Though the fall
of man was great, it was not absolute. Man was ruined by apostasy, but
he was not left destitute of all higher life. He retained some vestige
of his primal nature. A sense of the divine, a religious aptitude, and
the longing to return to God, subsist in his heart. These render his
redemption possible; for the moral law, which had been vindicated by the
terrible consequences of the fall, is maintained in all its integrity in
the restoration of the fallen creature. A certain harmony was necessary
between man and God in order to salvation. Had our nature been
thoroughly perverted, no contact would have been possible. We would not
have had the capacity to receive from God that great gift which was the
only mode of repairing the fall of beings created in his image and
formed to possess him.[118]
This being the condition of man, M. de Pressense maintains that the
result of this divine teaching was to convince him of his weakness and
evoke the desire of salvation. Therefore Christianity comes in to supply
a felt want of human nature.
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