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 the “tree of life.”  We are no doubt tempted to think that these terms may be symbolic; but a more careful reflection, and a deliberate rejection of the influence of present experiences, may lead us to accept the narrative more literally.  Even now, we are not unfamiliar with the ideas of medicinal virtues in plants and fruits.  I see nothing impossible in the idea that God may have been pleased to impart such virtue to the fruit of a tree standing in the midst of the Garden, that physical health, immunity from all decay, and constant restoration, should have been the result of eating the fruit; and the eating of this fruit, we know, was freely permitted.  The late Archbishop Whately suggested, and I think with great probability, that the longevity of the earliest generations of the Adamic race may have been due to the beneficial effects of the eating of this fruit, which only gradually died out.  Just as we know at the present time, that peculiarities introduced into human families, often survive from father to son, till they gradually die out after many generations.