The teaching of Christ? His example? You do not understand that? Was not His life the perfect life, His teaching the perfect teaching? You say that this teaching cannot be followed now in its entirety. Is it not the wickedness of man that prevents it? Did each man act up to this teaching, to this example, would it not be a perfect world? Let each man try his best and the world will improve. Such as I have written were the answers he found to his questions. I do not say that these are always the answers that are given. It may be there are others. It may be that in the years that have passed since then new explanations have been evolved. Although I do not think that is so, as only a year ago I saw some of these very replies written in a well-known Review as the authoritative answer of scientific theology to these difficulties. However that may be, these are the answers the boy received, such were the guides given to lead him out of the darkness of scepticism into the light of faith. CHAPTER V. SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY--II. What thought the boy of these explanations? Do you think they helped him at all? Do you think he was able to accept them as real? Did they throw any light into the darkness of his doubts? The boy took them and considered them. He considered them fairly, I am sure; he would have accepted them if he could. For what he was looking for was simply guidance and light. He had no desire for aught but this. If he revolted now from the faith of his people it was because he found there neither teaching he could accept nor help. If the scientific theologian shewed him that the error was in him and not in the faith the boy would, I think, have been glad. So he took these explanations and considered them, and this is what he thought. They tell me that the seven days of creation are seven epochs. I did not ask that. To my question whether man has fallen, as the Bible says, or risen, as science declares, no reply has been given. There is only a specious likening of a man's life, saying that man falls from the innocence of his childhood to sin through the knowledge of evil, and requires redemption. My question is avoided, and a new sophism given me which is also untrue. A child is not innocent. It is only ignorant and weak. Its natural impulses are those of a savage. It requires to learn the knowledge of good and evil to subdue these instincts. This symbolism of the child is utterly false. A child is to us a very beautiful thing because its tenderness, its helplessness, its clinging affection awaken in us feelings of love, of protection, which we feel are beautiful. All men should, all men I think do, love children, but the beauty is in the man's emotions that are awakened, not in those qualities of the children that awaken them.