EVOLUTION AND THE FALL. 65 



which is now persistently put on one side, that in 

 this matter man is a great exception in the order 

 of nature. While every other living thing is striving \ 

 for its own good, man alone is found choosing what 1 

 he knows to be for his hurt. No theory of evolu- 

 tion is complete, then, which ignores the fact of sin I 

 in man. Men have tried again and again to ex- 

 plain it, and they have only succeeded in explain- 

 ing it away. Sin cannot be explained, for it is 

 irrational the one irrational, lawless, meaningless 

 thing in the whole universe. And the wilfulness 

 which in the Fall separated man from his true 

 good that is, God is reproduced in every sin, 

 and is everywhere a disturbing cause in the reign 

 of law, a check to progress and a barrier to know- 

 ledge. 



Side by side, then, with all that science tells us 

 of the evolution of man at the first from lower 

 forms of life, and all that history tells us of the 

 progress of man since, in civilization and know- 

 ledge, we see the fact of sin casting its shadow 

 upon human history and holding man back from 

 his full development. This is- the fact which lies 

 at the basis of all religions, and which moral 

 systems universally recognize, though they can 

 neither explain nor remove it. And science has 

 taught us that we must be true to facts. It is 

 because he is true to facts, that a Christian evolu- 

 tionist refuses to acquiesce in the easy optimism of 



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