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fruit of the tree of knowledge had any effect on the moral constitution. It was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in this sense; that while Adam abstained from plucking the fruit he would experience good, and when he should pluck it, he would experience evil. But the notion that it had any power to make the eater more intelligent; or that, as animal food invigorates the physical system of a child, so this fruit would produce some physiological or metaphysical alteration in man's nature, has no countenance from the most approved interpreters of Scripture. Mr. Lothrop has been unconsciously biased, we think, by the tempter's remarks to our first parents. His tract evidently fol lows Satan's exegesis. He strove to make the impression on our mother, that there was something in the effect of the fruit on the human system which was greatly to be desired. This tract falls in with the same opinion. The author has a better opinion of Satan, it is true, than we have, if "the knowledge of good and evil" be synonymous with an advanced state of moral being. But we should be at a loss to explain how the "tempter tempted Eve with his subtilty," as the apostle says, except by the sugges tion of this idea. It is generally supposed that his subtle insinuation consisted in the idea, that the fruit of the forbidden tree would advance the moral condition of man, thus perverting the name of the tree, and making that which was intended to be a means of good by abstaining from it, and of evil by eating it, appear to be a source of improvement in the intellectual or moral faculties, or both, by the power of the fruit to raise the eater," from a lower to a higher degree of intelligence."

Adhering still to this notion, that the knowledge of good and evil, that is, of the difference between them, came by eating the forbidden fruit, the author argues that the effect of the fruit was to make men 66 more like God in one of his faculties." This, again, was the invention of Satan. There is no other authority for the idea. He made our mother believe, (as this tract teaches,) that to eat that fruit would make her somewhat divine; and that God knew it, and was practising imposition upon man. "For," says the tempter, " God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil;" that is, having an improved moral discernment, and becoming acquainted with many things extremely desirable to be known.

The author evidently thinks that the words of the Most High, preparatory to the expulsion of man from Paradise, are a solemn and literal acknowledgment of the undesired effect of the fruit on the first pair. Such an interpretation represents God as soliloquizing at an event which he greatly regretted, namely: the advancement of Adam and Eve in their moral discernment; but if, according to Mr. L., Adam took a step higher in the scale of the intelligent creation, we are at a loss to see why the Most High should have deplored it. He does not deplore the sin, but only the effect, namely: that man had "become as one of us," that is, God. Now this, according to Mr. L., was a positive improvement, and he uses it to shew that Adam, before his fall, and before he enjoyed this advancement, was not so high in the scale of being, as we.

The very common and obvious interpretation of this passage is the only one which is generally approved. Judicious critics represent it as an expression of holy indignation, with an admixture of irony and pity, on the part of the Most High. Behold poor man, guilty and wretched; truly this is being like one of us! Sad consequences of being beguiled by Satan, to think that eating that fruit would make him wiser! And now, lest he repeat the same folly, tempted again by Satan, and, thinking that the tree of life, instead of being a covenant seal, is an antidote to death, should rebel against the dread sentence, and vainly seek to live forever by eating of the tree which he has now forfeited, let him be driven out from the garden, to convince him that he is fallen and lost.

Any other interpretation, especially the one which Mr. L. adopts, can easily be shewn to be impossible. For any other interpretation would reject the idea of irony in these words. It would represent the Most High as saying, We did not intend that man should rise to so high a degree of intelligence. We meant to keep him low, by keeping him ignorant. This is a counterplot; and man has stolen a march in moral and intellectual progress. We must forefend ourselves against his further assumption of a higher intelligence. It will be dangerous to our plans and purposes, to let him remain in reach of a tree whose fruit once tasted will be an antidote to dying. How shall we prevail against his vaulting ambition, but by expelling him from among those trees?

Such, we think, is a just paraphrase of the words of the Most High, if Mr. L.'s interpretation be correct; an interpretation which makes the Most High more an object of commiseration than man. Yet the doctrine of this tract is founded, in part, upon this interpretation.

Next in order to our objection to this theory as based upon a false interpretation of Scripture, we remark that the tract is erroneous in the assumption which runs through it, that experi ence of sin is the necessary means of a "higher intelligence" in moral beings. This doctrine is plainly advanced in the foregoing extracts. It is also a favorite notion with Dr. Bushnell, as appears most fully in his letter to the Publishing Committee of the Massachusetts Sabbath School Society.

We all believe that the experience of sin and redemption will, under the overruling power and grace of God, conduce to the more exalted happiness of man, and illustrate the attributes of God. All who differ on the disputed point, "Whether sin is the necessary means of the greatest good," agree in this belief. But the idea that the practical or experimental knowledge of evil is necessary to a higher degree of intelligence, we have already intimated, and repeat it with due deference, is only a "doctrine of devils." It is contradicted by facts. Woe to Gabriel and his peers, if this be so. There will then be an intellectual inferiority in heaven to the inhabitants of hell. No doubt the fallen angels believe this doctrine. Religion in their view is abjectness. The holy angels seem to them, we presume, as Milton makes Satan taunt them, in the light of bondmen to the Almighty. "Thy words," says Satan to the seraph, "argue thy inexperience!" This comports with the doctrine of the tract before us. Inexperience of sin, it is thought by some, makes a nature soft, effeminate, and pusillanimous; and to all such, it is supposed by wicked angels, their

"Easier business were to serve their Lord, High up in heaven with songs to hymn his throne, At practised distances to cringe, not fight."

But to fight with God has something stalworth in it; to suffer punishment with an indomitable will, daring him to do his worst, is true greatness. So the knowledge of all sin opens to the mind worlds of ideas, without which a soul is yet in boyhood, and can

never be said to have attained its majority. The abominable doctrine that reformed rakes make the best husbands, is founded on this theory.

Some such doctrine as this, we have perceived, is in the minds of certain professedly Christian parents. They would not be unwilling to have their sons pass through great experience of sin, provided they could be sure of their repentance and conversion in season to do that greater amount of good to their fellow men, which, they are persuaded, they would do as a consequence of their experience in transgression. But if this be true, it is certainly singular that the author and finisher of our faith, our example, the Redeemer of lost men, was not made perfect for his work by being permitted to fall under Satan's fiery darts in the wilderness; and then, recovered from sin, use his qualifications thus acquired, to rescue his brethren.

The author of this tract probably regards the Saviour as a perfect specimen of human nature. We say probably, for charity impels us to say this; and yet we should infer, from his views of the power which the knowledge of evil has to raise us to a higher intelligence, and from its effects as he regards them on Adam, that the man Christ Jesus was, after all, though a very good man, yet inferior to what he would have been had he obeyed Satan in the wilderness, and thus had enjoyed the "knowledge of good and evil," in the sense in which those words are interpreted in this tract. We have for some time doubted, whether the character of Christ does inspire certain men, ministers of Christ in name, with true respect. Theodore Parker evidently has but small reverence for the human character of our Redeemer. He has used expressions with regard to him which make the blood run cold in our veins. Others in the denomination to which he yet belongs, though they must, as a matter of course, express before this community their regard for Christ, yet, if the truth were known, we believe would not assign to Jesus the highest place in moral and intellectual attainments. They themselves, by their "knowledge of good and evil," such as Jesus never had, possess the elements, in their own view, perhaps, of a higher nature, the means of a far greater moral discernment, and sources of future happiness in their deep and rich experience of sin. It seems to them a masterly thing to have been able to sin. The man who should hold his breath, and be able to stay beneath the ponderous ocean long enough to survey those

"Wedges of gold, great anchors, heaps of pearl,
Inestimable stones, unvalued jewels,

All scattered in the bottom of the sea; "

or the man or angel who could pass that trackless gulf, and know the depths of hell, would have in his new sources of thought, and "higher intelligence," a noble reward for his peril and suffering. So it is, no doubt, supposed by some, that the experimental knowledge of evil is advantageous to the moral and intellectual nature. Hence, as we have said, some parents are less careful about the virtue of their children; they give them full sweep in their acquaintances and amusements; feeling, if their views could be interpreted, that, in accordance with the doctrine of this tract, they will be hereafter, if converted, "more like God in one of his attributes." How that one attribute of God itself became perfect without an experimental knowledge of evil, we are not informed; "for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man; " neither of which, we think, could be said, if the experimental knowledge of evil were the necessary means of a higher. state of intelligence.

No, it is not true, that to pass through the baleful experience of vice is the means of greater intellectual and moral excellence. The imagination, the forms of thought and expression, are corrupted or tainted inevitably by experience in sin; the soul is haunted by remembrances of foul deeds; the sense of purity is lost; the renewed sinner always cries: "O that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me!" The Bible sets the seal of reprobation on the notion, that experience of sin is the necessary means of a higher state of intelligence. "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." "The knowledge of the holy is understanding." Fool and sinner, are, in the Bible, convertible terms.

The influence of this tract we cannot but regard as extremely pernicious. It first came to our knowledge in consequence of its being pointed out to a friend by a young man, who exulted in its principles as affording a defence to libertinism. It is one of the fruits of Unitarianism, acknowledged by the husbandmen of that vineyard. All which they here teach their fellow men, with regard to the apostacy and its effects on us, is, that Adam by his disobedience," in some way lost position and favor with God." "Lost position with God!" Position! What a word for a pro

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