I believe they lost intellectual powers which fallen man has never regained. Operating by the consent of natural laws, sinless man would have wrought endless miracles. The mind, winged like a seraph, and armed like a thunderbolt, would have breached the very citadel of knowledge and robbed it of its treasures. I think they lost a plane of being only a little lower than the angels. I believe they lost youth, beauty, and physical immortality. I believe they lost the virtues of heart and soul, and many of the magnificent powers of mind, which made them the images of God, and which would have even brushed aside the now impenetrable veil which hides from mortal eyes the face of Infinite Love; that Love which gave the ever-blessed light, and filled the earth with music of bird, and breeze, and sea; that Love whose melodies we sometimes faintly catch, like spirit voices, from the souls of orators and poets; that Love which inlaid the arching firmament of heaven with jewels sparkling with eternal fires. But thank God, their fall was not like the remediless fall of Lucifer and his angels, into eternal darkness. Thank God, in this "night of death" hope _does_ see a star! It is the star of Bethlehem. Thank God, "listening Love" _does_ "hear the rustle of a wing!" It is the wing of the resurrection angel. The memories and images of paradise lost have been impressed on every human heart, and every individual of the race has his own ideal of that paradise, from the cradle to the grave. But that ideal in so far as its realization in this world is concerned, is like the rainbow, an elusive phantom, ever in sight, never in reach, resting ever on the horizon of hope. THE PARADISE OF CHILDHOOD.