IMPORTANCE OF THE DOCTRINE 225 



If His sinlessness was human sinlessness, it was none 

 the less a result of transcending grace — not a result 

 which the purely natural man has shown himself to be 

 capable of producing in any stage of his development. 

 Apart from supernatural assistance man misses the 

 mark, and exhibits the one example in creation of a 

 species that invariably fails to fulfil the distinctive law 

 of its being. To deny that primitive man enjoyed 

 special assistance, and to exclude the sin of our first 

 parents from our explanation of universal human sin- 

 fulness logically involves that we should make God the 

 author not only of the possibility of sin, as Dr. Tennant 

 puts it, but also of the practical impossibility of avoiding 

 it. That natural evolution has been a factor in pro- 

 ducing our fallen state, we are free, as believers in catho- 

 lic doctrine, to acknowledge. To regard it, however, 

 as the whole explanation is to impugn divine justice 

 and to stultify our moral instincts. Evolutionary 

 science, as distinguished from naturalistic philosophy, 

 leaves us free to avoid such a nightmare of belief. 



16 



