"Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy pain and thy conception; in pain thou shalt bring forth children..." This was the penalty pronounced upon Eve for her part in the tragedy. The question arises: Was Eve never to be a mother but for this transaction? This, if not the only, is at least the most natural inference. Then how was the race to be propagated? or was it to be propagated at all? Adam for his part was condemned to hard labor, and altho creation was supposed to have been finished and complete, the ground was cursed so as to make it produce thorns and thistles to annoy and tantalize him and increase his labor. Were none of these things on the earth before? Were the rose bushes in the Garden of Eden "thornless"? "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return." Several questions arise here. Was Adam to be immortal in the flesh if he had not eaten of the forbidden fruit? Did death enter the world, as we have always been taught, because of this sin? And if Adam had not sinned would he and Eve still be living in the Garden of Eden, without the knowledge of good and evil, naked and unashamed to this day? If Eve was never to become a mother if she had not sinned, would she and Adam still be there alone, with nothing but the animal world about them for companions? And if death only entered the world because of sin, why does all nature die? Man alone was capable of sin, and according to the story, man alone sinned,--unless we include the serpent. Yet, not a beast of the field, a fowl of the air, a fish of the deep, nor a reptile or creeping thing of all the earth has ever lived but that it died, or will die. Not a tree has ever grown, not a plant has ever opened its leaves, blades or petals to the sun; not a seed has ever germinated, nor a flower ever bloomed that was not doomed to die. Did all this come upon all nature because Adam ate an apple? Would all the beasts of the field and the birds of the air, paraded before Adam that he might name them, be still living with him in the Garden of Eden, if he had not sinned? Would all the plants and trees and flowers that grew and bloomed in the Garden of Eden in the days of Adam and Eve's innocence be still there, with the same leaves and blooms, just as they were, if man had not sinned? These questions I know look silly. But if we are forced to accept the premise, we must be prepared to accept the natural conclusion to which it leads. And if death--physical death--as orthodoxy has always taught, entered the world only because of Adam's sin, it naturally and inevitably leads to the conclusions I have indicated.