And St. John explains this more fully, when he tells us that the voice of the Lord, the Word of God whom Adam heard walking among the trees of the garden, was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ, who was the life of Adam and all men, and the light of Adam and all men. All death and misery, and all ignorance and darkness, come at first from forgetting the Lord Jesus Christ, and forgetting that he is about our path and about our bed, and spying out all our ways; as St. John says, that Christ’s light is always shining in the darkness of this world, but the darkness comprehendeth it not; that he came to his own, but his own received him not; but as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, as he gave to man at first; for St. Luke says, that Adam was the Son of God. But a son must depend on his father; and therefore man was sent into the world to depend on God. So do not fancy that man before he fell could do without God’s grace, though he cannot now. If man had never fallen, he would have been just as much in need of God’s grace to keep him from falling. To deny that is the root of what is called the Pelagian heresy. Therefore the Church has generally said, and said most truly, that ‘Adam stood by grace in Paradise;’ and had a ‘supernatural gift;’ and that as long as he used that gift, he was safe, and only so long. Now what does supernatural mean? It means ‘above nature.’ Adam had a human nature: but he wanted something to keep him above that nature, lest he should die, as all natural things on earth must. Trees and flowers, birds and beasts, yea, the great earth itself must die, and have an end in time, because it has had a beginning. Man had and has still a human nature; the most beautiful, noble, and perfect nature in the world; high above the highest animals in rank, beauty, understanding, and feelings. Human nature is made, so the Bible tells us, in some mysterious way, after the likeness of God; of Christ, the eternal Son of man, who is in heaven; for the Bible speaks of the Word or Voice of God as appearing to man in something of a human voice: reasoning with him as man reasons with man; and feeling toward him human feelings. That is the doctrine of the Bible; of David and the prophets, just as much as of Genesis or of St. Paul. That is a great mystery and a great glory: but that alone could not make man good, could not even keep him alive. For God made man for something more noble and blessed than to follow even his own lofty human nature. God made the animals to follow their natures each after its kind, and to do each what it liked, without sin. But he made man to do more than that; to do more than what he _likes_; namely, to do what he _ought_. God made man to love him, to obey him, to copy him, by doing God’s will, and living God’s life, lovingly, joyfully, and of his own free will, as a son follows the father whose will he delights to do.