Page:Labour - The Divine Command, 1890.djvu/69

Rh to treat me with disdain. And if I had hitherto been held in esteem among men, I might well be henceforth treated as a nobody.

This is the reason why writers have never spoken of this commandment, nor ever will speak of it to the end of the world.

Adam committed a crime. God punished him according to the greatness of his fault, as we see in Holy Scripture, and he thus gained forgiveness from God. Why, then, should tradition say that he was sent to hell for five thousand five hundred years?

The New Testament makes no allusion to this exile. Whence, then, comes the legend? If it is true, God, in imposing on him the penance of labor, deceived Adam by a false promise. For if this labor was of no utility to Adam, if, after enduring all its fatigues during his life, he was condemned after death to the torments of hell, every one would exclaim, "Is this the recompense God gives us for our labor?" If that be true, what can we do? How shall we act? How must we live ? by robbery and murder?…

And then you invent new laws, you have need of the executioner, you brand men with hot irons, you send them into exile, women remain widows, and orphans become in their turn a prey to vice and crime.

And whose is the fault?

Evidently his who has concealed, and continues to conceal, the law of labor.

39. If there were in the world a man having