Tho whole story bears the strongest marks of being the production of an infantile intellect. The simple manner in which the writer tells us that the man and woman sewed fig leaves together and made aprons for themselves is sufficient evidence of this. We cannot believe that Adam and Eve went through the many processes necessary for the production of the needles and thread, with which to sew their leaves together. Then the conversation between god, as he took his stroll in the garden in the cool of the evening, and Adam and Eve, is just what we should expect from the crude imaginations of our early ancestors; as also is the manner in which the man placed the blame on the woman, and she in her turn upon the serpent. The curse, too, is precisely in the same style; first the serpent, then the woman, afterwards the man, and lastly the earth itself being brought under the divine anathema. No less apparent is the absurdity of the writer stating that Adam called his wife Eve “because she was the mother of all living,” when there were then no other human beings in existence; and declaring that god made coats and breeches (see “Breeches Bible”) of skins, when as yet death had not entered into the world. Such fables cannot be accepted as true history by the intellect of the nineteenth century. That we suffer for the sins of our fathers is unfortunately too true; but that we shall eternally frizzle for them I declare, without the least hesitation, to be a vile falsehood and an insult to our intellects. The vices and diseases of our ancestors are undoubtedly reproduced in ourselves, as are their good deeds and lofty sentiments; and we again transmit these properties to our offspring. We have, in fact, the power of rendering happy or miserable those who follow us, and making the general state of society somewhat better or worse. Our great mental attributes were not surely evolved within us for no purpose, and to lie dormant, but that we should exercise them and use them for the moral and social improvement of ourselves and our fellows. But to imagine that we shall suffer again in some other condition of existence, because of our fathers’ sins, is the height of insanity.