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THE FALL.
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Then came the temptation. The serpent approached the woman and tempted her to eat of the tree in question. She at first refused, saying :
"God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it lest ye die."
With more persuasion she yielded, because she saw that it was good for food and pleasant to the eye, and a tree to be desired to make one wise. The immediate result of the transgression was that their eyes were opened. They knew that they were naked, and fearing to appear in nakedness before God, hid themselves. The result was that when God came to know of it, he punished all the three, the man, the woman and the serpent. To Adam, he said, “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.” And to himself the Lord God said, “Behold the man has become as one of us to know good and evil;” and, thinking "lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever," drove him out of the Garden of Eden, and made provision for guarding the approaches to the Tree of Life by placing cherubim and a flaming sword which turned in every direction round it. This, briefly, is the account of the catastrophe. We can best interpret it by observing the results which are said to have ensued from the act of transgression. Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of good and evil, but became ignorant!* That was one result. Another result was
. * That the general condition of humanity is one of ignorance will hardly be denied by any one to-day.
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