"Putting aside everything that might excite laughter by its absurdity, or detestation by its profaneness, and confining ourselves merely to an examination of the parts, it is impossible to conceive a story more derogatory to the Almighty, more inconsistent with his wisdom, more contradictory to his power than this story is." In their contentions against the story of Genesis, no less than iu their war upon "the fall" and "original sin" in the men-made creeds of Christendom, infidels have denounced God in most blasphemous terms as the author of all the evil in this world by permitting, through not preventing, the fall; and they have as soundly ridiculed and abused Adam for the part he took in the affair. He has been held up by them as weak and cowardly, because he referred his partaking of the forbidden fruit to the fact that the woman gave to him and he did eat; a circumstance into which they read an effort on the part of the man to escape censure, perhaps punishment, and to cast the blame for his transgression upon the woman. These scoffers proclaim their preference for the variations of this story of a "fall of man" as found in the mythologies of various peoples, say those of Greece or India.[A] But all this aside. The truth is that nothing could be more courageous, sympathetic, or nobly honorable than the course of this world's great Patriarch in his relations to his wife Eve and the "fall." The woman by deception is led into transgression, and stands under the penalty of a broken law. Banishment from the presence of God, banishment from the presence of her husband--death, await her. Thereupon the man, not deceived, but knowingly (as we are assured by Paul), also transgresses. Why? In one aspect of the case in order that he might share the woman's banishment from the comfortable presence of God, and with her die--than which ho higher proof of love could be given--no nobler act of chivalry performed. But primarily he transgressed that "Man might be." He transgressed a less important law that he might comply with one more important, if one may so speak of any of God's laws. The facts are, as we have already seen, that the conditions which confronted Adam in his earth-life were afore time known to him; that of his own volition he accepted them, and came to earth to meet them. [Footnote A: See Ingersoll's Lectures, "Liberty of Man, Woman and Child," where the great orator, contrasts the story of the Pall given in the Bible with that of Brahma in the Hindoo mythology, and extravagantly praises the latter to the disparagement of the former.] LESSON IX. (Scripture Reading Exercise.) THE ADAMIC DISPENSATION--III. ANALYSIS. I. The Purpose of Man's Earth Life. II. Epicurean Doctrine. III. Book of Mormon Doctrine--Men Are That They Might Have Joy. REFERENCES. Book of Mormon--Nephi ii; Alma xiii and xlii, and the notes of this lesson. NOTES. _The Purpose of Man's Earth-Life.--"Men are that they might have joy."_