Page:A Defence of Revealed Religion.pdf/15

Rh evil; and we cannot for a moment suppose that he would have been so created by his Heavenly Father. Mr. Voysey seems in the assertion "I have denied the theory that Adam was morally perfect" to doubt the generally received idea that man's first parents were pure and innocent. But to doubt this is to reflect upon the loving mercy of God. Man was the creation of God, called into being that he might receive the rich blessings of his Maker. "For Thy pleasure they are and were created;" and the pleasure of God can only be in that which is free from sin. We can only reconcile man's present moral state with the belief in God's all-embracing love, by accepting as an undoubted fact the belief that man has fallen. Created in innocence, he has by the abuse of his freedom perverted his whole nature. Looking towards and crawling upon the earth, instead of aspiring towards heaven, he is now by nature a sensual and selfish being, the merest wreck of his former self.

What then were the results of the fall, in so far as they affected the relations between God and His creatures P. With Mr. Voysey, we cannot for a moment imagine that God doomed all their descendants to endless suffering simply because our first parents sinned. Such an act would more befit a barbarous tyrant of earth than the merciful Ruler of heaven. Through the prophet Ezekiel it is