EVOLUTION AND THE FALL. 63 



The change which took place at the Fall was 

 a change in the moral region ; but it could not be 

 without its effect elsewhere. Even the knowledge 

 of nature becomes confused, without the governing 

 truth of the relation of man to God. The evolution, 

 which should have been the harmonious develop- 

 ment of the whole man, is checked and impeded in 

 one part, and that the highest part, of his nature. 

 And therefore, in spite of all the physical and 

 intellectual advance which man has made, he is 

 always and everywhere the worse for the Fall. 

 However great his development has been, it is 

 still a retarded development, a development slower 

 than it need have been, less regular and less sure 

 than God meant it to be. 



A simple illustration may help us here. A child 

 who is obedient and teachable and willing to learn, 

 who trusts his father or his teacher, may be in 

 actual knowledge as inferior as he is in size and 

 strength to the full-grown man, though the man 

 may be wayward and wilful and self-assertive. 

 And yet, for all that, the child is in a higher 

 moral condition, and capable of a fuller and truer 

 intellectual development ; for he is in a right 

 relation to truth, while wilfulness and self-assertion 

 are antagonistic to truth and impede knowledge. 

 So man before the Fall was in a right relation to 

 God, though he knew nothing of modern science 

 and modern civilization. When that relation was 



