IV - THE SINFULNESS OF MAN (Rom. viii: 19—22)

Summary

“For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God. For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.”

—Romans viii: 19—22.

I believe that it is out of the power of any man to give a connected and perfect interpretation of these two immortal chapters, the Seventh and the Eighth of Romans, except upon the substantial theory of Evolution; and when in the light of this more recent discovery the method of God in creation, both of the terraqueous globe and of animal and human life, shall have been explored and perfectly understood, both of these chapters will come out into a prominence that they have never had, though they have fascinated the attention of all Christian scholars.

If we consider man as a dual creature,—subordinately an animal, with a superinduced spiritual being, an animal at the bottom and a spiritual being at the top, and the two struggling together for supremacy,—the seventh chapter of Romans will be very thoroughly interpreted as a commentary on the facts set forth by science and history.