to contact
with the Gospel, as in the case of Jairus, the rich young ruler, and the
Syrophenician woman. It has been affirmed by Wernle[9] that the Apostle
Paul in the interests of salvation grossly {59} exaggerates the condition
of the natural man. 'He violently extinguished every other light in the
world so that Jesus might shine in it alone.' But this surely is a
misstatement. It is true that no more scathing denunciation of sinful
human nature has ever been presented than the account of heathen
immorality to be found in the first chapter of Romans. Yet the apostle
does not actually affirm, nor even imply, that pagan society was so
utterly corrupt that it had lost all knowledge of moral good. Though so
bad as to be beyond hope of recovery by natural effort, it was not so bad
as to have quenched in utter darkness the light which lighteth every man.

3. Christianity, while acknowledging the partial truth of both of these
theories, reconciles them. If, on the one hand, man were innately good
and could of himself attain to righteousness, there would be no need of a
gospel of renewal. But history and experience alike show that that is
not the case. If, on the other hand, man were wholly bad, had no
susceptibility for virtue and truth, then there would be nothing in him,
as we have seen, which could respond to the Christian appeal.[10]
Christianity alone offers an answer to the question in which Pascal
presents the great antithesis of human nature: 'If man was not made for
God, how is it that he can be happy only in God? And if he is made for
God, how is he so opposite to God?'[11] However, then, we may account
for the presence of evil in human nature, a true view of Christianity
involves the conception of a latent spiritual element in man, a capacity
for goodness to which his whole being points. Matter itself may be said
not merely to exist for spirit, but to have within it already the potency
of the higher forms of life; and just as nature is making towards
humanity, and in humanity at last finds itself; as

'Striving to be man, the worm
Mounts through all the spires of form,'[13]

{60} so man, even in his most primitive state, has within him the promise
of higher things. No theory of his origin can interfere with the
assumption that he belongs to a moral Sphere, and is capable of a life
which is shaping itself to spiritual ends. Whatever be man's past
history and evolution, he has from the beginning