Facts witnessing so clearly that the especial strength of evil lay, as the philosophers had seen, in matter, so far it was a conclusion which both Jew and Persian were ready to accept.  The naked Aristotelic view of it being most acceptable to the Persian, the Platonic to the Hellenistic Jew.  But the purer theology of the Jew forced him to look for a solution of the question which Plato had left doubtful, and to explain how evil crept into matter.  He could not allow that what God had created could be of its own nature imperfect.  God made it very good; some other cause had broken in to spoil it.  Accordingly, as before he had reduced the independent Arimanes, whose existence he had learnt at Babylon, into a subordinate spirit; so now, not questioning the facts of disease, of death, of pain, of the infirmity of the flesh which the natural strength of the spirit was unable to resist, he accounted for them under the supposition that the first man had deliberately sinned, and by his sin had brought a curse upon the whole material earth, and upon all which was fashioned out of it.  The earth was created pure and lovely—­a garden of delight of its own free accord, loading itself with fruit and flower, and everything most exquisite and beautiful.  No bird or beast of prey broke the eternal peace which reigned over its hospitable surface.  In calm and quiet intercourse, the leopard lay down by the kid, the lion browsed beside the ox, and the corporeal frame of man, knowing neither decay, nor death, nor unruly appetite, nor any change or infirmity, was pure as the pure immortal substance of the unfallen angels.  But with the fatal apple all this fair scene passed away, and creation as it seemed was hopelessly and irretrievably ruined.  Adam sinned—­no matter how—­he sinned; the sin was the one terrible fact:  moral evil was brought into the world by the only creature who was capable of committing it.  Sin entered in, and death by sin; death and disease, storm and pestilence, earthquake and famine.  The imprisoned passions of the wild animals were let loose, and earth and air became full of carnage; worst of all, maws animal nature came out in gigantic strength, the carnal lusts, unruly appetites, jealousies, hatred, rapine, and murder; and then the law, and with it, of course, breaches of the law, and sin on sin.  The seed of Adam was infected in the animal change which had passed over his person, and every child, therefore, thenceforth naturally engendered in his posterity, was infected with the curse which he had incurred.  Every material organization thenceforward contained in itself the elements of its own destruction, and the philosophic conclusions of Aristotle were accepted and explained by theology.  Already, in the popular histories, those who were infected by disease were said to be bound by Satan; madness was a “possession” by his spirit, and the whole creation from Adam till Christ groaned and travailed under Satan’s power.  The nobler nature in man still made itself felt; but it was a slave when it ought to command.  It might will to obey the higher law, but the law in the members was over strong for it and bore it down.  This was the body of death which philosophy detected but could not explain, and from which Christianity now came forward with its magnificent promise of deliverance.