Now, was the first sin that eternally damned the whole human race a mere matter of eating from a forbidden tree? It seems so from the natural import of the language used. "When the woman saw that the tree was _good for food_ ..." Could a just God inflict such an awful punishment as orthodox Christianity teaches, not only upon this simple, ignorant couple, but upon the entire human race for all time and eternity for such a trifling incident? I trow not. Besides, I have often thought that if that particular tree had not been specifically pointed out and forbidden, probably neither Adam nor Eve would ever have had any desire to eat of it. It is the forbidden that always draws the strongest. Let us examine this story closely and see whether the serpent or God told the truth. Don't be alarmed and accuse me of blasphemy or sacrilege. We set out in search of truth; let us try to find it. God is alleged to have said, "of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for _in the day_ that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Gen. ii, 17. But he _did not_ die, according to the subsequent story, for over nine hundred years thereafter. The fact that the penalty: "For dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," was pronounced _after_ the transgression, does not fulfill the statement "in the _day_ thou eatest thereof." But we shall refer to this again. The serpent is alleged to have said: "Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as God, knowing good and evil." Gen. iii, 4, 5. And verse 7 says: "And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked." And verse 22 says: "And Jehovah God said, 'Behold, the man is become as _one of us_, to know good and evil.'" Does not this confirm that what the serpent said was true? The temptation is very great here to digress far enough to offer a rational interpretation of this beautiful poetic allegory of the "Fall of Man." But it is outside the scope and purpose of this work, and I leave it with the simple question: Was not that which we call the first sin only the expression of man's natural aspirations onward and upward, in search of knowledge and a higher and better and broader and larger life, that always entails its penalties of trial, suffering, toil, and more or less disappointment? When God comes to call them to account, Adam puts the blame on his wife, and she shifts it to the serpent. Note what follows: The serpent is cursed to crawl upon his belly, just as we see him now. Did he walk uprightly before, and did he have legs and feet? "And dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life." What did he eat before? As a matter of fact, serpents do not eat dust now. Remember, this sentence was pronounced _to the serpent_ himself: "And Jehovah God said unto the serpent,"--not to Adam and Eve. We shall have occasion to recall this again.