. But the purer theology of the Jew
forced him to look for a solution of the question which
Plato had left doubtful, and to explain how evil
crept into matter. He could not allow that what God
had created could be of its own nature imperfect. God
made it very good; some other cause had broken in to
spoil it. Accordingly, as before he had reduced the
independent Arimanes, whose existence he had learnt
at Babylon, into a subordinate spirit; so now, not
questioning the facts of disease, of death, of pain, of
the infirmity of the flesh which the natural strength of
the spirit was unable to resist, he accounted for them
under the supposition that the first man had deliberately
sinned, and by his sin had brought a curse upon the
whole material earth, and upon all which was fashioned
out of it. The earth was created pure and lovely--a
garden of delight of its own free accord, loading itself
with fruit and flower, and everything most exquisite
and beautiful. No bird or beast of prey broke the
eternal peace which reigned over its hospitable surface.
In calm and quiet intercourse, the leopard lay down by
the kid, the lion browsed beside the ox, and the
corporeal frame of man, knowing neither decay, nor death,
nor unruly appetite, nor any change or infirmity, was
pure as the pure immortal substance of the unfallen
angels. But with the fatal apple all this fair scene
passed away, and creation as it seemed was hopelessly
and irretrievably ruined. Adam sinned--no matter
how--he sinned; the sin was the one terrible fact:
moral evil was brought into the world by the only
creature who was capable of committing it. Sin entered
in, and death by sin; death and disease, storm and
pestilence, earthquake and famine. The imprisoned
passions of the wild animals were let loose, and earth
and air became full of carnage; worst of all, maws
animal nature came out in gigantic strength, the carnal
lusts, unruly appetites, jealousies, hatred, rapine, and
murder; and then the law, and with it, of course,
breaches of the law, and sin on sin. The seed of Adam
was infected in the animal change which had passed
over his person, and every child, therefore, thenceforth
naturally engendered in his posterity, was infected with
the curse which he had incurred. Every material
organization thenceforward contained in itself the
elements of its own destruction, and the philosophic
conclusions of Aristotle were accepted and explained by
theology. Already, i