iv] Some Implications of the Incarnation 127 



disagree. Sin is the conscious misdirection of the will, 

 as we have so often said. It is failure in a sense, but only 

 in a sense. It is failure to do what is recognised as the 

 right. Sin cannot be inherited; only its consequences 

 can. A perfectly good man, perfectly good up to the 

 possibilities of his then stage, that is, might be entirely 

 sinless himself, and yet inherit the necessity to develope 

 along wrong lines, through the misdirection of human- 

 ity's evolution. The barrier which kept him from per- 

 fection might be real enough, even though he did right 

 himself, up to his lights, in every act of his life, and so 

 was personally sinless. This is a purely theoretical 

 matter, but it serves to show the point we want to 

 emphasise that the inheritance of the taint which 

 raised a barrier between man and God is possible for a 

 being perfectly sinless; that there is no question of the 

 blasphemous attribution of sin to Christ in discussing 

 the possibility of His inheriting something which we 

 have seen reason to believe may be inherent in all men. 

 Indeed, it is using an unfortunate phrase when we even 

 describe it as a taint. In those who sinned it was a 

 taint; in those who inherit the nature debarred from 

 perfection, it is a consequence a disability. Having 

 thus cleared away possible misunderstanding, we may 

 proceed to develope our argument. 



Suppose that Christ did inherit the nature of a 

 humanity that possessed 'positive imperfection,' as we 

 have called it 1 ; would He not be thereby barred out 

 from God as man? And would not this disability make 

 the Incarnation of no avail as Atonement? Would His 

 Manhood be anything more than manhood as perfect 

 as it could be when clogged with the chain of such a 

 past? Of course, if we were wrong in believing that there 

 was anything of the nature of original sin and of positive 

 imperfectness due to misdirection of progress, the pro- 

 1 Evolution and the Need of Atonement, p. 144. 



