LECTURE VI 



ORIGINAL SIN 



If the purpose of my last lecture was successfully 

 achieved, the task now before us has been much sim- 

 plified — the task, I mean, of reckoning with the im- 

 plications of the evolutionary hypothesis which bear, 

 or are thought to bear, upon the truth of the catholic 

 doctrine of sin. If, as I have been maintaining, that 

 hypothesis permits us to believe that man's original 

 state was one of supernatural grace, in which he was 

 enabled wholly to avoid sin and to escape the physical 

 death to which he was naturally liable, it would also 

 seem to permit the supposition that some special cause, 

 in addition to natural evolution, has brought about 

 the present moral condition of mankind. 



The question requiring answer is. How did mankind \ 

 lose the advantages of that primitive state? Why is it 

 that he has reverted, so to speak, to the condition in 

 which, according to evolutionary doctrine, he would 

 naturally have been from the beginning, if he had not 

 been given supernatural privileges and endowments? 

 The only answer to this question with which we have 

 to reckon is that of the doctrine of the fall and of origi- 

 nal sin. The evidences which establish the correct- 

 ness of that answer have been very briefly indicated 

 in my fourth lecture, and their sufficiency ought not 



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