Common Sense Applied to Religion; Or, The Bible and the People

by Catharine Esther Beecher

Before examining this evidence, it is important to notice the distinction between revealed facts and the theories invented to explain them.

The fact, which both experience and revelation agree in teaching, is that man, as a race, is guilty and depraved in action, and that from the earliest periods of life this depraved action is manifested.

The theories relate to the cause of this wrong action, and there are only two. The first theory is, that the constitution of mind is perfect, and that the wrong action results from a want of experience, knowledge, right habits, right training, and right social influences.

The second theory is, that the constitution of mind is depraved, and that its wrong action is the inevitable result of this wrong construction.

Then come the theories in reference to the cause of this assumed malformation of mind. There are only two ever assigned, viz., God and man: God by creation, and man by sinning in Adam or before Adam in a pre-existent state.

By those who ascribe the deed to God, it is claimed that he perpetrated this wholesale wrong to our race in one of two ways, viz., either by the direct miscreation of each mind at or near the time of birth, or by creating such a constitution of things that by one wrong act the first pair transmitted, from parent to child, through the whole race, a vitiated and depraved mental constitution.

We now resort to the Bible to ascertain what are its teachings on this subject.

In the first place, then, we find a constant recognition of the fact of a depraved action of mind, and that this commences at the earliest period of life. On this, as a revealed fact, there is no debate.

Next, in regard to the theories instituted to account for this fact. Here we shall only discuss the commonly accepted theory of the Christian world, and leave the other for the future volume.

The main reliance for the support of the common theory of a miscreated mind is found in Genesis, chapters i. and v., which, it is claimed, teaches, in the first place, that God could and did create the first human pair with minds perfectly organized, and, next, that after they sinned, their descendants came into life with a depraved mental constitution. The passages read thus: