( 64 ) 



But how startling the exhibition of evil by this new 

 being as compared with the scenes of the countless ages 

 already past ! Then the right of the strongest was 

 God's law, and rapine and destruction were the history 

 of life. But into man had been "breathed the breath 

 of life," and he had "become a living soul." The law 

 of right, the Divine Spirit, was planted within him, and 

 the laws of the beast were in antagonism to that law. 

 The natural development of his inherited qualities 

 necessarily brought him into collision with that higher 

 standard planted within him, and that war was com- 

 menced which shall never cease " till He hath put all 

 things under His feet." The first act of man's disobe- 

 dience constituted the Fall, and with it would come the 

 first intellectual "knowledge of good and of evil" 

 an apprehension up to that time derived exclusively 

 from the divinity within, or conscience.* 



2. Free Agency. Heretofore development had been 

 that of physical types, but the Lord had rested on the 

 seventh day, for man closed the line of the physical 

 creation. Now a new development was to begin the 

 development of mind, of morality and of grace. 



* In our present translation of Genesis, the Fall is ascribed to 

 the influence of Satan assuming the form of the serpent, and this 

 animal was cursed in consequence, and compelled to assume a 

 prone position. This rendering may well be revised, since serpents, 

 prone like others, existed in both America and Europe during the 

 Eocene epoch, five times as great a period before Adam as has 

 elapsed since his day. Clark states, with great probability, that 

 " serpent " should be translated monkey or ape a conclusion, it 

 will be observed, exactly coinciding with our inductions on the basis 

 of evolution. The instigation to evil by an ape merely states in- 

 heritance in another form. His curse, then, refers to the retention 

 of the horizontal position by all other quadrumana, as we find it 

 at the present day. 



