To be near unto God - pagina 373

All Paradise was with them. It was altogether pleasure without burden. At one point only they were in danger. That was their spiritual estate. In this they were vulnerable. If the soul fell down they were gone unless God saved them, risks.

;

they were gone forever. The curse, which came upon the earth immediately after they had fallen, showed at once that pandemonium had been let loose against them, and that the whole creation, as it were, had entered into conclave to destroy them. When we think how absolutely helpless these two people stood, almost without clothing and entirely unfortified, in the face of these unloosed and raving forces of world and nature, we feel at once that absolutely nothing would have come of them, and that they would have met death at once, if only in maw of lion or tiger, had not from the side of God secret, wondrous grace watched over them. How human life saves itself now need not be

We

asked. now face the evil and destructive forces of nature strongly fortified in every way, and it is an exception when a flood surprises, a hurricane destroys, an epidemic works havoc, or wild animals carry off human victims. But of all the means of resistance, which are at our disposal,

Adam and Eve had

none, and they were but with each other. This makes it so wonderful that our race was not at once destroyed, that it maintained itself, that it increased and obtained the upper hand. For many centuries indeed after Paradise

had disappeared, man was forced to wage war to the death with the wild forces of destruction, and to this day the names of a Nimrod and of a Hercules are alive in the 369

memory

of nations, as

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