_5. Summary of Views of the Fall:_ I shall depend on the two foregoing passages, to sustain, in large measure, the views of this lesson, viz., that the fall of Adam was not an accident; that it did not surprise the purposes of God with reference to man's earth-life, much less thwart them; that the fall was as much embraced in the sovereign purposes of God with reference to the earth-life of man as was the Atonement; that without the first the second could not be; that the transition from heaven conditions to earth conditions, the fall, in some way was connected with the propagation of the earth-life of man: "Were it not for our transgression we never should have had seed" is the declaration of Eve, allowed to stand in the Book of Moses as an undoubted truth. But for the transgression of Adam, as the Prophet Lehi tells us, in the above passage, "all things which were created, must have remained in the same state which they were [in] after they were created; and they must have remained forever and had no end. _And they_ [Adam and Eve] _would have had no children_: Wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin." But Adam made the necessary transition from a state of mere innocence, he fell that man might be, and that the experiences of earth-life might follow, and eventuate in something better and greater than mere innocence, _viz._, in virtue; which is goodness, and strength, acquired by conquest of evil.[A]