The Default of Adam and Eve

75:1.1The Adamic mis­sion on ex­per­i­men­tal, re­bel­lion-seared, and iso­lated Uran­tia was a formidable un­der­tak­ing. And the Ma­te­rial Son and Daugh­ter early be­came aware of the dif­fi­culty and com­plex­ity of their plan­e­tary as­sign­ment. Nev­er­the­less, they coura­geously set about the task of solv­ing their man­i­fold prob­lems. But when they ad­dressed them­selves to the all-im­por­tant work of elim­i­nat­ing the de­fec­tives and de­gen­er­ates from among the hu­man strains, they were quite dis­mayed. They could see no way out of the dilemma, and they could not take coun­sel with their su­pe­ri­ors on ei­ther Je­ru­sem or Eden­tia. Here they were, iso­lated and day by day con­fronted with some new and com­pli­cated tan­gle, some prob­lem that seemed to be un­solv­able.

75:1.2Un­der nor­mal con­di­tions the first work of a Plan­e­tary Adam and Eve would be the co-or­di­na­tion and blend­ing of the races. But on Uran­tia such a project seemed just about hope­less, for the races, while bi­o­log­i­cally fit, had never been purged of their re­tarded and de­fec­tive strains.

75:1.3Adam and Eve found them­selves on a sphere wholly un­pre­pared for the procla­ma­tion of the broth­er­hood of man, a world grop­ing about in ab­ject spir­i­tual dark­ness and cursed with con­fu­sion worse con­founded by the mis­car­riage of the mis­sion of the pre­ced­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion. Mind and morals were at a low level, and in­stead of be­gin­ning the task of ef­fect­ing re­li­gious unity, they must be­gin all anew the work of con­vert­ing the in­hab­i­tants to the most sim­ple forms of re­li­gious be­lief. In­stead of find­ing one lan­guage ready for adop­tion, they were con­fronted by the world-wide con­fu­sion of hun­dreds upon hun­dreds of lo­cal di­alects. No Adam of the plan­e­tary ser­vice was ever set down on a more dif­fi­cult world; the ob­sta­cles seemed in­su­per­a­ble and the prob­lems be­yond crea­ture so­lu­tion.

75:1.4They were iso­lated, and the tremen­dous sense of lone­li­ness which bore down upon them was all the more height­ened by the early de­par­ture of the Mel­chiz­e­dek re­ceivers. Only in­di­rectly, by means of the an­gelic or­ders, could they com­mu­ni­cate with any be­ing off the planet. Slowly their cour­age weak­ened, their spir­its drooped, and some­times their faith al­most fal­tered.

75:1.5And this is the true pic­ture of the con­ster­na­tion of these two no­ble souls as they pon­dered the tasks which con­fronted them. They were both keenly aware of the enor­mous un­der­tak­ing in­volved in the ex­e­cu­tion of their plan­e­tary as­sign­ment.

75:1.6Prob­a­bly no Ma­te­rial Sons of Neb­a­don were ever faced with such a dif­fi­cult and seem­ingly hope­less task as con­fronted Adam and Eve in the sorry plight of Uran­tia. But they would have some­time met with suc­cess had they been more farsee­ing and pa­tient. Both of them, es­pe­cially Eve, were al­to­gether too im­pa­tient; they were not will­ing to set­tle down to the long, long en­durance test. They wanted to see some im­me­di­ate re­sults, and they did, but the re­sults thus se­cured proved most dis­as­trous both to them­selves and to their world.