4. We are told that the prohibition to eat the fruit was issued to Adam before Eve was released from her imprisonment in Adam's side, or from performing the functions of a rib-bone, before she became a woman and a wife; and it is not even implied that it was intended to extend to her. Why, then, in the name of God, should such curses be heaped upon her devoted head for eating the fruit when she had not been forbidden to do so? And it does not appear to have been wrong in any sense, only that Jehovah had issued an order forbidding it. 5. Jehovah professed great sympathy for Adam's lonely condition, and made a help meet for him; and yet the first meat she helped him to, it would seem, damned him and his posterity for ever. In view of this fact, it is probable Adam would have preferred to let her remain a bone in his side. 6. Here let it be noted that Adam and Eve were ignorant and inexperienced beings. They had had no experience in any thing, and hence could not know that such an act, or any other act, was wrong and sinful. 7. Nor could Adam know what the word "die" meant when Jehovah told him he would die the day he ate the fruit, as he had seen nothing die. 8. It may here be said in reply, that they should, in their ignorance, have obeyed the command which was given them To this we reply, they did obey the command of one being. God told them not to eat, and the serpent told them to eat, the fruit; and, not having lived with or had any experience with either of those omnipresent beings, how could they know what would be the consequence of obeying or disobeying either of them? This question of itself is sufficient to settle the matter. They could not possibly know, with no experience in either case, that the consequence would be more serious or more fatal in disobeying Jehovah than the serpent. 9. And as they got their eyes open by eating the fruit, and did not die as Jehovah told them they would (while the serpent told them they would not), it is not to be wondered at that ever after they and their posterity should be more inclined to serve the serpent-devil than Jehovah, seeing that all the happy consequences which the former predicted as the result of eating the fruit were realized, while those of Jehovah were falsified. For proof see chap. 53. 10. The most artful sophistry can not disguise the fact that the doctrine of moral depravity is a slanderous imputation upon divine mercy, goodness, and justice, and challenges not only his goodness, but his good sense. 11. And every page of history and every principle of science demonstrate it to be both false and demoralizing. Man _fell up_, and not _down_. CHAPTER XXXVI.--THE MORAL DEPRAVITY OF MAN A DELUSION.