284 Musings by Camp-Fire and Wayside 



beheld suns slowly wheeling in trackless space, and 

 planets unfolding in the eternal calm; but broke 

 into glad acclaim when these new avenues and 

 receptacles of love appeared. 



Adam was an infant. He did not know his 

 moral or physical right hand from the left; did not 

 distinguish between the paths of rectitude and of 

 wrong; did not know the difference between good 

 and evil; had not eaten of the tree of knowledge. 

 He was, therefore, innocent. This is the sound 

 ethic of Moses, the lawgiver as well as the poet and 

 prophet — and it is fundamental to every principle 

 of justice. Sin was as impossible to Adam as to a 

 bird or flower, or to any creature that has not risen 

 to moral consciousness. The infant of the race, 

 his was the innocency of the babe. Moses does not 

 credit him with positive and aggressive righteous- 

 ness. He had to rise before he could fall; had to 

 climb before he could descend. He could not 

 know the difference between good and evil till he 

 had tasted both the mellow and nutritive sweet of 

 the one, and the bitter and poisonous sweet of the 

 other. His theology was also that of a child, a 

 simple anthropomorphism. God was his father, in 

 form identical with himself in body, mind, and 

 being — living in the garden, and walking abroad, 

 as Adam did, in the evening. What Adam's child 

 was to him, such was he to God. 



Now, let us see what Adam did in Eden during 

 that epoch of his progress which Moses describes. 



