in order that they may in any degree come within the compass of human
comprehension.

Man, in his primeval innocence, was a genuine image and likeness of
the All-perfect Divinity; perfect after the same manner, but on a
lower plane. There was then no antagonism between the creature and the
Creator; and the finite naturally and joyfully obeyed the infinite; for
in obedience to the will of the Heavenly Father it found sustenance for
the soul as manifestly as in meat and drink for the body. The progress
of time saw the creature turn from the love of God to the love of
self,--from seeking the truth of God to seeking out its own vain
imaginations, and from performing the orderly uses of a life of charity
to all the disorderly indulgencies of selfish passion. Instead of
worshipping the living God, man now invented idols representing his own
evil passions, and bowed before them in adoring admiration; for the
attributes wherewith he clothed them were fitting forces to stimulate
his progress along the pathway he had chosen, where life was made
hideous by the lowering shadows of rapine and murder.

The first Church, represented by Adam and Eve, is the general type of
every Church that has followed it, and of every unregenerate individual
in those Churches. Instead of looking to God as the source of all
wisdom, there is ever the desire to eat of, or make our own, the fruit
of the tree of knowledge, that we may know of _ourselves_ good from
evil; and that we may do of ourselves what seems to us right; and
instead of penitence for sin and an endeavor after reformation, there is
a striving to conceal our unfaithfulness. The covering assumed by those
who, in Scripture, stand as the parents of mankind, is the perpetual
type of the subterfuges we all invent to hide our disobedience from our
God, from our neighbors, nay, even from ourselves. The primal image and