Page:Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism.djvu/149

container of all created things, as the creator is of all creatures.

The rebellion of the angel was the first disorder, the first evil, and the first sin. It was the origin of all sin, of all the evil and all the disorder which was to fall upon creation, and especially upon the human race, through subsequent ages; for, when the fallen angel, who was now deprived of light and beauty, saw the man and woman in paradise, so pure, so lustrous, and so beautiful with the splendors of grace, he felt the deepest dejection at the sight of an excellence which he had lost, and instantly formed the design of involving them in his condemnation, since he could not equal them in glory. Assuming the form of a serpent, which was to be forever the symbol of deceit and cunning, the horror of the human race, and an object of divine wrath, he entered the terrestrial paradise, and, gliding through its tender and fragrant herbage, entangled the woman in that most subtle snare, by which she lost her innocence, and with it her happiness.

Nothing can equal the sublime simplicity of the Mosaical narration of this tragedy, of which the terrestrial paradise was the theater, God the spectator, and the actors, on the one side the king and sovereign of the abyss, and on the other the kings and sovereigns of the earth; of which mankind was to be the victim, while the sad and sorrowful catastrophe was to be lamented with everlasting sorrowing, by the earth in its motion, by the heavenly bodies in their revolutions, by the angels on their thrones, and by us, unhappy children of those unfortunate parents, in the darksome valley of our pilgrimage.

The serpent commenced his discourse thus: "Why hath God commanded you that you should not eat of