WE have been reading the history of Adam’s fall. With that fall we have all to do; for we all feel the fruits of it in the sinful corruptions which we bring into the world with us. And more, every fall which we have is like Adam’s fall: every time we fall into wilful sin, we do what Adam did, and act over again, each of us many times in our lives, that which he first acted in the garden of Paradise. At least, all mankind suffer for something. Look at the sickness, death, bloodshed, oppression, spite, and cruelty, with which the world is so full now, of which it has been full, as we know but too well from history, ever since Adam’s time. The world is full of misery, there is no denying that. How did that come? It must have come somehow. There must be some reason for all this sorrow. The Bible tells us a reason for it. If anyone does not like the Bible reason, he is bound to find a better reason. But what if the Bible reason, the story of Adam’s fall, be the only rational and sensible explanation which ever has been, or ever will be given, of the way in which death and misery came among men? Some people will say: What puzzle is there in it? All animals die, why should not man? All animals fight and devour each other, why should not man do so too? But why need we suppose that man is fallen? Why should he not have been meant by nature to be just what he is? Some scholars who fancy themselves wise, and think that they know better than the Bible, will say that now, and pride themselves on having said a very fine thing; ignorant men, too, often are led into the same mistake, and are willing enough to say: “What if we are brutish, and savage, and ignorant, and spiteful, indulging ourselves, hating and quarrelling with each other? God made us what we are, and we cannot help it.” But there is a voice in the heart of every man, and just in proportion as a man is a man, and not a beast and a savage, that voice cries in his heart more loudly: No; God did not make you what you are. You are not meant to be what you are, but something better. You are not meant to fight and devour each other as the animals do; for you are meant to be better than they. You are not meant to die as the animals do; for you feel something in you which cannot die, which hates death. You may try to be a mere savage and a beast, but you cannot be content to be so. And yet you feel ready to fall lower, and get more and more brutish. What can be the reason? There must be something wrong about men, something diseased and corrupt in them, or they would not have this continual discontent with themselves for being no better than they are; this continual hankering and longing after some happiness, some knowledge, some good and noble state which they do not see round them, and never have felt in themselves. Man must have fallen, fallen from some good and right state into which he was put at first, and for which he is hankering and craving now.