Page:Studies in the Scriptures - Series I - The Plan of the Ages (1909).djvu/128

 t22 The Plan of the Ages.

have been made acquainted with evil in some other way than by experience? There are four ways of knowing things, namely, by intuition, by observation, by experience, and by information received through sources accepted as positively truthful. An intuitive knowledge would be a di- rect apprehension, without the process of reasoning, or the necessity for proof. Such knowledge belongs only to the divine Jehovah, the eternal fountain of all wisdom and truth, who, of necessity and in the very nature of things, is supe- rior to all his creatures. Therefore, man's knowledge of good and evil could not be intuitive. Man's knowledge might have come by observation, but in that event there must needs have been some exhibition of evil and its results for man to observe. This would imply the permission of evil somewhere, among some beings, and why not as well

Why should not man be the illustration, and get hh knowledge by practical experience? It is so: man is gairv ing a practical experience, and is furnishing an illustration to others as well, being "made a spectacle to angels."

Adam already had a knowledge of evil by information but that was insufficient to restrain him from trying the ex- periment. Adam and Eve knew God as their Creator, and hence as the one who had the right to control and direct them j and God had said of the forbidden tree, "In the day thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die. ' ' They had, there* fore, a theoretical knowledge of evil, though they had never observed or experienced its effects. Consequently, they did not appreciate their Creator's loving authority and his be- neficent law, nor the dangers from which he thereby pro- posed to protect them. They therefore yielded to the temptation which God wisely permitted, the ultimate utility of which his wisdom had traced.

Few appreciate the severity of the temptation under which

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