CHAPTER V.

THE FORCE OF TRUTH.
" What is truth ? " was the pertinent question of Pilate when Jesus said, " Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice."
Truth is the inmost reality, or substance, of thought, the stable element in all things. It is a fixed principle, and forms of thought or conduct are permanent or otherwise in accordance with the proportion of truth embodied in them. There is a modicum of truth in all forms, else they could not exist. Unadulterated error is negative, nothing.
Love is spirit. Like the wind, it bloweth where it listeth and attaches itself where it will. Love is feminine, magnetic, and in union with the positive force of truth brings forth immortality.
The law of creation is the same in all, begetting and conceiving ; positive and negative forces in action and reaction. Love, in itself, is not light,
8o EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
but the union with truth begets light, the rays of which are thought.
The mind of man perceives truth vaguely, gropes after it, and asks with Pilate what it is, feeling within himself hints of its stable quality and its glorious splendor. It is well that he per- ceives it only in fractions ; its full body would blast him with excess of light.
We are, in truth, what we think and what we love. These are our realities, the one masculine and the other feminine, the male and female in each one of us, whose union or conjunction de- velops the germ of immortality. This process is aided and fostered by the physical sex union, where the love of two souls coalesces in the union of two bodies.
Good, true, healthful thought develops into good action, and, working outward through the body, builds healthy vital atoms for its construction and renewal. But it is only in part that truth can manifest in thought. We are environed by a world of images which mirror forth with more or less accuracy some reality ; the mind perceives the image, but can only surmise what is the truth concealed in it.
THE FORCE OF TRUTH. 8 1
Man thinks, and the thought takes form in in- ventions outside of his body, which are at best clumsy images of the reality he endeavored to embody or portray, and the image is never di- vorced from this inner reality, which is the truth of it. That this weak image of immortality, and its way of attainment, can be set forth in words is proof of its reality in the inner world of the ego. There is no absolute falsehood ; every lie has something true in it or it could not be ex- pressed, truth and its negative falsehood being intimately blended, although always at war. The absolute unconditioned truth cannot be expressed. We behold its radiant shadow, or image, in the beauty, grandeur, and sublimity of nature, in the perfection of form, and in everything which is or can be of use in the physical, mental, or moral world.
But if we worship simply the image and do not perceive its inner significance, stability, or reality, the soul soon falls back on itself empty and hun- gry, for the soul can never be filled or satisfied with fleeting shadows.
All men have an instinctive love of truth ; even the lowest scoundrel has a subtle undercurrent of
82 E VOL UTION OF I MM OR TALIT Y.
respect for it, which gets expression in his best moments, toward another scoundrel who is a chosen pal.
" Perfect love casteth out fear," the distinguish- ing mark of the slave, and in it he stands a free man ; but truth makes him steadfast, firm, in the new-found freedom of love. Man's love is under the dominion of his will and reason if he honestly and diligently seeks for its right use, for in the final analysis use determines the quality and value of any possession.
Idle, useless action is demoralizing and destruc- tive, not only to those who indulge in it, but to the whole interdependent structure of society. The perfect system and order of the heavenly bodies, each in its appointed orbit, true to its time and place, moving, not entirely each for its own well-being, but for the harmonious adjustment of the whole starry system, have no idle, irrelevant, useless motions to destroy the universal harmony.
The universe is a mighty orchestra, evolving grand melodies with infinite variations. Its intri- cate mechanism suggests wheels within wheels, moving in perfect order and harmony in the development of that grand diapason whose theme is use.
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In the material world all is order, system, and harmonious action, but an ascent into the world of mind reveals another condition. Love ceases to be wholly an attraction of matter, and educa- tion, taste, choice enter into its affinities. Pas- sion is no longer under the brute law of condition, times, or the demands of the female, but is free to express itself at any time, unless under the law of the higher nature of reason and right.
Thus man gets out of time and becomes a dis- cordant note in nature's anthem, and who shall correct the false note and set the singer in his true place ? Only himself can do this, when he shall pause, correct his errors, watch for the true beat, and begin again his orderly march in the evolution of life.
To love God, according to Jesus, is the first and greatest commandment, and God is that spirit in man which creates. It is his love nature, and he should strive to perfect it in the stable element of truth, by thinking, speaking, and living the kruth in all ways and to the uttermost.
" God is Love," that is, the creative or forma- tive power of the universe. But the God that is Love is not that great Infinite Energy in which and of which are all things created.
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In the story of Genesis this Love God was out- witted by the serpent who pointed man to a higher condition than that of the slavish obedi- ence of ignorance. The finite character of that God is further shown in the declaration that he " repented that he had made man," and through- out the Old Testament we find him engaged in more or less successful struggles with the stiff- necked and rebellious Jews.
Jesus says, " God is a spirit, and those who worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." The " spirit and the truth " you are enjoined to worship in are your own love and the reality of your own soul. The spirit of God entering in impregnates the soul, and this is wor- ship in its fullest sense. To know truth one must worship it, not with song or words or ceremo- nies, however charming or esthetically satisfying, but in the secret recesses of being, when " thou hast entered into thy closet and shut to the door, that nothing may distract or disturb the calm of spirit."
In that silence and utter calm the search for truth and its worship are to be prosecuted. From the soul, the center of being, a spark may shine
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out illuminating the darkness within, and giving evidence of the birth of the soul into immortality. But if all is dark when the boisterous outer nature is calmed, the force of will, love, and desire, the mind, the energy of the entire being, should be focused, drawn to a central point in the solar plexus (the great ganglia of nerves back of and a little above the pit of the stomach), which is the central station of the soul. Be patient, earnest, longing for the light, and fix thought and imagin- ation on this center where love and truth unite, and it may be that a flicker of flame, a gentle warmth may give evidence that the fire is lighted which will consume all error and weakness. Love and truth unite to bring forth the priceless offspring of immortality.
The vibrations of spirit give pleasure, but to insure that result, spirit must be organized into a form. Too rapid vibrations disintegrate forms, as coal or wood is disintegrated by fire. The more com- plete and perfect the love spirit, the more rapid the vibrations ; and if in a form the attractions of whose atoms is powerful enough to hold it together, the greater the pleasure derived from the vibrations.
Truth, or reality, is the stable center, even
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of the pleasures derived from the vibrations of love, which constructs forms by the cooperation of truth, and destroys that which it builds by excess of itself.
Truth fixes the granite mountains in their im- movable bases, but it is love which howls around them in storm and rain, or smiles on them in the sunshine, dissolving and disintegrating them into soil and mists and vapors. With slower vibra- tions these again solidify to preserve the moun- tain form, strength, and beauty.
So truth and love are one, in union, producing that fire body which is immortal and which they who are truly wedded shall become. What is this which evolves slowly, laboriously, from min- eral to vegetable, from vegetable to animal, from animal to man, who, looking up at the sun and the stars, questions the existence of God, while the same mystery is consciously within himself?
We have many names for this force which we cannot wholly explain, this something which breathes, digests food, walks, moves, uses our bodies, sleeps when we are weary, wakens in the morning, grows flesh and bones, and heals the wounds of the bodies we abuse. It is a tire-
THE FORCE OF TRUTH. 8 J
less energy, not limited by objects nor their laws of being ; centered in man it is Soul. Science has sought to capture and define it, laboring with microscope and telescope, with scalpel and cruci- ble, but in vain, for even protoplasm refuses to yield up the secret, to that which denies the ex- istence of it in the very self which seeks to dis- cover it elsewhere.
Scientific research has established the fact that the cell is the beginning of forms, which, however complex they may become, are built to complete- ness by an aggregation of cells.
The belief that the first cell of any series is masculine is very ancient, and probably arises from the fact that the fire of being resides in the male. From this fact doubtless comes the Buddhistic conception that the energy of creation is a semi- nal rain which continually descends from the Brahma Lokas (God-worlds), and it is probably from the same fact that all religions have a male deity at the head of the pantheon, whether it be filled with a multitude of gods or is tenanted nominally by only one.
The leadership of the race is vested in Adam from the same cause, and herein is also to be found
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the reason why the whole race is collectively called
man.
This question of cell growth, its activities and its meaning as related to man and woman, is embodied in an address before a Federation of Women's Clubs, held in Michigan in 1895. The address is here reproduced by consent of the author. It is entitled : —
HIGHER THOUGHT OF SEX.
Science halts in its last analysis of matter, baffled by a principle which eludes investigation, presenting everywhere its sphinx-like presence, the principle of life. We cannot delve deeply enough into matter to reach, much less define that principle, but we can follow scientific research far enough to learn that its first intelligent ac- tivities are sexual in character. Everything in nature is male and female, and the creative prin- ciples are the principles of generation. The negative female principle gathers together and concentrates ; the positive male principle scatters, casts abroad. Through this positive and negative action currents of electricity pass from pole to pole to bind, enfold, maintain all things in their
THE FORCE OF TRUTH. 89
appointed places. All forms are generated through this positive and negative interchange, and these are the principles of sex.
Growth, evolution, are the fruit of sex activities, and the progressive changes take place through the feminine principle, or form. In the lowest animal and plant life the best nourished cells develop females, the smaller, underfed ones males. Female-ness is quiescent satisfaction ; male-ness is hungry activity. Protozoa are single protoplas- mic cells with a nucleus or center of reproductive matter. They are microscopic infusoria and their universe is a tiny drop of water. Yet they live, love, and propagate their kind after the universal law of sex, and in one regard they may seem to have an advantage over more highly organized creatures ; they are potentially immortal. In " Evolution of Sex," by Geddes and Thomson, oc- curs the following statement: ''Protozoa not too highly differentiated, living in conditions where conjugation is possible, have a freedom from natural death." Alfred Binet says : " In ciliate infusorians, conjugation, which means an exchange of nuclear elements, is the necessary condition of eternal youth and immortality."
9
These nuclear elements are the reproductive cells ; these creatures multiply by fission, or cell division, but they live through conjugation, the sex union in which their elements mingle and again reform, without which union the divided cells soon waste away and die. The simple elements of their being are mingled, fused ; nothing is withheld, and the result is " eternal youth and immortality." That fact is worth mak- ing a note of; in it is contained a hint on which humanity may well ponder. Here love is born, in this lowest phase of life, in the form of satis- faction of protoplasmic hunger, and thus at the very bottom of the ladder of sentient existence we get the lesson that love is stronger than death.
A grade higher true sexual attraction is devel- oped with free promiscuous association, and from this point selective sexuality arises, the swarming hordes of insect life associating in pairs after a brief courtship. Farther on among the birds and mam- mals true psychic love is evolved. Cooperation exists, partnerships are formed, and the tenderest affection prevails far beyond the breeding period. They have their standard of morality and of man- ners ; they admire, love, and hate ; they are
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jealous, frank, suspicious, or confident. The vague attraction of the nuclear cell has become a settled reproductive impulse, out of which blossom all the amenities of animal life.
The same general evolvement takes place in the vegetable world from the lowest to the highest organism, the business of nature being the creation of new forms of life through the sex activities, and these creative activities are everywhere the out- come of the vivifying principle of love. Erasmus Darwin's "Loves of the Flowers" furnishes some charming pictures of the variety and beauty of reproductive plant life, and the author affirms that 11 the whole of nature is a hymn of love."
This is the genesis of sex. As the psychic or emotional nature is evolved sex attraction expands into all the phases of the domestic affec- tions. The tiger and his mate are a unit against the world in the protection of their offspring ; the higher apes pay their mates and offspring the ten- derest attention ; even the blind mole grieves itself to death over its dead companion. In their native state harmony reigns in the domestic life of animals, for they are obedient to the laws of their being. Among them, from the lowest to the
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EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY,
highest, the female is free. She calls the male or dismisses him at her pleasure. This is an invari- able law of undomesticated animal life, but when we come to the human animal plane we find a total lapse from nature's methods, a complete reversal of her order, with a consequent degradation of the sex functions. This may well be one of those things that the angels desire to look into. If the supreme architect of the universe, before whose wisdom every head must bow, selected the sex principles as the foundation of His stupendous structure of life, what part do we play who have reversed their progressive order and thrust them down among the shameful indecencies of thought ? When the psychic and spiritual natures are capable of the highest development we should expect to find the most reverent treatment of the subject, together with the greatest wisdom and knowledge concerning its manifold activities, powers, and uses. For sex is of the soul and of the spirit as well as of the body, for the God from whom we derive our spiritual being is our father and our mother. In this higher range of being, we might hope for the flower of a free and glorious womanhood and a noble, self-poised, aspiring manhood, the per-
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feet chord and rhythm of life, beings truly only a little lower than the angels. But alas for human progress ! The legal enactments of our higher civilization do not hesitate to degrade the physical sex functions below the level of the brutes, by making refusal to cohabit by either party in mar- riage a ground for divorce. Why does this fright- ful degradation exist, this lapse from love to the monstrous perversions of lust? Because the womanhood of the world is not free, and because we are not free, — we think the thought of slaves. Our ideals are perverted ; instead of taking coun- sel of the higher nature, we are cheated of our birthright by the maxims of policy and tremble before the rod of the world's censure, when it rests with us to remodel society and to elevate life to the plane of the divine order and harmony.
Nothing can exist in external form which is not first thought. No condition is possible but has its genesis in the world of idea. Thought shapes the world ; it is what we think it to be ; we put into it such quality as we will by the quality of our thought.
A magnificent elm stands in a meadow, sound, sturdy, full of sap, with the life of a century in
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EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
its veins. A poet dreams in its shadow. He hears all the winds that blow sing in its leafy branches; the carol of the happy birds that reared their young in its shelter before he was born ; the chatter of active squirrels fills a pause ; and the echo of the laughter of boys who swarmed up its trunk a century ago. He rejoices in its glowing, palpitating life experiences, its green head towering heavenward, ringed round with sunshine and the light of all the stars. " These and much more than these the poet sees," and so some new interpreter of nature, some Keats or Wordsworth, may make the elm immortal by re- vealings of its complex life. But the owner of the soil where it is rooted regards it with other eyes. He measures it critically. It is so many feet of lumber, worth so much per foot. That is all there is of the tree. He will use it in building a saloon on the corner of the village street. It is the same tree, but each makes of it according to his quality, and the thought of the one lifts us to the stars, while the other thought casts us down to hell. As whatever we think tends to become externalized, so the poem in the heart of the poet will get itself written, and the saloon in the heart
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of the churl will get itself built, and out of one will be the issues of life and out of the other the issues of death.
We are what we think. The eternal verities take no note of our affectations and hypocrisies of speech and manner. We may prate of the freedom and dignity of the " new woman," but as long as we are simple echoes of conventional popular opinions on the subject before us we have neither freedom nor dignity.
Liberty is first of the soul. She only is the free woman who has thought herself out into the light of absolute truth and can dispassionately consider and accept the positive right. A bold heart is required for free thought, and the courage and enthusiasm that inspire the martyr will alone induce us to accept the consequence of such thinking, when it is applied to the relation of the sexes. By it
The balance beam of fate is bent, The bounds of good and ill are rent.
The collective thought of communities forms conditions, and it is this collective thought of sex which makes it almost questionable for a woman
g6 EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
to speak to women on matters pertaining to it, while free discussion before the two sexes which make the one whole is impossible, except, possi- bly, in some scientific gathering. But even the scientist handles it with reserve. Its physiology is fenced off as if it belonged to a department of nature separate and distinct from the whole being, and scientific prudery puts a premium on igno- rance.
If there is anything impure in sex activities it is in the mind of the thinker. We may make legitimate war on improper habits and perverted instincts, but the functions of nature are of God's planning, and the wise will seek to understand and use them according to His idea.
While we drift hither and thither on the bosom of the world's hoary conventions, marriage is be- coming a problem that humanity is afraid of try- ing to solve. Its ideals are almost wholly material, and men and women are bought and sold in the world's matrimonial market, and always to the in- creased degradation of unprotected womanhood, for where legitimate marriage is a matter of bar- gain and sale, illegitimate passion will reward itself with some defenseless prey.
THE FORCE OF TRUTH. 9 J
Childless marriage is fast becoming the ideal with both sexes, the prostitution of sex to the indulgence of physical appetite and passion. Vi- brate this thought with sufficient force and activ- ity and we get a generation of women physically diseased before puberty, and if not incapable of motherhood the function is exercised through such suffering and danger as must react most unfavor- ably on offspring. What is the meaning of the frightful increase in child immorality but this pros- titution of sex? Low, licentious, selfish thought (for such thought is not cast out by the form of words which make the legal union), in the con- ception, during gestation, and throughout the plastic period of infancy and early childhood, brings forth its deadly fruit. The child breathes the very air of lewdness. An undisciplined father, an outraged mother ; no animal save man, the crown of creation, will seek to cohabit with a pregnant female, and no female animal but woman invites her male companion during the period of gestation. Nature protects the new life, but we outrage nature and must suffer from her reprisals. The animal expression of union which is all there is of love in too many marriages ; the angry re-
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volt against motherhood ; the shams, conceal- ments, and mysteries which mark the higher order of homes — all these vibrations wake correspond- ing vibrations in the sex centers of the child, and the side of the nature which should slumber throughout a tranquil youth is roused to a prema- ture and disastrous activity.
What does the increasing prevalence of uterine disease in the last half-century mean ? It means that we are dragging the angel we have almost become back into the slime from which we have evolved — the protozoan quiescent satisfaction on the animal plane ; while the other half of human- ity furls his wings and reverts to the primal state of hungry male activity !
The reactions of abnormal sexuality are even more disastrous on man than they are on woman, because they vibrate almost wholly on the plane of the soul. There is a subtle subjective side to the sex relation where the silent, unseen, occult forces operate, and right here may be found the key to the spiritual inertness of men. To this sexual retrogression may also be ascribed the self- ishness and materiality of the age, the decay of brotherly love, and the prevalent doubt of immor-
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tality and of God. Leave the surface, look into the heart of life, the secret councils in which the truth reveals itself, and we shall find that it is a prostituted womanhood which makes a debased manhood. This is the plague spot on life, the prolific mother of many sorrows, and the idlest question which can be mooted is which sex is most blamable. We live and die together, and whether we will or not we are bound to the same destiny.
We have clubs, societies, associations in the interest of every subject under the sun but the vital one we are considering. We are familiar with the ethics of ancient religions, but the ethics of the most ancient of all relations is an unknown quantity. We know the rationale of crumbling civilizations, but the causes of social decay in modern life get only a superficial examination.
We have dominated the subtle physical ele- ments of our planet by careful amd protracted study and effort, but who has investigated the tremendous forces concealed in the mystery of sex? Fence round the purity of woman and the sanctity of home with all the protective legal enactments that are possible ; there cannot be too
L.oFC.
IOO EVOLUTION OF IMMORTALITY.
many, nor can they be too sweeping and radical, still we only compel an outward respect for the forms of morality. Until the deadly inertia of ignorance is overcome and hypocrisy and animal- ity are destroyed in the secret recesses of hearts and homes, this downward rushing current cannot be arrested, its forces reversed and the uplifting of humanity be accomplished.
The change to higher conditions must come through the female. God will not reverse his order of progress. The heart of womanhood is astir and the bosom of society is heaving with its unrest. The present industrial competition be- tween the sexes has its uses or it could not be. It marks the era when the old dogma of the sub- jection of woman crumbled to pieces from sheer senility. As a formula, it is no more ; as a fact, it still dominates the interior life of woman in the most vital of all relations. Through industrial and intellectual competition we are striving for room for a larger expression of the " eternally feminine," blindly striving, many of us ; but let us not mistake the means for the end. Not room for more of the masculine quality, but room among men for women is the goal for effort.
THE FORCE OF TRUTH. IOI
Strife, competition, force, are foreign to feminine activities. The exceptional woman can outtop man in many of the strictly masculine activities, but in so doing she loses hold of the finer femi- nine element of attraction. Similars repel, is an axiom of physics. Marriage is the law of growth on every plane of being, — body, soul, spirit; but marriage is the fusing and interblending of oppo- site forces. In each of us are elements of both sexes, and by abnormal development of latent masculinity it is possible for a woman to unsex herself. Man is the superior animal, woman the superior soul. Man is force, woman is power. Force is generated on the material plane, the domain of the intellectual and animal faculties ; power in the emotional soul nature. If we mis- take the source of our strength and our light goes out in darkness, how great will be that darkness ! We cannot force man to higher levels by rang- ing ourselves alongside of him in his world if by so doing we must forsake our own. Coeducation by all means ; cooperation whenever it is prac- ticable, while we bear in mind that woman is not born to rival man, she is born to rule him through the higher affections, when she has achieved
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her ultimate destiny. If woman will climb the heights man will follow, obedient to the force which holds the atoms of the universe together, — the attractive power of sex ; and the name of that attraction is love. He will follow, but he will never take the initial step. The line of progress is through the female. To think nobly, to aspire to higher activities, to reveal the spiritual, to oc- cupy the territory of the finer moralities, to be a pervasive power rather than a dominating force — this is true womanhood, the highest ideal of both sexes.
The legend of creation contained in the Jewish Scripture is worthy of more than a cursory in- spection by the searcher after truth. Like all legends or allegories, it requires interpretation ac- cording to known laws of language and of nature. When God said, " Let us make man," the inference points clearly to a plurality of gods, or intelli- gences, in conference prior to the creation of man.
This indicates the worship of a plurality of gods, which worship antedated the Jewish race, and was certainly not in conformity to the He- brew ideal of one God. No matter whence its
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origin, in a sense the story is true. It nowhere affirms that creation began with the evolution of this globe which we call the world, but to the denizens of this globe it was the "beginning." The principle of division, the making of many from one, came into play, and He divided the above from the below, the sea from the land, light from darkness, day from night, making, as in the division of cells, the one life which was every- where the same, become two forms of life.
These forms are distinct opposites and remain so, from " the beginning," when matter divided, to the subtler divisions in mind which followed as mind evolved. Thus ignorance is divided from knowledge, good from evil, death from life, and this further division is effected by the ego, the self of man, which stands between as the sepa- rating or pivotal power.
The ego judges between good and evil, but is neither the one nor the other ; it knows light and darkness, but belongs to neither.
In Isaiah God said, " Lo, I am God, and beside me there is none else. I make the light and I make the darkness ; I create good and I create evil ; I, the Lord, do all these things."
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What God does for the universe, that /, the Ego, the essential self, does in its cosmos. It is the sole judge of what is for itself good or evil, and thus divides the one from the other by judg- ing both.
God divided the waters by the firmament, and in man this firmament is the ego, the dividing- principle, which separates the above from the be- low, the light-spirit from the dark-spirit, the evil from the good. It is the kingdom of heaven which is " within you."
Peace and joy are not in the overarching skies, nor in some far-away heaven, nor in some future time. It is within you, here, now, if the true self stands poised, holding the equal balance be- tween all opposing forces.
Man is the image of God, containing in himself close hidden microscopical counterparts of all that God is, or that is contained in Him. He placed the sun in the heavens to rule the day and in man a miniature sun of intelligence to rule his active, waking, intellectual life. Because light is within himself man can see, for without intelligence nothing can be perceived.
Man is the apex of creation, and in the apex of
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his humanity is concealed the first cell of another ascending series of evolution toward another higher and better nature, a nature of his own cre- ation and subsequent discovery.
What was that " deep sleep " of Adam in which he divided and became woman and man, a deep sleep in which he was unconscious of the won- derful development taking place within himself? Sleep is called the twin brother of death, but the " deep sleep " of Adam was of another character, — trance, the sleep of Sialam, in which the soul overcomes or passes by the boundaries of both sleep and death. The soul has power to render the body torpid and incorruptible while free from it, when it mingles with the universal and infinite in space. The exercise of the same power ena- bles it to return and again inhabit the body, it may be after many days.
The soul can and often does leave the body in normal sleep, at times falling into a realm where the laws which govern the waking consciousness do not exist. The impossible has no existence there, and the astonishing miracles of that realm are not wholly illusory, for they sometimes be- come the moving impulse to good or evil.
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Sleep is a state of joy, and the soul gathers from it vast stores of strength and energy, which it infuses into the body, thus enabling it to per- form worthily the work which is its proper share in the mystery of life. In the sleep of Sialam Adam gave birth to the spiritual part of himself, which, on awaking, he found to his surprise and joy materialized at his side as Eve, woman, his wife. It would be well for us too if there could fall on us that " deep sleep" in which we could find and bring back from that realm of spirit the one wholly our own and fully adapted to our spir- itual needs.
This story of the Ci deep sleep " and its conse- quences in the division of Adam is full of sug- gestion to the thoughtful mind. In this dual relation lies concealed the secret of another na- ture, a germ of that higher humanity which we may create, each pair for themselves.
The command not to eat of certain things sug- gests that the appetites must come under the domination of the instructed and intelligent will. In the exercise of resistance to temptation man becomes master of himself. It is evident that man is not free to abuse himself, to do evil to himself, which creates disease and death.
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The concept of the infinite nature of deity is not in this story, but rather the reverse. We find division and antagonism steadily growing in prom- inence until at last God meets with an antagonist in one of his own creations. The advent of the serpent breaks the silence and peace of Eden. The ignorant innocence of Adam and Eve, their trustful obedience, gives place to tumult, distrust, and deceit, and the far-off sullen roar of the bat- tle of the ages comes to the ears of the God who " repented that he had made man." From this time God and man are at variance, because the truth being presented to Adam by the serpent, the plan of creation is thwarted. How unlike the God of Isaiah, who proclaims, " Lo, I am God ! I change not."
Evidently this repentant, changeful, warlike God is not the God whom Jesus reveals as the Father, nor does he anywhere allude to the Edenic story, or the fall of man. It is Paul, the lawyer, who makes the latter a cardinal principle in the new religion of Christianity.
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