CONTINUITY APPLIED 175 



excegtJ^hen^QneJ[&-nicu:aU}^cul^ for the missing. 

 Sin is not immaturity of moral effort, but wilful viola- 

 tion of conscience. So far from being a phase of I 

 upward struggle, it is a refusal to struggle upward — a | 

 turning back which ought not to occur. The "ought \ 

 not" remains unexplained and contrary to divine right- 

 eousness, so long as we describe it as the unavoidable 

 result of divine arrangements. Christian doctrine 

 accounts for the unavoidableness of sin by teaching it 

 to be a consequence of human sin, originally avoid- 

 ble and wilful.^ This explanation is indeed partial 

 nly, and the ethical problems which are involved in 

 the moral solidarity of mankind cannot fully be solved. 

 But such teaching at least relieves us of the monstrous 

 notion that God originated the inevitableness of sin, 

 and holds man responsible for the result of His own 

 arrangements. 



If such a notion subverts our belief in the resource- 

 ful wisdom and righteousness of God, it also goes coun- 

 ter to every precedent that an evolutionary view of 

 man's origin affords. As has been eloquently argued 

 by the late John Fiske, in his Through Nature to Godj^ 

 the course of natural evolution previous to man's 

 appearance has been by true steps, each surviving form 



1 See Aubrey Moore, Essays Scientific and Philosophical, pp. 

 61-66. He says that, "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." See also J. Orr, 

 God's Image, pp. 201-212. 2 pp, jjy gi j^g. 



/^fe^^ 



