afterward require the union of the two sexes in order to create the rest of the human family?
All human knowledge and material sense must be gained from the live personal senses. Is this knowledge safe, when to eat of its first fruits was to ensure death? “If man eat he shall surely die,” is the prediction in the story under consideration. Adam and his progeny were cursed, not blessed; and this indicates that the Divine Spirit, or Father, reprehends mortal man and consigns him to dust.
Genesis iii. 9. And the Lord God called unto Adam, and said “Where art thou?” And he said, “I heard Thy voice in the garden; and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.”
Knowledge, gathered from the body, or material sense, produced the immediate fruits of fear and shame. Ashamed before Truth, the error of being shrank abashed from the divine voice, calling to the senses. Its summons may be thus paraphrased: “Where art thou? Art thou in matter? Then art thou a sense of evil, instead of good.”
Fear was the first manifestation of the error of material sense, and is the foundation of all sickness and death. In the allegory the body had been naked, and Adam knew it not; but now error demands that Mind shall see and feel through matter, which is impossible. The first impression material man had of himself was one of nakedness and shame. He felt that he had been stripped of his rich inheritance in the Fatherhood and Motherhood of God.
