when God has said "Despair!" What is this but hatching the old
serpent's eggs in the pulpit?

II.--WHAT WERE THE RESULTS OF THIS LIE?

1. They are very numerous, and we can only find space to say a few words
on each. There was _guiltiness_. Eve believed the devil instead of God,
and took the forbidden fruit, making herself a sinner. Her excuse was,
"The serpent beguiled me." But she coveted that which God kept back. How
many Edens are lost because we desire that which is forbidden! Is not
this the spring of the so-called social evil? We may say what we like
against seduction, and our words cannot be too strong, but the woman
desiring when God had said, "Thou shalt not," is the true reason of many
falls.

2. The next step downwards is the tempting of another and a loved one.
Sometimes we have found ourselves wishing Eve had died with the fruit in
her mouth, instead of living to do the devil's work, and lure her loved
husband to the same ruin. Let me say here and with all emphasis, _Never
fear so much as when the hand of affection offers you that which God
forbids_.

3. Now comes Death. The parents of the human race were separated from
God. Environment is a condition of life. They have learned to do evil,
they have to share the lot of those who had not kept their first estate.
Heaven was an impossible climate to the apostate angels, and Eden was
only possible to those who obey. It is easy to see that the garden was
not now Paradise. Adam and his wife hid themselves among the trees from
the presence of the Lord! Those trees were not created for that purpose.
Alas for sin! it poisons food and taints air. We cannot insist upon this
with too much force. It was true then as now. "He that believeth not
shall not see life." Adam and Eve were poisoned by the forbidden fruit.
Is it not yet true that Innocence, Chastity, Modesty, are dead in some
who are thought to live? We wonder afterwards to see them cast out, but
it is, after all, the separation of the dead from the living.

4. And now comes Suffering. They must hear the curse pronounced, and
then depart into the world which has begun to grow thorns for them. Yes,
sufferings after death. What is history but the story of punishment?
When men scoff at what is called eternal punishment they forget, or,
perhaps, have never given it a thought, that the punishment of the first
crime is going on at the present moment. Thorns and briars are but
parable