late Fisher Ames, a
distinguished statesman and jurist, said, "No man can be a sound lawyer
who is not well read in the laws of Moses." The seat of this law is the
bosom of God, and her voice is the order, peace and happiness of the
world.

DID ADAM FALL OR RISE?

The old scholastic ideas of "total hereditary depravity, and miraculous
conversion," with their correllates, have driven more minds into doubt and
skepticism than most of men are apprised of. The reasons are evident.
First. Common sense shrinks from them as ideas which are destructive of
every principle of human responsibility. Second. They are opposed to the
testimony of consciousness which asserts the soul's freedom. Third. They
are opposed to correct ideas of justice as it is administered in all
governments, both human and divine.

"And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us to know
good and evil." Our fathers, of Calvinistic type of faith, used to tell us
that this language only asserted Adam's experience of conscious guilt;
that he knew good before he transgressed, and had experimental knowledge
of evil after he transgressed. This was the best they could do and save
their Calvinism, and even this would not have saved it in the days of
investigation like ours. The Lord did not say, "The man is become as one
of us knowing good and evil," but "the man is become as one of us _to
know_ good and evil." The old view of the subject virtually says, The Lord
had experimental knowledge of both good and evil, and that the way in
which Adam became Godlike was the way of the transgressor. Then the
greatest Godlikeness is the result of the greatest sinning. _What
nonsense!_ The Bible says: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and
they knew they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together and made
themselves aprons." The account also asserts that the "tree of knowledge
of good and evil" was "a tree to be desired to make one wise." Total
depravity and its correllates could never have been found in this context.
This history is not responsible for it, nor for the mischiefs it has
produced.

The Heavenly Father knew, when he created man, that he would fail upon
trial. To have prevented this would have been nothing short of an
interference with man's freedom, and consequently his responsibility,
without which he could not have been man. The Lord saw man in his alien
state and in his return to holiness. He "made of one blood all nations