Having shown that man commenced his earthly career on a low moral and
intellectual plane, and that therefore the assumption of his original
moral perfection is a fallacy, the correlative dogma of his fall into a
state of moral depravity falls to the ground of its own weight. It would
be a work of supererogation to attempt to show that man never fell in a
moral sense, after having shown that he never occupied an elevated moral
position to fall from. It is self-evident that he could not fall if
there was no lower position for him to fall to; and this has been
shown. Nevertheless we will expose its absurdity from other logical
stand-points. According to the Westminster Catechism, "God placed man in
the garden of Eden, and forbade him to eat of the fruit of the tree
of knowledge; and, because he disobeyed, he became the victim of God's
eternal wrath, an accursed and totally depraved being." Such doctrine
is not only morally revolting, but replete with logical absurdities. We
will recount some of them:--
1. God formed and fashioned man, according to the Bible, after his own
image, the product of his infinite wisdom; and if he had not possessed
infinite wisdom, which must enable him to do every thing to perfection,
he had had an eternity to study the matter, and get it fully matured, so
as to make every thing work in harmony, and endow every sentient being
with happiness.
2. And, as happiness is the highest end and aim of every living being,
it is hence evident that, where there is a want of happiness, there is a
want of perfection in the being who established such a state of things;
and such a being could not by any possibility be infinitely good and
infinitely wise.
3. A few points considered will show very clearly, that, if man sinned
and fell, God has to sustain the responsibility of it. We are told that
God made man; and, being all-wise, he would, of course, endow him with
exactly such faculties and inclinations and appetites as were best
adapted to his situation, and calculated to make him happy. But,
according to orthodoxy, God had planted a tree near the spot where he
placed Adam, and furnished it with some beautiful and luscious fruit,
and implanted in man an appetite and relish for it, and, as if to
tantalize him with perpetual hanger, forbade him to eat the fruit; and
apparently, for fear Adam would obey his command and abstain from eating
the fruit, he created a serpent-devil to persuade him (or rather his
wife) with bland smiles (assuming that a snake can smile, which is
rather doubtful) to partake of the fruit, and satisfy their appetites.
All this appear's to have been the work of their Creator, and not
theirs. But the conspicuous features of the absurdity do not stop here.
4. We are told that the prohibition to eat the fruit was issued to Adam
before Eve was released from her imprisonment in Adam's side, or from
performing the functions of a rib-bone, before she became a woman and a
wife; and it is not even implied that it was intended to extend to her.
Why, then, in the name of God, should such curses be heaped upon her
devoted head for eating the fruit when she had not been forbidden to do
so? And it does not appear to have been wrong in any sense, only that
Jehovah had issued an order forbidding it.
5. Jehovah professed great sympathy for Adam's lonely condition, and
made a help meet for him; and yet the first meat she helped him to, it
would seem, damned him and his posterity for ever. In view of this fact,
it is probable Adam would have preferred to let her remain a bone in his
side.
6. Here let it be noted that Adam and Eve were ignorant and
inexperienced beings. They had had no experience in any thing, and hence
could not know that such an act, or any other act, was wrong and sinful.
7. Nor could Adam know what the word "die" meant when Jehovah told him
he would die the day he ate the fruit, as he had seen nothing die.
8. It may here be said in reply, that they should, in their ignorance,
have obeyed the command which was given them To this we reply, they did
obey the command of one being. God told them not to eat, and the serpent
told them to eat, the fruit; and, not having lived with or had any
experience with either of those omnipresent beings, how could they know
what would be the consequence of obeying or disobeying either of them?
This question of itself is sufficient to settle the matter. They
could not possibly know, with no experience in either case, that the
consequence would be more serious or more fatal in disobeying Jehovah
than the serpent.
9. And as they got their eyes open by eating the fruit, and did not die
as Jehovah told them they would (while the serpent told them they
would not), it is not to be wondered at that ever after they and their
posterity should be more inclined to serve the serpent-devil than
Jehovah, seeing that all the happy consequences which the former
predicted as the result of eating the fruit were realized, while those
of Jehovah were falsified. For proof see chap. 53.
10. The most artful sophistry can not disguise the fact that the
doctrine of moral depravity is a slanderous imputation upon divine
mercy, goodness, and justice, and challenges not only his goodness, but
his good sense.
11. And every page of history and every principle of science demonstrate
it to be both false and demoralizing.
Man _fell up_, and not _down_.