or bondage of death is due to sin. If we realize
that this is all that {196} need be allowed in order to give us full
fellowship in St. Paul's religious teaching, we shall be able to
investigate the further truth of his teaching, from a scientific and
historical point of view, with a free mind.

And the three propositions stated above are not reasonably open to
doubt, (1) That our race is one species, and derived from one source,
is the conclusion of the modern ethnologist as much as of St. Paul[17].
The general theory of evolution has effectively counteracted the
previous tendency to postulate the existence of various independent
races of men.

(2) There are many professors of psychology who deny the existence of
moral freedom and consequently of sin in St. Paul's sense at all. As I
have already pointed out, this is the real battle-ground between
theology and science. But granted the reality of moral freedom and of
{197} sin, i.e. of something which need not and ought not to have been
committed, it is impossible to deny that, below the innumerable sins of
which human history is full, there exists deep in our nature an
'ineradicable taint'--a morbid tendency to do wrong--a bias or
propensity to evil--which is the heritage of our race; which indeed men
may become unconscious of by acquiescing in sin, but of which they
become painfully conscious again as soon as they are awakened to a
moral ideal. The late Dr. Mozley collected a remarkable series of
passages from what he calls 'worldly philosophers and poets'--notably
Byron and Shelley--testifying to the belief in universal sin[18]. This
of course we may say is only the inheritance of animal tendencies from
an animal ancestry; but if so, it is exactly what our higher spiritual
nature might and ought to have subdued long ago and brought into
subjection. Its presence with us and in us now is the result of sins
innumerable--innumerable wilful preferences of the lower to the higher
nature, which have let it loose and given it force. It is, in the
strictest sense, the inheritance of sin in the race.

(3) The New Testament frequently reiterates {198} the assertion that
Christ has robbed death of its sting or delivered men from its bondage.
And this is also expressed (both by St. Paul and by our Lord Himself,
as reported by St. John) by saying that Christ has 'abolished
death[19]' or that the believer shall never die[20]. But if Christ has
abolished death, then there