the result of his birth or of his surroundings-in one word, in accordance with the affirmation of the prophet, "The righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him; and the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father, nor the father bear the iniquity of the son;" but each man shall be responsible only for his own sin; and when justice has spoken mercy will plead.

CHAPTER VII.

THE ACCOUNT OF THE CREATION AND FALL OF MAN, AS NARRATED IN THE SECOND AND THIRD CHAPTERS OF GENESIS, IN ITS BEARING ON THE QUESTION OF HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY, AND THE VALIDITY OF THE VARIOUS THEORIES WHICH HAVE BEEN ERECTED ON WHAT IS DESIGNATED THE DOCTRINE OF THE FALL EXAMINED AND CONSIDERED.

I HAVE omitted to consider in the fifth chapter the narrative of what is designated "the fall of man,” as given in the third chapter of Genesis, because it is a subject of such importance that it requires a separate consideration. For not only has it a most intimate bearing on the subject we are considering, but the theory called "conditional immortality, or life in Christ," is to no inconsiderable extent based on it, and a large portion of the teaching both of systematic and popular theology has been elaborated on the assumption that it constitutes the foundation on which the superstructure of Christianity is erected. As this last point is one of the greatest importance, I will begin by offering on it a few brief observations.

The generally accepted theory on this subject is that Adam, by his act of disobedience to the Divine command forbidding him to eat of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, incurred for himself and his posterity the penalty of what is designated spiritual death, to be followed in due course by natural death, i.e. the death of the body, and this by eternal death, which is commonly understood to mean a never-ending existence in torment. Further, it is held that the complicated scheme called the plan of salvation was devised by God for the purpose of remedying the marring

of his original creative plan which the fall occasioned; that the redemptive work of Jesus Christ, including his incarnation, sufferings, death, and resurrection, was intended to be remedial of the terrible consequences which have been entailed on mankind by Adam's transgression, although, according to generally-accepted theories, the remedy has been an imperfect one; and that His divine mission, but for the fall, would have been unnecessary. The above views are held with modifications too numerous to admit of a separate enumeration here, but the above is a sufficiently accurate statement of the general theological position.

Assuming this theory to be correct, we surely ought to find in the pages of revelation some very definite affirmations that Christianity is erected on the doctrine of the fall as its foundation, and the references to it should be frequent. What, then, are the facts? I answer

1. That from the third chapter of Genesis to the last chapter of Malachi the fall of man is not once mentioned, or even referred to, by the sacred writers. To this the only apparent exception is Job xxxi. 33, but even this obscure reference disappears in the alternative marginal rendering of the Revised Version.

2. The fall of man is not only never affirmed by our Lord to have been the foundation of His divine mission, but it is not once directly referred to by Him in the whole course of His teaching. To this the only apparent exception is a passage in St. John's Gospel which may be viewed as a reference to Genesis iii.

"Ye," says our Lord to the unbelieving Jews, "are of your father, the devil, and the lusts of your father it is your will to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and stood not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar and the father of it." As the translation of this last

clause is not free from difficulty, the Revisers have given in the margin the following alternative rendering: "When one speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own, for his father also is a liar." (John viii. 44.)

It is, however, extremely doubtful whether those whom our Lord addressed could have understood this utterance as a reference to Genesis iii., because it contains no intimation that the devil was the tempter; nor can such an intimation be found anywhere in the Old Testament. On the contrary, the tempter is, throughout the whole narrative, affirmed to have been a serpent; and it gives, as a reason why it was able to act the part of a tempter, that "the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made." Nor is the serpent once identified with the devil throughout the entire New Testament, except in the Apocalypse; and even St. Paul, though frequently warning those to whom he wrote to beware of the wiles of the devil, designates Eve's tempter as "the serpent." Further, the sentence which is pronounced on the serpent as a punishment for what he had done, though applicable to literal serpents, is inconsistent with what is said of the devil from one end of the Bible to the other. If, therefore, our Lord's hearers had learned to identify the serpent of Genesis iii. with the Satan of the Old Testament, or with the devil (o diáẞoλos) of the New,* their information must have been derived from some extra-biblical source, for the Old Testament does not contain even a hint that its Satan was the real tempter.

It will, perhaps, be urged that the following passage, in the First Epistle of St. John, is a reference to our Lord's utterance as it is recorded in his Gospel.

I say, "with the Satan of the Old Testament or with the devil of the New," because it is evident that the attributes which are attributed to each differ widely. The demons (rà daiμivia) of the New are not even mentioned in the Old.

"He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. He that doeth sin is of the devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning. To this end was the Son of God manifested, that he might destroy the works of the devil. . . . . In this the children of God are manifested, and the children of the devil; whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother. For this is the message that ye have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another: not as Cain was of the evil one, and slew his brother. And wherefore slew he him? Because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous?.... Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer, and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him." (1 John iii. 7—15.)

The murder referred to in this passage seems to have been understood by the Evangelist to have been that of Abel, and not of Adam and his posterity.

3. No reference to the fall is to be found either in the Acts of the Apostles, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, in those of St. Peter, St. James, St. John, and St. Jude, in nine of St. Paul's Epistles, nor even in the Revelation, except in its identification of the old serpent with the devil; for the war in heaven mentioned in it, between Michael and his angels, and the dragon and his angels, with the casting down of the dragon to the earth, evidently refers to a time long subsequent to the creation of man. It will doubtless be urged by those who hold the popular theories on this subject, that all these writings presuppose it, though they do not directly refer to it. To this I answer

First. It is incredible, if they presuppose it as the foundation on which their teaching rests, that all direct, and even indirect, reference to it should be entirely wanting.

Secondly. In investigating a subject like the present, we have nothing to do with presuppositions and assumptions,