34
Patriarchs and Prophets
driven from his beautiful home, and forced to struggle with a stubborn
soil to gain his daily bread, that very labor, although widely different
from his pleasant occupation in the garden, was a safeguard against
temptation and a source of happiness. Those who regard work as a
curse, attended though it be with weariness and pain, are cherishing
an error. The rich often look down with contempt upon the working
classes, but this is wholly at variance with God’s purpose in creating
man. What are the possessions of even the most wealthy in comparison
with the heritage given to the lordly Adam? Yet Adam was not to
be idle. Our Creator, who understands what is for man’s happiness,
appointed Adam his work. The true joy of life is found only by the
working men and women. The angels are diligent workers; they are
the ministers of God to the children of men. The Creator has prepared
no place for the stagnating practice of indolence.
While they remained true to God, Adam and his companion were
to bear rule over the earth. Unlimited control was given them over
every living thing. The lion and the lamb sported peacefully around
them or lay down together at their feet. The happy birds flitted about
them without fear; and as their glad songs ascended to the praise of
their Creator, Adam and Eve united with them in thanksgiving to the
Father and the Son.
The holy pair were not only children under the fatherly care of God
but students receiving instruction from the all-wise Creator. They were
visited by angels, and were granted communion with their Maker, with
no obscuring veil between. They were full of the vigor imparted by
the tree of life, and their intellectual power was but little less than that
of the angels. The mysteries of the visible universe—“the wondrous
works of Him which is perfect in knowledge” (
Job 37:16
)—afforded
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them an exhaustless source of instruction and delight. The laws and
operations of nature, which have engaged men’s study for six thousand
years, were opened to their minds by the infinite Framer and Upholder
of all. They held converse with leaf and flower and tree, gathering from
each the secrets of its life. With every living creature, from the mighty
leviathan that playeth among the waters to the insect mote that floats
in the sunbeam, Adam was familiar. He had given to each its name,
and he was acquainted with the nature and habits of all. God’s glory in
the heavens, the innumerable worlds in their orderly revolutions, “the
balancings of the clouds,” the mysteries of light and sound, of day and