dares to defy and dishonor the I AM, not created,--the Lord God, the
Almighty, Holy, Eternal.

_That_ IS SIN, _per se_. And that is all of it,--so help me God! Your
child there--John--says to his father, "I WILL _not to submit_ to your
will." "Why not, John?" And he answers and says, "Because I WILL _not_."
There, sir, John has revealed _all of sin_, on earth or in hell. Satan has
never said--can never say--more. "I, Satan, WILL NOT, because I WILL _not
to submit_ to thee, God; MY WILL, not thine, shall be."

This beautiful theory is the ray of light which leads us from night, and
twilight, and fog, and mist, and mystification, on this subject, to clear
day. I will illustrate it by the law which has controlled and now
regulates the most delicate of all the relations of life,--viz.: that of
the intercourse between the sexes. I take this, because it presents the
strongest apparent objections to my argument.

Cain and Abel married their sisters. Was it wrong in the nature of things?
[Here Dr. Wisner spoke out, and said, "Certainly."] I deny it. What an
absurdity, to suppose that God could not provide for the propagation of
the human race from one pair, without _requiring them to sin!_ Adam's sons
and daughters must have married, had they remained in innocence. They must
then have sinned in Eden, from the very necessity of the command upon the
race:--"Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth." (Gen. i. 28).
What pure nonsense! There, sir!--_that_, my one question, Dr. Wisner's
reply, and my rejoinder, bring out, perfectly, the two theories of right
and wrong. Sir, Abraham married his half-sister. And there is not a word
forbidding such marriage, until God gave the law (Lev. xviii.) prohibiting
marriage in certain degrees of consanguinity. That law made, then, such
marriage _sin_. But God gave no such law in the family of Adam; because he