Page:Unity of Good.djvu/78

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Unity of Good.

a unity which sin recognizes as its most potent and deadly enemy.

If God knows sin, even as a false claimant, then acquaintance with that claimant becomes legitimate to mortals, and this knowledge would not be forbidden; but God forbade man to know evil, at the very beginning, when Satan held it up before man as something desirable, and a distinct addition to human wisdom, because the knowledge of evil would make man a god, — a representation that God both knew and admitted the dignity of evil.

Which is right, God, who condemned the knowledge of sin, and disowned its acquaintance, or the Serpent, who pushed that claim with the glittering audacity of diabolical and sinuous logic?