Sensations of terror, surprise,
dislike, and so forth, were _ex hypothesi_ unknown. Why then should not
the narrative be exact, unless, indeed, we have some _a priori_ ground
for supposing that human nature _never could_ have been in a state where
the voice of God and angels sounded in its ears, and where innocence and
the absence of all evil emotion was the daily condition of life? The
unbeliever may sneer at such a state, but _reason_ why it should _not_
have been, he can give none. So, again, with the idea of the "tree of
the knowledge of good and evil" and the "tree of life." We are no doubt
tempted to think that these terms may be symbolic; but a more careful
reflection, and a deliberate rejection of the _influence of present
experiences_, may lead us to accept the narrative more literally. Even
now, we are not unfamiliar with the ideas of medicinal virtues in plants
and fruits. I see nothing impossible in the idea that God may have been
pleased to impart such virtue to the fruit of a tree standing in the
midst of the Garden, that physical health, immunity from all decay, and
constant restoration, should have been the result of eating the fruit;
and the eating of this fruit, we know, was freely permitted. The late
Archbishop Whately suggested, and I think with great probability, that
the longevity of the earliest generations of the Adamic race may have
been due to the beneficial effects of the eating of this fruit, which
only gradually died out.
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