whatever, just or unjust, is to admit a dangerous fact. Hence the fact must
be denied; for if sin's claim be allowed in any degree, then sin destroys
the _at-one-ment_, or oneness with God,--a unity which sin recognizes as
its most potent and deadly enemy.

If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then acquaintance with that
claimant becomes legitimate to mortals, and this knowledge would not be
forbidden; but God forbade man to know evil at the very beginning, when
Satan held it up before man as something desirable and a distinct addition
to human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would make man a god,--a
representation that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil.

Which is right,--God, who condemned the knowledge of sin and disowned its
acquaintance, or the serpent, who pushed that claim with the glittering
audacity of diabolical and sinuous logic?




Suffering from Others' Thoughts


Jesus accepted the one fact whereby alone the rule of Life can be
demonstrated,--namely, that there is no death.

In his real self he bore no infirmities. Though "a man of sorrows, and
acquainted with grief," as Isaiah says of him, he bore not _his_ sins, but
_ours_, "in his own body on the tree." "He was bruised for _our_
iniquities; ... and with his stripes we are healed."