l8o MAN'S PRIMITIVE STATE 



death is a consequence of loss of divinely afforded 

 means of immortality, a loss brought about by the 

 avoidable and voluntary sin of our first parents. 



The sum of the matter is that, when the Christian 

 view of history is once intelligently accepted, the doc- 

 trine that man was originally, and by supernatural 

 grace, made capable of sinless development and unin- 

 terrupted life forever, is perceived to accentuate rather 

 than to violate the principle of continuity, and to per- 

 mit behef in an evolutionary origin of man's physical 

 organism. 



IV 



Having reckoned with the principle of continuity, 

 and having established the agreement therewith of the 

 doctrine that man's primitive state was one of super- 

 natural grace and potential immortahty, we shall find 

 no difficulty in reconciling that doctrine with the con- 

 clusions of evolutionary science which I defined in an 

 earlier part of this lecture. 



I. One does not need, in the first place, to abandon 

 /the cathoHc doctrine of man's primitive state in order 

 to accept the conclusion that man's physical organism 

 has been produced by natural evolution, and owes its 

 specific characters to variations of lower organisms, 

 preserved by natural selection. He only needs to 

 supplement this theory by allowing for the super- 

 physical elements in human nature, and by recog- 

 nizing that physical antecedents and factors neither 

 afford adequate explanation of human nature in 



