of man, in his first
epoch of life, was able to perceive and represent supernatural and ethical
truth, as we are to-day able to represent the highest relations of our mind
to the supernatural and the ethical only in pictures and parables; but the
Biblical representations offer us, under this plastic covering, a substance
which, in view of the most extensive criticism, of the deepest speculation,
and of the most enlightened and practically most successful piety, is still
established as the purest, the most correct, and the most fruitful
representation of the nature of God, and of the ethical nature and the
ethical history of man.

Moreover, we shall not make it difficult to bring about an understanding
between the Darwinian theories and the Biblical doctrine, by supporting the
other view taught by the Holy Scripture--that death came into the animal
world first through the fall of man, and that the fall of man first brought
the character of perishableness {324} into the condition of the earth or
even of the universe. There are essentially three Biblical passages to
which those refer who think that they find such a view in the Holy
Scripture; namely, Romans V, 12; Romans VIII, 19-23, and Genesis III; but
they are wrong. That the Apostle Paul, in Romans V, 12, by the world, into
which death came through sin, did not mean the universe or the globe, but
mankind, is plain enough from the connection, and is only demanded by the
difference of meaning which in the Greek, as well as in the German
language, the word "world" has according to its connection. And in Romans
VIII, 19-23, where he speaks of the subjection of the creature to vanity,
he does not mention a certain time in which it happened, nor an historical
occasion, as the fall of man, which should have given the impulse to this
subjection; but he only says, in general, that it was God who "hath
subjected the creature to vanity," and that he hath "subjected the same _in
hope_." He who reads this passage without prepossession, can be led to no
other idea than to this: that God has subjected the creature to the law of
vanity from the very beginning of creation--not forever, but from the very
beginning--with the intention that he shall also celebrate his
transfiguration and deliverance from the yoke of perishableness, together
with the perfection of mankind, and with the manifestation and
transfiguration of the children of God. And even the curse of the ground
(Genesis III,