Knowledge of Good and Evil
17
sadness they bade farewell to their beautiful surroundings and went
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forth to dwell upon the earth, where rested the curse of sin.
To Adam God had said: “Because thou hast hearkened unto the
voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded
thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake;
in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; thorns also and
thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the
field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto
the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto
dust shalt thou return.”
Genesis 3:17-19
.
Although the earth was blighted with the curse, nature was still to
be man’s lesson book. It could not now represent goodness only; for
evil was everywhere present, marring earth and sea and air with its
defiling touch. Where once was written only the character of God, the
knowledge of good, was now written also the character of Satan, the
knowledge of evil. From nature, which now revealed the knowledge
of good and evil, man was continually to receive warning as to the
results of sin.
In drooping flower and falling leaf Adam and his companion wit-
nessed the first signs of decay. Vividly was brought to their minds the
stern fact that every living thing must die. Even the air, upon which
their life depended, bore the seeds of death.
Continually they were reminded also of their lost dominion.
Among the lower creatures Adam had stood as king, and so long
as he remained loyal to God, all nature acknowledged his rule; but
when he transgressed, this dominion was forfeited. The spirit of re-
bellion, to which he himself had given entrance, extended throughout
the animal creation. Thus not only the life of man, but the nature of
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the beasts, the trees of the forest, the grass of the field, the very air he
breathed, all told the sad lesson of the knowledge of evil.
But man was not abandoned to the results of the evil he had chosen.
In the sentence pronounced upon Satan was given an intimation of
redemption. “I will put enmity between thee and the woman,” God
said, “and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and
thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Genesis 3:15
. This sentence, spoken in
the hearing of our first parents, was to them a promise. Before they
heard of the thorn and the thistle, of the toil and sorrow that must be
their portion, or of the dust to which they must return, they listened to