rdity. Again, why should God feel Himself so
much aggrieved by Adam's peccadillo? If it were not for the
theological atmosphere which surrounds the question, we should see at
once that it was ridiculous. Why should the consequences continue
through countless generations? Remember this was supposed to be the
very start of humanity's career. What a dreary, hopeless outlook was
left to it! The notion is incredible, and most of the clear-headed men
who hold it would scout it without discussion if they heard of it now
for the first time. As it is, however, they go on talking of the
"awful holiness" of God, the offence against the divine majesty, and so
on. But what is this divine holiness? I can well remember that as a
child I used to tremble at the thought of it, for somehow, like a good
many other people, I had been taught to think of the divine holiness as
synonymous with merciless inflexibility. But holiness, righteousness,
justice, mercy, love, are but different expressions of the same
spiritual reality. One might go on multiplying these considerations
for ever, but there is no need to do so. Sufficient has been said to
demonstrate the fact that the doctrine of the Fall is an absurdity from
the point of view both of ethical consistency and common sense.

+Science and the Fall.+--After this it is almost superfluous to point
out that modern science knows nothing of it and can find no trace of
such a cataclysm in human history. On the contrary, it asserts that
there has been a gradual and unmistakable rise; the law of evolution
governs human affairs just as it does every other part of the cosmic
process. This statement is quite consistent with the admission that
there have been periods of retrogression as well as of advance, and
that the advance itself has not been steady and uniform from first to
last; there have been long stretches of history during which humanity
has seemed to mark time and then a sudden outburst of intellectual
activity and moral achievement. It could hardly be maintained, for
instance, that the Athens of Socrates was not superior to the France of
Fulk the black of Anjou, or that the Assyria of Asshur-bani-pal was not
quite as civilised as the Germany of the ninth century A.D. Alfred
Russel Wallace has shown in his popular book, "The Wonderful Century,"
that the latter half of the nineteenth century witnessed a greater
advance in man's power over nature than the fifteen hundred years
pr