I. The problem of moral evil: conflict of Christian and modern views.

I. It is in their respective relations to the sin and disorder of the world, perhaps more than at any other point, that the Christian and "modern" views of the world come to a direct issue. On the one hand, there are certain respects in which the Christian view finds unexpected support from the modern view of the world; on the other, there are certain respects in which it is fundamentally at variance with it. Let us briefly consider both.

There are three respects, in particular, in which the modern view of the world comes to the support of the Christian view of sin.

1. The modern view of things is marked by a stronger sense than in former times of the reality and universal presence of evil--both of natural evil and of moral evil, though moral evil, as was to be expected, is regarded more from its side of error, misery, and bondage, than from its side of guilt. The modern view has disposed of the superficial optimism of earlier times. The days of a flimsy optimism, when men demonstrated to their own satisfaction that this was the best of all possible worlds, and made light of the facts which contradicted their pleasing hypothesis, are over, and everywhere there is an oppressive sense of the weight of the evils which burden humanity, and of the unsatisfactoriness of natural existence generally. The strain of modern thought is pessimistic rather than optimistic. Its high-water mark is not optimism, but what George Eliot prefers to call "meliorism."1 Herbert Spencer, indeed, still looks for an "evanescence of evil," as the result of the working of natural and necessary laws of evolution,2 but I do not find that this represents the general temper of the age. Schopenhauer and Hartmann have at least this merit, that they raise the question of the good or evil of existence in a form which makes it impossible ever again to ignore it, or bury it out of sight. Pessimism, as Professor Flint has said, "like Macbeth, has murdered sleep."1 All this is a gain to the Christian view. Hartmann even goes so far as to find the merit of Christianity in the fact that it is a system of Pessimism.2 Both systems take for granted the facts of existence, and both look them boldly in the face. But there is this difference--Christianity looks on the world in a spirit of hope; Pessimism looks on it in a spirit of despair.

2. It is an extension of the same remark to say that the modern view of the world has disposed effectually of the shallow Rousseau view of the inherent goodness of human nature, and of the eighteenth-century illumination dreams of a perfectibility of man based on education, and on altered social and political conditions.3 The optimistic and Pelagian views of human nature are as completely discredited as the optimistic view of the world generally. Kant struck this deeper keynote when, in opposition to the preceding Rationalism, he acknowledged the presence of a "radical evil" in human nature, which he could only account for by an act of the will above time.4 The modern evolutionary philosophy goes even beyond Christianity in its affirmation of the dominance of the brute element in man's being--of the ascendency of the egoistic over the social impulses in the natural man;5 while the moralisation of humanity which it anticipates, in the sense of a gradual subordination of the former to the latter, is admitted to be yet very imperfect. From the side of modern thought, therefore, there is no hesitation in admitting, what Christianity also affirms, that the animal in man has an undue preponderance over the intellectual and spiritual; that the will, even in the best of men, is hampered and fettered by impulses of the lower nature to a degree which often evokes the liveliest expressions of shame and self-reproach; that society is largely ruled by egoistic passions and aims. The law in the members warring against the law in the mind1--in a sense, a natural depravity and "original sin "--has its recognition in modern science and philosophy.

3. In the modern view of the world we have the fullest recognition of the organic principle in human life, and of the corollary of this in heredity. This, which is the correction of the individualistic view of human nature which prevailed in last century, I take to be one of the greatest gains of modern thought for the right understanding of the Christian doctrines both of sin and of Redemption. The Christian view is one which gives its rightful place alike to the individual, and to the organic connection of the individual with the race; and it is the latter side of the truth which modern thought has done so much to further. Rather, perhaps, I should say that both sides are being brought into strong prominence; for if there never was so much stress laid on the connection of the individual with society, neither was there ever so much said about individual rights. The former idea, at all events, is now thoroughly incorporated into modern habits of under the name of the "solidarity" of the race.2 There is an individual life, and there is a social life in which we all share. The race is an organism, and the individual, if we may so speak, is a cell in the tissue of that organism, indissolubly connected for good or evil with the other cells in the unity of a common life.1 From this follows the conception of heredity, which plays so important a part in modern theories. Man is not simply bound up with his fellows through the external usages and institutions of society. "He has been produced by, and has become a part of them, . . . he is organically related to all the members of the race, not only bone of their bone and flesh of their flesh, but mind of their mind."2 He is a bundle of inherited. tendencies, and will in turn transmit his nature with its new marks of good an evil, to those who come after him.3 It is easy to see that this conception of heredity, and of the organic unity of the race, is but the scientific expression of a doctrine which is fundamental to the Scriptures, and which underlies all its tea in about sin and salvation.

In respect of the points just named, therefore, it may be affirmed that the modem view of the world is largely in agreement with Christianity. We may not agree with Schopenhauer and Hartmann that Christianity is a system of Pessimism; but we may admit that Pessimism, in so far as it recognises that the world is in an evil state, is far truer to facts and to Christianity than the superficial Optimism, the shallow perfectionism, and the Pelagian denial of original and inherited sin, which it helped to displace. In the respect last named, indeed, modern thought is nearer to Christianity than some Christian systems themselves. Ritschl, for example, teaches that sin consists only in acts, and not in states and dispositions of the heart; that there is no such thing as original or inherited sin; that sin is not transmissible by nature, but only through education, influence, the reciprocal action of individuals in society, etc.4 But in maintaining this, he comes into conflict, not merely with texts of Scripture, but with the whole modern conception of the organic union of the race. Universal sin--sin which does not consist merely in acts but seated causes in the heart the effects of which both bodily and mental, are hereditarily transmitted--these I take to he conceptions which neither Ritschl nor any other will now be able to overthrow.1

When all this is said, however, it must still be granted that the most fundamental difference exists between the two views--the Christian and the modern. The difference is partly one as to the nature of sin, and it runs up into a difference as to its origin. The Christian view of sin is not only infinitely deeper and more earnest than in any current conception apart from Christianity; but it is, as I formerly remarked, profoundly modified by the difference in the views of God and of man. The first thing we have to do here is to secure clearly the Christian idea of sin: then when we have done this, and asked whether it is verified in conscience and experience we are prepared to judge of theories of origin.

I lay it down as a first principle that, in the Christian view, sin is that which absolutely ought not to be.2 How that which absolutely ought not to be is yet permitted to exist under the government of a wise and holy God, is a problem we may not be able to solve; but the first thing to do is to hold firmly to the conception of sin itself. Sin, as such, is that which unconditionally ought not to be, which contradicts or infringes upon an unconditional law of right, and therefore can only be understood in the light of that which ought to be--of the moral good.3 The Christian view of sin, accordingly, has for its presupposition the doctrine of God as ethical Personality, previously explained. It is God's perfect nature and holy will which form the norm of character and duty for man. The law of holiness requires, not only that the human will subsist in perfect harmony with the Divine, being surrendered to it in love, trust, and obedience, but, as involved in this, that there should be a right state of the affections, a pure and harmonious inner life. The external sphere for obedience is prescribed by our position in the world, and by our relation to it, to our neighbours, and to God.

As the negation of this, sin, in the Biblical view, consists in the revolt of the creature will from its rightful allegiance to the sovereign will of God, and the setting up of a false independence, the substitution of a life-for-self for life-for-God.1 How such an act should ever originate may again be a problem we cannot solve; but it is evidently included in the possibilities of human freedom. The possibility of sin arises from the fact that the creature has necessarily a relative independence and that in man, particularly, together with the impulse towards God, there exists an impulse towards the world, which the will may be tempted to make an object on its own account.2 The false choice made. the spiritual bond between God and the soul is cut or at least infinitely weakened: the soul enters into subjection to the world to which it has surrendered itself, and an abnormal development begins, in which the baneful and God-negating character of the egoistic principle taken into the will gradually reveals itself.3

While thus spiritual in its origin, as arising from the free act of a will up to that time pure, sin is anything but spiritual in its effects. Its immediate result is the subversion of the true relation of the natural and the spiritual in man's constitution, making that supreme which ought to be subordinate, and that subordinate which ought to be supreme. The relation of the spiritual and psychical in human nature is inverted. The spiritual is reduced to subjection, can at best make only feeble and ineffectual protests; the natural or psychical is elevated to authority and rule. Further, the spiritual bond being broken which kept the nature in harmony--reason, conscience, the God-ward affections ruling, while the lower passions and desires observed the bounds which higher law prescribed for them--not only is the psychical nature exalted to undue ascendency, but its own actings are now turbulent and irregular. It refuses to obey law; its desires clamour importunately each for its own special gratification; discord and division take the place of the normal unity. There is introduced into the soul a state of a0nomi/a--lawlessness.1 Reason and conscience are still there as indestructible elements of human nature, nor can the sense of its dependence on God, or obligation to Him, ever be entirely lost. Hence arise, even in the natural man, conflict, struggle, self-condemnation, painful and ineffectual attempts to break the dominion of sin, never truly successful.2 For this reason, that carnality preponderates in the nature of man as a whole, and that the most spiritual acts of the natural man betray the signs of its controlling influence, the whole man is spoken of as "in the flesh," though elsewhere Paul distinguishes the flesh from that better self--the nou=j, or inner man--which protests against its rule.3 All this finds its verification in conscience and experience, if not in its totality in every man's consciousness, yet in the general consciousness of the race. What a man's judgment of himself will be depends upon his standpoint, but in proportion to the depth of his self-knowledge he will confess that his heart is not naturally possessed by love to God, and by spiritual affections; that his inner life is not perfectly pure and harmonious; that there are principles in his heart at war with what duty and the law of God require; that he often transgresses the commandment which he recognises as "holy, and just, and good,"4 in thought and word and deed; and that, in all this, he lies under his own self-condemnation. He is conscious that the sin of his heart is such that he would not willingly lay bare its secrets to his closest intimate, and he would probably confess also that this state in which he finds himself did not spring wholly, or de novo, from his individual will, but that it developed from a nature in which the principle of disorder was already implanted.

Gathering these observations to an issue, I conclude that the cardinal point in the Christian view of sin is, that it is not something natural, normal, and necessary, but, both as actual and as hereditary, something which must find its explanation in a free act of the creature, annulling the original relation of the creature to God. The Christian view, in other words, cannot be maintained on the hypothesis that man's existing state is his original one,--still less on the assumption that, in a moral respect, it is an advance and improvement on his original one, but only on the supposition that man has wilfully defaced the Divine image in which he was originally made and has voluntarily turned aside to evil. Apart from express statements on the subject, the underlying presupposition of the Christian view is that sin has a volitional cause, which, as the sin itself is universal, must be carried back to the beginning of the race--that, in other words, the development of the race has not been a natural and normal, but an abnormal and perverted one. And here it is, I admit, that the modern view of the world, with its doctrine of man's original brutishness, and his ascent by his own efforts to civilisation and moral life, comes into the most direct and absolute contradiction with it. Many attempts--some of them well meant--have been made to gloze over, or get rid of, this contradiction; but these would-be solutions all break on the fact that they make sin, or what passes for sin, a natural necessity; whereas, on the Biblical view, it is clearly not man's misfortune only, but his fault--a deep and terrible evil for which he is responsible.

We shall best appreciate the force of this contradiction by looking at some of the theories to which the Christian view is opposed.

1. First, we have a class of theories which seek the ground of evil in creation, or in the original constitution of the world; but these I do not dwell upon. Such is the theory of Buddhism, and of all the pessimistic systems. "The existence of the world," Schopenhauer holds, "is itself the greatest evil of all, and underlies all other evil, and similarly the root evil of each individual is his having come into the world";1 and Hartmann speaks of the "inexpiable crime" of creation.2 Such, again, is the hypothesis of two original principles in creation, e.g., the Persian dualism, of which we see some faint attempts at a revival in modern times.3 Such were the Platonic and Gnostic theories, that evil had its origin in matter. This doctrine also has its modern revivals. Even Rothe has adopted the view which seeks the origin of evil in matter, though why matter should be supposed inimical to goodness it is not easy to see. With him, it is the non-divine, the contradictory counterpart to God, opposed in its essence to the Divine, a conception not Biblical, and one which cannot be maintained.4

2. We come, second, to a class of theories which seek the explanation of evil in the nature of man. It is the characteristic of all these theories that they regard sin as necessarily resulting from the constitution of human nature, in contrast with the Biblical view that it entered the world voluntarily. Of this class of theories, again, we have several kinds.

(1) We have the metaphysical theories of sin--that, e.g., of Hegel. Sin is here regarded as a necessary stage in the development of spirit. Hegel is fond of explicating the story of Eden in the interests of his philosophy, and this is how he does it. "Knowledge, as the disannulling of the unity of nature," he says, "is the 'Fall,' which is no casual conception, but the eternal history of spirit. For the state of innocence, the paradisaical condition, is that of the brute. Paradise is a park, where only brutes, not men, can remain. . . . The fall is,therefore, the eternal mythus of man, in fact the very transition by which he becomes man."1 Sin, in brief, is the first step of man out of his naturalness, and the only way in which he could take that step. It is the negation of the immediate unity of man with nature, and of the innocence of that pristine state, but only that the negation may be in turn negated, and the true destination of spirit realised.2

(2) We have the ethical and would-be Christian forms of these theories, in which the subject is looked at from the religious point of view. Such, e.g., is the theory of Schleiermacher, who derives sin from a relative weakness of the spirit as compared with sense.3 Such, again, is the theory of Lipsius, who explains it from the fact that man is at first a naturally conditioned and self-seeking being, while his moral will is only gradually developed.4 Such is the theory of Ritschl, who connects it with man's ignorance. With him also man starts as a purely natural being, the subject of self-seeking desires, while his will for good is a "growing" quantity.5 Sin, therefore, is an inevitable stage in his development.

(3) We have the evolutionary theories, in which man begins only a shade removed from the brutes, and his subsequent moralisation is the result of slow development. This theory may be held in a more naturalistic or in a more philosophical form. In the former, the genesis of our moral ideas, from which the sense of sin arises, is sought in causes outside of the moral altogether--in the possession by man of social as well as egoistic impulses, in the perception of the advantage that would accrue from the subordination of the latter to the former, in the gradual accumulation of the results of experience in the organism through heredity, in the strengthening of the bonds of society through custom, law, etc.6 What this theory fails to show is how this idea of the advantageous becomes converted into the perfectly distinct conception of the morally obligatory. A clearly perceived duty lays an obligation on the will quite distinct from a perceived advantage; and even supposing the discovery made that a larger good would accrue through every individual devoting himself to the common weal, a distinct notion is involved when it is perceived that duty requires us to adopt this for our end.1 The higher form of the evolutionary theory, accordingly, makes a more promising beginning, in that it grants to man from the first his rational nature, and recognises that his ideas of moral truth and obligation spring directly from a rational source. It is held, however, as in the theories already considered, that at first it is the instinctive impulses, in which the self-regarding desires are necessarily preponderant, which hold the field, and that man comes to the knowledge of his true nature only gradually. Man, indeed, only begins to be a moral being when, through the awakening of his moral consciousness, he makes the discovery that he is not what, in the true idea of his personality, he ought to be--when he forms an ideal. It is this impulse to realise his true nature, to attain to moral freedom, and bring the self-seeking impulses into harmony with moral law, which, on this theory, constitutes the mainspring of all development and progress.2

Taking this class of theories together, I contend that it is impossible to derive out of them conceptions of sin and guilt adequate to the Christian view. In the first place, it is evident that, in all these theories, sin is made something necessary--not simply something that might be, or could be, but an absolute necessity. In every one of them, the original condition of man is supposed to be such that sin could not but result from it. This, it seems to me, is practically to empty the idea of sin of its real significance, and to throw the responsibility of it directly back on the Creator. It is probably a feeling of this kind which leads many who favour the view we are considering to disclaim the word "necessity." Hegel, even, tells us that sin is not necessary; that man can- will evil, but is not under compulsion to will it. But this is a mere evasion, arising from an- ambiguous use of terms. In a multitude of other places Hegel tells us that sin arises from the highest logical and speculative necessity.1 Schleiermacher, in like manner, disclaims the view that sin is a necessary law of human development.2 He could not do otherwise, and hold, as he does the sinlessness of Christ. But he holds at the same time that the development through sin--or what we subjectively regard as sin--is the form of growth ordained for us by God, with a view to the ultimate Redemption, or perfecting, of the race in Christ.3 Lipsius will have it that sin is at once necessary and free and avoidable.4 Ritschl holds, in the same way, that a necessity of sinning can be derived neither from the outfit of human nature, nor from the ends of moral life, nor from a design of God.5 Yet he grants, and starting off with man as he does as a merely natural being, he could not do otherwise, that sin is an apparently unavoidable product of the human will under the given conditions of its development.6 All these theories in fact, therefore, however they may evade the use of the name, do make sin a necessity. In the evolutionary theories this is very obvious. There is here no pretence that a sinless development is possible. How is it conceivable that a being beginning at the stage of lowest savagery should avoid sin; and what responsibility can be supposed to attach to the acts of such a being, in whom brute passions and desires have full ascendency, while reason and conscience are yet a glimmer--a bare potentiality?

One immediate effect of these theories, accordingly, is to weaken, if not entirely to destroy, the idea of guilt. How can man be held responsible for acts which the constitution of his nature and his environment--without the intervention of moral causes of any kind, such as is involved in the idea of a "Fall"--make inevitable? In all these theories I have named, accordingly, it will be found that there is a great weakening down of the idea of guilt. That man attributes his acts to him- self, and feels guilty on account of them, is, of course, admitted; but instead of guilt being regarded as something objectively real, which God as well as man is bound to take account of, it comes to be viewed as something clinging only to the subjective consciousness,--a subjective judgment which the sinner passes on himself, to which nothing actual corresponds. Redemption thus becomes, in theories that admit Redemption, not the removal of guilt, but of the consciousness of guilt; and this, not by any real Divine pardon, but by the sinner being brought to see that his guilty fears misrepresented the actual state of God's mind towards him. Thus it is in the theories of Schleiermacher, of Lipsius, and of Ritschl--in that of Ritschl most conspicuously. According to Schleiermacher, this subjective consciousness of guilt is a Divinely ordained thing to serve as a spur to make men seek Redemption, i.e. to be taken up into the perfect life of Christ.1 Ritschl regards all sins as arising so much from ignorance as to be without real guilt in the eyes of God. God does not impute guilt on account of the ignorance in which we now live. The reason, therefore, why sins are pardonable is, that though the sinner imputes them to himself as offences, they are not properly sins at all, but acts done in ignorance. The guilt attaching to these acts is but a feeling in the sinner's own consciousness, separating him from God, which the revelation of God's Fatherly love in the Gospel enables him to overcome.2 But I ask, Does this harmonise with the moral experience of the race--not to say with the statements of the Bible? Is it not the universal feeling of mankind that guilt is a terrible and stern reality, carrying with it objective and lasting effects, that it is as real as the "ought" is real, and that conscience, in passing judgment on our state, is but reflecting the judgment of God, to whom, ultimately, we are accountable? This weakening down and subjectivising of the idea of guilt is to me a strong condemnation of any theory from which it springs.

These theories contradict the Christian view of sin, not simply in respect of its nature and of the degree of guilt attaching to it, but in the accounts they give of its origin. They regard that as a normal state for man in the beginning of his history, which the Christian view can only regard as an abnormal one. This is, indeed, the primary difference on which all the others depend. With minor differences, these theories all agree in regarding man's original condition as one but little removed from the brute; the animal impulses are powerful and ungoverned. Is this a state which, from the Christian point of view, can ever be regarded as normal? It may be a normal state for the animal--can it be a normal state for a moral personality? In such a being, even from the first, the moral law asks for a subordination of the animal impulses to reason and conscience, for unity, and not for disorganisation and lawlessness. It asks for this, not as something to be attained through ages of development, but as something which ought to exist now, and counts the being in a wrong moral state who does not possess it. What, according to these theories themselves, is the judgment which the individual, when moral consciousness awakes, passes on himself? Is it not that he is in a wrong moral state, a state in which he condemns himself, and feels shame at the thought of being in it? Else whence this sense of moral dissatisfaction, which it is acknowledged that he feels, and feels the more keenly in proportion as his moral perceptions become more acute? It is not simply that he has an ideal which he has not reached: this is an experience to be found in every stage of development, even when the conscience implies no blame. But the contrast is between the idea of the "is" and of the "ought to be," even in his present state, and this awakens the feeling of blame.1 On what ground, further, must it be held that man must have commenced his career from this low and non-moral, if not positively immoral point? Is it a necessary part of a law of development, that a man can only reach that which he ought to be by passing through that which he ought not to be? Then evil has a relative justification, and the judgment which the immediate consciousness passes on it must be retracted or modified from a higher point of view.1 We have only to compare the Christian estimate of sin with that to which this theory heads us, to see how profound is the difference between them. On this theory of development, when a man has reached the higher moral standpoint, he judges of his former state more leniently than he did at first; he ceases to pass condemnatory judgments on himself on account of it. In the Christian view, on the other hand, the higher the stage which a Christian man has reached, the evil and guilt of his former state will appear in a deeper dye; the more emphatically will he condemn it as one of lostness and shame. Which estimate is the more just? I do not think there is any difficulty, at least, in seeing which is most in accord with the idea of the moral.

I cannot, therefore, think that the picture sometimes given us of man's primeval state--that of a miserable, half-starved, naked wretch, just emerged from the bestial condition, torn with fierce passions, and fighting his way among his compeers with low-browed cunning--is one in harmony with the Christian view. And the adversaries of the Christian faith not only admit the discrepancy between their view and ours, but glory in it. Christianity, they say, requires you to accept one view of man's origin, and science gives quite another. As it is sometimes put, the doctrine of Redemption rests on the doctrine of the Fall; and the doctrine of the Fall rests on the third chapter of Genesis. But science has exploded the third chapter of Genesis, so the whole structure falls to the ground. I acknowledge the issue, but it is not rightly put to say that the doctrine of the Fall rests on the third chapter of Genesis. The Christian doctrine of Redemption certainly does not rest on the narrative in Gen. iii., but it rests on the reality of the sin and guilt of the world, which would remain acts though the third chapter of Genesis never had been written. It would be truer to say that I believe in the third chapter of Genesis, or in the essential truth which it contains, because I believe in sin and Redemption, than to say that I believe in sin and Redemption because of the story of the Fall.1 Put the third chapter of Genesis out of view, and you have the facts of the sin and disorder of the world to be accounted for, and dealt with, all the same.

The question, however, arises, and it is a perfectly fair one to raise, Whatever we may say of the relation to the Christian view, is not this doctrine of man's origin, which implies a pure point of beginning in the history of the race, expressly contradicted by the facts of anthropology? Do not the facts of modern science compel us to adopt a different view? Must we not conclude, if regard is had to the evidence, that man did begin as a savage, but a few degrees removed from the brutes, and has only gradually worked his way upwards to his present condition? In answer I would say, I certainly do not believe that this theory has been proved, and, expressing my own opinion, I do not think it is likely to be proved. If it were proved, I admit that it would profoundly modify our whole conception of the Christian system. Negatively, evolutionists have not proved that this was the original state of man. The missing link between man and brute has long been sought for, but as yet has been sought in vain. The oldest specimens of men known to science are just as truly men as any of their successors.2 At the same time, we need not reject the hypothesis of evolution within the limits in which science has really rendered it probable. The only theory of evolution which necessarily conflicts with the Biblical view is that which supposes evolution to proceed by slow and gradual modifications--"insensible gradations," as Mr. Spencer puts it--and this is a view to which many of the facts of science are themselves opposed. Evolution is not opposed to the appearance, at certain points in the chain of development, of something absolutely new, and it has already been mentioned that distinguished evolutionists, like Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, freely recognise this fact.1 The "insensible gradation" theory, as respects the transition from ape to man, has not a single fact to support it. With man, from the point of view of the Bible, we have the rise of a new kingdom, just as truly as when life first entered,--the entrance on the stage of nature of a being self-conscious, rational, and moral, a being made in the image of God, and it is arbitrary to assume that this new beginning will not be marked by differences which distinguish it from the introduction of purely animal races.

The evidence which is adduced from other quarters of the originally savage state of man is equally inconclusive. There is no reason to believe that existing savage races represent the earliest condition of mankind; rather there is evidence to show that they represent a degradation from a higher state. The traces of early man which geology has disinterred show, indeed, the existence in various parts of the world of races in a comparatively rude and uncivilised state; but they are found mostly in outlying regions, far from the original centres of distribution, and afford no good evidence of what man was when he first appeared upon the earth.1 On the other hand, when we turn to the regions which tradition points to as the cradle of the race, we find great empires and civilisations which show no traces of those gradual advances from savagery which the modern theory requires, but which represent man as from the earliest period as in possession of faculties of thought and action of a high order.2 The theory, again, that man began with the lowest Fetishism in religion, and only gradually raised himself through Polytheism to Monotheism, finds no support from the history of religions.3 There is not the slightest proof, e.g., that the Vedic religion was developed out of fetish worship, or ghost worship, but many indications that it was preceded by a purer faith, in which the sense of the unity of God was not yet lost. The same may be said of the religions of the most ancient civilised peoples,--that while all, or nearly all, in the form in which we know them, are polytheistic and idolatrous, there is not any which does not show a substratum of monotheistic truth, and from which we cannot adduce many proofs of an earlier purer faith.4

Another side from which the Christian view is contested, and the hypothesis of an originally savage condition of man is supposed to be supported, is the evidence that has been accumulated of an extreme antiquity of the human race. I am not aware that the Bible is committed to any definite date for the appearance of man upon the earth; but it will be generally felt that if the extreme views which some advocate on this subject, carrying back marks appearance some hundred thousand or two hundred thousand years, were accepted, it would, taken in connection with the comparatively recent origin of civilisation, militate against the view which we defended. I am free further to admit that, did no religious interest enter, and were the facts of science the only ones to be regarded, we would probably have been found yielding a ready assent to the hypothesis of a great antiquity. The religious interests at stake lead us, while of course acknowledging that whatever science really proves must be accepted as true, to be a little more careful in our examination of the proofs. And it is well we have been thus cautious; for, if we take the latest testimony of science as to what has been really proved, we find that the recent tendency is rather to retrench than to extend the enormous periods which were at first demanded; and that, while some geologists tell us that one or two hundred thousand years are needed, others, equally well informed, declare that ten thousand years would cover all the facts at present in evidence.1 Professor Boyd Dawkins has said in a recent Address:--"The question of the antiquity of man is inseparably connected with the further question, Is it possible to measure the lapse of geological time in years? Various attempts have been made, and all, as it seems to me, have ended in failure. Till we know the rate of causation in the past, and until we can be sure that it is invariable and uninterrupted, I cannot see anything but failure in the future. Neither the rate of the erosion of the land by sub-aerial agencies, nor its destruction by oceanic currents, nor the rate of the deposit of stalagmite, or of the movement of the glaciers, have as yet given us anything at all approaching to a satisfactory date. We have only a sequence of events recorded in the rocks, with intervals the length of which we cannot measure. It is surely impossible to fix a date in term of years, either for the first appearance of man, or for any event outside the written record."2

I claim, then, that so far as the evidence of science goes, the Bible doctrine of a pure beginning of the race is not overturned. I do not enter into the question of how we are to interpret the third chapter of Genesis,--whether as history or allegory or myth, or, most probably of all, as old tradition clothed in oriental allegorical dress,--but the truth embodied in that narrative, viz. the fall of man from an original state of purity, I take to be vital to the Christian view. On the other hand, we must beware, even while holding to the Biblical account, of putting into the original state of man more that the narrative warrants. The picture given us of the first man in the Bible is primitive in every way. The Adam of the book of Genesis is not a being of advanced intellectual attainments, or endowed with an intuitive knowledge of the various arts and sciences. If his state is far removed from that of the savage, it is equally far removed from that of the civilised man.1 The earliest steps in what we call civilisation are of later date, and are duly recorded, though they belong, not to the race of Seth, but to that of Cain.2 It is presumed that man had high and noble faculties, a pure and harmonious nature, rectitude of will, capability of understanding his Creator's instructions, and power to obey them. Beyond that we need not go. The essence of the Biblical view is summed up in the words of the Preacher: "God made man upright; but they sought out many inventions."3