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the foundation of Pauline theology?--
For since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in
Christ shall all be made alive (1 Corinthians xv. 21, 22).
If Adam may be held to be no more real a personage than
Prometheus, and if the story of the Fall is merely an
instructive "type," comparable to the profound Promethean
mythus, what value has Paul's dialectic?
While, therefore, every right-minded man must sympathise with
the efforts of those theologians, who have not been able
altogether to close their ears to the still, small, voice of
reason, to escape from the fetters which ecclesiasticism has
forged; the melancholy fact remains, that the position they have
taken up is hopelessly untenable. It is raked alike by the old-
fashioned artillery of the churches and by the fatal weapons of
precision with which the enfants perdus of the advancing
forces of science are armed. They must surrender, or fall back
into a more sheltered position. And it is possible that they may
long find safety in such retreat.
It is, indeed, probable that the proportional number of those
who will distinctly profess their belief in the
transubstantiation of Lot's wife, and the anticipatory
experience of submarine navigation by Jonah; in water standing
fathoms deep on the side of a declivity without anything to hold
it up; and in devils who enter swine--will not increase.
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