A MAP OF LIFE sequence the nature he had to hand on to his descendants was an impaired nature, strongly attracted to sin. Worse than that: the right relationship between God and the human race was broken and Heaven was closed to men. In him the race lost the Supernatural Life : so that men thereafter (with one glorious exception) entered this world with the natural life of soul and body (so much was necessary that they should be of the human race) , but without the Supernatural Life, which but for Adam’s fall they would have had. This is what we call Original Sin : which is thus to be thought of not as a wrong done by us personally, not as corruption of the soul in its essence, but as the absence of that Life which makes us sons of God and will hereafter open Heaven to us.* Thus then through the spoiling of God’s plan one of the three elementary things was lost — and lost instantly. The other two were not lost so quickly. Adam we may assume, passed on his knowledge of God’s purpose and God’s laws to his children and they to their children. But as the slow centuries passed and men became farther removed in time and space from the first revelation, that happened to it which must always happen to a tradition of men unguarded by God: error crept into it, passion distorted it ♦ The exception referred to earlier in the paragraph was Mary, the Mother of Christ. From the first moment of her existence in her mother’s womb, her soul possessed the Supernatural Life. This is called technically her Immaculate Conception. 42