Confusion is often caused by the tendency to revert to a materialistic conception of sin on the part of those who would explain its presence in terms of the evolution hypothesis. It is sufficient, so the argument runs, to observe the difficiilty that each must encounter ' of enforcing his inherited organic nature to obey a moral law' (Tennant, Hulsean Lectures, p. 81). But, apart from the fact that what needs explanation is the self- arraignment which the process entails, it is con- trary to experience, no less than to Scripture, thus to place the ' organic nature ' in an essential rela- tion to sin, which is made to consist in the failure to 'moralize' it. The publicans and harlots go into the Kingdom of heaven before those with whose wilful rejection of God the physical and emotional nature has least to do. Even popular Christianity places ' the devil ' at the climax of temptation; nor are 'youthful lusts,' though they may constitute the earliest and most obvious material of transgression, the deadliest and most intimate occasion of sin. The impulse to make stones bread, or appropriate the kingdoms of the world, masks a temptation to independence of Divine authority which is the essential element in guilt. St. Paul's doctrine of the Flesh with its passions and lusts (Ro 7^ 8^, Gal 5^^ etc.) cannot be set against this. It has been abundantly shown that the Pauline anthropology, to use the words of Lipsius, ' rests entirely on an OT base. ' The ' old man' (6 TraXatds t)ixG>v dvdpwiros, Ro 6® etc.) is, there- fore, the body, not as uncontrolled by spirit, but as inwrought by the Evil One (see above). Accord- ing to Christian teaching, sin ' takes occasion ' by any commandment or recognized purpose of God, whether related to the physical nature or not ; nor would the theologian of any age be a whit less emphatic than the modern theorist in placing it, not in the impulse, 'but in the 'deliberate refusal to reject the impulse.' All men are born in sin, not as inheriting insatiable and abnormal appetites, which, however strong, are still outside their per- sonal responsibility, but as subject to influences which, 'felt within us as ourselves' (Tennyson, Locksley Hall Sixty Years After), well up in person- alities hostile to the Kingdom of God.
It will be urged that influences such as these are still external to the individual, of whom, there- fore, sin cannot be predicated anterior to positive acts of transgression. But, in the first place, this separation between actions and character does not correspond with experience. The man as distinct from his activities is an abstraction. The ' psycho- logical infant ' is an ideal construction (see Mar- tineau, Types of Ethical Theory, bk. ii. c. 2). No one has any knowledge of himself except in action. It is empirically true that ' concupiscence hath of itself the nature of sin ' (Thirty-nine Articles, 9), because in experience the line between suggestion and acquiescence is imaginary, and ' he that looketh on a woman to lust ' knows that he has already committed adultery. And this is not in- consistent with the complementary truth that
temptation is not sin. But, secondly, while it may be admitted that sin on this view is metaphysically not free from difficulty, it must be observed that no peculiar problem is created by it. It is not exposed to the objection which naturally arises if it is explained in terms of a theory of heredity. Such theories are necessarily tentative and pro- visional, and it is the vice of all explanations based upon the current hypotheses of scientific investiga- tion, that they tend to outrun assured results, and to involve religious truth in the imperfections of systems always in process of becoming antiquated. As soon, however, as it is perceived that the sup- posed analogy of an ' acquired character ' trans- mitted by propagation to descendants does not accurately represent the teaching of Scripture, ob- jections raised on this score from the point of view of advancing science lose their force. The problem involved in the exercise of personal influence acting through the self-determining will of another per- sonality, remains just where it is, whether sin be a reality or not ; St. Paul's ' I, yet not I ' stands for an experience which is constant, whether the in- spiring influence be ' the grace of God ' or ' sin that dwelleth in me. ' Whatever may be true of hypnotic suggestion or of abnormal conditions like demoniacal possession, the normal course of per- sonal influence, even of one man upon another, is not to paralyze the individual, so that the resultant action is not his but another's. That sharp separa- tion of personalities which makes one human being wholly external to another may to some extent be due to the illusion of physical limitations. But at any rate, in dealing with ' spiritual wickedness,' we reach a sphere where these conditions are left behind, and the distinctions which they involve are inapplicable. That spirit should ' thus act ujion spirit involves no new difficulty, because its possibility is involved in the creation of free, re- sponsible personalities, capable of love and there- fore of enmity, of responding to a spirit of evil no less than to the Spirit of God. This may involve a race, just as the Holy Spirit indwells the King- dom of heaven and each member of it. Sin is the antithesis, not of freewill, but of grace. The true analogy of redemption is rather the exorcism which leaves the subject ' clothed and in his right mind,' than the remedy which repairs the ravages of dis- ease. Salvation is not the process by which the sinner is gradually transformed into the saint, but the justifying act whereby the unrighteous is transferred to the Kingdom of grace. No doubt the evil spirit may return to the house from which it went out, and we are not, therefore, compelled to reject facts of experience, and deny the gradual nature of self-conquest. But to think of sin as an inherited or acquired character which is being gradually reduced, is to introduce a distinction between original and actual sin which removes the former altogether from the category of guilt. Satan ' entered into Judas ' (Lk 22*, Jn 13^^) ; and our Lord's statement — ' He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet' (Jn 13^°) — seems to imply liability to incur fresh guilt rather than a redemp- tion as yet incomplete. That sin remains even m the regenerate is sufficiently accurate as an ex- pression of the observed fact of the imperfect lives of Christians. But the deeper view of St. John is that disciples, being still in the world, have con- stant need to be kept from the Evil One in whom it lies, and to receive afresh propitiation and forgive- ness for sins actually committed in consequence of this spiritual contact.