We will notice a few other points.
60. As God declared eating the fruit would make Adam "like one of us," that is, Godlike (and all men are enjoined to become Godlike), was not Adam, therefore, justified in eating the fruit in order to become Godlike?
61. In chapter sixty-nine it is shown, that, as Adam and Eve got their eyes open by eating the inhibited fruit, the act of disobedience turned out to be a great blessing, inasmuch as it saved the earth from being filled with a race of blind human beings.
62. And, as this blessing was obtained through the agency of the serpent-devil, we must admit "the father of lies" was a great benefactor of the human race, as shown in chapter sixty-nine.
63. As Adam could not very well exercise "dominion over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. i. 26) while shut up in a little eight-by-ten garden, we can observe here another practical benefit of the act of disobedience which drove him from the garden.
64. Is it not a strange piece of moral incongruity to set Adam to tilling the soil in the garden as a blessing, and then doom him to till it outside as a curse? (Gen. iii. 23.) He first embarked in the business as a blessing, and then as a curse. How the same act could be both a blessing and a curse is a "mystery of godliness" which swamps us.
65. The Jews tell us the original tempter was a serpent (Gen. iii. 1); The Mexicans say it was a demon; the Hindoos call him a snake; the Greeks declare it was a dragon; Josephus supposes it was an ape; some of the East-India sects speak of him as a fish; but the Persian revelations make it a lizard. Which is right?
66. The Mosaic or Hebrew cosmogony represents the serpent as dealing out the fruit to the genus homo; while the Mexicans, the Egyptians, and the Persians set the serpent or "evil genius" to guarding the tree to protect the fruit. Which is right?
67. When God Jehovah announced to the trinity of Gods, "Behold, the man has become as one of us to know good and evil" (Gen. iii. 22), exactly as the serpent had predicted, instead of dying as Jehovah had predicted, does it not prove that the serpent was the best and most reliable prophet?
68. As Adam and Eve could know nothing of the nature of right and wrong until they attained that knowledge by eating the fruit, does not this fact prove it to be a justifiable if not a righteous act?