is sometimes urged that it was morally necessary for the original progenitors of the race to possess the power and liability to sin, in order to make them free agents. Free agents, indeed! That is certainly a novel kind of free agency, which not only makes a man free to commit an act which it is known will lead to his own destruction and the ruin of the entire human race, but implants in him the inclination to do it. This is free agency run mad. We will illustrate the principle. A mother sees her little child approaching an open well, and turns heedlessly away, and lets the child rush into the jaws of death; and, when reproved for the act, she raises the plea, "Oh, I did not want to interfere with its free agency!" Here is the Christian logic of free agency put in practice. God is represented as setting traps around the human family, knowing they will be caught; and this is called moral freedom or free agency. The rat enjoys the same kind of moral freedom when he creeps beneath the deadfall in quest of food, and takes the chance of misplacing the triggers. There is no free agency in any rational sense in furnishing a man with a rope to hang himself, knowing that it would be used for that purpose; and this the orthodox God has done for the whole human family, so that we are all now suspended on the gallows of total depravity and moral death. THE FALL AND CURSE. We will now notice some of the awful consequences said to have resulted from eating the forbidden fruit,--"the _worldwide curse_" pronounced upon the human race as the penalty for that act. Several distinct effects are enumerated as consequences of the deed. But a critical investigation of the matter in the light of the present age will show, that instead of being curses, they are blessings, and have added greatly to the enjoyment and happiness of the human family; and, consequently, we should now be in a more deplorable condition than we are if "our primitive parents" had heeded the divine interdiction, and let the fruit alone. We will look briefly at some of the consequences, and observe whether they have really turned out to be curses, or not. The first effect produced by the act of Father Adam and Mother Eve eating the forbidden fruit appears to have been that of opening their eyes so that they could see and distinguish objects around them. It certainly was a very singular way of cursing human beings to grant them the glorious boon of vision, and thus relieve them from the necessity of groping their way through life. As to the gift of sight being a curse, there are thousands of human beings now in the world who would like to be cursed in that way--those who were born blind, or have lost their sight. "The rest of mankind" would consider it to be a great misfortune or curse to be placed in the original condition of Adam and Eve in this respect. We must admit, then, that this curse turned out to be a blessing, and that we are indebted to the serpent-devil for it; and, consequently, he