the soul be holy, temptation may only confirm it in virtue. Only the evil will, self-determined against God, can turn temptation into an occasion of ruin.

As the sun's heat has no tendency to wither the plant rooted in deep and moist soil, but only causes it to send down its roots the deeper and to fasten itself the more strongly, so temptation has in itself no tendency to pervert the soul. It was only the seeds that "fell upon the rocky places, where they had not much earth" (Mat. 13:5, 6), that "were scorched" when "the sun was risen"; and our Lord attributes their failure, not to the sun, but to their lack of root and of soil: "because they had no root," "because they had no deepness of earth." The same temptation which occasions the ruin of the false disciple stimulates to sturdy growth the virtue of the true Christian. Contrast with the temptation of Adam the temptation of Christ. Adam had everything to plead for God, the garden and its delights, while Christ had everything to plead against him, the wilderness and its privations. But Adam had confidence in Satan, while Christ had confidence in God; and the result was in the former case defeat, in the latter victory. See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 385–396. C. H. Spurgeon: "All the sea outside a ship can do it no damage till the water enters and fills the hold. Hence, it is clear, our greatest danger is within. All the devils in hell and tempters on earth could do us no injury, if there were no corruption in our own natures. The sparks will fly harmlessly, if there is no tinder. Alas, our heart is our greatest enemy; this is the little home-born thief. Lord, save me from that evil man, myself!"

Lyman Abbott: "The scorn of goody-goody is justified; for goody-goody is innocence, not virtue; and the boy who never does anything wrong because he never does anything at all is of no use in the world. . . . . Sin is not a help in development; it is a hindrance. But temptation is a help; it is an indispensable means." E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 123-"Temptation in the bad sense and a fall from innocence were no more necessary to the perfection of the first man, than a marring of any one's character is now necessary to its completeness." John Milton, Areopagitica: "Many there be that complain of divine providence for suffering Adam to transgress. Foolish tongues! When God gave him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, for reason is but choosing; he had been else a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he is in the motions" (puppet shows). Robert Browning, Ring and the Book, 204 (Pope, 1183) — "Temptation sharp? Thank God a second time! Why comes temptation but for man to meet And master and make crouch beneath his foot, And so be pedestaled in triumph? Pray 'Lead us into no such temptations, Lord'? Yea, but, O thou whose servants are the bold, Lead such temptations by the head and hair, Reluctant dragons, up to who dares fight, That so he may do battle and have praise !"

3. How could a penalty so great be justly connected with disobedi ence to so slight a command?

To this question we may reply:

(a) So slight a command presented the best test of the spirit of obedience.

Cicero: "Parva res est, at magna culpa." The child's persistent disobedience in one single respect to the mother's command shows that in all his other acts of seeming obedience he does nothing for his mother's sake, but all for his own, -shows, in other words, that he does not possess the spirit of of obedience in a single act. S. S. Times: "Trifles are trifles only to triflers. Awake to the significance of the insignificant! for you are in a world that belongs not alone to the God of the infinite, but also to the God of the infinitesimal."

(b) The external command was not arbitrary or insignificant in its substance. It was a concrete presentation to the human will of God's claim to eminent domain or absolute ownership.

John Hall, Lectures on the Religious Use of Property, 10-"It sometimes happens that owners of land, meaning to give the use of it to others, without alienating it, impose a nominal rent-a quit-rent, the passing of which acknowledges the recipient as owner and the occupier as tenant. This is understood in all lands. In many an old English deed, 'three barley-corns,' 'a fat capon,' or 'a shilling,' is the consideration

which permanently recognizes the rights of lordship. God taught men by the forbidden tree that he was owner, that man was occupier. He selected the matter of property to be the test of man's obedience, the outward and sensible sign of a right state of heart toward God; and when man put forth his hand and did eat, he denied God's ownership and asserted his own. Nothing remained but to eject him."

(c) The sanction attached to the command shows that man was not left ignorant of its meaning or importance.

Gen. 2:17-"in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Cf. Gen. 3:3-"the tree which is in the midst of the garden"; and see Dodge, Christian Theology, 206, 207-"The tree was central, as the commandment was central. The choice was between the tree of life and the tree of death,-between self and God. Taking the one was rejecting the other."

(d) The act of disobedience was therefore the revelation of a will thoroughly corrupted and alienated from God- a will given over to ingratitude, unbelief, ambition, and rebellion.

The motive to disobedience was not appetite, but the ambition to be as God. The outward act of eating the forbidden fruit was only the thin edge of the wedge, behind which lay the whole mass- the fundamental determination to isolate self and to seek personal pleasure regardless of God and his law. So the man under conviction for sin commonly clings to some single passion or plan, only half-conscious of the fact that opposition to God in one thing is opposition in all.

III.

CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL, SO FAR AS RESPECTS ADAM.

1. Death. This death was twofold. It was partly:

A. Physical death, or the separation of the soul from the body. — The seeds of death, naturally implanted in man's constitution, began to develop themselves the moment that access to the tree of life was denied him. Man from that moment was a dying creature.

In a true sense death began at once. To it belonged the pains which both man and woman should suffer in their appointed callings. The fact that man's earthly existence did not at once end, was due to God's counsel of redemption. "The law of the Spirit of life" (Rom. 8:2) began to work even then, and grace began to counteract the effects of the Fall. Christ has now "abolished death" (2 Tim. 1:10) by taking its terrors away, and by turning it into the portal of heaven. He will destroy it utterly (1 Cor. 15:26) when by resurrection from the dead, the bodies of the saints shall be made immortal. Dr. William A. Hammond, following a French scientist, declares that there is no reason in a normal physical system why man should not live forever.

That death is not a physical necessity is evident if we once remember that life is, not fuel, but fire. Weismann, Heredity, 8, 24, 72, 159-"The organism must not be looked upon as a heap of combustible material, which is completely reduced to ashes in a certain time, the length of which is determined by its size and by the rate at which it burns; but it should be compared to a fire, to which fresh fuel can be continually added, and which, whether it burns quickly or slowly, can be kept burning as long as necessity demands. . . . . Death is not a primary necessity, but it has been acquired secondarily, as an adaptation... Unicellular organisms, increasing by means of fission, in a certain sense possess immortality. No Amoeba has ever lost an ancestor by death. . . . . Each individual now living is far older than mankind, and is almost as old as life itself. . . . . Death is not an essential attribute of living matter."

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If we regard man as primarily spirit, the possibility of life without death is plain. God lives on eternally, and the future physical organism of the righteous will have in it no seed of death. Man might have been created without being mortal. That he is mortal is due to anticipated sin. Regard body as simply the constant energizing of God, and we see that there is no inherent necessity of death. Denney, Studies in Theology, 98-"Man, it is said, must die because he is a natural being, and what belongs to nature belongs to him. But we assert, on the contrary, that he was created a supernatural being, with a primacy over nature, so related to God as to be immortal. Death is an intrusion, and it is finally to be abolished." Chandler, The Spirit of Man, 45-47 — "The

first stage in the fall was the disintegration of spirit into body and mind; and the second was the enslavement of mind to body."

Some recent writers, however, deny that death is a consequence of the Fall, except in the sense that man's fear of death results from his sin. Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, 19–22, indeed, asserts the value and propriety of death as an element of the normal universe. He would oppose to the doctrine of Weismann the conclusions of Maupas, the French biologist, who has followed infusoria through 600 generations. Fission, says Maupas, reproduces for many generations, but the unicellular germ ultimately weakens and dies out. The asexual reproduction must be supplemented by a higher conjugation, the meeting and partial blending of the contents of two cells. This is only occasional, but it is necessary to the permanence of the species. Isolation is ultimate death. Newman Smyth adds that death and sex appear together. When sex enters to enrich and diversify life, all that will not take advantage of it dies out. Survival of the fittest is accompanied by death of that which will not improve. Death is a secondary thing-a consequence of life. A living form acquired the power of giving up its life for another. It died in order that its offspring might survive in a higher form. Death helps life on and up. It does not put a stop to life. It became an advantage to life as a whole that certain primitive forms should be left by the way to perish. We owe our human birth to death in nature. The earth before us has died that we might live. We are the living children of a world that has died for us. Death is a means of life, of increasing specialization of function. Some cells are born to give up their life sacrificially for the organism to which they belong.

While we regard Newman Smyth's view as an ingenious and valuable explanation of the incidental results of death, we do not regard it as an explanation of death's origin. God has overruled death for good, and we can assent to much of Dr. Smyth's exposition. But that this good could be gained only by death seems to us wholly unproved and unprovable. Biology shows us that other methods of reproduction are possible, and that death is an incident and not a primary requisite to development. We regard Dr. Smyth's theory as incompatible with the Scripture representations of death as the consequence of sin, as the sign of God's displeasure, as a means of discipline for the fallen, as destined to complete abolition when sin itself has been done away. We reserve, however, the full proof that physical death is part of the penalty of sin until we discuss the Consequences of Sin to Adam's Posterity.

But this death was also, and chiefly,

B. Spiritual death, or the separation of the soul from God. — In this are included: (a) Negatively, the loss of man's moral likeness to God, or that underlying tendency of his whole nature toward God which constituted his original righteousness. (b) Positively, the depraving of all those powers which, in their united action with reference to moral and religious truth, we call man's moral and religious nature; or, in other words, the blinding of his intellect, the corruption of his affections, and the enslavement of his will.

Seeking to be a god, man became a slave; seeking independence, he ceased to be master of himself. Once his intellect was pure, - he was supremely conscious of God, and saw all things else in God's light. Now he was supremely conscious of self, and saw all things as they affected self. This self-consciousness - how unlike the objective life of the first apostles, of Christ, and of every loving soul! Once man's affections were pure, he loved God supremely, and other things in subordination to God's will. Now he loved self supremely, and was ruled by inordinate affections toward the creatures which could minister to his selfish gratification. Now man could do nothing pleasing to God, because he lacked the love which is necessary to all true obedience.

G. F. Wilkin, Control in Evolution, shows that the will may initiate a counter-evolution which shall reverse the normal course of man's development. First comes an act, then a habit, of surrender to animalism; then subversion of faith in the true and the good; then active championship of evil; then transmission of evil disposition and tendencies to posterity. This subversion of the rational will by an evil choice took place very early, indeed in the first man. All human history has been a conflict between these two antagonistic evolutions, the upward and the downward. Biological rather than moral phenomena predominate. No human being escapes transgress

ing the law of his evolutionary nature. There is a moral deadness and torpor resulting. The rational will must be restored before man can go right again. Man must commit himself to a true life; then to the restoration of other men to that same life; then there must be cooperation of society; this work must extend to the limits of the human species. But this will be practicable and rational only as it is shown that the unfolding plan of the universe has destined the righteous to a future incomparably more desirable than that of the wicked; in other words, immortality is necessary to evolution.

"If immortality be necessary to evolution, then immortality becomes scientific. Jesus has the authority and omnipresence of the power behind evolution. He imposes upon his followers the same normal evolutionary mission that sent him into the world. He organizes them into churches. He teaches a moral evolution of society through the united voluntary efforts of his followers. They are 'the good seed.... the sons of the kingdom' (Mat. 13:38). Theism makes a definite attempt to counteract the evil of the counter-evolution, and the attempt justifies itself by its results. Christianity is scientiflc (1) in that it satisfies the conditions of knowledge: the persisting and comprehensive harmony of phenomena, and the interpretation of all the facts; (2) in its aim, the moral regeneration of the world; (3) in its methods, adapting itself to man as an ethical being, capable of endless progress; (4) in its conception of normal society, as of sinners uniting together to help one another to depend on God and conquer self, so recognizing the ethical bond as the most essential. This doctrine harmonizes science and religion, revealing the new species of control which marks the highest stage of evolution; shows that the religion of the N. T. is essentially scientific and its truths capable of practical verification; that Christianity is not any particular church, but the teachings of the Bible; that Christianity is the true system of ethics, and should be taught in public institutions; that cosmic evolution comes at last to depend on the wisdom and will of man, the immanent God working in finite and redeemed humanity."

In fine, man no longer made God the end of his life, but chose self instead. While he retained the power of self-determination in subordinate things, he lost that freedom which consisted in the power of choosing God as his ultimate aim, and became fettered by a fundamental inclination of his will toward evil. The intuitions of the reason were abnormally obscured, since these intuitions, so far as they are concerned with moral and religious truth, are conditioned upon a right state of the affections; and as a necessary result of this obscuring of reason-conscience, which, as the normal judiciary of the soul, decides upon the basis of the law given to it by reason, became perverse in its deliverances. Yet this inability to judge or act aright, since it was a moral inability springing ultimately from will, was itself hateful and condemnable.

See Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3: 61-73; Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man, 202-230, esp. 205-"Whatsoever springs from will we are responsible for. Man's inability to love God supremely results from his intense self-will and self-love, and therefore his impotence is a part and element of his sin, and not an excuse for it." And yet the question "Adam, where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9), says C. J. Baldwin, "was, (1) a question, not as to Adam's physical locality, but as to his moral condition; (2) a question, not of justice threatening, but of love inviting to repentance and return; (3) a question, not to Adam as an individual only, but to the whole humanity of which he was the representative." Dale, Ephesians, 40-"Christ is the eternal Son of God; and it was the first, the primeval purpose of the divine grace that his life and sonship should be shared by all mankind; that through Christ all men should rise to a loftier rank than that which belonged to them by their creation; should be 'partakers of the divine nature' (2 Pet. 1:4), and share the divine righteousness and joy. Or rather, the race was actually created in Christ; and it was created that the whole race might in Christ inherit the life and glory of God. The divine purpose has been thwarted and obstructed and partially defeated by human sin. But it is being fulfilled in all who are 'in Christ' (Eph. 1:3)."

2. Positive and formal exclusion from God's presence. - This included: (a) The cessation of man's former familiar intercourse with God, and

the setting up of outward barriers between man and his Maker (cherubim and sacrifice).

"In die Welt hinausgestossen, Steht der Mensch verlassen da." Though God punished Adam and Eve, he did not curse them as he did the serpent. Their exclusion from the tree of life was a matter of benevolence as well as of justice, for it prevented the immortality of sin.

(b) Banishment from the garden, where God had specially manifested his presence.-Eden was perhaps a spot reserved, as Adam's body had been, to show what a sinless world would be. This positive exclusion from God's presence, with the sorrow and pain which it involved, may have been intended to illustrate to man the nature of that eternal death from which he now needed to seek deliverance.

At the gates of Eden, there seems to have been a manifestation of God's presence, in the cherubim, which constituted the place a sanctuary. Both Cain and Abel brought offerings "unto the Lord" (Gen. 4:3, 4), and when Cain fled, he is said to have gone out "from the presence of the Lord "(Gen. 4:16). On the consequences of the Fall to Adam, see Edwards, Works, 2:390-405; Hopkins, Works, 1:206-246; Dwight, Theology, 1:393-434; Watson, Institutes, 2:19-42; Martensen, Dogmatics, 155-173; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 402–412.

SECTION V. IMPUTATION OF ADAM'S SIN TO HIS POSTERITY.

We have seen that all mankind are sinners; that all men are by nature depraved, guilty, and condemnable; and that the transgression of our first parents, so far as respects the human race, was the first sin. We have still to consider the connection between Adam's sin and the depravity, guilt, and condemnation of the race.

(a) The Scriptures teach that the transgression of our first parents constituted their posterity sinners (Rom. 5:19-"through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners "), so that Adam's sin is imputed, reckoned, or charged to every member of the race of which he was the germ and head (Rom. 5:16—"the judgment came of one [offence ] unto condemnation"). It is because of Adam's sin that we are born depraved and subject to God's penal inflictions (Rom. 5:12 - "through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin "; Eph. 2:3-"by nature children of wrath"). Two questions demand answer, - first, how we can be responsible for a depraved nature which we did not personally and consciously originate; and, secondly, how God can justly charge to our account the sin of the first father of the race. These questions are substantially the same, and the Scriptures intimate the true answer to the problem when they declare that "in Adam all die" (1 Cor. 15:22) and "that death passed unto all men, for that all sinned" when "through one man sin entered into the world" (Rom. 5:12). In other words, Adam's sin is the cause and ground of the depravity, guilt, and condemnation of all his posterity, simply because Adam and his posterity are one, and, by virtue of their organic unity, the sin of Adam is the sin of the race.

Amiel says that" the best measure of the profundity of any religious doctrine is given by its conception of sin and of the cure of sin." We have seen that sin is a state; a state of the will; a selfish state of the will; a selfish state of the will inborn and universal; a selfish state of the will inborn and universal by reason of man's free act.