Then came the choice.  The step up was a step down:  up into the use of his highest power; down by the use of that power.  In that wherein he was most like God in power, man became most unlike God in character.  First the woman chose:  then the man.  Satan subtly begins his attack upon the woman.  Because she was the weaker?  Certainly not.  Because she was the stronger.  Not the leader in action, but the stronger in influence.  He is the leader in action:  she in influence.  The greater includes the less.  Satan is a master strategist, bold in his cunning.  If the citadel can be gotten, all is won.  If he could get the woman he would get the man.  She includes him.  She who was included in him now includes him.  The last has become first.

She was deceived.  He was not deceived.  The woman chose unwarily for the supposed good.  The man chose with open eyes for the woman’s sake.  Could the word gallantry be used?  Was it supposed friendship?  He would not abandon her?  Yet he proved not her friend that day, in stepping down to this new low level.  Man’s habit of giving smoothly spoken words to woman, while shying sharp-edged stones at her, should in all honesty be stopped.  Man can throw no stones at woman.  If the woman failed God that day, the man failed both God and the woman.  If it be true that through her came the beginning of the world’s sin, through her, too, be it gratefully and reverently remembered, came that which was far greater—­the world’s Saviour.

The choice was made.  The act was done.  Tremendous act!  Bring your microscope and peer with awe into that single act.  No fathoming line can sound its depth.  No measuring rod its height nor breadth.  No thought can pierce its intensity.  That reaching arm went around a world.  Millenniums in a moment.  A million miles in a step.  An ocean in a drop.  Volumes in a word.  A race in a woman.  A hell of suffering in an act.  The depths of woe in a glance.  The first chapter of Romans in Genesis three, six.  Sharpest pain in softest touch.  God mistrusted—­distrusted.  Satan embraced.  Sin’s door open.  Eden’s gate shut.

Mark keenly the immediate result that came with that intense rapidity possible only to mental powers.  At once they were both conscious of something that had not entered their thoughts before.  To the pure all things are pure.  To the imagination hurt by breaking away from God, the purest things can bring up suggestions directly opposite.  Through the open door of disobedience came with lightning swiftness the suggestion of using a pure, holy function of the body in a way and for a purpose not intended.  Making an end of that which was meant to be only a means to a highest end.  Degrading to an animal pleasure that which held in its pure hallowed power the whole future of the race.  There is absolutely no change save in the inner thought.  But what a horrid heredity in that one flash of the imagination!  Every sin lives first in the imagination.  The