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they were naked, they were strangers to shame and confusion. Their morning and evening hymns and prayers ascended to the source of their existence. Their days were spent in recreation, or in such employment as yielded delight without producing painful fatigue; and at night, refreshing slumbers brought renewed vigour for the coming morn. Death, although threatened them as the penalty of their transgression, was a mysterious and undefined thing; terrible, because denounced by the Deity, but not the better understood.

Among the angels, whom God had created before He made the earth, were some who had rebelled against their Maker's will; and, attempting to resist His power, had been cast out of heaven into a place of gloom, and pain, and sorrow. Satan, the chief of these rebellious angels, had heard of the creation of the world from his place of punishment with envy and hatred; and when he learned the injunction respecting the tree of knowledge, he occupied himself unceasingly to devise means to bring upon man the wrath and displeasure, and, consequently, the threatened punishment, of the Almighty; not that it would lighten his own pain to behold the pain of others, but that, in the malice of his heart, he sought to provoke God against all that He had made, and to turn into bitterness and regret the pleasure of the Creator in the happiness of which He had been

the author. Now Satan was free to roam about wheresoever he would, except only that he could never re-enter the gates of heaven, from which he had been expelled.

Adam and Eve had not long been placed in Paradise, when Satan, prowling about the earth, discovered their abode, girt in by mountains and rocks, which formed an almost inaccessible wall around the garden. That this was the abiding-place of his intended victims he could scarcely fail to know from its construction, and from the happy spirits which hovered over it, ascending to heaven, or descending from the throne of God, bearing the desires of man, or the commands of the Deity. The gates of Paradise were guarded by angels appointed to protect the place from the entrance of unholy things. Around-above, the most jealous care was visible to secure the welfare of God's chosen creatures. Satan, pleased at this vigilance, which told how great was the Maker's love, and how great would, therefore, be His sorrow to inflict evil upon those for whom He had intended nothing but good, was not long in devising means to pass unobserved and unsuspected. As he had been the first to practise deceit in heaven, so also he was the first to introduce fraud upon earth. Spirits have power to take what shape they please. The wicked Satan can assume the appearance of an angel of light. He

now, however, transformed himself into the likeness of a serpent, one of the wisest creatures which the Lord had made, yet not likely, from its habits, to be questioned.

Impressed with the fear which always accompanies, and frequently betrays guilt, Satan, though in a new form, durst not attempt to enter Paradise by any of the gates where the stationed angels were; but, gliding up a steep ascent, he crossed the barrier by a track hitherto unattempted. The angels, having no guile or treachery in themselves, suspected no falsehood in others; and hence the author of all evil passed unnoticed into Eden.

He alighted at length in a pleasant_dell; the banks of which were covered with bright green grass, and where

"Under foot, the violet,

Crocus, and hyacinth, with rich inlay,

Broidered the ground."

In the midst ran a sweet brooklet, which, after leaping in fantastic beauty from ledge to ledge down the rocks from which it seemed to distil, flowed away into a broad lake, set about with groves of branching palm, cedar, aloes, and lemontrees, and undergrown with thickets of eglantine, jessamine, and rose-briars. It was a place of perfect delight, where laughing Spring seemed to have thrown, in sport, her gayest living garland.

Here it was that the majestic tree of life, laden with bud, and bloom, and fruit, grew and flourished beside the more drooping but not less beautiful tree of knowledge. Both were untasted and untouched; for Adam, having no thought to disobey his Maker, had abstained from too near an approach to the forbidden fruit.

There might have shot a momentary relenting pang through the heart of the evil one as he paused to look around upon the happy spot into which he had obtruded; but if so, it quickly passed away. Through a long and verdant alley, leading from the lake already described, he quickly descried the happy inhabitants of the garden. The manly form, and noble bearing of the rather of mankind: his eyes beaming with affection, and his open and healthful countenance bespeaking the honesty and truth which had been implanted in his bosom, struck the observing fiend with awe, and he was fain to creep away among the flowers and grass, as the blissful pair approached the spot where, still in the serpent's form, the monster lay. From the conversation which he overheard, however, Satan was enabled to learn that Eve, though more beautiful in form and feature, was not endued with the same strength of mind and discernment as her husband; that she obeyed his will; and derived her chief pleasure from those things which appeared to afford most delight to him.

This knowledge was of importance, as it gave a greater prospect of success to the evil design which he meditated. The man, there seemed scarcely a hope to mislead from the path of rectitude, contrary to the express command he had received, and the stern unbending dictates of his mind; but the woman, more tender and confiding, more susceptible to momentary impressions, and deriving her very power from the yielding gentleness of her nature, might, he thought, be tempted to destruction. It was on Eve, therefore, that he resolved first to try his seductive influence.

Though following close on all their steps, and watching every moment, it was not immediately that an opportunity occurred for the temptation. Adam and Eve were mostly together, or when separate they were seldom alone. Angels attended them at their occupations and amusements, in their hours of rest, and in their gentle wanderings.

One day, however, when Adam, by some illusive appearance, which had been devised for that purpose by the evil spirit, was for a moment withdrawn from the side of his spouse, the serpent seized the opportunity to address her, cautiously questioning her concerning the fruit of the forbidden tree. He hinted not at disobedience; spoke not against the decree which had connected death-terrible and mysterious death-with the fruit of the tree of knowledge; he merely

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