Fall of Man

“ It was easy to turn upside down our belief in the Fall of Man. We always knew there was something wrong with him, but we did not know what it was until evolution explained his unregenerate character so satisfactorily. ”

“ Fruits of the Fall.—The fall had a twofold direction—downward, yet forward. It brought man into the world and set his feet upon progression's highway. But it also brought death, with all its sad concomitants. Not such a death as the righteous now contemplate, and such as both righteous and unrighteous undergo, as a change preparatory to resurrection; but eternal death—death of the spirit as well as the body. There was no resurrection when Adam fell—not upon this planet. ”

“ So surely as he utters that cry, faithless in his own power, that man must fall.
And thus it is with human souls. They are standing here, in earthly life, gazing across the great abyss of the Future. It is dark and terrible below. ”

“ We must recognize that the fall of man is a reality, exemplified in our own persons. We have quite other sins than the animals, and far more deleterious; and they have all come through self-indulgence, with which our psychic natures are soaked through and through. As we climbed down hill for our pleasure, so must we climb up again for our purification and restoration to our former high estate. ”

“ The delights and pains of the flesh, the agonies and raptures of the soul, these are fragmentary meteors fallen from thought’s harmonious system. But these burning experiences—how in any sense can they be mere pieces of thought’s heaven? For, if the fall is real, there is a world outside thought’s region, and, if the fall is apparent, then human error itself is not included there. ”

“ But, granted we have lived before, there may be grounds for the suffering both of man and beast. The story of the Fall may be but a contortion of something that has happened to man in a former existence, in another sphere, possibly, in another planet ”

“ Fall, The, the first transgression of divine law on the part of man, conceived of as involving the whole human race in the guilt of it, and represented as consisting in the wilful partaking of the fruit of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of both good and evil. ”

“ People tell us that the doctrine of a fall, an earth which has departed from God, a race which has rebelled, is a gloomy and dark one, covering the face of life with sackcloth. But it seems to me that instead of being so, it is the only conviction that can make a man bear to see the world as it is. Brethren, which of these two is the gloomy—the creed that says, Look at all these men dying—in dumb ignorance, living in brutal sin ”

“ And further, it is evident that the Fall was foreseen, to be a means whereby man could be brought face to face with both good and evil; that of his own agency he might elect the one or the other, and thus be prepared by the experiences of a mortal probation for the exaltation provided in the glorious plan of his creation:—"For behold, this is my work and my glory, to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man;" ”

“ It is charged that the doctrine of the Fall, together with the constant emphasis of man’s “exceeding sinfulness,” deprives man of special dignity. Without doubt the theory of the Fall has sometimes been presented in such a manner as to cancel all human claims to greatness. Whenever a religious teacher carries his doctrine of the Fall to unjust lengths, we must all be tempted to declare that we can readily prove an alibi! And if he shall employ that doctrine as a vast slur on humanity, we shall insist that the length of the fall must be the length of the possible rise! ”

“ Death itself, in times of scourge, has periods when it advances, slackens, sinks back, and slumbers. Our globe is perhaps only a rocket a little more continuing than the rest. History, recording the causes of the rise and fall of all things here below, could enlighten man as to the moment when he might arrest the play of all his faculties ”

“ These men were conscious of the Fall, if they were conscious of nothing else; and the same is true of all heathen humanity. Those who have fallen may remember the fall, even when they forget the height. Some such tantalising blank or break in memory is at the back of all pagan sentiment. There is such a thing as the momentary power to remember that we forget. And the most ignorant of humanity know by the very look of earth that they have forgotten heaven. ”

“ Then downward fell, forever lost to sight.
And so it is, I thought, that poor hearts yearning
For more of life, charmed by its outward sheen,
Must backward fall, the truth too quickly learning,
That death, cold and unyielding, stands between. ”

“ Now behold, it was not expedient that man should be reclaimed from this temporal death, for that would destroy the great plan of happiness; therefore, as the soul could never die, and the fall had brought upon all mankind a spiritual death as well as a temporal ”

“ The idea of a Creator postulates the further idea of a Fall. The finished work of an omnipotent Creator is presumably good,—good in this sense, if in no other, that its actualities must needs determine the creature's ideals and standards of good. But the world, as Man knows it, seems to be deeply tainted with evil. How is this anomaly to be accounted for? The story of the Fall is the answer to this question. Whether modern theology regards the story of the Fall as literally or only as symbolically true, I cannot say for certain. ”

“ Fate slew him, but he did not drop;
She felled — he did not fall —
Impaled him on her fiercest stakes —
He neutralized them all.
She stung him, sapped his firm advance,
But, when her worst was done,
And he, unmoved, regarded her,
Acknowledged him a man. ”

“ The gleams of calm that fall upon his tortured heart only light up an abyss of misery—a vault of darkness peopled by demons. He is already cut off from among the living, by the doom of inevitable fate, and while we pity him we fear him. ”

“ The lightnin' came—the fall—but give 'em credit fur the other. The little namby-pamby, white livered, zephyr clouds that is so divine an' useless, might float forever an' not even make a shadow to hide men from the sun.
“So credit the fallen man or woman, big with life an' passion, with the good they've done when you debit 'em with the evil. Many a 'oman so ugly that she wasn't any temptation even for Sin to mate with her, has done more harm with her slanderin' tongue an' hypocrisy than a fallen 'oman has with her whole body. ”

“ Hence, the whole world still groans under the sad effects of the original transgression. Sorrow, mourning, and death, still prevail—the aged, middle-aged, and infant still feel the force of these evils—all are made partakers in a greater or less degree of the wretchedness and miseries of the fall—none escape—none can proclaim themselves immortal, or free from these direful effects. ”

“ Or, if fall we must, at least then here, where lie our fathers, let us leave our bones to cry out against the destroyer of our race, and our dust to poison the air his children shall breathe. If such must be our fate, it is well. ”

“ It haunts my soul when none is nigh:
I hear its whisper in the sigh
Of that complaining wind.
[Pg 16]
And now in death my soul is fain
To tell the tale of fear
That hidden in my breast hath lain
Through many a weary year:
Yet time would fail to utter all—
The evil spells that held me thrall,
And thrust my life from fall to fall,
Thou needest not to hear. ”

“ Not the falling proclaims the defeat, but the place of the fall;
And the fate that decrees and the god that impels through it all
Regard not blind mortals' divisions of slayer and slain,
But invisible glories dispense wide over the war-gleaming plain.
He whom a Dream hath possessed. [Shaemas O Sheel]
He whom a dream hath possessed knoweth no more of doubting,
For mist and the blowing of winds and the mouthing of words he scorns ”

“ So in fallen man, the bolt that braced the soul together is broken, and the powers of the soul clash together. The passions, the will, the reason, all, in themselves, remain as they were, undepraved; but they are no longer in harmony together, and man finds himself weakened by an intestine conflict. This, together with the loss of supernatural grace and a supernatural destiny, is the evil which, according to Catholic theology, accrued to man by the fall. ”

“ But after all life is but a span, "an inch or two of time," hung upon a slender cord that is momentarily in danger of breaking and in the end-the inevitable end-sure to be cut asunder by the ever-busy hand of man's universal enemy, the dread of all mankind - Death, Death, pitiless, cruel and relentless Death. Sickness, sorrow, pain and death are realities alike in the experience of young and old, rich and poor, great and small, in every land and in every clime. ”

“ That sinister countenance seemed to him to presage some approaching calamity.
Thus, there are men whom fate has marked on the forehead with a fatal stamp. The mysterious sign is not displayed at every time and before all; but at certain epochs of life, when the unknown breath caresses the predestinated or cursed head, the mark all at once appeals, like a tawny light in the depth of night.
A curse! Fatality has moulded that man's brain, it has left its potent impress on his skull. ”

“ So men must often fall. Fall to what end? To pass into that boundless gulf of distant light into which everything is passing, passing straight by the assimilation of its proper food, circuitously by weakness and failure, but still coming, growing, reaching out into infinite light, for all is of God, and God is Love. ”

“ With the stroke of the loss I was so proud of he uttered the cry of a creature hurled over an abyss, and the grasp with which I recovered him might have been that of catching him in his fall. I caught him, yes, I held him—it may be imagined with what a passion; but at the end of a minute I began to feel what it truly was that I held. We were alone with the quiet day, and his little heart, dispossessed, had stopped. ”

“ That stand upon the pinnacles of state,
To boast your slippery height; when you do fall,
You pash yourselves in pieces, ne’er to rise;
And he that lends you pity, is not wise. ”

“ Wild grief and pain from the sores of body and soul, which were wearied in the struggle with stern life; intense sufferings from the wounds dealt to man by the iron hand of want—all this was invested in the simple, crude words and was tossed in ineffably melancholy sounds toward the distant, empty sky, which has no echo for anybody or anything. ”

“ Could there be a sadder proof of the extent and reality of the Fall than the deep-seated distrust of our loving Lord and Master which makes us hesitate to give ourselves entirely up to Him, which fears that He might require something beyond our powers, or call for something that we should find it hard to give or to do? ”

“ Either way our hold of them is a transient hold, and one knows not whether is the sadder—the bare garden beds where all have done blowing, and nothing remains but a tangle of decay, or the blooming beauty from which a man is summoned away, leaving others to reap what he has sown. Tragic enough are both at the best—and certain to befall us all. We live and they fade; we die and they remain. ”

“ When, here and there, in dungeon and in thrall,
Or exile pale,
Like torches dying at a funeral,
Brave natures fail;
When Truth, the armed archangel, stretches wide
God's tromp in vain, [Pg 180]
And the world, drowsing, turns upon its side
To drowse again;—
O Man, whose course hath called itself sublime
Since it began,
What art thou in such dying age of time,
As man to man? ”

“ And mocked at wounds and pain,
The doom is laid on me to die—
Like the humble men in days gone by—
That angered me to hear them cry
For pity to me in vain.
I shall not go out suddenly
As many a man has done. ”

“ Most men cling to life in grim desperation, like a climber to a cliff giving way, or a drowning man clutching at any straw. How beautiful the contrast of the placid, tranquil acquiescence expressed in that phrase of our text! No doubt there will always be the shrinking of the bodily nature from death. ”

“ And the realization of death, in the revolt of one’s whole being, is invested with a special horror—that of being crushed and pulverized, of being not even a dead man, but a nameless heap, a handful of fleshly dust. ”

“ 'No need to listen for the fall. This is the world's end,' he said, and swung off. ”

“ Besides the sinner, aware of his appalling fate but helpless to avert it, there are others unto whom the Purifier of the fallen is an inexhaustible source of hope and strength. Is it not the common experience of most of us that, fighting hard against temptations and passions, we were often pushed to the very brink of the abyss, and a fall was almost inevitable ”

“ It was as when you lift a wreck from the tranquil sea and let it fall again to the depths, useless to wave or shore; the black and ghastly hulk is covered; it is seen no more; but the water palpitates with circling rings, trembles above the grave, dashes quick and apprehensive billows upon the sand, and is long in regaining its quiet surface.
"I wonder if there ever was a perfect man," said Jo, at length, drawing a deep sigh. ”

“ Poor human nature! Is not a man's walking, in truth, always that: 'a succession of falls'? Man can do no other. In this wild element of a Life, he has to struggle onwards; now fallen, deep-abased; and ever, with tears, repentance, with bleeding heart, he has to rise again, struggle again still onwards. ”

“ Shall we not receive solace even when contemplating the ruins of fallen man? We have looked down; let us now look up and rejoice in the thought, that even so low as the human race has fallen, so high may it also rise. ”

“ The mad pulse beat back the baffled life with a low sob.
And so the stark and naked soul unfolded its wings to the dimness of Death!
A lonely, unknown Death.
A Death that left this dumb living body as his endless mark. ”