Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/52

48 shown him? What was this punishment to that which he might have looked to receive?

4.—May we then believe that Adam labored for nine hundred and thirty years, and that he eat his bread in the sweat of his brow, living by the work of his hands, although he was a noble, according to his time, since he is the father of the human race?

5. Did he desire dominion, or any power whatever? No. For though he listened in paradise to the words of the serpent, who said to him and to his wife, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil,"—that is, you shall live like pomestchiks, and you will be the most intelligent beings in the world,—they nevertheless so lost spirit as to seek concealment from God.

Following the counsel of the serpent, Adam hoped to live in the world without labor; but he was, on the contrary, condemned to seek his nourishment in the sweat of his face, and instead of being elevated to a supreme rank, he lost his birth-place, and in exile was poor and without shelter. Thus to him the serpent became a horrible creature, to whose frightful influence he owed his own loss and that of all his race.

6. Thus you will see, reader, what is the result of this desire for possessions.

And what must we think of one who thus gains possessions, that is, who can be sheltered beneath an umbrella, having white hands, and who during all his life eats the bread that