128 FAMOUS SCOTS 



printing, gunpowder, and the mariner's compass without 

 any connection with the West, so we see the works of 

 the Creator in the palaeozoic period repeated by the 

 tiny creature-worker, without any idea that he had been 

 anticipated. Thus Creation is not merely a scheme 

 adapted to the nature of man, but one specially adapted 

 to the pattern nature of God. Man made in the image 

 of God is a real and fitting preparation for God's sub- 

 sequent assumption of the form of man. ' Stock and 

 graft had the necessary affinity,' and were finally united 

 in the one person. History is, therefore, no mere finite 

 record dating from a human act in Eden, but is the real 

 result of a decree, ' in which that act was written as a 

 portion of the general programme.' 



The problem of the origin of evil is of course a diffi- 

 culty viewed in relation to the decrees of God, in whom 

 no evil can exist. In the present state of things he 

 regards evil as due to man himself. The deputed head 

 of creation has voluntarily and of his own free will not 

 chosen to be a fellow- worker with God, who, while 

 binding him fast in the chain of events, has yet left his 

 will free. To ordain sin would be a self-contradiction 

 of the idea of God ; He but creates the being that in 

 turn creates sin. 'Fore-knowledge,' as Milton says, 

 'had no influence on their fault, which had no less 

 proved certain unforeseen.' Perhaps this is as near as 

 we are ever likely to get. But the Fall in its theological 

 aspect, while it must be fully apprehended by faith, has 

 nothing to fear from science, which teaches, if it can 



