Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1879 Excerpt: ...of a Fall. Their conception, of how this sad catastrophe was brought to pass they embodied in the form of a simple tale which they handed down to their descendants. It is one version of this ancient story that we have in the beginning of Genesis, It is purely and beautifully imaginative, but still, what it really bears witness to is no fiction of fancy at all, but a stubborn and melancholy fact--a fact which it was fcndly believed sufficiently and satisfactorily to explain--the fact of man's inherited depravity, the fact of the existence in his nature of what is called " original sin," the fact of his having an inborn proneness to deviate from the line of innocence when assailed by the pressure of temptation. And, truly, this is all that the doctrine of original sin can be properly taken to imply. No doubt it has often been held that an acknowledgment of man'snatural depravity carries with it by implication an acknowledgement of his original fall. This, however, is by no means tbe case. The one confession by no means necessarily involves the other. Men may be bad, but it does not follow that their remote ancestors must therefore have suffered a lapse from a condition which was better. It is, of course, no proof of it at all. That men happen to be bad is no more a proof that their first forefather was originally created good, and fell from that state of goodness, than the fact that all crows are black is a proof that they were originally white. That certain kinds of fruit trees bear unwholesome fruits may be a proof of their worthlessness as fruit trees, but assuredly, it is no proof whatever that they are deteriorated fruit trees. And so with the human race--what proof can be produced that men have fallen or deteriorated from a state that was high...
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