The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-04-02
SAYS FALL OF MAN WAS REALLY 4 RISE Rev. Quincy Ewing Breaches at
 the Advent MAN NOT CREATED PERFECT Story of Garden of Eden Neither Exact Science Nor Literal Ills tory-Must Be Taken as
 Poetry.
MAN NOT CREATED PERFECT

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as God knowing good and evil And the Lord God said, behold, the man Is become as one of us to know good and evil Therefore the Lord God sent him from the Garden of Eden to till the ground from whence he was taken. "-Gen. Ill, {, 5, p and 2S.
 MT. Ewing said
 | called your attention two weeks ago to Ezekiels protest against the idea that God holds a man responsible for the sins of his ancestors, which amounted, as l said. to rejection of the doctrine or original sin. Last Sunday, l pointed out that, instead of being cursed, when he was driven from the Garden of Eden and commanded by God to till the ground and earn his bread in the sweat of his face. man was In reality blessed, It is likely enough that some of you who heard the sermons of the past two Sundays were prompted to ask the question: What, then, was the fall of man? What Is the truth of the third chapter of the book of Genesis? What really occurred in the Garden of Eden-or in whatever place that garden represents in the bibli- cal narrative, and in what respect was mans status in the sight of God affected by what occurred there?"
 It is this question to which 1 want to suggest the answer today In seeking thls answer the first thing we need to do is to do justice to the story as we have 1t in the book of Genesis, neither understand ing it to be what it Is not, nor import ing into 1t what 1t doesn't teach, nor overlooking what 1t does.
 Man Not Created Perfect.
 It is commonly assumed that ran as we are confronted by him in tb Eden story was created perfect. That stump ton is unwarranted by the narrative. It nowhere tells us that man was created perfect. On that contrary, 1t tells us that about him which is absolutely ineonsis- tent with the idea of human perfection; namely, that he was without knowledge of good and evil. Inasmuch as moral character depends upon the prolonged choosing of good in preference to evil, it is impossible to ascribe moral perfec- ton to a being who had never had an op- portunlty of making such choice. The narrative in Genesis asserts nothing fur ther than the ancestor of the human race was created sinless, and surely we should not find 1t difficult to distinguish be- tween moral sinlessness and moral per lection. The entire brute creation is sin less, but where is the brute possessed Ol lHOSt QudlllltS IildL pObSeSSbu Dy Il human being would mean for him perfec- ton?
 Again, we commonly import Into the old Genesis story the idea that the tra- ditional devil of our theologies took the form of a serpent and tempted the won- an. The fact is in the story itself all re- sponsibllity for the woman's temptation Is laid upon the serpent. There is nc statement that the devil assumed the pf fbo+ th, ,,f simply acted as his agent: there Is no mention of the devil whatever If the serpent had not been conceived of as a true serpent there would have. been no excuse for the sentence pronounced upon him, and no point to It: "On thy belly shalt thou go. and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life" That sentence, assuredly,N was not aimed at Satan!
 Yet. again, 1t Is generally supposed that the serpent, when he entered the Garden and tempted Eve, played altogether the role of dceiver-said nothing to her that was not a He. On the contrary, 1t Is questionable if he said anything to her that wasn't true, and 1t is certain that by far the larger part of his promise made was fulfilled The narrative repre- sents him as saying to Eve, when he offers her the forbidden fruit: Eat of it and your eyes will be opened; you will be as a God knowing good and evil " This is followed by the statement, In the seventh verse, that her eyes and the mans were opened, and in the twenty second verse we read: 'The Lord God said, behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil" So 1t is clear that the serpent was far from playing altogether the role of decelver
 Not Science or History.
 Further, we need to get rid of the idea, that this story of the Garden of Eden and what occurred there, Is either exact science or literal history. For, of course 1t is neither. To take 1t as exact science is to join issue with the best authenti- cated scientific facts of the present day. To take it as literal history Is to cen tradict the most fundamental coneeptIons of what human history is and has been. To do justice to it. we should take it as poetry; and, so taken. it is full of profound suggestiYeness: so taken in- stead of contradcting our science and our history, 1t is in Fundamental harmony with both In a poem, we distinguish always between form and idea, between it's Fundamental conceptions and the language in which those Fundamental con captions are presented to us Some of the greatest poems Shakespeares, O. E., contain historical and scientific errors embedded in some of their noblest i'm agery. but, in spite of these errors and alongside of them, there Is profoundest truth which the world does not outgrow and cannot. This truth appeals to and helps us, and we are not foolish enough to overlook or reject 1t, because the poet gives it to us garmented in langu- age that could not be employed today to express what we know about history or about science. Let Hamlet or Lear be in detail ever so unscientiic or ever so unhistorical, nevertheless the Fundamental conceptions of both may be the truest truth. in perfect accord with the widest Knowledge of the scientist and the his- torian. And it is well to bear in mind, that all through the ages, the profound est truths, those to which man has at taehed, and justly. the highest value have taken the form of poetry.
 Fundamental Conceptions.
 Let us distinguish, then, between the form and the Fundamental conceptions of the third cha pter Of the Book of Genesis, in order to estimate the value of it's teach ing That value Is no more dependent upon belief that there was once such a place as the Garden of Eden, than 1t Is upon belief that q serpent actually con yersed with woman in the human tongue, or that God actually made coats of skins for Adam and Eve
 The fundamental conception of the story with which we are concerned in seeklnl. an answer to the question, What was the fall of man? is that the first ancestors of the human race were without knowl- edge of moral good and evil-ln other words, sinless; for. where there is no