We shall prefer Brigham's expounding of the dark passages of Genesis.
Our first parents were not made up like mortal bricks. They came to be the Mother and the Father of a new creation of souls.
We say Mother now, first, for we are tracing this everlasting theme of motherhood, in the Mormon economy, without which nothing of the woman part of the divine scheme can be known—next to nothing of patriarchal marriage, to which we are traveling, be expounded.
Eve—immortal Eve—came down to earth to become the Mother of a race.
How become the Mother of a world of mortals except by herself again becoming mortal? How become mortal only by transgressing the laws of immortality? How only by "eating of the forbidden fruit"—by partaking of the elements of a mortal earth, in which the seed of death was everywhere scattered?
All orthodox theologians believe Adam and Eve to have been at first immortal, and all acknowledge the great command, "Be fruitful and multiply."
That they were not about to become the parents of a world of immortals is evident, for they were on a mortal earth. That the earth was mortal all nature here to-day shows. The earth was to be subdued by teeming millions of mankind—the dying earth actually eaten, in a sense, a score of times, by the children of these grand parents.
The fall is simple. Our immortal parents came down to fall; came down to transgress the laws of immortality; came down to give birth to mortal tabernacles for a world of spirits.
The "forbidden tree," says Brigham, contained in its fruit the elements of death, or the elements of mortality. By eating of it, blood was again infused into the tabernacles of beings who had become immortal. The basis of mortal generation is blood. Without blood no mortal can be born. Even could immortals have been conceived on earth, the trees of life had made but the paradise of a few; but a mortal world was the object of creation then.
Eve, then, came down to be the Mother of a world.