THE prevailing belief of Christendom to-day is, that about six thousand years ago, somewhere in Asia, the Supreme Creator took common clay and moulded it into the form of a man, somewhat as a sculptor forms the model from which the marble statue is to be constructed, and when shaped to his liking he breathed into the clay model the breath of life, and it became a living soul. This miraculous work is believed to have been begun and completed on a particular day; so that in the morning the earth contained not a man, but in the afternoon the full-grown, bearded man stood up in his majesty and assumed supremacy over all living things. This godlike man finding himself lonely, the Creator put him to sleep, and opened his side and took therefrom a rib, out of which he formed a woman, who was to be a companion, a wife, to the man; and from this particular couple have come, by ordinary generation, all the people dwelling upon the face of the earth. They are said to have been perfect, but, unfortunately for their progeny, this perfection did not long continue. Before they were blest with offspring they lost their Creator’s favor by eating fruit from a forbidden tree, and became fearfully demoralized, and, instead of begetting children endowed with their own angelic qualities, they became the unhappy parents of a race of moral monsters, of which we are all degraded and degenerate descendants. The sacerdotal story of the fall of Adam and Eve is based upon the assumption that it is to be received as literal history, revealed by the Creator and written down in a book by a man specially chosen and plenarily inspired; so that there can be no error or mistake in the record. To question this narrative in its literal sense is most impious, and subjects the doubter to the charge of favoring infidelity. While persons “professing and calling themselves Christians” cannot agree regarding many things deemed by them matters of vital importance, the fall of man is a matter in which they are fully agreed. The great basic dogma which underlies all modern systems of theology, Romish and Protestant, is the utter depravity of the human race through the fall of Adam, dooming a large majority of the human family to eternal punishment. How evil came into the world has been the most perplexing problem of the ages. Before it the most gigantic minds have been covered with confusion and paralyzed with doubt. Why sin and suffering should have been permitted, not to say created, has never been made clear to the human reason by any system of theology, Romish or Protestant. A few years ago Dr. Edward Beecher published a book entitled _The Conflict of Ages_. When reviewed by Dr. Charles Hodge in the _Princeton Review_ he entitled his paper “Beecher’s Conflict;” but it was rightly called _The Conflict of Ages_; it was not “Beecher’s Conflict,” and the explanation given by theology only involves the question in greater doubt and difficulty.