so as to influence
his own nature. Man could only be what God caused him to be, and do what
God enabled or compelled him to do.

Man might justly say to God: "I did not ask to be created. I did not ask
to be sent into this world. I had no power to select or mould my nature.
I am what You made me. I am where You put me. You knew when You made
me how I should act. If You wished me to act otherwise, why did You not
make me differently? If I have displeased You, I was fore-ordained to
displease You. I was fore-ordained by You to be and to do what I am
and have done. Is it my fault that You fore-ordained me to be and to do
thus?"

Christians say a man has a will to choose. So he has. But that is only
saying that one human thought will outweigh another. A man thinks with
his brain: his brain was made by God.

A tall man can reach higher than a short man. It is not the fault of the
short man that he is outreached: he did not fix his own height.

It is the same with the will. A man has a will to jump. He can jump over
a five-barred gate; but he cannot jump over a cathedral.

So with his will in moral matters. He has a will to resist temptation,
but though he may clear a small temptation, he may fall at a large one.

The actions of a man's will are as mathematically fixed at his birth as
are the motions of a planet in its orbit.

God, who made the man and the planet, is responsible for the actions of
both.

As the natural forces created by God regulate the influences of Venus
and Mars upon the Earth, so must the natural forces created by God have
regulated the influences of Eve and the Serpent on Adam.

Adam was no more blameworthy for failing to resist the influence of Eve
than the Earth is blameworthy for deviating in its course around the
Sun, in obedience to the influences of Venus and Mars.

Without the act of God there could have been no Adam, and therefore no
Fall. God, whose act is responsible for Adam's existence, is responsible
for the Fall.

_If God is responsible for man's existence, God is responsible for all
Man's acts._

If a boy brought a dog into the house and teased it until it bit him,
would not his parents ask the boy, "Why did you bring the dog in at
all?"

But if the boy had trained the dog to bite, and knew that it would bite
if it were teased, and if the boy brought the dog in and teased it until
it bit him, would the parents blame the dog?

And if a magician, like one of those at the co