in a
fit condition to receive virtue.' And Irenaeus says that it was in the
power of God to make men perfect from the beginning, but that such an
initial perfection would be contrary to the law of human nature, which
is the law of gradual growth[3]. We must therefore modify the
statement of Christian doctrine from which we started, thus:--_Man has
been slowly led, or has slowly developed, towards the divine ideal of
his Creator; but his actual development has been much less rapid and
constant than it might have been, owing to the fact of sin from which
he might have been free_.

Now, can it be fairly said that science can take any legitimate
exception to such a statement? The progress of man which
anthropological science discloses is very broken, very partial; if
development of some sort is universal, progress is very rare, distinct
deterioration not uncommon. Science, like poetry and philosophy, must
bear witness to the disappointing element in human nature, of which He
was so conscious of whom it is said that 'He did not trust himself to
man, because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning
man, for he himself knew what was in man'--the sad secret of human
untrustworthiness and unsatisfactoriness[4].

Again, can science assert that this actual development of man, so
thwarted and tainted and partial, has been the only possible
development, and that there could not have been a better? If it cannot
say this, there is in the {223} general view of human progress and
deterioration no antagonism between religion and science.

II.--But it may be said, 'Science certainly does say that the actual
development of man has been the only possible development. Science
excludes the idea of sin in the sense of something which need not have
happened, because it excludes the idea of freedom or contingency
altogether. Good and bad characters are like good and bad apples--mere
facts of natural growth'; or more suggestively, 'Sin (so called) is
only the survival of brute instincts, which, from a higher condition of
evolution, men have come to be ashamed of.'

It cannot be made too emphatic that here is the real battle-ground of
religion and science to-day, though the fact is often concealed in
popular controversy. _I do not believe there is any real difficulty in
adjusting sufficiently the relations of religion and science as to the
Fall when once the idea of sin has been admitted--that is, the idea of
free, r