Life is the great fact of all existence; the tendency towards life is the greatest of all forces; the maintenance of life is the first of all laws; and the tendency towards the life of the species is even stronger than the tendency towards the individual life. Such a force, if perverted, must have a most pernicious effect; such a law if violated must have a terrible punishment. In inferior nature this impulse acts harmoniously and beneficially; in mankind this function, though noble and comparable to God's creative power, "from whom all paternity in heaven and earth is named" (Eph. iii. 15) is greatly abused and has most destructive consequences. The first effect of original sin as embodied in the Curse was in the relation of the sexes and the reproduction of the species. Adam's choice of the natural over the supernatural plane of existence showed itself in the dominance of nature in the carrying out of the first law of being. The originating of natural life became the transmission of supernatural death. The command to increase and multiply, which is the condition of life and progress, of glory to God and happiness in heaven for myriads, has been perverted into the most fruitful source of conflict, cruelty, misery, degradation and eternal loss. God has given laws to regulate the great functions of life; they are necessary not only for the supernatural life, but for the due observance of the most natural of nature's laws.
