and in its extreme or absolute form it is highly disputable, and
rejected by large sections of biologists. Professor Haeckel[8]
declares contemptuously that he should feel it more reasonable to
accept the Mosaic account of special creations! The late Mr. Romanes,
after summing up the evidence on both sides without any contempt,
decides: 'No one is thus far entitled to conclude against the possible
transmission of acquired characters[9].' Again, 'that this substance
of heredity is largely continuous and highly stable, I see many and
cogent reasons for believing. But that this substance has been
uninterruptedly continuous since the origin of life, or absolutely
stable since the origin of sexual propagation, I see even more and
better reasons for disbelieving[10].' And he remarks[11], 'I doubt not
Weismann {227} himself would be the first to allow that his theory of
heredity encounters greater difficulties in the domain of ethics than
in any other--unless indeed, it be that of religion.'
I ought to add, in view of the apparently improbable event of the
doctrine of Weismann becoming in its absolute form the accepted
doctrine of biologists, that of course it only concerns the material
organism. No one who is not a materialist would deny the _possibility_
of the character of the parent modifying at its very root that of the
child, without even the smallest conceivable modification of the
physical organism; because in the origination of a spiritual
personality, and in the link which binds it to the antecedent
personalities to which it owes its being, there is that which lies
outside the purview of biological science. There _may_ be an
inheritance of sinful tendencies derived from sinful acts in the region
of the spiritual personality, even if no physical transmission is
possible.
However it be explained, it appears to be the case that Christianity is
bound to maintain the position that in the region of moral character
there is, in fact, a solidarity in humanity. We are bound together.
Our acts, as they form our own character, do somehow or other, however
slightly, modify the characters of our descendants for good or evil.
And this modification of the tendencies of the race by the acts of
individuals may have been more marked at the beginning than it is
to-day.
On the other hand Christianity is not in any way interested in denying
that man derives a physical heritage of habits and tendencies from a
pre-human ancestry. All I imagine that Christianity is interested in
affirming is this--that when the animal organism became the
dwelling-place of the human spirit (so to speak) that human spirit
might have taken one of two courses. It {228} might have followed the
path of the divine will; and in that case human development would have
represented a steady and gradual spiritualizing of the animal nature
reaching on towards perfection. It might have taken, on the other
hand, and did in fact take (more or less), the line of wilful
disobedience. And the moral effects of this wilfulness and
disobedience from the beginning onwards have been felt from parent to
son. So that the springs of human conduct have been weakened and
perverted, and no man has started without some bias in the wrong
direction which would not have been there if his ancestors for many
generations had been true to God.
It is worth noticing in passing that 'original sin' is not a fixed
quantity derived from one lapse of the original man, but is a moral
weakness continually reinforced by every actual transgression, and, on
the other hand, reduced in force by moral resistance and self-control.
Individuals start at very different levels of depravity. Only it would
appear that practically in no man but One is there any reason to
believe the fundamental nature immaculate.
IV.--But it will be said 'You have not yet touched upon a big central
contradiction between religion and science. According to the Christian
doctrine mankind is derived from a single specifically human pair, made
human by a special inspiration of the Divine Spirit. According to the
theory of evolution, a certain species of apes under specially
favourable conditions gradually advanced to become what might be called
man, though of a very low type.' To this I am inclined to make reply
thus: Christianity is really bound up with maintaining four
positions--(1) the reality of moral freedom; (2) the fact of sin,
properly so called as distinct from imperfection; (3) its practical
universality, at least as an inherited tendency; and (4) the unity of
the human race in such {229} sense that the same postulates may be made
with regard to all men, and the same capacity for moral redemption
(more or less) assumed to be in them. Now, as regards the first three
of these positions enough has been said already, and the last of them
does not appear to be at present in dispute between science and
religion. St. Paul says, 'God made of one' (or 'of one blood,' for
this reading is possibly right) 'every nation of men' (Acts xvii. 26).
And of one blood, if not of one individual, all men are, according to
the present conclusions of biological science. A recent work on
ethnology, by Mr. Keane (Cambridge Geographical Series), speaks
thus:--'The hominidae are not separately evolved in an absolute
sense--i.e. from so many different anthropoid precursors, but the
present primary divisions are separately evolved from so many different
pleistocene precursors, themselves evolved through a single pliocene
prototype from a single anthropoid precursor[12].'
It does not seem to me, then, that Christianity is really bound up with
anything more than the unity of the human race, which science also
strongly asserts. But to pass from these positions, which may be
regarded as certain, to something more conjectural (apart from any
question of the literary character of Genesis iii), we may argue thus:
Sin is a fact having the same character universally in human history,
though the sense of sin has varied greatly, reaching back as far as
human history extends. This would lead us to suppose that it goes back
to the roots of the race. It suggests some original {230} fall, some
tainting of the race in its origin. I do not see, then, anything
absurd or contrary to evidence in such a hypothesis as this.--The
Divine Spirit is assumed to be at work in all the development of the
world. The 'laws of nature' are but His methods. At a certain moment
a new thing had emerged in the universe hitherto inorganic. It was the
fact of life. It was new[13]. But it was in continuity with what had
gone before. This principle of life had its great development,
vegetable and animal. It had attained a form in certain anthropoid
apes such as we are familiar with in men. Suppose then that the Divine
Spirit breathes Himself, again in a new way, into one single pair or
group of these anthropoid animals. There is lodged in them for the
first time a germ of spiritual consciousness, continuous with animal
intelligence, and yet distinct from it. From this pair or group
humanity has its origin. If they and their offspring had been true to
their spiritual capacities the animal nature would have been more
rapidly spiritualized in motives and tendencies.
Development--physical, moral, spiritual--would have been steady and
glorious. Whereas there was a fall at the very root of our humanity;
and the fall was repeated and reiterated and renewed, and the
development of our manhood was tainted and spoiled. There was a lapse
into approximately animal condition, which is dimly known to us as
primitive savagery. So that the condition of savage man is a parody of
what God intended man in his undeveloped stages to be, just as the
condition of civilized man in London and Paris is a parody of what God
intended developed man to come to. And there have been long and dreary
epochs when men have {231} seemed to lose almost all human ideals and
divine aspirations; when, in St. Paul's phrase, they were 'alive
without the law,' living a physical life unvisited by the remorse
consequent upon any knowledge of better things. And there have been,
on the other hand, epochs and special occasions of spiritual
opportunity and spiritual restorations. And so, on the whole, side by
side with the continually deteriorating effect of sin, has gone on the
slow process of redemption, the undoing of the evil of sin and the
realization of the divine purpose for man. Such an idea of human
history, partly only hypothetical, partly assured, conflicts with no
scientific ethnology, and is but a restatement of old-fashioned
Christianity in all that has religious importance.
V.--Of course, in all this I am assuming that the doctrine of sin and
of the Fall in its true importance has a much securer basis than the
supposition that Genesis iii is literal history. The doctrine of the
Fall is, as I have said, not separable from the doctrine of sin, or the
doctrine of sin from that of moral freedom. It rests upon the broad
basis of human experience, especially upon Christian experience, which
is bound up with its reality. Most of all it rests, for Christians, on
the teaching of Christ. For Christ's teaching and action postulate
throughout the doctrine of sin. But that doctrine in its turn goes
back upon the Old Testament, which is full of the truth that the evils
of human nature are due, not to its essential constitution, but to
man's wilfulness and its results; that the disordering force in human
nature has been moral, the force of sin; that human history represents
in one aspect a fall from a divine purpose, a fall constantly
reiterated and renewed in acts of disobedience. These constant acts of
disobedience are in part caused by an evil heart in human nature, and
this in its turn exhibits the fruits of past sins. Granted this, {232}
the story in Genesis iii, whether it be historical or whether (as not
only many modern Christians, but some of the greatest of early
Christians, have thought) it be not an historical account of a single
event, but a generalized account of what is continually happening, has,
at any rate, vital spiritual truth. The character of its inspiration
is apparent. Teach a child what sin is, first of all on the ground of
general Christian experience and the teaching of Christ, and then read
to it the story of Genesis iii, and the child must perforce recognize
the truth in a form in which it cannot be forgotten. There in that
story all the main points of truth as to the meaning of sin are
suggested, and the main sources of error precluded. Sin is not our
nature, but wilfulness; sin is disobedience to the divine law, the
refusal of trust in God; there is such a thing as being tempted to sin,
and yielding to it, and then finding that we have been deceived, being
conscience-stricken and fearing to face God; and the curse of our
manhood springs from nowhere ultimately but our own evil heart. And if
our sins lay us under an outward discipline, which is God's punishment,
yet in the very discipline lies the hope of our recovery. God the
destroyer is also the God who promises redemption. Thus all that we
most need to know about God and man, about obedience and disobedience,
about temptation, about the blessing and the cursing of human nature,
about conscience good and bad, is to be found in the story of Genesis
iii, written in language suitable to the childhood of the individual
and of the race.
VI.--But once more, and for the last time, the biologist will reply,
'You are not going to get off so easily. The fact of physical death is
inextricably interwoven into the structural growth of the world long
before men appeared. But Christianity regards it as a mere consequence
of human sin.' This is not the case. Long before science {233} had
investigated the early history of life on our globe, Christian teachers
both in East and in West--St. Augustine as well as St. Athanasius--had
taught that death is the law of physical nature, that it had been in
the world before man, and that 'man was by nature mortal,' because, as
being animal, he was subject to death. How, then, do they interpret
the language of Scripture? In this way: They hold that if man had been
true to his spiritual nature, the supernatural life, the life in God,
would have blunted the forces of corruption, and lifted him into a
higher and immortal state.
Certainly, in some sense, death, as we know it, for man, is regarded,
especially in the New Testament, as the penalty of sin. But then what
do we mean by death? If sin is said to have introduced human death,
Christ is constantly said to have abolished it. 'This is the bread
that cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof and not die.'
'Whosoever believeth on me shall never die.' 'Christ Jesus abolished
death.' Sin, then, we may suppose, only introduced death in some sense
such as that in which Christ abolished it. Christ has not abolished
the physical transition from this world to the invisible world, but He
has robbed it of its terror, its sting, its misery. Apart from sin we
may suppose man would not have died; that is, he would never have had
that horrible experience which he has called death. There would have
been only some transition full of a glorious hope from one state of
being to another.
We are again in the region of conjecture. All that I am here
interested in asserting is that Christianity never has held to the
position that human sin first introduced death _into the world_. What
it has taught is that _human_ death, as men have known it, with its
horror and its misery, has represented not God's intention for man, but
the curse of sin.
{234}
VII.--Now I have endeavoured to face and meet the points which are
urged in the name of science against the Christian doctrine of the
Fall. I have endeavoured to point out that what is essential to
Christianity is to believe in the reality of moral freedom, and the
consequent reality of sin, as something which need not have been in the
individual, or in the race considered as a unity. This is all that
Christianity is really pledged to maintain. In maintaining this we are
maintaining what is absolutely essential to the moral well-being of the
race, and, moreover, what has the deepest roots in man's moral
experience and in the teaching of Christ. In holding this we hold the
doctrine of the Fall, a doctrine, that is, that man's condition has
been throughout a parody of the divine intention, owing to the fact of
sin tainting and spoiling his development from the root. But
Christianity is not in any kind of way pledged against the doctrine of
development, only against the doctrine which no reasonable science can
hold, that the actual development of man has been the best or only
possible one. Nor, I have urged, can it be reasonably said that the
Christian doctrine of sin and of the Fall is bound up with one
particular interpretation of Genesis iii. All, then, that we must
admit in the way of collision between Christianity and science is, on
the one hand, that Christianity is not intended to teach men science,
and that when there is any great advance in human knowledge it takes a
little while for Christianity to extricate itself from the meshes of
the language and ideas belonging to one stage of scientific knowledge,
and to assimilate the terms and ideas of the new. But, on the other
hand, there is perennial and necessary warfare between Christianity and
materialistic science, or a science which denies the reality of moral
freedom. And as to Christianity giving up what is proper to its own
ground--its teaching about {235} freedom and sin and the Fall, and
God's purpose for man, and the love shown in his redemption--to give up
this is to give up what is the best and deepest motive of human
progress, and what is most surely certificated by the witness of Christ
and the spiritual experience of Christendom. Indeed all schemes of
human improvement are shallow and inadequate, which do not deal with
man as what, in fact, he has been proved to be, a sinful, that is a
fallen, being, needing not only education but redemption.
Before leaving this attempt to show that there is no necessary conflict
between biological and theological science, it is important to call the
attention of the intelligent public to the fact that what formerly
appeared to be the solid consistency of the 'Darwinian' creed, has been
broken up into a state not far removed from chaos. It has become
apparent how very little way has really been made towards showing what
have been the actual factors in evolution--how the fact of evolution
through variation has actually occurred. Thus Mr. Bateson[14] remarks,
'If the study of variation can serve no other end, it may make us
remember that the complexity of the problem of specific difference is
hardly less now than it was when Darwin first showed that natural
history is a problem, and no vain riddle.' What is the cause of
variations occurring? What law do they exhibit in their occurrence?
Do variations occur with a certain degree of sudden completeness[15]?
Or how are we to {236} explain the maintenance of variations, which in
a more developed stage are to be very useful, before they can be shown
to be useful at all? What is the place held in evolution by 'natural
selection'? What, if any, the place held by use-inheritance? Is the
factor of 'mimicry,' supported by Darwin, an important or even real
factor in evolution? What is to be the issue of the controversy
between the biologist and the physicist on the question of the time
required for organic development? Are we to suppose that organic
development at the beginning proceeded very much more rapidly than at a
later stage? Or even that it exhibited laws of which we have no
experience now, such as would admit of a 'natural' development of life
out of what is not living? All these, and many more questions, appear
to be so completely open that, granted the general theory of continuous
evolution as against special creation, hardly anything as regards the
factors or causes of evolution can be said to be scientifically
settled. Thus on such subjects as the origin of the human race, its
exact relation to an animal ancestry, and the right interpretation of
the fact of sin, {237} before science can make demands on theology,
there must be more agreement in her own camp.
[1] See especially Ezekiel xxviii, xxxi.
[2] See vol. i. p. 193.
[3] Clem. Alex. _Strom_, vi. 12. 96; Iren. _c. Haer._ iv. 38.
[4] See also above, vol. i. pp. 78, 79.
[5] On the meaning of 'freedom of will,' see vol. i. pp. 230 ff.
[6] See above, vol. i. pp. 80-1.
[7] Romanes, _Examination of Weismannism_ (Longmans, 1893), pp. 61-70,
153.
[8] _The Last Link_ (Black, 1899), p. 79.
[9] Romanes, _Darwin and after Darwin_ (Longmans, 1895), ii. p. 279.
[10] _Examination of Weismannism_, pp. 114, 115.
[11] _Darwin and after Darwin_, ii. p. 90.
[12] See also in Haeckel, _Last Link_, p. 148: 'We assume the single
monophyletic origin of mankind at one place, in one district'; and
passages cited above, vol. i. p. 196, n. 1. The science of comparative
religions also suggests the same conclusion. Everywhere common
underlying religious needs and tendencies appear. Acts xvii. 27 is
justified by a comparison of religions.
[13] It must not be left out of sight that the idea of life as
naturally derived from what was inorganic, has not yet been made to
appear even scientifically probable, in view of the evidence.
[14] W. Bateson, _Materials for the Study of Variations, treated with
especial regard to discontinuity in the origin of species_ (Macmillan,
1894), p. xii.
[15] Biologists are now apparently more disposed than formerly to admit
the sudden appearance of considerable and important modifications and
rapid developments. Cf. Haeckel, _l. c._ p. 144, and Bateson, p. 568.
He concludes that 'discontinuity of species results from discontinuity
of variation.' 'The existence,' he says, 'of sudden and discontinuous
variation, the existence, that is to say, of new forms having from
their first beginning more or less of the kind of perfection which we
associate with normality, is a fact that disposes, once and for all, of
the attempt to interpret all perfection and definiteness of form as the
work of selection. The study of variation leads us into the presence
of whole classes of phenomena that are plainly incapable of such
interpretation.' This relative perfection of variations at starting
Mr. Bateson attributes in great measure to the principle of 'symmetry,'
or 'repetition of parts' in living things. An organism is symmetrical,
and thus what happens in one of many similar organs repeats itself
normally in all the others. Change in one part is not an isolated
fact, but there is 'similarity and simultaneity of change.'
NOTE F. See vol. i. p. 215.
BAPTISM BY IMMERSION AND BY AFFUSION.
The following passage in the Didache, c. 7, is of the plainest
importance for the history of this matter: 'If thou have not living
[i.e. running] water, baptize into other water; and if thou canst not
in cold, then in warm. And if thou have not either [in sufficient
amount for baptism, i.e. immersion in the water] pour forth water
thrice upon the head into the name of Father and Son and Holy Ghost.'
Cf. Dr. Taylor, _Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_ (Cambridge, 1886), p.
52: 'The primitive mode of baptism was by immersion. According to the
Jewish rite a ring on the finger, a band confining the hair, or
anything that in the least degree broke the continuity of contact with
the water, was held to invalidate the act. The Greek word "baptize,"
like the Hebrew _tabol_, means to dip: to "baptize" a ship is to _sink_
it. The construction [in the above passage of the Didache] "baptize
_into_ other water," points to immersion, as likewise does Hermas, when
he writes (_Simil._ 9): "They go down therefore into the water dead,
and come up living;" and Barnabas (chap. xi): "Herein he saith that we
go down into the water laden with sins and filthiness, and come up
bearing fruit in our heart, and having our fear and our hope towards
Jesus in the Spirit." This was still the normal way of administering
the rite, but it was no longer insisted upon as necessary: {238} "_If
thou have not either_," not enough of "living" or "other" water for
immersion, "_pour water thrice upon the head_," &c.'
NOTE G. See vol. ii. p. 136.
A PRAYER OF JEREMY TAYLOR.
O holy and almighty God, Father of mercies, Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ, the Son of Thy love and eternal mercies, I adore and praise and
glorify Thy infinite and unspeakable love and wisdom; who hast sent Thy
Son from the bosom of felicities to take upon Him our nature and our
misery and our guilt, and hast made the Son of God to become the Son of
Man, that we might become the sons of God and partakers of the divine
nature; since Thou hast so exalted human nature be pleased also to
sanctify my person, that by a conformity to the humility and laws and
sufferings of my dearest Saviour I may be united to His Spirit, and be
made all one with the most holy Jesus. Amen.
O holy and eternal Jesus, who didst pity mankind lying in his blood and
sin and misery, and didst choose our sadnesses and sorrows that Thou
mightest make us to partake of Thy felicities; Let Thine eyes pity me,
Thy hands support me, Thy holy feet tread down all the difficulties in
my way to heaven; let me dwell in Thy heart, be instructed with Thy
wisdom, moved by Thy affections, choose with Thy will, and be clothed
with Thy righteousness; that in the day of judgement I may be found
having on Thy garments, sealed with Thy impression; and that, bearing
upon every faculty and member the character of {239} my elder Brother,
I may not be cast out with strangers and unbelievers. Amen.
O holy and ever blessed Spirit, who didst overshadow the Holy
Virgin-mother of our Lord, and caused her to conceive by a miraculous
and mysterious manner; be pleased to overshadow my soul, and enlighten
my spirit, that I may conceive the holy Jesus in my heart, and may bear
Him in my mind, and may grow up to the fullness of the stature of
Christ, to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus. Amen.
To God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ; to the eternal Son that
was incarnate and born of a virgin; to the Spirit of the Father and the
Son, be all honour and glory, worship and adoration, now and for ever.
Amen.--Jeremy Taylor, _Holy Living_; see his _Works_, vol. iii. p. 238.
NOTE H. See vol. ii. p. 147.
THE ORIGIN OF THE MAXIM--'IN NECESSARIIS UNITAS, ETC.'