The fall of man is disputed by some who seem to find more satisfaction in the belief that they have risen from the brute and, therefore, are superior to their ancestors, than they do in the thought that man has fallen from a higher estate.  But the facts do not support the brute theory.  Even if the “missing links” could be found, it would be as reasonable—­though not so flattering to man’s pride—­to believe that the monkey is a degenerate man as that man is an improved monkey.

It has often been pointed out as evidence of man’s fall that he is the only created thing that does not live up to his possibilities.  In plant and bird and beast there is no disobedience—­all fulfill the purpose of their creation, from the flower, that puts forth its bloom as perfectly when it “wastes its sweetness on the desert air” as when in the garden its beauty calls forth expressions of delight, to the bird that wakes the echoes of trackless forests with its melody.  Man, only man, mocks his Maker by prostituting to evil the powers that might lift him within sight of the throne of God.

If so many men and women fall now, in spite of light and love and all the incentives to noble living, is it incredible that the first pair should have fallen when the race was young?  Possibility becomes probability when we remember that the conflict that rages between the mind and the heart is the one real conflict in every life.  Reason versus faith is the great issue to-day as in Eden.  Faith says obey; reason asks, Why?  The one looks up confidingly to a Power above; the other relies on self and rejects even the authority of Jehovah unless the finite mind can comprehend the plan of the Infinite.

No one will doubt the doctrine of original sin if he will study nature and then analyze himself.  In the plant, in the animal and in the physical man, the invisible thing which we call life is the only sustaining force; when it takes its flight, that which remains falls back to the earth and becomes dust.  And so the spiritual in man is the only force that can give him a moral nature and preserve it from decay; when his spiritual life departs the mind as well as the body rots.

Some find a stumbling block in the doctrine of the Atonement.  That one should suffer for others, shocks their sense of justice, they say, and yet that is the law of life.  Each generation borrows from generations past and pays the debt to the generations that follow.  A certain percentage of the mothers die in childbirth—­evidence that they are God’s handiwork is found in the fact they so willingly enter the valley of the shadow of death to attain to motherhood.  Many a boy has been won back to rectitude by the sorrows of a parent; we are not infrequently healed by the stripes that fall on others.  In fact, great wrongs are seldom righted without the shedding of innocent blood—­one dies and a multitude are saved.  These do not always illustrate the voluntary laying down of life