We need not speculate upon the nature of the thing forbidden. It is enough to know here that partaking of the thing forbidden by the commandment led to the knowledge of evil, as well as of good--to knowledge that comes of experience; and though, as I have before argued, the transgression so far from surprising the purposes of God was essential to them, yet when law is transgressed, in the nature of things, penalties must follow, else laws are but a mockery and the reign of law a myth. Adam transgressed the law, as already detailed;[A] the penalties followed. The nature of those penalties must be found in the events following the "fall" as consequences as well as in the penalty pronounced--"In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." The harmony of things was broken: innocence fled; union with God was severed; God banished man from his presence--spiritual death;[B] physical death also followed; for as to his body, dust man is, and unto dust shall he return, was the decree of God,[C] and all the woes that make up the sum of evil in man's earth life followed. [Footnote A: Lessons VII and VIII.] [Footnote B: "The task we have set ourselves is to investigate the essential nature of Spiritual Death. And we have found it to consist of a want of communion with God" (Drummond's "Natural Law in the Spiritual World," p. 158). So that spiritual life consists in a union with God; destroy that union--and sinning against God destroys it--and spiritual death ensues. For this doctrine we have the warrant of revelation: "Adam * * * partook of the forbidden fruit and transgressed the commandment; * * * whereupon I, the Lord God, caused that he should be cast out from the Garden of Eden, from my presence, because of his transgression, wherein he became spiritually dead, which is the first death, even that same death which is the last death, which is spiritual, which shall be pronounced upon the wicked when I shall say, 'Depart ye cursed'" (Doc. & Cov., Sec. xxix:40, 41). "The fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal; that is, they were cut off from the presence of the Lord" (Alma xlii:9).] [Footnote C: Gen. iii:19. The several sentences of this chapter pronounced upon man and woman should be included as penalties affixed to the commandment, "Thou shalt not eat of it," as well as "Thou shalt surely die."]