The origin and propagation of sin
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| The origin and propagation of sin |
From the introduction:
The present work practically consists of four lectures which I had the honour to deliver before the University of Cambridge.
They have been made rather more suitable for publication by such expansion as was necessary for clearness of expression, and by the addition of a few appended notes. It was my original intention to incorporate the substance of these lectures in a larger work dealing for the most part with the early history of the development of the doctrines of the Fall of man and of original sin. When the end of that work was beginning to come in sight, however, circumstances necessitated considerable delay before it could be carried to completion.
I therefore decided to publish the smaller portion of my material first; and this plan was the more readily adopted for the reason that the lectures, being of a critical and speculative nature, were easily and naturally separable from the matter furnished by a historical investigation.
It is inevitable that the results of the historical study are sometimes presupposed in the addresses contained in this volume, but I hope to submit them also to the reader who may be interested in the subject before many months have elapsed. Until this can be done the argument of the present work will lack a very necessary supplement.
For it is such a historical study of the development of the doctrines here examined, such a taking of them to pieces, as it were, to show the nature of their material and the processes by which they have been constructed, that furnishes one of the best criteria of their validity and finality. Meanwhile, I attempt to supply a criticism of the implications of a traditional doctrine, and a restatement of so much of its essential meaning as can be retained, rather than a commentary upon it; and, in doing so, to offer a small contribution to Inductive and Critical Theology.
It is hoped that some little service may be thereby rendered in meeting an increasing, if silent, demand from persons who approach theological literature from the point of view of Natural Science or Philosophy.
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