Now, can it be fairly said that science can take any legitimate exception to such a statement? The progress of man which anthropological science discloses is very broken, very partial; if development of some sort is universal, progress is very rare, distinct deterioration not uncommon. Science, like poetry and philosophy, must bear witness to the disappointing element in human nature, of which He was so conscious of whom it is said that 'He did not trust himself to man, because he needed not that any one should bear witness concerning man, for he himself knew what was in man'--the sad secret of human untrustworthiness and unsatisfactoriness[4]. Again, can science assert that this actual development of man, so thwarted and tainted and partial, has been the only possible development, and that there could not have been a better? If it cannot say this, there is in the {223} general view of human progress and deterioration no antagonism between religion and science. II.--But it may be said, 'Science certainly does say that the actual development of man has been the only possible development. Science excludes the idea of sin in the sense of something which need not have happened, because it excludes the idea of freedom or contingency altogether. Good and bad characters are like good and bad apples--mere facts of natural growth'; or more suggestively, 'Sin (so called) is only the survival of brute instincts, which, from a higher condition of evolution, men have come to be ashamed of.' It cannot be made too emphatic that here is the real battle-ground of religion and science to-day, though the fact is often concealed in popular controversy. _I do not believe there is any real difficulty in adjusting sufficiently the relations of religion and science as to the Fall when once the idea of sin has been admitted--that is, the idea of free, responsible action, with its correlative, the possibility of wrong action which might have been avoided_. Christian and other teachers have, no doubt, often failed to see how limited human freedom is, but they have never been wrong in asserting that the reality of freedom within limits is essential to Christianity and morality. Sin is not a mere fact of nature. It is a perversion which ought not to have been. This subject is not what is directly before us now; but the heart of the controversy is here; and I will make the following very brief remarks upon it. (1) A theory that cannot be put into practice, or a theory that cannot account for the facts, is a false or at least inadequate theory. Now the theory of necessary determinism cannot be put into practice. To believe that our own conduct is not really under our own control--that the idea of responsibility is at bottom an illusion--is to destroy the basis of human life and education. Even {224} the holders of the theory admit that it must be kept out of sight in practice.