Genesis 3:19, commentary and pictures

God spoke this sentence upon Adam because he listened to his wife and ate from the tree God had commanded him not to eat, with no excuse when every want was supplied. The ground was cursed for his sake to bring forth thorns and thistles, so in sorrow and by hard labor in the sweat of his face he would eat bread drawn from the soil until he returned to the ground, for dust he is and to dust he shall return. Returning to dust means literal death and utter extinction of life, not entrance into a higher existence, for sin cut man off from free access to the tree of life whose fruit perpetuates immortality. The life of toil and care was appointed in love as a discipline made needful by sin to check indulgence, occupy the mind, strengthen the body and develop self-control, and though laborious it remains a blessing indispensable to happiness, health and recovery from the fall. Sorrow, toil and return to dust were spoken after the promise of a Deliverer, and the penalty of death required the Son of God to step in, bear transgression upon Himself and open the way to regain all that was lost.

Occasion and Sentence

The sentence was spoken to Adam because he listened to his wife and ate from the tree God had commanded him not to eat. He had listened to Satan's misrepresentation of God, and he fell with no excuse, for all his wants were generously supplied and only one prohibition was laid upon him. By following his own way in harmony with Satan's temptation against God's known will, in a vain attempt to elevate and bless himself, he gained an experimental knowledge of disobedience and of good and evil and lost fidelity and loyalty to God. The sentence declares the ground cursed for his sake to bring forth thorns and thistles and weeds, to be eaten of in sorrow all the days of his life, with man eating bread drawn from the soil by hard labor in the sweat of his face until he returns to the ground from which he was taken, for dust he is and to dust he shall return. It is a lesson for all mankind that God's Word is to be sacredly respected and His requirements implicitly obeyed.

Adam's disobedience brought hardship, painful labor to obtain food, and an end in death and return to dust. The good first known was joined by an acquaintance with evil throughout life, bringing toil, sorrow, disappointment, grief and pain. The curse fell on the earth, which would produce briers and thorns, while Adam would face Satan's temptations throughout his life and finally die and return to dust. The glory that had covered holy Adam departed, and blessings of health and abundance gave way to poverty, sickness, suffering and hardship for him and his descendants.

Happy labor in Eden was turned into anxiety and toil for a living, so that Adam was sentenced to a life of toil and anxiety instead of the happy labor he had known. While obedience lasted, work in the garden was joy and the earth freely supplied need, but after departure from obedience man was doomed to wrestle with the evil Satan sowed and to earn food by hard work against the power to which he had yielded his will. Because Adam and Eve ate against God's command, they and their race would go on eating the knowledge of evil all the days of life, afflicted by Satan's temptations, subject to disappointment, grief and pain, and finally to death. Driven from Eden, Adam had to struggle with stubborn soil for daily bread, labor harder than his pleasant garden work yet protected thereby from temptation. No longer able to cultivate the beautiful Eden home, they were shut out to work among thistles, brambles, thorns and weeds brought by the curse which Satan had sown, whose promise of higher perceptions to know good and evil like angels proved a lie.

What looked like a simple act brought the fall of the race, loss of beautiful Eden, expulsion, and the opening of the floodgates of woe, evil, disappointment, sorrow and suffering upon the world and the whole human family. Violation of God's law is thus the greatest loss and deepest injury conceivable, proving God is not so merciful as to overlook disobedience or excuse the sinner in sin but is severe and exacting toward transgression, with mercy covering guilt only after sin is repented and forsaken. Fallen man has been granted another trial only through the sacrifice of Christ, whose giving from heaven to die to pay the debt of transgression and make it possible to keep the law through His blood exalts the law and evidences its sacred character. The example and its result should lead every soul to avoid and abhor sin as hateful, feeling it better to suffer loss of all things than to depart from the least commandment, and parents and mothers as queens in households are to train children to obedience by keeping this before their minds. Each one who transmits disease, drunkenness or sexual wrongdoing to children repeats the fall by passing bodily and moral harm to later generations. To protect the family from further transgression the light of the law with its promises to the obedient must be made as clear as a city on a hill, with obedience required to become members of the royal family, children of the heavenly King.

Adam understood the sentence of death pronounced by his Maker in its literal sense. At first he viewed death with horror and the thought that he must die filled him with anguish. He first learned its reality in the human family when Cain his firstborn murdered Abel, leaving him doubly bereaved in Abel's death and Cain's rejection and bowed with remorse for his own sin. After living hundreds of years and nearly a thousand years amid misery, decay, corruption and wide-spreading sin that would bring the Flood, he regarded the sentence as just and merciful because it would end his miserable life of suffering and sorrow.

Return to Dust

Returning to the ground, dust to dust, declares the penalty for sin to be literal death and the utter extinction of life, not entrance into a more exalted existence. It proves false the promise that disobedience would bring higher life, great light and freedom, and that the tempter was a benefactor of the race. Adam understood the sentence in this literal sense. Immortality had been promised only on condition of obedience, and once lost it could not be passed to descendants, so death passed to all; yet immortality has been brought within reach through Christ and the gospel, to be received by those who believe in the Son and seek it through patient well-doing.

The promise that eyes would be opened proved true only in that after disobedience Adam and Eve discerned their folly, knew evil, and tasted the bitter fruit of transgression. Continued living depended on free access to the tree of life in Eden, whose fruit had power to perpetuate life and immortality. Obedience would have kept that access so man would have lived forever, but sin cut him off, and God set cherubim and a flaming sword to guard the way so fallen man could not approach, eat, and live forever as an immortal sinner, thus immortalizing transgression. The guilty race was thereby made subject to disease and death and to return to dust, and left without right to the tree. In great love God gave His Son to die that man might find pardon and live.

The sentence of death was not executed speedily through the laws of nature. Eve felt no immediate ill effect or death but a pleasurable sensation of a new and more exalted life like angels feel, which she set against the positive command that eating brings certain death, and Adam let that false experience seduce him to eat. The delay emboldens continued transgression by following inclination while claiming divine approval, but true experience always agrees with natural and divine law. The full execution and burden of the sentence was restrained because Christ undertook to redeem humanity and bear the wrath that justice placed on sinners, so that fallen Adam through faith in Him could find refuge and hope of life amid death.

Because of sin man is dust and subject to death, and death is the portion of every living thing. Adam and Eve learned this from the first signs of decay in the drooping flower, the falling leaf, and the goodly trees casting off their leaves, mourning frail delicate flowers more deeply than men now mourn their dead. Nature blighted by the curse continually warned of sin's results, and even the air depended on for life bore the seeds of death. In that post-fall condition of mortality the long-lived race was permitted to eat the flesh of clean animals, though flesh meat formed no part of the food provided for man in the beginning.

Human greatness ends in dust. Kings and crowned monarchs, great men, and all people with their lofty rank, earthly honors, grandeur, strife for supremacy, mortal praise and even life itself do not last, and decisions made in council rooms that blasted human expectations and stripped others of honor and life did not exempt them from the same end. Honor from mortal lips is temporary and sinks into insignificance beside the honor that comes with Christ, whose promise to claim the faithful as sons and daughters of the eternal God is worth striving for.

The disobedient and unholy who choose rebellion and refuse the salvation purchased by the death of the Son will be consumed by fire and return to dust again. This is utter destruction, leaving them as though they had not been. They will not be shut up in hell to endure endless misery, nor be taken to heaven where the company of the pure and holy would make them exceedingly miserable. Then justice is satisfied, showing the benevolence and compassion of God, giving reason to admire His character and adore His holy name, with all the heavenly host saying Amen after the wicked are destroyed from the earth.

Satan claimed the sentence gave him undisputed possession and dominion over the bodies of the dead as his captives and property in the grave, never to be released and never to live again, because the power of the grave had never been broken. In consequence of sin even Moses in his own merits was death's lawful captive. Christ broke that claimed power and began His work of making alive that which was dead by giving life to the dead for the first time in raising Moses to immortal, glorified life, holding His title in the name of the Redeemer. By despoiling Satan of his prey He proved the sentence does not leave the dead forever in Satan's possession, that He has power to ransom those Satan holds captive, that although men die they will live again, and that the resurrection of the righteous dead is forever certain. The dead will come again in a joyful resurrection and share in the life to come.

Earth Under Curse

Disobedience brought a curse that marred the earth, seared it with rebellion and left the world disloyal to God, separating earth from heaven and estranging humanity from Him. Nature therefore gives only an imperfect testimony, no longer displaying God's glory in its original brightness and unable to reveal His character in perfection. A blight has fallen upon the fair creation so that pages once opened in undimmed brightness to the first pair now bear a shadow, the brightness from God's face having departed from the face of nature, yet traces of primal loveliness remain and rightly studied and interpreted nature still speaks of her Creator and its lessons are not obliterated.

The curse did not at once change the earth's appearance, for it remained rich and beautiful and fruitful in God's bounty, with abundant precious metals and enormous durable trees. Even under the curse resting in the days of Noah, together with the curse that followed Cain's murder forming a double curse, the face of nature was not greatly changed but showed only evident tokens of certain decay. Beautiful nature made for man's benefit began to wither and dissolve, and falling leaves and drooping flowers, especially the decay of sturdy trees, grieved Adam as sure signs of loss.

The curse was first felt lightly at the fall, but Cain's murder of Abel brought a double curse upon the ground and made human life and labor more difficult. It greatly increased at the Flood and since the Flood has lain more and more heavily as men forgot God, so the soil has become more barren and harder to cultivate and make productive, requiring double labor. Before the Flood the first fallen leaf found decaying on the ground was mourned like a dead friend as evidence of the curse and decay of nature, and the ancients did not need modern inventions, improvements and labor-saving machines. Because the land groans under the curse God has raised up men with inventive faculties to build implements to lighten labor upon it, yet God is not in all man's inventions, for Satan has largely controlled minds and hurried men to new inventions that lead them to forget God. Cain resented and murmured against God over the sentence and curse pronounced on the ground and the race because of Adam's sin.

The curse changed the atmosphere from once mild and uniform in temperature to marked changes with extremes of heat and cold, for which the Lord mercifully provided garments of skins as protection. Continued ingratitude, disobedience to law, idolizing and claiming God's gifts of forests, gardens, waters, minerals and metals, and devising ways to indulge sin brought heavier cursing upon men themselves. That heavier curse came in the Flood after 120 years of warning through Noah, with torrents of rain from heaven and fountains of the great deep broken up, uprooting trees, sweeping away inhabitants, groves, palaces and idol places, burying lovely fruitful places under rubbish and earth, throwing up rocks concealed under the surface, and turning the lovely home into a broken uneven frightful solitude still seen in deep gorges and seamed and cleft rocks.

The curse rests upon man, earth, sea, cattle, beasts and fish, and as transgression becomes almost universal it is permitted to become as broad and deep as the transgression. Beasts have degenerated in size and length of years and languish under it, suffering more than they otherwise would because of man's wrong habits, intemperance and depraved appetite craving what is most injurious to health. Disease prevails alarmingly among animals in cancers, tumors and diseased tissues, and its effect is disease in cattle making meat eating dangerous, with diseased flesh of dead carcasses sold in marketplaces bringing disease among men as the sure result. There is no safety in eating the flesh of dead animals and soon there will be no safety in milk or anything from animal creation or in possessing flocks and herds, for to place such flesh on the table defiles the temple and merits destroying judgment, while eating it communicates disease without being discerned and even free abundant eating can cause severe inflammation of the eyes nearly to loss of sight.

Death came as a consequence of sin, and the taking of animal life for food belongs to the transgression that would not have occurred had the curse never fallen. Flesh of dead animals was not man's original food of simple fruits, grains and vegetables but was permitted after vegetation was destroyed and in post-fall mortality to the long-lived race eating clean animals. Since the Flood the curse is seen in the shortening of human existence and in rapidly increasing physical, mental and moral degeneracy in these latter days, and even the promised land is described as affected by the curse that marred Eden.

Even in decay under sin the world is still very beautiful, and with God's blessing it as it is could be enjoyed if it were not defiled by the wicked corrupt deeds of men who tread the soil. Ignorance, selfishness and sins corrupting soul, body and spirit fill the world with moral leprosy and deadly malaria, blessings turned into a curse when used to gratify pride and glorify self, and every place inhabited by human beings is debased with sin. The world before the Flood far exceeded present mountains and rocks in beauty, grandeur and loveliness, yet was destroyed with its people for sinfulness, violence and corrupting works that defiled the earth. If God's people obey His requirements and cooperate with Him in tilling the soil with skill and earnestness, diseased land will be restored to health, fertility, prosperity and beauty as a praise to His name, even as hearts controlled by God reflect His character, but through selfishness and covetousness managing without God's wisdom and refusing the land its sabbath it loses vigor and dearth and sickness testify to disobedience. Though tens of thousands fall under temptation, youth must be rescued from defiling influences as the hope for missionary labor, trusting that God lives and reigns and can do much.

As long as this life lasts the evils that came in by the curse must be fought, for this earth was cursed because of sin. In these last days vermin of every kind will multiply, and troublesome and harmful insects and reptiles that annoy and torment and even kill people and destroy the work of hands and fruit of land must be guarded against and destroyed, with men faithfully doing their given part in spraying and exterminating them and leaving the rest with the Lord. The body also feels the curse in pain, infirmity and weakness, which must be pressed against and borne up under by seeking God earnestly for strength, talking and acting faith, manifesting courage and attending to daily duties, and not yielded to, talked about, dwelt on or magnified until life becomes useless and miserable to please the enemy. Evil will cease only when Satan ceases to exist, when Satan with the agencies he employed to annoy and grieve will be cast into the lake of fire and brimstone, and then sin will be no more.

The curse on nature under sin was appointed in great mercy to witness to man of the character and results of rebellion against God. Man was made ruler over the earth and all living creatures, and while Adam stayed loyal to Heaven all nature was in subjection to him, but when he rebelled against the divine law the inferior creatures rebelled against his rule. By that experience men are meant to see the sacredness of God's law and to learn by their own experience the danger of setting it aside even in the slightest degree.

Toil as Discipline

Work itself was not laid on as a curse, for the decree to eat bread by sweat of face did not make labor itself the curse even though the earth was cursed because of the fall. Before sin God gave sinless Adam and Eve pleasant employment in tilling the soil and caring for what He had planted, with God Himself as instructor and all things responding to their efforts to develop and perfect, and they did not regard it as degrading but as a great blessing and pleasure and happiness, since God never meant human beings to have nothing to do. If the first pair had not transgressed, only pleasant work in tending a beautiful garden would have entered the world, while delicate idleness and selfish gratification make invalids and make life empty and barren.

After the fall the order of things changed and the earth was cursed so it no longer brings forth only what is good but must be worked under disadvantage and produces thorns and briars and weeds and thistles. Labor became widely different from the pleasant, invigorating, happy occupation in the garden, made very much harder and attended with anxiety, weariness, pain and sweat in struggling with stubborn soil to gain daily bread. The deeper the curse of sin the heavier the toil and the further men go from God's order, changing it to put grinding toil heavily on one class while idleness is excused among those with money, though money does not increase moral worth and the requirement rests on rich and poor alike.

The life of toil and care thus laid upon man was appointed in love as a discipline made needful by sin. It was to place a check upon indulgence of appetite and passion and to develop habits of self-control, and to occupy the mind, strengthen the body, and develop the faculties. It was part of God's great plan for man's recovery from the ruin and degradation of sin, and the school He has provided for training and development in the fallen state.

God designed that toil to alleviate and resist the evil brought into the world by disobedience. Labor by the sweat of the face makes Satan's temptations ineffectual and stays the tide of evil and holds back its spread. Its discipline checks self-indulgence and restrains evil, while fostering industry, purity, firmness, happiness and development, making labor a safeguard against temptation and a part of God's great plan for recovery from the fall and for training.

Though laborious and wearisome, the decree to work remains through faith and hope a blessing indispensable to happiness, prosperity, health and development. The sentence requiring toil for daily bread and the promise of future happiness and glory both come from God and are blessings, and even toilsome labor under the sentence became a relief to sorrow and remorse. Well-regulated, judicious labor brings healthful weariness, refreshing sleep, happiness and health, guards against temptation, and human wants are supplied only by personal labor with forethought, care and faith, so that the true joy of life is found only by working men and women.

Sin does not shut man out from work, for after disobedience Adam was still permitted to tend the garden and to be a laborer together with God, though labor never again stands on the high and holy ground it had before sin. The more sinful and separated from God he becomes, the less enjoyment he finds in tilling the soil and doing what pleases God, and the more fully his bread comes by hard, sweating toil, which stirs unpleasant resentment against his Maker for not letting him give loose rein to his own inclinations and make his own laws, and Satan works through human agency to please himself in that resentment. The agriculturist and tiller of the soil who gives entire heart, soul and body to God still has great encouragement, for his labor becomes much less burdensome, and his repentance proves itself by obedience in accepting the Lord's plans and receiving the Lord's directions.

Christ and Restoration

Sorrow and toil and return to dust were spoken as the appointed portion of fallen humanity after listening to the tempter and yielding to Satan, together with the thorn and the thistle, yet they were spoken after the promise of a Deliverer so that words of hope were heard before the penalty was heard. Adam and Eve were told of the toil and sorrow and death that sin would bring, including return to the dust from which they were made, but before hearing that judgment they received the promise that all that was lost by yielding to Satan can be regained through Christ. He was given at infinite cost to redeem the race from the destroyer and to restore the human family to sonship with God and to His likeness and image for those who accept salvation.

That disobedience in Eden brought guilt and sorrow into the world with a penalty so grave that the Son of God gave Himself to save humanity from it. The penalty of death required Him to step in and pledge His own life to pay for transgression so that man might have another trial. He left His heavenly home and laid aside robes of royalty and high command and riches, clothed divinity with humanity, became poor and walked as a man among men, and lived humbly as a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. He suffered insult and rejection and reproach and mockery and crucifixion from those He came to bless, taking man's transgressions and their just penalty upon Himself to open a way of escape. By that provision divine aid brings certain victory and an immortal inheritance, making it possible to keep the law through His blood, for the provision does not abolish God's law to give unconditional pardon, since the Father does not show benevolence at the expense of justice nor set aside principles of righteousness to exalt the sinner in impenitence and encourage transgression.

The curse pronounced on the earth and on humanity because the law was transgressed, with death coming because of sin, was accompanied by a promise of pardon through Christ the Redeemer, giving hope and pardon for transgression. In the promise of the Redeemer the star of hope lighted a dark future hung with gloom like the pall of death, and the gospel was first preached to Adam by Christ. Adam and Eve felt sincere sorrow and grieved over their wrongdoing and repented of their guilt and believed the precious promise of God, and were saved from utter ruin. The Son's triumph opens salvation for the fallen race and assures that the earth will be redeemed from that curse.

Before the world was created Christ had promised to come to earth and bear the penalty of transgression if man should fall. After Adam and Eve listened to Satan and were expelled from the Eden given them to cultivate, with angels placed toward the tree of life lest they immortalize transgression and with Satan gaining entrance where before he had no control, Christ in the wilderness of temptation passed over the same ground where Adam fell and met and conquered the prince of darkness over appetite where Adam failed. That victory redeems the disgrace of Adam's failure and fall and places the human family on vantage ground with God, making it possible to overcome in their own behalf through the merits of the crucified and risen Saviour and through perfect obedience to come back by Him to the Eden home instead of repeating the transgression. The law of God could not be changed and altered to meet man in his fallen condition, for if change were possible Adam would have been pardoned and would have retained his home in Eden. Instead the penalty of transgression remained death, Christ became man's substitute and surety to save a fallen race, and Adam losing Eden was placed with all his posterity upon probation under an unalterable law where obedience or disobedience decides eternal destiny.

Warning Against Disobedience

The sentence on Adam stands as a warning that disobedience brings its merited punishment and that sin brings death. God's retributive justice never fails, He holds His creatures strictly accountable, and He exacts strict regard for His commandments. He does not treat violations of His law lightly, and every transgressor will sooner or later learn that He means what He says. The seriousness of the judgment pronounced measures how He regards every transgression now, passing over disobedience no more lightly at present than in Adam's day.

The fact that Adam suffered for breaking it proves God's law is binding and can be obeyed, and it can no more be transgressed with impunity now than when sentence was pronounced then. Without God's goodness and mercy the guilt and sorrow and death that disobedience brought upon the world would have plunged the race into hopeless despair. The penalty for disobedience to the law given in Eden is to be set forth first before everyone in a position of responsibility, especially rulers of nations and those united with them. It sets the divine law as the basis of all right conduct, to make them realize accountability to God and the need to obey all His requirements, with reward for obedience and punishment for disobedience.

What looked like a simple act brought the fall of the race, for Adam and Eve ventured to transgress God's prohibition by taking the forbidden fruit, fell, lost Eden, and were expelled from it. One very small sin that appeared recoverable opened the floodgates of woe to the world and will result in the eternal ruin of thousands upon thousands, millions upon millions. Even one departure from right brings shame and loss, and Adam's one sin bringing death and all human woe with loss of Eden is set up as a beacon of warning against fostering one sin. This proves God is not so merciful as to overlook disobedience or excuse the sinner in sin, but is severe and exacting toward transgression, with mercy covering guilt only after sin is repented of and forsaken. The fact that He gave His Son from heaven to die to pay the debt of transgression and to make it possible for fallen man to keep the law through the merits of Christ's blood exalts the law and evidences its sacred character. Though apparently small, the transgression closed the gates of Paradise, and ever since sin has increased in volume and prevalence and is still increasing, yet divine benevolence has not been cut off and love and care still flow earthward, which should make man afraid of his littleness and his sin-loving propensities. The terrible retribution for failing to bear God's slight test warns not to move on a so-called liberal plan careless in little matters and not particular about His requirements, but to study Christ's perfect example and make that life the criterion and standard, lest through Satan's bewitching power defects of character are kept instead of reformed and men deviate widely from the only true pattern and become more faulty.

Adam's fall and expulsion brought sin and great woe into the world, and his experience stands to warn men not to do as he did, yet they disobey as he did. Driven from Eden for disobeying the express injunction of God and violating the law of Jehovah, his transgression brought unutterable woe, and if falling had stopped with him the race would now be in a far more elevated condition physically, mentally, and morally. Instead there has been a succession of falls, with later generations continuing to indulge appetite and passion in direct violation of God's law, bringing further moral decline, disease, and loss of health and power. Eve had everything to make her happy with fruit of every variety freely available, yet the forbidden fruit appeared more desirable, she was intemperate in her desires, she ate and through her influence her husband ate also, and appetite took control of reason. Since the fall the human family like Eve has been beguiled by Satan to disregard God's prohibitions while flattering itself that the consequence will not be as fearful as apprehended, violating the laws of health and running to excess in almost everything, so that intemperance in almost every form exists and disease steadily increases as effect follows cause. The loss of Eden came through intemperance in desire for food, showing that what is eaten and how food is prepared influences moral tendencies, and indulged inclination, habit, delicate unhealthful cooking and unhealthful dress weaken physical, mental, and moral efficiency and make it impossible to overcome temptation, so the body must be cared for to keep sincere piety and religious fervor.

The ground was cursed for Adam's sake because he listened to his wife and ate from the tree God had commanded him not to eat, so in sorrow and hard labor with thorns and thistles and the herb of the field he would eat from it all his life, eating bread by sweat until he returned to the ground from which he was taken, dust returning to dust. This came by following his own way in harmony with Satan's temptation and against God's known will in a vain attempt to elevate and bless himself, gaining an experimental knowledge of disobedience and of good and evil, losing fidelity and loyalty to God, and opening floodgates of evil and suffering upon the whole human family. The same experiment is repeated today whenever men follow their own ways and human wisdom against a plain thus saith the Lord, receiving Satan's inventions through human policy and placing human tradition above God's expressed commandments, as in changing the Sabbath to the first day of the week. Man's only safety is full confidence in God's word and in a thus saith the Lord. Adam's fall began a succession of falls ever since, and to keep disobeying now is to perpetuate that same disobedience, with a parent who does so setting a bad example that leads children and family to follow in it.

By eating what God had forbidden man lost his right to Paradise, and what disobedience cost in loss of the right to the Eden home disproves once in grace always in grace. Choosing that same disobedience now forfeits the right to the Eden restored, and the present condition of the fallen race testifies to the awful results of transgressing God's law. Just as Adam and Eve lost Eden by transgression, transgressing the law now will lose heaven, for God's law is the transcript of His character and disregarding that law disregards Jesus Christ. Jesus came to save His people from transgression of the law and imparts His righteousness to those who obey so they can overcome in place of their own strength. Having and keeping God's commandments is the test of love, so the human family must obey the light on the binding claims of God's law and lift the cross in view of the whole world. In preparing for Paradise restored man must bring perverted appetite under strict control, because indulgence of depraved appetite weakens power to resist evil and enables Satan to fasten evil habits upon man and ensnare him in the net of his devices.

The verse belongs to authentic early history of the world, of the creation of man, and of his fall and the introduction of sin, giving true knowledge of the beginning that keeps the mind from being left to fables and conjectures. It guards against the enfeebling of intellect from entertaining error, against bewilderment by false theories, and against the tyranny of superstition and falsehood, so there is no need to depend on human conjectures and unreliable theories. With creation, the atonement, and the perpetuity of the law it stands as a pillar of the Christian faith among the most important truths to be accepted with implicit confidence as the guide of life. Yet this inspired account of the fall is practically rejected, wholly or in part, by many who profess Christianity and by a large share of the professedly Christian world. To cavil at it, spiritualize it, and explain it away under a claim of wisdom, independence, talent, and learning is infidelity prevailing not in the world merely but in the church. Joined to the teaching of the first advent of Christ as a helpless babe born in a stable and cradled in a manger, the teaching of the fall and its consequences that opened the floodgates of woe is among the most important knowledge to be received.

Adam lived for nearly a thousand years among men even to the ninth generation as a witness to the results of sin, commanded to instruct his posterity in the way of the Lord. By the suffering that followed his fall God taught him the necessity of strict adherence to His law. He faithfully sought to stem the tide of evil by carefully treasuring what God had revealed and repeating it to succeeding generations, describing man's holy and happy estate in Paradise, repeating the history of his fall, telling of the sufferings that taught obedience, and explaining the merciful provisions for salvation. Yet few gave heed to his words and he was often met with bitter reproaches for the sin that had brought woe upon his posterity. Under the curse pronounced upon the earth and the human race for Adam's sin, Cain murmured against God, cherishing rebellion, indulging desire for self-exaltation, and questioning divine justice and authority, while Abel saw justice and mercy in God's dealings with the fallen race and gratefully accepted the hope of redemption.

Working Faithfully Today

Earning bread by the sweat of the brow is God's ordained plan for human life, requiring a man with strength of body to sustain himself and his family by honest hard labor that taxes his powers, doing his own part and not living on the bounty of others. God has not bound Himself to fill barns with bounty and granaries with plenty while a man neglects to work, and strength lent by Him must be used to provide for oneself and to earn even more so as to bless others and advance the cause of God. Property gained by such labor brings responsibility to dispose of means rightly to honor God and glorify Him with time and strength, while laziness that refuses to work, gambling that seeks dishonest gain without work, living for amusement, cultivating indolent and inefficient habits, and remaining a burden and dependent are condemned. Youth is the sowing time for industrious or idle habits, and age will reap a corresponding harvest.

Jesus Himself entered that lot, learning the carpenter's trade in youth and laboring and toiling with His own hands in subjection to His parents to supply His own temporal wants. By doing so He honored physical labor and made His practical life a lesson on its dignity, an encouragement and a source of strength to every human being in performing the commonplace duties of life. Learning to do useful bodily work builds self-reliance and prepares a person to support himself and for useful service and greater responsibility. No physically strong youth is prepared to take a course of study to become a minister or a physician until he has gained experience in useful, taxing labor, and parents fail in duty when they freely supply money for such study beforehand.

For a healthy young man stern, severe exercise strengthens brain, bone and muscle and is essential preparation for the difficult work of a physician, keeping the mind in working order for sharp, quick action with full scope of its powers. Without it the mind becomes inactive and stagnant like a pool, with a morally corrupting influence and moral miasma around him, and he never becomes what God designed. Temporal work to secure the bread eaten by the sweat of the brow is not lost or wasted time and must not be divorced from spiritual service. Withdrawing from temporal business to devote time wholly to religious duties does not make a person more fervent and earnest, for the business of life is not to stand still and ministry is not the only important duty, and Christ left no example of separating temporal business from spiritual service but was a true worker in temporal as well as spiritual things, bringing into all He did a determination to do His Father's will, God having given to every man his work according to his several ability.

After sin men must earn food by hard labor and tilling the soil, and refusing that work through laziness, ignorance and unwillingness increases the evil and multiplies the curse. Cultivating the soil is not degrading servitude but holds blessing for workers and their families, for despite the curse the earth still has blessings and hidden treasures in its depths and is to be made to give forth its strength to those who work it with courage, will and perseverance. It can do nothing without the blessing of God, yielding only under that blessing. Possessing a piece of land and a comfortable home by faithful labor is honorable, making fathers and mothers kings and queens and the family truly prosperous.

The decree to eat bread by the sweat of the face was not given as a curse, even though the earth was cursed because of the fall, for work itself belongs to Eden before sin where tilling the soil and caring for what God planted was regarded not as degrading but as a great blessing, pleasure and happiness. After the fall the order of things changed and toil rests heavily with anxiety, attended with weariness, and the deeper the curse of sin the heavier the burden and the further God's order is changed. Yet through faith and hope labor remains to the descendants of Adam and Eve a blessing from the same throne as the promise of future happiness and glory, because God never meant humans to have nothing to do. Labor is to human beings what they make it: rightly used it is pleasure and blessing, while perverted by idleness that lives on money and supposes money increases moral worth, by heavy toil laid on one class, by constant drudgery relieved only by drink and exciting amusements making men little better than brutes, or by gambling, amusement, indolence and dependence, it degrades.

Useful labor is indispensable to physical, mental and moral well-being, and the true glory and joy of life are found only by working men and women. Those who stay busy and cheerfully do their daily tasks become useful members of society and make their lives a blessing to themselves and others, for diligent labor guards against many of Satan's snares. Idleness is one of the greatest curses, with vice, crime and poverty following in its wake, and no person rich or poor can glorify God by a life of indolence, poor men whose only capital is time and physical strength being as accountable to God for using it in patient, persevering labor to bring tithes and offerings as the rich man is for his money. Digging the ground by bodily toil reflects that sweat and work as both constitutional necessity and means of bodily and mental vigor, illustrated by frugal work on the soil and the sweat with which a community like the Pilgrims established itself and earned subsistence.

Since the fall sickness, suffering, disease and mortality have followed as punishment of rebellion and violation of the conditions and laws governing human life, not as special acts of Providence nor as man's created condition or appointed lot from God. Disease, suffering and death have rapidly increased, with the curse bringing hardship, physical decline and eventual return to the ground, compounded by wrong habits, indulgence of appetite and passion, continued transgression and violations of natural law across generations. If God's law had always been obeyed, people would never have known suffering, trouble and burdens. The weakness now common has followed the fall, linked to declining strength and shorter lifespan compared with earlier long life.

Searching the hidden treasures and jewels of truth in the record of the introduction of sin and its results upon the race, the disobedience and impenitence of man and the just retribution for sin following the holy innocency of the first parents in Eden in communion with God and sinless angels, gives strength of intellect beyond philosophy and develops the powers of the mind by grand subjects, dignified simplicity, elevated themes and sharp clear light from the throne of God. It holds grand truth of sacred history possessing amazing strength and beauty and reaching as far as eternity, outlining the fall and the consequences of the sin that opened the floodgates of woe upon the world. Knowledge of it, joined to the teaching of the first advent of Christ as a helpless babe born in a stable and cradled in a manger, is among the most important knowledge to be gained.

Adam and Eve's disobedience brought fearful consequences, with Satan's deception bringing the entrance of sin and death, loss of original purity and dignity, and the curse under which the earth became a place of suffering and human life was marred. Adam, once sovereign in Eden, became a slave in a world marked by poverty, sickness and suffering as the portion of his descendants in place of Eden's health and blessings, and after losing the garden and access to the tree of life people live in a fallen world marked by sickness, pain, sorrow, tears and death. Violating God's command brought woe to the whole world, showing God's requirements are founded in love and wisdom and obedience to them is the only safe course.