Such a state of things is so far removed from anything of which we have experience that we find ourselves continually at fault in the effort to imagine or to describe it. But we must, at least, suppose it to have been a condition in whicli man obeyed freely the law of that nature to which he had attained ; the ideas ' right ' and ' wron^ ' hardly presented themselves to his mind with fiill meaning, for ' the knowledge of good and evil ' was not yet his. It may well have been that the image of God was a gift only germinally bestowed and gradually realized. Man did not come all at once into his splendid inheritance. In the Para- dise narrative he is depicted as still at an early sta^e in his history. He is represented as living a life of communion Avith God, conscious, as it would seem, th.at he ' ought ' to obey the laws of God, which, as yet, were presented in the simplest and most elementary form ; but the consciousness of moral obligation could only be half realized where the knowledge of evU was not present. So far there is nothing in the story which would conflict with tlio teaching of science, whether phy.sical or mental. In his primitive condition man would have been able to recognize only the simplest moral commands. He was forbidden to taste of the fruit of ' the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ' : for so perilous an experienc'c he was not prepared. And, in the absence of tempta- tion from without, it was iierhaps possible that this state of purity should have continued. The man's nature, though not developed to perfection, though not stronj; with the discipline which time and experience bring, was perfectly balanced ; and in obe3'ing its dictates he would obey the dictates of his Creator.
How into such a world could evil enter? That is the (question which has vexed philosophy from generation to generation. It is a micstion to which no final or complete answer has been given. But the record of revelation at le.ast puts the dilliculty one step further back ; it points to the region where the solution is to he sought. In the Bible the fall of the angels precedes the fall of man (.Fude'). Temptation came into human life through the machination of a spirit of evil distinct from man. The invitation to sin came from the serpent in the garden, and it took the form of a suggested violation of the command known to bo divine. Sin is not an indigenous product, but is brought in iib extra, somewhat as it has been suggested that life was first brought to the earth in a meteoric stone. According to the Itihle, the origin of evil is to be sought outside human nature.
We are not now in a region where science has .anything to (ell us. We have only the brief phrases of Scrijiture as our guide. And it will bo ob.served that we cannot say positively that the tcniptntion would not have been self-suggested, as the man grew in faculty and in strength, had there been no malign influence external to himself.
• See (libson, Thirty-yiiif Artir^trg, p. Mfl. t MarteUHen, Christian Doijtmilicii, g 78.
We do not know, and cannot know. What is told IS this. The man was in a state of innocence and purity, and the suggestion to sin came, as a matter of fact, in tlie first instance from a personal agency of evil outside the domain of his own will.
Here, then, is ignorance of evil dispelled, which- ever course the man adopted. For the conscious refusal of evil, no less than its acceptance, would in a measure involve a knowledge of evil. An apostolic writer speaks of the WXeiot, or perfect man, as one 'who by reason of use has his senses exercised to discern good and evil ' (He 5'^). True, there would be no personal realization of evil were it not consciously embraced. But its existence must henceforward be delinitely con- ceived. And we may notice that whether man yielded to the temptation or overcame it, in any case he would have advanced a step in knowledge. To yield was a spiritual fall ; to resist would have been a spiritual rise. But in any case the new experience would be an intellectual rise. This is a principle which has formed the starting-point of some remarkable speculations as to the Fall both in mediaeval and modern times. The philosopher Erigena seems to have had a confused perception of this truth when he taught that sin was relatively necessary for the development of human nature. Schiller, again, interpreted the Fall as the necessary transition of reason from the state of nature to that of culture. The necessity of evil is a pro- minent feature in the Hegelian philosophy, accord- ing to which the life of the world is conceived as inevitably developing itself through antagonism and conflict. This is the Divina Commedia of human history, the perpetual tragedy of life. And theologians have pointed out that in Scrip- ture itself the origin of the arts of civilization and of peace is traced to fallen and not to unfallen man. Tubal-cain, 'the forger of every cutting in- strument in brass and iron,' and .Tubal the father of musicians, are the de.scendants of Cain (Gn 4^'- ^). The truth which seems to underlie speculations Huch as these is that man would not begin to process rapidly, in an intellectual point of view, until he became conscious of the resistance to his energies which evil presents. But this conscious- ness would not have been less intense had he over- come the temptation which assailed him instead of yielding to it. It is only the man who has successfully battled with evil that is conscious of its full strength, for upon him alone has it spent all its powers. And thus to assert that «n was relatively necessary for the development of human nature, is to confuse the yielding to temptation with the experience of it. Had primeval man been strong when evil presented itself, we know not to what heights of intellectual, as of spiritual excellence, the race might not have now attained. In this view only is it true that the first tempta- tion marks the ' beginning and the foundation of the development of mind, the birth of man's intellectual nature.' •