some disposition to regard it as mystical or
"allegorical," i.e., to regard it as representing spiritual facts of
temptation and disobedience, under the guise or story of an actual
audible address by a serpent, and the eating of an actual fruit. The
earliest translators seem to have glossed the "Gan-'Eden," everywhere in
the Old Testament (_except_ in Gen. ii. 8), by the phrase "the paradise
of pleasure," or some other similar term. And the Vulgate _always_ uses
some phrase, such as "place of delight," "voluptas," "deliciae," &c. It
must be admitted that there is some temptation to this course, because
of the inveterate tendency of the human mind to reduce things to its own
level--to suppose everything to have happened _in ways which are within
its present powers to comprehend._ We figure to ourselves the fear and
dislike _we_ should ourselves experience, of a large snake; we imagine
the amazement with which an intelligible voice would be heard to proceed
from such a creature; so far from being _tempted, we_ should at once be
moved to hostility or to flight; and thus we are inclined to throw doubt
on the narrative as it stands.

But this is to do what we justly complain of modern materialists and
positivists for doing--reducing everything to terms of present
experience and knowledge.

It has to be borne in mind, that _under the conditions of the case_, the
serpent was neither ugly, dangerous, nor loathsome, but beautiful and
attractive; that the residents of the Garden were familiar with the
"voice of God"--i.e., they had habitual intelligible communication with
heaven: probably, also, free intercourse with angelic messengers
(inconceivable as it may now seem to us) was matter of daily experience
to them. The woman would then recognize in the voice an Angel
communication; and unaware at first that it was an evil angel, it would
excite no surprise in her at all. Sensations of terror, surprise,
dislike, and so forth, were _ex hypothesi_ unknown. Why then should not
the narrative be exact, unless, indeed, we have some _a priori_ ground
for supposing that human nature _never could_ have been in a state where
the voice of God and angels sounded in its ears, and where innocence and
the absence of all evil emotion was the daily condition of life? The
unbeliever may sneer at such a state, but _reason_ why it should _not_
have been, he can give none. So, again, with the idea of the "tree of
the knowledge of good and evil" and