a better way. But answer
me this. If you are generally affected, what right have you to bring, as
you are supposing, a diseased brain to a sound one? We Romans are all
sound--sound as a bell.

Then Christian goes on to the history of the fall. But the whole would
be self-baffled and construed away from want of sin as the antithesis of
holiness.

_Why St. Paul and the Athenians did not come to an Understanding._--So,
again, if you think that St. Paul had a chance with the Athenians. If he
had, it would tax his divine benevolence to see that he forbore to
pursue it. This attempt shows that he was under a misconception. He
fancied a possibility of preaching a pure religion. What followed? He
was, he must have been defeated. That is, practically, else why did he
not persist? But his confutation was the factual confutation of
experience. It was no go. That he found too surely. But why? I am sure
that he never found out. Enough that he felt--that under a strong
instinct he misgave--a deep, deep gulf between him and them, so that
neither could he make a way to their sense, nor they, except
conjecturally, to his. For, just review the case. What was the [Greek:
euangelion], the good tidings, which he announced to man? What burthen
of hope? What revelation of a mystery of hope arising out of a deeper
mystery of despair? He announced a deliverer. Deliverer! from what?
Answer that--from what? Why, from evil, you say. Evil! of what kind?
Why, you retort, did not the Pagans admit that man was lying under evil?
Not at all; nothing of the kind. But you are sure you have heard of such
things? Very likely. And now you are forced back upon your arguments you
remember specially that evil as to its origin was a favourite
speculation of theirs. Evil, in its most comprehensive designation,
whence is it? How came it? Now, mark, even to that extent, viz., the
extent indicated by this problem, the ancients had no conception of evil
corresponding to, no, nor dimly approaching to, a correspondence with
ours. They had no ineffable standard of purity; how, then, any function
of impurity? They had no ineffable doctrine of pain or suffering
answering to a far more realized state of perception, and, therefore,
unimaginably more exquisite; how, then, could they raise a question on
the nature or fountains of such pains? They executed no synthesis, and
could execute none upon the calamities of life; they never said in
ordinary talk that this was a wo