THE CREATION AND FALL are mysteriously concerned. The good angels exercise a certain guardianship over men : the fallen angels — devils — are concerned to lead men into sin and so cause them to fail to reach Heaven. The devil, then, tempted man to commit his first sin. It is important to understand Adam’s new condition. He had lost the Supernatural Life: he retained the natural life or the union of body and soul ; the soul retained the natural powers of intellect and will. Supernaturally he was dead, for the loss of life is death; naturally he still lived. But even his nature did not emerge from the disaster unimpaired : it lost the privilege of exemption from death; henceforth man must pass through the gateway of death to reach his eternal destiny. More serious still was that man’s nature lost its direction. Adam had sinned because he had chosen his own will instead of God’s — he had swung his nature out of its true Godward direction, and had introduced war into the very inmost part of his nature, into the union of body and spirit — body warring against spirit, spirit tom by war in its own powers. Thus then stood Adam, the individual man — the Supernatural Life lost, the natural life impaired because given a wrong direction; but still knowing the purpose of his being and the laws set by God for the governance of his life. But Adam was also, by God’s dispensation, the representative man, and the effect of this original catastrophe upon the whole human race is measureless. As a mere physical con41