Mr. Dermott having come into the room, Helen repeated the answer, when he continued, "You will remember that God made a bargain or agreement with Adam and Eve, that if they would yield obedience to his command about the forbidden fruit, they should live forever. This I told you was called a covenant of life, or of works. They forfeited the reward by their disobedience; and now they must pay the penalty. They were driven out of that pleasant home, and were condemned to eternal death. Was this covenant, Walter, made for themselves alone?" "It was made for all mankind." "Where do we learn this?" Mrs. Dermott turned to Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and read,— "'For as by the offence of one, judgment came upon all men to condemnation, even so by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men unto justification of life. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.' "Is it common for God to join children with their parents in his covenants?" "He does in the second commandment." "Yes, and he did with Noah, and also with Abraham. "'And I, behold, I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you.'" "What is the meaning, father, of 'ordinary generation'?" "It means, Helen, that children follow their parents; then they grow up and have families; and thus one generation follows another. Do you remember that very old gentleman we saw at your grandfather's? He said he had lived to see married members of four generations—himself and wife, his son with his wife, his grandson with his wife, and now he has a great-granddaughter, who is just married. "Adam lived to be nine hundred and thirty years old, so that he must have seen many generations of his posterity. How sad must his life have been to think that by his disobedience he had not only forfeited the favor of God, the delightful pleasures of paradise, and the joys of eternal life, but that all who would descend from him must participate in the consequences of his first transgression! They fell with him from his high estate, just as when a man who is immensely wealthy fails. He does not suffer alone. His children and his children's children must become sharers in his poverty. Or as a man who is executed upon the gallows does not suffer alone; his children, to the latest generation, suffer with him. They can never get rid of the disgrace. "Or suppose a man, like our neighbor, Mr. Morse, is dreadfully deformed by scrofula, and has suffered from it all his life, as his father did before him. Now, look at his children. Every one of them is tainted with the same disease. Lydia has it in the form of consumption, Esther in sore eyes, while the little boys, James and Joseph, are always breaking out in great sores upon their bodies.