The reek of liquor was still in the air, the sawdust itself was redolent of it. But none of this now stirred the blood of David Joslin. Two or three times he raised the half-full glass in front of him level with his eye—and placed it back again untasted on the table. At last, quietly, pale, he took from his coat pocket a heavy volume, which often he had carried there. There were certain worn places where the book fell open readily. Familiar words stared up at him. The solitary reader, trained to literal interpretations, pondered what he read. He endeavored to restore the vision of the Garden, the first home of Man. He undertook to conceive the Temptation, to picture the Serpent himself; indeed, tried to think as John Calvin thought when he wrote his words: But, since it could not have been a trivial offense, but must have been a detestable crime, that was so severely punished by God, we must consider the nature of Adam’s sin, which kindled the dreadful flame of divine wrath against the whole human race. Augustine properly observes, that pride was the first of all evils. But we may obtain a more complete definition from the nature of the temptation as described by Moses. For as the Woman, by the subtlety of the Serpent, was seduced to discredit the word of God, it is evident that the fall commenced in disobedience. This is also confirmed by Paul, who states that all men were ruined by the disobedience of one. With propriety, therefore, Bernard teaches that the gate of salvation is opened to us, when in the present day we receive the Gospel with our ears, as death was once admitted at the same doors when they lay open to Satan. Augustine? Bernard? Who were they? Dust and forgotten for the most part. But after them and before them men had lived, human beings, hoping, aspiring, falling, sinning. David Joslin, mountaineer, turned once more to the pages of the old dogmatist. This is that hereditary corruption which the fathers called _original sin_; meaning by sin, the depravation of a nature previously good and pure; on which subject they had much contention. Yet this timidity could not prevent Pelagius from arising, who profanely pretended that the sin of Adam only ruined himself, and did not injure his descendants. But the temerity of the Pelagians and Celestians will not appear surprising to him who perceives from the writings of Augustine what a want of modesty they discover in everything else. Every descendant from the impure source is born infected with the contagion of sin; and even before we behold the light of life, we are in the sight of God defiled and polluted. For “who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?” The Book of Job tells us, “Not one.”