And, that your test may be perfect, I will let your temptation be
nothing more than your natural desire for that fruit. Adam sinned. What
was the sin?

Adam said, in heart, MY WILL, _not thine_, SHALL BE. _That_ was the
sin,--_the simple transgression of God's law_, when there was neither sin
nor evil in the _thing_ which God forbade to be done.

Man fell and was cursed. The law of the control of the superior over the
inferior is now to begin, and is to go on in the depraved conditions of
the fallen and cursed race. And, FIRST, God said to the woman, "_Thy
desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee." There,_ in
that law, is _the beginning of government ordained of God. There_ is the
beginning of the rule of the superior over the inferior, bound to obey.
_There_, in the family of Adam, is the germ of the rule in the tribe,--the
state. Adam, in his right, from God, to rule over his wife and his
children, had _all the authority_ afterwards expanded in the patriarch and
the king. This simple, beautiful fact, there, on the first leaf of the
Bible, solves the problem, whence and how has man right to rule over man.
In that great fact God gives his denial to the idea that government over
man is the result of a social compact, in which each individual man living
in a state of natural liberty, yielded some of that liberty to secure the
greater good of government. Such a thing never was; such a thing never
could have been. _Government was ordained and established before the first
child was born:_--"HE SHALL RULE OVER THEE." Cain and Abel were born in a
_state_ as perfect as the empire of Britain or the rule of these United
States. All that Blackstone, and Paley, and Hobbs, or anybody else, says
about the social compact, is flatly and fully denied and upset by the
Bible, history, and common sense. Let any New York lawyer--or even a
Philadelphia lawyer--deny this if he dares. _Life, liberty, and the