and consolatory to recognise that, instead of evil itself being an eternal principle, it is only the necessary but temporary preparation for the eternal happiness of the limitless millions of the future.

How, then, was this manifestation of the evil of sin to be effected?

Satan fell, as we have seen, through pride, casting off his dependence on God, but no immediate effects followed. No physical death or suffering ensued, and in the case of spiritual existences no such effects could follow.

The evil of sin could only be manifested in beings like the human race, in whom, in consequence of the intimate connection of spirit and body, the former suffers through the latter, and every sin of the spirit is manifested by its direct, or indirect influence on the complex necessities of physical, psychical, and social existence. This evil might have been permitted to manifest itself in the human race without the agency of Satan, and man, lifted up by pride like Satan, might have fallen by an act of wilful rebellion against God, to which there was no temptation save the desire to be independent of God; but if so, then also, like Satan, his fall would probably have been irremediable.

Such an effect was avoided by temptation coming to man from without, and causing him to fall through the ignorance and defect of the flesh; and while the evil of sin in man was thus just as fully manifested, Satan at the same time was allowed to manifest the evil of his own sin, and therefore of all wilful rebellion and independence of God, by the effects produced on the human race, and by so doing was allowed also to become, eventually, his own destroyer.

Now, in order to understand the fall of man, and the nature of sin in the human race, it is necessary to consider the nature of the moral and psychical constitution of man-to consider, in fact, what was the original

nature of his constitution as first created, and what is the defect in that constitution which sin has produced.

The supporters of the modern theory of 'development' would have us believe that man, instead of having ever fallen, has risen, and is still rising, by a process of selfdevelopment; and they have attempted to illustrate their theory by pointing to certain savage races as illustrations of the race in its primitive state. More careful inquiries, however, have shown, from the evidence of language and arbitrary customs, the very origin and meaning of which these races have forgotten, that they are parallel offshoots of the same original races from which more civilized nations have sprung, and that isolation, and removal from those influences which have checked the tendency to moral degradation in the latter, is the sole cause of that degradation in the former. They are not, therefore, instances of the primeval condition of the human race, and there are no specimens of the human race that can be brought forward as representing a possible link between the higher animals and man. On the contrary, the monuments of ancient races point to a state of civilization different, but not inferior, to that of the present; and such civilization, as in the case of Egypt, was most perfect at its commencement.

This is the weakest point in the theory of evolution, as was felt and acknowledged by Mr. Darwin himself. No undoubted links, or transitional states,* have ever been discovered as evidences of a development from a lower to a higher state of existence, while evidences of degradation from a higher to a lower state are plentiful, both in the case of man and in the lower forms of life. Geology reveals a state of our earth, thousands of ages

* The existence of reptilian birds and of numerous mammalian fishes is no evidence that they are transitional states, nor is there any evidence that a bat is a mouse developing into a bird, or a sparrow in a transitional state before becoming a mouse.

previous to the existence of man, when mighty saurians of prodigious size and power were lords of creation, and yet, instead of these developing into something higher, all their highest forms have perished, and a few only of their lower, and possibly degraded types, have survived in the alligator, crocodile, etc. The facts by which the theory of evolution' has been supported are proofs indeed of a development of principle in creation, but not of the evolution of species one from another, and the identity of principle in each step of that development is, therefore, indisputable evidence of unity of design, and of all creatures being the offspring of one mind.

This subject is, however, too extensive to be fully treated here, and it will be sufficient to the believer in revelation to point to its statements, that 'God made man upright,' and that He created him in His own image; that is to say, righteous and capable of recognising righteousness as good, and wickedness as evil. In this respect he is different from the animals, who only recognise things as good and evil so far as they affect themselves and those for whom they have a natural affection; while, on the other hand, although he is similar to the angels in his capacity for recognising moral good and evil, man, unlike them, has a physical and psychical nature, subject to suffering, which brings home to his mind, in a manner which it does not to the angels, the nature and consequences of sin and righteous

ness.

Yet the original capacity for recognising the nature of moral good and evil did not make man righteous in the sense that God is righteous, or that redeemed men are righteous. It was rather the seed, of which the latter righteousness, under favourable circumstances, might be the fruit. It was the capacity for being righteous, the capacity for recognising that righteousness was good and sin evil, when they were presented to his mind. But, as

before remarked, the idea of good and evil cannot be conceived by the mind without some previous experience of their nature, so that even now, after much experience of moral good and evil, while we may recognise that an act is wrong before it is committed, yet it is not until the act is committed that the full sense of its evil comes upon our minds. Had it been otherwise, and men and angels had been like God, with a full prescience of the nature of moral good and evil before their effects were experienced, they might never have fallen; but such prescience is only possible to Infinite Wisdom, and therefore men, as free agents, although made in the image of God, were yet like Him only as the new-born babe is like its father, perfect indeed with the germs of all that father's features and characteristics, and therefore capable of developing into his perfect image, but, on the other hand, capable of losing those original characteristics, or germs, by disease, degradation, or death.

This innate capacity for recognising moral good and evil is thus clearly distinct from that knowledge of their nature which springs from experience of the consequences which follow good and evil actions, and which brings home their nature to the mind of man with still greater force and emphasis. Those consequences are indeed experienced by the whole animal creation, but being without man's capacity for recognising moral good and evil, that experience is incapable of elevating them into the rank of moral beings. Yet some have argued, from the observed resemblances between many of the actions and tendencies of men and animals, that there is no radical difference between them, and that the latter differ from man only in the less perfect development of faculties which are more fully manifested in him. Reason, imagination, love, gratitude, self-denial, generosity, and even conscience, it is said, may all be observed in the higher animals. That they may have the rudiments of reason

and imagination, that they often possess strong natural affection, and feel gratitude for kindness, and that they are capable of great self-denial where their natural affections are strongly excited, may be freely admitted. Something similar in appearance also to generosity may sometimes be observed in them. The anger which both they, and man, feel towards those who injure them, or are hostile to them, ceases, and fades away, when their enemy's power to injure is gone, for anger being the mind's protest against, and resistance to injury, it ceases of necessity when there is nothing to resist. Dogs, for instance, unless specially trained by man to do so, will not bite and worry an unresisting antagonist, a fact fully recognised by many of them, who, on being attacked, will lie passive and unresisting until their antagonist's anger has ceased. So also with those savage animals who do not attack man as a prey for food, for both the bull, and some species of the bear, will not injure the man who lies perfectly still and gives no sign of life, and therefore of capacity for resistance. In like manner, in the cases of seeming generosity of a powerful animal towards a weaker, especially when the former is not naturally savage, the recognised inferiority of the weaker animal neutralizes the anger which the stronger would feel towards another of its own power. This, however, is a totally distinct feeling to that of moral generosity, or pity for the weak and suffering. It is simply the manifestation of the working of a natural passion, or affection, possessed alike by men and the higher animals.

Conscience, again, may be simulated by the action of the higher animals. A dog or horse soon learns to associate disobedience to its master with suffering, and that master's displeasure, and by the association betrays its consciousness of having been disobedient, even when its master's eye is not on it. Because, therefore, we say