THE ORIGIN AND PROPAGATION OF SIN.
The Origin and Propagation of Sin : being the Hulsean Lectures Delivered before the University of Cambridge in 1901-2. By F. R.
Tennant, M.A. (Camb.), B.Sc. (Lend.), Student of Gonville and from the University pulpit, he must have startled some of his older hearers from their customary condition of mental repose. The doctrines of the Fall and of Original Sin no longer hold the im- mense places which they occupied in mediaeval and in Reformation theology. They are taught, however, in the Thirty-nine Articles, and aro occasionally referred to in the pulpit, although in a timid and hesitating manner, for sin implies guilt, and it is hard for the modern mind to associate the sense of guilt with the sin of another. Mr. Tennant, who is a perfectly candid controversialist, does not deny that some expressions in St. Paul's Epistles give support to the dorms which he rejects, but he attributes St. Paul's views to his early Jewish education. For the fall of man-
kind in Adam the lecturer would substitute a fall, not less universal, of the individual. Man does not inherit a fallen and corrupt nature, but, in virtue of his animal ancestry, he possesses emotions and appetites which are not sinful, but have to be moralised or brought into subjection to reason and moral law. Sin arises when men, by an act of their own will, refuse to impose this subjection upon their lower natures. This position is defended by the lecturer in a very closely reasoned but most interesting argument, in the course of which he calls to aid modern philosophy, and especially recent science. Much that he says is excellent and true, but it seems to us rather a description of the origin and growth of moral civilisation than of the origin and propagation of sin, properly so called. One difficulty in the way of accepting Mr. Tennant's account of the origin of sin arises from the fact that the fall of man is admitted by him to be universal. But if all men were in a condition of moral equilibrium at the begin- ning of their course, we should expect that while many might fall, some at least would emerge completely victorious from the moral struggle. Then Mr. Tennant is not quite consistent with himself in the account which he gives of the original impulses and appetites of mankind. They are all non-moral. We cannot say of any of them "they ought not to be," for they are necessary to men as organic beings ; yet he places not only self-centredness and self-pleasing, but envy and jealousy, among those harmless impulses ! Some weight, we think, should be given to the fact that all the deepest thinkers and most profound observers of human nature, Christian and pagan, have come to the conclusion that there is some original, or at all events ineradicable, flaw in humanity which no amount of moral discipline can completely cure. This, if we mistake not, is the view of Lotze, a thinker to whom Mr. Tennant often refers with most just admiration. Although Mr. ,Tennant shows at times a tendency to forget some old truths, and to exaggerate the im- portance of new theories, his lectures are, as a whole, well worthy of perusal. No Hulsean Lectures of recent years have approached them in real living thought. The lecture on " Theodicy " is especially good.
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