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Nordhoff, Charles, 1830-1901

"The Communistic Societies of the United States From Personal Visit and Observation"


Soon as the life had left my soul,
He took possession of the whole.
"He plunder'd all my mental pow'rs,
My visage, stature, speech, and gait;
And, in a word, in a few hours,
He was first Adam placed in state:
He took my wife, he took my name;
All but his nature was the same.
"Now see him hide, and skulk about,
Just like a beast, and even worse,
Till God in anger drove him out,
And doom'd him to an endless curse.
O hear the whole creation groan!
The Man of Sin has took the throne!
"Now in my name this beast can plead,
How God commanded him at first
To multiply his wretched seed,
Through the base medium of his lust.
O horrid cheat! O subtle plan!
A hellish beast assumes the man!
"This is your father in my name:
Your pedigree ye now may know:
He early from perdition came,
And to perdition he must go.
And all his race with him shall share
Eternal darkness and despair."
[Footnote: It is curious that the Jewish Talmud (according to
Eisenmenger) has a somewhat similar theory--namely, that Eve cohabited
with devils for a period of one hundred and thirty years; and that Cain
was not the child of Adam, but of one of these devils.]
The same theory of the fall is stated in another hymn:
"We read, when God created man,
He made him able then to stand
United to his Lord's command
That he might be protected;
But when, through Eve, he was deceiv'd,
And to his wife in lust had cleav'd,
And of forbidden fruit receiv'd,
He found himself rejected.


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