The tree of knowledge of good and evil was the tree of choice.  Obedience to God was the one thing involved.  That simply meant, as it always means, keeping in warm touch with God.  All good absolutely is bound up in this—­obeying God, keeping in warm touch.  To obey Him is the very heart of good.  All evil is included in disobeying Him.  To disobey, to fail to obey is the seeded core of all evil.

Whichever way he chose he would exercise his God-like power of choice.  Whichever way he chose, the knowledge would come.  If he chose to obey he would know good by choosing it, and evil by rejecting it.  He knew neither good nor evil, for he had not yet had the contact of choice.  Knowledge comes only through experience.  In choosing not to obey, choosing to disobey, he would know evil with a bitter intimacy by choosing it.  He would become acquainted with the good which he had shoved ruthlessly away.

With the opportunity came the temptation:  God’s opportunity; Satan’s temptation.  Satan is ever on the heels of God.  Two inclined planes lead out of every man’s path.  Two doors open into them side by side.  God’s door up, the tempter’s door down, and only a door-jamb between.  Here the split hoof can be seen sticking from under the cloak’s edge at the very start.  Satan hates the truth.  He is afraid of it.  Yet he sneaks around the sheltering corner of what he fears and hates.  The sugar coating of his gall pills he steals from God.  The devil bare-faced, standing only on his own feet, would be instantly booted out at first approach.  And right well he knows it.

A cunning half lie opens the way to a full-fledged lie, but still coupled with a half-truth.  The suggestion that God was harshly prohibiting something that was needful leads to the further suggestion that He was arbitrarily, selfishly holding back the highest thing, the very thing He was supposed to be giving, that is, likeness to Himself.  Eve was getting a course in suggestion.  This was the first lesson.  The school seems to be in session still.  The whole purpose is to slander God, to misrepresent Him.  That has been Satan’s favorite method ever since.  God is not good.  He makes cruel prohibitions.  He keeps from us what we should have.  It is passing strange how every one of us has had that dust in his eyes.  Some of us might leave the “had” out of that sentence.

See how cunningly the truth and the lie are interwoven by this old past-master in the sooty art of lying.  “Your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil.”  It was true because by the use of this highest power of choice he would become like God, and through choosing he would know.  It is cunningly implied with a sticky, slimy cunning that, by not eating, that likeness and knowledge would not come.  That was the lie.  The choice either way would bring both this element of likeness to God in the sovereign power of choice, and the knowledge.