30 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



and physical terms, and clearly apprehend sin as 

 a quality of a moral being, and allow the appe- 

 tites of the flesh to stand uncondemned as long 

 as they perform their work of maintaining a 

 normal physical basis for the spiritual life. We 

 may have a diseased body, a riotous and uncon- 

 trollable nervous constitution, a deranged brain; 

 but a sinful physical nature we can not have with- 

 out robbing ourselves of words which describe the 

 condition of a spiritual being, and leaving our- 

 selves without any means of portraying the na- 

 ture and working as well as the abnormalities of 

 that being, so different from the physical.* 



Without doubt the great weakness of tradi- 

 tional theology in its hold upon the people is the 

 seeming unreality of some of its doctrines. The 

 world's vital creed is wrought out in the experi- 

 mental laboratory of life. The theologian 's creed 

 often smells of the cloister and the study. Some 

 people will give assent to a fictitious creed that 

 at the same time takes no hold upon their lives. 

 They will still continue to repeat shibboleths into 

 which they neglect to translate conviction. This 

 is a triumph for formalism, but a loss for godli- 

 ness. Moreover, those who balk are they who are 



"It had been a tendency of the Enlightenment to see in evil a mere defect of 

 our sensual nature, which would disappear in proportion as reason became stronger. 

 Kant, on the contrary, traces evil to the will: for him it is not a mere falling short of 

 the good, but is in direct antagonism to it; it is not dependent on outward conditions, 

 but is "radically" evil. The problem becomes thus more acute, but the philosopher 

 is not thereby constituted a believer in the dogma of the Fall and Original Sin, that 

 "most unseemly of all conceptions.' For man has also a permanent disposition toward 

 goodness, and this must be energetically called upon to confront the foe." (Eucken: 

 "Problem of Human Life," 540.) 



