and admiration of his work,
" Wliat is man, that thou art mindful of him,
And the Son of Man, that thou visitest him V
For thou hast made him a little lower than the angels ;
Thou hast crowned him with glory and honor !
Thou madest him to have dominion over the work of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet !
All sheep and oxen, yea, and the beasts of the field ;
The fowl of the air, and the fish of the seas,
And whatsoever passeth through the path of the seas ! "
But it is not merely by omissions, and by silence,
that the doctrine of man's original moral agency
and holiness is disproved by the Scriptures. The
narrative we are considering, when farther exam-
ined, will be found to supply frequent and powerful
proofs against such a view, and to them we will now
direct our attention.
80 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER H.
INDIRECT EVIDENCE THAT MAN WAS NOT ORIGINALLY
A MORAL BEING, DRAWN FROM THE ACCOUNT OF
HIS CREATION AND PRIMITIVE HISTORY.
LET us suppose, if we can, that this story of Adam
and Eve had relation to two creatures of another
sphere, or of a former and extinct race : creatures
who disappeared after the expulsion from Paradise,
and who left no posterity, with whom we had no
connection or relations, and of whom we had no
account or knowledge beyond what is contained in
the first two chapters of Genesis. The nature and
faculties of such beings, though of no importance to
us, except perhaps as a curious topic of speculation,
would doubtless attract our interest ; and among
other inquiries, we should probably set ourselves to
investigate whether they possessed, differently from
the lower creatures, with the account of whose
origin theirs is connected, a moral faculty and re-
sponsibilities.
In such an inquiry, following the sublime account
of the Creation in its upward steps from race to race,
when we come to man, what do we find to indicate
any essential diversity in these respects from the
creatures that preceded him ? What is there to de-
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 81
note the imposition upon him of any new relations
to the Creator and his laws ? The partial examina-
tion which we have already given, has shown us
that there is nothing ; and a comparison of those-
portions of the narrative which relate the formation
of the brutes, and those which recite the creation
of Man, will confirm the conclusion. It will show
what we have already noticed, that there was set
no essential distinction between them, except in
physical and intellectual excellence, and in differ-
ence of rank and dignity.
Prona que cum spectent animalia cetera terrain,
Os homini sublime dedit,ccelumque tueri
Jussit, et erectos ad sidera tollere vultus.
The story represents both the birthday and the
material source or origin of man and the brutes to
have been the same ; both being formed on the sixth
day, and both being made " from the dust of the
earth," (i. e., from the same original elements of
which the earth is composed,) a truth which every
new discovery of Science beautifully confirms.
" And the Lord God formed man [of the] dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and
man became a h'ving soul." " And out of the ground the
Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of
the air," &c., &c. (Genesis ii. 7, 19.)
Even the circumstance which alone in these two
cases seems to suggest a possible difference of con-
stitution, the breathing into man, by his Maker, of
82 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the breath of life, whereby he became " a living
soul," does not appear to form a real distinction. In
chapter i. 20, the Creator, in introducing the forma-
tion of the lower orders of animals, the tenants of
the seas and air, calls them " the moving creature
that hath life," the expression translated "life"
being (NEPESH HAVAH) a living soul; and precisely
the same term which is applied to man in the pas-
sage we are considering, the only change being to
the plural. It appears, too, that the creation of the
brutes, and that of man, though distinct acts upon
the same day, were so far blended as one transac-
tion, that, although a special blessing had been pro-
nounced on the fifth day upon the lower creatures
then brought into being, no express benediction is
given on the sixth to the brutes ; but with that
which is bestowed upon man are associated general
expressions of the kindness and paternal care of
the Creator, and general directions of life, applicable
to all the races, of ever} 7 grade, alike.
" And God blessed them, [the races of the fifth day,] say-
ing, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas,
and let fowl multiply in the earth." " And God blessed them,
[Man,] and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply,
and replenish the earth, and subdue it : and have dominion
over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
every living thing that moveth upon the earth. And God
said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in
the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall
be for meat And to every beast of the earth, and to every
fowl of the air, and to everything that creepeth upon the
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 83
earth, wherein there is life, [a living soul,] I have given every
green herb for meat." (Genesis i. 22, 28-30.)
This address of God to man, especially the first
part of it, merits a particular notice. In it, as well
as in the remarks with which man's creation was
preceded, (and Avhich we have already partially
considered,) we find reference to a wide diversity
between man and the other creatures in powers and
privileges. We find in both, a proclamation of the
design with which he was created, the mission he
was to have, and the sphere he was to fill. We
find, as we should expect, a code of instructions
announced to him at the outset of his career, as the
summary of his obligations and his rights, of
the general conditions and purposes of his existence.
It includes all that is necessary or desirable to be
enjoined upon a merely rational being. He is to
multiply his race, to replenish and occupy the earth.
He is, by the cultivation and exercise of his varied
intellectual and physical powers, by civilization,
learning, art, and science, to " subdue " the elements
and the forces of Nature, with all the races of its
creatures, turning them all into the servants of his
wants, and using them as the means of his advance-
ment. He is, in short, to occupy the position of
lord of the natural world, with its inhabitants, and
is, by the development of all his powers, to fit him-
self worthily to adorn that station. Is it not re-
markable that, in this epitome of all the matters
expected of him by his Maker, not a hint is given
84 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
of that important fact, which, had it existed, must
have constituted the fundamental distinction between
him and all other creatures, and the great pervading
idea, in all directions to him from the Author of his
being ? Is it not remarkable that while, at such a
time, his relations to the world, and the creatures
about him, are so clearly and fully set forth, not a
suggestion is dropped of any such relations to his
God, as, had he been a moral being, must have
been to him, unspeakably, the most important and
interesting of all considerations ? How is it that
we find not a word from which we can infer the
imposition upon him of any rule of moral duty, or
even the existence of any moral capabilities ?
Theologians, indeed, seem to have inferred, and
some of them have asserted with a positiveness that
implies the necessity of such a supposition to the
common view of man's original moral nature, that,
at his creation, " God revealed to him, in direct and
definite terms, his whole duty, and disclosed to him
the law by which his life was to be governed." l
Doubtless, such a revelation was to have been ex-
pected had man been created a moral agent; and
although the fact that no such revelation to man
at this period has been revealed is not a conclusive
proof against its having been made, it yet leaves
such a declaration as the above unsupported by
authority. The sole ground (if any) upon which
1 Dwight's Theology, Vol. I. p. 396 ; Dr. Harris's Man Primeval, ch.
19, sect. 3, &c., &c. ; Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 21.
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 85
the assertion is based, is found in the fact that there
was imposed upon man at a subsequent period,
(after his removal into Eden,) a specific and par-
ticular injunction, which fact is thus narrated :
" And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden,
and there he put the man whom he had formed." " And the
Lord God took the man and put him into the garden to dress
it, and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man,
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat :
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt
not eat of it : for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die." (Genesis ii. 8, 15-17.)
We say that this fact offers the sole ground upon
which the assertion of man's original moral nature
is based, because, as we have seen, there is no other
declaration or circumstance that can be referred to
as affording the slightest evidence of his then pos-
sessing such an endowment. It may be, indeed, and
is generally conjectured, that man possessed a moral
nature upon his creation ; but if that supposition is
questioned, there is only this prohibition to cite in
support of it. And, accordingly, it is appealed to for
that purpose by many theologians ; let us see with
what reason.
That the prohibition did not in itself constitute
any such revelation, will probably be admitted. We
need not argue that this special mandate does not
comprise, like the Ten Commandments, a code of
moral obligation, " disclosing to man his whole duty,
and the rules by which his life was to be governed."
No such claim is set up in any quarter. On the
86 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
other hand, it is insisted that this mandate was, for
the time being, and to a certain extent, a substitute
for the moral law, as a rule of probation ; and, if so,
it must have been in itself a something different
from the moral law. The proposition is laid down
by a leading writer, " that by a divine or sovereign
appointment of some kind, man's thousand liabili-
ties were reduced to one." 1 And by another, that
while this mandate did not itself relate to any mat-
ter of general moral obligation, yet the moral law
" was written in legible characters on man's heart.
That natural sense of right and wrong, which exists
even now in every human being, and must have
existed in him in a state of perfection, combined with
subsequent divine revelations, sufficiently instructed
him concerning the will of God," 2 &c., &c. And
the doctrine is, that this special command respecting
the forbidden fruit, though it did not instruct Adam
in his moral duties or relations, yet implied that
he was already, either by nature or revelation, ac-
quainted with them.
So far as regards any prior moral instructions to
Adam, by divine revelation, it is sufficient to say
that not the slightest hint or intimation of any such
revelations can be found in the narrative, and to
assume them is, therefore, to say the least, unwar-
ranted. This assumption, however, (as in the pas-
sage just quoted,) betrays a conscious weakness in
1 Harris, Man Primeval.
2 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 21.
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 87
respect to the claim in favor of Adam's moral knowl-
edge. It evinces a doubt whether Adam, after all,
had so much moral knowledge, that " special reve-
lations " must not necessarily be imagined for him
besides ; but if such special revelations are necessary
to be supposed, at what period of his existence was
the first one ? and why may we not believe this pro-
hibition, with the consequences resulting from its
violation, to have themselves conveyed the first?
The writer, indeed, speaks of Adam's state of per-
fection as proving his moral knowledge. But by
this supposed " state of perfection," he must mean,
if anything, Adam's moral perfection, thus assum-
ing his conclusion to prove his premises. For if he
means his physical and intellectual perfection, we
have already shown that a moral nature is not
necessarily implied by these. But apart from any
admissions or inconsistencies of those who make the
claims in question, how, we ask, can it be maintained
that a special and definite mandate upon a particu-
lar point, not relating to moral subjects, necessarily
implies a moral knowledge and responsibility in the
being to whom it is addressed ? Can no command
be given except to a moral being ? Do we not every
day see commands, prohibitions, laws, issued to in-
fants, and to animals incapable of moral reasoning?
In the Scriptures themselves, we read that God
" commanded " the fish which swallowed and re-
leased the prophet Jonah ; Joshua " commanded "
the sun and moon to stand still ; Christ " com-
88 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
manded " the winds and the seas. Adam himself
was to " have dominion," that is, to exercise com-
mand as his descendants do, over the inferior creat-
ures, and to hold them responsible for obedience.
In all these cases, no prior moral knowledge in the
objects "commanded" is implied, and why, there-
fore, does a specific mandate, to man in his original
condition, necessarily imply that that condition was
one of moral knowledge and responsibility ?
But if the mere fact of a command being issued
does not imply this moral knowledge, is there any-
thing in the form or circumstances of the prohibi-
tion itself which raises such implication ? We have
alluded to the fact that it was single, precise, and
definite, in its terms. It forbade but one simple
act. It was based upon the circumstances of a par-
ticular locality, and could have no application as a
rule of conduct in any other place. The act for-
bidden, too, had intrinsically no moral character.
The injunction restrained no particular appetite,
(like a law of temperance,) for it was coupled with
the permission " to freely eat " of the fruit of any
and every other tree in the garden. It might as
well have been, as is generally admitted, " the pro-
hibition to any other act, as the bathing in a par-
ticular river, for instance," l or anything else equally
indifferent. It was, therefore, no part of a moral
law. It did not recall to man's attention any of
his general moral duties, and consequently, unless
1 Harris, Man Primeval, &c.
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 89
(which we have just disproved) the mere issuing
of any command to man in itself implied his moral
agency, there is nothing in it from which the infer-
ence of such agency can be drawn. Indeed, as we
shall probably urge hereafter, it rather precludes
than favors such a supposition ; for it would be
strange, indeed, that such a mandate should have
been imposed upon a moral agent, as the sole test
of his virtue, whether in an individual or a repre-
sentative capacity.
It has been insisted, indeed, by some writers
that, in Adam's peculiar circumstances, no other
sort of command than such as we have described,
namely, one without relation to moral duty, could
have been imposed as a test of obedience. It is said
that, situated as he was, it was almost impossible for
him to violate any of the Ten Commandments had
they been revealed to him. That he could hardly
have followed false gods, or worshipped idols, or
profaned God's name, or broken the Sabbath, or
dishonored father and mother, or committed murder,
adultery, or theft, or borne false witness, or coveted
another's goods, had such sins been suggested to
him ; and that thus, as there was no moral rule
which could be made the test, a mandate indifferent
in its character was adopted of necessity. But this
theory will not bear examination. For if Adam's cir-
cumstances, at the outset of his existence, were such
(and we have ourselves taken pains to show that
they were) that there was little likelihood of his
90 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
being tempted to sin, yet these circumstances were
but temporary. Many of them, indeed, necessarily
continued only up to the time of Eve's creation, and
were removed upon her making a society for him
and with him. Others still subsisted for a longer
period ; but after Eve's creation, certainly, (upon the
ordinary view of their being both moral beings,)
there were moral duties reciprocally due between
them, which both would be at times tempted to vio-
late. But we do not need to rely upon this answer.
Even before Eve's creation, had Adam (as a moral
being) no duties to his Maker, to himself, or to the
lower creatures which he could neglect or violate ?
Could he not be guilty of coldness, ingratitude, re-
sentment toward God ? Would he have been un-
able to commit the sin of profanity, or Sabbath-
breaking ? Was he incapable of neglecting his per-
sonal duties of self-improvement, temperance, and
industry ? Could he not be guilty of cruelty to the
lower animals ? Had he been a moral being, any
of these possibilities would have suggested moral
tests of his character, had such been wanted ; and if
(as is no doubt true) his earlier circumstances must
have greatly diminished the temptations to violate
such duties, still in time, even as a solitary being,
he would have been subject to their influence. We
do not find that the wanderer on a desert island is
incapable of committing sin, or becomes invulnerable
to every temptation. Indeed, in Adam's case there
was one of the Ten Commandments specially suitable
THE CREATION AND THE COMMAND. 91
as a moral test, to wit, the law against " doing any
manner of work on the Sabbath day," a law, the
reason for which was then in full force, the six days'
work of creation having then been just completed,
on account of which " the Lord blessed the seventh
day, and sanctified it." The day, then, at least in
God's mind, was sacred then; and how is it that
Adam was not enjoined to " keep it holy ? " It will
not answer to say that he might have been so en-
joined in fact. Apart from the circumstance that
there is no hint of such an injunction upon him,
there is the remarkable absence of all evidence that
the Sabbath day was ever observed by the patriarchs
or the Jews down to the time of Moses, an im-
portant truth in its bearing upon other parts of our
view, as we shall show hereafter. Had Adam ever
received the law of the Sabbath, it is impossible
that his descendants for so long a period should have
lost it.
We think, then, that the doctrine of man's orig-
inal moral nature must be admitted to be destitute
of all Scriptural authority. As before remarked, it
rests upon conjecture alone, not only without sup-
port, but, as we hope to prove satisfactorily, against
the teachings of revelation. In this chapter, we
have confined ourselves to considering the evidence
against it, which arises by implication from the nar-
rative. In subsequent pages we shall offer proof
against it, not only from the facts of the narrative,
but from the doctrinal inconsistencies and confusions
92 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
into which it conducts its advocates. We think it
will appear that simplicity, clearness, and truth can
be attained only by believing that this special pro-
hibition (particularly as we find no hint of any
other) was in fact the only law of conduct to which
man was, before the transgression, held subject or
accountable.
PURPORT OF THE COMMAND. 93
CHAPTER III.
DIRECT EVIDENCE TO THE SAME EFFECT DRAWN FROM
THE SAME NARRATIVE. THE COMMAND.
WE have considered in the last chapter the indi-
rect proofs which the sacred history furnishes that
Man, in his original nature, was devoid of moral
perceptions, but it is not wanting in more positive
evidences.
And first, we shall notice a slight and apparently
trivial fact which is stated, (chap. ii. 25,) and which
sheds a light upon the subject not to be disregarded.
It reads as follows :
" And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and
they were not ashamed ; " [or, as the Chaldaic version gives it,
" They knew not what shame was." !]
It is somewhat singular that the narrator should
have taken pains to note this state of moral insensi-
bility in our first parents at this period, unless as a
hint upon the very subject of our inquiry. It seems
to us that it clearly does furnish a suggestion re-
garding it, for it reveals a then absence from man's
constitution of one of the earliest and most sensitive
instincts of his moral nature. It is the brutes and
1 Comprehensive Commentary : Genesis.
94 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
infants, and those savages who seem totally devoid
of moral ideas only, that are unconscious of those
instinctive promptings. In both children and sav-
ages, too, they invariably exhibit themselves upon
the first awakening movements of the moral faculty ;
and in conformity with this analogy, we shall notice
hereafter as a remarkable confirmation of our view,
that the first emotion experienced by Adam and Eve
after their disobedience, impelled them to their first
succeeding act, the adoption of a covering. At
present, we only suggest that, with the theory of
man's perfect and delicate moral sensibilities, involv-
ing correct conceptions of purity and impurity, this
total indifference to, or ignorance of, the sentiment
of modesty seems entirely inconsistent ; and by it
his subsequent instantaneous change in this respect,
as an effect of his disobedience, is rendered equally
unaccountable.
A more striking proof, however, and one that has
been strangely overlooked by commentators, is af-
forded by the name of that tree which is the cen-
tral feature in the narrative, and whose effects upon
the partakers constitute its whole significance. The
neglect which we have referred to in theological
writers is, however, explainable. Upon the common
doctrine of man's original moral nature, the com-
O
mand and disobedience which decided his destiny,
needed not to have relation to any particular sub-
ject, or to have in themselves any peculiar signifi-
cance. The whole story, according to it, is this.
THE COMMAND. 95
Man was at first holy, or at least in his moral char-
acter, and as a moral agent, intelligently, consciously,
and voluntarily perfect. In this state a specific test
was made by his Maker of his firmness in obedience,
by a special law of conduct. This law, upon the
first temptation, man wilfully disobeyed, and by that
disobedience became then and thenceforth, himself
and his race, sinful and corrupted. In such a theory,
it would be indifferent what were the precise nature
of the mandate thus applied as a test, and which
man wilfully disobeyed. It might have been one
thing as well as another, or as Dr. Harris says in
the passage we have already quoted (ch. 19, sec.
iii. 12) : " Respecting the probable reasons for the
particular act prohibited, nothing need be said.
That something else might have been forbidden,
the use of a particular stream, or the approach to a
particular spot, and that the same truths might have
been taught by such prohibition, is quite possible."
Hence it is that the real character and purport of
the command as indicated by the appellation of the
tree to which it related, has been left in obscurity.
But, in the light of the considerations we have re-
viewed, it becomes invested with extraordinary
meaning, and fraught with luminous suggestion.
The tree whose fruit was forbidden to Adam
was not (as the common view of it would seem to
imply) "the tree of evil," nor yet was it "the
tree of good and evil," but " the tree of the
KNOWLEDGE of good and evil." In other words,
96 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
it was, as we shall see upon a critical examination
of the phrase, " THE TREE or THE APPREHENSION
OF RIGHT AND WRONG." The expression is ren-
dered in the Chaldaic version before referred to,
(Targum of Onkelos,) "the tree of which they
who eat are wise in discerning (or knowing) the
difference between good and evil " 1 (i. e., right
and wrong). This, then, was the faculty which
was alone wanting in man to render him "as
gods " (ELOHIM, God) ; the faculty after which the
serpent tempted him to aspire, in order that he
might thus " become like God, knowing good and
evil " ; and which, when acquired by man, was
thus declared by the Almighty himself to increase
the resemblance between them, " Behold, the
man has become as one of us, to know good and
evil." Let us examine, then, somewhat carefully
the import of the phrase under consideration ; and
first, of the word " knowledge."
This word (Hebrew, YADAH ; Septuagint, TOV
yivwo-xetv; Latin, cognoscendi, scientice^) has been
taken by some commentators in the sense of " ex-
perience," 2 (a meaning, however, hardly sanc-
tioned by the Hebrew,) but a different sense is
plainly understood by the writer of the Targum of
Onkelos, whose version we have cited, and who is
regarded as the highest authority. Whether or not
1 Bush's Notes on Genesis, pp. 11, 58. "Walton's Polyglott Bible trans-
lates the Chaldaic into "Arbor cognoscendi boni et matt," and the origi-
nal into "Arbor scientice boni et mali."
a Comprehensive Commentary ; Bush on Genesis, p. 56.
THE COMMAND. 97
experimental acquaintance can be implied, at least,
simple intelligence, or cognition, is an essential part
of the idea it conveys. Accordingly, (to quote
from Professor Bush,) 1 " the learned Vitringa, who
seldom advances an opinion that is not entitled to
great respect, argues, that to know good and evil in
the language of the Scriptures, is to understand
the nature of good and evil, of right and wrong,
not to experience it." " For, (he argues in sub-
stance,) if our first parents gained their first expe-
rience of good and evil by the fall, this implies that
they were before unacquainted with good, and not
only so, but that they experienced good from that
event, whereas they in fact derived only evil ; "
and these objections, Professor Bush, without fully
assenting to, admits himself unable to answer. It
may be added that the " knowledge " referred to
is shown not to be experience, by the fact that when
actually obtained, by eating of the forbidden fruit,
its effect was both immediate and complete, and is
also described in the narrative by the expression,
" their eyes were opened," plainly denoting new
and instantaneous perceptions of some sort ; thus :
" She took of the fruit thereof and did eat, and gave also to
her husband with her, and he did eat. And the eyes of them
both were opened, and they knew that they were naked."
(Chap. iii. 6, 7.)
Here the verb " knew " in the original, is radi-
cally the same as " knowledge " in the phrase under
1 Bush on Genesis, p. 56.
7
98 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
consideration, " knowledge of good and evil." It
is obvious that it does not mean that they expe-
rienced that they were naked, for this was a con-
dition long familiar to their consciousness. It evi-
dently implies that they intellectually recognized, or
perceived, certain considerations or ideas in connec-
tion with the fact of their nudity, which they had
never before recognized. This interpretation is con-
firmed by finding the same word used (verse 4,
chap, iii.), where the tempter says, "for God doth
know that ye shall be as gods knowing good and
evil." Again ; verse 6 expressly describes the ef-
fect of the tree as to make one wise, (L'HASKIL, i. e.,
to cause to understand.') And in verse 22, (already
quoted,) God says, " Behold the man has become as
one of us, to know good and evil ; " in which ex-
pression evidently the Divine knowledge to which
man is said to have already attained, cannot be un-
derstood to be experience, whether the " good and
evil " thus " known " be supposed to be happiness
and misery, or right and wrong. The knowledge
which God has of " evil," in whatever form, must
be an intellectual comprehension, and not an experi-
mental acquaintance.
Upon this point, in further support of our jnter-
pretation, we might cite many and able authorities.
As a recent work, 1 however, has given a short
exposition of the true meaning of the word here
rendered " to know," we will insert it here. The
author says :
1 Taveh Christ, p. 78.
THE COMMAND. 99
"In respect to the use of the name YAVEH, or 'Jehovah,'
by the Patriarchs, we find it upon every page of their history ;
and yet on turning to Exod. vi. 3, it is there stated by God
himself that by his name YAVEH, He was not known to
them. This apparent inconsistency has been a stumbling-
block to many, and has even been seized upon by some who
lay claim to superior scholarship, as an objection to the
credibility of these records. . . . The objection disap-
pears at once upon reference to the original. The verb
[to know] there used, means ' to comprehend,' ' to under-
stand,' and is very inaccurately and inadequately rendered
by ' to know.' Literally it reads, 'And by my name YAVEH
was I not " comprehended," or " understood " by them.' It
properly conveys the meaning 'to see with the mind,' 'to
understand by means of explanatory circumstances.' As in
the return of the dove to the Ark with an olive-leaf, then
Noah ' knew ' that the waters were abated. And in the
sacrifice of Manoah, when the Angel of the Lord ascended
in the flame of the altar, and returned not, ' then Manoah
" knew " he was an Angel of the Lord.' An instance by
which the sense of this word may be tested, occurs in Isaiah
vi. 9 : ' Seeing they shall see, and shall not perceive' that is,
' understand,' ' comprehend.' The word here correctly ren-
dered ' perceive,' is precisely the one which, in the case under
consideration, our translators have given as ' know.' "
We think, therefore, that we may safely con-
clude that the sense of the word " knowledge," in
the title of the tree in question, is more precisely
given by the term " apprehension," and we accord-
ingly proceed to examine the force of the remaining
terms, " good and evil."
These words in our version are evidently indef-
inite in their signification. They have been un-
derstood by some commentators in the sense of
100 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
" happiness and misery ; " and by others, still more
indefinitely, as "all things," "all things worth
knowing." 1 To the first of these interpretations it
may be replied that the serpent would hardly have
urged upon our first parents as a temptation to dis-
obey God's command, that they should thereby
come to " apprehend " (still less " experience ")
happiness and misery ; especially since (they being
already in the enjoyment of happiness) in such an
offer misery would be the only new knowledge
promised them. To the second, we may say that
if man's having been formed in the image of God
involved his possession of high intellectual powers,
or even of those equal to what he at present pos-
sesses, then he was already equally or more capable
of " knowing all things," than he has been since
o o *
partaking of the forbidden fruit, and the designation
of the tree was therefore a misnomer. And to both
renderings, the remark of God before quoted (chap,
iii. 22), " Behold the man is become as one of us, to
know good and evil," presents a conclusive objec-
tion ; for it shows : 1st, that the full effect of the
tree, in the " knowledge " it was to impart, had
been attained immediately upon the partaking of
its fruit; and 2d, that this knowledge, so already
attained, was neither that of " happiness and mis-
ery," nor of " all things worth knowing."
In fact, if we have established that the word
" knowledge " is equivalent to " intellectual appre-
1 Bush's Notes on Genesis, p. 56 ; Comprehensive Commentary.
THE COMMAND. 101
hension," then it will follow almost of course that
" good and evil " in the same passage, must mean
" right and wrong," since only a moral distinction
of that kind could properly be a subject of intellect-
ual apprehension ; unless indeed it be claimed that
the words are properly interpreted by the phrase,
" the advisable, and unadvisable," a signification
which will hardly be insisted on, as it impliedly
denies to our first parents the original gift of reason.
An examination of the original will confirm our
view that these words are to be understood in this
passage in their moral signification.
The Hebrew words employed (TOY, good, and
RA, evil), particularly the former, are generic, and
are properly rendered in our translation by the cor-
responding generic and indefinite words, " good "
and " evil." The only question is, are they here
to be understood in the sense of natural or moral
qualities. The word TOV (rendered in the Septua-
gint, KaAov, and in the English translation, " good ")
also appears in the following connections : 1st, in
chap. i. 31, where God, looking upon his work of
Creation, saw that it was " good " ; and 2d, in
chap. iv. 7, where God, rebuking Cain for his sin-
ful anger, says, " If thou doest well (Hebrew verb
TATEV, of which TOV is root), shall it not be ac-
cepted? " From the latter of these examples it is
manifest that this word TOV admits of a moral sense
in the passage we are considering. Whatever un-
certainty regarding it may still exist, will be re-
102 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
moved by examining the sense of its correlative,
BA (evil), in the same sentence, since it is plain
that the same rule of interpretation must apply to
both.
^his word RA (rendered in the Septuagint TO
irovypov, wickedness) is the same that is employed
in chap. vi. 5 : u And God saw that the wickedness
(Hebrew, RA, Septuagint, TO TTOJ^/JOV) of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of
the thought of his heart was only evil (RA) con-
tinually" (literally, "evil, evil, everyday"). It
may be observed that in these different passages
of Genesis, the same sense is more certainly estab-
lished for the same word, thus recurring in the
original, by the contemporaneous origin of the dif-
ferent passages in which it occurs ; an argument
which the Hebrew scholar will best appreciate. It
is for this reason that we do not make a more
extended comparison of passages from various por-
tions of Scripture, as we might do, tending to
establish the same point. Thus, the same Hebrew
words are used in Isaiah vii. 16 : " Before the
child shall know how to refuse the evil and choose
the good" etc., in which phrase all commentators
agree that they have a moral signification. 1
So satisfactory, indeed, is the evidence with regard
to the real force of these terms for " good and
evil," that not only " the learned Vitringa," as
we have seen, actually renders them by " right
1 See Barnes on Isaiah ; Rosenmuller, etc.
THE COMMAND. 108
and wrong," but Gesenius 1 expressly defines RA
in this place as " wickedness " (TO xaKov). We
shall doubtless be safe in accepting these authori-
ties, at least in connection with the considerations
we have reviewed, as conclusive upon the question
of their moral import. 2
1 Thesaurus, Robinson's Translation, ed. 1850.
2 See also Herder's Spirit of Hebrew Poetry, Marsh's Translation,
Vol. I. p. 132 ; Bunsen's Biebel Werke ; Smith's Dictionary of the Bible,
1860, Article ADAM.
104 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER IV.
EFFECT OF THE FOREGOING, AND OBJECTIONS TO IT
CONSIDERED.
WE think it will be generally admitted that
sufficient evidence has been adduced to prove our
position, that by the phrase, " the tree of the knowl-
edge of good and evil," is meant " the tree of the
apprehension of right and wrong." Unless, there-
fore, this be a mere chance appellation, totally des-
titute of point or meaning, we must suppose it to
imply that the object it designates was created in
order to be the instrument of occasioning the im-
partation to man (supernaturally doubtless) of fac-
ulties and perceptions before unknown, and pertain-
ing to the cognizance of moral distinctions. If we
are to apply to it the plainest rules of interpretation,
itself reveals the truth respecting man's nature both
before and after he partook of the forbidden fruit,
and is the key by which we are to unlock the whole
narrative before us.
As we use this key in our progress, we shall see
how readily it causes to yield and open the difficul-
ties with which the common view has enclosed this
simple story, with the effect to harass every think-
ing mind. Understanding man before his disobe-
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 10,5
dience as a being ignorant of the nature of right
and wrong, the explanation of his otherwise unac-
countable conduct becomes easy ; the admitted ef-
fects of that disobedience on himself and posterity
intelligible ; and God's course toward all, of obvious
benevolence and justice. Before entering, how-
ever, upon the details of the narrative relating to
the act of disobedience and its consequences, it will
be proper to notice some objections that may be
offered at the outset, to the views we have urged,
regarding the true purport of the narrative.
The first objection that naturally occurs, grows
out of the obvious truth, that the attaining of a
moral faculty by man would be a substantial benefit
to him, and an elevation of his nature. Hence, it
will be said, it could hardly be supposed that God
would have imposed an injunction upon man per-
emptorily forbidding such attainment ; and espe-
cially, that he would have coupled such injunction
with a threatened penalty for disobedience. We
may also again and more fully allude to the inquiiy
already suggested : " Why, if man had no moral
sense, no knowledge of right and wrong, was
a law imposed upon him, with a punishment for its
violation ? Is not this fact in itself inconsistent with
the supposition ? "
To the latter objection we reply, in the first place,
and to the same effect as heretofore : it does not
follow that because man had no moral sense, he
could not clearly comprehend the force of the im-
106 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
perative. An infant, or an animal, understands a
command, and recognizes its connection with the
rod held up to enforce it ; but we do not thence
infer in them any moral ideas or reasoning. Even,
therefore, had the prohibition in question been one
which might be classed among those of moral duty,
there is no difficulty in supposing that man could
have felt its binding force without comprehending
the moral reasons that sustained it. The fact that
it was not of that character, but had relation to a
matter involving no moral principle or duty what-
ever, is an additional and a strong circumstance in
meeting the objection ; and the fact of the com-
mand, so far from being inconsistent with our view,
seems inconsistent with any other ; for, as before
suggested, it seems hardly supposable that such a
command would have been selected as the test of
fidelity in a moral being.
But farther. The very form of the mandate
seems to imply that it was addressed to the under-
standing, the judgment, and not to a moral
faculty. There are strong reasons for regarding the
last clause of it as a prediction, rather than a threat ;
and so interpreting the whole as a warning, in the
form of a command. The passage reads literally,
" Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,
eat not of it, because (Hebrew, CHE) in the day
thou eatest of it, dying thou shalt die." The He-
brew word here more literally rendered " be-
cause," imports simple result, without implying
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 107
any new causation to produce it. Accordingly, the
Cbaldee version reads (as translated in " Walton's
Polyglott Bible "), " quonid (since) in die qud
comederis ex ea^ morte morieris" Nor is there
any such sternness in the announcement of conse-
quent death, as our English translation would seem
to indicate. It is precisely the same form of ex-
pression which occurs in verse 16 : " Of every tree
in the garden, eating thou shalt eat ; " and there
interpreted in our version as a gracious permission,
" thou mayest freely eat." It would appear, there-
fore, that in this injunction God were addressing
man's prudence ; as if, for want of a moral sense to
which to appeal, He relied upon self-interest to
deter him from disobedience, through the fear of
certain consequences forewarned to ensue. These
forewarned consequences need not necessarily have
been the natural consequences of the forbidden
fruit ; they might be such consequences, not natu-
ral or necessary, which God yet saw best should
attend the change in man's nature, occurring at
the transgression. In either case they would be
proper considerations to enter into an appeal to
man's prudence, rather than his conscience ; just
as a parent might command his infant child too
young to comprehend moral appeals not to play
with fire, lest it should be burned (a natural conse-
quence), or not to do so, lest it should be deprived
of some plaything or other privilege (a special and
punitive consequence).
108 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
The real truth with regard to mortality seems to
have been that it was, even in man's original state,
his natural condition ; as it was and ever has been
that of all other creatures, whether anterior to or
contemporary with the human race. The story
speaks of " the tree of life which was in the midst
of the garden," and plainly intimates in verse ~2'2
that man's immortality was dependent on his par-
taking of that tree. If this were so, it would seem
that his subjection to mortality, here spoken of as
to ensue upon the transgression, was to be brought
about, not by any change in his physical nature, by
or in consequence of the disobedience ; but only
by his removal from the opportunity of averting
existing liability to death. He was not to be made
mortal, but only to continue so, even as he was
created. " Dying thou shalt die," seems to be the
force of the prediction ; i. e., " shalt be left inev-
itably to die." And this supposition gathers addi-
tional force when we observe that the prescribed
result is announced as to ensue upon the day in
which man should partake of the forbidden fruit.
Were " death " here spoken of in the ordinary
sense, the announcement was not fulfilled ; for
man did not on the day of the disobedience actually
die. But, if our construction is correct, it was
literally carried out; for on that very day, mor-
tality was fixed upon him as thenceforth his inevi-
table fate. And that not as a new condition appar-
ently, but as the final confirmation of his old one.
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 109
"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread
until thou return (literally, until thy returning)
unto the ground ; for out of it thou wast taken :
for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
It seems hardly reasonable to suppose that the pre-
scribed continuance of the condition in which Adam
had been created, and which that fact and his then
existing in it showed not to be incompatible with
innocence and happiness, should be construed as
a threat of punishment in case of his commiting
an offence.
It is worth remarking, in further support of the
view we are taking, that Eve subsequently states
the command in precisely the form in which we
have above rendered it : " God hath said, ye shall
not eat of it, lest ye die." In this version of Eve's,
it is clear that she speaks of mortality as a fore-
warned consequence rather than a threatened pun-
ishment. She apparently supposes it also a natural
consequence, for the serpent immediately replies to
her by denying that such a consequence could be
expected to ensue : " Ye shall not surely die : for
God doth know that in the day ye eat of it (so far
from its causing you to die, it will cause that) ye
shall become as gods, knowing good and evil."
Certainly, had the effect of mortality been threat-
ened as a penalty to be specially inflicted by the
Almighty, such language could only have expressed
to Eve a palpable absurdity ; for in that case such
effect would lie exclusively within God's purposes,
110 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
and it would be ridiculous for a third party to dis-
pute the announcement of his intention, and to
assert that He " knew " a contrary result would be
produced. We may add that this rendering is still
further confirmed, upon examination of the sen-
tence pronounced upon man after the disobedience,
as we shall hereafter have occasion to show.
To the other inquiry, why an act so desirable
should have been prohibited, we answer : that
though the acquisition of a moral faculty was, in
itself considered, an advantage to man, yet there
has also ensued to him, as one result of its posses-
sion, a vast amount of evil, in the guilt and sin for
which he has since made himself answerable, and
which but for that acquisition could not have
accrued. The Creator, foreseeing this sad result,
and foreseeing therefore that the elevation of nature
to be attained by man would be speedily followed
by a fall in position, through his subsequent incur-
rence of moral guilt, with its attendant debasement
and consequent misery, might well throw his influ-
ence against its attainment. It would be quite
consistent, in such view, that God should authori-
tatively forbid the act that would effect it, upon the
ground of the tremendous consequences involved.
Such a command could do no injustice to man,
because, not being a moral agent, his foreseen diso-
bedience of it could not be an act of guilt. Neither
could it interfere with the Divine plan that man
should in fact become a moral agent, (for that this
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. Ill
was the Divine plan in his creation, who can
doubt ?) He who foresaw all things from the be-
ginning, needed not to wait for the event to be sure
of man's course, and to know that the act, though
prohibited, would be done. Yet it removed all
shadow of pretence, that the introduction of guilt
and sin into the world was in any manner the act
of God ; it being what his influence had been ex-
pressly exerted to avert.
While, then, this authoritative prohibition takes
away from man all opportunity to cavil, that sin,
moral evil, or even moral agency, of which sin has
become in our world the sad attendant, had been
brought into it and imposed upon him by God's
agency, however remote, or with his sanction, how-
ever indirect, it does not follow, that the act
which it forbade was of course inconsistent with
God's designs. To suppose this, under any circum-
stances or upon any interpretation of the narrative,
would be to hold that the Almighty had been dis-
appointed and thwarted in his purposes in creating
man. It would be the denial of his foreknowledge.
It would be derogatory to his wisdom and power,
and would be equally inconsistent with the com-
mon, or any other possible view, of the Transgres-
sion. Had it been so, God would certainly never
have created the race, foreseeing, as he must have
done, the actual result. Events constantly occur in
his providence contrary to the Divine commands,
yet directly fulfilling his designs. We need scarcely
112 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
allude to the death of our Saviour, which, as we
are told in Acts ii. 23, was " through the deter-
minate counsel of God," while yet he was " by
wicked hands crucified and slain." So we read of
Pharaoh, whose refusal to let the people go was in
direct opposition to the " thus saith the Lord," and
yet in full accordance with God's wishes and pur-
poses. And again, that Christ " straitly charged "
the healed persons " that they should tell no man,"
although he must have known that " so much the
more they would proclaim it."
We have noticed these imagined objections in
this place, in order that we might remove at the
outset any prejudice against our view, by vindi-
cating its consistency with reason and God's char-
acter. It will be observed, however, that the
agreement of our view with Revelation, is all of
our present concern, and all that we can fairly
be called upon to make clear. Even, therefore,
should teachings of the sacred narrative whose
meaning shall be thus established, seem irrecon-
cilable with general principles, or with the plans
which we should be likely to contrive, it would
not be incumbent on us to show them consistent.
Such difficulty has not been considered fatal to the
common view, admitted, and seemingly insuperable
as it has been. Yet in the light in which we have
presented the story, we apprehend no such conflict.
We confidently appeal to, and rely on, these very
features of consistency and simplicity, which are so
OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED. 113
wanting to the common view, as among the most re-
markable confirmations of the interpretation which
we offer. Not merely in its general features, but
even in its minutest details, it will be found har-
monious with itself, with the honorable position of
our first parents towards their posterity, and with
the justice, benevolence, and wisdom of God. Let
us now return from this digression to an examina-
tion of the narrative.
114 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER V.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE
DISOBEDIENCE.
PROCEEDING with the narrative, as we examine
its account of the conduct of our first parents, in
the various particulars connected with their act of
disobedience^ we shall find nothing to discredit, but
much to support, the views we have presented.
Everything which can tend to throw light upon the
nature and circumstances of that great transaction,
so unparalleled in its character, and so momentous
in its results, must always be deeply interesting :
especially since, in the light in which we have been
accustomed to contemplate it, with reference to the
conduct of our first parents, there is none related
in history so utterly inexplicable, so diverse from
every natural expectation, and from the ordinary
conduct of men. Let us consider for a moment the
manner in which the usual view presents them.
It shows us, then, two human beings endowed
with every perfection of mind and body, in the foil
exercise of a sound judgment, as a part of a vigor-
ous and active intellect ; righteous from voluntary
choice ; knowing well, and viewing with loathing and
fear, the degradation and misery of sin ; and in the
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 115
enjoyment of every happiness from the bountiful
hand of that Creator with whom they were not only
living in daily and confiding intercourse, but to
whom they saw and felt themselves united by every
tie of reverence, gratitude, and affection. Immense,
indeed, we should exclaim, must be the incitement
which could tempt them to relinquish such bless-
ings I Inconceivable the form and the power of
the temptation that could draw them from their
chosen duty ! Yet we are told that these intelligent
and holy beings, upon the very first suggestion, vol-
untarily forsook all this happiness and virtue ; delib-
erately committed the single act upon which they
knew their destiny hung ; abandoned their beloved
Creator, benefactor and friend, at once, upon the
bare and unsupported assertion of an inferior " beast "
and reptile, that He had lied to them, and was jeal-
ous of their advancement, He, who was heaping
blessings and honors upon them continually ! That
they perpetrated this, their first and thus momentous
sin, upon reflection, in full view of its heinousness,
and all its awful consequences, yet apparently with
scarcely a rising hesitation, and without the smallest
recorded struggle of awakening conscience ! And
upon what inducement ? To obtain an experimental
acquaintance with sin and sorrow and evil ; for this,
with their existing experience of " good," and intel-
lectual apprehension of sin, (which moral beings
must possess,) was all that was offered them ! Is
all this credible ? Could we comprehend such reck-
116 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
less folly in even a. fallen human being of the pres-
ent day ? Will " curiosity " explain it ? Do men,
then, show such insatiate curiosity to partake of
known and deadly poison ? Will " ambition " ac-
count for it ? It is true that the woman partook,
because she " saw it was a tree to be desired to
make one wise-" ; but if the common view is right,
the only " wisdom " it could impart, would be the
wisdom that attends destruction; and is there in-
deed an ambition for misery and ruin ? Nay,
more ! could a man ever, (at least, since this period
of perfect and voluntary rectitude passed away,)
without a single struggle, yea, without a terrible
and long-protracted war with conscience, have com-
mitted as his first sin, that very one upon which he
knew his earthly life, his eternal fate, and the des-
tiny of his race were suspended ? And can it be
that perfectly holy beings would falsify the truth
which even of " degenerate " humanity has for ages
been recognized in the proverb, "Nemo repente
fit turpissimus ? " Surely these objections are insu-
perable. Yet these are only a portion of the diffi-
culties that invest the story, in regard to this first
act of disobedience, under its ordinary interpreta-
tion. If any other view shall present as great, let
it by all means be rejected !
Had Adam and Eve been moral beings, it is in-
conceivable but that at their first temptation the sin
of disobedience should have constituted the first and
strongest objection to it in their minds the centre
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 117
and focus of their resistance. And had there, in
fact, been a conflict of this kind within them, it
would certainly have been at least hinted at by the
inspired writer, in referring, as he has, to the emo-
tions and deliberations under which the act was
committed. Milton, though obviously embarrassed
and hampered by the plain teachings of the text, is
yet not so unmindful of human nature, and of prob-
ability, as to neglect this consideration of conscien-
tious scruples, and accordingly represents Eve as
attempting to reason down conscience by a very
refined moral abstraction,
" In plain, then, what forbids He, but to know ?
Forbids us good ! forbids us to be wise !
Such prohibitions bind not."
And the same poet depicts Adam as dwelling
more fully and at large upon the moral aspect of
the contemplated deed. Yet we find no such sug-
gestions alluded to in the Scripture account, nor
anything of the manifold other accessories which
the Poet's imagination has felt itself constrained to
supply, in order to color its representations with the
hues of probability.
On the contrary, the whole transaction as nar-
rated in the sacred record, is marked with the sim-
plicity, and evinces the innocence, of childhood :
" l!^ow the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the
field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the
woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree
of the garden ? And the woman said unto the serpent, We
may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden : but of the
118 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath
said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.
And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die :
for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your
eyes shall be opened; and ye shall be as gods, (ELOHIM, God,)
knowing good and evil. And when the woman saw that the
tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise, (lit. to cause to un-
derstand,) she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat ; and gave
also unto her husband with her ; and he did eat." (Ch. iii. 1.)
Here we see Eve, in reply to the first approaches
of the serpent, all unconscious of his designs, an-
swering his inquiry with candor and truth. She
repels his covert insinuation of unreasonableness in
God's command, and states fully and fairly its im-
port and alternative. As before remarked, she
seems to state the latter as a natural consequence
rather than a. threat of punishment, (certainly the
serpent so understands her,) which she had no mo-
tive to do, unless she supposed it to be thus pre-
sented. Nowhere is there the least indication of a
disposition on her part to misrepresent or equivocate,
but the reverse ; and if, as some commentators try
to imagine, discontent were already rising in her
heart, she would have been more likely to have ob-
scured the terms of the mandate, and to have colored
the penalty with the strongest hues of a complaining
spirit. The whole effect, indeed, of the command,
as here recited by Eve, and apparently understood
by her, is that of a benevolent warning, connected
with a general and kind permission ; she says :
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 119
" Serpent, you are wrong in your suggestion. We
may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden ; all
are free to us. Of one only, which stands in the
midst of the garden, God has warned and enjoined
us not to eat of it, or touch it, lest we die."
Whatever may have been the true import of
Eve's reply, the serpent obviously perceives in her
mind no objections of a moral nature against diso-
bedience, for he responds, not in the usual style of
the tempter, by persuading her that the sin would
be venial, or that
" Such prohibitions bind not; "
but solely to the suggestion of the consequences, as
the only argument, seemingly, which required to be
met. And as we have before noticed, the serpent
alludes to these consequences as something within
God's knowledge, rather than his intentions; and
therefore as an effect, rather than a punishment :
" Ye shall not surely die : for God doth know that in the
day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened ; and ye
shall be as ELOHIM, knowing good and evil."
Such an assurance as this could have had little
effect to deceive Eve, had mortality been under-
stood by her to be a threatened penalty for the act
prohibited, since in such case no assertion of a third
and inferior party could discredit the threat, as no
power of his could prevent its execution. It would
seem, on the contrary, had she really been a moral
and a holy being, that such an open and flagrant
120 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
insult upon her Parent and Friend, these base as-
persions of his veracity and affection, and this
calumnious imputation against him of a mean jeal-
ousy of his children, would have agitated her with
indignation and horror, and driven her from the
presence of the tempter. Such, at least, would be
their natural effect upon a human mind not utterly
debased, as humanity is at present constituted. Yet
we find no intimation that they in the least dis-
turbed her tranquillity, or awakened her suspicions ;
a fact inexplicable, except upon the supposition that
she was incapable of appreciating their wickedness.
But apart from these objections to the common
interpretation that are suggested by the serpent's
reply, it seems impossible, under that interpretation,
that it should have presented to Eve's mind any in-
telligible idea whatever that could have influenced
her as a temptation, or inducement, to the sin of dis-
obedience. Eve, it appears from the story, paused
and reflected upon the considerations for and against
the suggestions of the serpent. Indeed, it seems
certain that the actual transgression occurred at a
different time from that of this interview, and
when, having consulted with her husband, she had
brought him with her to the tree, an idea ac-
cordingly which most commentators support. At
all events, it was not until she " saw that the tree
was good for food, and that it was pleasant [or " a
desire"] to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to
make one wise, that " she took of the fruit thereof,
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 121
and did eat." Upon the common view, it would
seem difficult for her to have formed so favorable an
opinion of the properties of the tree in its capacity
for imparting " wisdom " (by which we must under-
stand, of course, desirable knowledge). Reflecting
upon the serpent's proposition, her deliberations
could hardly have failed to run somewhat thus :
" The serpent assures me that our eyes shall be
opened, and we shall be like ELOHIM, * knowing good
and evil.' Does he mean by ' good and evil,' that
which is moral, or that which is physical and mate-
rial ? Yet, of what importance can it be which he
intends ? for in either case, what new and desirable
experience or knowledge could accrue to us ? Every
material, and all moral good, we already actually
enjoy, and of course have the capacity to compre-
hend it also ; and though we have never yet known
any kind of evil as an experience, yet we have a
sufficient intellectual appreciation and conception of
its character, as in contrast with good, to see that it
is something which our souls shrink from, and which
it is desirable should be avoided. He offers us, then,
no new knowledge, except that which we have no
desire to possess ; and shall I disobey my Creator
for that ? Besides, how could an acquaintance such
as the serpent proposes, with good and evil, with evil
as well as good, (whether the evil be material or
moral,) increase our resemblance to ELOHIM ? since
we already ' know ' them both, precisely as He
does, not in our experience, but sufficiently in our
122 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
conceptions. Clear it is, that no new knowledge
can be imparted by the tree, or if any, it must be
such as would make us wretched, and diminish
rather than promote our likeness to our Maker."
So obvious a process of reasoning, certainly does
not seem improbable in beings of the high endow-
ments which are attributed to our first parents before
the fall, while the conclusions to which it leads, are
manifestly utterly inconsistent with the course of
conduct which they adopted.
On the other hand, the view we are urging rec-
onciles the story with itself, with probability, and
with the instincts of human nature : for it presents
in this reply of the serpent a real temptation to a
partaking of the fruit ; and fully accounts for Eve's
slight hesitation, if any there was, since her want
of a moral sense would oppose to it no conscientious
repugnance. According to our view, she might be
supposed to reason thus upon the proposition of the
tempter : " The serpent is clearly right in saying
that the tree will convey to us the apprehension of
right and wrong, for that its very name, given by
God himself, indicates. Surely, to possess this mys-
terious knowledge, whatever it may be, this mental
illumination and power, so incomprehensible, so di-
vine, were, indeed, to increase our resemblance to
God's infinite nature, and to make a great step
upward ! What can that knowledge be ? What
strange joys and blessings may not be involved in
it ? Hurtful it cannot be, for God possesses it, and
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 123
he is only blessed and glorious. True, he has for-
bidden us its acquisition ; but why ? * Lest we
die.' But how can the knowledge of right and
wrong occasion us to die ? The serpent positively
assures us it will not ; and if he is right, as he plainly
is, in stating one result of the fruit, may he not also
be correct, and God mistaken, with regard to this ?
He gives a reason, too, for his assertion, ' Ye shall
not surely die,' he says, '/or ye shall be as ELOHIM,
knowing good and evil,' as if the knowing good and
evil, like ELOHIM, were in itself a reason and a proof
against the result of mortality. And is it not so ?
Has this knowledge made God to die ? Then, why
ourselves, who are made in his image ? On the
other hand, the brutes who do not possess it, differ-
ing therein from ELOHIM, differ also in this, that
they are mortal, for so the bones and fragments of
their perished races show us. May not, then, this
unknown power of knowing right and wrong, be
that which ensures to its possessor exemption from
death, instead of liability to it ? It is all we need
to perfect our similitude to our Creator ; and should
it complete the resemblance in respect to this knowl-
edge of right and wrong, and in respect to the cer-
tainty of eternal life besides, then this is, indeed, a
tree at once good for food, and pleasant to the eyes,
and a tree to be desired to make one wise I "
There is surely nothing forced in this chain of
reasoning, as the supposed meditations of an intel-
ligent creature, not a moral agent, and so incapable
124 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
of seeing anything improper to be indulged in its
imputations upon God's knowledge or veracity. To
such a being, the antagonism of God's allegations
to those of the serpent, would seem simply a differ-
ence of opinion, or a mere discrepancy of state-
ment ; and between the two, that would receive the
most credit which seemed to be the most plausible,
or best corroborated. The question of expediency is,
at all events, the only one upon which the narrative
represents Eve as pausing to deliberate, a circum-
stance which, as we have before suggested, is hardly
conceivable of a holy being hesitating over her first
temptation, and that, one of such tremendous mo-
ment. When this inquiry seemed plausibly dis-
posed of; when she saw, or supposed she saw,
u that the tree was good for food, and pleasant to
the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one
wise," both she and her husband unhesitatingly par-
took of its fruit, without the faintest recorded move-
ment of conscience to restrain them. " She gave
to her husband also, and he did eat." They seem
to have acted throughout like artless children, who
are readily enticed to acts agreeable in the prospect,
so long as they are ignorant of their moral charac-
ter, and incapable of discerning it. 1
1 Paul says, 1 Tim. ii. 14, that " Adam was not deceived, but Eve
being deceived, was in the trangression " (jrapa<i<rei). His precise
meaning in this passage is somewhat obscure. It would seem to fol-
low from the statement that Adam (if the trangression were a sin) was
the least excusable of the pair. It will be noticed, however, that in
any light, this remark of Paul's does not militate against our view
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 125
Some other considerations in this connection
ought not to be overlooked. The narrative plainly
teaches that the temptation was first addressed to
Eve when she was alone ; that it was not imme-
diately acted upon by her, but dwelt in her mind
until a subsequent occasion, when, Adam being
present, she partook of the fruit, and persuaded
him to do likewise. Of the latter fact, indeed,
there can be no question, since God himself asserts
it in the remark : " Because thou hast hearkened
unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten," &c. It
thus appears : 1st, that the disobedience was upon
full and deliberation reflection, at least upon the
part of Eve ; and 2d, that the tempter in his
" subtlety " approached her first, as the most likely
to be " beguiled " into the act of disobedience. Yet
upon the common view of the temptation, as direct
advice to sin in order to attain increase of knowl-
edge, it seems very inartfully presented. The ap-
peal to intellectual ambition was a weak one to
press upon a woman's mind, though it might pre-
sent a powerful incitement to an intelligent, nobly
constituted man ; and, on the other hand, the sug-
gestion of sinful disobedience (even for a tempting
object) would be less likely to succeed with a woman,
since his language does not import sinfulness in " the transgression."
And farther, that Paul appends it as a reason for what he has just ad-
vanced upon his own authority, and not by inspiration; viz., v. 12:
u I suffer not the woman to usurp authority over the man, but to be in
silence." As such, it certainly looks like an illogical argument, for what
many in our day will, doubtless, regard as very questionable doctrine.
126 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
in whom conscience, trustfulness, and the spirit of
obedience are naturally much more than in the other
sex influential upon conduct. But upon our suppo-
sition that the temptation involved a fallacy merely,
and no suggestion of guilt, it was appropriate that
Eve should be first approached by the tempter,
since her judgment was weaker than Adam's, and
the appeal was quite as strongly addressed to wom-
anly curiosity as to manly ambition ; while the wife,
if gained over, would be a powerful agency in per-
suading the husband. In fact, it appears from the
narrative that it was chiefly this female character-
istic curiosity, which influenced Eve, the stim-
ulus of mental ambition being in her case subordi-
nate, though probably a leading motive with Adam.
She ate because " she saw that the tree was good
for food and pleasant to the eyes," as well, as " a
tree to be desired to make one wise," and then
** gave to her husband with her, and he did eat."
And thus the great transaction was consummated.
Whatever may have been the previous character
and position of our first parents, or the precise
nature of the change that was effected bv this act
o /
within them, there will be little dispute that it occa-
sioned, in some way or other, the most remarkable
and important revolution that humanity has ever
undergone. By it was wrought that momentous
change, whatever it may have been, that altered at
once the personal relations of man to his Maker,
and fixed the future destinies of the whole human
THE DISOBEDIENCE. 127
race. The history of man's career dates from the
moment of its perpetration ; for that moment it was,
by all admissions, which gave him that direction,
and those qualities of character, which have deter-
mined his whole course as a race, and his destiny.
Thenceforth, relying no longer on the constant com-
panionship of his Maker to direct his conduct, he
was left to look chiefly within his own breast for the
monitor of his thoughts and actions, and for the
familiar expositor of that law to which he was to be
held accountable. This, it is agreed by all, was
one result, was in fact the great result of the act
we have contemplated. Shall we suppose this with-
drawal of God's immediate supervision to have been
because his children were fairly embarked on the
fearful current of moral ruin, (whereby they would
seem to need that care the more,) or rather because
they had now attained that moral discernment which
in a measure dispensed with his counsel, and had
reached that position of free and intelligent moral
agency, for which at their creation He had designed
them ?
For answer, we look not alone to the goodness
and benevolence of God's character, but also to his
revelation, in the narrative whose consideration we
continue.
128 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER VI.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT.
IN seeking an answer to the inquiry just sug-
gested, we come next to examine the circumstances
which are related to have succeeded the disobedient
action, as its actual and necessary consequences.
The next sentence to that which relates the par-
taking of the forbidden fruit, declares its immediate
and marvellous effect :
"And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew
that they were naked ; and they sewed fig-leaves together and
made themselves aprons." (Chap. iii. 7.)
The effect thus wrought seems to have been the
complete effect of the fruit, for no other results are
alluded to, and no others ensued, except such as
were afterwards specially imposed by the Creator.
The Almighty himself obviously announces this to
have been the fact in verse 22, where he says,
" Behold, the man is become as one of us," etc. ;
plainly implying that the whole change which the
fruit could produce in man's nature had occurred ;
and necessarily implying that that change was the
one indicated in verse 7, which we are considering.
The immediateness, completeness, and the char-
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 129
acter of this related effect, are noticeable, as being
inconsistent with those theories which hold that the
change produced in man by the disobedience was
such as time and experience only could reveal.
We find here, therefore, no support for the idea
that it wrought the loss of constitutional moral ex-
cellence, or of the ability to maintain moral perfec-
tion ; none for the doctrine that it merely exhibited
the certainty of man's sinfulness, through his first
development of character; and as little for the
fancy that the fruit may have effected a deteriora-
tion in man's physical nature, reducing it to the
level of suffering and mortality. At present, how-
ever, we are more concerned with the inquiry what
light this part of the story sheds upon man's pre-
vious moral nature, and what change in this respect
it indicates to have been actually produced.
When, therefore, the deed is done, the fatal sin,
as it is called, committed, how are the actors
affected ? At once " their eyes are opened," and to
what purpose ? Is it as the common view would
teach an awakening from the infatuation of wick-
edness to an awful and overwhelming sense of
guilt ? Are they then crushed in the dust with
remorse and terror? with the pangs of self-
reproach ? with humiliation and distress ? None
of these. As little do they manifest the symptoms
of newly infused corruption, and rush immediately
into the practice of sin. Milton, indeed, ignoring
the facts of the narrative, represents their first
9
130 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
emotions as those of sinful passion. The story,
on the other hand, reveals them as the feelings of
simplicity and purity. " Their eyes were opened,"
not to agony and remorse for their disobedience,
not to new seductions of appetite, but to the prompt-
ings of modesty, and to make themselves a covering.
It has been supposed by the supporters of the
ordinary view, that the phrase, " They knew that
they were naked," indicates the advent of impure
emotions to the minds of our first parents, who
had been previously so holy as to be indifferent to
the circumstance of their want of bodily clothing.
The making for themselves aprons, it is said, mani-
fests the resistance of their lingering virtue against
this impurity. If this is so, it is most strange that
the story has not presented these truths in a more
clear and natural way ; but that it is not so, and
that this is a forced and improbable explanation of
the passage, will appear from several considerations.
In the first place, the expression, " their eyes
were opened," can by no just construction be made
to imply the inroad of sinful emotions. It is no-
where so used in Scripture. On the contrary, it
always implies a mental illumination, the attain-
ment of desirable knowledge, while sin is called
a blindness. " Their eyes have they closed, and
their ears are dull of hearing," says the Prophet
Isaiah, in speaking of the wilful wickedness of
Israel, " lest they should see with their eyes," etc.,
" and be converted, and I should heal them." The
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 131
Psalmist cries, (Psalm cxix. 18,) praying for the
enlightenment of his moral perceptions, " Open
thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things
out of thy law " ; and so in numerous other passages.
Now in the light of these premises, let us examine
the common idea of this passage. It is certain and
admitted that Adam and Eve attained some new
perceptions, not with regard to the mere physical
fact of their nudity, for this they must have fully
comprehended before ; but with regard to a pre-
viously unimagined significance in that fact, and a
new effect of its contemplation upon themselves.
And what, upon the ordinary view, were these new
suggestions ? Not, surely, that a state of nudity was
in itself improper in moral beings, for God had al-
lowed them theretofore to continue unclothed. Not
that it in itself tended to awaken impure emotions
in moral creatures, for such had never before been
their experience. The discovery must therefore
have been, merely, that this condition, now for the
first time, excited within them impure and immoral
emotions. It was simply then (as the view would
imply) a discovery that they had suddenly become
more easily corrupted, more subject to the control
of debasing appetites than before, and this discov-
ery must have been through the actual upris-
ing and prevalence of those passions within their
breasts. But as we have already seen, no such
experience of sin can be intended by the phrase,
" their eyes were opened," a phrase used only to
132 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
convey a totally opposite signification. Nor is this
the only objection. Apart from all this, the ex-
pression fairly denotes an improvement in the men-
tal vision, whereby it is strengthened or cleared up,
to discern things previously in existence, but undis-
tinguished ; and can by no just use of language
be employed to describe the total change of a man's
circumstances, with his natural recognition simply
of that change and its consequences. It describes
the enabling of a blind man to see the things
already about or within him, and not the removal
of one who sees to a different sphere, where his
eye merely rests upon new objects of vision.
Again. It is incredible that indifference to a
condition of nudity could be a result or accompa-
niment of the highest purity in a free moral agent.
Such an idea is neither sanctioned by reason nor by
observation. In a being free to sin, the practice of
whatever tends to excite or foster natural passion
is incompatible with the highest state of holiness.
The purest and holiest creatures of earth, so far
from being the most indifferent, are the most sensi-
tively delicate and modest ; and it needs no argu-
ment to show that the baser passions would be
more likely to prevail among men, however holy,
if all went naked like the brutes, than if they de-
cently covered themselves with clothing. Indeed,
a common brute nudity can scarcely be thought of,
except as accompanied by brute-like prevalence
and shamelessness of passion. Such is its notorious
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 133
influence among the filthy savage races, who alone
exhibit it in practice, the lowest representatives
of humanity, the farthest conceivable from holy
beings, so lost to moral purity as to seem almost
destitute of a moral sense. The only other human
beings who are indifferent, are infants too young to
comprehend moral distinctions ; and in both these
classes, no sooner does conscience begin to appear,
than this instinct of modesty awakens ; " their eyes
are opened," " they know that they are naked,"
and " they are ashamed." l How unaccountable
upon the common view, and how consistent with
that which we are sustaining, that the first emotion
of our first parents after their disobedience, should
be that instinctive and delicate modesty which ac-
companies the earliest presence of the moral sense !
How forcible a commentary upon the purport of the
recorded fact, that, before that act of disobedience,
they had been "both naked, the man and his
wife," and " knew not what shame was ! " That
this new feeling was no sinful prompting, but in
accordance with the dictates of purity and modesty,
is clear, for God himself afterwards sanctioned it,
by clothing them in a more perfect manner. Nei-
ther here, nor elsewhere in the narrative, do we
1 Missionaries among the degraded savages of South Africa assert,
that the first indication afforded by these almost naked barbarians of
the awakening of religious feeling in their hearts, is their application
for the most essential articles of clothing. When a native comes to
ask for a shirt, it is an almost unerring sign that he is spiritually
awakened, and is ready to put on the garment of righteousness.
134 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
find the least hint of a sudden degradation, or of
the incoming of new depravity.
Once more. A decisive refutation of this doctrine
of incoming impurity found in verse 7, appears in
verse 22, already quoted ; where God, speaking of
the effect produced by the fruit, says, " Behold,
the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil " (i. e., right and wrong). The change here
referred to as having already taken place, is mani-
festly that which occurred when his " eyes were
opened," and " he knew that he was naked."
The " knowledge that he was naked," then, was
associated with his new acquirement of " the knowl-
edge of good and evil," and was in itself an evi-
dence that in that respect he had " become like
ELOHIM." The manner in which man, then, looked
upon his nudity, when "his eyes were opened,"
was the way in which ELOHIM in man's position
would Himself regard it, and occasioned his acting
with respect to it, precisely as ELOHIM would, and
in fact did, subsequently act. Now had man
taken this new view of his nudity in consequence,
and as a part of his changing from a holy to a sin-
ful creature, and as a result of the inroad of impure
emotions, then, so far from its being an evidence
of his having become more like ELOHIM, it would
have indicated his departure from such a resem-
blance. In such case its cause would have been
described as the advent of moral darkness and
blindness, instead of the dawn of moral light and
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 135
clearness of vision. Hence, the passage, while it
fully accords with our theory that verse 7 relates
the awakening by man to the dignity of a moral
agent, is inconsistent with the idea that it repre-
sents him, theretofore a holy moral creature, as
falling into his first experience of sin.
Having thus examined the transgression with
reference to its immediate results upon its actors,
let us consider how they would naturally be affected
after the first promptings of instinct had been
obeyed, and some little time had elapsed for re-
flection. While busy with satisfying the instinc-
tive demands of modesty, they could think of noth-
ing else ; but these disposed of, their minds would
naturally revert to the act of disobedience which
they had just committed, and which in the light of
their newly acquired moral sense they would now
begin to view in a ne'sV and alarming aspect. It is
true that no actual sinfulness had as yet, in fact,
been committed by the pair, (the disobedience hav-
ing been perpetrated by them in a state of moral
ignorance ;) nor is there any positive intimation
that they now imputed to themselves guilt in the
transgression ; yet we may well suppose that their
sensitive consciences presented their conduct to
them, however incorrectly, in the light of a sin, as
they can hardly be supposed to have reasoned with
much metaphysical precision upon the effect of
their previous moral incapacity. Indeed, some
degree of morbidness is the invariable character-
136 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
istic of a newly awakened or tender conscience,
even in the most cultivated and practised minds.
St. Paul could not refrain from calling himself the
chief of sinners when reviewing acts in which at
the time he verily thought he was doing God ser-
vice ; and such examples are of common observa-
tion. At all events, whether Adam and Eve rea-
soned or not upon the sinfulness of their conduct,
they could not fail to remember that in it they had
disobeyed the positive commands of their Maker ;
they recalled the solemnly declared consequences,
and it is no wonder that, when they heard his voice
approaching, " they hid themselves from his pres-
ence among the trees of the garden."
" And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said unto him,
Where art thou ? And he said, I heard thy voice in the gar-
den, and I was afraid, because I was naked ; and I hid myself.
And He said, Who told thee that thou wast naked ? Hast
thou eaten of the tree whereof I commanded thee that thou
shouldest not eat? " (Chap. iii. 9-11.)
Summoned thus from their retreat to render an
account of themselves, Adam, under the terror of
their situation, (and here, at least, the temptation
is adequate,) commits his first sin, that of equivo-
cation, if not falsehood, in excusing his flight. This
excuse, however, is not without its bearing upon
our inquiry. Had Adam been conscious that his
sense of shame proceeded from impure emotions,
he would scarcely have ventured to offer it as an
apology for his self-concealment. He must have
EFFECTS OF THE FORBIDDEN FRUIT. 137
supposed it in itself proper and commendable ; nor
does God in his response imply the contrary. With-
out any censure for such sentiments, (which, as we
have seen, He afterward fully sanctioned,) He in-
stantly demands, in an inquiry full of meaning in
this connection, " Who told thee that thou wast
naked? " a plain implication of man's prior want
of those moral perceptions which were now asso-
ciated by him with this fact of nudity. Whence
comes this new sentiment of modesty ? these
sudden perceptions of purity and impurity ? HAST
THOU EATEN OF THE TREE whose power it was to
convey them ? Is it from that that thou derivest
this new knowledge of good and evil ? this appre-
hension of moral right and wrong ? Such were
the questions which Adam elicited by this confes-
sion of his modesty ; questions whose very state-
ment disclosed their answer, and would seem irre-
sistibly to confirm the conclusions we have drawn
from other portions of the narrative.
We may perhaps incidentally remark that this
sin of equivocation in Adam, was one not so hei-
nous in its nature (especially in view of his situation
at the moment) as to be unlikely to have been the
first committed by a moral being. Indeed it is the
very one which is usually the first serious sin of
childhood, falsehood for the purpose of escaping
apprehended retribution or censure. 1 We thus
1 " Even in the best naturally disposed children is found an element
of hatred, and an element of lying, especially for the purposes of self-
justification." Miilhr's Doctrine of Sin, Vol. II. p. 309.
188 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
avoid a serious objection (already noticed) to the
ordinary view, which represents the first sin of
Adam as one of the greatest, the most unaccount-
able, the least excusable, and upon the smallest
temptation of any recorded in the history of man.
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 139
CHAPTER VII.
EXAMINATION OF THE NARRATIVE CONTINUED. THE
SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS.
THE sentences (so called) which God proceeds
to pass upon the various actors in the disobedience
now demand our attention. They are recorded as
follows :
" And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou
hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above
every beast of the field. Upon thy belly shalt thou go, and
dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put
enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed
and her seed : it shall bruise thy ,head, and thou shalt bruise
his heel.
" Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sor-
row and thy conception : in sorrow shalt thou bring forth
children ; and thy desire shall be unto thy husband, and he
shall rule over thee.
" And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast done this,
and hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten
of the tree whereof I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt
not eat of it ; cursed is the ground for thy sake : in sorrow
shalt thou eat of it, all the days of thy life ; thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth to thee, and thou shalt eat of the
herb of the field. In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou
taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
(Chap. iii. 14-19.)
140 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
Of these, that which is addressed to the serpent
has received much attentive consideration from
commentators, and various suppositions have been
formed regarding it. It is of less importance in
our inquiry than the others, yet not destitute of
interest. It is mostly agreed that the first portion
of it applies merely to the serpent tribes of creat-
ures, whose shape, having been thus assumed by the
tempter, is doomed to signify thereafter God's dis-
pleasure at the purpose which had inspired him in
this transaction. The latter part, however, is gen-
erally thought to be prophetic, and to foreshadow
the long conflict between the prince of darkness
and the soul of man, until the coming of Christ to
bruise and effectually crush the power of evil in
the world.
If we adopt this interpretation of the latter
clause of the address to the serpent, we at once are
led to inquire, why, upon the common view of " the
fall," this antagonism between man and the prince
of evil should now be announced as a thing of the
future. According to this view, man, having been
previously a holy being, under the moral law, and
with the power of breaking it, must have been
always subject to temptation and sin ; had in fact,
been at this time already attacked, defeated, and
completely ruined by the enemy of his soul. In
his primal fidelity to God, and preference for holi-
ness, he must have been constantly in a position of
antagonism and enmity to sin and the tempter;
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 141
more so, surely, far more than since his "fall,"
and increased depravity of nature. Yet the Al-
mighty distinctly speaks, not of continuing enmity,
but of ''putting enmity" between him and the
tempter, as a thing thenceforth to take place. " I
iv ill put enmity," etc. It would appear from this
that no such antagonism had previously subsisted
between man and sin as has since subsisted ; a fact
inconsistent with the view of man's original moral
holiness and subsequent corruption, but clearly in
conformity with the theory that his moral agency,
and consequently " the enmity " between him and
sin, commenced after the disobedience.
In this address to the serpent we recognize a just
displeasure on the part of the Almighty toward an
intelligent and malignant being who has designed
to subvert God's plans, but who, with the usual
success of such plotters, has really been but the
blind and unwilling instrument of accomplishing
his purposes. In influencing man to disobedience,
he accomplished no real triumph, such as the com-
mon view supposes, either over man or his Creator ;
he disappointed no wishes or intentions of God,
even temporarily ; he simply occasioned man's ad-
vancement to the condition of a moral agent, and
thus furthered God's designs respecting human
nature from the beginning.
The sentences pronounced upon the human pair
we shall notice more at length.
In the first place : they are not to be regarded as
142 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the denouncement of a punishment. For it is mani-
fest, that if a punishment is proclaimed by them,
it must be either a punishment for this specific and
individual act of Adam and Eve, or a punishment
to be visited upon them and their posterity for this
and future transgressions of the race. That it is
not the latter, is unequivocally declared by God in
the outset. It is, " Because thou hast done this,
and hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife, and
hast eaten of the fruit of the tree whereof I com-
manded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it,"
that the results announced are to follow. What-
ever the intent or purpose, therefore, of these fore-
told experiences, it is certain that they were to
attach to Adam and his posterity, simply and solely
as a consequence of this particular and individual
act of Adam and Eve. Were they, then, so to be
visited upon Adam and all future generations of
mankind, as a penalty for this his individual act of
transgression ? We shall urge the negative of this
proposition upon several grounds ; and in doing so,
we shall of course set aside for the time being all
our previous evidence that this transgression of
Adam was not a sin, and consequently offered no
cause for the infliction of a penalty. We shall
proceed upon the supposition upheld by the com-
mon view, that it was a criminal act in him, and as
such a proper subject for punishment.
The first objection, then, is the obvious one that
as these foretold experiences are evidently an-
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 143
nounced as conditions which were to attach to the
whole race forever, they could not be intended as a
punishment for Adam's individual act. Had Adam
committed a sin punishable with death, it were not
mercy merely, it were the simplest justice, to visit
the penalty upon him and new-create the race. It
were the most obvious wrong to punish Adam's
posterity for the guilt of his first sin any more than
for that of his second ; or to punish his descend-
ants for his sins any more than for the sins of any
subsequent ancestor. By this, we of course do not
mean to deny either the fact or the justice of
God's " visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon
the children unto the third and fourth generation,"
as he declares he does in another place. It is, as
we conceive, a very different thing to " visit the
iniquities of the fathers upon the children" in the
natural and legitimate consequences which evil
deeds may entail upon an innocent posterity, from
what it is " to punish " the children for the sins
of their fathers, by the infliction of special penalties
totally separate and disconnected from the conse-
quences of such sins. Such are the trials here pre-
dicted for the descendants of the human pair : the
pangs of childbirth, the sterility of the ground, the
necessity and fatigues of toil. These are conse-
quences specially imposed for the act of disobe-
dience, and which did not naturally grow out of
it. Even mortality itself, as we have before seen,
appears not to have been a necessary or natural
144 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
result of the disobedience ; for from ver.se 22 it would
appear that it was already man's natural condition ;
that it could have been averted before the trans-
gression only by partaking of the " tree of life,"
and that it might have been averted by so doing,
even after that event. If then the permitting it to
continue, by depriving man of any farther oppor-
tunity of escaping it, was indeed a penalty, it was
a penalty special and not naturally consequent in its
character. This consideration is of itself an evi-
dence that it could not have been intended as a
penalty for the disobedience ; for such are not the
punishments of sin which God allows to descend
upon even the third and fourth generations, far less
upon all generations forever.
Second. Another indication that a penalty is
not here imposed, may be found in the phraseology
of the sentence itself. According to the ordinary
doctrine, a curse was passed at this time upon
Adam and his race. " All mankind fell under
God's wrath and curse," says the "Westminster
Catechism ; but it will be observed that no such
curse upon the human family is here narrated. It
is not Adam, but the ground, that is cursed. The
difference between the address to Adam and that to
the serpent is remarkable. Both commence in the
same manner, "Because thou hast done this;"
but with the serpent it is, " cursed art th-ou" while
with Adam it is simply, " cursed is the ground, for
thy sake ! " Nor is this only another form for the
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 145
same thing, a.s we shall see if we compare it with
God's terrible denunciation upon Cain, in the next
chapter :
"And now thou art cursed from the earth, [or, in respect
to the earth,] which hath opened her mouth to receive thy
brother's blood from thy hand. When thou tillest the ground,
it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength," etc.
(Chap. i-v. 11.)
So also in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy,
where curses are denounced upon the Israelites if
they should be disobedient. It is done in no indi-
rect manner :
" Cursed shalt thou be in the city, and cursed shalt thou be
in the field. Cursed shalt thou be when thou comest in, and
cursed shalt thou be when thou goest out."
In the case before us, the announcement of " the
sentence " is not in a form that necessarily indi-
cates anger, especially that portion which is ad-
dressed to Eve. Even mortality as we have
observed in another place seems foretold simply
as man's natural fate ; a fate not specially prepared
for him on account of the transgression, but only
not to be averted, as it might perhaps otherwise have
been. Such appears to be the force of the expres-
sion which is literally translated, " until thy return-
ing unto the dust, whence thou art taken ; for dust
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return ; " and
this inference is confirmed by the allusions in other
parts of the story to the " tree of life," and to the
necessity that man, whether before or after the
10
146 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
transgression, should partake of it, in order to be
rendered immortal.
Third. The experiences here predicted cannot
be understood as penalties imposed for the disobe-
dience, because (with the exception of mortality)
they had not been forewarned or threatened as its
consequences. God could not with justice, any
more than human rulers, inflict upon man punish-
ments of which he had not forewarned him; and
if death alone had been announced as the penalty,
he could not now inflict different and additional evils
such as were not necessarily involved in mortality.
That the trials here recited were not so involved,
appears from the fact that God distinctly tells Eve,
that her increased physical " sorrows," and those
of her sex, were to be an effect specially imposed,
" I will greatly multiply thy sorrow," etc. The
sterility of the ground, too, is the consequence of a
distinct and separate curse upon it, entirely inde-
pendent of man's mortality. But this is not all.
The objection may be as fairly taken from what is
omitted in the enumeration, as from what is con-
tained. Whether this " sentence " be supposed to
be an infliction for this particular sin of Adam
alone, or whether a general judgment for the future
sinfulness of mankind foreshadowed and typified in
this first transgression, in either case it is unac-
countably incomplete. For, what are undoubtedly
the worst penalties of sin are not here alluded to.
Nothing is said of the diseases, the violence, the
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 147
distresses, the injustice, the alarms, the remorse, and
all the other direct punishments of sin in this life ;
nothing of its retribution in another state of exist-
ence. Will it be claimed that God not only openly
affixed unexpected additions to the penalty originally
forewarned, but even in announcing these mentally
added others, the greatest, most important, and
most fearful of all ? Clearly, if an announcement
of the penalty for sin, this " sentence," while it is
in one point of view unjustly enlarged, is in another
as strangely deficient.
And fourth : not only do these sentences include
too much, and omit too much, to be regarded as the
denouncement of penalties for sin, but, what is a still
more forcible objection, the evils which they do fore-
tell are such as do not ensue to all sinners. If we
allow that they proclaim judgments for general sin-
fulness, (though but an incomplete enumeration,)
they at least ought to be as universal in their appli-
cation to the race, as the sinfulness against which
they are meant to testify God's displeasure. But it
will be seen that the sorrows predicted for Eve, are
such as visit only those of her female descendants
who bear children ; and the burdens (if any) that
are placed upon Adam, are, as we know, entirely
unfelt by a large proportion of his posterity. Mil-
lions upon millions of women have lived and died
without experiencing the peculiar trials of the wife
and the mother ; and other vast multitudes of the
race, in all ages, have been relieved by Nature's
148 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
profusion in tropical climes, the fertility of partic-
ular soils, the possession of hereditary property, or
by other circumstances, from the necessity of toil
for a subsistence. These prescribed experiences,
then, if they are designed to be penalties for sin,
differ very widely differ, indeed, in the most es-
sential point from the real and admitted retribu-
tions for guilty deeds, remorse, fear, mental and
physical ruin and suffering, which no sinner ever
escapes, of whatever sex, condition, or country. It
cannot be believed that experiences, so uncertain
and so imperfectly encountered by mankind, should
have been selected by the Deity as general penalties
for a guilty race, and so held up as a special
and peculiar testimonial of his displeasure at man's
universal sinfulness.
These considerations alone, and certainly these
in connection with the evidence adduced that the
transgression was not a sinful act in Adam and Eve,
must suffice to convince us that the conditions of
life here imposed upon all generations of mankind
forever, were not thus imposed as a penalty for the
personal disobedience of their progenitors.
But if these experiences thus announced to en-
sue upon the disobedience are not penalties for it,
in what light are they to be regarded ? They are
certainly not rewards, and if neither rewards nor
punishments, what is their character ? The question
is most pertinent, yet not difficult of answer. They
are, manifestly, certain new conditions of existence
THE SENTENCES NOT PUNISHMENTS. 149
now imposed upon man, as those into which Infi-
nite Wisdom and Benevolence see it best that he,
as a moral agent, shall enter ; conditions which,
though involving some sorrows, and entailing some
burdens, are yet with wonderful wisdom adapted to
his necessities in his exalted yet hazardous state of
moral agency, in order to enable him to escape its
perils, to partake fully of its blessings, and to reach,
through it, the highest development of his being.
This supposition reconciles all the difficulties which
we have considered, and which present such insu-
perable objections to any other view of this narra-
tive. These conditions of life were, indeed, as pro-
claimed by the Creator,, to be entered into by Adam
and his posterity, " because " he committed the act
of disobedience ; yet they are not open to the charge
of injustice that would lie against them, were they
a punishment for that, his individual act. They
were not aggravations of the troubles incident to
humanity, but a means adopted to mitigate or pre-
vent the evils to which it would otherwise be ex-
posed. To have created subsequent generations
into a state of punishment for acts committed before
they were born, would have been an injustice, how-
ever slight that punishment might be ; but to create
them into any particular conditions of life, not suf-
ficiently onerous to make existence, on the whole, a
burden and an evil, (especially if the purpose and
tendency of those conditions were to promote their
happiness or elevation,) would be no more unjust
150 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
than to create them into any particular age or coun-
try. That the conditions under consideration were
of such character and tendency, that they were not
only no serious calamity to man, but actually calcu-
lated and intended to secure his physical, moral,
and spiritual welfare, we shall now proceed to show.
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 151
CHAPTER
THE SENTENCE OF EVE.
IT is plain that in the new relations of man,
wherein the irregularities and excesses of his pas-
sions, otherwise merely pernicious, had become
guilty and punishable, it would comport with the
goodness and benevolence of God to place him in
such circumstances of life as would cooperate with
reason and conscience to regulate his appetites, and
to restrain their strength and growth. Accordingly,
we find that all the conditions of life now announced
by his Maker, as henceforth imposed upon him, are
such as experience has shown to be conspicuously
of that character.
The " sentence " (if we may so call it) of Eve,
which is first in order, peculiarly sustains this state-
ment, and is manifestly designed for purposes of
the highest importance to the moral welfare of the
race :
" I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception : in
sorrow thou shalt bring forth children ; and thy desire shall
be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee."
A most remarkable and impressive announce-
ment ! One that must have strangely affected the
trembling Eve, if she were expecting from her
152 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
Creator's lips, the threatened doom of death, and
with it the annihilation of the human race ! In
exact and widest contrariety to the purport of such
a sentence, is this announcement of her own con-
tinued existence, and through her the birth and
generation of Earth's future millions through count-
less ages. This Divine address, so extraordinary in
all its aspects, and especially when viewed in con-
nection with the preceding parts of the narrative,
will well repay the most careful study.
And first, to express the considerations which the
passage suggests most obviously to the mind.
The conditions of life that are announced as
henceforth imposed upon woman are the trials of
parturition, and especially her subjection to the jeal-
ous watchfulness and authority of the stronger sex,
a jealousy instinctive in its character, and pecul-
iar to the human race, a jealousy which estab-
lishes chastity as the first female virtue, and punishes
the loss of it, as woman's worst sin, with inexorable
rigor, and with lasting disgrace, which especially
enforces her fidelity to the conjugal relation as the
right and due of her husband scarcely less than of
God, and regards her violation of this duty as the
most flagrant crime, and the deepest wrong that she
can possibly commit, a crime never to be for-
gotten or forgiven. Who will deny that these
have been, in all ages, among the strongest pre-
servatives of female virtue ? The fact is remark-
able that in all ages and countries, and in every
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 153
form of society, from the most barbarous to the
most enlightened and Christian, the purity of
woman has been viewed by the natural instinct of
both sexes in a light far different from the same
virtue in man. By the common law of mankind,
there is recognized in him a sort of right or property
in her character, imposing upon her a special law,
and a double obligation to chastity, notwithstanding
that, theoretically, the rules of morality know no
distinctions of sex. This instinct it is, and the con-
sequences that flow from it in the social penalties
that follow her loss of virtue, together with the
physical trials to which she must be subjected in
childbirth, which have been ever among the great-
est blessings of woman and the world. They have
operated to check the prevalence of licentiousness
in Earth's worst regions and periods, and have effi-
ciently aided to preserve the vigor of the human
race. Are ordinances of such wisdom and good-
ness to be regarded as a curse and a punishment ?
Are they to be mourned over as a penalty for sin,
or rather to be rejoiced at as means preventive or
obstructive of its sway ?
That all this is involved in the " sentence " of
Eve, is apparent upon a merely general considera-
tion. But if we will examine the constituent parts
of the " sentence," we shall see reasons, more defi-
nite and not less powerful, for recognizing it as a
wise and benevolent provision for a race of beings
about entering on a moral existence. It speaks
154 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
first of a change to occur in the physical nature of
woman ; and second, of new relations and obliga-
tions of a moral character, to which she is thence-
forth to be subject. Let us take the first portion
first : " I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and con-
ception : in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children ! "
It is clear that some degree of pain in childbirth
was to have been her lot, even in her original state,
corresponding, in this respect, with the higher or-
ders of animals, which suffer more or less of physi-
cal pain in producing their young. This inconsid-
erable " sorrow " is now to be greatly augmented,
and if we would appreciate the effects of such aug-
mentation upon the physical and moral welfare of
the race, let us reflect how widely the relationships
of parent and child, of brother and sister, in short,
the family relation, differ in all their characteristics
and influences among mankind, from the same rela-
tionships among the brute creation. Nor is it diffi-
cult to see how far this difference is effected by the
increased " sorrow," the pains, anxieties, and labors,
which the human mother experiences in producing
and rearing her offspring. The lower animal, bring-
ing forth its young with little or no physical exertion
or strain, and providing for their infant wants with-
out labor, needs no natural limitation to the num-
ber of her family. Each infant, or brood, that is
produced, has passed the need of maternal assistance
before the next comes forth, and is thenceforth for-
ever abandoned and forgotten. Such, it would ap-
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 156
pear, would have been substantially the condition
and relations of the human mother and her children
but for this " greatly multiplied sorrow," imposed
upon Eve and her daughters, by which we under-
stand, in accordance with most commentators, not
merely the physical pains of parturition, but all the
maternal cares and labors necessarily incurred, from
physical causes, in producing and rearing infants.
These pains, cares, and labors, inevitably restrain
the mother from having more children than she can
faithfully attend to both physically and morally,
and keep them under her care and influence while
their characters are forming for life. The family is
thus consolidated and inseparably united. It is kept
together by natural causes, long enough to make its
mutual attachments and associations ineffaceable,
and the strongest of human sentiments. A com-
pact organization of intelligent creatures, compelled
to associate, it would be impossible for it to sub-
sist, except in the mutual observance by its mem-
bers of those moral laws and principles, which
alone can secure its harmony and happiness ; and
its training in those laws and principles, the form of
its organization, and all its natural ties, sympathies,
and influences, are most happily fitted to promote.
Here the mind is trained, from the earliest hour, in
ideas of obedience, truth, and mutual dependence, and
in sentiments of affection, forbearance, and forgive-
ness, besides the manifold other virtues and graces
which, implanted and cherished in the family circle,
156 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
bloom and bear fruit afterwards in wider spheres, to
the admiration, instruction, and improvement of
mankind. We need not dwell upon a theme so
often treated as the important influence of the fam-
ily relation upon the moral welfare of the human
race. That influence is well understood, and uni-
versally admitted to be greater than all others
combined ; and yet, it would seem (if indeed this
" sentence " of Eve announced an important change
in the conditions under which her descendants were
to be born and reared through infancy) that, but for
that " sentence," the power of the family relation
among men would have been imperfect or unknown.
Why children might suitably be easily borne, and
cast upon the world at a tender age, abundantly
able to provide for themselves, if, like animals, they
were not destined to a moral career, can easily be
understood ; and why, as moral beings, they require
the different conditions of birth and training implied
in the " sentence " under consideration, seems also
abundantly manifest.
Before leaving this part of Eve's sentence, we
may allude to a subordinate effect often attributed to
the maternal sufferings and cares therein imposed,
an increased affection toward the offspring that
causes them. It is difficult to decide how far the
intensity of maternal affection is due to this mere
endurance of pain and care, as distinguished from
other and powerful causes ; but there are many rea-
sons for believing that it has an important influence.
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 157
Why else is the mother's love for her offspring
deeper and stronger than the father's, who asso-
ciates as constantly with them, but has less of the
trials and burdens of their nurture ? Why, among
barbarians and savages, who, approximating in their
habits of life to the level of the animal creation,
bring forth and rear their children with scarcely
more pain and trouble than the brutes, are parental
affection and all family ties so little regarded ? In-
deed, when we observe, what seems to be a general
fact, that the amount of physical pain and trial
attendant upon infant birth and nurture bears a
direct proportion to the moral and social advance-
ment of the class or community to which the mother
belongs, it would almost seem as if it were provi-
dentially proportioned to the mother's knowledge
of her moral duties, and the moral dangers of her
children ; and designed, by intensifying the ma-
ternal affection and solicitude, to increase her moral
care, and to strengthen the family influence in those
forms of society where the most varied enticements
to sin prevail, and the strongest natural protection
against them is required.
Let us now take up the second clause of Eve's
sentence : " Thy desire shall be unto thy hus-
band, and he shall rule over thee." The original
for " desire " is TERSHUKAH, and is defined by
Gesenius, (Robinson's edition, 1850,) " to run ; "
hence, (with citation of this passage,) " to run
after," " to desire," " to long for." The same word
158 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
occurs in Genesis iv. 7, where God, speaking to
Cain of sin, which, like a wild beast, " lieth at the
door," says, "unto thee shall be his desire, (i. e.,
he shall long after, or to have possession of thee,)
and thou shalt (i. e., it is thy duty to) rule over (or
control) him." The word expresses any passionate
longing or desire, and may be used to express sex-
ual passion, longing, or inclination. Thus it is em-
ployed in Solomon's Song, (ch. vii. 10,) where, in
the midst of an exceedingly amatory strain, com-
mencing, " How fair and pleasant art thou, O
love, for delights ! " the joyous exclamation of the
loved one breaks forth, "I am my beloved's, and
his desire is toward me ! " And in the passage
under consideration, the whole context seems clearly
to indicate its use in a similar sense. 1
But farther ; the original for " husband " (ISH),
though also signifying, generically, " man," has, in
this place, the limited signification of its English
rendering. This will appear not only from the text
itself, but also from a comparison with ch. ii. 24,
where Adam speaks of (ISH) " a man " leaving
father and mother, and cleaving unto his (ISHA)
" woman," in which case it is plain that he does not
speak of " man " in general, nor of " woman " in
general, but of an associated human pair. So in
the passage under review, " thy desire shall be unto
1 The phrase is rendered in the Septuagint, irpbs v avSpa <rov jj airo<r-
TpoQij <rov ; and the Latin translation of the Targum of Onkelos, in Wal-
ton's Polyglot Bible, gives it, "Ad virum tuum dtsiderium luum,"
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 159
thy (ISH) man" plainly means, "the man with
whom thou art mated, thy husband; and Tie
(i. e., such man, thy husband) shall rule over thee."
Now, what is remarkable here is, that in this pas-
sage we find thus, for the first time laid down, the
moral duties of the marriage relation. It is no gen-
eral statement that " woman " shall have affection
and " desire " towards " man," and that " man "
shall exercise government over "woman"; but it is,
that the " desire" of the wife shall be confined to her
husband, and that in their married relation she shall
render to her husband obedience. It imposes con-
jugal fidelity and conjugal submission, to "love,
honor, and obey," the whole moral law of marriage.
It is the first Divine injunction given, that there
should subsist between a human pair a more sacred
and exclusive relationship to each other, as a moral
obligation, than prevails in the similar natural asso-
ciations of birds or beasts. Like the other conditions
of life recited in " the sentence," it is established
thenceforth : a plain implication that Adam and Eve,
though called in one or two instances " man and
wife," as our translation renders the expressions
ISH and ISHA, (" man " and " woman,") in the
preceding portions of the narrative, had not, up to
this time, been under the moral laws and relations
which were thereafter to be conveyed by those des-
ignations. Nor does this involve anything deroga-
tory ; for in their peculiar circumstances, (even had
they possessed a moral sense,) such a fact could be
160 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
a matter of no importance. Being entirely alone
in the world, there was no room for conjugal jeal-
ousy or infidelity. The word " helpmeet," a title
applied to Eve in the preceding chapter, seems to
express more accurately than " wife," her relations
toward Adam before the disobedience.
The whole account of Eve's creation and pres-
entation to Adam is most curious and significant,
well worthy our study. It has been customary to
say that the marriage relation was instituted at that
time, and this is true, so far as regards the pairing
or association of the sexes in human creatures ; but
there is no proof that the narrative goes farther
than this, as we shall see upon a closer examination.
As preliminary to this examination, however, a few
remarks seem desirable.
Whatever may have been the date or origin of
this history in its present form, there can be little
doubt that the original traditions or memoranda
from which it is derived were among the oldest
known literature. They date back to a period long
preceding Moses, and anterior even to the most
ancient Egyptian inscriptions. The language em-
ployed in them, and at least partially preserved in
this narrative, was of the most archaic and primi-
tive character ; so simple, that its words, few and
typical, are still invested with the purely physical
ideas in which they originated. Among them, we
seem back at the very creation of language. We
recognize the few, original and long-forgotten ances-
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 161
tors of those whole classes of kindred words, which
now represent, in their respective families, so many
varied shades of meaning. We behold these primi-
tive ancestral types just expanding themselves from
the primary materialism which gave them birth, and
beginning to reach after higher meanings, like Mil-
ton's half-formed brutes emerging from the ground,
and struggling to be free. From this simplicity and
poverty of terms, it results that the same word will
stand for a whole family of similar or derivative sig-
nifications, and it will be left to the reader to infer
the sense which the writer intended to convey,
a matter not always devoid of doubt, or incapable
of leaving room for dispute by different readers.
Thus the word ADAM, originally meaning " red,"
or " red earth," appears throughout the story as a
word used for " the ground," for the common noun
"the man," and for the proper name "Adam";
the original often affording no means of distin-
guishing the sense intended, except as the require-
ments of the context furnish it. Accordingly, an
examination will show that there exists no suffi-
cient reason whatever for interpreting it, at least, in
this part of the story, as a proper name. It does not
appear ever to have been applied as such to " the
man " by his Maker. It is uniformly translated
" the man " down to ch. ii. v. 19, where the trans-
lator suddenly changes to "Adam," without any
apparent reason, and uses " Adam " and " the man "
indiscriminately thereafter. So, of the words ISH
11
162 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
and ISHA, translated " man " and " woman " in v.
24. Their original meaning is simply " male " and
" female," being words of sex applicable to all ani-
mals and creatures. Thus, in Genesis vii. 2, 3,
God commands Noah, " Of every clean beast thou
shalt take to thee, by sevens, the male (ISH) and
his female (ISHA), and of fowls also, the male
(ISH) and his female (ISHA)." These same
words then we shall find rendered by the trans-
lators of* this narrative, at their option, " male "
and " female," " man " and " woman," or " hus-
band " and " wife," and even diversely interpreted
within the same sentence. Thus, in v. 24, our ver-
sion reads : " Therefore shall a man (ISH) leave
his father and his mother, and cleave unto his wife
(ISHA)," where there is no more reason for not
translating ISHA " woman," than there is for trans-
lating ISH " man " ; our sense of the word " wife "
being no more necessarily implied than it is in
Genesis vii. 2, just quoted, and where it is prop-
erly translated " female." 1
This primitive physical origin of terms, however,
is in no instance more marked than in that expres-
sion which, in v. 18, 20, is translated " helpmeet."
This phrase ETZEB, K' NEGDO, [translated in the
Septuagint /Jo^os O/AOIOS avno, " a helper counter-
1 So it is said, that among the Zulus of South Africa, who are among
the lowest of the human race in the moral scale, " No word correspond-
ing to the Saxon word wife is found in the Zulu language. The terms
most nearly approaching to it are ' umkake,' and its correlatives umkako
and umkami, which mean ' his she,' or ' his female. 1 "
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 163
part to him,"] exhibits, in its primary meaning,
a coarseness of physical idea which cannot be
shown in a work of this kind, but of which our
English word " helpmeet " (at least in its modern
acceptation, implying social companionship and as-
sistance in the duties and cares of life) is quite too
elevated and refined a translation. Even the ren-
dering of the Septuagint, " a helper counterpart to
him," is an improvement of later times upon its
literal primary sense. The true and simple mean-
ing of the phrase is " a sexual counterpart " of
him, and there is nothing more implied in it than
this expression in its severest physical meaning con-
veys. In its application to woman, in the second
chapter of Genesis, it means simply the female of
man, as it might that of any other animal, with
equal propriety, and without any change. And we
shall, perhaps, understand the true spirit and mean-
ing of the story which relates the creation of Eve
and her presentation to Adam, if we transcribe it
with the designations of the woman which we have
just examined, substituted in their primitive literal
sense :
" And the Lord God said, it is not good that the man l
should be alone : I will make a sexual counterpart for him.
" And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast
of the field, and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto
the man to see what he would call them ; and whatsoever the
man called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
1 Throughout this passage, the original for "the man" is HA
ADAM, except where we have otherwise indicated.
164 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
And the man gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the
air, and to every beast of the field : but for the man there was
not found a sexual counterpart for him.
" And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the
man, and he slept ; and he took one of his ribs, and closed up
the flesh instead thereof. And the rib which the Lord God
had taken from the man, made he a woman, [ISHA, ' a female
man,'] and brought her unto the man. And the man said,
This [i. e., this creature] is now bone of my bones, and flesh
of my flesh : she [LE ZOT, not the personal pronoun ' she,'
but ' this creature '] shall be called woman, [ISHA, ' female,']
because she was taken out of man, [ISH, ' male.'] There-
fore shall a man [ISH, ' a male man '] leave his father and
mother, and shall cleave unto his woman, [ISHA, his ' female.']
and they shall be one flesh." (Ch. ii. l-24.)
An attentive consideration of this account, and
of the few verses preceding which relate the forma-
tion of " the man," will show that it is nothing
more than a detailed relation of what is generally
stated in ch. i. v. 27, 28, " So God created man
in his own image : in the image of God created
he him ; male and female [ISH and ISHA] created
he them. And God blessed them, and said, [in
precisely the words employed in v. 22, toward the
paired animals,] Be fruitful, and multiply, and re-
plenish the earth," etc.
Taking the two accounts together, we seem
clearly brought to the following deductions of fact :
1st. That woman was originally created simply in
the capacity of a female counterpart of man, im-
mediately after his reviewing and naming the paired
animals, and in order that his condition might be
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 165
made as complete and happy as theirs in this respect ;
2d. That this female counterpart, when created, was
presented to man, by the Creator, without any in-
junction to either party, regarding the marriage
state, that implied any moral obligation in it to
greater exclusiveness in favor of each other, than
was imposed upon the similar relationships of the
creatures around them ; 3d. That though Adam,
9 O *
in the joy of his first reception of Eve, expressed,
with a lover's poetic enthusiasm, and, perhaps, also
with a prophet's divine inspiration, (for so it would
appear to be intimated in Matthew xix. 4, 5,) the
ardent affection with which all future " helpmeets "
should be regarded, he evidently alludes to natural
emotions merely, and not to any moral obligations
or mutual duties involved in such relationships, and
to be observed by himself or his descendants. His
apostrophe (which, singularly enough, is at least par-
tially rhythmical) is simply an epithalamium, a
nuptial song, worthy, both in subject and sentiment,
to be what it is, the first recorded language of man ;
7 O O
but it certainly is not, nor does it recognize as its
basis, a moral code of matrimonial law. 1 It ex-
i This apostrophe of Adam is not only the first recorded human lan-
guage, but is, it would appear, a poem also, and that poem a love-song.
The rude and partial verbal rhythm, alluded to in the text, has little
weight in establishing its poetical character; but its structure strikingly
illustrates (though with primitive simplicity) that rhythm of thought,
with the gradational parallelism, and antithesis of language and idea,
which are the true indications and characteristics of early Hebrew
poetry. Let us set out the passage with reference to these features :
166 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
presses the closeness of the marriage tie, but refers
solely to the natural passion or affection of the ani-
mal nature, as the foundation of its sympathies.
" This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh : therefore (lit. ' upon this ') shall a man cleave
(or * will a man cleave,' since the verb in the origi-
nal has the force of the future) unto his wife, and
they shall be (i. e., ' will be ') one flesh." In this
sense, also, Christ presents this passage in Matthew
six. 5, 6, where he speaks of God having created
man, male and female, and having said, " For this
cause ("EVCKCV TOWOV, ' by reason of this,' or ' on ac-
count of this, as its consequence ') shall a man leave
(future, KaroXeti/ret, will a man leave) his father
and mother, and shall cleave (will cleave) unto his
wife," etc.
In all this, therefore, while we have exhibited to
us the divinely prepared foundation for the marriage
relation, drawn from man's necessities, and im-
planted deeply in his nature, we yet fail to find that
This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.
She shall be called Isha, for she is taken out of Ish ;
Therefore shall Ish leave his father and mother and cleave to his Isha,
And they two shall be one flesh.
The song of Lamech to his wives Adah and Zillah (Gen. iv. 23) has
been supposed to be the first poem in human language ; but may we
not rather adopt the more agreeable conclusion, that the earliest poem
is found in the first recorded human utterance ; and that instead of being
the bloodthirsty howl of a murdering savage, it breathes only the ex-
pression of the tenderest and most lasting of human affections ? Thus
from the very first, Love and War have lent readiest inspiration to the
poetic faculty.
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 167
relation itself, in the development of its moral rights
and obligations. The situation of the pair resembles
the tender and sacred state of betrothal, hallowed
by a communion of sympathies, desires, and hopes,
and by a mutual and unchangeable fidelity in af-
fection ; yet, to make it complete in matrimony, it
needed the solemn and definite law of conjugal duty,
the rule of "love, honor, and obey," imposed in
the mandate, " Thy desire shall be unto thy hus-
band, and he shall rule over thee." It is curious to
remark, though it may be accidental, that it is not
until after this new phase is given to his relations
toward Eve, (in chap. iii. 16,) that Adam dignifies
her with a proper name. Up to that time, he applied
to her only a general sexual designation, " She
shall be called ' female,' because she was taken out
of the male." But after that period, as if, with his
new moral perceptions, he regarded her from a
higher point of view, or perhaps from some new
revelation had received new light upon the nature
and purposes of marriage, and its connection with
the origin of future generations, he calls her " Eve,
[HAVAH, to live,] because she was the mother of
all living." Before the Divine prescription of mat-
rimonial duty, the marriage ceremony, if we may
call it so, he views her like a lover, in the light
of her relations to himself; after that event, like a
husband or father, in that of her relations to the
family. It would almost seem as if this little cir-
cumstance, in itself, were indicative of a new aspect
168 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
in their relations toward each other, and also of that
in which it consisted.
We see then, if any importance is to be attached
to the foregoing speculations, that not only the es-
tablishment of the Family, but also the moral law
of marriage, and therefore, as we may almost say,
the institution of marriage itself, was a part of the
" sentence " passed upon man for his disobedience
in partaking of the forbidden fruit. It may be said
that the omission of the historian to refer to the
prescription of such duties at an earlier period, is
no proof that they were not imposed ; but if so, what
is the force of the future in the address to Eve,
which would seem plainly to indicate the establish-
ment of a new order of things thereafter ? "I will
greatly multiply thy sorrow and conception, and thy
desire shall be unto thy husband, and he shall rule
over thee ? " It will surely not be denied that this
announcement was made in consequence of the dis-
obedience, whereby the pair had acquired the knowl-
edge of good and evil ; and if so, it must be admit-
ted that, before that fact, this law of conjugal duty
had not, at least, been known by them, and but for
its occurrence would never have been revealed or
recognized. But if it were a thing which they could
not have known or recognized, it must have been
so on account of their want of moral perceptions,
and therefore could not have subsisted as a law
binding upon them. What then do all these facts
indicate with respect to the moral history of the first
THE SENTENCE OF EVE. 169
pair ? What, with relation to the real character of
these " sentences of punishment," so called ? Could
the family institution and the moral law of marriage
have been intended as curses, or were they rather
blessings to mankind ? Were they not essential and
benevolent means of preserving the purity and hap-
piness, the mental and physical elevation, of the
race ? laws adapted to the condition of moral
creatures alone, but for such indispensably neces-
sary ; and thus manifesting, in their establishment,
the wisdom and goodness of God, his benevolence
rather than his severity toward the human race ?
170 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER IX.
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM.
LET us now direct our attention to "the sen-
tence " addressed to Adam, which we shall find
no less noteworthy in the same point of view :
" And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened
unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of
which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it :
cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sorrow shalt thou eat
of it all the days of thy life ; thorns also and thistles shall it
bring forth to thee ; and thou shalt eat of the herb of the field ;
in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return
[thy returning] unto the ground, from whence thou wast
taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
(Ch. iii. 17-20.)
We have in a former chapter referred to sev-
eral reasons why this passage cannot be regarded as
the denouncement of a penalty, and it will be found
that a careful analysis of it such as shall convey
to us its exact scope and meaning will confirm
the view we have taken. What then is the real
purport, and what are the effects implied in and
resulting from this " sentence " of Adam ?
In the first place, it is obvious that the degree of
toil which it seems to impose upon man, is only
such as may be requisite to draw from the earth a
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 171
sufficient and comfortable subsistence. No mandate
or necessity is laid upon him to labor without pur-
pose, or for any other purpose than barely to main-
tain life. He is not even required to do this as, in
itself, an obligation. Work is announced to him
not as a duty or a punishment, but as a means " to
eat bread " ; in other words, as a simple condition
of existence ; and the light labor which the tiller of
the soil finds necessary for this single end, is the
standard and the measure of the burden which is
thus intended to be divinely imposed. Hence the
forced and weary toil of bondsmen, or the drudgery
of starving operatives in an overcrowded population,
whose half-paid exertions contend vainly against des-
titution and lingering death, are not to be cited as
illustrations of the sentence. These small though sad
exceptions to the general lot of mankind are no part
of a system ordained by the wise and benevolent
Creator, but spring from the avarice and injustice
of men in artificial states of society, denying to hon-
est industry its justly earned reward. From such
toil there rises before the Almighty, not the sigh
(well pleasing to him) of that light sorrow by him
decreed in the law of natural and healthful labor,
but the cry of the hireling kept back of his wages,
which, when it enters the ear, awakens the indicnia-
* * O
tion of the Lord God of Sabaoth. Neither are we
to refer to it the incessant and exhausting toil to
which we see men voluntarily devoting themselves
on every side, to satisfy the demands of greed, or
172 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
pride, or the more elevated ambition of the student
or scholar, the leader or the benefactor of his race.
Even that honorable and useful labor, whose pur-
pose is to promote, by the progress of science and
civilization, the comfort and happiness of mankind,
forms no part of "the sentence." It plainly pre-
scribes to man, not the general duty of industry and
thrift, but so much and only so much labor as his
simplest wants shall require to supply them. Beyond
that, every exertion that he ever makes, whether
for comfort, or for ostentation, for wealth, for power,
for learning, for his own selfish purposes, for the
love of God or the good of men, commendable and
useful as it may be, or the opposite, has yet no con-
nection whatever with this divine decree, that the
bare necessaries of life should be earned by his ex-
ertions.
But having thus ascertained the purport of this
passage, we are at once led to remark two consider-
ations with respect to it.
The first of these is, that the amount of labor
imposed upon man by " the sentence," is very in-
considerable, and constitutes, in fact, no noticeable
burden in his condition. How slight is the degree
of industry required to extract a subsistence from
the ground in any habitable part of the earth, and
especially in by far its larger portion, and among
the vast majority of mankind, a very little consid-
eration will remind us. It is not so great but that
in many climates it is practically nothing, and in
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 173
most it is greatly less than man's best interests re-
quire ; so that if this " sentence " is indeed a curse,
to have made it more bitter would have been a ben-
efit to the race. It is not so great but that in the
most sterile and unproductive spots which man in-
habits, the hours need be comparatively few where-
in he who is prudent and careful must labor in order
to live. The complaining, then, against our great
progenitor, and of this " sad sentence " pronounced
upon him and his posterity, at times when our own
selfish ambition, or possibly, in some rare cases, the
oppressions of an artificial social state, make us to
groan under the fatigue of toil, as if the load we
thus bear, either voluntarily or by compulsion, were
the ordinance of God, in punishment for Adam's
sin, is unjust, both to our Maker and to our original
ancestor. Let the censure, if any is due for our
excessive burdens, fall on more modern shoulders
than those of Adam, and let those only find fault
with him for the labors of life who are averse to all
work, even the most moderate and salutary.
The other consideration is, that from so small an
amount of labor, as we thus see to be actually requi-
site for subsistence, we have no reason to suppose,
either from the inspired narrative or from man's
own constitution, that he was ever, even in his orig-
inal condition, exempt. The first injunction laid
upon him, when his mission in ,the world was an-
nounced, was that he should " replenish the earth
and subdue it " ; subdue it by the enlargement of
174 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
his faculties, by the exertion of his mental and
physical powers, by the cultivation of those numer-
ous arts and sciences whereby the face of Nature is
changed, and its thousand materials worked and
fashioned into the instruments of his necessities, con-
venience, or pleasure. And as the first step in this
study and conquest of Nature, he was placed in the
Garden of Eden "to till it," (not merely "to
dress it," as our translation renders the phrase.) It
is worthy of notice, that the same word in the origi-
nal is used in ch. ii. 5, where, speaking of the world
before man's creation, it says : " There was not a
man to till the ground ; " in v. 15, " The Lord God
took the man and placed him in the garden to till
it ; " and in v. 23, " The Lord God sent him forth
from the garden to till the ground from whence he
was taken." Thus it appears that man was never
intended to be idle. Even before his creation he was
wanted that he might cultivate the soil ; and it ap-
pears, too, that the same kind of employment, if not
the same degree, was expected of him before as after
the sentence. It was to till the soil that he was
placed in Paradise ; it was to do no more that he was
sent forth therefrom, with what is called " the curse
of toil " hanging over him ; as if this were a new ex-
perience, instead of being, from the first, a necessity
of his nature. God, who made him in his own im-
age, did not design that he should wander listlessly
and aimlessly over the earth, while He himself, in
ceaseless displays of his infinite power, was finding
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 175
constant occupation for his own activities. Indeed,
we cannot for a moment contemplate man's being,
with its wondrous energies and combinations, both
physical and intellectual, without being impressed
with the conviction that he was a creature made for
work. This is his mission, his necessity, his enjoy-
ment. In his normal state he can no more be kept
back from it, than he can be restrained from his
food and his breath. He seeks it, not merely for its
rewards, but for itself, not only/w an end, but as
an end. He invents it, and calls it " play " ; and if
shut up and prevented from finding it, or making it,
he loses his reason and dies. Hence, as we have
already remarked, the small amount of labor which
is imposed by the sentence, as one of his conditions
of existence, is by no means the limit with which
men can content themselves. Had it been so, the
world would have been standing these thousands of
years since the creation, unimproved and uninhab-
ited, except by a straggling, imbecile, and barbarous
race. Before, and at the very time that that " sen-
tence " was pronounced upon man, there existed
within him capacities and impulses to labor, in view
of which such an ordinance, were it construed as a
punishment, or even as a mandate, might well be
wondered at for its apparent superfluousness and
insignificance.
But if the sentence imposed no new burdens of
toil upon man, either with respect to obligation
or amount, wherein did it change his situation ? for
176 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
it must be allowed that it did so in some manner.
It changed it simply by making that labor a neces-
sity which was before a recreation. It made oc-
cupation work unavoidable, instead of being
merely the voluntary expression of a natural in-
stinct. Man previously, as we have seen, loved
labor, as he now does, for its own sake, as a means
of employing his restless powers, but he was under
no compulsion of circumstances to engage in it.
The ground and the flocks supplied him with all the
means of life, without his care, and the mental and
physical labor which he put forth was superfluous,
except as a mode of enjoyment. Had he ever
fallen (as he might well in time have done) into
habits of sloth and self-indulgence, consulting his
own ease and permitting his noble faculties to sink
into supineness and decay, still the teeming earth
and the abounding herds would have supplied him
with plenteous stores of food and clothing, and spon-
taneously ministered to his every need. There was,
therefore, no pressure upon him to hold him per-
force to those habits of industry by which alone
he could properly develop his capacities and pre-
serve his native vigor. In the circumstances, in-
deed, of his primeval existence, under the immediate
eye and guidance of his Maker, he was in little
danger of being permitted to become the prey of
indolence or self-indulgence, and therefore there
was little or no occasion for such external constraint.
Then he was like a child under the parental super-
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 177
vision, who needs not to be confined to any regular
business or employment ; but now, when he had
become a moral agent, and like the youth entering
upon life, was to be thrown chiefly upon himself for
moral training and direction, a provision of this sort
became of too much importance to be longer defer-
red. At once, and " because " man had accom-
plished the act whereby he had entered upon a state
of moral agency, " because " in this condition
newly entered on, idleness was not only vicious but
the parent of vice, and " because" as a moral
agent, habits of industry were essential for the
preservation of his moral virtue, as well as his gen-
eral progress and well being, a change " in his be-
half," or " on his account," is caused to pass upon
the fruitful soil. It does not appear necessarily that
the ground was rendered less productive than be-
fore ; indeed, it may have been made even more so ;
but it seems that whereas it had previously brought
forth the useful fruits unmixed with others, and so
without occasion for special cultivation and care,
thenceforth it was liable to produce with them
intruding weeds and brambles, whose extirpation
should tax the strength and patience of the husband-
man. This seems inferable from the phraseology
of " the sentence " itself. " Because thou hast
done this, and hast eaten of the tree, etc., (and hast
thus become a moral being,) cursed is the ground
for thy sake (literally, ' on thy account '). In sor-
row shalt thou eat of it (i. e., thy eating of it
12
178 THE EISE AND THE FALL.
shall not be as heretofore without labor, but only
through its cultivation) all the days of thy life.
Thorns also and thistles (as well as harvests, and
among them) shall it bring forth to thee, and thou
shalt eat of the herb of the field, (i. e., thou shalt
not be able to rely on the spontaneous productions
of the ground for thy subsistence, but shalt be
compelled to delve after it in the land which thou
shalt till.) In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat
bread, (i. e., the sweat of thy face, thy labor, shall
not be for mere recreation as heretofore, but thine
eating of bread shall depend on it,) until thou re-
turn (thy returning) unto the ground from whence
thou wert taken."
It now remains for us to inquire more particularly
the force of the expression " because thou hast done
this," in connection with the announcement of " the
sentence." It plainly implies that, but for the diso-
bedience, the necessity of labor would have been
unknown by man. What reasons may be supposed,
then, for placing man under this necessity, after his
becoming a moral agent, which did not obtain be-
fore that event ? And having answered this in-
quiry, we shall briefly consider what was the pur-
pose, and what have been the effects of this neces-
sity upon man's condition and history.
One reason why man had less occasion to be sub-
jected to this necessity of labor, before he became
a moral agent, has been already hinted. Under the
Divine direction and influence, he was sure to be
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 179
kept sufficiently and profitably occupied. When he
passed from that immediate supervision, to be thrown
more upon himself, this necessity was required in
order to supply, in a measure, the place of that
parental authority ; like it, to prevent his lapsing
into inactivity, and to ensure, in some degree, the
discipline and cultivation of his various faculties.
Another reason, and an obvious one, is, that while
he was unconscious of moral distinctions, idleness
and torpor, though degrading, would not be crimi-
nal, nor subject him to responsibility ; but after re-
ceiving his moral nature, they would be fatal ene-
mies, not only to his natural but to his spiritual
welfare, and thus the necessity of labor would then
become desirable to be imposed as a protection
against sin. But even were these and other reasons
of less weight, there is one consideration, derived
from the general plan of God in man's creation,
which seems of itself to afford an adequate answer
to the inquiry why man's attaining or not a moral
sense, should make a difference with respect to this
provision of labor.
Man was created that he might become a moral
being. With reference to this end, and to be of
service in his moral career, all his noble faculties of
every kind were imparted. Unless, therefore, he
should attain to this position, he would have been
created in vain, and his progress and even his exist-
ence would be aimless and profitless. It is need-
less to speculate as to what disposition of him would,
180 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
in that case, have been made by his Creator, since
the contingency did not and would not occur. The
end of his creation was accomplished in full accord-
ance with his Maker's intention and foreknowledge,
without which certain foreknowledge man would
never have been formed. But it is plain to be
seen, that, so long as he should remain, like the
brutes, ignorant of moral principles, so long there
could be no reason for his development in other
respects more than for theirs. As he would not be
filling his appointed station in the divine system, it
might well be a matter of indifference whether he
advanced or receded in the scale of being. Hence,
could we conceive of the race as now existing in a
state of entire moral darkness, we may well suppose
that it would have been left without the incentives
to progress which the necessity of labor provides,
and which seem essential to preserve it from stagna-
tion and decline. On the other hand, men having
attained to moral perceptions, and having entered
thereby on the course for which they were designed,
it is easy to see that the divine aim would be to
hold and encourage them in it, and to provide for
their general advancement, and that this purpose
and its execution might well be announced to Adam
in the terms, " ' Because ' thou hast become thus,
let labor never fail thee, not only as thy necessity
and thy discipline, but as a mainspring of thy prog-
ress."
"While upon the force of the word " because," in
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 181
this connection, we may again refer to a fact ad-
verted to upon a preceding page, in our argument
that this " sentence " is not the denouncement of a
penalty for sin. We refer to the fact that the most
numerous, direct, inevitable, and fearful of the tem-
poral punishments for sin, diseases, poverty, vio-
lence, and the thousand other forms of physical and
mental anguish which guilty deeds produce, are
entirely unnoticed. Were these evils really and only
the penalties of sin, in such sense that but for sin
(i. e., the moral quality of an act) they would have
been unknown by man, then, surely, in an especial
sense they would have ensued " because " he had
become a possible (or upon the ordinary view, an
actual) sinner. How is it then that these tremen-
dous experiences are ignored, and the slight and
beneficial toil by which man earns his subsistence is
alone referred to ? The explanation lies in the
truth which we have before suggested, and which
science, reason, and revelation itself, alike confirm.
These sad experiences did not enter the world as the
effects of moral guilt. They did not ensue to man
" because " he had become a moral agent, or a sin-
ner. They are the fruits, not of a moral quality in
his actions, but of appetites and passions created in
him as in all other creatures anterior and subse-
quent to his origin, and which have ever produced
these identical fruits in those other races upon which
no curse was ever denounced. The author of " Na-
ture and the Supernatural," under the pressure of
182 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the common view, alluding to these pre-Adamite
confusions and woes, calls them " the anticipative
consequences of sin " ; insisting that God, because he
foresaw the miseries, curses, and disorder that man's
rebellion would introduce in his system, indicated
that foreknowledge, not by providing against them,
not by displaying the harmony and peace that
would have prevailed but for man's delinquency, but
by himself scattering misery, curses, and ruin among
the antecedent races ; as if he were bent on having
a symmetry of disorder, if any there must be at all.
Such a view we cannot adopt. That there may be
" anticipative consequences," we will not deny ; but
that these are ever exhibited in deliberate illustra-
tions or aggravations of the evils foreseen, instead
of attempted remedies for them, is more difficult to
believe. Rather let us suppose that God, in his pro-
gressive plan of creation, had not yet seen fit to in-
troduce beings either physically or spiritually per-
fect ; that accordingly man himself was formed in
his inception more after the similitude of the inferior
creatures than his Maker intended he should event-
ually be, when in the distant and higher stages of
his moral existence ; that he was created, therefore,
with the same innate passions as the races before
him ; that these passions, had he been left in his
original state, without a moral sense, and without
the necessity of labor to break and restrain their
force, would have raged with violence tenfold
greater than they do, being curbed by these provi-
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 183
sions ; and that, therefore, such evils as do, notwith-
standing all, spring from them, so far from being
properly ranked among the consequences that were
to ensue " because " he " did this," were themselves
(being divinely foreseen) among the reasons why
he was permitted to do as he did, and on account
of which " the sentence " was pronounced.
The purpose and the effects of " the sentence "
upon man's character and destiny, after what has
been said, need not be largely dwelt upon. That
it was intended not to enhance man's burdens be-
yond what Nature and his best interests would, in
any event, have dictated, has been already shown ;
and that the necessity of moderate labor, as a con-
dition of existence, was therefore designed as a
blessing and a benefit to man, were it not suscep-
tible of proof by argument, has been abundantly
demonstrated by experience. What the history of
mankind would have been, even in a state of inno-
cence, had not labor been requisite for their subsist-
ence, let the races of men in those climes where
Nature's profusion dispenses with toil, let those
families, everywhere to be found, in which physical
and mental decline proceed down generations of idle-
ness, suffice to indicate ! Let not man's sentence to
labor, then, be termed a curse ! A thousand times
more truly and terribly would the sentence have
proved a curse had it exonerated him forever from
that hard necessity.
Indeed, the direct advantage of labor to mankind
184 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
through its influence on the individual, in invigorat-
ing and enlarging the faculties, and in checking the
growth of dangerous and degrading passions, is but
a small though important part of the benefits it con-
fers. Its necessity for man's subsistence, if it does
not actually originate the ideas of property and its
rights, is certainly most intimately blended with
them ; for it may be questioned whether, were labor
only a recreation and amusement, its product would
be regarded as sacred in the possessor. This neces-
sity of toil, therefore, lies at the foundation of social
and political institutions, and is intimately connected
with civil order and security. Moreover, the fact
that in human society the subsistence of every mem-
ber is dependent upon labor in some field of useful-
ness, gives rise to the thousand different forms of
human industry, by which the happiness, the com-
fort, and the advancement of society are promoted,
and which would, for the most part, lie dormant,
did not necessitv arouse them to action. Thus on
/
every side, in the individual and in society, we per-
ceive the beneficial effects of " the sentence " to
work in order to eat. Where law and order, vir-
tue, learning, and civilization prevail, and where
ignorance, barbarism, vice, and violence darken the
earth, we find, in one guise or another, the proof
how justly and significantly our English version
renders it, " Cursed is the ground for thy sake ! "
" That like an emmet thou must ever toil,
Is a sad sentence of an ancient date,
THE SENTENCE OF ADAM. 185
And certes, there is for it reason great ;
For though it sometimes make thee weep and wail,
And curse thy stars, and early rise and late,
Withouten that would come an heavier bale,
Loose life, unruly passions, and diseases pale."
The closing portion of the narrative is consistent
with our view :
" Unto Adam also and to his wife did the Lord God make
coats of skins, and clothed them. And the Lord God said,
Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and
evil : and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the
tree of life, and eat, and live for ever : therefore the Lord God
sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground
from whence he was taken. So he drove out the man : and
he placed at the east of the garden of Eden cherubim, and a
flaming sword which turned every way to keep the way of the
tree of life."
We here behold the Almighty manifesting his
approval of the emotions and acts which were the
first results of the pair's disobedience, by clothing
them more perfectly. We find him also referring
to the change that had been wrought in them, not
as a lapse " into a fallen and depraved nature, come
under his wrath and curse," but as an advance to
an increased resemblance to himself; and finally,
we see him removing them from Eden with no
mark of displeasure, but simply as a prudent pro-
vision against a foreseen contingency. Our English
phrase, " drove out the man," implies an idea of
anger which the original does not convey. The
expression signifies merely " a total separation, or
186 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
exclusion, as in an act of divorce." That this
exclusion took place not as a retribution but as
a precautionary measure, and in order that man
might enter upon his purposed career, is expressly
stated. It was " lest he should put forth his hand
and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live
for ever, therefore the Lord God sent him forth
from the garden, to till the ground from whence he
was taken." His mission in Eden was terminated ;
thenceforth his field was the World ; the true his-
tory of mankind was now to commence.
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 187
CHAPTER X.
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS.
IN the study we have given of the historic rec-
ord, we have aimed simply to ascertain and apply
its true interpretation, assuming that the facts which
it relates, and the moral system which they inaugu-
rated were in exact fulfilment of the original and
O
only plan of the Creator. It has been our purpose to
examine the moral system as we find it, designing to
show that, standing alone, it is complete, consistent,
and benevolent in itself; and that there is no need
to apologize for it by the doctrine that it was forced
upon God's adoption, against his will, as a substitute
for a better one originally planned by him, and pre-
ferred for his creatures could he have had his way.
We have confined ourselves to the point of view
indicated for several reasons, and especially because
we believe that no moral system can be justified as
the adopted plan of an omnipotent God, which is
not in itself justifiable. Moreover, the plea of ne-
cessity, while it involves the difficult theory of a dis-
appointed Omniscient, and a baffled Almighty, im-
poses also the task of contriving a conjectural better
system than that which the Allwise has seen fit to
adopt, in order that it may be assumed to have
188 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
been his preference, without sufficient evidence that
he ever conceived it. It is (among others) a strong
objection to the common view, (that the disobe-
dience hurled mankind into ruin,) that a resort to
such hypothesis of a purposed better system than
the existing one is necessarily involved in it ; and
this necessity has led to various conflicting theories
as to the details of that defeated scheme, most of
them more or less inconsistent with themselves, and
all of them full of difficulties and without adequate
support in Revelation. In the present discussion,
therefore, we have carefully abstained from such
uncertain conjectures as to what might have been,
preferring to confine ourselves to the moral system
which actually prevails, to ascertain the true mode
of its introduction, to discover its general features,
and trace its general progress.
But w r hile we thus deprecate the resort to hypoth-
esis as a means of justifying the moral system, or
conveniently getting rid of inexplicable difficulties
in it, and while we see no necessity for it for either
purpose under the view which we maintain, we
may yet be permitted to anticipate the inquiry by
some minds, whether that view may not discover
confirmation or elucidation from a stand-point out-
side of itself, and suggested by admitted facts or
principles. Such inquirers may possibly also urge
that notwithstanding the proof that man, through
the disobedience, was advanced in the scale of
being, they cannot entirely divest themselves of
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 189
the idea that somehow, nevertheless, that act was
calamitous to the race, and displeasing to God, and
that the divine mandate not to partake of the tree
of knowledge, was designed for man's benefit, and
sincerely intended for his observance. They may,
therefore, desire to know whether such impressions
are necessarily incompatible with our general view,
and if not, in what way the consistency can be ex-
hibited. In the present chapter, therefore, we de-
sign to show that by a simple hypothesis entirely
accordant with the foregoing views, and not dis-
countenanced by other parts of this narrative, and
of Scripture, all these inquiries and difficulties can
be readily and satisfactorily solved.
Let us suppose that the human pair were placed
in Eden in their primitive state of moral ignorance
with the purpose, or at least the preference on the
part of God, of training them there by a special
process for the possession of the moral sense ; the
contemplation being that they should receive that
faculty only after having been fully prepared, by
this preliminary instruction and development, to
become, like the angels, moral agents, without the
liability of falling into sin. Then the prohibition
against eating would be a prohibition of premature
knowledge, and would be strictly intended for obe-
dience. And if we farther suppose that the privi-
lege of immortality was to be within man's reach in
case he waited for his moral sense until he should
thus be secure of undeviating holiness in connection
190 THE BISE AND THE FALL.
with his endless life, we can easily appreciate the
force of the warning that the result of his disobe-
dience would be inevitable death.
It is not necessary to suppose that God so ex-
pected or designed that Adam would refrain from
partaking, as that he was disappointed at the actual
result. On the contrary, we must believe that he
fully anticipated the disobedience, and that the
world and all its races were framed with full refer-
ence to the moral system that finally came to pre-
vail in it. But it may have been a part of this
same divine scheme, that, before the designed sys-
tem should be entered upon, and as a mode of intro-
ducing it, Man an intellectual being, fully com-
petent to exercise his reason should have placed
before him the opportunity of immortal existence on
earth through obedience, with the alternative of
mortality and moral frailty in case of transgression.
We may then believe that the first pair, having full
freedom of choice and action, by an act of folly
(but not of sin) prematurely entered upon their
moral career, and so fastened upon the race the ex-
isting moral system, with its pains and disabilities, in
place of that purer and loftier destiny which man
might otherwise have enjoyed. From that time
onward, the moral system has consisted, not (as
generally taught) of remedial measures to repair
a ruin, and restore a lost original holiness, but of
progressive steps in moral knowledge and expe-
rience, in order to reach, by slow and laborious ad-
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 191
vancement, that moral perfection which, had man
obeyed in Eden, he would have attained by a
shorter and easier course.
It will be observed that we suggest this view as
an hypothesis merely, consistent with, but not essen-
tial to, our general view. Apart from the objection
that it is a mere hypothesis, it involves the difficulty,
or at least the uncertainty, of assuming that some
special process is possible, whereby a creature could
be morally trained while in a state of moral igno-
rance ; and the more doubtful conjecture that the
beneficial effects of this special training could be
transmitted by inheritance from our first parents
to all their descendants, insuring the permanent
holiness of all successive generations. It might
possibly be demonstrated that a divine training
which should develop the Will of an intellectual
being in such proportion to his other faculties, as to
make it at once perfectly subservient to the Reason,
and supreme over the Sensibilities, would be a suffi-
cient training to insure moral perfection ; but would
the effects of this special cultivation upon Adam
naturally descend, without exception or deterioration,
to all his posterity ? The case of the angels affords
us no light upon either question, for we know noth-
ing of their moral history or experience, except
through a supposed intimation, (vague at best,)
that some have sinned and fallen ; and nothing of
their families or generations, except that they
44 neither marry nor are given in marriage." The
192 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
hypothesis suggests the farther objection, that im-
mortality among terrestrial races would be an
anomaly, decay and death having been the uni-
versal law of Earth in all its ages. Yet, to this it
may be replied that man, too, is admitted to have
been created mortal, immortality being set before
him only as a contingent possibility. The immense
durations of antediluvian lives would seem to indi-
cate that man's primitive organism must have been
far more vigorous and enduring than now, requiring
but slight improvement to make it imperishable ; and
although a race of immortals, as they " increased
and multiplied and replenished the earth," must, at
no distant period, have over-peopled it, unless con-
stantly removed by translation to some other sphere,
the examples of Enoch and Elijah, and perhaps also
of our Lord himself, may remind us that this is not
an impossible supposition.
While the hypothesis thus seems intrinsically not
improbable, and well worthy of consideration, there
will be found in the narrative a number of features
apparently tending to support it. Of these we may
mention first, the fact that Adam, after his creation,
was " taken and put " into the garden of Eden,
a place specially planted and prepared, as if for
some special purpose of education and training con-
nected with the acquisition of the moral faculty,
since the tree of knowledge is the central feature in
his history there, and he was removed from the gar-
den as soon as the moral faculty was acquired. Upon
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 193
this hypothesis also, the presence of " the tree of
life in the midst of the garden," which was left ac-
cessible to man until he acquired the moral sense
in a mode that was forbidden, and was then im-
mediately guarded from his approach, is invested
with much significance. Still more noteworthy is
the confirmation derived from the account of the
temptation and its consequences. And again, in
the same light, the malevolence of the tempter, the
artfulness of his insinuations, and the folly of the
pair in harboring his suggestions, are strikingly
exhibited and explained. We thus see the serpent
" more subtile than any beast of the field," and for
centuries after, the symbol among Orientals of that
intellectual subtlety, that cunning sagacity, which
the Eastern mind is apt to confound with wisdom,
addressing himself to the task of inducing the pair
to disobey the mandate of their Maker. The nar-
rative gives no hint of his motive, nor does it inti-
mate that beneath his reptile form was disguised a
higher intelligence, an evil spirit, an enemy of God
and mankind ; yet it would seem that such an infer-
ence may fairly be drawn from various circum-
stances of the transaction ; from his interference
on the scene, from his insolent denial of God's ve-
racity, and from the curse which is afterwards de-
nounced upon his head by the Almighty for his
conduct. Assuming, then, the malice of the tempter,
we can readily see what he aimed to accomplish by
inciting our first parents to the untimely acquisition
13
194 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
of the moral faculty. Seeing them to be as yet
incapable of safely assuming its responsibilities, he
strove to plunge them into it, expecting their ready
and helpless subjection to passion and sin, their
alienation from God, their ruin as a race of moral
beings, and the utter failure of the moral scheme as
apparently formed.
Had Adam and Eve been aware, or had they
suspected that they were to receive " the knowledge
of good and evil" by the Divine permission at some
future time, it is scarcely conceivable that they would
have disobeyed in order to attain it more speedily.
But there is no intimation that such was the case,
and from the prohibition they would probably draw
an opposite inference. Yet this consideration hardly
mitigates their rashness and folly in the disobedience,
since as intellectual beings they had capacity enough
to understand that their Maker might more reason-
ably be trusted, and his commands more safely
obeyed, than the insinuations of an inferior or un-
known creature. Not less certain is it (under the
hypothesis) that their disobedience was a disastrous
event to them and the race in its consequences ; for
though they by it advanced themselves a step in
the scale of being, yet they also lost by it the in-
conceivable blessings and privileges by which that
same step would otherwise have been accompanied.
We can easily understand, therefore, how God,
while not inculpating them as criminally guilty in
the act, should yet administer a just rebuke for
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 195
their want of confidence in him, and should present
to their view somewhat in the light of a retribution
the pains and sufferings which their rashness had
compelled him now to impose as indispensable con-
ditions of their existence, for the prevention of
their moral, mental, and physical ruin. For while
these pains and disabilities thus imposed were, like
the bitter and painful remedies of medical science,
of the highest benevolence and among the greatest
blessings, and can no more appropriately be denom-
inated punishments than the prescriptions of a kind
and sympathizing physician, they were yet in some
sense the penalty paid for that inconsiderate con-
duct by which man had brought upon himself a
feeble moral constitution, instead of the highest
condition of moral health and soundness which he
might and would otherwise have enjoyed.
But while God's sternness toward the human
pair is thus paternal, in a far different tone is the
malevolent plotter addressed. Instead of " cursed
is the ground for thy sake," it is, " Cursed art
ihou above every beast of the field : upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days
of thy life : and I will put enmity between thee
and the woman, and between thy seed and her
seed : it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt
bruise his heel." When we observe (what Geol-
ogy teaches) that this curse worked no change in
the serpent form or habits, its significance in its
application to the animal would seem to be that a
196 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
conspicuous and perpetual stigma should attach to
it, which these natural characteristics should serve
to symbolize, and so to keep in remembrance as a
lesson and warning to mankind. 1 It announces
that the creature whose form and name must be
forever associated with the disobedience in Paradise
as the prompting instrument to it, should remain
forever in the seeming debasement of its form and
life, and in the disgust and hatred which it should
inspire, a sign to man how odious and despicable is
the subtlety of human wisdom, when its judgments
and counsels are in disagreement with the Divine
monitions. Or, if we regard the serpent in this
transaction as the impersonation of an evil spirit
rather than of a subtle sagacity, then the sentence
dooms the reptile thus forever marked as the repre-
sentative of the evil principle, to carry down to all
1 Some Biblical critics have found their sympathies moved in behalf
of the serpent family, on account of this curse ; deeming it unreason-
able and cruel to punish them for the use of their form without their
knowledge or consent. It may relieve such doubters somewhat, to
notice that the curse affects the creature's reputation merely, as it will
hardly be thought that this could be a source of much discomfort to a
brute creature, unconscious of the fact, and insensible to the ignominy.
The force of the expression " Cursed art thou," etc., seems to be the
same as in Jacob's malediction,.-.-" Cursed (t. e., detested) be their
wrath, for it was cruel." As to the enmity put between the serpent
tribes and man, it was undoubtedly real; but it will be observed that
it was to be reciprocal. If the animal was to excite hatred, it was to
inspire terror also, and it has thus been greatly protected from the
active persecution which many other creatures have suffered. Indeed,
as a mere brute, it would have been far more to be pitied had God
honored it on this occasion by making it thenceforth man's favorite
article of food or ornament. The truth is, that as the serpent form was
only used as an impersonation, so it was only cursed as a symbol.
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 197
human generations the lesson, how detestable and
dangerous evil is. The enmity which God declares
he " will put " between the serpent and man, must
be regarded as a special instinctive hostility that
would not otherwise have existed. As applied to
the brute creature, there can be no question that the
declaration has been fulfilled ; but in its deeper
meaning, the plotting adversary of God and man
disguised beneath the serpent form, is shown how
completely his principal hope, the ruin of man as a
moral being, was to be baffled and to fail. The
language, in its application to him, meant this :
" The human race is not to be thy unresisting prey.
The moral faculty itself, which thou didst conceive
of as a mere intellectual perception affixing but
not deterring from guilt, shall be a mighty force
exerting its influence within the human breast
against thy sway ; the voice of conscience shall be
constantly heard, inciting opposition to thy power ;
and though (as illustrated in the hostility to subsist
between the serpent race and man) thou shalt suc-
ceed in working more or less of harm in the world,
yet ' the seed of the woman shall bruise thy head,'
(by a fatal, incurable wound,) while thou (in a
merely temporary and partial success) shalt only
' bruise his heel.' " In other words, (if we adopt
the spiritual sense so generally accorded to the pas-
sage,) " A scheme of salvation shall be put in oper-
ation, whereby a long and doubtful warfare between
man and evil shall terminate in his deliverance from
198 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
sin ; and the final destruction of thy power on
earth shall come to the human race through a fu-
ture ' SON OF MAN,' its triumphant Redeemer
and Saviour."
It is unnecessary to dwell longer upon this hy-
pothesis. If not susceptible of demonstration, it
seems at least well worthy of being attentively
considered, and whatever of doubt or difficulty
may be thought to becloud it, may possibly be dis-
sipated by a more careful study or a fuller exami-
nation. Containing so many marks of truth, and
having so close a connection and agreement with
our general view, we should have been unwilling
to omit it from this discussion of the narrative,
even had we been less inclined than we are to
accept the conclusions which it suggests. We have
reserved it, however, from view, until the true in-
terpretation and import of the narrative could be
shown to be attainable without its aid ; considering
(as already urged) that History should, if possible,
be explained by its facts alone, and without resort
to assumptions.
We have thus gone carefully through the whole
of this remarkable narration, and can form our own
opinion of its purport. If no such teaching is con-
veyed as we have supposed, it is strange that our
view should find such singular corroboration, not
only in the general features of the story, but even
ELUCIDATION BY HYPOTHESIS. 199
in its minutest details ; and that all these particu-
lars should display such consistency with each other.
In this respect we need not fear to challenge for
our interpretation a comparison with that which
has been heretofore ordinarily received, as well as
in the no less important qualities of simplicity,
reasonableness, and significance. Unless we are
much misled, also, it will be found to possess other
marks of truth in its power of reconciling theologi-
cal diversities which spring from different admitted
and indisputable, but apparently inconsistent facts.
Some of these we shall hereafter briefly advert to,
but before we take leave of the narrative, we must
notice one source of probable objection to the cor-
rectness of our view, which is found in another
portion of Scripture.
200 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER XL
REVIEW OF OBJECTIONS FROM THE FIFTH CHAPTER
OF ROMANS.
"WHEREFORE, as by one man sin entered the world, and
death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all
have sinned ; (for until the law sin was in the world, but sin
is not imputed where there is no law : nevertheless death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them who had not
sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the
figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence so is
the free gift : for if through the offence of one, many be dead,
much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is
by one man, Christ Jesus, hath abounded unto many. And
not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift : for the judg-
ment was by one to condemnation ; but the gift is of many
offences unto justification. For if by one man's offence death
reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of
grace and of the gift of righteousness, shall reign in life by
one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as by the offence of one,
judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by
the righteousness of one the free gift came upon all men to
justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many
were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be
made righteous." (Romans v. 12-19.)
The passage quoted above, from the fifth chap-
ter of Paul's Epistle to the Romans, is invariably
made the battle-field in controversies which turn
upon the history of Adam and his relations to the
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 201
race. Within it, as by instinct, theological belliger-
ents make it their first object to get themselves
securely intrenched, persuaded that if once well
covered by the advantages of that ground they may
then safely undermine, batter, and bombard the
strongholds of all adversaries. Times innumerable
has it been the theatre of assault or of sortie, of
capture or repulse. Happily, its capacity is ample
enough to afford comfortable accommodations for
all ; and it is accordingly at this day quietly occu-
pied by at least half a dozen diverse creeds, each
of which, in its particular quarters, claims to be
master of the field, and glares self-complacent de-
fiance at the rest. And so, as it is by universal
consent the Malakoff of Theology, the key of
every position, we must, in deference to the
established practice of polemic warfare, establish
our title to respect, by either carrying its ram-
parts, or proving that we are out of the range of
its fire.
We frankly admit that we question the infalli-
bility of the rules which declare this a battery to be
spiked by every proffered theory, as a condition
of success. We have great doubts whether it were
constructed by Paul as a barrier across the road
toward truth ; we believe that he rather intended
it as a friendly way-mark, to guide the inquirer
along the unobstructed path. To drop the figure,
we cannot think that the Apostle's glowing and
rhetorical mind, when it threw out this passage in
202 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the course of his argument in support of the claim
of the Gentiles to salvation as well as the Jews, ever
designed it as a precise and definite formula of
dogmatic belief, in all its parts and expressions.
We do not believe that it was ever written for
analysis in theological alembics by the microscopic
scrutiny of syllables, or the mathematically accurate
weighing of significations, in order to detect the
measures of doctrinal equivalents. It is simply an
illustration with which he closes an argument, and
exhibits its bearing; and it is to be held to no
greater precision of terms than will suffice for illus-
tration, and extended to no farther reach of doc-
trine than is sought to be enforced by the argu-
ment.
The point of these remarks becomes manifest
when, upon a careful inspection of the passage, we
find that there is nothing whatever in its main idea
that conflicts with the view contained in the fore-
going pages. That Adam, in his relations to man-
kind, was the type of Christ in his relations to man-
kind ; that as, through the disobedience of the
one, universal sinfulness and universal mortality
were brought into the world and passed upon the
Gentiles as well as the Jews, so, through the obedi-
ence of the other, universal righteousness and uni-
versal life are offered to the world, to Gentiles as
well as to Jews, this, which is all that the Apostle
has sought to establish in his preceding argument,
and hence all that he has designed to illustrate in
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 203
this comparison, is completely accordant with, and
sustained by, the view we have presented. The
only possible discrepancy which can be made to
appear between this passage and our theory is
found in the terms " sinning" (d^apTTyo-an-os) and
*' offence "(TrapaTn-wjua literally, " a falling away "),
which are here apparently applied by Paul to the
first disobedience of Adam, as if he regarded that
act as characterized by moral guilt.
With regard to these expressions, however, we
insist that they are to be considered as incidental
expressions merely, not committing the writer to
any particular view of the transaction to which they
are applied, but casually used by him as words
ordinarily employed to designate it, unless they can
be shown to have been derived from his previous
argument as an essential feature of the inferences
therefrom. In other words, the illustration must
not be pushed as a proof of doctrine further than
the reasoning which it was merely intended to illus-
trate. Now Paul announces this passage, as the
sum and result of his previous argument. " Where-
fore," he says, i. e., " To sum up what we have
before shown, the argument may be briefly ex-
hibited in the following comparison." In order,
therefore, to fix the precise limit of the principles or
doctrines to which he intends to commit himself in
the comparison, we must go back to the beginning
and follow the course of his argument, that we may
remark the particular doctrines there set forth
204 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
which he is here attempting comprehensively to re-
state and illustrate.
What then are the drift and scope of the preced-
ing portions of this Epistle to the Romans, and how
far do they bear upon this reference to Adam ?
More especially is the disobedience of Adam, as an
action having a moral aspect, so far discussed or
made use of as to render the designation of " sin,"
here applied to it, essential to the argument ? Let
us examine it and see.
If we go back to ch. i. v. 16, we shall there find
Paul announcing, at the outset, the theme of the
whole discussion, namely, that " the Gospel of
Christ is the power of salvation to every one that
believeth, to the Jew first, and also to the Gen-
tile." From this point, anticipating the hostility
which the declaration of this universality of the
Gospel would encounter from Jewish bigotry, he
proceeds in the support of its truth by arguments
from reason, from Scripture, and from the estab-
lished course of God's dealings with men.
He reminds his opponents, as the groundwork
of his reasoning, of the admitted application of
God's moral system to the whole human race. He
shows them that all men, without exception, the
Jew as well as the Gentile, are all gone astray from
moral rectitude, and are all alike punished for their
sins. And while all alike share in the responsibili-
ties of the moral law, shall they not, he inquires,
be admitted to its privileges also ? *' Yes," he re-
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 205
plies (ch. ii. 616), " He who renders unto every
man according to his deeds, tribulation and an-
guish to the unrighteous, to the Jew as well as the
Gentile, He also confers glory, honor, and peace
upon him that worketh good, to the Gentile as well
as the Jew." It is not the mere accident of nation-
ality that makes men differ in his sight. " For not
the hearer of the law, (the Hebrew,) but the doers
of the law, (of all races,) are justified before God."
*' Do you think," he continues, " that because you
happen to be a Jew, with the law and the cir-
cumcision, that you can therefore lead an unholy
life with any more security than the Gentile who
has not these outward tokens ? Is it being a
Jew, then, which is to purchase special favor from
God ? If so, be assured that he is not the Jew,
in God's estimation, who is one outwardly, but he
who is one in the spirit ; and such an one shall be
accepted by Him, of whatever lineage or origin."
Pursuing this idea in the next chapter (ch. in.),
Paul examines the real advantages which the Jews
possessed over the Gentiles, showing that they con-
sisted merely in national blessings and privileges,
(such as that " unto them were committed the ora-
cles of God,") and not in any different rights or lia-
bilities as subjects of the moral law. He shows that
they have merited no special favors under the law,
having been equally corrupt with the Gentiles ; and
concludes that in this respect, therefore, they have
no reason for boasting or expectation of preference
206 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
in the impartial administration of the Divine gov-
ernment, since " God is the God of the Gentiles, as
well as of the Jews."
" But," it would be asked by the Hebrew ob-
jector, " was not a covenant made with Abraham for
himself and his seed after him ? " " Undoubtedly,"
responds the Apostle ; and he now refers to this
very fact as a farther proof that the reward of faith
shall come to the Gentiles as well as the Jews. He
adverts to the important fact (ch. iv. 10), that the
faith, on account of which this covenant was made,
" was reckoned unto Abraham for righteousness
while he was yet uncircumcised ; " and from it he
draws the conclusion that Abraham, " the father of
the faithful," thereby became and was recognized
as the father of the uncircumcised faithful, no less
than of such as were his lineal descendants , " for
the promise (v. 13) was not to Abraham or his seed
through the [Jewish] law, but through the right-
eousness of faith." It applies, therefore, not merely
to his natural posterity, but to all " out of many
nations," who shall imitate the faith of Abraham ;
that is, (v. 24,) " who shall believe on Him that
hath raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead."
Then, after a short discursive allusion to the
ground and the joy of faith in Christ, having ar-
rived at the point for which he set out, he looks
back, and reviewing the path he has gone over, he
sums up the effect of the whole argument by declar-
ing it proved that the " Gospel of Christ," like the
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 07
moral system itself, is universal, both in its respon-
sibilities and privileges. " Wherefore," (i. e,, as
the result and the illustration of the foregoing,) " as
by one man sin entered into the world, and death
by sin, and so death passed upon all men for that all
have sinned," in other words, (v. 18,) " as by the
offence of one, judgment came upon all men to con-
demnation, so by the righteousness of one, the free
gift came upon all men, unto justification of life."
From this review, it will be seen that the moral
character of Adam's act, so far from being relied
upon as a material part of Paul's previous argument,
was not even alluded to in it, however distantly,
nor is there any portion of that argument upon
which it can have the remotest bearing or influence.
In its light we see at once, that Paul's object in this
passage, as well as in the whole discussion, is not to
define the character of Adam's transgression, (such
an idea never entered his mind ;) but to exhibit the
wide application of the office of Christ. For this
purpose he here refers to Adam's disobedience with
sole reference to the universality of its effect, using
this both as an illustration of, and an argument for,
the universality of Christ's remedial dispensation. It
could make no difference for this purpose, whether
the common idea that Adam's act was a sin were
correct or not, and although he calls it " an offence,"
casually adopting the common expression and idea
respecting it, yet, inasmuch as this designation is
entirely outside of his previous train of thought and
208 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
argument, it must be regarded as " obiter dictum"
and not an authoritative declaration of its true char-
acter.
" But," it will be urged, " does not this destroy
much of the force of the passage, which is plainly
* judicial ' in its character ? It speaks of ' condemn-
ing ' and ' acquitting,' l and how can there be con-
demnation except for sin ? Is not the idea of sin,
therefore, an essential part of the contrast insti-
tuted ? " Let it be admitted in reply, that the pas-
sage is judicial in spirit, and that the condemnation
spoken of is for sin. Of what sin, and whose, does
the Apostle declare it to be the judgment ? Observe
it is the condemnation of all mankind that he speaks
of, the single topic of all his previous discussion ;
and although he here alludes to Adam's act as
introducing this condemnation, he directly declares,
both in this passage and in the outset of his argu-
ment, that it so comes on all mankind, not for
Adam's act, but because " all have sinned." We do
not here examine at length, the claim, supported
in " The Conflict of Ages," that in this place, the
expression " all have sinned " should be translated
" all have been treated as sinners " ; and so the
whole phrase read, " Death passed upon all men,
for that all were treated as sinners," %. e., " All were
treated as sinners, because all were treated as sin-
ners," or, perhaps, " because all were regarded as
sinners." We think it unnecessary to dilate upon it,
l Conflict of Ages, p. 397.
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 209
for according to the one mode of reading, it is mere
nonsense, and according to the other, it simply
comes back to the present translation, " because all
have sinned" Besides, the true sense of the phrase
is to be found not merely by scrutinizing it by itself,
but by referring to the argument with which it is
connected. It is the restatement of that which
constitutes the basis and foundation of Paul's whole
argument, as will be seen by consulting the pre-
vious chapters, wherein he sets out by showing the
sinfulness of all men as the reason of God's judg-
ments. Thus, (ch. i. 10,) " For the wrath of God
is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men," of whom (ch. ii. 9) " We
have before proved [or 4 charged '] that they are all
under sin, as it is written, ' There is none righteous,
no, not one.' " In all this there is not the slightest
reference to the sin of Adam as the ground of the
condemnation of the race, but, on the contrary, there
are plain intimations, in almost every verse, that
[notwithstanding Adam's act] had men been them-
selves righteous, they would have been justified. If
it is true, then, as asserted by some, that in this par-
ticular passage " the sin of Adam, and not their
own actual transgression, is given as the ground and
reason of the subjection of all men to the penal
evils spoken of," l then it is in direct variance and
opposition to the whole of the preceding argu-
ment, both in its letter and its spirit, a circumstance
l Professor Hodge, quoted in Conflict of Ago, p. 406.
14
210 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
which should cause such a view to be received with
some hesitation.
What Paul attempts in the argument is the ex-
position of two great systems in the moral govern-
ment of God. The first, a system (without refer-
ence to the mode of its origination) of condemna-
tion upon all who have violated the moral law, i. e.,
upon all men, " for that all have sinned, and come
short of the glory of God," (ch. iii. 23,) (i. e.,
" failed to illustrate his holiness.") The other, a
system of justification through " faith of Jesus
Christ, unto all, and upon all them that believe,"
(ch. iii. 22.) Having set forth these systems in the
preceding chapters, he now, in this summary of
what has gone before, contrasts them ; the system
of judgment, as having been introduced or originated
by the disobedience of Adam, our natural head,
with the system of justification, as having been in-
troduced or originated by the obedience of Christ,
our spiritual head. We may admit, if we please,
that he makes " the sequence of justification and
life from the obedience of Christ, a sequence in
which there is a real and glorious causative power"; l
but it is certain that he sets up no such causation
and effect between the act of Adam and the con-
demnation of men, so, at least, as to teach that the
latter was a punishment for the former. But if
Paul does not mean that this "judgment" upon
men was in consequence of any guilt in Adam's
i Conflict of Ayes, p. 375.
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 211
act, then the question of guilt or not in that act
does not enter into the spirit of the passage, and
his use of the word "sin," in reference to the act
of Adam, is not essential to the force of the contrast,
or to the judicial interpretation of the passage.
The substance of the foregoing argument is this :
That so far as Paul contrasts the act of Adam
with the acts of Christ (in distinction from the
effects of the acts in the two cases respectively),
this is incidental to the main course of thought, and
should be interpreted as referring to their outward
semblance, and not to their internal character. We
may present some considerations, however, upon a
a different ground, which will bring us to the same
conclusion.
Paul in this passage is using Adam and his act
simply as an antithetical type of Christ and his acts.
Adam, at the head of his system of " sinfulness and
condemnation," appears the counterpart or anti-
thesis of Christ, at the head of his system of holi-
ness and life. Adam's act of transgression inaugu-
rating the one, is the antithesis of Christ's acts
of obedience inaugurating the other. As a type,
therefore, the correspondence in the external as-
pects of the two sets of facts was sufficiently exact,
and it was not necessary that their internal
character should be in precisely corresponding con-
trast. In facts or events merely types, established
for illustration simply, such exact correspondence is
not required or expected. Thus, the sacrifices of
212 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
lambs and goats typifying the death of Christ,
neither in the moral nature of the victims, nor in
the manner of their death, exhibited to that great
event the slightest resemblance. Accordingly, Paul
here using Adam's transgression merely as an anti-
thetical type of Christ's holy obedience, could have
designed no other reference than simply to its ex-
ternal aspect, and to that only so far as in its
general form it presented a typical illustration.
Hence he should not be understood as expressing an
opinion upon the real internal character of the act
when he calls it Adam's " sin," or " offence " ; but
simply as calling it a sin because in its circum-
stances it resembled one sufficiently to be an anti-
thetical type of Christ's holiness. Nay, we go
farther. If we suppose Paul himself to have be-
lieved this act of Adam's to have been a sin, even
that will not make his entitling it so in this place
authoritative on that point. For though we must
suppose that Inspiration dictated his reference to
the act as a type in this case, still Inspiration sanc-
tions and invests it only so far as it is presented as
a type, and does not authoritatively fix its character
any farther. In other words, a statement or illus-
tration may be inspired to a certain degree, and be
true to that degree, but be untrue, or at least not
authoritative, beyond that particular point, even
though put forth in good faith as a broad truth by
the writer. To illustrate. We have no reason to
suppose that Paul knew of the perished races an-
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 213
tenor to man, the history of these having been
but recently brought to light by Geology. We can
therefore have no doubt that when he wrote that
" death came into the world by sin," he supposed
that fact was true in its widest acceptation. Thus
indeed have all theologians believed up to a very
recent date, and have doubtless considered this
declaration of Paul as inspired truth to the full
extent of its broadest meaning. 1 But since we have
learned that the statement is true only in its appli-
cation to man, we perceive that, although inspired
and true to the extent necessary for illustration of
the subject in hand, it is not so beyond that limit,
even though Paul himself may have considered it
entirely true as broadly as written.
Wherever, in fact, we meet with expressions used
in connection with types, we are to receive them
simply as illustrations, the precise accuracy of
which is not manifest on their face, but subject
to be ascertained from other sources. We may
well accept the term " offence," or " sin," as
properly applicable to Adam's act for the purposes
of typical allusion; but to ascertain how far it
was really a sin, or offence, when committed, we
must go to the original story, the same and the
only source from which Paul himself derived his
impressions of it. For the purpose for which he
needed it, he was not called upon to examine its
l Thus Dr. Dwight says, Theol, Vol. I. 424: " Until the fall, death
was a total stranger to Creation ; and but for that event, all animals, as
well as man, would have been immortal."
214 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
internal nature, and so just glanced at the facts in
the light in which they were commonly presented.
We, on the other hand, have been called upon to
examine that internal nature, and having so done,
have a right to form our own opinion respecting it.
It would be no more just then, to insist that the
literal and extreme sense of apapT-ya-avros (sinning),
thus incidentally and typically used in reference
to this act, is an inspired declaration of its real
character, than to maintain that the Apostle's state-
ment that " death entered into the world by sin "
was meant to deny and disprove the records of
Geology ; or that his declaration (in Heb. xi. 17)
that " Abraham offered up Isaac," is of greater
weight than the account of that transaction in
Genesis. The truth is that these expressions in
each instance, coming in incidentally, and for an-
other purpose, are to be taken as rhetorical ex-
pressions merely, and not as the infallible announce-
ments of inspiration.
Under such circumstances, looking entirely to
the enforcement of his central idea, the Apostle
would naturally refer to Adam's act in the terms
most familiar to himself and his readers, just as he
might use an illustration from classic fable, or an
unscientific but common view of natural phenomena,
without pausing to satisfy himself of the reality of
the supposed facts, and certainly without stamping
them with divine authority for their truth and ac-
curacy. Thus Christ himself, in remonstrating with
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 215
the Pharisees for their unbelief, demanded, " If I
by Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your
children cast them out ? " where it is not probable
that he meant to admit the incantations and charms
of the Jewish sorcerers to be efficacious for genuine
cures. So Jude says, " Yet Michael the archangel,
when contending with the devil he disputed about
the body of Moses," referring to an old fable or
tradition as an illustration, without asserting its
truth. And Paul himself (Heb. xi. 13), speaking
of the patriarchs previously enumerated, says,
" These all died in faith," though of one of them
(Enoch) he had just declared that he did not die,
but " was translated that he should not see death."
It was not the practice of Christ or his apostles to
combat the settled doctrinal notions of the Jews,
when these did not affect the vital truths of Chris-
tianity, or interfere with practical holiness of life.
It was not their purpose to teach dogma, but to
preach righteousness. Hence merely controversial
inquiries, when addressed to them, they uniformly
evaded. In the same spirit they observed and rec-
ommended compliance with ceremonial usages and
other matters, which they yet regarded as indif-
ferent, or even abrogated by the new dispensation.
There is therefore no reason to suppose that Inspi-
ration would have checked any adoption and applica-
tion by Paul of the common view of Adam's diso-
bedience for the purposes of typical illustration ; or
would have corrected in his mind any erroneous
216 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
impressions with regard to it, which he might have
received from his Jewish education, so long as that
correction was not requisite to affect the reality and
truth of the type, or to promote the efficient preach-
ing of the Gospel. Paul had much fuller and more
just perceptions of the scope and bearing of Chris-
tianity than some of the other apostles, equally
inspired, and this difference of views at times gave
rise to divisions of opinion among them ; yet doubt-
less there were many truths relating to God's gov-
ernment of which he, no less than the rest of man-
kind, entertained ideas obscure or tinctured with
error. The time had not yet come for these to be
clearly revealed. 1
1 The foregoing remarks suppose the Apostle in this passage to refer
distinctly to Adam's act of disobedience as a simple and complete fact
in itself. We would suggest, however, that his argument may be
looked at from another point of view, which may be stated as fol-
lows :
Paul presents the act of Adam as he presents the act of Christ,
each in the light of its consequences in their individual characters. He
looked in his own mind upon the disobedience of Adam with its at-
tendant result of sinfulness in him (not separating the act from the
character that followed the act, and speaking of " the offence " of Adam
as a figure for the sinfulness in him which it introduced), just as he
refers to " the obedience " of Christ and his consequent righteousness,
without meaning to allude to any or all of the specific acts which made
up his obedience.
The central and main idea is the parallelism of the justification
by Christ in respect to its consequence on man, with the disobedience
and sinfulness introduced by Adam in reference to their consequence.
The first is broadly stated, without exhibiting the contents of this jus-
tification or the mode of its consequence ; so also the disobedience of
Adam and its results to him and the race are stated with corresponding
breadth. These two parallel sets of facts (and not their analytic con-
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 217
Having thus asserted our claim that too much
stress is not to be laid as authority upon the desig-
nations applied by Paul to Adam's act and its
effects, in contrast with and as a type of the
acts of Christ and their effects, it remains for us
to show that the adoption of the view which we
have urged by no means destroys the force or
value of Adam as a type of the Messiah, but
rather enhances it. In the first place, it does not
impair that value. For though it sets aside the
literal sense in which his act may contrast as a sin,
with the holiness of Christ, it still leaves the con-
trast perfect in a typical, or illustrative sense.
Obedience is still set in opposition with disobedi-
ence, and righteousness with an act of transgres-
sion so nearly resembling sin as to answer every
purpose of a typical antithesis. But besides the
correspondence in this respect, and in respect to the
universality of the two dispensations, and in respect
to their opposite character (the only particulars in
which the Apostle suggests a comparison), the com-
pleteness of the parallel is farther extended by our
.view in several important particulars.
For not only does it satisfy St. Paul's declaration
that Adam's act inaugurated a system of universal
condemnation, just as Christ laid open one of uni-
tents) it was, that formed in the Apostle's mind the analogical argu-
ment of parallelism which he here employs ; leaving the reader to refer
on the one hand to the Gospel for the particulars, and on the other to
the account of Adam and his disobedience for farther light; presenting
both, therefore, as subjects for investigation and study.
218 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
versal (i. e., free) salvation, but it also shows a
parallelism in the mode of the effects of each upon
men. It justifies in an especial manner the Apostle's
statement that, " As by one man many were made
sinners, even so, by one shall many be made right-
eous." How then is it that men are " made sin-
ners " (or " come to be regarded as sinners," if
that is a better translation) through Adam's act,
and how does it appear to be the same way as that
in which " many are made righteous " (or " come
to be considered and treated as righteous ") through
the agency of Christ ? Not, in either case, by an
inevitable infusion into the race or the individual,
and without its cooperation, immediately upon and
by virtue of the obedience or disobedience, (as the
case may be,) of guilt or holiness respectively, or
of new tendencies toward guilt or holiness. Had
Adam been a holy being and lost that holiness both
for himself and his posterity by an act of sin, as
the ordinary view teaches, so that by and through
that act he and they thenceforward became inevi-
tably sinful, then it must have been that immedi-
ately upon that act and by it, some change for the
worse was wrought in the constitution of the race.
Were Christ's influence, then, the exact antithesis
of this, it would follow that immediately upon his
obedience and by it, some change was wrought for
the better in the constitution of the race. But
this, as we all know, is not the manner in which
Christ's righteousness affects the condition of man-
THE FIFTH CHAPTER OF ROMANS. 219
kind. Man is not made the subject of God's grace
involuntarily, although he is, without his agency,
admitted to the opportunities of its benefits. So,
on the other hand, our view shows us that he does
not partake of the evil effects of Adam's act invol-
untarily, although he is, without his own agency,
made a moral being by it, and so exposed to the
opportunity of being affected by them. Christ's
work, it is agreed, in itself alone and without ref-
erence to its acceptance by man, affected the moral
position of the race only by the new opportunities
of holiness and pardon which it introduced. So,
by our view, Adam's act, in itself alone and with-
out reference to the actions of men as moral agents
under it, influenced the moral position of his pos-
terity only by making guilt a possibility for them.
Christ only removed the impediments to men's sal-
vation. Adam, according to our view, did nothing
more than open the way to moral ruin. Thus, in
short, (as we say,) Adam made men capable of be-
coming sinners, and left it for them to adopt the
character, or to remain holy if they would ; just as
Christ opens to them the opportunity of becoming
righteous, but leaves it dependent upon themselves
to embrace it : " To as many as received him, to
them gave he the power (eowtav, the faculty or
privilege) to become the sons of God." (John i. 12.)
In respect to the actual moral situations and rela-
tions which ensued to the race as historic facts, in
the two cases respectively, we find the Apostle's
220 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
presentation of the parallel sustained by our view.
For as the actual result of Adam's act was, that in
consequence of it the race did voluntarily lapse
into a sinful and lost condition, entailing punish-
ment, so, on the other hand, the mission of Christ
has had, and will have for its actual effect the salva-
tion of believers, and finally the whole race, from
this unhappy state of sin and peril. It appears,
then, that though men's natures were by Adam's
act, in itself considered, enlarged and exalted, yet,
as the result of their own course in consequence
of it, they have fallen from moral innocence into
guilt and condemnation. In this respect, there-
fore, it may be said that the result and effect of
Adam's act have been disastrous to the race. Christ's
work, however, can have no such unhappy though
indirect consequence. For while faith in Him
strengthens and ennobles human nature for its con-
test with sin, it also relieves the soul from the peril
impending over its safety. Thus "if through the
offence (transgression) of one, many be dead, much
more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, hath
abounded unto many." Or, to adopt the other
words of the Apostle, "As by the offence (diso-
bedience) of one [it resulted] unto all men to con-
demnation, even so, by the righteousness of one [it
resulted] unto all men to justification of life." 1
1 "We follow the literal reading of the text, v. 18 : "Apa ovv ws Si 1 evos
irapeurTuifAaTOS ei irofTa? avBptairovs eis KaToKpiAia: ovria KOJ. Si' ecbs Sucai-
<i/btaTo ts wavras av0p<o;rovs eis Si/caio><nv <ofc. It will be noticed that in
our English version the words "judgment came" and "the free gift
came" are inserted by the translators.
PART III.
THE CONFIRMATIONS OF THEOLOGY.
PART III.
THE CONFIRMATIONS OF THEOLOGY.
CHAPTER I.
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED.
IN the exhibition of the view presented in the
foregoing pages, the object of this work is substan-
tially accomplished. Our purpose in it is to discover
the true import of the narrative which we have
reviewed, not to support or to controvert any par-
ticular deductions from it. The true interpreta-
tion of Scripture arrived at, we leave to others its
proper application in the department of Theology.
The field for which we assume responsibility is
within the limits of the narrative alone, and should
we or others fall into mistaken inferences from the
results to which we have arrived, as these erroneous
deductions cannot impair the truth of the premises,
so they ought not to influence the judgment to be
passed upon them. But notwithstanding the peril
of entering the mists of theological speculation,
where so many and great minds have been " in
wandering mazes lost," as anything that tends to
confirm the truth of the interpretation we contend
224 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
for may reasonably claim our attention, we propose
to advert, as briefly as may be, to a few of those
objections which Theology suggests to the common
view of Adam's character, history, and relations to
the race, for the purpose of showing that these ob-
jections are avoided by the adoption of our own.
Skeptics have ever made it a reproach against
Theology, and even believers have found it a painful
mystery, that there have sprung from its teachings
so many variant dogmas and creeds, all based on
seeming truths, yet in many cases mutually irrecon-
cilable. That there may be a variety of aspects in
which the same truth may be regarded, and that
thus in the theological domain, from the want of
Revelation or its uncertainty, as well as from the
limited powers of the human mind, there may be
different modes of contemplating or applying the
same general principles, may be easily granted. But
that propositions should arise, all apparently truth-
ful to a certain extent, and yet inconsistent ; while
from the diverse attempts to reconcile such contra-
dictions, or from disputes as to which of these dis-
cordant truths is most essential and vital, and should,
therefore, override the rest, doubts and confusion
should ensue, is a more serious difficulty. It ought,
nevertheless, rather to convince us that there is
error in the premises whence these discrepancies are
drawn, than shake our faith in either Revelation or
Reason. For it is self-evident that truth must be
uniform. The fundamental principles and the fun-
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 225
damental facts of God's moral government must be
consistent with themselves and each other. He
cannot be the only being in the universe whose
character is falsified by his voluntary acts ; hence
his word cannot manifest him in a light which Rea-
son may not discover to be consistent, benevolent,
and just. If the thought and study of ages have
failed to effect such a reconcilement, this fact argues
a misinterpretation of Scripture, and demands its
reconsideration. And, therefore, if under one view
of Adam's disobedience and its consequences, Rev-
elation and Reason seem at variance, while under
another they are clear and harmonious, this is of it-
self an argument for the adoption of the latter view
rather than the former.
That the theory we have urged in the forego-
ing pages does in all cases avoid such discrepancies
in relation to the subjects involved in it, would
be perhaps a presumptuous averment, before it
shall have been fully tested by time and discussion.
We propose, however, to consider some of the more
prominent difficulties which arise upon the common
view of " Adam's fall," and which ages of contro-
versy have not cleared up, as finding in it a reason-
able solution. And in order that the nature of these
difficulties may be more clearly apprehended, it will
be proper for us to settle distinctly, at the outset,
what the ordinary view inculcates with regard to
Adam's original nature, his disobedience, and its
effects upon mankind.
15
226 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
The more liberal theologians, especially those of
modern times, seem disposed to modify the extreme
views of Adam's original nature and character
which have in some quarters obtained, and which
are thus expressed in the Westminster Catechism :
" God created man in his own image, in knowledge,
righteousness, and holiness." Though the doctrine
of man's original holiness in character and disposi-
tion, has been in times past, and perhaps still gen-
erally is, held by the great body of believers, yet as
there has been among the leading writers an inclina-
tion to qualify it, our attention ought to be directed
to the more moderate view. This may be stated to
be that Adam, though a moral creature, conscious
of the distinction between right and wrong, capable
of choosing between them and accountable for his
choice, and in this freedom or capability to act in
either direction, choosing to do right, preferring in
his conduct holiness to sin, was yet not what can
be called a holy being. That he was only an inno-
cent childlike creature, without sin, chiefly because
without experience of temptation ; morally intelli-
gent, indeed, but weak in rectitude, because without
moral discipline and training. The description by Dr.
Bushnell of primeval man (" Nature and the Super-
natural," p. 104) is among the most recent, and is,
perhaps, the most clear and elegant : " He (the Cre-
ator) will have given us, or at least the original new
created progenitors, a constituently perfect mould.
So that taken simply as forms of being, apart from
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 227
any character begun by action, they are in that ex-
act harmony and perfection, that, without or before
deliberation, spontaneously runs to good ; organi-
cally ready with all heavenly affinities in play, to
break out in a perfect song. So far, they are inno-
cent and holy by creation, or by the simple fact of
their constituent perfection in the image of their
Maker ; only there is no sufficient strength or
security in their holiness, because there is no de-
liberative element it it." Other writers hold sub-
stantially the same view ; thus Dr. Harris (" Man
Primeval," p. 395) declares : " As a free agent,
his liabilities would (apart from a special provision
to the contrary) be coextensive with his multiplied
obligations. His nature is a living law table."
" That his nature was potentially (not actually)
perfect, we affirm in effect, when we say he was
made in the Divine image," (p. 432.) In connec-
tion with the views thus set forth, is to be remarked,
nevertheless, the obvious truth, as expressed by Dr.
Harris in another place, that in any moral agent,
" mere sinlessness, even for a moment, is impossible.
The nature of a moral being involves the neces-
sity at every moment of actual compliance with
every known claim of law, or else the actual refusal
of such compliance." So, also, President Edwards
remarks in his " Treatise on Original Sin," (p. 106,)
" In a moral agent, subject to moral obligations, it
is the same thing to be perfectly innocent as to
be perfectly righteous." Without multiplying ci-
228 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
tations farther, we may say, generally, that there
are almost no theologians who do not at least hold,
with these writers, that man's moral faculties were
so far awake and informed as to make him fully
accountable for his acts ; that his disposition was
naturally and voluntarily right ; and that he was not
only absolutely, and from choice, " sinless," (which
sinlessness in a moral being must clearly be, as stated
by Harris and Edwards, the same thing as holiness,)
but was in his moral nature and capabilities at
least " potentially " perfect, a capability which is
claimed by but few to subsist in him since " the
apostasy."
Taking, then, even this qualified estimate of
man's original moral character, it would seem that
the distinction attempted to be made between his
supposed " sinlessness " or " innocence," as a moral
agent, and the " holiness " by others ascribed to
him, does not suggest any real difference in the
theories. We should be at a loss to give a defini-
tion of a holy being, if that of " a being knowing
the difference between right and wrong, and free to
choose between them, who voluntarily remains in a
state of moral rectitude," does not apply. Nor
does the supposition that he has never felt tempta-
tion to be otherwise, affect the case so far as we can
discover ; for if temptation (i. e., a motive actually
exciting inclination to sin) be essential to holiness,
it is difficult to see how that attribute can be as-
cribed to God himself, who certainly cannot be im-
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 229
agined to have ever been in any degree disposed to
do evil.
This modification of the old doctrine of man's
original holiness, seems to have been adopted in
order to avoid the difficulty which that suggested,
in connection with the fact that man, thus holy,
yielded so readily to the first assaults of sin. But
were it admissible at all, it would itself create an
equal difficulty, in the necessity to account for the
radical and permanent change which is still sup-
posed to have been occasioned by the transgression,
both in God's relations and disposition toward man,
and in man's own nature, character, and destiny.
For it would seem strange that the Creator who had
formed him thus on the very division line between
holiness and sin, so nearly on it, indeed, that, as
some writers insist, his overstepping it at the first
pressure was inevitable, should have discarded him
with anger when he so toppled across. Still more
strange would it be that so small a change of position
should have been regarded as so immense, so irre-
coverable ; that so slight a shock to his nature should
have shivered it into ruins. We can comprehend
how an angel who, by a mighty rush, has broken
away from holy inclinations and influences, and aban-
doned his soul to the tide of evil passions, to follow
them thenceforth as its ruling forces, should leave
behind him all thought and all power of return, and
declare eternal war against God and goodness. But
we do not so clearly understand why an innocent,
230 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
well-meaning creature, which, like a child, is just
beginning to use its moral faculties, should, because
its feeble hand has failed in the first attempt to
wield them steadily, find itself in consequence for-
ever incapable of holding and applying them with
even its original firmness and skill. If, therefore,
any of the various doctrines be adopted which make
man originally " a moral agent, free to sin, but sin-
less by disposition and intelligent choice," then, we
insist, his character must be considered as far differ-
ent from that of " childlike innocence," (the dis-
tinguishing feature of which is the deficiency or
obscurity of moral intelligence,) and as so closely
allied to that of a " holy " creature as to justify our
so regarding and styling him. And, in confirmation
of this conclusion, we may quote one of the most
recent and able writers on this subject, who, distin-
guishing between the original (concreated) holiness
of Adam, and the holiness of his primal charac-
ter, quotes Turretin's description of the latter as pe-
culiarly " correct and felicitous " : l " It compre-
hended knowledge in the understanding, holiness in
the will, rectitude in the affections, and such an
entire harmony in all his faculties that his members
were obedient to his affections, his affections to his
will, his will to his understanding, and his under-
standing to the Divine law." The original holiness
of his nature, however, the writer concludes to have
been " not so properly just views of God, and proper
1 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 15.
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 231
affections in regard to God, i. <?., right thinking and
feeling. It was something which stood, partly at
least, in the relation of cause to all this, something
which led to all this. It was, in short, that spiritual
life which we have predicated of the mind of Adam
on his creation, resulting from the presence and
influence of the Holy Spirit of God. Holiness
was thus native to Adam. He was created spirit-
ually alive, though all spiritual apprehensions and
affections, i. e., all spiritual actings, were subsequent
to his creation." 1 " The holy principle, the spirit-
ual life which we have predicated of him, had its
natural actings in obedience ; it rendered it his
meat and his drink to do the will of his Father in
heaven." 2
This " original holiness," then, being a cardinal
doctrine of the common view in all its modifications,
it goes on to assume that, in consequence of such
natural and voluntary virtue, man was regarded by
his Maker with complacency and favor. This it was
which caused God to walk and associate with his
creature in familiar friendship as a being worthy of
his companionship and love. While in this state of
free moral agency, " under obligation to keep the
whole law," and voluntarily doing so, for some rea-
son unexplained, but as if the moral law itself were
either not a sufficient, or perhaps too severe a test
for this holy yet frail humanity, a special command
is imposed upon Adam, whereon the whole future
l Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 19. a Ibid. p. 21.
232 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
career, character, and destiny of himself and his
race are made to depend. The peculiar nature of
this test \ve must leave to its advocates to explain.
" It is not that he is thereby discharged from any
of his other obligations. This he could not be ; but
by some " mysterious " Divine influence or sover-
eign appointment, his thousand liabilities are reduced
to one. He was rendered invulnerable except at
one point. Looking abroad over the wide field of
duty, he might already foretaste the security of
heaven, save in one spot. This was moral liability
reduced to a minimum." l
This sole and special probationary mandate, it is
said, man deliberately violated. Led away by some
incomprehensible desire for knowledge (but what
knowledge is either not explained, or in dispute),
he partook of the forbidden fruit, and in so doing
wilfully sinned against his Maker. The effect at-
tached instantaneously, conspicuously, and forever.
In the very act, and during its occurrence, he fell
from his high estate and glorious prospects. His soul
turned at once into channels of guilt, and began to
flow with fatal sweep down the descent of sin. His
nature, as is generally held, underwent a sudden
and material change, though what that change was,
or how exhibited, has been the topic of endless dis-
cussion. His relations toward God were imme-
diately altered for the worse ; but in what way, and
to what extent, has never been agreed ; only it is
l Harris, Man Primeval, p. 396.
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 233
admitted that, in consequence of the transgression
and the change which it effected in him, God came
either to contemplate him less favorably, or at least
to associate with him less familiarly than before.
His act having been representative for the race, his
posterity share in its evil results. In what way
they were affected by it has never been agreed ; but
it is generally allowed that, in consequence of it,
they come into the world, not indeed less free in
moral agency nor with less personal accountability
for their acts, but with a nature abnormal or de-
formed, less prone to good than that original one
of their first progenitor, and, as most insist, possess-
ing less capability of attaining to moral perfection.
These are all the points in the ordinary view of
Adam's history to which we need refer ; and these
we believe (although possibly with some modifica-
tions in form here and there) are and must be
substantially adopted by all believers in Adam's
original moral agency. It will now be proper for
us to note distinctly with how many of these propo-
sitions and how far our view is consistent. It ad-
mits then
1. That Adam was created, and continued up to
the disobedience, a noble and sinless being, and in
intimate and friendly association with his Maker.
2. That to him, as such being, a special command
was given, on which were made to depend his
moral destiny and that of his coming race.
3. That he disobeyed that command, and that,
234 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
consequent upon this transgression, a radical change
occurred in him with respect to a moral nature and
relations, a change which left him, however, a
moral agent, personally accountable, and with in-
herent tendencies to pursue in life a course of con-
duct self-gratifying and sinful.
4. That in consequence of that change the per-
sonal intimacy of his Maker was withdrawn, and
that man subsequently fell under the power and
dominion of his appetites and became a sinful creat-
ure.
5. That all Adam's posterity, in consequence of
his transgression, inherit a nature like that which he
possessed after the transgression, instead of that
with which he was originally formed. And that
thus the existence of sin in the world, and men's
liability to it, may be referred back for their origin
to Adam's transgression.
The exposition of these propositions under our
view has been already set forth in the preceding
pages. We have there seen how Adam in his
original state, with grand and vigorous intellectual
powers, and a soul whose want of an innate moral
sense was supplied by the Divine temporary in-
struction and guidance, must of necessity, at least
for some period of time in his early existence, have
been an exalted and innocent being. That there
subsisted within him, nevertheless, in full array, the
slumbering appetites of his natural constitution,
whose undeveloped energies required but time and
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 235
opportunity to press beyond their due and healthful
bounds, and, gaining the ascendancy in his being,
to achieve its final overthrow. We have shown
that by the transgression these innate tendencies
were unchanged in nature or in force ; that the
only bearing of that act upon them was an indirect
one, that of investing their indulgence with a
moral character ; that this new influence or effect,
however, implied in itself a radical progress in man's
moral condition and relations ; that by virtue of
it, the undue allowance of these propensities, other-
wise morally innocent, came to be sinful, and man's
prevailing tendencies towards such allowance, ten-
dencies to evil, influences and manifestations of
corruption and depravity. That thus also all his
posterity, inheriting from him these natural propen-
sities by virtue of Adam's original animal nature,
and inheriting too these moral perceptions by virtue
of his moral nature acquired through the transgres-
sion, find themselves in consequence of that act in-
fluenced by inherent powerful tendencies sweeping
them toward evil. How far these tendencies toward
sin, arising from the native force of the passions, are
strong enough to affect man's freedom of action, is
a fair question for metaphysical discussion under
any view, or no view, of his moral relations. That
they are so powerful that no mere human being
has in fact ever completely controlled them, is un-
disputed. But it is to be noted that He " who was
made in all points like as we are, yet without sin,"
236 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
did overcome them, and we should therefore be
cautious in asserting that they are absolutely irre-
sistible. Indeed, in such an inquiry we should find
it difficult to estimate the natural strength of our
propensities, as distinguished from their developed
strength through repeated indulgence ; yet when
we speak of man's inherent tendencies to evil, we
must refer to the former alone. Can we be sure
that these are such as to warp and determine human
character with a power beyond man's capacity of
control ? May it not be that if he were to train
his moral powers unswervingly from infancy in the
government of his passions, just as instead thereof
he from the outset permits his passions to override
his conscience, he might at length secure for virtue
the easy and undisputed ascendancy in his soul ?
Whatever may be the possibilities of the case, it
is certain that none of Adam's posterity have, as a
matter of fact, achieved in life or in heart the entire
subjection of passion to duty. As the actual result,
therefore, of their moral agency, they have come to
be sinners, with controlling tendencies toward sin.
Here is the true " apostasy" both of Adam and the
race, their falling into sinfulness almost at once
upon entering on their moral career. Let us not
be understood, however, as maintaining that since
the transgression man has any natural or acquired
disposition toward sin for its own sake in preference
to holiness. The distinction is to be observed be-
tween the indulgence of the natural propensities,
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AXD COMPARED. 237
and the moral character of such indulgence. It is
true that man turns to gratification more readily
than to resistance, yet it is not true that he there-
fore prefers the sin involved in it, to the virtue of
abstaining. Love sin in the abstract he does not.
On the contrary, he by innate instinct hates moral
evil, and loves moral good. God's declaration in
the garden, that he would " put enmity " between
Man and the principle of evil, has not been falsi-
fied. He blames himself for vice, and yields to it ;
not because he finds pleasure in the criminality, but
because his appetites solicit him more effectually
than his principles. It is this very truth which en-
hances, if indeed it does not constitute, the guilt
of his act. Had he an inborn pleasure in sin for
its own sake, God, who so created him, would share
with him the responsibility for its choice. It is
because he has these better instincts and prompt-
ings by nature, and because his Will (given him
for their -support) permits them on the contrary to
be supplanted by abnormal passions, that he, and
he alone, is held accountable for his wickedness and
folly.
It is strenuously argued by many, indeed, that
the universal sinfulness of man is of itself irresist-
ible proof of a native tendency to sin. Such is the
argument of the great Jonathan Edwards in sup-
port of the doctrine of native corruption or deprav-
ity. If the claim be that it indicates a constitu-
tional superiority of influence over the mind and
238 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
will of the inferior or material principles inclosed
in the material body, in other words, the natural
power of the appetites to influence and control
man's actions, it must be admitted ; but if it be
meant that man has an inborn love of sinfulness for
its own sake, it must be denied. In thus yielding
to his appetites, man but follows the analogy of all
animals in recklessly obeying, even to excess, their
animal impulses ; and the fact in him no more
proves a natural depravity or love of sin for its own
sake than it does in them. True, in the human
animal the restraints to be overcome are stronger,
o *
but so are the appetites and the temptations. True,
in him this subservience and bondage to passion are
far more degrading, and, in consequence of his
moral light, are invested with an infinitely more
fearful and distressing character. We do not argue
against the evil or the heinousness of sin ; but we
insist that these outbreaks of appetite these " vic-
tories obtained by the inferior principles of man's
nature, especially the animal propensities, over rea-
son and conscience," 1 (for this is laid down by
these writers as the definition of actual sin) do
not nevertheless demonstrate an innate love of sin-
fulness in him, any more than similar outbreaks,
though against less potent opposition, demonstrate a
hatred of Nature's laws and of the universal order
in the inferior races which also exhibit them. It is
surprising that the obvious distinction between acts
1 Payne's Lectures, p. 373.
THE COMMON VIEW STATED AND COMPARED. 239
themselves, and the abstract moral character invest-
ing those acts, has been so often overlooked in these
discussions, and to its neglect much of the confusion
that marks them is attributable.
240 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTER II.
DIFFICULTIES. ENCOUNTERED BY THE COMMON VIEW,
AND THEIR SOLUTION.
WE now pass to examine some of the difficulties
attending the ordinary view, as we have presented
it, in order to inquire whether that which we sup-
port would enable us to avoid them. These diffi-
culties are, of course, of a different sort from those
which we have already considered, as arising out
of the narrative. They are simply such as exist
intrinsically in the doctrines themselves, or are
developed by their mutual comparison, and they
suggest errors in these by revealing inconsistencies
where truth should disclose only general harmony.
The first difficulty to which we will advert is
one that has greatly embarrassed theologians, and
springs from the doctrine of Adam's original, intel-
ligent, and voluntary holiness and obedience, taken
in connection with the doctrine of his subsequent
deliberate sin. A late writer, whom we have before
quoted, thus refers to the strange phenomenon :
" Adam was created in the image of God in the
full maturity of his powers. The law of God and
the law of love were inscribed upon his heart. His
body was the temple of the Holy Ghost. Preserved
as we have seen he was by this Divine agent from
DIFFICULTIES Am> THEIR SOLUTION. 241
moral failure on all other points, he was left without
any special divine influence to guard him against
taking the forbidden fruit. Still his mind was in a
perfectly holy state ; the disposition to obedience
remained in all its pristine vigor up to the moment
of temptation ; he had the strongest conceivable
motives to resist it ; the destinies of the entire race
were in his keeping ; he must ruin himself and his
race if he did not stand fast in his integrity. And
yet he fell ! Man in innocence and holiness, sank ;
and sank just at the point, too, where he was left,
as I conceive, to the unaided support of his vigorous
and perfect moral powers." 1 In this passage, how-
ever, forcible as it is, the difficulty to which we
now refer is only dimly suggested. If Adam's
"mind was in a perfectly holy state, the dispo-
sition to obedience in all its pristine vigor," by what
possibility could he be brought at once voluntarily
to act in opposition to this mental state and disposi-
tion ? The supposition that he was left unsustained
by special divine aid at this particular point does
not account for it ; for he is said to have had,
nevertheless, his natural holiness both of disposition
and habit to oppose to temptation. This difficulty
is no imaginary one in metaphysics. " The ques-
tion," says Dr. Dwight, " How can a holy being
become sinful ? or, How can a holy being transgress
the law of God ? is a question to which, perhaps,
no satisfactory philosophical reply can be given." a
1 Payne's Lectures, p. 98. 2 Dwighfs TheoL, Vol. I. p. 410.
16
242 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
So also Dr. Harris : " How sin is metaphysically
possible in a perfect being we know not. Innumer-
able solutions have been attempted." l And he
adds, in a note quoting Dr. A. Neander : "Accord-
ing to my conviction, the origin of evil can only be
understood as a fact, a fact possible by virtue of
the freedom belonging to a created being, but not
to be otherwise deduced or explained."
The difficulty may be thus stated : If Adam was
a being entirely occupied and directed by a holy
disposition, this holiness of disposition or " holy
principle " must have prevented the rise of incli-
nation to sinfulness. And if he could thus have
had no inclination to sin, how can he be conceived
to perpetrate sin ? The problem springs from the
doctrine that that which constitutes a man's con-
trolling principle of action determines his conduct
in every given case. " Upon this foundation," says
Dr. Dwight, " the inquiry [how could Adam sin ?]
is made ; and if the foundation be solid and just,
the inquiry cannot be answered, because in the
actual case there was no other principle of action
than a holy principle."
1 Man Primeval, p. 404. To the same effect see Muller's Christian
Doctrine of Sin, Vol. II. p. 396. " We are not at all able to see how
the possibility of evil for the personal creature could have been present
from the beginning, (of -which we have the most striking proof in the
same having become a reality,) if directly at the beginning he was pos-
sessed of moral perfection." And again: " The possibility of the fall is
not reconcilable with the moral perfection of the personal creature,
consistently with a correct insight into the notion of creaturely free-
dom."
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 243
Should any insist, however, that a free agent
must necessarily have the power of acting in oppo-
sition to the prevailing " principle " of his mind,
and that it is therefore no impossibility for a holy
being to sin, we may present the inquiry to such in
another form. Suppose the temptation just sug-
gested to Adam in his imagined state of intelligence
and virtue. It is the first approach of sin to that
clear and holy mind ; and in itself considered, there-
fore, must be repulsive and alarming. We learn
that he was not taken by surprise, but deliberately
surveyed and weighed the criminal proposal. His
appetites are in perfect repose and in normal sub-
ordination to reason and conscience ; hence there is
nothing here to incline to the sin whose deformity
is so manifest and so odious. Through his moral
intelligence and reason he is fully conscious of and
weighs all the inducements that can be offered for
and against compliance, and finds the motives for
refusal to be paramount. 1 Thus disposition, con-
science, and reason all unite to influence him to a
particular course. Now is it conceivable that a
rational and virtuous being will, after such a debate
and such a conclusion, immediately proceed to sin,
1 It may be objected that this was not the conclusion he arrived at,
having been deceived into committing the act by the expectation of
greater advantage than would follow abstaining. But had he been
truly under the influence of holiness, his desires duly subordinated
to his duty, he would not have been deceived into this expectation ;
or if he had, it would not have proved a sufficiently powerful induce-
ment to sin. We are supposing him to have been under such influ-
ences, and to have reasoned accordingly.
244 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
not only without motive but against motive and
against desire ? Is not such a result as inconceiv-
able as if it were an actual impossibility ? Without
engaging in a metaphysical discussion of the bare
power of a free agent under such circumstances, we
cannot doubt a ready admission that to believe man
would thus exert it for his own misery and destruc-
tion would be irrational and absurd. From such
considerations as these, therefore, the theologians,
finding themselves unable to explain the occurrence
of Adam's sin, under the theory of his prior moral
agency and virtue, adopt with Dr. D wight the con-
clusion that " a cause exists, though indefinable and
unintelligible to ourselves. In other words, the
cause is unknown except by its effects."
We are aware that some have sought for an argu-
ment, or at least for a suggestion, under the em-
barrassment in question, by referring to the fallen
angels as a proof that holy beings have sinned, and
that the alleged difficulty, therefore, must be merely
in appearance. Such a course of reasoning, how-
ever, is worthy of no consideration. Admitting
that there is Scriptural proof that such beings exist
as we mean by " fallen angels," how much do we
know of their nature or history ? Where do we find
such definite or positive evidence that they were
originally holy, or respecting the circumstances of
their defection, as suffice to demonstrate an analogy ?
Revelation furnishes us with little information re-
garding them, even of a vague and almost mythical
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 245'
nature ; enough, indeed, for speculation and conject-
ure, but nothing for the purposes of argument.
Whether their moral nature and relations resembled
those of man ; whether their intellectual and emo-
tional being were similar to his ; amid what circum-
stances and influences they were placed ; what led
them to disobey their sovereign, and what were
the character and the consequences of that disobe-
dience, all these are wrapped in obscurity. To
cite them in the present discussion, is an attempt
to elucidate the unintelligible by a resort to the
unknown. No one can say that were they fully
disclosed, they would throw any light on the ques-
tion, and would not even enhance the difficulty,
instead of relieving it. In the discussion of matters
pertaining to our own moral career and relations,
let us confine ourselves to the facts and principles
which our Maker has placed within our knowledge
and comprehension, for our instruction and guid-
ance. If mysteries arise which these cannot remove,
let us frankly admit them, but let us not seek refuge
or concealment in that which is still more obscure
or uncertain.
We ought not to leave this topic without making
one point more, even at the risk of repeating some-
what upon previous pages, for the consideration of
those who may still believe that a holy being might
possibly sin, or who may not admit that Adam had
such kind or degree of holiness as should have
proved a preventive. Let these explain, then, if
246 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
they can, how Adam with the least virtue of dispo-
sition, nay, with the faintest spark of prudence or
of reason, could, situated as he was, have yielded so
readily to so slight a temptation, against such over-
whelming responsibilities and influences. Let us
quote from another the circumstances of the act :
" Adam was left, in regard to the prohibition of the
tree of knowledge of good and evil, to the unaided
strength of his own mind, a mind in the full ma-
turity of its powers, and in a perfect moral state. . . .
The consequences which were to follow transgres-
sion were of two kinds, personal and relative. He
himself was to die if he took the forbidden fruit ;
his posterity also were to die with him. How tre-
mendous the responsibility which rested upon him !
How unparalleled the force of the motives which
were brought to bear upon him ! How incredibly
superior in inherent power to those which have
been brought to bear upon any other man except
the God-man, Jesus Christ. We may plunge our-
selves into ruin, eternal ruin. We may indirectly
bring such ruin upon those who spring from us to
the latest moment of time ; but we cannot plunge a
world into ruin ! Adam was, however, placed in
circumstances in which this was possible to him.
The condition of the whole race was practically in
his hands. He could bless the world or destroy
the world, and he chose to destroy it ! He put forth
his hand and took the fruit, an expression which
denotes the spontaneity of the act, and ate it, and
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 247
brought death upon himself and the race. I marvel
that even the infidel himself does not blush when he
talks of ' the little sin ' of eating the apple ! Can
any sin, I ask, even the sin of Judas in betraying
his Lord, or the sin of the Jews in crucifying him,
be compared with the atrocity of the sin of Adam
in eating this apple? Transgression gathers its
guilt from the magnitude of the motives to avoid it ;
and that again from the amount of ruin and wretch-
edness into which it plunges. Who then can calcu-
late the guilt contracted by Adam when he ate the
forbidden fruit ? " 1
And yet this atrocious this enormous sin com-
mitted in the face of such unparalleled motives to
obedience, it is alleged, was the deliberate, spon-
taneous act of a holy being, assailed for the first
time by temptation ! And how great was that temp-
tation ? The inducements which could lead Adam
to set aside these influences and restraints, ought,
according to all known rules of cause and effect, to
have been correspondingly alluring, at least in ap-
pearance. How despicably insignificant, under any
view of them, and how little calculated to persuade
a reasoning creature they were in fact, we have seen
in another part of this work. But if Adam thus fell
into guilt, beside which even that of Judas grows
dim, he the holy man, except in this one fault
must surely have felt afterwards a remorse not less
than that of the corrupt and hardened traitor ! And
1 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 47.
248 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
yet we find in the narrative no hint of anything
more than a natural timidity in the presence of his
disobeyed sovereign. Is it credible, is it conceiva-
ble, we ask once more, that a crime so enormous,
against motives so overwhelming, could have been
perpetrated by a holy being with so little hesitation
and so little remorse ?
It is quite manifest, then, that the difficulty we are
considering is inseparable from the doctrine of
Adam's original virtue and subsequent fall, under
whatever modifications it may be presented. The
only escape is by abandoning the idea of his original
moral perfection, and this, as we have before seen,
implies the relinquishment of all moral agency.
Then of course disappears also the idea of sin in
the transgression ; and now the question at once
arises, If Adam was not a moral agent, and did not
sin in his disobedience, what was the nature of that
act and its consequences ? a question to establish
whose answer these pages have been written. Here
the whole mystery, in fact the whole problem, is
resolved. Nor does any other equally inexplicable
assume its place, as so often occurs. We easily ac-
count for Adam's disobedience in the circumstances
in which we suppose him. For it is plain, as we
have before exhibited in our chapter on the Trans-
gression, that to suppose a disobedience of God's
commands by one who had only reason to oppose to
the seducer, involves no such mystery as that of a
sin by a holy and intelligent being, who acts against
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 249
the remonstrances alike of reason, inclination, and
conscience.
A second difficulty which grows out of the doc-
trine of Adam's moral agency, and his moral proba-
tion in the command which he disobeyed, arises from
the plain and admitted principle, that as such moral
agent he must have been " under the indispensable
obligation to keep the whole moral law," while it
is also indisputable that " his acceptance, justifica-
tion, and reward were suspended upon the single
point of his abstaining from the forbidde'n fruit."
Both these propositions are taken from Dr. D wight,
and both are, in some form or other, repeated by
other theologians ; though President Edwards, and
those of his views, consider that the " acceptance,
justification, and reward," thus suspended upon
Adam's obedience to the special mandate, were only
the acceptance, etc., which were to include his pos-
terity. They insist that, upon all other matters, his
obligations and responsibilities were purely personal ;
that in this alone he stood in a representative or
federal capacity. With this qualification, they en-
tirely sustain the proposition above cited from
Dr. Dwight. Thus Dr. Payne, in his able " Lec-
tures on Original Sin," says : " Little room is left
for doubt that obedience, on other points, was ren-
dered certain, by sovereign sustaining grace pre-
venting failure, and that in no point was his obe-
dience contingent but in reference to the condition
of the charter. The Holy Spirit, dwelling in the
250 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
mind of Adam, may easily be conceived to have
secured by special influence, yet in a manner per-
fectly compatible with free agency, obedience to
other precepts, while He put forth no such influence
to secure obedience to the interdict." (p. 73.) And
we may cite upon the same point, Dr. Harris
(" Man Primeval," p. 395) : " The law implies that
every avenue of evil was for him closed up one
excepted. For surely it was not to be understood
that he might violate every other obligation, natural
and moral, with impunity. Left to himself, ' he
was a free agent, capable of self-government, and
held responsible for a life of obedience.' '
The doctrine, then, clearly is, that Adam was a
free moral agent in respect to all duties, yet under
a dispensation which insured him against the viola-
tion of all except one. Now we are free to confess
that we cannot see how both these things can be
true. No man can be at the same time morally
free, and yet be by some external power prevented
from moral dereliction. The " security of heaven,"
to which Dr. Harris, as we have before seen, com-
pares the state of the first man, guarded from sin
without violation of free agency, consists in the
inherent, self-sustaining strength of the beings who
remain untouched by sin, and is consistent with
their free agency, because it results from the con-
stant exercise of that free agency. There is no
resemblance between this and the supposed condi-
tion of Adam, protected not by his own inherent
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 251
moral strength and preference, but by some spell or
influence from without, from yielding to temptation.
It is impossible to conceive of any species of " spe-
cial influence " whereby the Holy Spirit could secure
Adam's general obedience consistently with his free
agency. Besides, to say that he remained a free
agent in respect to other matters, implies a respon-
sibility connected therewith, that he was (either
personally or federally) on trial with relation thereto.
To make a single test his sole condition of accept-
ance, is either to discharge him from all others,
which leaves him without a moral responsibility and
trial, or to guarantee him against all other tempta-
tions, i. e., to prevent him from exercising free
agency in any other matter, which is to that extent
to annihilate free agency. Says Dr. Payne, " Im-
munity from temptation, or from the possibility of
being vanquished by it, is utterly incompatible with
a state of moral trial " ; * and again, " a being sus-
tained by sovereign effectual grace cannot be in a
state of probation." 2
To say, then, that but one condition of accept-
ance was imposed upon man, yet that he still con-
tinued subject to many obligations, is not a mystery
but a contradiction. Equally so, that he was a free
moral agent, (i. e., uninfluenced from without, and
on full moral trial,) and yet was specially secured
by the Holy Spirit with relation to all points but
one, so that, except as to that point, he was not free
1 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 349. 3 Ibid. p. 75.
252 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
and not on trial. We have seen that the difficulty
is not avoided by the Edwards theory, that Adam
was individually accountable as to his general du-
ties, and federally accountable as to this particular
interdict ; that in relation to his personal duties he
was specially guarded, but that in relation to his
representative duty he was left to himself; in other
words, that he was a free agent only as respected
the special prohibition, and in his federal capacity.
Apart from the fact that this does not relieve the
difficulty, we may inquire, with regard to the view
itself, what Scripture ground is there for it ? Where
is the least suggestion of such a distinction ? or any
recognition of it, either before or after the disobe-
dience ? Where is the probability of it ? for why
should Adam be so carefully protected as respected
his personal welfare, and be left exposed as to the
vastly more important interests of the race ? More-
over, supposing Adam to have delayed or refrained
from partaking of the forbidden fruit, how long,
upon this view, were this arrangement and his per-
sonal exemption from moral liability and free agency
to continue ? The view seems to consider his per-
sonal free agency, at some time of his life, as essen-
tial ; when was it to be resumed ? And after its
resumption, if ever, should Adam happen to sin
personally, but never federally, or conversely, how
was he to be punished, and in what way would his
posterity be affected ? If there is enough in the
narrative to suggest any such complex arrangement
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 253
as the view asserts, there must be enough to suggest
some hints in reply to these inquiries. We think,
however, it must be evident that the scheme itself
is only an ingenious but improbable invention, to-
tally devoid of authority.
The difficulty, then, which we are considering,
meets us irresistibly, either alone or in concert with
others, upon any theory which views Adam as a
moral agent before the transgression. 'It yields only
with the relinquishment of this idea, but then it
yields entirely. There is then seen to be no vari-
ance between the plain teaching of the Word, that
but one command was laid upon man as law for his
obedience, and that that was made the pivot of his
moral destiny, and the equally plain dictate of rea-
son, that a moral being must be subject to the whole
moral law, as fully free to break it as he is free
and accountable to keep it in all its provisions.
It may be worth remarking here, as a feature of
improbability in the common view, that it exhibits
Adam, whose natural disposition for holiness and
constant association with God fitted him to endure
a far more severe probationary test than his poster-
ity, as subjected to one which is singularly insignifi-
cant, while his descendants, weak, corrupted, and
environed with sin and sinful influences, are placed
for their trial under the manifold requirements of
the whole moral law, and left to combat with every
conceivable temptation. If the conditions imposed
upon us be no more difficult than moral beings re-
254 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
quire, why was the first man shielded from these
and admitted to less ? If the test applied to Adam
were sufficient, why are we subjected to one of so
much greater severity ? The purpose of any pro-
bationary trial is (probare) to prove the moral firm-
ness of the creature, and to strengthen his moral
powers by discipline and exercise. It would seem,
then, that he who has the greatest original advan-
tages should encounter the most arduous trial, and
that he who has the fewest aids to success should
be most easily dealt with. It has been replied, in-
deed, to this objection, that in the case of Adam,
who was, at least in this matter, the representative
not only of himself but the race, the test was pur-
posely made insignificant, in order that he (and
through him the race) might have the greatest pos-
sible chance of success and of after-acceptance and
blessedness. It is surely, however, a sufficient an-
swer to such a position, that the very insignificance
of the test must have also destroyed its value. If
it were intended to be sole and final, as respected
Adam or the race, what would have been estab-
lished or effected had Adam succeeded in abiding
it ? So slight a victory would neither have proved
man's moral fidelity, nor have availed as a means of
his moral development. When God tempted Abra-
ham, it was with no easy trial, and surely Adam
should have been as secure in virtue as the patri-
arch, his " degenerate " descendant. But if the
test were not intended to be sole and final, but only
DIFFICULTIES AND THEIR SOLUTION. 255
preliminary to successive and more difficult trials,
then of course this particular experiment could not
have been the turning-point of man's moral destiny,
according to the universal doctrine, as well as the
clear import of Revelation itself. Thus, at every
turn, we encounter objections to be avoided only by
returning to our starting-point, and taking a differ-
ent path from the outset.
We may also remark, that in the foregoing con-
siderations we touch the ground of certain com-
plainings which the received view of Adam's trans-
gression and fall has awakened among men in all
ages, against their Maker and his moral system.
How often do we hear objectors complain that God
has made an unreasonable difference between them
and Adam, as respects their opportunities of accept-
ance and life ! that Adam's posterity have never
had so favorable terms of probation as he, and that
God did not deal fairly by the race in making
Adam their federal head, since there must have
been in him a special deficiency of moral firmness,
to have so easily fallen ! " Why," they will say,
" why was not some Abraham first created and
deputed to encounter for the race this test, so easy
in itself, yet so momentous in its consequences ?
Nay, why should not I myself have been offered a
similar trial ; for it surely seems hard that I should
be ruined by Adam's failure in a trial which it
seems incredible that / could not have endured ? "
Thus has grown up in human hearts an unfilial
feeling of bitterness not only toward God, but to-
256 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
ward our first progenitor ; and, indeed, it does seem
unaccountable that the normal man, fresh from the
hands and society of God, should not have been able
to withstand a temptation far less trying than many
which thousands of his " depraved " descendants
have triumphantly resisted. No less reasonable,
also, in one point of view does it appear, to expect
that God should permit all men to enter upon pro-
bation on uniform terms and under equally favorable
conditions. And it is therefore worthy of notice,
that of all the complaints and cavils to which we
have alluded our view finally disposes. It exhibits
the transgression not as an act of moral weakness
and folly at once imbecile and disastrous. It
represents it as an act which any being in Adam's
situation would have undoubtedly committed, an
act not sinful nor necessarily productive of sin, and
not intrinsically evil to mankind ; but one, on the
contrary, which elevated man in the moral scale,
and opened to him opportunities of exaltation and
glory otherwise unattainable. It reveals, too, the
fact that no difference has been made between Adam
and ourselves in the terms of probation, unless in
our favor ; for it shows him entering upon his moral
career, after the transgression, with precisely the
same nature and under the same obligations as every
other being of the succeeding race ; and that the
only difference between him and ourselves, in moral
circumstances, is found in the vastly greater advan-
tages by which we are surrounded, to attract and
keep us in the path of rectitude.
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 257
CHAPTER ITL
THE COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED WITH
RESPECT TO THE METHOD OF ITS INFLUENCE UPON
THE RACE.
ANOTHER recommendation of the view which we
urge is, that it simply and comprehensibly explains
the nature and method of that radical change in
man which is universally agreed to have taken place
at the disobedience. It has been generally insisted
that this change was some kind of a "fall," a de-
terioration or prejudice of some sort, sustained by
Adam and transmitted to his posterity, either in his
nature, character, or relations to God. We propose
to examine this doctrine, and to show, if possible,
that no such deterioration or " fall " can be believed
to have attended the act of transgression, as a result
O *
involved in its commission. We do not deny, as
we have before intimated, that there was a fall by
Adam, subsequently to and independently of the
disobedience, into sinfulness and alienation from
God, the same "fall" or "apostasy," in fact,
of which every one of his descendants has been
individually guilty. The " fall," against the prob-
ability of whose occurrence we shall offer some con-
siderations, is such an one as the common view
17
258 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
supposes to have been associated with and effected
by the act of transgression itself.
Let us inquire in the outset, " Wherein consisted
that supposed * change for the worse ' in man's con-
dition, alleged to have occurred at and through the
disobedience ? " The number and diversity of the
replies furnished to this inquiry by the different
schools of Theology, of themselves indicate the
difficulty contained in it. One party insists that
by the transgression man lost all " natural ability "
(i. e., all inherent power) to keep the law of God.
Another declares that by it he only lost the " moral
ability " to keep it ; meaning thereby that the dis-
obedience, without taking away man's power of
obedience, effected such a loss of disposition thereto
as rendered it certain that he never would entirely
submit to its requirements. But these, after all,
are rather statements of effects than of the mode.
The question still recurs, what was the change in
man which left him thus naturally or morally un-
able to keep the law ? That no satisfactory reply
has ever been made to this is evident from the fact
that it is still as much as ever a subject of dispute
and discussion. Perhaps the most rational and in-
telligible answer, however, that has been offered, is
contained in a theory already alluded to ; that, in
consequence of the disobedience, God withdrew
his Holy Spirit from man, who had been thereto-
fore under its influence, and so left him without
" spiritual life " and the restraining power of the
COMMON" VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 259
Divine indwelling, against the assaults of sin. 1 To
the same effect Dr. Bushnell says : " It is not that
man fell away from certain moral notions or laws,
but it is that he fell away from the personal inhabi-
tation of God, lost inspiration, and so became a
dark, enslaved creature, alienated, as the Apostle
says, from the life of God." 2 This seems clear
and explicit, and partly satisfies our inquiry. Yet
we still are constrained to ask, What happened to
man, that caused God thus to withdraw his Holy
Spirit from him, to cease his personal inhabitation,
to deprive his creature of " spiritual life " ? There
must have been some reason for so sad and fatal a
visitation, and what was that reason ?
It is urged, indeed, by some of the advocates of
the particular doctrine in question, that these spirit-
ual blessings, of which Adam and the race are
O 7
supposed to have been thus deprived, were " char-
tered privileges " ; 3 meaning thereby advantages
' not naturally or originally pertaining to humanity,
and specially granted only on certain conditions ; so
that on the breach of these they might be with-
drawn without injustice and without prejudice to
the race, since men were not thereby placed in any
lower or worse condition than if this special oppor-
tunity had never been permitted. Yet, even upon
this theory, unless this experiment with Adam were
1 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin, p. 144.
2 Sermons on the New Life, p. 36.
8 Payne's Lectures on Original Sin.
260 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
totally without meaning and without purpose, we
must suppose that there was some real and neces-
sary connection between his transgression and the
withdrawal from him of these " chartered blessings,"
so called. Doubtless when conferred it was the
sincere desire of the Giver that they should be
preserved by man. Is it conceivable, then, that
their continuance was made to depend upon some-
thing which had not, in itself, the slightest bearing
upon it ? If not, why was Adam's disobedience
incompatible with this continuance ? Why, and
from what motive, were they withdrawn when this
disobedience occurred, and never again offered to
the race ? These are the questions which we pur-
pose to investigate.
Obviously, this final withdrawal of blessings from
the race, in the manner supposed, must have been
either the direct act of God, not necessarily occa-
sioned by the transgression, or the necessary effect
of the transgression itself. If the direct and un-
necessary act of God, it must have been either with
displeasure or without displeasure ; and in this latter
case it must have been intended either for man's
benefit, or have been without any reason at all.
But inasmuch as the withdrawal was, by the hy-
pothesis, a great loss and evil to mankind, and inas-
much as God cannot be believed to have acted from
mere caprice, the last suggestion may be dismissed,
and we may consider the supposition that the with-
drawal was the unnecessary act of God, merely
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 261
from displeasure at Adam's disobedience to his
command. We should, perhaps, be less likely to
discuss this at length, but as it closely borders upon
a view supported by some theologians, that man-
kind by the fall fell into a state of disfavor with
God (though without explaining the nature of that
disfavor), and as the same considerations will apply
to both hypotheses, we shall consider it somewhat
fully.
Was this final withdrawal, then, (or this disfa-
vor,) occasioned by a mere feeling of Divine anger
at this personal act of Adam, a feeling extending
from him to his posterity; so that although there
was no inherent obstacle to the continuance of his
former blessings (or favor), yet, in consequence of
this displeasure, they were forever withdrawn both
from Adam and his race ? It will be readily seen
that were this supposed displeasure and its conse-
quences confined to Adam, there would be little
difficulty in accepting an affirmative answer. The
trouble arises from the doctrine that they extend to
his future race in all generations, who had no par-
ticipation with him in the guilty act. If this be
true, then, unless we believe that such divine dis-
pleasure against Adam's posterity on account of his
act was without reason on the part of God, (a doc-
trine out of the question,) we must account in some
way for its existence, and there are but two methods
of doing so. Either it is because they are his pos-
terity, though not in any sense responsible for his
262 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
sin, or because they are regarded by God as impli-
cated in the guilt of his disobedience.
That God does not cherish displeasure or disfavor
against us for Adam's act, simply because we are
his descendants, while admitting that we are in no
way responsible for his conduct, we ought not to feel
obliged to argue. Such a displeasure would be a
mere resentment, alike unphilosophical and unjust.
That God would harbor such vindictiveness toward
a race of innocent beings, simply because they were
that which He himself had made them, thus pun-
ishing them for his own act, is utterly incredible
and revolting. Apart from its intrinsic impossibil-
ity, God himself expressly declares that he does
not punish the children for the sins of their fathers,
though undoubtedly, under the inflexible laws of
his material universe, the natural consequences of
sin may extend beyond the perpetrator. Nor is the
injustice implied in such a view the only argument
against it. We are led to inquire why, if God
foresaw that the whole human race were to be thus
displeasing to him, he did not refrain either from
their original creation or from their continuance
after the transgression of Adam. It can hardly be
believed that he would preserve the existence of
a race in which every new birth awakened new
sentiments of disfavor and displeasure.
Is, then, this imagined displeasure of God against
us on account of Adam's act, because he holds us
responsible for it, or implicated in its guilt ? If it
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 263
be so, either man must be regarded as having (by
virtue of his descent) participated with Adam in
his act of disobedience ; or else, by virtue of that
descent, the guilt of that act must be imputed to
him, though he be not regarded as having partici-
pated in the act of transgression. We confess that in
stating these propositions, which we do because they
form received topics of theological discussion, the
obscurity which would be admitted to invest them
were they anything but theological dogmas, does
not seem to us much relieved by the fact that they
are such. But to consider them fairly and in their
order : It is perfectly manifest that, if our descent
from Adam identifies us in any way with his act as
participators in it, then such participation consists
in or arises from the fact of such descent, some-
thing, therefore, of which God alone is the author.
Consequently, if he may be justly displeased with
us and hold us responsible as participators, he
should also be displeased with himself, for at least
sharing in such participation. If he is not so dis-
pleased with himself, then he cannot be with us ;
and if he is so displeased, then follows the absurd-
ity that, having been pleased to create us and being
displeased that we are created, he is both pleased
and displeased at the same thing. We need not
dwell on a proposition which leads to such conclu-
sions ; and therefore turn to the inquiry whether,
by virtue of our descent from Adam, the guilt of
his act is imputed to us, though not participating in
264 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the act. As the advocates of this view themselves
admit it to be " a mystery," we shall not be ex-
pected to see plainly the method or the justice of
thus imputing guilt to perfect innocence. But it is
evident that this proposition, though in a different
form from the last, is substantially the same thing.
For if this " imputation " is in consequence of our
descent from Adam, then it is this descent which
constitutes our guilt. In other words, we are held
guilty for the act of God himself. God then shares
in the guilt of Adam's sin, and, being holy in all
his acts, is both holy and guilty at the same time.
Such are some of the inconsistencies in which the
doctrine of God's displeasure with, or disfavor to-
ward the posterity of Adam, on account of his trans-
gression, involve us. It seems incredible, therefore,
that this supposed final withdrawal from the race
of the blessings previously enjoyed by it, could
have been the unnecessary act of God. We now
proceed to inquire whether it resulted as a neces-
sary consequence of the transgression itself.
Did, then, this " deprivation " ensue, as is more
commonly and rationally believed, because by the
disobedience some change had occurred in Adam
(to be by natural transmission perpetuated in his
descendants), impairing and corrupting his mind
and character ; unfitting man, therefore, for God's
personal inhabitation ; of itself excluding the Holy
Spirit, and so destroying " spiritual life " in the
soul ? If this be so, if the relations either of
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 265
Adam alone or of man in general were really prej-
udiced by the disobedience, if that act of itself
tended to separate the race from God, it must have
been by producing some radical and permanent de-
terioration, either in the actual moral character of
mankind, or in those qualities of the mind which
lie at the basis of character and go to its formation.
Let us see, therefore, how far these suppositions
respectively are admissible.
That this act so impaired the moral character of
man (irrespective of any change in his faculties or
disposition) that God could no longer abide in his
soul, in other -words, such that had no other sin
been ever committed by Adam or by any of his
descendants, and this particular sin been fully for-
given by the Creator, still the corruption left by
this single act would have tainted men in all gener-
ations and rendered them unacceptable to God, has
been sometimes inculcated. Thus the Westminster
Catechism teaches that "the sinfulness of that estate
whereinto man fell consists in the guilt of Adam's
first sin, the want of original righteousness, and the
corruption of the whole nature, which is commonly
called original sin." How far Adam's descendants
can be justly held accountable for his personal act,
we have already considered : at present we confine
ourselves to the latter part of the proposition, which
speaks of the want of original righteousness and
the corruption of the whole nature, as being them-
selves of the nature of " sw," an ^ implies that every
266 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
man comes into the world, not merely destitute of
" original " (i. e., native) holiness of character, but
with an " original " character of sinfulness, even
before he has thought, spoken, or acted. " Charac-
ter," then, in the sense here used, means something
separate from " disposition" or " tendencies." Prop-
erly, it is the moral tone, or hue, which invests a
man's life, thoughts, or actions. It is absolutely
requisite for its existence, therefore, that there
should be moral faculties already existing, as well
as life and acts, for a brute has no character, nor
an idiot, nor a man that never thought or acted ;
while " disposition " may exist in the brute or the
idiot, entirely separate from moral agency. By the
proposition of the Westminster Catechism just stated,
however, man possesses a character before he enters
on moral agency, a character anterior to moral
agency, and anterior, therefore, to the possible com-
mencement of character, which is absurd. In fact,
the principle that man can have no character except
through acts in which he personally participates, is
one too plain to need discussion. It is universally
recognized in the ordinary affairs and judgments of
life, and is questioned nowhere except in the domain
of theology, and survives even there in connection
with no other subject than this transgression of
Adam. Probably it would have forsaken this re-
treat also, were it not retained as a refuge from
other difficulties of greater magnitude, which the
ordinary view must encounter in its absence ; a
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 267
necessity which should excite suspicion of the theory
which is compelled to resort to it.
If, then, this supposed deterioration or fall of
man was not of the nature of a change in his moral
O
character, apart from his disposition, will, or action,
it must have been in the disposition or will them-
selves, that is, in those mental qualities or facul-
ties which are concerned in the determination of
conduct and character. Such alteration, if it oc-
curred, was necessarily either by the absolute or
relative weakening of the will, rendering man to
that degree incapable of rendering perfect obedi-
ence ; or in such loss of disposition thereto, as ren-
dered him thenceforward unwilling to render such
obedience, that is, a change from both a natural
and moral ability for holiness, to a natural or moral
inability, or both. In what way, then, could any
such change have been produced ? Evidently it
could have been effected only either by a supernat-
ural or a natural process of mental alteration ;
that is, either through the direct interposition of the
Creator, acting upon the mind thus to impair and
degrade its properties and powers, or as an ordinary
and necessary consequence of the state or condition
in which the mind was at the time of the trans-
gression. That it was not the former, we need
hardly insist. That God would deliberately mar
his own work, no intrinsic necessity existing for it,
is incredible. " Previous to the disobedience," says
a recent writer, "Adam appreciated the perfections
268 THE RISE AXD THE FALL.
of God and loved his attractions. After that act,
these perfections presented no loveliness, elicited no
affections. Light, and love, and filial trust, yielded
to darkness, enmity, error, and despair ! This could
not have been effected by the direct act of God.
It is impossible to conceive that Jehovah did or
could deface the spiritual beauty with which He
himself had adorned the soul of Adam." * To have
done so, we may add, and to have inflicted upon
man a mental and moral prostration, rendering him
more liable than before to sin, and inevitably de-
termining his subjection by evil, a condition to
which his own act would not have naturally reduced
him, would have been to relieve him of the chief
share of responsibility for the prevalence of sin in
the world, since such prevalence would have been
then attributable, not to man's disobedience, but to
God's intervention. We must conclude, therefore,
that whatever evil effects upon the human mind
were produced by the transgression were natural
effects alone.
These natural effects, as we have before sug-
gested, must have consisted in either the absolute
or relative weakening of the will or disposition, as
respected resistance to evil ; and must have been
either a natural diminution of power in the will or
disposition, or a natural augmentation of strength
in the appetites and passions, or a natural deprecia-
tion of the influence exerted upon the will or dis-
1 Payne's Lectures, p. 144.
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 269
position by the moral faculty. Let us consider,
first, whether it could have consisted in a mere
natural accession of new force to the propensities,
or a mere natural enervation of the disposition or
will.
We submit that it cannot be placed upon either
of these grounds, because,
1st The change supposed to have been produced
was by far too immediate and too great to be as-
cribed to any such naturally produced " tendency to
repetition," 1 as the commission of all acts creates.
This " tendency to repetition," in other words^
" the influence of habit," is not one that becomes
suddenly manifest, since an act must have been done
a considerable number of times before it is felt as
a " habit." That a single commission tends to the
formation of a habit, cannot be disputed, just as it
cannot be denied that a drop of water must raise
the level of the lake, but the truth is recognized
rather by the reason than the senses, so slight is the
actual result. " As the snow gathers together, so
are our habits formed. No single flake that is added
to the pile produces a sensible change ; no single
action creates, however it may exhibit, a man's
character ; but as the tempest hurls the avalanche
down the mountain and overwhelms the inhabitant
and his habitation, so passion, acting upon the ele-
ments of mischief, which pernicious habits have
brought together by imperceptible accumulation,
l Harris's Man Primeval.
270 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
may overthrow the edifice of truth and virtue." 1
Hence the effect of habit can only be exhibited after
time and repetition ; and should repetition never
occur, no appreciable force or influence will have
been created. Indeed, it not unfrequently happens
that the commission of an act, so far from inciting
to repetition, actually deters from it, in view of the
remorse and distress, or other evils which follow as
its consequence. This would certainly seem as
likely to be the result in the case of holy beings as
in any other; and the idea is confirmed by our
observations of human character, so far as we can
derive instruction from them.
2d. The various appetites, like other mental fac-
ulties or properties, are, to a considerable extent,
distinct from each other, and are, for the most part,
affected, each for itself, independently of the rest,
and only by their respective gratifications. In other
words, the indulgence of one propensity does not
ordinarily foster or strengthen another of an entirely
different character. If this be questioned, as re-
spects the effect of habitual indulgence, it is suffi-
cient for our purpose to confine our proposition to
that of a single vicious gratification. We think it
will hardly be claimed that a man's single and only
act of intemperance has left him more cruel or more
deceitful than he was before he committed it. Now,
if it be admitted that Adam's transgression was
prompted by some evil appetite or desire, even this,
1 Bentham.
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 271
though it might explain an augmentation of that
particular propensity, would not account for what is
alleged to have resulted, the entire corruption of
his whole heart and being. It is allowing much,
even for the sake of the argument, that the single
and slight outbreak of passion here described (sup-
posing it to be such) could give that particular pro-
pensity a preponderating influence in the human
heart for all generations. It is far more than reason
or experience will admit, that such an act could, by
a mere natural consequence, place at once and for-
ever the whole tribe of evil passions upon the throne
of human character.
3d. Had the transgression simply produced a
merely natural growth or development of appetite,
or a merely natural effect upon the disposition or
will of the race descending from Adam, as yet in
his loins, the same results must have been conse-
quent upon any other evil indulgence of any other
evil propensity. This is manifest. Yet the narra-
tive plainly teaches that the effects of the disobe-
dience depended upon that particular act, and no
other ; and that no different violation of duty, how-
ever flagrant, could or would have been followed by
the same consequences. This fact alone seems fatal
to the idea that the supposed " deterioration " or
" fall," in man's condition, whatever it may be im-
agined to have been, could have consisted in any
natural change produced by the transgression, at
least in any of his intellectual faculties.
272 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
We come next to inquire whether man's moral
sense, or his conscience, may not have been en-
feebled or blunted, either in its energies or its in-
fluence over human conduct, through which loss of
power or influence the race became thenceforth less
able to cope successfully with its own inherent ten-
dencies to self-indulgence.
In reply to this portion of our inquiry, we may
refer to substantially the same considerations as
just have engaged our attention. It can hardly be
believed, in the first place, that a single disregard of
conscience would have been equivalent to its perma-
nent overthrow, and have accomplished its incapac-
ity farther to dispute the field successfully against
all the propensities. Such a sweepingly disastrous
result does not agree with our observations, nor is it
conformable to the expectations we should naturally
form respecting a divinely implanted monitor over
human conduct. Repeated violations of conscience
will undoubtedly, in time, blunt and deaden its
force ; but a single commission of a single sin does
not, so far as we have reason to believe, permanently
and effectively undermine its influence within us, or
render it perceptibly less active or efficient in its op-
position to indulgences of a different character. Still
less are future generations so influenced by the acts
of their ancestors, that in consequence of a single sin
they are born into the world perceptibly deficient
in moral faculties. Such a theoiy would require a
continual and progressive depreciation in the moral
COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED. 273
powers of the race, and this we know is far from
being exhibited in fact. And in the second place,
could we believe that any such consequence natu-
rally ensued to the conscience or its influence, by
the disobedience, there would have been no reason
why any other sin, actually committed by Adam,
should not have produced a similar result. The
story, however, shows that this could not have been
the effect of any other act, however repugnant to
the conscience ; and for this, with the other reasons
we have urged, we are driven to conclude that the
supposed " fall " of Adam and his race, did not
consist in the natural loss of moral strength or in-
fluence.
We have thus exhausted, as we believe, all the
grounds upon which the doctrine of a " deterio-
ration " or fall in man at the transgression, or his
loss of God's favor, or Holy Spirit, at that time, can
be rested. If no such change for the worse can be
made out, and if it cannot be believed that he could
fall under God's displeasure or disfavor without
some such adequate cause, then we seem compelled
to explain the undoubted cessation of the Divine
intimacy and companionship which ensued, by sup-
posing it to have been unattended by displeasure on
the part of the Creator. This conclusion coincides
with the view we are urging in these pages. We
suppose that man, by the transgression having ac-
quired a conscience, was no longer in need of God's
personal indwelling or influence to. direct his con-
18
274 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
duct ; that he was now prepared to walk alone in
the path of duty, and was accordingly left by his
Maker to put forth those unsupported movements in
the formation of moral character, which were neces-
sary for his strength and discipline as a free moral
agent. Adopting this view, the difficulties which
we have noticed as embarrassing the common doc-
trine are met no longer. Discovering that the evils
necessarily incident to humanity are not of the na-
ture of penalties, and that we are, therefore, not
punished for Adam's disobedience, we are no longer
driven to believe that we are in any way held ac-
countable for it, or for the nature with which the
Creator has endowed us. While insisting that we
are judged for our own acts alone, in accordance
with the plain and admitted rules of justice, we yet
do not ignore any of the facts of experience or of
Scripture, nor deny that in consequence of Adam's
transgression death was entailed upon all his poster-
ity forever. All the difficulties, the inconsistencies,
and the impossibilities which we have been discuss-
ing, take their rise directly or indirectly in the doc-
trine that Adam's transgression was a " sin," and
that the burdens imposed upon him in consequence
were " penalties " to which his race were " sen-
tenced " therefor. While this ground is adhered
to, they are unavoidable, and can never be fully
disposed of without either abandoning this founda-
tion, or the doctrine of God's benevolence, as well
as the first principles of justice and reason.
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 275
CHAPTER IV.
THE COMMON VIEW OF THE FALL EXAMINED WITH
REFERENCE TO ITS DOCTRINE THAT MANKIND IS
A FAILURE.
OUR limits will permit us to refer to but one more
difficulty to which the common view gives rise. It
is of scarcely inferior magnitude to those which we
have discussed, though of perhaps less practical mo-
ment. The view represents to us God creating
Man in a high and responsible condition as a moral
being, his native character and faculties, his rank
in the universe, his relations to his Maker, and his
prescribed destiny, being far more exalted than they
have at any time since been exhibited. It tells us
that scarcely had he been formed in this perfect
mould, and inaugurated in this lofty place and mis-
sion, scarcely had his Maker pronounced him
" very good," and begun to lead him upward in his
destined path of greatness and glory, ere, by a sin-
gle step, he fell from his high estate, and sank into
corruption, wretchedness, and ruin. It is not merely
that he failed to become all that his opportunities
might have made him. " It is on all hands ad-
mitted," says one of our strongest modern theolo-
gians, " that the fall of Adam involved the race in
RUIN ! " Man, at the very outset, broke down in fail-
276 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
ure ! For this, the system of the universe offers no
analogy. All created things are in the divine wis-
dom made of temporary continuance. By their very
constitution, being formed to fill a particular sphere,
and accomplish a particular end, having answered
their object they fall into decay and disappear. All
this we see without impeachment of the divine
power or foresight, for here is a manifest fulfilment
of design, a purpose, a progress, and a consumma-
tion. Nowhere among all the kingdoms of Nature
can an object be found which is stamped with the
mark of its own failure and of God's disappointment.
But theology insists that one must be excepted. In
man, it declares, in man we behold a work which,
as originally made, was the last, the noblest, and
the best of God's creating. He was the work upon
which God entered with a special solemnity, and
which, w-hen finished, he displayed as the master-
piece of his wisdom and power ; a creature which
he cherished with affectionate and careful attention,
and which he destined for a career as splendid in
the illustration of his character as its nature was
glorious by the reflection of his image. And this
creature, so glorious, so perfect, so tenderly guarded
and instructed, before it has fairly started on its
course, falls into sudden and hopeless RUIN ! In-
stead of remaining in and reflecting his holiness,
it sinks at once into corruption and sin ! Instead
of preserving its harmony and friendship with him-
self, it repels him from the very beginning of temp-
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 277
tation with hostility and hatred ! Its normal state
has scarcely been disclosed ere it has disappeared ;
its purposed destiny, even before it is fully revealed,
is forfeited ; the joy and love which were to mark
its career are changed to gall and bitterness, its
intended glory to shame and contempt !
We will not assert that here is implied a disap-
pointment, a thwarting of God's plans and ex-
pectations. We will not deny that man might
possibly have been created for the very purpose of
having him thus miserably and deplorably fail of
his natural destiny. We will not dispute that God
might be conceived to have thus formed him noble,
holy, and angelic, with the full design that he
should sink immediately into a state earthly, sen-
sual, and devilish. But what we insist is, that if
here was not a disappointment of God's original
plan, if man's failure was really accordant with
his first scheme, then the moral system pre-
sents a stupendous anomaly in the universe, a
strange and terrible departure from the otherwise
invariable divine methods of progress and order.
In it we see what nowhere else is displayed to us,
the Deity working by retrogressions, retreats,
and corrections. We behold Him, after creating
man to his satisfaction, after pronouncing him
" very good," (i. <?., in full accordance with the Di-
vine purpose at the time of his formation,) im-
mediately, in pursuance of an original intention,
degrading and mutilating this perfect work; and
278 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
next, (again turning upon himself,) drawing out
the energies of Heaven, and Earth, and Hell, to
accomplish its partial restoration.
Let it not be urged that this asserted degradation
and mutilation of man was the free act of man
himself, and consequently something for which God
is in no way responsible. Such an answer may
suffice, so far as respects the divine irresponsibility
for Adam's personal act ; but not as respects the
influence of that act upon the race, its relation to
their condition and destiny, and the incorporation
by the Almighty of the fall as a fundamental feat-
ure and portion of his general moral system. No
one hesitates to attribute to divine agency the
changes which occur in the history of men or of
nations, although these changes result from the vol-
untary acts of the parties affected ; and in the case
of this great event in human affairs, the same mode
of reasoning is applicable. Supposing this event to
have been a fall of the race in Adam, then God,
when he created man, either designed for the race
(not merely foresaw, but purposed^) a moral system
involving its fall, degradation, and sinfulness through
its progenitor and representative ; or he designed
for it a system not involving this reverse and ruin.
If the former, then it must follow that the repre-
sentative degradation and sinfulness of Adam, how-
ever voluntary, were in fulfilment of the divine
purpose in his creation, that had he, in the exer-
cise of his free agency, and in his capacity as a
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 279
federal head, overcome temptation and remained free
from sin, this original divine purpose would have
been frustrated : that in that case the moral system
as first planned must have been abandoned ; or else,
to carry it out, Adam must have been exposed to
such other successive trials as would at last have
resulted in his freely sinning, and with the design
that they should so result, or have been removed,
and the experiment renewed with another and less
resolute federal head.
It will probably be difficult to assent to the idea
that God could desire and deliberately plan for the
guilt, ruin, and wretchedness of the race. And if,
to avoid such conclusions, we assume the other of
the two suppositions suggested, and assert that in
creating man his Maker designed for him a moral
system that did not involve this representative fall
and corruption in Adam, then it must follow that
he has been disappointed and thwarted by the
actual result, and has been drawn into a system
different from that which he originally contem-
plated. Apart from other objections to such a con-
clusion, however, we cannot admit the possibility
that Adam's individual act (even if unforeseen)
could change or thwart the divine purpose with
regard to the race in general. If we can admit that
his Maker might have made him the federal head
of the race without knowing into what position, as
such head, he would bring it, still it will be hard to
admit that God could not remedy the evil, when
280 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
Adam had acted in his federal capacity in a manner
different from that expected and designed. As a
free agent, Adam might doubtless defeat God's
plans for him as an individual ; but the great pre-
destined course and sphere of the human race, that
for which it was in the far counsels of eternity pro-
jected, and for the accomplishment of which it was
now created, could not be thus easily disturbed. If
Adam failed to inaugurate its career in the manner
designed, (and this as a free agent he might do,)
nothing would be easier than to form another fede-
ral head for humanity. And it is inconceivable but
that in this or in some other way, the Almighty
would have secured the initiation and advancement
of the race in the particular course he had marked
out for it.
It will be perceived that we herein distinctly
take the ground that the actual moral system must
have been the one originally purposed, and, hence,
that the actual moral condition and experiences of
the race must be those which were at the outset
designed for it as a race. Under any view which
gives a moral character to the representative act of
Adam, and so makes that act prejudice the moral
position, character, or relations of the race, it seems
impossible to hold such a doctrine without supposing
a divine agency or connivance in the inroad of sin ;
but under the view we are advocating no such
consequences follow, and we believe that the propo-
sition just enunciated must, at all events, irresistibly
result from any correct system of reasoning.
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 281
" But," it may be inquired, " does the fact that
man is corrupt and miserable, prove that God de-
signed he should be so ? Is God, then, pleased
with man for so fulfilling his designs by wickedness
and misery ? If so, how can sin be said to be dis-
pleasing to the Creator ? Where is its heinousness,
and where man's accountability for it ? " Certainly
we cannot believe that God is in any way respon-
sible as the author or introducer of sin, or that he
views it with any other feeling than abhorrence.
We cannot believe that sin is the legitimate and
proper destiny of man, that he ought not to resist
it with all his power, and that he would not better
please his Maker by so doing than by yielding as
he does to its sway. How, then, are these different
positions to be reconciled ?
We believe that no difficulty will be met in such
reconciliation, if the distinction is recognized be-
tween " the race " as an entity, an undivided unit
in its whole history and existence, and " the race "
as separated into the different individuals compos-
ing it. Now it is manifest that, as regards these
numberless separate individuals, inasmuch as they
are all free agents, God cannot determine by his
own will what their various characters shall be.
He may, and doubtless does create each one of
them, desiring his personal holiness, and giving him
the requisite capabilities for achieving it ; thus de-
signing holiness to be the individual state of each
and every man, and happiness and glory his indi-
282 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
vidual destiny. This being so, if, notwithstanding
this purpose and desire of the Creator, they do,
each and all of them in the exercise of their sepa-
rate powers as free agents, become wicked and
miserable, the act is their own, and God is free
from all responsibih'ty, even though he may from
the beginning have foreseen the result. Now this
has been actually the case with the whole race,
viewed as individuals ; and thus we say that, in
this sense, man alone is the author of sin, is respon-
sible for it, and in committing it displeases God, and
forsakes his legitimate and intended destiny.
On the other hand, it is clear that the race as
such, as it has no personality, cannot have the power
of deciding its own character, and therefore cannot,
as a race, have any moral accountability. The
same distinction may be made with regard to in-
dividual and national character. Any individual
man may and must control liis own separate char-
acter and destiny ; but no man can determine the
character and destiny of his race or nation as such,
that character being the aggregate of all the separate
characters of all the different persons composing the
race or nation in all places and ages. Now we may
evidently agree that certain general causes or in-
fluences, permitted by the Almighty to exist in his
moral system for man, may continuously operate
through the innumerable ages of human history,
which, without impairing the free agency of any
individual, may render probable or certain a certain
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 283
general character in the whole race taken together.
Thus a government may be so administered for
generations, that, without forcing any man to the
commission of base or fraudulent acts, the charac-
ter of the nation shall inevitably become corrupt
and deceitful. In the case of a human govern-
ment, indeed, such a course and result imply wrong
and injustice on its part, for the reason that human
governments are but the creatures of the governed,
and under solemn obligation to them to use their
powers in a particular manner ; but in the divine
system no such inference can be drawn, because no
obligation exists to establish any particular system
for the masses, provided no injustice or hardship is
done to any individual. We would reverse a com-
mon theological dogma, that God has a right to
pursue any course with the individual that tends to
advance the general good of the whole. On the
contrary, we insist that the divine obligation is to
the individual alone, for he is alone held account-
able. The Almighty may not do him injustice or
wrong, nor adopt any general system that involves
such special injuries. But this principle observed,
God has a right to select any moral system for the
race which will best answer his wishes and designs ;
and it must follow, as a matter of course, that if no
injustice or hardship is done as against any single
creature, none can be charged as against the aggre-
gate of the race. If, then, no one person is unduly
influenced to evil, and yet the whole race has be-
284 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
come evil, if, in other words, the Almighty has
selected for this world a moral system involving
an aggregate sinful character of mankind, though
through the voluntary sinfulness of each individual,
then He may be properly said to have contem-
plated for the race as such the character thus re-
sulting, so to continue until in the progress of his
plan it shall be changed to one that is higher and
better. And in all this, as we have already seen,
no injustice is necessarily implied ; we can only
say that so, for his wise purposes, God willed it
should be.
To enunciate the principle in general terms we
may express it as follows : Every created thing has
its prescribed place and purposed destiny in God's
scheme of the universe. Of free agents, since these
hold necessarily the decision of their own character
and destiny, that character and destiny can only be
foreseen, not determined, by the Creator. Of all
things not free agents, the character and destiny
must be predetermined by Him. Hence, the race
as such, not being in its collective capacity a free
agent, whatever character and destiny it may have
in that capacity, must be that which it was designed
to have.
To apply these conclusions to the subject under
consideration will be easy and simple. The com-
mon view, as we have seen, attempts to explain
the existence of evil, and the wretched condition of
the race, by saying that they are both in opposition
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 285
to the divine intentions, that the race, as a race,
has gone astray, has missed its destiny, is lost and
ruined. It argues that our confidence in God's be-
nevolence and justice compels us to believe that
God must have created the race for a holy and
happy career and destiny ; that a different state of
things having ensued, the race as such must have
disappointed those purposes and missed that destiny.
Casting about, then, to find when and how that com-
mon forfeiture occurred, it fixes on Adam's trans-
gression as the occasion, and concludes that this
transgression must have been a fatal and federal
sin, of which corruption, ruin, and death, in Adam
and the race, have been the fearful penalty. Of all
this, the views just presented, if correct, completely
dispose. For it is apparent that benevolence and
justice do not require that God should prescribe
a holy and happy career for the race as such, so
long as he does place such career within the reach
of the individuals that compose it, or offer to these
individuals such other destiny as is consistent with
justice. As no man is punished for the character
of the race apart from his own, or is prevented by
the prescribed destiny of the race as such from
achieving perfection as his own, in other words,
as no harm or injustice is done by designing for the
race as such that which has been its actual career
and condition, of course, the principles of neither
benevolence nor justice are impugned by supposing
such design to have existed. Accordingly, it be-
286 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
comes no longer necessary to relieve God from the
responsibility of having designed for the race as
such that which is its actual condition, or to suppose
a fall and forfeiture by it, in order to account for
that general condition. Regarding, then, the origi-
nal transgression of Adam as neither a fall nor a sin^
nor necessarily productive of either, there can be
no repugnance to believing it to have been accord-
ant with God's wishes and designs, and entirely
consistent with his benevolence and justice, both
as regards its effects upon Adam and upon the suc-
ceeding race.
But while it is thus insisted that the race as
such has not missed its destiny and is not, there-
fore, with reference to its original condition, in a
lost and ruined state, no such claim can be made
for the different human creatures that compose it.
That each one of these has missed the path of his
true destiny, and is in a lost and ruined state
through his own sinfulness, until redeemed and
saved, is painfully indisputable. Through the en-
ergy of the appetites, the habit of submission to
their force is formed even before the awakening of
conscience ; and men thus almost invariably become
sinners upon their first temptation after becoming
moral agents. When we say, however, that they
are lost and ruined, we use the expression rather
with reference to what they might and ought to be,
than to what they ever have been ; for, becoming
sinners even upon their first entrance into moral
MANKIND NOT A FAILURE. 287
life, their spiritual advancement is one of progress
rather than restoration. Herein we detect the anal-
ogy between the moral career of the individual and
that of the race. Properly understood, we believe
the same general method will be found to appear in
both, and that a parallel may be closely followed
between them. In the few following pages of this
work we shall attempt, in however brief and im-
perfect a manner, to trace the main features of that
parallel. We shall endeavor to show that in his
moral plan with men, both individually and collec-
tively, God's course has been, as in all other works
of which we are cognizant, that of a steady and con-
stant progress, beginning with immaturity and pro-
ceeding toward perfection. Upon no other theory
can the difficulties we have been discussing, and
others, be avoided. " The conflict of ages " re-
specting the moral government of God, originating
in, and waged over, the doctrines of man's primal
fall, and a system of restoration to God's favor, a
conflict still as far from being settled as ever,
warns us to abandon the foundation which has
proved so unsatisfactory. Perhaps no other will
ever be offered that shall be free from objection ;
yet in hopes that we may awaken in others a spirit
of reflection on the subject, we venture to close
this work with a rough outline of God's progres-
sive moral system, such as revelation, reason, and
experience seem to reveal it.
288 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
CHAPTEE V.
OUTLINES OF THE PKOGRESSIVE MORAL SYSTEM.
IN turning to contemplate the moral history of
the race, we naturally revert first to the circum-
stances of its origin. We go back to the time when
the Almighty, having brought his material creation
by successive and advancing stages of preparation
toward the crowning work of MAN, is now ready to
usher him into being. Being thus on the threshold
of his moral scheme, we may suppose the Deity
planning in advance the method by which he will
raise this moral system upon the foundations so
slowly and elaborately reared for it. When we re-
member the uniform mode of action exhibited in all
his previous works, there seems but one supposi-
tion to be made of the course he will adopt. We
almost of necessity suppose him, conformably with
his invariable plan of orderly progress, marking out
for his moral scheme successive stages of advance-
ment, from its commencement to its consummation.
He will not, as he never has, begin with complete-
ness, and make his system a mere succession of in-
juries and repairs, of ruins and partial recoveries,
but every step shall be an advance upon the preced-
ing ; all together exhibiting an orderly and progres-
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 289
sive plan, proceeding onward and upward, from the
first awakening germs of moral nature and govern-
ment, toward their highest manifestation in the per-
fect holiness and freedom of their Infinite Author.
Such being supposed to be the general design, how
does Revelation exhibit the process of its accom-
plishment ?
First, He creates the being in whose career this
moral system is to be exhibited. He forms this
being on a scale, both physically and intellectually,
worthy of his high mission, and endows him with
all mental attributes, which will be useful when he
shall come into possession of his moral faculty. So
far, in all these noble qualities, is he made in advance
of all other creatures, so much more closely in
resemblance to the attributes of God himself, that
he is said to be in the divine image and likeness.
Yet his first necessities, both of body and mind,
pertain to his physical nature and to his material
circumstances. Until the rudiments of his educa-
tion in relation to these matters shall be gained, any
moral faculties or training would be premature and
superfluous. Accordingly, the first hours of the
first man's life, as of every one of his descendants,
are spent in learning to preserve his own physical
existence, and to secure physical comforts and con-
venience ; in other words, to acquire habits, powers,
and principles requisite for supremacy over material
nature. These essential experiences being gained,
and he fairly installed in life, all is now ready for
19
290 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
his introduction to the moral career for which he
was created.
Nor is it merely proper and fitting that the moral
life should begin in man at this period of his exist-
ence, but it is also just here that his nature requires
its appearance as a restraint upon the propensities
within him, whose energies his growing wants and
coming circumstances are about to develop. Be-
fore increasing intelligence should awaken new and
perilous cravings, before society should grow up
around him, with its excitements and temptations,
and especially before posterity who, by the Di-
vine plan, were to be born with moral faculties
should be generated, it was necessary that the pro-
genitor of the race should become a moral being.
Just at this time, therefore, in a way the circum-
stances of which, and the reasons for which, have
been set forth in previous pages, the first man, then
in himself comprising the race of whose future myr-
iads he was to become the father, enters upon his
moral career by awaking to the perception of moral
truths, just as all his descendants first became con-
scious of moral distinctions at a corresponding stage
of their being. This original state of man, then,
may, in reference to his moral history, be properly
designated the infancy of the race.
The nature of the change that thus occurred in
humanity when moral consciousness first dawned,
was not, any more than it is in individual expe-
rience, an alteration of its character or propensities,
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 291
so as to make it intrinsically different from before.
The moral scheme, if it designed to leave man a
free agent, could do no more than give him the
ability and opportunity to shape and determine his
own character, and the first step toward this was, of
course, to make him a creature capable of having
one. Up to this period he had been under the im-
mediate supervision and tutelage of his Divine Sov-
ereign, and so had had neither occasion nor oppor-
tunity to develop and discipline his moral powers,
had he been in possession of such. Now, having
received them, having the inward voice of con-
science to guide and warn him, he may and will be
thrown more upon these inner resources and aids of
moral development. Man will be no longer carried
as a moral infant in the divine arms ; he will be
left, in some degree at least, to bear his own weight,
to walk by himself, no matter how awkwardly and
imperfectly, until he shall have learned the use and
value of his inner faculties. We shall find the
Creator, then, not entirely withdrawing from his
supervision of the race, yet communicating with it
only in such occasional manner as exigencies may
demand, such as shall aid the growth and direction
of the moral powers in a right direction, and keep
alive among men the recognition of his existence
and his relations to them as their governor. These
revelations will not relate to general principles of
morality, but only to the law of particular cases ;
the child is, as yet, to be only supported when he
292 THE RISE AXD THE FALL.
totters, not instructed in the science of walking with
precision and grace. The first phase of the moral
system, then, is the regime or DISPENSATION OF CON-
SCIENCE, the only rule of conduct of which the
Patriarchs and their contemporaries seem to have
had any knowledge, excepting, as we have before
seen, such rules and regulations as were received
through special communications of the Almighty.
In those early days before History, Philosophy,
and Revelation had done anything toward exhibit-
ing and settling the principles of right and justice,
so imperfect a guide in morals as conscience alone,
must necessarily have been inadequate to human
necessities. Happily, however, men were scat-
tered ; there were few if any social organizations
more complex than tjiat of the family under the
absolute government of its patriarchal head. The
wants of mankind were, therefore, few and easily
supplied, their habits simple and hardy, their oppor-
tunities and incitements to evil comparatively incon-
siderable ; and from these causes, as well as from the
occasional divine interposition for direction, control,
or rebuke, the terrible consequences that might be
expected, were, if not wholly prevented, at least
delayed. Human passion, nevertheless, asserted its
ascendancy. " The whole earth became corrupt
and filled with violence ; " and the Deluge, sweeping
a generation from existence, came in the history of
the race like one of those long-remembered expe-
riences or punishments of childhood, a crisis hi
THE MORAL SYSTEM PEOGRESSIVE. 293
the individual life which leaves a lasting impression
upon the mind and character. Looking back upon
these early and sad experiences, these enormities
and these retributions, we can see that they were
producing a purposed effect. They were exhibiting
to the race, and forcing upon its recognition, the
necessity for a system of divine and human law,
comprehensive, clear, and immutable, for the gov-
ernment of men, and also developing the princi-
ples upon which such law should rest. To Noah
after the flood, certain simple and primitive rules and
teachings preparatory to such a system, and embrac-
ing some of its essential particulars, were imparted,
such, indeed, and such only as the then moral de-
velopment of the race had fitted it to receive. Now
we begin to see human governments established for
the first time, a fact which of itself implies some
comprehension of legal and constitutional methods,
barbarous and imperfect enough no doubt. At a
later period, after ages of experience, when civil
society was better settled and organized, and relig-
ious forms and doctrines more fully reduced to sys-
tem, there had come to obtain more general and
philosophical conceptions of abstract morality, espe-
cially among the chosen people which God was
training to be the vehicle of his revelations and
laws to man. Yet no one can carefully read the
history of the race down to the exodus from Egypt
without observing how crude and imperfect were
men's moral notions, the remarkable abstinence by
294 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
the Almighty from enunciations of general laws and
principles, (even the observance of the Sabbath
does not seem to have been enjoined or practised
till the time of Moses,) and how low a standard of
morality God was content to accept and even to
require. He seems to treat mankind as immature
and ignorant children ; and when he imparts instruc-
tion it relates only to particular cases, as if a knowl-
edge of abstract moral principles were, as yet, not
to be expected of men.
This early experimental training of the race, in
learning the necessity and the principles of moral
and social law, corresponds with the process which
every human creature goes through immediately
after his infancy is passed, and he has entered on
the comprehension of moral distinctions. His mind,
as yet immature and incapable at once of digesting
abstract truths, gradually deduces them from the
experiences of life, assisted by the instructions, the
reproofs, and the chastisements of parents or guar-
dians. Thus he learns moral laws, not at first in
the form of a system, but by seeing them disclosed
in particular cases, and so is gradually prepared to
receive them reduced to a code, and to recognize the
justice, the authority, and the necessity of such
code when presented. As the period, then, when
mankind was insensible to moral distinctions was
denominated its infancy, so the period just consid-
ered as immediately following, may be called the
childhood of the race in respect to its stage and
process of moral development.
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 295
Having thus passed through the requisite prelim-
inary training, by the time of Moses, as we have
seen, the world was prepared for the next great
step in its moral history, the revelation of a
MORAL LAW, exhibiting with divine authority and
completeness the whole code of human obligation.
This was the law given to Moses. The Ten Com-
mandments, which were its basis, constituted a brief
and comprehensive epitome of moral duty of uni-
versal and unchanging obligation ; while the attend-
ant statutes, ordinances, and revelations, although a
great portion of them applied especially to the Jews,
were yet of inestimable value to the race, not merely
from their typical significance, but as containing a
system of true religion, and as illustrating the moral
law in its application to the affairs of individual and
social life. It will be remarked, however, that the
law thus given sought chiefly to regulate or sup-
press man's evil propensities by prohibitions and
commands, rather than to do so by imbuing the
heart with spiritual affections whose superior strength
should supplant and prevent those tendencies to evil.
Its spirit and effect, indeed, were it fully obeyed,
could not fail to promote the inner and spiritual life
of the soul. It even inculcated, here and there,
such sublime precepts as indicated the future and
higher stage of moral growth for which it prepared
the race ; but its main idea was discipline, obedience,
a pure morality in mind and conduct, as the essen-
tial and sufficient ground, at that stage of man's
moral growth, of his acceptance with God.
296 THE KISE AND THE FALL.
This revelation was committed to a people whose
character and designed history were specially adapted
for the diffusion and preservation of it among men.
The effect which it was purposed to produce, and
did produce, upon the moral growth of the Jews,
may be seen by comparing their moral condition
and tendencies when they first received it, with
what they had become at the opening of the Chris-
tian era. At the first period, their whole idea of
religion was associated with childish materialism
and superstition, with manufactured divinities and
sensual ceremonials. At the latter, they had long
outgrown these degradations, and the adoration of
the one invisible and eternal God, with the recog-
nition of His law, and reverence of its authority,
were fully and finally established. Viewed, then,
as a means of moral development, this was the
great object and result of the Mosaic revelation :
to show clearly to man his relations and responsi-
bilities to his Maker as a subject of His moral gov-
ernment, to disclose the main features of a true
religion, and to exhibit the whole outward duty of
every human creature, both to his Maker and his
fellow man.
This phase or epoch of moral growth in the race
corresponds to the experience which every individ-
ual soul goes through when it outgrows a reliance
upon conscience and special instructions for the direc-
tion of its conduct, and begins to comprehend for
itself the revelation of God's law, measuring its
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 297
obligations by the system of duty therein disclosed.
It is common experience that the moral part of
man, when awakened by conscience to the sense of
duty, first sets itself with energy to the study and
observance of the law, seeking for satisfaction and
growth in the strict attention to the external forms
of religion and practices of morality. Commonly
and naturally, though not, of course, universally,
this process occurs when the mind, emerging from
the fickleness, weakness, and dependence of child-
hood, begins to feel the first serious promptings of
religious thought, and the growing powers which
have not yet become fully tempered and disciplined
by maturity and experience. It then by a natural
tendency turns to general truths ; and, strong in its
self-confidence, even selects the principles, pure and
true, which it thinks shall direct its future course,
fully assured of its own ability to follow them un-
swervingly. This moral epoch and experience,
then, whether of the race or of the individual,
the intervening stage between the commencement
and the maturity of moral life, may fitly be called
the youth of man's moral development.
It would be impossible within our prescribed lim-
its, perhaps impossible for human intelligence within
any limits, to exhibit in full detail the economy of
the Mosaic dispensation in the work of man's moral
development. Even those particular features im-
mediately illustrating our argument cannot be all
referred to, and we must simply notice the most
298 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
prominent. That dispensation, then, found the race
in a state of moral ignorance, illumined only by
conscience and vague traditions. It revealed to it
with particularity the existence and character of
God, the Creator and Ruler of the universe, his
purpose in man's creation, the relations and obliga-
tions toward him of the individual and mankind.
It definitely disclosed the principles and precepts of
the moral code, the sublimity and glory of holiness,
the heinousness, deformity, and destructiveness of
sin. It showed the real moral position and charac-
ter of men in their actual life, that they were a
race of sinners, prone to wickedness, constantly in-
curring God's displeasure, exposed to the punish-
ment of his law ; thus revealing in the clearest
manner their lost condition and their need of the
divine assistance and mercy. Ages of experience
under it proved conclusively, what itself recognized
in all its parts, that from this lost condition the law
itself, as a system of commands requiring perfect
obedience, was inadequate to save them ; that hu-
man nature, however well instructed in duty, was
too weak against imperious appetite to render com-
plete submission to pure morality ; that neither the
race as such, nor the individual man, could be
brought up from a sinful state to holiness, could
be redeemed, sanctified, and perfected, except by
means which the same Mosaic revelation divinely
foreshadowed, the scheme of redemption and
atonement typified in the Jewish system of sacrifices
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 299
and ordinances. Thus " the law was a school-mas-
ter " to bring the race to the Christian dispensation,
exhibiting to men at once their need of a Saviour,
with the character of his mission and sacrifice, and
training them in the moral knowledge and disci-
pline requisite to appreciate and embrace his scheme
of salvation.
" In the fulness of time," therefore, was inaugu-
rated the third great stage in man's moral advance-
ment, by the advent of the promised Messiah and
the publication of his Gospel. We need not here
consider at length the nature and effect of the
Christian religion as distinguished from that which
preceded and prepared for it. Yet it must be ob-
vious to the most superficial observer that Christi-
anity was the complement of Judaism. It followed
up the work of moral discipline with that of atone-
ment, justification and sanctification. It accepted
what had been already accomplished by the aid of
the conscience and the law, and pursued the labor
still farther into the innermost chambers of the
heart. The inadequate system of law was not
supplanted, but perfected, by the new dispensation.
Man was not discharged from his obligation to a
pure morality. On the contrary, a higher standard
was revealed, and a more perfect code of duty both
toward God and man, enjoined for his observance.
Entire obedience to the law had been found impos-
sible for human weakness, and the effort after it
wearisome and painful. Yet Christianity proclaimed
300 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
this higher plane of duty which it instituted, as a
freedom instead of a servitude, and was able so to
inspire and illumine the soul with its spirit, as to
make it accept, realize, and rejoice in the doctrine.
It entered into the race and the individual as a new
life a regeneration awakening new principles
of action, new motives and affections, creating aspi-
rations after holiness for its own sake ; a holiness
not of the conduct only but of the heart, a com-
plete similitude to the divine likeness. Thus its
tendency and its object were to supersede the old
mechanical obedience by a true spiritual virtue far
transcending in purity and beauty the sphere of
mere legal requirements. By the same influences
it tended to deepen man's fear and hatred of sin,
that dreadful evil, so abhorrent to God, so variant
from his character, so disastrous to his universe,
so fatal to holiness and the soul, so enormous a woe
as to have necessitated the sacrifice of Christ him-
self that man might be redeemed from its power
and consequences. Nor did it excite his longing
for holiness and the divine acceptance, while leav-
ing these beyond his reach on account of his weak-
ness and guilt. It provided the means of obtaining
a full forgiveness for past transgressions while really
striving after spiritual life, and strength beyond his
own to aid him in his struggles. Thus it supplied
the deficiences of the law by admitting faith to
supply the incompleteness of works, and so con-
stantly inspired the believer with new courage and
energy in his endeavors after perfect obedience.
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 301
Thus the rise and growth of Christianity among
the race represents the maturity, the manhood of
its moral development. In it we behold man's at-
tainment to the true conception of moral principles
(as distinguished from a moral law^), and a just ap-
preciation of their elevating, ennobling, liberating
nature, his transit, in short, from a formal to a
spiritual religion. Not that this complete result is
yet fully manifested : not at once does the man
reach all the maturity and power of his manhood, or
the Christian the culmination of his Christian expe-
rience. But the race has entered on the period
when its previous education has ripened, and truth
begins to bring forth her perfect fruits. How great
the harvest shall finally prove, is known to the In-
finite alone ; but if we look abroad upon the world,
bad as it still is, and observe what Christianity has
done for it already, we may form some conception
of the greatness and glory which, when the race
and the world shall end, that religion as the last
stage in the divine scheme of man's moral advance-
ment will be seen to have achieved for him and in
him.
Having thus traced man's moral progress from
unconsciousness to instinct, from instinct to disci-
pline, from discipline to faith and liberty, the in-
quiry naturally arises, whether in these, so far as
they shall be manifested or experienced on Earth,
the race will find the last stage of its advancement.
To this question that great eternal future which
302 THE RISE AND THE FALL.
shall open to all of us, can alone supply the full
response. Yet as to the nature of that response
Revelation offers no indistinct intimations. As we
have illustrated the moral history of the race, in its
various steps, by corresponding moral advancements
of the individual, so we look forward as a race, after
the dissolution of this material world, to the new
heavens and the new earth, with the same faith as
we expect the ultimate holiness and blessedness, in
another sphere, of him who has passed through an
accepted experience in this. God has created man-
kind to exhibit his grand system of grace in their
sanctification and redemption ; and neither with
respect to the race as a whole, nor to the separate
beings that compose it, will the work be left unfin-
ished. The last great stage will be, as was the
beginning, conducted under his own personal super-
vision. Man, the perfect (or perfected*) man in
Christ Jesus, once more innocent, not now, as at
the first, from moral ignorance, but from a matured
moral wisdom and strength, in God's image, not
merely in a natural but in a spiritual likeness also,
will again walk with his Maker as a personal dis-
ciple and familiar friend. In that final heavenly
Paradise, the description of which closes the Bible,
as that of the primal and earthly Eden commences
it, it is proclaimed that "the Tabernacle of God
shall be with men, and He himself shall dwell with
them, their God." There " there shall be no more
sorrow, nor pain, nor crying, and no more curse ; "
THE MORAL SYSTEM PROGRESSIVE. 303
and man shall again ** have right to the Tree of
Life," which shall " stand by the river in the midst
of the City," as of old " in the midst of the gar-
den ; " for, " to him that has OVERCOME," the divine
companionship, with freedom, rest, and immortality,
are no longer incompatible with " THE KNOWLEDGE
OF GOOD AND EVIL."
Here we must pause. Neither our purpose nor
our limits permit us to pursue the subject further.
We set out to learn, if possible, somewhat of God's
moral plan, by investigating that portion of its his-
tory which relates to the origin of moral evil in
the world. If any light has been let in upon this
from nature or from revelation, a light revealing
more clearly than before the goodness, the justice,
the consistency, the upward progress, without check
or failure, of God's moral system, while not obscur-
ing but rather illustrating the great facts of human
corruption and human free agency, then others
with stronger vision, will see more fully than we
the truths which it discloses, and lift the curtain for
more perfect revelations.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX.
FROM THE ANNOTATED PARAGRAPH BIBLE. Genesis.
Chap. I.
AND God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly 20
the moving [or creeping] creature that hath life, and
fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firma-
ment of heaven. And God created great whales, and 21
every living creature that moveth, which the waters
brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every
winged fowl after his kind : and God saw that it was
good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, 22
and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let
fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the 23
morning were the fifth day.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living 24
creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing,
and beast of the earth after his kind : and it was so,
And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, 25
and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creep-
eth upon the earth after his kind : and God saw that
it was good.
And God said, Let us make man in our image, after 26
our likeness : and let them have dominion over the
fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over
the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every
creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God 27
created man in his own image, in the image of God
created he him ; male and female created he them.
And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be 28
308 APPENDIX.
fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and
subdue it : and have dominion over the fish of the sea,
and over the fowl of the air, and over every living
29 thing that moveth upon the earth. And God said,
Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed,
which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree,
in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to
30 you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the
earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing
that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life,
[a living soul,] / have given every green herb for
31 meat : and it was so. And God saw every thing that
he had made, and behold, it was very good. And the
evening and the morning were the sixth day.
Cb. II. Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all
the host of them. 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.
8 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.
7 And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the
ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of
life [lives] ; and man became a living soul.
8 And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in
Eden ; and there he put the man whom he had formed.
9 And out of the ground made the LORD God to grow
every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for
food ; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden,
and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
15 And the LORD God took the man [or, Adam] and
put him into the garden of Eden, to dress it, and to
16 keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man,
17 saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest
freely eat : but of the tree of the knowledge of good
and evil, thou shalt not eat of it : for in the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
APPENDIX. 309
And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man 18
should be alone : I will make him an help meet for
him. And out of the ground the LORD God formed 19
every beast of the field and every fowl of the air ; and
brought them unto Adam [or, the man] to see what he
would call them ; and whatsoever Adam called every
living creature, that teas the name thereof. And 20
Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the
air, and to every beast of the field ; but for Adam
there was not found an help meet for him.
And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon 21
Adam, and he slept : and he took one of his ribs, and
closed up the flesh instead thereof: and the rib, which 22
the LORD God had taken from man, made he a
woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam 23
said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my
flesh : she shall be called woman, [Isha,] because she
was taken out of man [Ish]. Therefore shall a man 24
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto
his wife : and they shall be one flesh. And they were 25
both naked, the man and his wife, and were not
ashamed.
Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of Ch. III.
the field which the LORD God had made : and he said
unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat
of every tree of the garden ? And the woman said 2
unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees
of the garden : but of the fruit of the tree which is in 3
the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not
eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die. And 4
the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely
die : for God doth know that in the day ye eat there- 5
of, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as
gods, knowing good and evil.
And when the woman saw that the tree was good for 6
food, and that it teas pleasant to the eyes, and a tree
310 APPENDIX.
to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit
thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband
7 with her ; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked ;
and they sewed fig leaves together, and made them-
selves aprons.
8 And they heard the voice of the LORD God walking
in the garden in the cool of the day : and Adam
and his wife hid themselves from the presence of
9 the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden. And
the LORD God called unto Adam, and said unto
10 him, Where art thou ? And he said, I heard thy
voice in the garden, and I was afraid because I was
11 naked; and I hid myself. And he said, Who told
thee that thou wast naked ? Hast thou eaten of the
tree whereof I commanded thee that thou shouldest
1 2 not eat ? And the man said, The woman whom thou
gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I
13 did eat. And the LORD God said unto the woman,
What is this that thou hast done ? And the woman
said, The serpent beguiled me, and I did eat.
14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because
thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle,
and above every beast of the field ; upon thy belly
shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of
15 thy life ; and I will put enmity between thee and the
woman, and between thy seed and her seed : it shall
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy
sorrow and thy conception ; in sorrow thou shalt bring
forth children ; and thy desire shall be to thy husband,
and he shall rule over thee.
17 And unto Adam he said, Because thou hast hearkened
unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree
of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not
eat of it : cursed is the ground for thy sake ; in sor-
APPENDIX. 311
row shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life : thorns 18
also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee ; and thou
shalt eat the herb of the field; in the sweat of thy 19
face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the
ground ; for out of it wast thou taken ; for dust thou
art, and unto dust shalt thou return.
And Adam called his wife's name Eve, [i. e., living,] 20
because she was the mother of all living. Unto Adam 21
also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of
skins, and clothed them.
And the LORD God said, Behold, the man is become 22
as one of us, to know good and evil ; and now, lest he
put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life,
and eat, and live forever : therefore the LORD God 23
sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the
ground from whence he was taken. So he drove out 24
the man ; and he placed at the east of the garden of
Eden cherubim, and a flaming sword which turned
every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.
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ADVENTURES OF TELEMACHUS. By FENELON; trans-
lated by DR. HAWKESWORTH, with a Life of Fenelon by LA-
MARTINE ; Biographical Notices, &c. &c. Edited by 0. W.
WIGHT, A. M. In one volume, crown 8vo. Price in extra
cloth, uncut, $2.25 ; half calf, gilt or antique, 4.00.
MONTAIGNE.
WORKS OF MICHAEL DE MONTAIGNE. Comprising
his Essays, Journey into Italy, and Letters ; with Notes from
all the Commentators, Biographical and Bibliographical No-
tices, &c. By W. HAZLITT. With a portrait of Montaigne.
A new and carefully revised edition, edited by O. W. WIGHT.
In four volumes, crown 8vo. Price in extra cloth, uncut,
$9.00; half calf, gilt or antique, 16.00.
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