22 WILLIAM DALI, ESQ.^ T.S.A.. F.G.S., OX PEEHJSTOPJC MAN 



" the man (often translated Adam) does not touch the story of 

 Grenesis ii, iii, in any way. It does not follow that man had the 

 same mental endowments as the man " of whom Genesis ii, iii, 

 speaks. And even if he had, though there might be some difficulty 

 involved in the admission, we ought not to allow ourselves to forget 

 that the qualities which " the man spoken of as having fallen 

 possessed, were moral and spiritual, not mental. " The man " 

 of that narrative had the power of free will. He had the power, 

 that is, of infringing the Law of Right and Wrong, which (no doubt, 

 at first, in a very elementary form) was imposed upon him. Per- 

 sonally I feel it difficult to understand how he could be entrusted 

 with the full intellectual powers necessary to enable him to make 

 the moral distinctions required by the new powers conferred on him. 

 This, however, might be left an open question. But it is quite impos- 

 sible to concede the objections to the story of the Fall raised by those 

 who hold that the Fall could not have occurred, on the ground 

 that the being described in the story of the Fall was an advance upon, 

 not a Fall from, the former position of man ; and therefore would 

 be a contradiction of the j)rinciple of Evolution. Ultimately, no 

 doubt, the Creation of Man was an advance on his former position. 

 But that conclusion could only be reached when the Second Man. 

 the Lord from Heaven," had undone the work of the Fall, and had 

 raised Humanity to a level from which it could attain the position 

 assigned to it by St. Paul, of being " filled with all the fulness of 

 God." Before His coming, man. by reason of his higher respon- 

 sibihties, was far more wicked in God's sight than the animals. 



As to the literal interpretation of the early chapt-ers of Genesis, 

 that is a question of interpretation, not of the supreme authority of 

 Holy Scripture, as far as its message to man is concerned. One 

 can hardly, for instance, imagine the Sacred Writer intended us to 

 believe that the knowledge of good and evil could grow on a tree, 

 and be plucked therefrom as one plucks fruit. Still less can one 

 believe this, when the last book of the Bible speaks of the Tree of 

 Life in similar terms, and no one, so far as I know, has ever proposed 

 to interpret that passage literally. 



I think the time has arrived when we may venture to lay down 

 rather clearer principles on the interpretation of Holy Writ, and 

 to make a definite distinction between the primary principles of 



