Then she brought forth Abel; and before six other verses are ended, we learn that the brothers are at enmity because of religion, and that one has killed the other.
How Adam and Eve were to have propagated the human race, had Eve not listened to the snake; or whether they were to have propagated it at all, is a mystery which our finite minds were evidently not expected to fathom. Nevertheless, Saint Augustine made a heroic effort to answer the riddle; and his classic theological work, "The City of God," contains his theory, still discreetly veiled in the original Latin, which, being interpreted, is considerably nastier than any other English that I ever perused in a classical theological work.
The first occupation of Adam outside of Paradise ought to have some weight with us, as a time-honored precedent. That wicked mankind, and Noe came out of the Ark, together with all those animals, birds, reptiles, &c., the very first command given him was, that he and his family should increase and multiply. Apparently, their obedience to this command was so prompt and effective that the Lord never reproached him or his descendants for any neglect of duty in that particular.
"And God blessed Noe and his sons: and said unto them, Increase and multiply, and fill the earth."
It is true that Noe got drunk, soon after this; but the diligent casuists, who follow every perilous passage in the Douay Bible with their indefatigable notes, tell us that Noe did not commit a sin by getting drunk, "because he knew not the strength of it," the wine.
(Thus does ignorance excuse the sinner, when the casuists need the defense.)
And through the Mosaic Code, breathes the same spirit and purpose: it can fairly be summed up in the phrase, Thou shalt marry!
Every encouragement is given to wedlock and to large families: polygamy itself, had its reason, in those hot climates where puberty is reached at so early an age, and where the child-bearing woman is so quickly aged into unfitness for mating with the robust husband. It was partly because the Mosaic law gave so little excuse for immorality, that adultery was so cruelly punished. And the vigor of the Jewish type, for so many centuries, amid so many barbarous persecutions, and in spite of such wide geographical dispersions, is the most splendid monument to the eternal wisdom of the command—
Marry! Increase and multiply! Fill the earth with lawfully begotten children! Honor the Home! Preserve your Race! Do not breed promiscuously! DO NOT MONGRELIZE!
In short,