it. Can you conceive of anything more mythical than that? One of the
English divines of the age of Calvin declared that original sin,--Adam's
sin imputed to us,--was so awful, that "if a man had never been born
he would yet have been damned for it." It is from this mythical sin
that a mythical Savior saves us. And how does he do it? In a very
mythical way, as we shall see.

When the world fell, it fell into the devil's hands. To redeem a part
of it, at least, the deity concludes to give up his only son for a
ransom. This is interesting. God is represented as being greatly
offended, because the world which he had created perfect was all in a
heap before him. To placate himself he sacrificed his son--not
himself.

But, as intimated above, he does not intend to restore the whole world
to its pristine purity, but only a part of it. This is alarming. He
creates the whole world perfect, but now he is satisfied to have only
a portion of it redeemed from the devil. If he can save at all, pray,
why not save all? This is not an irrelevant question when it is
remembered that the whole world was created perfect in the first
place.

The refusal of the deity to save all of his world from the devil would
lead one to believe that even when God created the world perfect he
did not mean to keep all of it to himself, but meant that some of it,
the greater part of it, as some theologians contend, should go to the
devil! Surely this is nothing but myth. Let us hope for the sake of
our ideals that all this is no more than the childish prattle of
primitive man.