This process may transfer itself from soul to soul and from life to life. The sin of one generation produces perhaps worse and more virulent sin in the next, until the corrupted parts of the nation perish. Likewise, the evil disposition with which one life starts may be the continuance of unpunished sin of a previous life, and is a stage towards the punishment that shall at last eradicate the sinful growth."

3. According to the ancient ecclesiastical doctrine, not only sinful disposition and guilt, but also mortality followed from the transgression of the first ancestors of man. As the Jewish mind became reflective, death appeared to it as a blot on Creation. The sense of estrangement from God by sin and the threatened punishment of death in the narrative of Genesis seemed to furnish an explanation. The first recorded statement of this doctrine is in the book Ecclesiasticus xxv. 24: “Of woman came the beginning of sin, and through her we all die." Later it became a prevalent opinion among learned Jews. To judge by the evidence, universal death was commonly attributed to Adam's sin long before universal sinfulness.2 St. Paul made it part of Christian belief (Romans v. 12).

But the modern mind cannot accept this doctrine. The only sort of innocence that primitive man possessed must have been akin to the innocence of animals; but animals were subject to death long before man arrived on the earth.

Yet this childish inference, that mortality is a punishment for sin, may be made to symbolize profound truth. We have already seen that death serves to relieve man of his mistakes and misdeeds. Death, together with birth, provides discontinuity in human life, so that man may to some degree be rid of the

But see the chapter on Judgment, in which punishment and destruction of sinful natures are distinguished.

* Vide F. R. Tennant, "The Fall and Original Sin,” passim.

injuries and evil habits contracted in the past, and at the same time profit by the experience of the results of various courses of conduct. That is evident in the race. It is highly probable that death performs a like function for the individual, especially since sinful habits are largely dependent on the body, which perishes at death.

But the necessity for death seems to lie deeper than this. Man, whether the human race or the individual soul, develops through realizing himself in successive forms. Through taking one form he gains power to take a superior form, and so on. But this implies that he must discard the old forms and recover the plasticity which is necessary for development. He loses this plasticity as he gains a form, and recovers it when he discards that form and begins to develop into a new one. In other words, the plasticity of youth is lost as the person gains a mature intellectual and moral character, and is recovered by means of death, that the person may grow a new and superior character. Like as one may study a subject, which is presently almost forgotten, less for the sake of the knowledge than for the intellectual power which is gained through the study, so does a soul develop a character in a lifetime, not so much for the character itself, as for the growth of the inner nature of reason and goodwill and love.

But it belongs to the Christian hope that man will eventually attain immortality. As sin is progressively overcome and the mental nature develops, so does man become more and more capable of spiritual life. But spiritual life is Divine life, and free from such limitations and imperfections as attach to this human life. On that account, we may suppose, he will not need to be continually renewed and delivered by death. But in the early stage of the growth of the spiritual death still reigns. May it be that it will be overcome gradually, as the need for it gradually diminishes?

4. It was part of the ancient doctrine that baptism is a means of the forgiveness of original sin. Augustine professed that it was largely regard for this sacrament that induced him to insist on the sinfulness of the new-born child, lest, if there were no sin to be forgiven, the value of the sacrament might seem very much less. This conclusion was apparently arrived at through a childish piece of reasoning. Baptism was originally the rite which marked allegiance to Christ. Now allegiance to Christ was held to constitute a new relation to God, one in which the soul was spiritually quickened, and, in consequence, the antagonism to God called sin was held to be abolished. Furthermore, allegiance to Christ carried with it entrance into the community which existed for the purpose of preparing for the Kingdom of Heavennamely, the Church. But when the baptism of infants came into vogue, certain of the baptized had, presumably, committed no sin. So, in order to save this aspect of baptism, Augustine insisted that the infant was at any rate guilty of original sin. But is not this like trying to show that every one has a certain disease, lest a famous remedy for it should become depreciated?

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What effect then has baptism on the facts denoted by the term "original sin "? The modern mind is opposed to a view of sacraments according to which they could mediate moral and spiritual changes otherwise than with the consciousness of those in whom the change is worked. But baptism is the rite of admission into the Church of Christ-that is, the society which exists for preparing souls religiously and morally for the spiritual life; and, in so far as it does this, it will counteract those tendencies which are signified by the term "original sin." Through being brought up in the Church the child will be subject to Christian influences, in so far as the Church is truly Christian, instead of to the corrupting influences which would

beset him in unregenerated human society what Ritschl called the "kingdom of sin." It is indeed the Christian influences coming to those educated and living in the Church rather than baptism that check and prevent original sin. But the frequent performance of the sacrament being viewed by grown people may, by reminding them of their own baptism, move them to renew their allegiance to Christ and to open their hearts and minds to receive the Christian influences of the Church, and also impress on them their duties to the young members of the Church of bringing to bear these influences upon them.

CHAPTER VI

THE ATONEMENT

THE Atonement is the name for the work of Christ whereby through His death, or His death and resurrection, He has made it possible for men in a way or to a degree in which it was not possible before to pass from the state of antagonism to God to the state of harmony with God.

The religious experience upon which the doctrine of the Atonement is based and that upon which the doctrine of Christ is based are so far the same in that both include the experience of entering through Christ into union with God. But the former includes also the previous antagonism to God, and the latter the actual Divine life that ensues on the union with God. The experience upon which the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is based is also partly the same as the experience of atonement, since in atonement the Spirit works on the soul, but it includes also the subsequent spiritual communion with God. Still, strict boundaries are not to be drawn: these doctrines have some reference to what lies outside their special province. Atonement shades off over the growing Divine life and communion with God, and the Divine life in the soul and the communion of the soul with God are largely the same life considered in different relations.

The experience of religious atonement, being different in kind from the experience of ordinary life, was naturally expressed through symbols. We may.