2. The next step downwards is the tempting of another and a loved one. Sometimes we have found ourselves wishing Eve had died with the fruit in her mouth, instead of living to do the devil's work, and lure her loved husband to the same ruin. Let me say here and with all emphasis, _Never fear so much as when the hand of affection offers you that which God forbids_. 3. Now comes Death. The parents of the human race were separated from God. Environment is a condition of life. They have learned to do evil, they have to share the lot of those who had not kept their first estate. Heaven was an impossible climate to the apostate angels, and Eden was only possible to those who obey. It is easy to see that the garden was not now Paradise. Adam and his wife hid themselves among the trees from the presence of the Lord! Those trees were not created for that purpose. Alas for sin! it poisons food and taints air. We cannot insist upon this with too much force. It was true then as now. "He that believeth not shall not see life." Adam and Eve were poisoned by the forbidden fruit. Is it not yet true that Innocence, Chastity, Modesty, are dead in some who are thought to live? We wonder afterwards to see them cast out, but it is, after all, the separation of the dead from the living. 4. And now comes Suffering. They must hear the curse pronounced, and then depart into the world which has begun to grow thorns for them. Yes, sufferings after death. What is history but the story of punishment? When men scoff at what is called eternal punishment they forget, or, perhaps, have never given it a thought, that the punishment of the first crime is going on at the present moment. Thorns and briars are but parables. They are real, it is true. Man must wrestle with his mother earth for every bit he eats. She does not feed him willingly; she produces that which he cannot eat. He must lacerate her bosom with his spade ere she will yield him bread, and he must sweat with toil before she will give him his crust! Yet this is but the shadow of something terribly worse. The non-producer will live, whatever becomes of those who toil. What is war but one of the many things which rob man of his bread? The soldier is a consumer, not a producer. I do not say he is not a necessity. He is all that, but he must be fed. What matters it to him what is the price of meat; he will have his three-quarters of a pound of meat every day. Aye, and he earns it too! Who would grudge the brave fellows in Egypt the stores we send out? None of us. Yet we cannot but feel that the sword and bayonet, like the thorn hedge, take up soil which might grow corn, and the higher it grows the greater the shadow, and therefore the poorer the crops which are nighest to it. It is a necessity, but it is an expense.