it only shares the fate of every other doctrine or ordinance of Christianity. No truths of the Gospel can possibly be more certain than those of the Divinity and Incarnation of Jesus Christ, and the Atonement wrought by Him on the Cross; and yet I have known Unitarians who have denied these essential truths in (to all human appearance) a higher moral and even religious state than many Catholics who uphold them. Now, does such a fact detract in the least degree from the importance of holding the Catholic faith? Assuredly not. God only knows the real immorality involved in a denial of that which He has clearly revealed. He only knows the real loss to the soul, even when it appears to suffer no loss, but to surpass in some things the souls of those who hold the truth. If God has revealed to us His love in the gift of His Son through His Incarnation, then to reject the record of such love must be as deadly a spiritual sin as it is possible for a human being to commit. And we must hold it to be so; only we must hold it along with this consideration, that God, who deals with all His creatures in the most perfect justice, may see fit in particular cases to restrain the deadly effects of such spiritual sins, and even to suffer some of the overflowing of His grace to work in those who can hardly be accounted believers, in order to stir up those who hold the truth to greater care about their own walk, and to greater zeal in His service.

RECENT Controversies are supposed, though with little truth, to affect another matter closely connected with the doctrine of the Church.

The doctrine of Holy Baptism is undoubtedly based upon the truth that Christ is the Second Adam, and that we must be, in some mysterious but real way, in Him for purposes of salvation, as we are in the first Adam for sin and death.

Of late years free speculation (it can hardly be called free thought) has run counter to the truth of the record of the origin of man which we have long supposed that we have derived from the first chapters of the Book of Genesis.

It is surmised (though with not a grain of anything like proof) that man came into existence, not by an independent act of creation, but by natural selection, or by some means analogous to it, and that, for anything that we know, man derived his origin in this way not from one parent, but from many. Various anthropoids, such as those which now range the tropical forests, may, it is surmised, at some remote period have given birth to creatures capable of holding converse with God.

Outrageous as all this seems, it is nevertheless suggested by some as tending to throw doubts on the received

accounts of the origin of the human race, and consequently is supposed to affect the truth of those doctrines of original sin and salvation in Christ which seem to be built upon the truth of such an origin.

I shall now briefly attempt to show how far the received doctrine of the Church can be affected by it.

First of all, let us assume that mankind sprung from one pair. Both revelation and universal tradition are in favour of the assumption. Reason, too, is in its favour, for the chances are enormous against any inferior being giving birth to any one such being as man; much more is the generating of several such beings improbable in the extreme. Our best instincts, too, are against the assumption; for on the assumption of many heads or fountains of the race we lose at one fell stroke the natural bond of brotherhood which knits all mankind together.

We

If we assume that mankind sprang from one Adam or head, then the doctrine of the Church respecting original sin and its transmission is totally unaffected by it. The only thing which is affected by it is our conception of the manner in which God actually gave being to man. have been all along supposing that certain passages in the Book of Genesis teach us that man was created momentarily, as it were, and by an independent act of creation; instead of which (on the hypothesis of natural selection) it seems that we have misinterpreted these places, for (on this hypothesis) he was brought into being by a slower and more hidden process. Instead of having been created by one single independent act of power, his creation was dependent upon a series of acts, or perhaps rather interpositions, whereby various forms of animal life were gradually developed into a human being by a process somewhat analogous to that by which a breeder of cattle improves his stock by singling out those creatures for

pairing together which are best adapted for producing the creatures he designs.

What, then, the Church holds on the authority of Scripture is this: that whatever process was actually made use of to bring man into being was God's process, planned by His foreknowledge, and brought about by His alldirecting providence, and not by any unconscious forces of so-called nature. By a slower process than we have been accustomed to suppose He willed to give existence to a creature endowed with such moral attributes and such mental powers that that creature could be said to be made "in His image, after His likeness." He gave to this creature the power of choosing His service or of rejecting it. This was his trial as a moral agent. He fell under the trial, and transmitted to his posterity the moral deterioration which he received at his fall. Difficult as this matter of the transmission of evil is, there is assuredly nothing unnatural in it: almost all the inferior creatures with which we are surrounded transmit their characters and dispositions to their offspring. The Bible doctrine of the transmission of sin is in strict accordance with the fact of the transmission of moral and mental peculiarities in nations and in families.

Assuming, then, that the creation of man, whatever was its actual mode, was brought about by the special will and power of God, and assuming that all mankind sprang from one individual, then the doctrine of natural selection in no way affects the Scripture account of the trial of man, of his fall, and of the transmission of the effects of that fall. It only modifies our conceptions of the way by which God brought man into existence; but when once he is brought into existence, then comes his probation, and respecting this natural science can teach us nothing. It is purely a matter of history to determine which, out of the

innumerable modes for trying man at His disposal, God actually employed.

And now let us make, if it be lawful for argument's sake to do so, a further assumption. Let us suppose that mankind, instead of springing from one pair, sprang from several, so that numerous irrational creatures in various parts of the world gave being to creatures possessed of souls and consciences.

Monstrous as such a supposition is, let us nevertheless, for argument's sake, assume it, and see how far its destructive power reaches into the domain of Theology.

Now a moment's consideration will show that it bears against the doctrine of the Church on Original Sin or on Holy Baptism only so far as it bears on the trustworthiness of the whole Revelation. If the seemingly historical matter contained in the very opening of the book designed to teach us God's truth teaches us error on points of the first practical importance, then of course the trustworthiness of the whole Revelation is shaken. Especially is the authority of St. Paul shaken; for, in the very heart of that Epistle of his which contains the most direct doctrinal teaching, he draws out with great fulness a comparison between the federal headship of the two Adams, in which comparison he unquestionably assumes that the account of the Fall is inspired by God to teach us that all mankind sprung from one Adam; and the conclusion he draws is, that if through the first Adam sin enslaved all federally in him, so much more through the Second Adam shall grace free all federally in Him. If, then, St. Paul cannot be trusted when he reveals to us the doctrine of the transmission of Adam's sin, it most certainly seems that we cannot rely upon his teaching in the matter of any truth which he was seemingly commissioned to reveal. So that the supposed unhistorical