Not many years ago a scientist in Massachusetts imported to the United States some caterpillars that interested him. He kept them in a bottle. One day the bottle tipped over, and some of the caterpillars escaped. Unnoticed, they made their way into the garden, and in due time stocked it with gypsy moths. These moths became a plague, and the swarms produced by them have done millions of dollars of damage to the woods and orchards of New England.
How far-reaching are the results of some acts, insignificant in themselves! The tipping over of the bottle was a trivial incident, but thence resulted all the damage done by the insect pests.
People sometimes speak as if the original sin of Eve in the Garden of Eden had been a trifling matter. "Merely the eating of a piece of fruit," they call it. But from that act all the trouble in the world has resulted. Think of the wars, the crimes, the cruelties, the diseases, the loathsome vices that have filled and polluted the world. All the consequences of that one sin! Death, too, the king of terrors, is "the wages of sin."
But after death comes the judgment; and this not because of what Adam or Eve did but because of what men themselves have done. Men will be judged, not because Adam was a sinner, but because they are sinners; not because their first parents fell into disobedience, but because they have followed in their steps and have loved sin and practiced it.
Thank God, though there is no remedy for all the calamity that sin has brought upon the world, save God's own intervention in power (which He will bring to pass when Christ comes to earth to reign in righteousness), there is a remedy, a grand and complete remedy, for the individual sinner. He may get rid of the burden of his guilt through Christ's precious blood.