not backward. But it is also true that all this development is represented as having been (we may say) a second-best thing. It has not been according to God's first purpose. There has been a great and continual hindrance, which has consisted in a persistent rebellion or sin on man's part against God; and this again has had its root in a certain perversion of the heart of mankind which is regarded as approximately universal. If we now take into account again the first three chapters of Genesis (which, however, have left much less trace than is commonly supposed in the Old Testament as a whole[2]) we find that they describe an original act of rebellion on the part of the first human pair, which is there spoken of as at least entailing external consequences of a penal sort upon their descendants--that is death, pain, and the loss of Paradise; and that later, especially in the teaching of St. Paul, the universal moral flaw in human nature (original sin) is also represented as having its source in this initial act of rebellion. Sin is therefore, according to our Christian scriptures, something unnatural to man: the violation of his nature by his rebellion; and it is a continual element of deterioration. But the idea that man was created perfect, i.e. so as not to need development, is not suggested. No doubt theologians, from the age of Augustine down to recent times, have done something more than suggest it. Thus Robert South supposes that 'an Aristotle was but the rubbish of an Adam, and Athens but the rudiments of Paradise'; and Milton implanted the idea in the {222} imagination of Englishmen; but it is in no way suggested by the Bible, and was expressly repudiated by the earliest Christian theologians in east and west. Thus, in answer to the question whether Adam was formed perfect or imperfect, Clement of Alexandria replied, 'They shall learn from us that he was not perfect in respect of his creation, but 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_.