—­Hell has enlarged its soul and opened its mouth without any limits—­ words taken, my dear little brothers in Christ Jesus, from the book of Isaias, fifth chapter, fourteenth verse.  In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.  Amen.

The preacher took a chainless watch from a pocket within his soutane and, having considered its dial for a moment in silence, placed it silently before him on the table.

He began to speak in a quiet tone.

—­Adam and Eve, my dear boys, were, as you know, our first parents, and you will remember that they were created by God in order that the seats in heaven left vacant by the fall of Lucifer and his rebellious angels might be filled again.  Lucifer, we are told, was a son of the morning, a radiant and mighty angel; yet he fell:  he fell and there fell with him a third part of the host of heaven:  he fell and was hurled with his rebellious angels into hell.  What his sin was we cannot say.  Theologians consider that it was the sin of pride, the sinful thought conceived in an instant:  Non SERVIAM:  I will not serve.  That instant was his ruin.

He offended the majesty of God by the sinful thought of one instant and God cast him out of heaven into hell for ever.

—­Adam and Eve were then created by God and placed in Eden, in the plain of Damascus, that lovely garden resplendent with sunlight and colour, teeming with luxuriant vegetation.  The fruitful earth gave them her bounty:  beasts and birds were their willing servants:  they knew not the ills our flesh is heir to, disease and poverty and death:  all that a great and generous God could do for them was done.  But there was one condition imposed on them by God:  obedience to His word.  They were not to eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree.

—­Alas, my dear little boys, they too fell.  The devil, once a shining angel, a son of the morning, now a foul fiend came in the shape of a serpent, the subtlest of all the beasts of the field.  He envied them.  He, the fallen great one, could not bear to think that man, a being of clay, should possess the inheritance which he by his sin had forfeited for ever.  He came to the woman, the weaker vessel, and poured the poison of his eloquence into her ear, promising her—­O, the blasphemy of that promise!—­that if she and Adam ate of the forbidden fruit they would become as gods, nay as God Himself.  Eve yielded to the wiles of the archtempter.  She ate the apple and gave it also to Adam who had not the moral courage to resist her.  The poison tongue of Satan had done its work.  They fell.