In their contentions against the story of Genesis, no less than in their war upon "the fall" and "original sin" in the men made creeds of Christendom, infidels have denounced God in most blasphemous terms as the author of all the evil in this world by permitting, through not preventing, the fall; and they as soundly ridicule and abuse Adam for the part he took in the affair. He has been held up by them as weak and cowardly, because he referred his partaking of the forbidden fruit to the fact that the woman gave to him and he did eat; a circumstance into which they read an effort on the part of the man to escape censure, perhaps punishment, and to cast the blame for his transgression upon the woman. These scoffers proclaim their preference for the variations of this story of a "fall of man" as found in the mythologies of various peoples, say those of Greece or India. [19] But all this aside. The truth is that nothing could be more courageous, sympathetic, or nobly honorable than the course of our world's great Patriarch in his relations to his wife Eve and the "fall." The woman by deception is led into transgression, and stands under the penalty of a broken law. Banishment from the presence of God; banishment from the presence of her husband, if he partakes not with her in the transgression; dissolution of spirit and body--physical death--all await her! Thereupon, the man, not deceived, but knowingly (as we are assured by Paul), also transgresses. Why? In one aspect of the case in order that he might share the woman's banishment from the dear presence of God, and with her die--than which no higher proof of love could be given--no nobler act of chivalry performed. But primarily he transgressed that "Man might be." He transgressed a less important law that he might comply with one more important, if one may so speak of any of God's laws. The facts are, as we shall presently see, that the conditions which confronted Adam in his earth-life were afore time known to him; that of his own volition he accepted them, and came to earth to meet them. Man an Immortal Spirit.