HARMONIZED WITH EVOLUTION 185 



ous attention to its connection with other truths con- 

 fessedly vital. When I say confessedly vital, I mean 

 among those who accept the general truth of Chris- 

 tianity. 



If Christianity is really true, its primary doctrines of 

 redeeming grace are the most vital of all truths which 

 lie within the apprehension of human beings. Our 

 eternal welfare is bound up with, and conditioned by, 

 the atoning death of Christ and the grace of regenera- 

 tion that is secured to us by union with the second 

 Adam. If Christ came to seek and to save those who 

 were lost,^ then we must either repudiate the necessity 

 and significance of His coming, or regard ourselves as 

 fallen from the state which our Maker intended us to 

 enjoy, and which, therefore, if He is the God we 

 believe Him to be, He must originally have enabled 

 man to enjoy. The doctrines of salvation and original 

 // I righteousness hang together, so that we cannot repudi- 

 ate the latter and consistently retain the former. Sim- 

 ilarly, if the scriptural and catholic doctrine of 

 baptismal regeneration has any valid meaning at all, 

 it presupposes that the natural man has fallen from 

 grace, and is not in the state originally intended and 

 made possible for him by His Creator.^ If the intel- 

 lectual conditions of our age make it peculiarly diffi- 



1 St. Luke xix. 10. 



2 Dr. Tennant concedes the disagreement of the purely evolution- 

 ary view of sin with baptismal remission, so far as it concerns original 

 sin. Origin of Sin, 2d ed., pp. xii, 231. His concession is inade- 

 quate but significant. 



