EVOLUTION AND THE FALL. 61 



by natural science, but which is constantly felt by 

 religious people, whether scientific or unscientific. 

 All this beautiful theory of evolution, of progres- 

 sive development from inorganic to organic, from 

 brute to man, and its continuation in the history 

 of man from primitive times to the present day, is 

 confronted by the doctrine of the Fall. While 

 science seems to teach a continuous evolution, 

 Christianity is committed to a theory of degrada- 

 tion. For if the Fall is not a myth or an allegory, 

 it certainly means that the first man was what 

 his descendants are not, and that, in spite of all 

 that we know and much more that we imagine 

 about human progress, the first man, who, if evolu- 

 tion is true, had but just emerged from the brute 

 into the self-consciousness of man, was a higher 

 creature than an Aristotle or a Raphael or a 

 Darwin. 



It is clear that everything here turns upon 

 what we mean by " a higher creature." What had 

 Adam which his descendants have not? What 

 did he and they lose by the Fall ? Certainly 

 Adam's descendants have much which he had not. 

 No one, for instance, supposes that the first man 

 was supernaturally gifted with scientific knowledge, 

 or that he was a born metaphysician, or a mathe- 

 matician, or an artist, or a musician. All these 

 things are the result of a gradual growth, and only 

 the merest possibility of them could have existed 



