refute the arch-heresy which underlies all
others--that in favourable circumstances man might save himself, that
for the evil of our lives our evil surroundings are more to be blamed
than we.

Innocence in prosperous circumstances, unwarped by evil habit, untainted
by corruption in the blood, uncompelled by harsh surroundings, simple
innocence had its day in Paradise, a brief day with a shameful close.
God made man upright, but he sought out many inventions, until the flood
swept away the descendants of him who was made after the image of God.

Next we have a chosen family, called out from all the perilous
associations of its home beyond the river, to begin a new career in a
new land, in special covenant with the Most High, and with every
endowment for the present and every hope for the future which could help
to retain its loyalty. Yet the third generation reveals the thirst of
Esau for his brother's blood, the treachery of Jacob, and the
distraction and guilt of his fierce and sensual family. It is when
individual and family life have thus proved ineffectual amid the
happiest circumstances, that the tribe and the nation essay the task.
Led up from the furnace of affliction, hardened and tempered in the
stern free life of the desert, impressed by every variety of fortune, by
slavery and escape, by the pursuit of an irresistible foe and by a
rescue visibly divine, awed finally by the sublime revelations of Sinai,
the nation is ready for the covenant (which is also a challenge)--The
man that doeth these things shall live by them: if thou diligently
hearken unto the voice of the Lord thy God ... He shall set thee on high
above all nations.

Such is the connection between this narrative and what went before. And
the continuation of the same experiment, and the same failure, can be
traced through all the subsequent history. Whether in so loose an
organisation that every man does what is right in his own eyes, or under
the sceptre of a hero or a sage,--whether so hard pressed that
self-preservation ought to have driven them to their God, or so
marvellously delivered that gratitude should have brought them to their
knees,--whether engulfed a second time in a more hopeless captivity, or
restored and ruled by a hierarchy whose authority is entirely
spiritual,--in every variety of circumstances the same melancholy
process repeats itself; and lawlessness, luxury, idolatry and
self-righteousness combine to stop every mouth, to