70 MORAL CONDITION OF THE CHILD 



the human being that has arrived at the full form 

 of his powers. With this understanding of our 

 question, what shall be our answer? 



First, we consider that part of human nature 

 which we call the flesh: The animal nature cer- 

 tainly does furnish the conditions which make a 

 struggle against sin necessary. It is not that sin 

 is located in the animal nature, or that its work- 

 ings are sinful in themselves. But it grows out 

 of the fact that animalism has nothing in it but 

 impulse. It has no self-limiting power within it- 

 self. It has nothing but a tendency to function or 

 a pressure toward gratification. 



Legitimate gratification is not sinful; but the 

 flesh does not of itself stop at the line of legiti- 

 macy. Its only tendency, when it arrives at that 

 line, is to push on. But the passing of that line 

 is sin ; and the effort to hold it to that line consti- 

 tutes a direct struggle of the spirit with the 

 flesh. The sin that occurs from a transgression 

 of the boundary is not a sin of the flesh for the 

 flesh can not sin ; but it is a sin of the spirit, whose 

 function of regency in the personality has not 

 been made good. "Sin is no factor of the true 

 humanity, but only a feature of empirical human- 

 ity which is absolutely fatal to the true. What is 

 truly human is not sin, but the power to be 

 tempted to sin. It is not perdition, but freedom. ' ' 

 (Forsyth: "Person and Place of Jesus Christ," 

 302.) 



So we have the paradoxical answer: the ani- 



