They had looked upon all the trees of the Garden with great delight, and had eaten the fruit of many of them, as they were freely permitted to do, including the fruit of the tree of life in the midst of the Garden.

It is no strain of the imagination to suppose that the man and his wife visited the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, as it was the only forbidden tree, and was accordingly singled out from all the other trees of the Garden. They did so, undoubtedly, without desire to eat its fruit, as they were forbidden to do, though it may have been more attractive than the fruit of the other trees of the Garden.

This certainly did not seem to be a hard trial, as there were a hundred or a thousand trees, the perfect fruit of which they were privileged to freely eat, and only one tree whose fruit they were forbidden to eat. While the fruit of this forbidden tree had a three-fold attraction, and in this particular may have surpassed the fruit of any other tree in the Garden, there was a terrible penalty attached to the eating of this fruit, or in other words to the violation of the command of the Lord God. Thus the environment in which they were placed by the Lord God would seem overwhelmingly in their favor. It is quite reasonable to suppose that the man and his wife passed and repassed this tree as they went about in the Garden together, or separately, and it may be that they spent time pleasantly under its spreading branches, covered with beautiful leaves and surpassing fruit. As they beheld the tree with its tempting fruit, they might have asked themselves, and each other, "Why are we forbidden to eat such very desirable fruit?" In one of those walks about the Garden alone, the woman stopped to look at this tree, and

possibly to spend some time under its charming branches, against which there was no command. Quite likely she was charmed with the beauty of the tree and the superiority of the fruit, and pondered in her heart why they were debarred from eating the fruit. While in this frame of mind, she was approached by an evil spirit of superhuman knowledge and power, who had entered into the serpent, the most subtle of the beasts of the field. With a fascination more attractive than all the beauty and charm of the Garden, he engaged the attention of the

woman.

Why Satan chose to tempt the woman first is not stated in the Revelation, and is not made evident by all the attending circumstances. It may have been because the woman was of finer mold than the man, since Man was made of the dust of the earth, but the woman was made of a part of Man-a second creation, and accordingly of finer texture. As such, it would possibly be more difficult to turn her away from the command of the Lord God. Therefore, she must be won over first, else the scheme of the arch-tempter would surely fail. Or, the woman may have been regarded the weaker of the two. By deceiving her, Satan would have her cooperation in tempting the man. Whatever may have been his design, Satan sought to deceive the woman first in a very subtle manner, and with an overpowering fascination, that the woman with all her glorious environment was unable to withstand.

While the woman was probably pondering in her mind. why the fruit of this tree was forbidden them, she may have gone farther in her consideration of the command of the Lord God and its penalty than she ought. She may

have regarded it an unnecessary abridgment of their liberty. Be this as it may, it was at this point of possible least resistance that the serpent (Satan) addressed her, saying: "Yea, hath God (the Creator) said ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?" (Gen. 3:1), with such an emphasis as to belittle the command of God (the Creator). With ready response the woman answered: "We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden: But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God (the Creator) hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die" (Gen. 3:2, 3). In her answer the woman showed that they knew the command of the Lord God and the penalty attached to it. Her statement of it, however, was more prohibitive than that of the Lord God for she added "neither shall ye touch it." This expression of the awful penalty with her own mouth doubtless made a deep impression upon her mind and soul, and possibly it was hard for her to reconcile such a fearful penalty from the all-loving God for such an apparently small offence. This state of her mind emboldened the serpent (Satan) to take advantage of the woman, possibly wishing in her heart that such a penalty might not follow the eating of the forbidden fruit, by saying unto her: "Ye shall not surely die" (Gen. 3:4).

Before the woman could answer this direct contradiction of the words of the penalty affixed to the command of the Lord God, the serpent with another false assertion quickly and artfully diverted the mind of the woman from the contemplation of a dreadful penalty to the anticipation of a glorious promise and reward: "For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good

and evil." "When the woman," under this anticipation, "saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat" (Gen. 3:5, 6). Whether "her husband with her" meant nearby in calling distance or with her somewhere in the Garden, is not definitely specified. It is unlikely that her husband was so near as to hear any part or all of the conversation between the serpent and his wife. It is not stated that the serpent told the woman to induce her husband to eat of the fruit of the tree. Under the hallucination of the promise of the serpent, as she was led to understand it, she hastened to her husband and told him of the interview between herself and the serpent. Most likely she emphasized the promise of great reward that would follow the eating of the fruit, instead of the punishment threatened, since, without harm, she had eaten of the fruit. Because the penalty as stated by the Lord God was not immediately visited upon her, she was probably encouraged to believe that the contradiction of the serpent was true, and not only so, but that the promised reward made by him was also true. Since the man and the woman were made acquainted by experience with the perfect character of God and His boundless goodness to them, they were left alone to meet the temptation by faith. Neither separately nor together did they seek the counsel of God in the temptation to disobey His very explicit command.

Under such circumstances the woman "gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat. And the eyes of them both were opened, and they knew that they were naked" (Gen. 3:6, 7). The penalty of the violated command was then being visited upon them. There was no

need that any one should tell them what had taken place. They knew they were transgressors of God's righteous command, and that they were naked. Truly, they were as gods knowing good and evil, but they were not gods, but rather ungrateful and disobedient creatures of an all-good and loving God. They had taken their first lesson in the pursuit of the knowledge of evil. It was a most costly lesson. Their perfect spiritual lives had departed from them, or in other words, they were spiritually dead. "They knew that they were naked; and they sewed fig leaves together, and made themselves aprons" (Gen. 3:7). They had lost their spiritual innocence in the transgression of the righteous command of the Lord God. In their shame they resorted to temporary and material concealment of their conscious nakedness. With toil and sorrow they made for themselves material coverings to hide their bodily nakedness. It was of no avail, however, for they were spiritually naked also. When they heard the voice of God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day (the day in which they ate the fruit of the forbidden tree) they were ashamed and afraid. The immediate self-execution of the definitely expressed penalty of the violated commandment of God clearly demonstrated to them that He meant exactly what He had said. They were now aware that His righteousness was as certain as His goodness, which they had enjoyed so bountifully. Hence, their fear of God was now as great as their joy in Him before their fall. Since there were no limitations expressed in or with the statement of the penalty, there was no ground for hope for any relief from their suffering the full measure of the penalty of the violated law.