We find, then, that the doctrine of the Fall, when subjected to examination, is in no way inconsistent with the theory of the evolution of man from lower types, and his growth ' from strength to strength ' as the centuries have gone by. There has l>een a continuous intellectual development. When the pre- Adamite ancestor of the human familj' was fitted to receive the divine gift of reason, it was granted to him. Like Christ, Adam came in the fulness of time, when all things were ready. Up to this point the evolution had been unconscious ; henceforward it was to be con- scious, and partly assisted by voluntary effort.
• See Matheson, Can ths Old Faith Utfe with the New, p 219 O., where the argument of this paragraph ia deretoped at engtb.
And the first experience of eWl, explicitly re- cognized as evil, would atiord a fresh starting- point for his growth. For such experience of evil, as has been said, would in any event — whether it was conquered or the conqueror — involve a rise in the intellectual scale. Had it been overcome, as it might have been overcome (for the act of Adam is represented as one of free choice), there would have been a rise in the spiritual scale as well. But in the event there was intellectual growth, accompanied by a descent to a lower spiritual level, from which it would be impossible for man to rise without the aid of diWne grace. And so the Incarnation and the Atonement mark in the history of mankind a crisis as real, and introduce a force as potent, as when God created man in His own image.
Such a view of man's progress is in the strictest harmony alike with the Bible and with the teach- ing of modem science. For it is to be remembered that what science teaches us is that the history of man has been a history of development, but it does not and could not teach that this development has proceeded along the best conceivable lines.* It is no postulate of modern philosophy that this is the best of all possible worlds. And the Christian doctrine, that man as he presents himself to us in history and in life, though his education through the centuries has been divinely ordered, is not in the condition which was the divine intention for him, is a doctrine which receives verification from daily observation. The divine will has been thwarted, so to speak, by the perversity of the human will. And this has been recognized as the key to the problem of evil by men of all races and creeds. For what is the spectacle which the world of men presents? Newman has described it well in a splendid passage of his Apologia (ch. v.) : ' To consider the world in its length and its breadtli, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts ; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship ; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long- standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not towards final causes, the greatness and little- ness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short dura- tion, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence and intensity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfidly yet exactly described in the apostle's words, "having no nope and without God in the world," — all this is a vision to dizzy and appal ; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solu- tion. What shall be said to this heart-piercing, reason-bewildering fact? I can only answer, that either there is no Creator, or this living society of men is in a true sense discarded from His presence.' The ' outcast man ' is, in short, the Great Excep- tion. While every other living thing is striving for its good, man alone is found choosing what he knows to be for his hurt. And so to the believer in God his own experience confirms the eternal truth of the doctrine of the Fall. As Pascal says, ' De sorte que I'homme est plus incon-
• See Gore, Lux Jfundiio, pp. 635. 636. and the pasp^e there cited from Aubrey Moore's Eoolutxon and Chrigtianify ; "the change which took place at the Fall was a chanj^'e in the moral re^on ; but it could not be without \t» efToct elsewhere. Even the knowledge of nature becomes confused withf ut the yovern- in-r tr'th of the relation of man to God.'
oevable sang ce mystf^re, que ce mj-stbre n'est inconcevable k Ihomme.' Tliat doctrine is indeed a (latum of revelation ; but it harmonizes well with what we know of ourselves and of others. There has been somewhere a backward step in the history of man, who was at the first created 'very good.' And the teacliing of St. Paul about sin, stated in terms of the story of Gn 3, but based on the broad