No License for Sin.--Let it not be supposed, however, that disobedience to divine requirements is or ever can be justifiable. On the contrary, obedience is the great law upon which all blessings are predicated. [16] What was done by our First Parents in an exceptional instance and for a special purpose, constitutes no license for men to commit sin. Adam and Eve, having obeyed God's command to "multiply and replenish," reaped the reward of their obedience. But they had to be punished for their disobedience in the matter of the forbidden fruit. "The wages of sin is death." The fall was necessary, but it had to be atoned for: it could not be justified. "The Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance." He can nullify its effects, however, and bring good out of evil. Redemption was also necessary, and the Atonement preordained; but this did not make the murder of the innocent Savior any the less heinous. The perpetrators of that deed were guilty of a crime--the crime of crimes--and their punishment was inevitable. Were it otherwise, God would not be just, and would therefore cease to be God. [17] Fruits of the Fall.--The fall had a twofold direction--downward, yet forward. It brought man into the world and set his feet upon progression's highway. But it also brought death, with all its sad concomitants. Not such a death as the righteous now contemplate, and such as both righteous and unrighteous undergo, as a change preparatory to resurrection; but eternal death--death of the spirit as well as the body. There was no resurrection when Adam fell--not upon this planet. The World in Pawn.--Hell had seemingly triumphed over man's--or rather over woman's weakness. It was as if the world had been put in pawn. Death was the pawnbroker, with a twofold claim upon all creation. Everything pertaining to Earth was in his grasp, and there was no help for it this side of Heaven. No part of what had been pledged could be used as the means of redemption. Adam could not redeem himself, great and mighty though he was, in the spirit; for he was no other than Michael the Archangel, leader of the heavenly host when Lucifer and his legions were overthrown. But that same puissant Michael was now a weak mortal man, under the penalty of a broken law, powerless to repair the ruin he had wrought. He and the race that was to spring from him were eternally lost, unless Omnipotence would intervene, and do for them what they could not do for themselves.