IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE 221 



parents by the standards of a Christian conscience/ is 

 to miss the point, although the fact that an undeveloped 

 soul incurs less guilt in sinning than an enhghtened 

 Christian is hardly to be disputed. It is not the degree 

 of guilt that determines the responsibility of God, if He 

 puts them of His own will to a probation in which avoid- 

 ance of sin is practically impossible, and then holds 

 them guilty for sinning. The slightest sin, and the 

 slightest responsibihty therefor, when sinlessness is in 

 effect impossible for the individuals involved, warrants 

 the charge of injustice against Him who created such 

 conditions and yet holds men accountable. Men can- 

 not be held responsible, even in the very lowest degree, 

 for the unavoidable, when the Judge is also the cause 

 of its being unavoidable, without a violation of right- 

 eous judgment. We beheve, of course, that the Judge 

 of all the earth must do right; and this conviction, 

 combined with our knowledge that that Judge holds 

 men accountable in some degree for the slightest sins — 

 I mean for every sin the wrongfulness of which is to 

 any extent perceived by the sinner, — compels us to 

 regard an exclusively evolutionary explanation of 

 man's existing tendency to sin as incredible. 



If the reply is made that catholic doctrine is open to 

 the same objection, inasmuch as it teaches an existing 

 incapacity for sinlessness on the part of men, and yet 

 declares them to be held accountable by God, the 

 answer is this: Catholic doctrine does not, as does an 

 exclusively evolutionary view of sin, compel us to ex- 



1 Tennant, op. cit., pp. 91-94. 



