part iii, sec. 4; Bib. Sac., 20:317-320.

4. The Federal Theory, or Theory of Condemnation by Covenant.

The Federal theory, or theory of the Covenants, had its origin with Cocceius (1608-1669), professor at Leyden, but was more fully elaborated by Turretin (1623-1687). It has become a tenet of the Reformed as distinguished from the Lutheran church, and in this country it has its main advocates in the Princeton school of theologians, of whom Dr. Charles Hodge was the representative.

According to this view, Adam was constituted by God’s sovereign appointment the representative of the whole human race. With Adam as their representative, God entered into covenant, agreeing to bestow upon them eternal life on condition of his obedience, but making the penalty of his disobedience to be the corruption and death of all his posterity. In accordance with the terms of this covenant, since Adam sinned, God accounts all his descendants as sinners, and condemns them because of Adam’s transgression.

In execution of this sentence of condemnation, God immediately creates each soul of Adam’s posterity with a corrupt and depraved nature, which infallibly leads to sin, and which is itself sin. The theory is therefore a theory of the immediate imputation of Adam’s sin to his posterity, their corruption of nature not being the cause of that imputation, but the effect of it. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “physical, spiritual, and eternal death came to all, because all were regarded and treated as sinners.”

Fisher, Discussions, 355-409, compares the Augustinian and Federal theories of Original Sin. His account of the Federal theory and its origin is substantially as follows: The Federal theory is a theory of the covenants (_fœdus_, a covenant). 1. The covenant is a sovereign constitution imposed by God. 2. Federal union is the legal ground of imputation, though kinship to Adam is the reason why Adam and not another was selected as our representative. 3. Our guilt for Adam’s sin is simply a legal responsibility. 4. That imputed sin is punished by inborn depravity, and that inborn depravity by eternal death. Augustine could not reconcile inherent depravity with the justice of God; hence he held that we sinned in Adam.

So Anselm says: “Because the whole human nature was in them (Adam and Eve), and outside of them there was nothing of it, the whole was weakened and corrupted.” After the first sin “this nature was propagated just as it had made itself by sinning.” All sin belongs to the will; but this is a part of our inheritance. The descendants of Adam were not in him as individuals; yet what he did as a person, he did not do _sine natura_, and this nature is ours as well as his. So Peter Lombard. Sins of our immediate ancestors, because they are qualities which are purely personal, are not propagated. After Adam’s first sin, the actual qualities of the first parent or of other later parents do not corrupt the nature as concerns its qualities, but only as concerns the qualities of the _person_.

Calvin maintained two propositions: 1. We are not condemned for Adam’s sin apart from our own inherent depravity which is derived from him. The sin for which we are condemned is our own sin. 2. This sin is ours, for the reason that our nature is vitiated in Adam, and we receive it in the condition in which it was put by the first transgression. Melanchthon also held to an imputation of the first sin conditioned upon our innate depravity. The impulse to Federalism was given by the difficulty, on the pure Augustinian theory, of accounting for the non-imputation of Adam’s subsequent sins, and those of his posterity.

Cocceius (Dutch, Coch: English, Cook), the author of the covenant-theory, conceived that he had solved this difficulty by making Adam’s sin to be imputed to us upon the ground of a covenant between God and Adam, according to which Adam was to stand as the representative of his posterity. In Cocceius’s use of the term, however, the only difference between covenant and command is found in the promise attached to the keeping of it. Fisher remarks on the mistake, in modern defenders of imputation, of ignoring the capital fact of a true and real participation in Adam’s sin. The great body of Calvinistic theologians in the 17th century were Augustinians as well as Federalists. So Owen and the Westminster Confession. Turretin, however, almost merged the natural relation to Adam in the federal.

Edwards fell back on the old doctrine of Aquinas and Augustine. He tried to make out a real participation in the first sin. The first rising of sinful inclination, by a divinely constituted identity, _is_ this participation. But Hopkins and Emmons regarded the sinful inclination, not as a _real_ participation, but only as a _constructive_ consent to Adam’s first sin. Hence the New School theology, in which the imputation of Adam’s sin was given up. On the contrary, Calvinists of the Princeton school planted themselves on the Federal theory, and taking Turretin as their text book, waged war on New England views, not wholly sparing Edwards himself. After this review of the origin of the theory, for which we are mainly indebted to Fisher, it can be easily seen how little show of truth there is in the assumption of the Princeton theologians that the Federal theory is “the immemorial doctrine of the church of God.”

Statements of the theory are found in Cocceius, Summa Doctrinæ de Fœdere, cap. 1, 5; Turretin, Inst., loc. 9, quæs. 9; Princeton Essays, 1:98-185. esp. 120—“In imputation there is, first, an ascription of something to those concerned; secondly, a determination to deal with them accordingly.” The ground for this imputation is “the union between Adam and his posterity, which is twofold,—a natural union, as between father and children, and the union of representation, _which is the main idea here insisted on_.” 123—“As in Christ we are constituted righteous by the imputation of righteousness, so in Adam we are made sinners by the imputation of his sin.... Guilt is liability or exposedness to punishment; it does not in theological usage imply moral turpitude or criminality.” 162—Turretin is quoted: “The foundation, therefore, of imputation is not merely the _natural_ connection which exists between us and Adam—for, were this the case, all his sins would be imputed to us, but principally the _moral_ and _federal_, on the ground of which God entered into covenant with him as our head. Hence in that sin Adam acted not as a private but a public person and representative.” The oneness results from contract; the natural union is frequently not mentioned at all. Marck: All men sinned in Adam, “_eos representante_.” The acts of Adam and of Christ are ours “_jure representationis_.”

G. W. Northrup makes the order of the Federal theory to be: “(1) imputation of Adam’s guilt; (2) condemnation on the ground of this imputed guilt; (3) corruption of nature consequent upon treatment as condemned. So judicial imputation of Adam’s sin is the cause and ground of innate corruption.... All the acts, with the single exception of the sin of Adam, are divine acts: the appointment of Adam, the creation of his descendants, the imputation of his guilt, the condemnation of his posterity, their consequent corruption. Here we have guilt without sin, exposure to divine wrath without ill-desert, God regarding men as being what they are not, punishing them on the ground of a sin committed before they existed, and visiting them with gratuitous condemnation and gratuitous reprobation. Here are arbitrary representation, fictitious imputation, constructive guilt, limited atonement.” The Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882:30, claims that Kloppenburg (1642) preceded Cocceius (1648) in holding to the theory of the Covenants, as did also the Canons of Dort. For additional statements of Federalism, see Hodge, Essays, 49-86, and Syst. Theol., 2:192-204; Bib. Sac., 21:95-107; Cunningham, Historical Theology.

To the Federal theory we object:

A. It is extra-Scriptural, there being no mention of such a covenant with Adam in the account of man’s trial. The assumed allusion to Adam’s apostasy in Hosea 6:7, where the word “covenant” is used, is too precarious and too obviously metaphorical to afford the basis for a scheme of imputation (see Henderson, Com. on Minor Prophets, _in loco_). In Heb. 8:8—“new covenant”—there is suggested a contrast, not with an Adamic, but with the Mosaic, covenant (_cf._ verse 9).

In _Hosea 6:7_—“_they like Adam_ [marg. “_men_”] _have transgressed the covenant_” (Rev. Ver.)—the correct translation is given by Henderson, Minor Prophets: “_But they, like men that break a covenant, there they proved false to me_.” LXX: αὐτοὶ δέ εἰσιν ὡς ἄνθρωπος παραβαίνων διαθήκην. De Wette: “Aber sie übertreten den Bund nach Menschenart; daselbst sind sie mir treulos.” Here the word _adam_, translated “man,” either means “a man,” or “man,” _i. e._, generic man. “Israel had as little regard to their covenants with God as men of unprincipled character have for ordinary contracts.” “Like a man”—as men do. Compare _Ps. 82:7_—“_ye shall die like men_”; _Hosea 8:1, 2_—“_they have transgressed my covenant_”—an allusion to the Abrahamic or Mosaic covenant. _Heb. 8:9_—“_Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah; Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to lead them forth out of the land of Egypt._”

B. It contradicts Scripture, in making the first result of Adam’s sin to be God’s _regarding and treating_ the race as sinners. The Scripture, on the contrary, declares that Adam’s offense _constituted_ us sinners (Rom. 5:19). We are not sinners simply because God regards and treats us as such, but God regards us as sinners because we are sinners. Death is said to have “passed unto all men,” not because all were regarded and treated as sinners, but “because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12).

For a full exegesis of the passage _Rom. 5:12-19_, see note to the discussion of the Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship, pages 625-627. Dr. Park gave great offence by saying that the so-called “covenants” of law and of grace, referred in the Westminster Confession as made by God with Adam and Christ respectively, were really “made in Holland.” The word _fœdus_, in such a connection, could properly mean nothing more than “ordinance”; see Vergil, Georgics, 1:60-63—“eterna fœdera.” E. G. Robinson, Christ. Theol., 185—“God’s ‘covenant’ with men is simply his method of dealing with them according to their knowledge and opportunities.”

C. It impugns the justice of God by implying:

(_a_) That God holds men responsible for the violation of a covenant which they had no part in establishing. The assumed covenant is only a sovereign decree; the assumed justice, only arbitrary will.

We not only never authorized Adam to make such a covenant, but there is no evidence that he ever made one at all. It is not even certain that Adam knew he should have posterity. In the case of the imputation of our sins to Christ, Christ covenanted voluntarily to bear them, and joined himself to our nature that he might bear them. In the case of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to us, we first become one with Christ, and upon the ground of our union with him are justified. But upon the Federal theory, we are condemned upon the ground of a covenant which we neither instituted, nor participated in, nor assented to.

(_b_) That upon the basis of this covenant God accounts men as sinners who are not sinners. But God judges according to truth. His condemnations do not proceed upon a basis of legal fiction. He can regard as responsible for Adam’s transgression only those who in some real sense have been concerned, and have had part, in that transgression.

See Baird, Elohim Revealed, 544—“Here is a sin, which is no crime, but a mere condition of being regarded and treated as sinners; and a guilt, which is devoid of sinfulness, and which does not imply moral demerit or turpitude,”—that is, a sin which is no sin, and a guilt which is no guilt. Why might not God as justly reckon Adam’s sin to the account of the fallen angels, and punish them for it? Dorner, System Doct., 2:351; 3:53, 54—“Hollaz held that God treats men in accordance with what he foresaw all would do, if they were in Adam’s place” (_scientia media_ and _imputatio metaphysica_). Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 141—“Immediate imputation is as unjust as _imputatio metaphysica_, _i. e._, God’s condemning us for what he knew we would have done in Adam’s place. On such a theory there is no need of a trial at all. God might condemn half the race at once to hell without probation, on the ground that they would ultimately sin and come thither at any rate.” Justification can be gratuitous, but not condemnation. “Like the social-compact theory of government, the covenant-theory of sin is a mere legal fiction. It explains, only to belittle. The theory of New England theology, which attributes to mere sovereignty God’s making us sinners in consequence of Adam’s sin, is more reasonable than the Federal theory” (Fisher).

Professor Moses Stuart characterized this theory as one of “fictitious guilt, but veritable damnation.” The divine economy admits of no fictitious substitutions nor forensic evasions. No legal quibbles can modify eternal justice. Federalism reverses the proper order, and puts the effect before the cause, as is the case with the social-compact theory of government. Ritchie, Darwin and Hegel, 27—“It is illogical to say that society originated in a contract; for contract presupposes society.” Unus homo, nullus homo—without society, no persons. T. H. Green, Prolegomena to Ethics, 351—“No individual can make a conscience for himself. He always needs a society to make it for him....” 200—“Only through society is personality actualized.” Boyce, Spirit of Modern Philosophy, 209, note—“Organic Interrelationship of individuals is the condition even of their relatively independent selfhood.” We are “_members one of another_” (_Rom. 12:15_). Schurman, Agnosticism, 176—“The individual could never have developed into a personality but for his training through society and under law.” Imagine a theory that the family originated in a compact! We must not define the state by its first crude beginnings, any more than we define the oak by the acorn. On the theory of a social-compact, see Lowell, Essays on Government, 136-188.

(_c_) That, after accounting men to be sinners who are not sinners, God makes them sinners by immediately creating each human soul with a corrupt nature such as will correspond to his decree. This is not only to assume a false view of the origin of the soul, but also to make God directly the author of sin. Imputation of sin cannot precede and account for corruption; on the contrary, corruption must precede and account for imputation.

By God’s act we became depraved, as a penal consequence of Adam’s act imputed to us solely as _peccatum alienum_. Dabney, Theology, 342, says the theory regards the soul as originally pure until imputation. See Hodge on _Rom. 5:13_; Syst. Theol., 2:203, 210; Thornwell, Theology, 1:343-349; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:485, 487. The Federal theory “makes sin in us to be the penalty of another’s sin, instead of being the penalty of our own sin, as on the Augustinian scheme, which regards depravity in us as the punishment of our own sin in Adam.... It holds to a sin which does not bring eternal punishment, but for which we are legally responsible as truly as Adam.” It only remains to say that Dr. Hodge always persistently refused to admit the one added element which might have made his view less arbitrary and mechanical, namely, the traducian theory of the origin of the soul. He was a creatianist, and to the end maintained that God immediately created the soul, and created it depraved. Acceptance of the traducian theory would have compelled him to exchange his Federalism for Augustinianism. Creatianism was the one remaining element of Pelagian atomism in an otherwise Scriptural theory. Yet Dr. Hodge regarded this as an essential part of Biblical teaching. His unwavering confidence was like that of Fichte, whom Caroline Schelling represented as saying: “Zweifle an der Sonne Klarheit, Zweifle an der Sterne Licht, Leser, nur an meiner Wahrheit Und an deiner Dummheit, nicht.”

As a corrective to the atomistic spirit of Federalism we may quote a view which seems to us far more tenable, though it perhaps goes to the opposite extreme. Dr. H. H. Bawden writes: “The self is the product of a social environment. An ascetic self is so far forth not a self. Selfhood and consciousness are essentially social. We are members one of another. The biological view of selfhood regards it as a function, activity, process, inseparable from the social matrix out of which it has arisen. Consciousness is simply the name for the functioning of an organism. Not that the soul is a secretion of the brain, as bile is a secretion of the liver; not that the mind is a function of the body in any such materialistic sense. But that mind or consciousness is only the growing of an organism, while, on the other hand, the organism is just that which grows. The psychical is not a second, subtle, parallel form of energy causally interactive with the physical; much less is it a concomitant series, as the parallelists hold. Consciousness is not an order of existence or a thing, but rather a function. It is the organization of reality, the universe coming to a focus, flowering, so to speak, in a finite centre. Society is an organism in the same sense as the human body. The separation of the units of society is no greater than the separation of the unit factors of the body,—in the microscope the molecules are far apart. Society is a great sphere with many smaller spheres within it.

“Each self is not impervious to other selves. Selves are not water-tight compartments, each one of which might remain complete in itself, even if all the others were destroyed. But there are open sluiceways between all the compartments. Society is a vast plexus of interweaving personalities. We are members one of another. What affects my neighbor affects me, and what affects me ultimately affects my neighbor. The individual is not an impenetrable atomic unit.... The self is simply the social whole coming to consciousness at some particular point. Every self is rooted in the social organism of which it is but a local and individual expression. A self is a mere cipher apart from its social relations. As the old Greek adage has it: ‘He who lives quite alone is either a beast or a god.’ ” While we regard this exposition of Dr. Bawden as throwing light upon the origin of consciousness and so helping our contention against the Federal theory of sin, we do not regard it as proving that consciousness, once developed, may not become relatively independent and immortal. Back of society, as well as back of the individual, lies the consciousness and will of God, in whom alone is the guarantee of persistence. For objections to the Federal theory, see Fisher, Discussions, 401 _sq._; Bib. Sac., 20:455-462, 577; New Englander, 1868:551-603; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 305-334, 435-450; Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:336; Dabney, Theology, 341-351.

5. Theory of Mediate Imputation, or Theory of Condemnation for Depravity.

This theory was first maintained by Placeus (1606-1655), professor of Theology at Saumur in France. Placeus originally denied that Adam’s sin was in any sense imputed to his posterity, but after his doctrine was condemned by the Synod of the French Reformed Church at Charenton in 1644, he published the view which now bears his name.

According to this view, all men are born physically and morally depraved; this native depravity is the source of all actual sin, and is itself sin; in strictness of speech, it is this native depravity, and this only, which God imputes to men. So far as man’s physical nature is concerned, this inborn sinfulness has descended by natural laws of propagation from Adam to all his posterity. The soul is immediately created by God, but it becomes actively corrupt so soon as it is united to the body. Inborn sinfulness is the consequence, though not the penalty, of Adam’s transgression.

There is a sense, therefore, in which Adam’s sin may be said to be imputed to his descendants,—it is imputed, not immediately, as if they had been in Adam or were so represented in him that it could be charged directly to them, corruption not intervening,—but it is imputed mediately, through and on account of the intervening corruption which resulted from Adam’s sin. As on the Federal theory imputation is the cause of depravity, so on this theory depravity is the cause of imputation. In Rom. 5:12, “death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed upon all men, because all sinned by possessing a depraved nature.”

See Placeus, De Imputatione Primi Peccati Adami, in Opera, 1:709—“The sensitive soul is produced from the parent; the intellectual or rational soul is directly created. The soul, on entering the corrupted physical nature, is not passively corrupted, but becomes corrupt actively, accommodating itself to the other part of human nature in character.” 710—So this soul “contracts from the vitiosity of the dispositions of the body a corresponding vitiosity, not so much by the action of the body upon the soul, as by that essential appetite of the soul by which it unites itself to the body in a way accommodated to the dispositions of the body, as liquid put into a bowl accommodates itself to the figure of a bowl—sicut vinum in vase acetoso. God was therefore neither the author of Adam’s fall, nor of the propagation of sin.”

Herzog, Encyclopædia, art.: Placeus—“In the title of his works we read ‘Placæus’; he himself, however, wrote ‘Placeus,’ which is the more correct Latin form [of the French ‘de la Place’]. In Adam’s first sin, Placeus distinguished between the actual sinning and the first habitual sin (corrupted disposition). The former was transient; the latter clung to his person, and was propagated to all. It is truly sin, and it is imputed to all, since it makes all condemnable. Placeus believes in the imputation of this corrupted disposition, but not in the imputation of the first act of Adam, except mediately, through the imputation of the inherited depravity.” Fisher, Discussions, 389—“Mere native corruption is the whole of original sin. Placeus justifies his use of the term ‘imputation’ by _Rom. 2:26_—‘_If therefore the uncircumcision keep the ordinances of the law, shall not his uncircumcision be reckoned_ [imputed] _for circumcision?_’ Our own depravity is the necessary condition of the imputation of Adam’s sin, just as our own faith is the necessary condition of the imputation of Christ’s righteousness.”

Advocates of Mediate Imputation are, in Great Britain, G. Payne, in his book entitled: Original Sin; John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196-332; and James S. Candlish, Biblical Doctrine of Sin, 111-122; in America, H. B. Smith, in his System of Christian Doctrine, 169, 284, 285, 314-323; and E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology. The editor of Dr. Smith’s work says: “On the whole, he favored the theory of Mediate Imputation. There is a note which reads thus: ‘Neither Mediate nor Immediate Imputation is wholly satisfactory.’ Understand by ‘Mediate Imputation’ a full statement of the facts in the case, and the author accepted it; understand by it a theory professing to give the final explanation of the facts, and it was ‘not wholly satisfactory.’ ” Dr. Smith himself says, 316—“Original sin is a doctrine respecting the moral conditions of human nature as from Adam—generic: and it is not a doctrine respecting personal liabilities and desert. For the latter, we need more and other circumstances. Strictly speaking, it is not sin, which is ill-deserving, but only the sinner. The ultimate distinction is here: There is a well-grounded difference to be made between personal desert, strictly personal character and liabilities (of each individual under the divine law, as applied specifically, _e. g._, in the last adjudication), and a generic moral condition—the antecedent ground of such personal character.

“The distinction, however, is not between what has moral quality and what has not, but between the moral state of each as a member of the race, and his personal liabilities and desert as an individual. This original sin would wear to us only the character of evil, and not of sinfulness, were it not for _the fact_ that we feel guilty in view of our corruption when it becomes known to us in our own acts. Then there is involved in it not merely a sense of evil and misery, but also a sense of guilt; moreover, redemption is also necessary to remove it, which shows that it is a moral state. Here is the point of junction between the two extreme positions, that we sinned in Adam, and that all sin consists in sinning. The guilt of Adam’s sin is—this exposure, this liability on account of such native corruption, our having the same nature in the same moral bias. The guilt of Adam’s sin is _not to be separated_ from the existence of this evil disposition. And this guilt is what is imputed to us.” See art. on H. B. Smith, in Presb. Rev., 1881; “He did not fully acquiesce in Placeus’s view, which makes the corrupt nature by descent the only ground of imputation.”

The theory of Mediate Imputation is exposed to the following objections:

A. It gives no explanation of man’s responsibility for his inborn depravity. No explanation of this is possible, which does not regard man’s depravity as having had its origin in a free personal act, either of the individual, or of collective human nature in its first father and head. But this participation of all men in Adam’s sin the theory expressly denies.

The theory holds that we are responsible for the effect, but not for the cause—“post Adamum, non propter Adamum.” But, says Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:209, 331—“If this sinful tendency be in us solely through the act of others, and not through our own deed, they, and not we, are responsible for it,—it is not our guilt, but our misfortune. And even as to actual sins which spring from this inherent sinful tendency, these are not strictly our own, but the acts of our first parents through us. Why impute them to us as actual sins, for which we are to be condemned? Thus, if we deny the existence of guilt, we destroy the reality of sin, and _vice versa_.” Thornwell, Theology, 1:348, 349—This theory “does not explain the sense of guilt, as connected with depravity of nature,—how the feeling of ill-desert can arise in relation to a state of mind of which we have been only passive recipients. The child does not reproach himself for the afflictions which a father’s follies have brought upon him. But our inward corruption we do feel to be our own fault,—it is our crime as well as our shame.”

B. Since the origination of this corrupt nature cannot be charged to the account of man, man’s inheritance of it must be regarded in the light of an arbitrary divine infliction—a conclusion which reflects upon the justice of God. Man is not only condemned for a sinfulness of which God is the author, but is condemned without any real probation, either individual or collective.

Dr. Hovey, Outlines of Theology, objects to the theory of Mediate Imputation, because: “1. It casts so faint a light on the justice of God in the imputation of Adam’s sin to adults who do as he did. 2. It casts no light on the justice of God in bringing into existence a race inclined to sin by the fall of Adam. The inherited bias is still unexplained, and the imputation of it is a riddle, or a wrong, to the natural understanding.” It is unjust to hold us guilty of the effect, if we be not first guilty of the cause.

C. It contradicts those passages of Scripture which refer the origin of human condemnation, as well as of human depravity, to the sin of our first parents, and which represent universal death, not as a matter of divine sovereignty, but as a judicial infliction of penalty upon all men for the sin of the race in Adam (Rom. 5:16, 18). It moreover does violence to the Scripture in its unnatural interpretation of “all sinned,” in Rom. 5:12—words which imply the oneness of the race with Adam, and the causative relation of Adam’s sin to our guilt.

Certain passages which Dr. H. B. Smith, System, 317, quotes from Edwards, as favoring the theory of Mediate Imputation, seem to us to favor quite a different view. See Edwards, 2:482 _sq._—“The first existing of a corrupt disposition in their hearts is not to be looked upon as sin belonging to them distinct from their participation in Adam’s first sin; it is, as it were, the extended pollution of that sin through the whole tree, by virtue of the constituted union of the branches with the root.... I am humbly of the opinion that, if any have supposed the children of Adam to come into the world with a double guilt, one the guilt of Adam’s sin, another the guilt arising from their having a corrupt heart, they have not so well considered the matter.” And afterwards: “Derivation of evil disposition (or rather co-existence) is in consequence of the union,”—but “not properly a consequence of the imputation of his sin; nay, rather antecedent to it, as it was in Adam himself. The first depravity of heart, and the imputation of that sin, are both the consequences of that established union; but yet in such order, that the evil disposition is first, and the charge of guilt consequent, as it was in the case of Adam himself.”

Edwards quotes Stapfer: “The Reformed divines do not hold immediate and mediate imputation _separately_, but always together.” And still further, 2:493—“And therefore the sin of the apostasy is not theirs, merely because God imputes it to them; but it is truly and properly theirs, and on that ground God imputes it to them.” It seems to us that Dr. Smith mistakes the drift of these passages from Edwards, and that in making the identification with Adam primary, and imputation of his sin secondary, they favor the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship rather than the theory of Mediate Imputation. Edwards regards the order as (1) apostasy; (2) depravity; (3) guilt;—but in all three, Adam and we are, by divine constitution, one. To be guilty of the depravity, therefore, we must first be guilty of the apostasy.

For the reasons above mentioned we regard the theory of Mediate Imputation as a half-way house where there is no permanent lodgment. The logical mind can find no satisfaction therein, but is driven either forward, to the Augustinian doctrine which we are next to consider, or backward, to the New School doctrine with its atomistic conception of man and its arbitrary sovereignty of God. On the theory of Mediate Imputation, see Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:496-639; Princeton Essays, 1:129, 154, 168; Hodge, Syst. Theology, 2:205-214; Shedd, History of Doctrine, 2:158; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 46, 47, 474-479, 504-507.

6. The Augustinian Theory, or Theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

This theory was first elaborated by Augustine (354-430), the great opponent of Pelagius; although its central feature appears in the writings of Tertullian (died about 220), Hilary (350), and Ambrose (374). It is frequently designated as the Augustinian view of sin. It was the view held by the Reformers, Zwingle excepted. Its principal advocates in this country are Dr. Shedd and Dr. Baird.

It holds that God imputes the sin of Adam immediately to all his posterity, in virtue of that organic unity of mankind by which the whole race at the time of Adam’s transgression existed, not individually, but seminally, in him as its head. The total life of humanity was then in Adam; the race as yet had its being only in him. Its essence was not yet individualized; its forces were not yet distributed; the powers which now exist in separate men were then unified and localized in Adam; Adam’s will was yet the will of the species. In Adam’s free act, the will of the race revolted from God and the nature of the race corrupted itself. The nature which we now possess is the same nature that corrupted itself in Adam—“not the same in kind merely, but the same as flowing to us continuously from him.”

Adam’s sin is imputed to us immediately, therefore, not as something foreign to us, but because it is ours—we and all other men having existed as one moral person or one moral whole, in him, and, as the result of that transgression, possessing a nature destitute of love to God and prone to evil. In Rom. 5:12—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,” signifies: “death physical, spiritual, and eternal passed unto all men, because all sinned in Adam their natural head.”

Milton, Par. Lost, 9:414—“Where likeliest he [Satan] might find The only two of mankind, but in them The whole included race, his purpos’d prey.” Augustine, De Pec. Mer. et Rem., 3:7—“In Adamo omnes tune peccaverunt, quando in ejus natura adhuc omnes ille unus fuerunt”; De Civ. Dei, 13, 14—“Omnes enim fuimus in illo uno, quando omnes fuimus ille unus.... Nondum erat nobis singillatim creata et distributa forma in qua singuli viveremus, sed jam natura erat seminalis ex qua propagaremur.” On Augustine’s view, see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2; 43-45 (System Doct., 2:338, 339)—In opposition to Pelagius who made sin to consist in single acts, “Augustine emphasized the sinful state. This was a deprivation of original righteousness + inordinate love. Tertullian, Cyprian, Hilarius, Ambrose had advocated traducianism, according to which, without their personal participation, the sinfulness of all is grounded in Adam’s free act. They incur its consequences as an evil which is, at the same time, punishment of the inherited fault. But Irenæus, Athanasius, Gregory of Nyssa, say Adam was not simply a single individual, but the universal man. We were comprehended in him, so that in him we sinned. On the first view, the posterity were passive; on the second, they were active, in Adam’s sin. Augustine represents both views, desiring to unite the universal sinfulness involved in traducianism with the universal will and guilt involved in cooperation with Adam’s sin. Adam, therefore, to him, is a double conception, and = individual + race.”

Mozley on Predestination, 402—“In Augustine, some passages refer all wickedness to original sin; some account for different degrees of evil by different degrees of original sin (Op. imp. cont. Julianum, 4:128—‘Malitia naturalis.... in aliis minor, in aliis major est’); in some, the individual seems to add to original sin (De Correp. et Gratia, c. 13—‘Per liberum arbitrium alia insuper addiderunt, alii majus, alii minus, sed omnes mali.’ De Grat. et Lib. Arbit., 2:1—‘Added to the sin of their birth sins of their own commission’; 2:4—‘Neither denies our liberty of will, whether to choose an evil or a good life, nor attributes to it so much power that it can avail anything without God’s grace, or that it can change itself from evil to good’).” These passages seem to show that, side by side with the race-sin and its development, Augustine recognized a domain of free personal decision, by which each man could to some extent modify his character, and make himself more or less depraved.

The theory of Augustine was not the mere result of Augustine’s temperament or of Augustine’s sins. Many men have sinned like Augustine, but their intellects have only been benumbed and have been led into all manner of unbelief. It was the Holy Spirit who took possession of the temperament, and so overruled the sin as to make it a glass through which Augustine saw the depths of his nature. Nor was his doctrine one of exclusive divine transcendence, which left man a helpless worm at enmity with infinite justice. He was also a passionate believer in the immanence of God. He writes: “I could not be, O my God, could not be at all, wert not thou in me; rather, were not I in thee, of whom are all things, by whom are all things, in whom are are all things.... O God, thou hast made us for thyself, and our heart is restless, till it find rest in thee.—The will of God is the very nature of things—Dei voluntas rerum natura est.”

Allen, Continuity of Christian Thought, Introduction, very erroneously declares that “the Augustinian theology rests upon the transcendence of Deity as its controlling principle, and at every point appears as an inferior rendering of the earlier interpretation of the Christian faith.” On the other hand, L. L. Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 69, 368-397, shows that, while Athanasius held to a dualistic transcendence, Augustine held to a theistic immanence: “Thus the Stoic, Neo-Platonic immanence, with Augustine, supplants the Platonico-Aristotelian and Athanasian transcendence.” Alexander, Theories of the Will, 90—“The theories of the early Fathers were indeterministic, and the pronounced Augustinianism of Augustine was the result of the rise into prominence of the doctrine of original sin.... The early Fathers thought of the origin of sin in angels and in Adam as due to free will. Augustine thought of the origin of sin in Adam’s posterity as due to inherited evil will.” Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 161—“To this day in Catholicism inward and living piety and the expression of it is in essence wholly Augustinian.”

Calvin was essentially Augustinian and realistic; see his Institutes, book 2, chap. 1-3; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 1:505, 506, with the quotations and references. Zwingle was not an Augustinian. He held that native vitiosity, although it is the uniform occasion of sin, is not itself sin: “It is not a crime, but a condition and a disease.” See Hagenbach, Hist. Doct. 2:256, with references. Zwingle taught that every new-born child—thanks to Christ’s making alive of all those who had died in Adam—is as free from any taint of sin as Adam was before the fall. The Reformers, however, with the single exception of Zwingle, were Augustinians, and accounted for the hereditary guilt of mankind, not by the fact that all men were represented in Adam, but that all men participated in Adam’s sin. This is still the doctrine of the Lutheran church.

The theory of Adam’s Natural Headship regards humanity at large as the outgrowth of one germ. Though the leaves of a tree appear as disconnected units when we look down upon them from above, a view from beneath will discern the common connection with the twigs, branches, trunk, and will finally trace their life to the root, and to the seed from which it originally sprang. The race of man is one because it sprang from one head. Its members are not to be regarded atomistically, as segregated individuals; the deeper truth is the truth of organic unity. Yet we are not philosophical realists; we do not believe in the separate existence of universals. We hold, not to _universalia ante rem_, which is extreme realism; nor to _universalia post rem_, which is nominalism; but to _universalia in re_, which is moderate realism. Extreme realism cannot see the trees for the wood; nominalism cannot see the wood for the trees; moderate realism sees the wood in the trees. We hold to “_universalia in re_, but insist that the universals must be recognized as _realities_, as truly as the individuals are” (H. B. Smith, System, 319, note). Three acorns have a common life, as three spools have not. Moderate realism is true of organic things; nominalism is true only of proper names. God has not created any new tree nature since he created the first tree; nor has he created any new human nature since he created the first man. I am but a branch and outgrowth of the tree of humanity.

Our realism then only asserts the real historical connection of each member of the race with its first father and head, and such a derivation of each from him as makes us partakers of the character which he formed. Adam was once the race; and when he fell, the race fell. Shedd: “We all existed in Adam in our elementary invisible substance. The _Seyn_ of all was there, though the _Daseyn_ was not; the _noumenon_, though not the _phenomenon_, was in existence.” On realism, see Koehler, Realismus und Nominalismus; Neander, Ch. Hist., 4:356; Dorner, Person Christ, 2:377; Hase, Anselm, 2:77; F. E. Abbott, Scientific Theism, Introd., 1-29, and in Mind, Oct. 1882:476, 477; Raymond, Theology, 2:30-33; Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:69-74; Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 129-132; Ten Broeke, in Baptist Quar. Rev., Jan. 1892:1-26; Baldwin, Psychology, 280, 281; D. J. Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 186; Hours with the Mystics, 1:213; Case, Physical Realism, 17-19; Fullerton, Sameness and Identity, 88, 89, and Concept of the Infinite, 95-114.

The new conceptions of the reign of law and of the principle of heredity which prevail in modern science are working to the advantage of Christian theology. The doctrine of Adam’s Natural Headship is only a doctrine of the hereditary transmission of character from the first father of the race to his descendants. Hence we use the word “imputation” in its proper sense—that of a reckoning or charging to us of that which is truly and properly ours. See Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:259-357, esp. 328—“The problem is: We must allow that the depravity, which all Adam’s descendants inherit by natural generation, nevertheless involves personal guilt; and yet this depravity, so far as it is natural, wants the very conditions on which guilt depends. The only satisfactory explanation of this difficulty is the Christian doctrine of original sin. Here alone, if its inner possibility can be maintained, can the apparently contradictory principles be harmonized, viz.: the universal and deep-seated depravity of human nature, as the source of actual sin, and individual responsibility and guilt.” These words, though written by one who advocates a different theory, are nevertheless a valuable argument in corroboration of the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship.

Thornwell, Theology, 1:343—“We must contradict every Scripture text and every Scripture doctrine which makes hereditary impurity hateful to God and punishable in his sight, or we must maintain that we sinned in Adam in his first transgression.” Secretan, in his Work on Liberty, held to a _collective_ life of the race in Adam. He was answered by Naville, Problem of Evil: “We existed in Adam, not individually, but seminally. Each of us, as an individual, is responsible only for his personal acts, or, to speak more exactly, for the personal part of his acts. But each of us, as he is man, is jointly and severally (_solidairement_) responsible for the fall of the human race.” Bersier, The Oneness of the Race, in its Fall and in its Future: “If we are commanded to love our neighbor as ourselves, it is because our neighbor is ourself.”

See Edwards, Original Sin, part 4, chap. 3; Shedd, on Original Sin, in Discourses and Essays, 218-271, and references, 261-263, also Dogm. Theol., 2:181-195; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 410-435, 451-460, 494; Schaff, in Bib. Sac., 5:220, and in Lange’s Com., on Rom. 5:12; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 175-180; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 3:28-38, 204-236; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:269-400; Martensen, Dogmatics, 173-183; Murphy, Scientific Bases, 262 _sq._, _cf._ 101; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 135; Bp. Reynolds, Sinfulness of Sin, in Works, 1:102-350; Mozley on Original Sin, in Lectures, 136-152; Kendall, on Natural Heirship, or All the World Akin, in Nineteenth Century, Oct. 1885:614-626. _Per contra_, see Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:157-164, 227-257; Haven, in Bib. Sac., 20:451-455; Criticism of Baird’s doctrine, in Princeton Rev., Apr. 1880:335-376; of Schaff’s doctrine, in Princeton Rev., Apr. 1870:239-262.

We regard this theory of the Natural Headship of Adam as the most satisfactory of the theories mentioned, and as furnishing the most important help towards the understanding of the great problem of original sin. In its favor may be urged the following considerations:

A. It puts the most natural interpretation upon Rom. 5:12-21. In verse 12 of this passage—“death passed unto all men, for that all sinned”—the great majority of commentators regard the word “sinned” as describing a common transgression of the race in Adam. The death spoken of is, as the whole context shows, mainly though not exclusively physical. It has passed upon all—even upon those who have committed no conscious and personal transgression whereby to explain its infliction (verse 14). The legal phraseology of the passage shows that this infliction is not a matter of sovereign decree, but of judicial penalty (verses 13, 14, 15, 16, 18—“law,” “transgression,” “trespass,” “judgment ... of one unto condemnation,” “act of righteousness,” “justification”). As the explanation of this universal subjection to penalty, we are referred to Adam’s sin. By that one act (“so,” verse 12)—the “trespass of the one” man (v. 15, 17), the “one trespass” (v. 18)—death came to all men, because all [not “have sinned”, but] sinned (πάντες ἥμαρτον—aorist of instantaneous past action)—that is, all sinned in “the one trespass” of “the one” man. Compare 1 Cor. 15:22—“As in Adam all die”—where the contrast with physical resurrection shows that physical death is meant; 2 Cor. 5:14—“one died for all, therefore all died.” See Commentaries of Meyer, Bengel, Olshausen, Philippi, Wordsworth, Lange, Godet, Shedd. This is also recognized as the correct interpretation of Paul’s words by Beyschlag, Ritschl, and Pfleiderer, although no one of these three accepts Paul’s doctrine as authoritative.

Beyschlag, N. T. Theology, 2:58-60—“To understand the apostle’s view, we must follow the exposition of Bengel (which is favored also by Meyer and Pfleiderer): ‘_Because they_—viz., in Adam—_all have sinned_’; they all, namely, who were included in Adam according to the O. T. view which sees the whole race to its founder, acted in his action.” Ritschl: “Certainly Paul treated the universal destiny of death as due to the sin of Adam. Nevertheless it is not yet suited for a theological rule just for the reason that the apostle has formed this idea;” in other words, Paul’s teaching it does not make it binding upon our faith. Philippi, Com. on Rom., 168—Interpret _Rom. 5:12_—“_one sinned for all, therefore all sinned_,” by _2 Cor. 5:15_—“_one died for all, therefore all died._” Evans, in Presb. Rev., 1883:294—“_by the trespass of the one the many died_,” “_by the trespass of the one, death reigned __ through the one_,” “_through the one man’s disobedience_”—all these phrases, and the phrases with respect to salvation which correspond to them, indicate that the fallen race and the redeemed race are each regarded as a multitude, a totality. So οἱ πάντεσ in 2 Cor. 5:14 indicates a corresponding conception of the organic unity of the race.

Prof. George B. Stevens, Pauline Theology, 32-40, 129-139, denies that Paul taught the sinning of all men in Adam: “They sinned in the same sense in which believers were crucified to the world and died unto sin when Christ died upon the cross. The believer’s renewal is conceived as wrought in advance by those acts and experiences of Christ in which it has its ground. As the consequences of his vicarious sufferings are traced back to their cause, so are the consequences which flowed from the beginning of sin in Adam traced back to that original fount of evil and identified with it; but the latter statement should no more be treated as a rigid logical formula than the former, its counterpart.... There is a mystical identification of the procuring cause with its effect,—both in the case of Adam and of Christ.”

In our treatment of the New School theory of sin we have pointed out that the inability to understand the vital union of the believer with Christ incapacitates the New School theologian from understanding the organic union of the race with Adam. Paul’s phrase “_in Christ_” meant more than that Christ is the type and beginner of salvation, and sinning in Adam meant more to Paul than following the example or acting in the spirit of our first father. In _2 Cor. 5:14_ the argument is that since Christ died, all believers died to sin and death in him. Their resurrection-life is the same life that died and rose again in his death and resurrection. So Adam’s sin is ours because the same life which transgressed and became corrupt in him has come down to us and is our possession. In _Rom. 5:14_, the individual and conscious sins to which the New School theory attaches the condemning sentence are expressly excluded, and in _verses 15-19_ the judgment is declared to be “_of one trespass_.” Prof. Wm. Arnold Stevens, of Rochester, says well: “Paul teaches that Adam’s sin is ours, not potentially, but actually.” Of ἥμαρτον, he says: “This might conceivably be: (1) the historical aorist proper, used in its momentary sense; (2) the comprehensive or collective aorist, as in διῆλθεν in the same verse; (3) the aorist used in the sense of the English perfect, as in _Rom. 3:23_—πάντες γὰρ ἥμαρτον καὶ ὑστεροῦνται. In _5:12_, the context determines with great probability that the aorist is used in the first of these senses.” We may add that interpreters are not wanting who so take ἥμαρτον in _3:23_; see also margin of Rev. Version. But since the passage _Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we reserve to the close of this section a treatment of it in greater detail.

B. It permits whatever of truth there may be in the Federal theory and in the theory of Mediate Imputation to be combined with it, while neither of these latter theories can be justified to reason unless they are regarded as corollaries or accessories of the truth of Adam’s Natural Headship. Only on this supposition of Natural Headship could God justly constitute Adam our representative, or hold us responsible for the depraved nature we have received from him. It moreover justifies God’s ways, in postulating a real and a fair probation of our common nature as preliminary to imputation of sin—a truth which the theories just mentioned, in common with that of the New School, virtually deny,—while it rests upon correct philosophical principles with regard to will, ability, law, and accepts the Scriptural representations of the nature of sin, the penal character of death, the origin of the soul, and the oneness of the race in the transgression.

John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 1:196-232, favors the view that sin consists simply in an inherited bias of our nature to evil, and that we are guilty from birth because we are sinful from birth. But he recognizes in Augustinianism the truth of the organic unity of the race and the implication of every member in its past history. He tells us that we must not regard man simply as an abstract or isolated individual. The atomistic theory regards society as having no existence other than that of the individuals who compose it. But it is nearer the truth to say that it is society which creates the individual, rather than that the individual creates society. Man does not come into existence a blank tablet on which external agencies may write whatever record they will. The individual is steeped in influences which are due to the past history of his kind. The individualistic theory runs counter to the most obvious facts of observation and experience. As a philosophy of life, Augustinianism has a depth and significance which the individualistic theory cannot claim.

Alvah Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 175 (2d ed.)—“Every child of Adam is accountable for the degree of sympathy which he has for the whole system of evil in the world, and with the primal act of disobedience among men. If that sympathy is full, whether expressed by deed or thought, if the whole force of his being is arrayed against heaven and on the side of hell, it is difficult to limit his responsibility.” Schleiermacher held that the guilt of original sin attached, not to the individual as an individual, but as a member of the race, so that the consciousness of race-union carried with it the consciousness of race-guilt. He held all men to be equally sinful and to differ only in their different reception of or attitude toward grace, sin being the universal _malum metaphysicum_ of Spinoza; see Pfleiderer, Prot. Theol. seit Kant, 113.

C. While its fundamental presupposition—a determination of the will of each member of the race prior to his individual consciousness—is an hypothesis difficult in itself, it is an hypothesis which furnishes the key to many more difficulties than it suggests. Once allow that the race was one in its first ancestor and fell in him, and light is thrown on a problem otherwise insoluble—the problem of our accountability for a sinful nature which we have not personally and consciously originated. Since we cannot, with the three theories first mentioned, deny either of the terms of this problem—inborn depravity or accountability for it,—we accept this solution as the best attainable.

Sterrett, Reason and Authority in Religion, 20—“The whole swing of the pendulum of thought of to-day is away from the individual and towards the social point of view. Theories of society are supplementing theories of the individual. The solidarity of man is the regnant thought in both the scientific and the historical study of man. It is even running into the extreme of a determinism that annihilates the individual.” Chapman, Jesus Christ and the Present Age, 43—“It was never less possible to deny the truth to which theology gives expression in its doctrine of original sin than in the present age. It is only one form of the universally recognized fact of heredity. There is a collective evil, for which the responsibility rests on the whole race of man. Of this common evil each man inherits his share; it is organized in his nature; it is established in his environment.” E. G. Robinson: “The tendency of modern theology [in the last generation] was to individualization, to make each man ‘a little Almighty.’ But the human race is one in kind, and in a sense is numerically one. The race lay potentially in Adam. The entire developing force of the race was in him. There is no carrying the race up, except from the starting-point of a fallen and guilty humanity.” Goethe said that while humanity ever advances, individual man remains the same.

The true test of a theory is, not that it can itself be explained, but that it is capable of explaining. The atomic theory in chemistry, the theory of the ether in physics, the theory of gravitation, the theory of evolution, are all in themselves indemonstrable hypotheses, provisionally accepted simply because, if granted, they unify great aggregations of facts. Coleridge said that original sin is the one mystery that makes all other things clear. In this mystery, however, there is nothing self-contradictory or arbitrary. Gladden, What is Left? 131—“Heredity is God working in us, and environment is God working around us.” Whether we adopt the theory of Augustine or not, the facts of universal moral obliquity and universal human suffering confront us. We are compelled to reconcile these facts with our faith in the righteousness and goodness of God. Augustine gives us a unifying principle which, better than any other, explains these facts and justifies them. On the solidarity of the race, see Bruce, The Providential Order, 280-310, and art. on Sin, by Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary.

D. This theory finds support in the conclusions of modern science: with regard to the moral law, as requiring right states as well as right acts; with regard to the human will, as including subconscious and unconscious bent and determination; with regard to heredity, and the transmission of evil character; with regard to the unity and solidarity of the human race. The Augustinian theory may therefore be called an ethical or theological interpretation of certain incontestable and acknowledged biological facts.

Ribot, Heredity, 1—“Heredity is that biological law by which all beings endowed with life tend to repeat themselves in their descendants; it is for the species what personal identity is for the individual. By it a groundwork remains unchanged amid incessant variations. By it nature ever copies and imitates herself.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 202-218—“In man’s moral condition we find arrested development; reversion to a savage type; hypocritical and self-protective mimicry of virtue; parasitism; physical and moral abnormality; deep-seated perversion of faculty.” Simon, Reconciliation, 154 sq.—“The organism was affected before the individuals which are its successive differentiations and products were affected.... Humanity as an organism received an injury from sin. It received that injury at the very beginning.... At the moment when the seed began to germinate disease entered and it was smitten with death on account of sin.”

Bowne, Theory of Thought and Knowledge, 134—“A general notion has no actual or possible metaphysical existence. All real existence is necessarily singular and individual. The only way to give the notion any metaphysical significance is to turn it into a law inherent in reality, and this attempt will fail unless we finally conceive this law as a rule according to which a basal intelligence proceeds in positing individuals.” Sheldon, in the Methodist Review, March, 1901:214-227, applies this explanation to the doctrine of original sin. Men have a common nature, he says, only in the sense that they are resembling personalities. If we literally died in Adam, we also literally died in Christ. There is no all-inclusive Christ, any more than there is an all-inclusive Adam. We regard this argument as proving the precise opposite of its intended conclusion. There is an all-inclusive Christ, and the fundamental error of most of those who oppose Augustinianism is that they misconceive the union of the believer with Christ. “A basal intelligence” here “posits individuals.” And so with the relation of men to Adam. Here too there is “a law inherent in reality”—the regular working of the divine will, according to which like produces like, and a sinful germ reproduces itself.

E. We are to remember, however, that while this theory of the method of our union with Adam is merely a valuable hypothesis, the problem which it seeks to explain is, in both its terms, presented to us both by conscience and by Scripture. In connection with this problem a central fact is announced in Scripture, which we feel compelled to believe upon divine testimony, even though every attempted explanation should prove unsatisfactory. That central fact, which constitutes the substance of the Scripture doctrine of original sin, is simply this: that the sin of Adam is the immediate cause and ground of inborn depravity, guilt and condemnation to the whole human race.

Three things must be received on Scripture testimony: (1) inborn depravity; (2) guilt and condemnation therefor; (3) Adam’s sin the cause and ground of both. From these three positions of Scripture it seems not only natural, but inevitable, to draw the inference that we “_all sinned_” in Adam. The Augustinian theory simply puts in a link of connection between two sets of facts which otherwise would be difficult to reconcile. But, in putting in that link of connection, it claims that it is merely bringing out into clear light an underlying but implicit assumption of Paul’s reasoning, and this it seeks to prove by showing that upon no other assumption can Paul’s reasoning be understood at all. Since the passage in _Rom. 5:12-19_ is so important, we proceed to examine it in greater detail. Our treatment is mainly a reproduction of the substance of Shedd’s Commentary, although we have combined with it remarks from Meyer, Schaff, Moule, and others.

_Exposition of Rom. 5:12-19._—_Parallel between the salvation in Christ and the ruin that has come through Adam_, in each case through no personal act of our own, neither by our earning salvation in the case of the life received through Christ, nor by our individually sinning in the case of the death received through Adam. The statement of the parallel is begun in

_Verse 12_: “_as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death passed unto all men, for that all sinned,_” so (as we may complete the interrupted sentence) by one man righteousness entered into the world, and life by righteousness, and so life passed upon all men, because all became partakers of this righteousness. Both physical and spiritual death is meant. That it is physical is shown (1) from _verse 14_; (2) from the allusion to _Gen. 3:19_; (3) from the universal Jewish and Christian assumption that physical death was the result of Adam’s sin. See Wisdom 2:23, 24; Sirach 25:24; 2 Esdras 3:7, 21; 7:11, 46, 48, 118; 9:19; _John 8:44_; _1 Cor. 15:21_. That it is spiritual, is evident from _Rom. 5:18, 21_, where ζωή is the opposite of θάνατος, and from _2 Tim. 1:10_, where the same contrast occurs. The οὔτος in _verse 12_ shows the mode in which historically death has come to all, namely, that the _one_ sinned, and thereby brought death to all; in other words, death is the effect, of which the sin of the one is the cause. By Adam’s act, physical and spiritual death passed upon all men, because all sinned. ἐφ᾽ ᾦ = because, on the ground of the fact that, for the reason that, all sinned. πάντες = all, without exception, infants included, as _verse 14_ teaches.

Ἥμαρτον mentions the particular reason why all men died, _viz._, because all men sinned. It is the aorist of momentary past action—sinned when, through the one, sin entered into the world. It is as much as to say, “because, when Adam sinned, all men sinned in and with him.” This is proved by the succeeding explanatory context (_verses 15-19_), in which it is reiterated five times in succession that one and only one sin is the cause of the death that befalls all men. Compare _1 Cor. 15:22_. The senses “all were sinful,” “all became sinful,” are inadmissible, for ἁμαρτάνειν is not ἁμαρτωλὸν γίγνεσθαι or εἶναι. The sense “death passed upon all men, because all have consciously and personally sinned,” is contradicted (1) by _verse 14_, in which it is asserted that certain persons who are a part of πάντες, the subject of ἥμαρτον, and who suffer the death which is the penalty of sin, did not commit sins resembling Adam’s first sin, _i. e._, individual and conscious transgressions; and (2) by _verses 15-19_, in which it is asserted repeatedly that only one sin, and not millions of transgressions, is the cause of the death of all men. This sense would seem to require ἐφ᾽ ᾧ πάντες ἁμαρτάνουσιν. Neither can ἥμαρτον have the sense “were accounted and treated as sinners”; for (1) there is no other instance in Scripture where this active verb has a passive signification; and (2) the passive makes ἥμαρτον to denote God’s action, and not man’s. This would not furnish the justification of the infliction of death, which Paul is seeking,

_Verse 13_ begins a demonstration of the proposition, in _Verse 12_, that death comes to all, because all men sinned the one sin of the one man. The argument is as follows: Before the law sin existed; for there was death, the penalty of sin. But this sin was not sin committed against the _Mosaic_ law, because that law was not yet in existence. The death in the world prior to that law proves that there must have been some other law, against which sin had been committed.

_Verse 14_. Nor could it have been personal and conscious violation of an _unwritten_ law, for which death was inflicted; for death passed upon multitudes, such as infants and idiots, who did not sin in their own persons, as Adam did, by violating some known commandment. Infants are not specifically named here, because the intention is to include others who, though mature in years, have not reached moral consciousness. But since death is everywhere and always the penalty of sin, the death of all must have been the penalty of the common sin of the race, when πάντες ἥμαρτον in Adam. The law which they violated was the Eden statute, _Gen. 2:17_. The relation between their sin and Adam’s is not that of _resemblance_, but of _identity_. Had the sin by which death came upon them been one _like_ Adam’s, there would have been as many sins, to be the cause of death and to account for it, as there were individuals. Death would have come into the world through millions of men, and not “_through one man_” (_verse 12_), and judgment would have come upon all men to condemnation through millions of trespasses, and not “_through one trespass_” (_v. 18_). The object, then, of the parenthetical digression in _verses 13_ and _14_ is to prevent the reader from supposing, from the statement that “all men sinned,” that the individual transgressions of all men are meant, and to make it clear that only the one first sin of the one first man is intended. Those who died before Moses must have violated some law. The Mosaic law, and the law of conscience, have been ruled out of the case. These persons must, therefore, have sinned against the commandment in Eden, the probationary statute; and their sin was not _similar_ (ὁμοίος) to Adam’s, but Adam’s _identical_ sin, the very same sin numerically of the “_one man_.” They did not, in their own persons and consciously, sin as Adam did; yet in Adam, and in the nature common to him and them, they sinned and fell (_versus_ Current Discussions in Theology, 5:277, 278). They did not sin _like_ Adam, but they “sinned _in_ him, and fell _with_ him, in that first transgression” (Westminster Larger Catechism, 22).

_Verses 15-17_ show how the work of grace differs from, and surpasses, the work of sin. Over against God’s exact justice in punishing all for the first sin which all committed in Adam, is set the gratuitous justification of all who are in Christ. Adam’s sin is the act of Adam and his posterity together; hence the imputation to the posterity is just, and merited. Christ’s obedience is the work of Christ alone; hence the imputation of it to the elect is gracious and unmerited. Here τοὺς πολλούς is not of equal extent with οἱ πολλοί in the first clause, because other passages teach that “the many” who die in Adam are not conterminous with “_the many_” who live in Christ; see _1 Cor. 15:22_; _Mat. 25:46_; also, see note on _verse 18_, below. Τοὺς πολλούς here refers to the same persons who, in _verse 17_, are said to “_receive the abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness_.” _Verse 16_ notices a numerical difference between the condemnation and the justification. Condemnation results from _one_ offense; justification delivers from _many_ offences. _Verse 17_ enforces and explains _verse 16_. If the union with Adam in his sin was certain to bring destruction, the union with Christ in his righteousness is yet more certain to bring salvation.

_Verse 18_ resumes the parallel between Adam and Christ which was commenced in _verse 12_, but was interrupted by the explanatory parenthesis in _verses 13-17_. “_As through one trespass ... unto all men to condemnation; even so through one act of righteousness ... unto all men unto justification of_ [necessary to] _life_.” Here the “_all men to condemnation_”—the οἱ πολλοί in _verse 15_; and the “_all men unto justification of life_”—the τοὺς πολλούς in _verse 15_. There is a totality in each case; but, in the former case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their physical life from Adam,—in the latter case, it is the “_all men_” who derive their spiritual life from Christ (compare _1 Cor. 15:22_—“_For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”—in which last clause Paul is speaking, as the context shows, not of the resurrection of all men, both saints and sinners, but only of the blessed resurrection of the righteous; in other words, of the resurrection of those who are one with Christ).

_Verse 19._ “_For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were constituted sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be constituted righteous._” The many were constituted sinners because, according to _verse 12_, they sinned in and with Adam in his fall. The verb presupposes the fact of natural union between those to whom it relates. All men are declared to be sinners on the ground of that “_one trespass_,” because, when that one trespass was committed, all men were one man—that is, were one common nature in the first human pair. Sin is imputed, because it is committed. All men are punished with death, because they literally sinned in Adam, and not because they are metaphorically reputed to have done so, but in fact did not. Οἱ πολλοί is used in contrast with the one forefather, and the atonement of Christ is designated as ὑπακοή, in order to contrast it with the παρακοή of Adam.

Κατασταθήσονται has the same signification as in the first part of the verse. Δίκαιοι κατασταθήσονται means simply “shall be justified,” and is used instead of δικαιωθήσονται, in order to make the antithesis of ἁμαρτωλοὶ κατεστάθησαν more perfect. This being “_constituted righteous_” presupposes the fact of a union between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between Christ and believers, just as the being “_constituted sinners_” presupposed the fact of a union between ὁ εἶς and οἱ πολλοί, _i. e._, between all men and Adam. The future κατασταθήσονται refers to the succession of believers; the _justification_ of all was, ideally, complete already, but actually, it would await the times of individual believing. “_The many_” who shall be “_constituted righteous_”—not all mankind, but only “_the many_” to whom, in _verse 15_, grace abounded, and who are described, in _verse 17_, as “_they that receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness_.”

“But this union differs in several important particulars from that between Adam and his posterity. It is not natural and substantial, but moral and spiritual; not generic and universal, but individual and by election; not caused by the creative act of God, but by his regenerating act. All men, without exception, are one with Adam; only believing men are one with Christ. The imputation of Adam’s sin is not an arbitrary act in the sense that, if God so pleased, he could reckon it to the account of any beings in the universe, by a volition. The sin of Adam could not be imputed to the fallen angels, for example, and punished in them, because they never were one with Adam by unity of substance and nature. The fact that they have committed actual transgression of their own will not justify the imputation of Adam’s sin to them, any more than the fact that the posterity of Adam have committed actual transgressions of their own would be a sufficient reason for imputing the first sin of Adam to them. Nothing but a real union of nature and being can justify the imputation of Adam’s sin; and, similarly, the obedience of Christ could no more be imputed to an unbelieving man than to a lost angel, because neither of these is morally and spiritually one with Christ” (Shedd). For a different interpretation (ἡμαρτον—sinned personally and individually), see Kendrick, in Bap. Rev., 1885:48-72.

No Condemnation Inherited.

Pelagian. Arminian. New School.

I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate the soul. Creation. creation. creation. II. Man’s state Innocent, and Depraved, but Depraved and at birth. able to obey still able to vicious, but God. co-operate with this not sin. the Spirit. III. Effects of Only upon To corrupt his To communicate Adam’s sin. himself. posterity visiosity to the physically and whole race. intellectually. No guilt of Adam’s sin imputed. IV. How did all By following By consciously By voluntary sin? Adam’s example. ratifying Adam’s transgression of own deed, in known law. spite of the Spirit’s aid. V. What is Only of evil Evil tendencies Uncondemnable, corruption? habit, in each kept in spite of but evil case. the Spirit. tendencies. VI. What is Every man’s own Only man’s own Man’s individual imputed? sins. sins and acts of ratifying of transgression. this nature. VII. What is Spiritual and Physical and Spiritual and the death eternal. spiritual death eternal death incurred? by decree. only. VIII. How are By following By co-operating By accepting men saved? Christ’s with the Spirit Christ under example. given to all. influence of truth presented by the Spirit.

Condemnation Inherited.

Federal. Placean. Augustinian.

I. Origin of Immediate Immediate Immediate the soul. creation. creation. creation. II. Man’s state Depraved, Depraved, Depraved, at birth. unable, and unable, and unable, and condemnable. condemnable. condemnable. III. Effects of To insure Natural Guilt of Adam’s Adam’s sin. condemnation of connection of sin, corruption, his fellows in depravity in all and death. covenant, and his descendants. their creation as depraved. IV. How did all By being By possessing a By having part sin? accounted depraved nature. in the sin of sinners in Adam, as seminal Adam’s sin. head of the race. V. What is Condemnable, Condemnable, Condemnable, corruption? evil disposition evil disposition evil disposition and state. and state. and state. VI. What is Adam’s sin, Only depraved Adam’s sin, our imputed? man’s own nature and man’s depravity, and corruption, and own sin. our own sins. man’s own sins. VII. What is Physical, Physical, Physical, the death spiritual, and spiritual, and spiritual, and incurred? eternal. eternal. eternal. VIII. How are By being By becoming By Christ’s men saved? accounted possessors of a work, with whom righteous new nature in we are one. through the act Christ. of Christ.

II.—Objections to the Augustinian Doctrine of Imputation.

The doctrine of Imputation, to which we have thus arrived, is met by its opponents with the following objections. In discussing them, we are to remember that a truth revealed in Scripture may have claims to our belief, in spite of difficulties to us insoluble. Yet it is hoped that examination will show the objections in question to rest either upon false philosophical principles or upon misconception of the doctrine assailed.

A. That there can be no sin apart from and prior to consciousness.

This we deny. The larger part of men’s evil dispositions and acts are imperfectly conscious, and of many such dispositions and acts the evil quality is not discerned at all. The objection rests upon the assumption that law is confined to published statutes or to standards formally recognized by its subjects. A profounder view of law as identical with the constituent principles of being, as binding the nature to conformity with the nature of God, as demanding right volitions only because these are manifestations of a right state, as having claims upon men in their corporate capacity, deprives this objection of all its force.

If our aim is to find a conscious act of transgression upon which to base God’s charge of guilt and man’s condemnation, we can find this more easily in Adam’s sin than at the beginning of each man’s personal history; for no human being can remember his first sin. The main question at issue is therefore this: Is all sin personal? We claim that both Scripture and reason answer this question in the negative. There is such a thing as race-sin and race-responsibility.

B. That man cannot be responsible for a sinful nature which he did not personally originate.

We reply that the objection ignores the testimony of conscience and of Scripture. These assert that we are responsible for what we are. The sinful nature is not something external to us, but is our inmost selves. If man’s original righteousness and the new affection implanted in regeneration have moral character, then the inborn tendency to evil has moral character; as the former are commendable, so the latter is condemnable.

If it be said that sin is the act of a person, and not of a nature, we reply that in Adam the whole human nature once subsisted in the form of a single personality, and the act of the person could be at the same time the act of the nature. That which could not be at any subsequent point of time, could be and was, at that time. Human nature could fall _in Adam_, though that fall could not be repeated in the case of any one of his descendants. Hovey, Outlines, 129—“Shall we say that _will_ is the cause of sin in holy beings, while _wrong desire_ is the cause of sin in unholy beings? Augustine held this.” Pepper, Outlines, 112—“We do not fall each one by himself. We were so on probation in Adam, that his fall was our fall.”

C. That Adam’s sin cannot be imputed to us, since we cannot repent of it.

The objection has plausibility only so long as we fail to distinguish between Adam’s sin as the inward apostasy of the nature from God, and Adam’s sin as the outward act of transgression which followed and manifested that apostasy. We cannot indeed repent of Adam’s sin as our personal act or as Adam’s personal act, but regarding his sin as the apostasy of our common nature—an apostasy which manifests itself in our personal transgressions as it did in his, we can repent of it and do repent of it. In truth it is this nature, as self-corrupted and averse to God, for which the Christian most deeply repents.

God, we know, has not made our nature as we find it. We are conscious of our depravity and apostasy from God. We know that God cannot be responsible for this; we know that our nature is responsible. But this it could not be, unless its corruption were self-corruption. For this self-corrupted nature we should repent, and do repent. Anselm, De Concep. Virg., 23—“Adam sinned in one point of view as a person, in another as man (_i. e._, as human nature which at that time existed in him alone). But since Adam and humanity could not be separated, the sin of the person necessarily affected the _nature_. This nature is what Adam transmitted to his posterity, and transmitted it such as his sin had made it, burdened with a debt which it could not pay, robbed of the righteousness with which God had originally invested it; and in every one of his descendants this impaired nature makes the _persons_ sinners. Yet not in the same degree sinners as Adam was, for the latter sinned both as human nature and as a person, while new-born infants sin only as they possess the nature.”—more briefly, in Adam a person made nature sinful; in his posterity, nature makes persons sinful.

D. That, if we be responsible for Adam’s first sin, we must also be responsible not only for every other sin of Adam, but for the sins of our immediate ancestors.

We reply that the apostasy of human nature could occur but once. It occurred in Adam before the eating of the forbidden fruit, and revealed itself in that eating. The subsequent sins of Adam and of our immediate ancestors are no longer acts which determine or change the nature,—they only show what the nature is. Here is the truth and the limitation of the Scripture declaration that “the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father” (Ez. 18:20; _cf._ Luke 13:2, 3; John 9:2, 3). Man is not responsible for the specifically evil tendencies communicated to him from his immediate ancestors, as distinct from the nature he possesses; nor is he responsible for the sins of those ancestors which originated these tendencies. But he is responsible for that original apostasy which constituted the one and final revolt of the race from God, and for the personal depravity and disobedience which in his own case has resulted therefrom.

Augustine, Encheiridion, 46, 47, leans toward an imputing of the sins of immediate ancestors, but intimates that, as a matter of grace, this may be limited to “_the third and fourth generation_” (_Ex. 20:5_). Aquinas thinks this last is said by God, because fathers live to see the third and fourth generation of their descendants, and influence them by their example to become voluntarily like themselves. Burgesse, Original Sin, 397, adds the covenant-idea to that of natural generation, in order to prevent imputation of the sins of immediate ancestors as well as those of Adam. So also Shedd. But Baird, Elohim Revealed, 508, gives a better explanation, when he distinguishes between the first sin of nature when it apostatized, and those subsequent personal actions which merely manifest the nature but do not change it. Imagine Adam to have remained innocent, but one of his posterity to have fallen. Then the descendants of that one would have been guilty for the change of nature in him, but not guilty for the sins of ancestors intervening between him and them.

We add that man may direct the course of a lava-stream, already flowing downward, into some particular channel, and may even dig a new channel for it down the mountain. But the stream is constant in its quantity and quality, and is under the same influence of gravitation in all stages of its progress. I am responsible for the downward tendency which my nature gave itself at the beginning; but I am not responsible for inherited and specifically evil tendencies as something apart from the nature,—for they are not apart from it,—they are forms or manifestations of it. These tendencies run out after a time,—not so with sin of nature. The declaration of Ezekiel (_18:20_), “_the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,_” like Christ’s denial that blindness was due to the blind man’s individual sins or those of his parents (_John 9:2, 3_), simply shows that God does not impute to us the sins of our immediate ancestors; it is not inconsistent with the doctrine that all the physical and moral evil of the world is the result of a sin of Adam with which the whole race is chargeable.

Peculiar tendencies to avarice or sensuality inherited from one’s immediate ancestry are merely wrinkles in native depravity which add nothing to its amount or its guilt. Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:88-94—“To inherit a temperament is to inherit a secondary trait.” H. B. Smith, System, 296—“Ezekiel 18 does not deny that descendants are involved in the evil results of ancestral sins, under God’s moral government; but simply shows that there is opportunity for extrication, in personal repentance and obedience.” Mozley on Predestination, 179—“Augustine says that Ezekiel’s declarations that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father are not a universal law of the divine dealings, but only a special prophetical one, as alluding to the divine mercy under the gospel dispensation and the covenant of grace, under which the effect of original sin and the punishment of mankind for the sin of their first parent was removed.” See also Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:31 (Syst. Doct., 2:326, 327), where God’s visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children (Ex. 20:5) is explained by the fact that the children repeat the sins of the parents. German proverb: “The apple does not fall far from the tree.”

E. That if Adam’s sin and condemnation can be ours by propagation, the righteousness and faith of the believer should be propagable also.

We reply that no merely personal qualities, whether of sin or righteousness, are communicated by propagation. Ordinary generation does not transmit _personal_ guilt, but only that guilt which belongs to the whole _species_. So personal faith and righteousness are not propagable. “Original sin is the consequent of man’s _nature_, whereas the parents’ grace is a _personal_ excellence, and cannot be transmitted” (Burgesse).

Thornwell, Selected Writings, 1:543, says the Augustinian doctrine would imply that Adam, penitent and believing, must have begotten penitent and believing children, seeing that the nature as it is in the parent always flows from parent to child. But see Fisher, Discussions, 370, where Aquinas holds that no quality or guilt that is _personal_ is propagated (Thomas Aquinas, 2:629). Anselm (De Concept. Virg. et Origin. Peccato, 98) will not decide the question. “The original nature of the tree is propagated—not the nature of the graft”—when seed from the graft is planted. Burgesse: “Learned parents do not convey learning to their children, but they are born in ignorance as others.” Augustine: “A Jew that was circumcised begat children not circumcised, but uncircumcised; and the seed that was sown without husks, yet produced corn with husks.”

The recent modification of Darwinism by Weismann has confirmed the doctrine of the text. Lamarck’s view was that development of each race has taken place through the _effort_ of the individuals,—the giraffe has a long neck because successive giraffes have reached for food on high trees. Darwin held that development has taken place not because of effort, but because of _environment_, which kills the unfit and permits the fit to survive,—the giraffe has a long neck because among the children of giraffes only the long-necked ones could reach the fruit, and of successive generations of giraffes only the long-necked ones lived to propagate. But Weismann now tells us that even then there would be no development unless there were a spontaneous _innate tendency_ in giraffes to become long-necked,—nothing is of avail after the giraffe is born; all depends upon the germs in the parents. Darwin held to the transmission of acquired characters, so that individual men are _affluents_ of the stream of humanity; Weismann holds, on the contrary, that acquired characters are not transmitted, and that individual men are only _effluents_ of the stream of humanity: the stream gives its characteristics to the individuals, but the individuals do not give their characteristics to the stream: see Howard Ernest Cushman, in The Outlook, Jan. 10, 1897.

Weismann, Heredity, 2:14, 266-270, 482—“Characters only acquired by the operation of external circumstances, acting during the life of the individual, cannot be transmitted.... The loss of a finger is not inherited; increase of an organ by exercise is a purely personal acquirement and is not transmitted; no child of reading parents ever read without being taught; children do not even learn to speak untaught.” Horses with docked tails, Chinese women with cramped feet, do not transmit their peculiarities. The rupture of the hymen in women is not transmitted. Weismann cut off the tails of 66 white mice in five successive generations, but of 901 offspring none were tailless. G. J. Romanes, Life and Letters, 300—“Three additional cases of cats which have lost their tails having tailless kittens afterwards.” In his Weismannism, Romanes writes: “The truly scientific attitude of mind with regard to the problem of heredity is to say with Galton: ‘We might almost reserve our belief that the structural cells can react on the sexual elements at all, and we may be confident that at most they do so in a very faint degree; in other words, that acquired modifications are barely if at all _inherited_, in the correct sense of that word.’ ” This seems to class both Romanes and Galton on the side of Weismann in the controversy. Burbank, however, says that “acquired characters are transmitted, or I know nothing of plant life.”

A. H. Bradford, Heredity, 19, 20, illustrates the opposing views: “Human life is not a clear stream flowing from the mountains, receiving in its varied course something from a thousand rills and rivulets on the surface and in the soil, so that it is no longer pure as at the first. To this view of Darwin and Spencer, Weismann and Haeckel oppose the view that human life is rather a stream flowing underground from the mountains to the sea, and rising now and then in fountains, some of which are saline, some sulphuric, and some tinctured with iron; and that the differences are due entirely to the soil passed through in breaking forth to the surface, the mother-stream down and beneath all the salt, sulphur and iron, flowing on toward the sea substantially unchanged. If Darwin is correct, then we must change individuals in order to change their posterity. If Weismann is correct, then we must change environment in order that better individuals may be born. That which is born of the Spirit is spirit; but that which is born of spirit tainted by corruptions of the flesh is still tainted.”

The conclusion best warranted by science seems to be that of Wallace, in the Forum, August, 1890, namely, that there is always a _tendency_ to transmit acquired characters, but that only those which affect the blood and nervous system, like drunkenness and syphilis, overcome the fixed habit of the organism and make themselves permanent. Applying this principle now to the connection of Adam with the race, we regard the sin of Adam as a radical one, comparable only to the act of faith which merges the soul in Christ. It was a turning away of the whole being from the light and love of God, and a setting of the face toward darkness and death. Every subsequent act was an act in the same direction, but an act which manifested, not altered, the nature. This first act of sin deprived the nature of all moral sustenance and growth, except so far as the still immanent God counteracted the inherent tendencies to evil. Adam’s posterity inherited his corrupt nature, but they do not inherit any subsequently acquired characters, either those of their first father or of their immediate ancestors.

Bascom, Comparative Psychology, chap. VII—“Modifications, however great, like artificial disablement, that do not work into physiological structure, do not transmit themselves. The more conscious and voluntary our acquisitions are, the less are they transmitted by inheritance.” Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 88—“Heredity and individual action may combine their forces and so intensify one or more of the inherited motives that the form is affected by it and the effect may be transmitted to the offspring. So conflict of inheritances may lead to the institution of variety. Accumulation of impulses may lead to sudden revolution, and the species may be changed, not by environment, but by contest between the host of inheritances.” Visiting the sins of the fathers upon the children was thought to be outrageous doctrine, so long as it was taught only in Scripture. It is now vigorously applauded, since it takes the name of heredity. _Dale, Ephesians, 189_—“When we were young, we fought with certain sins and killed them; they trouble us no more; but their ghosts seem to rise from their graves in the distant years and to clothe themselves in the flesh and blood of our children.” See A. M. Marshall, Biological Lectures, 273; Mivart, in Harper’s Magazine, March, 1895:682; Bixby, Crisis in Morals, 176.

F. That, if all moral consequences are properly penalties, sin, considered as a sinful nature, must be the punishment of sin, considered as the act of our first parents.

But we reply that the impropriety of punishing sin with sin vanishes when we consider that the sin which is punished is our own, equally with the sin with which we are punished. The objection is valid as against the Federal theory or the theory of Mediate Imputation, but not as against the theory of Adam’s Natural Headship. To deny that God, through the operation of second causes, may punish the act of transgression by the habit and tendency which result from it, is to ignore the facts of every-day life, as well as the statements of Scripture in which sin is represented as ever reproducing itself, and with each reproduction increasing its guilt and punishment (Rom. 6:19; James 1:15.)

_Rom. 6:19_—“_as ye presented your members as servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now present your members as servants to righteousness unto sanctification_”; _Eph. 4:22_—“_waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit_”; _James 1:15_—“_Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth sin: and the sin, when it is full-grown, bringeth forth death_”; _2 Tim. 3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived._” See Meyer on _Rom. 1:24_—“_Wherefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts unto uncleanness._” All effects become in their turn causes. Schiller: “This is the very curse of evil deed, That of new evil it becomes the seed.” Tennyson, Vision of Sin: “Behold it was a crime Of sense, avenged by sense that wore with time. Another said: The crime of sense became The crime of malice, and is equal blame.” Whiton, Is Eternal Punishment Endless, 52—“The punishment of sin essentially consists in the wider spread and stronger hold of the malady of the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—‘_His own iniquities shall take the wicked._’ The habit of sinning holds the wicked ‘_with the cords of his sin_.’ Sin is self-perpetuating. The sinner gravitates from worse to worse, in an ever-deepening fall.” The least of our sins has in it a power of infinite expansion,—left to itself it would flood a world with misery and destruction.

Wisdom, 11:16—“Wherewithal a man sinneth, by the same also he shall be punished.” Shakespeare, Richard II, 5:5—“I wasted time, and now doth time waste me”; Richard III, 4:2—“I am in so far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin”; Pericles, 1:1—“One sin I know another doth provoke; Murder’s as near to lust as flame to smoke;” King Lear, 5:3—“The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices Make instruments to scourge us.” “Marlowe’s Faustus typifies the continuous degradation of a soul that has renounced its ideal, and the drawing on of one vice by another, for they go hand in hand like the Hours” (James Russell Lowell). Mrs. Humphrey Ward, David Grieve, 410—“After all, there’s not much hope when the craving returns on a man of his age, especially after some years’ interval.”

G. That the doctrine excludes all separate probation of individuals since Adam, by making their moral life a mere manifestation of tendencies received from him.

We reply that the objection takes into view only our connection with the race, and ignores the complementary and equally important fact of each man’s personal will. That personal will does more than simply express the nature; it may to a certain extent curb the nature, or it may, on the other hand, add a sinful character and influence of its own. There is, in other words, a remainder of freedom, which leaves room for personal probation, in addition to the race-probation in Adam.

Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, objects to the Augustinian view that if personal sin proceeds from original, the only thing men are guilty for is Adam’s sin; all subsequent sin is a spontaneous development; the individual will can only manifest its inborn character. But we reply that this is a misrepresentation of Augustine. He does not thus lose sight of the remainders of freedom in man (see references on page 620, in the statement of Augustine’s view, and in the section following this, on Ability, 640-644). He says that the corrupt tree may produce the wild fruit of morality, though not the divine fruit of grace. It is not true that the will is absolutely as the character. Though character is the surest index as to what the decisions of the will may be, it is not an infallible one. Adam’s first sin, and the sins of men after regeneration, prove this. Irregular, spontaneous, exceptional though these decisions are, they are still acts of the will, and they show that the agent is not _bound_ by motives nor by character.

Here is our answer to the question whether it be not a sin to propagate the race and produce offspring. Each child has a personal will which may have a probation of its own and a chance for deliverance. Denney, Studies in Theology, 87-99—“What we inherit may be said to fix our trial, but not our fate. We belong to God as well as to the past.” “_All souls are mine_” (_Ez. 18:4_); “_Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice_” (_John 18:37_). Thomas Fuller: “1. Roboam begat Abia; that is, a bad father begat a bad son; 2. Abia begat Asa; that is, a bad father begat a good son; & Asa begat Josaphat; that is, a good father a good son; 4. Josaphat begat Joram; that is, a good father a bad son. I see, Lord, from hence, that my father’s piety cannot be entailed; that is bad news for me. But I see that actual impiety is not always hereditary; that is good news for my son.” Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 121—Among the Greeks, “The popular view was that guilt is inherited; that is, that the children are punished for their fathers’ sins. The view of Æschylus, and of Sophocles also, was that a tendency towards guilt was inherited, but that this tendency does not annihilate man’s free will. If therefore the children are punished, they are punished for their own sins. But Sophocles saw the further truth that innocent children may suffer for their fathers’ sins.”

Julius Müller, Doc. Sin, 2:316—“The merely organic theory of sin leads to naturalism, which endangers not only the doctrine of a final judgment, but that of personal immortality generally.” In preaching, therefore, we should begin with the known and acknowledged sins of men. We should lay the same stress upon our connection with Adam that the Scripture does, to explain the problem of universal and inveterate sinful tendencies, to enforce our need of salvation from this common ruin, and to illustrate our connection with Christ. Scripture does not, and we need not, make our responsibility for Adam’s sin the great theme of preaching. See A. H. Strong, on Christian Individualism, and on The New Theology, in Philosophy and Religion, 156-163, 164-179.

H. That the organic unity of the race in the transgression is a thing so remote from common experience that the preaching of it neutralizes all appeals to the conscience.

But whatever of truth there is in this objection is due to the self-isolating nature of sin. Men feel the unity of the family, the profession, the nation to which they belong, and, just in proportion to the breadth of their sympathies and their experience of divine grace, do they enter into Christ’s feeling of unity with the race (_cf._ Is. 6:5; Lam. 3:39-45; Ezra 9:6; Neh. 1:6). The fact that the self-contained and self-seeking recognize themselves as responsible only for their personal acts should not prevent our pressing upon men’s attention the more searching standards of the Scriptures. Only thus can the Christian find a solution for the dark problem of a corruption which is inborn yet condemnable; only thus can the unregenerate man be led to a full knowledge of the depth of his ruin and of his absolute dependence upon God for salvation.

Identification of the individual with the nation or the race: _Is. 6:5_—“_Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips_”; _Lam. 3:42_—“_We have transgressed and have rebelled_”; _Ezra 9:6_—“_I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God; for our iniquities are increased over our head_”; _Neh. 1:6_—“_I confess the sins of the children of Israel.... Yea, I and my father’s house have sinned._” So God punishes all Israel for David’s sin of pride; so the sins of Reuben, Canaan, Achan, Gehazi, are visited on their children or descendants.

H. B. Smith, System, 296, 297—“Under the moral government of God one man may justly suffer on account of the sins of another. An organic relation of men is regarded in the great judgment of God in history.... There is evil which comes upon individuals, not as punishment for their personal sins, but still as suffering which comes under a moral government.... _Jer. 32:18_ reasserts the declaration of the second commandment, that God visits the iniquity of the fathers upon their children. It may be said that all these are merely ‘consequences’ of family or tribal or national or race relations,—‘Evil becomes cosmical by reason of fastening on relations which were originally adapted to making good cosmical:’ but then God’s _plan_ must be in the consequences—a plan administered by a moral being, over moral beings, according to moral considerations, and for moral ends; and, if that be fully taken into view, the dispute as to ’consequences’ or ’punishment’ becomes a merely verbal one.”

There is a common conscience over and above the private conscience, and it controls individuals, as appears in great crises like those at which the fall of Fort Sumter summoned men to defend the Union and the Proclamation of Emancipation sounded the death-knell of slavery. Coleridge said that original sin is the one mystery that makes all things clear; see Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 151-157. Bradford, Heredity, 34, quotes from Elam, A Physician’s Problems, 5—“An acquired and habitual vice will rarely fail to leave its trace upon one or more of the offspring, either in its original form, or one closely allied. The habit of the parent becomes the all but irresistible impulse of the child; ... the organic tendency is excited to the uttermost, and the power of will and of conscience is proportionally weakened.... So the sins of the parents are visited upon the children.”

Pascal: “It is astonishing that the mystery which is furthest removed from our knowledge—I mean the transmission of original sin—should be that without which we have no true knowledge of ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clue to our condition takes its turnings and windings, insomuch that man is more incomprehensible without the mystery than this mystery is incomprehensible to man.” Yet Pascal’s perplexity was largely due to his holding the Augustinian position that inherited sin is damning and brings eternal death, while not holding to the coördinate Augustinian position of a primary existence and act of the species in Adam; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:18. Atomism is egotistic. The purest and noblest feel most strongly that humanity is not like a heap of sand-grains or a row of bricks set on end, but that it is an organic unity. So the Christian feels for the family and for the church. So Christ, in Gethsemane, felt for the race. If it be said that the tendency of the Augustinian view is to diminish the sense of guilt for personal sins, we reply that only those who recognize _sins_ as rooted in _sin_ can properly recognize the evil of them. To such they are _symptoms_ of an apostasy from God so deep-seated and universal that nothing but infinite grace can deliver us from it.

I. That a constitution by which the sin of one individual involves in guilt and condemnation the nature of all men who descend from him is contrary to God’s justice.

We acknowledge that no human theory can fully solve the mystery of imputation. But we prefer to attribute God’s dealings to justice rather than to sovereignty. The following considerations, though partly hypothetical, may throw light upon the subject: (_a_) A probation of our common nature in Adam, sinless as he was and with full knowledge of God’s law, is more consistent with divine justice than a separate probation of each individual, with inexperience, inborn depravity, and evil example, all favoring a decision against God. (_b_) A constitution which made a common fall possible may have been indispensable to any provision of a common salvation. (_c_) Our chance for salvation as sinners under grace may be better than it would have been as sinless Adams under law. (_d_) A constitution which permitted oneness with the first Adam in the transgression cannot be unjust, since a like principle of oneness with Christ, the second Adam, secures our salvation. (_e_) There is also a _physical_ and _natural_ union with Christ which antedates the fall and which is incident to man’s creation. The immanence of Christ in humanity guarantees a continuous divine effort to remedy the disaster caused by man’s free will, and to restore the _moral_ union with God which the race has lost by the fall.

Thus our ruin and our redemption were alike wrought out without personal act of ours. As all the natural life of humanity was in Adam, so all the spiritual life of humanity was in Christ. As our old nature was corrupted in Adam and propagated to us by physical generation, so our new nature was restored in Christ and communicated to us by the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. If then we are justified upon the ground of our inbeing in Christ, we may in like manner be condemned on the ground of our inbeing in Adam.

Stearns, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:95—“The silence of Scripture respecting the precise connection between the first great sin and the sins of the millions of individuals who have lived since then is a silence that neither science nor philosophy has been, or is, able to break with a satisfactory explanation. Separate the twofold nature of man, corporate and individual. Recognize in the one the region of necessity; in the other the region of freedom. The scientific law of heredity has brought into new currency the doctrine which the old theologians sought to express under the name of original sin,—a term which had a meaning as it was at first used by Augustine, but which is an awkward misnomer if we accept any other theory but his.”

Dr. Hovey claims that the Augustinian view breaks down when applied to the connection between the justification of believers and the righteousness of Christ; for believers were not in Christ, as to the substance of their souls, when he wrought out redemption for them. But we reply that the life of Christ which makes us Christians is the same life which made atonement upon the cross and which rose from the grave for our justification. The parallel between Adam and Christ is of the nature of analogy, not of identity. With Adam, we have a connection of physical life; with Christ, a connection of spiritual life.

Stahl, Philosophie des Rechts, quoted in Olshausen’s Com. on _Rom. 5:12-21_—“Adam is the original _matter_ of humanity; Christ is its original _idea_ in God; both personally living. Mankind is one in them. Therefore Adam’s sin became the sin of all; Christ’s sacrifice the atonement for all. Every leaf of a tree may be green or wither by itself; but each suffers by the disease of the root, and recovers only by its healing. The shallower the man, so much more isolated will everything appear to him; for upon the surface all lies apart. He will see in mankind, in the nation, nay, even in the family, mere individuals, where the act of the one has no connection with that of the other. The profounder the man, the more do these inward relations of unity, proceeding from the very centre, force themselves upon him. Yea, the love of our neighbor is itself nothing but the deep feeling of this unity; for we love him only, with whom we feel and acknowledge ourselves to be one. What the Christian love of our neighbor is for the heart, that unity of race is for the understanding. If sin through one, and redemption through one, is not possible, the command to love our neighbor is also unintelligible. Christian ethics and Christian faith are therefore in truth indissolubly united. Christianity effects in history an advance like that from the animal kingdom to man, by its revealing the essential unity of men, the consciousness of which in the ancient world had vanished when the nations were separated.”

If the sins of the parents were not visited upon the children, neither could their virtues be; the possibility of the one involves the possibility of the other. If the guilt of our first father could not be transmitted to all who derive their life from him, then the justification of Christ could not be transmitted to all who derive their life from him. We do not, however, see any Scripture warrant for the theory that all men are justified from original sin by virtue of their natural connection with Christ. He who is the life of all men bestows manifold temporal blessings upon the ground of his atonement. But justification from sin is conditioned upon conscious surrender of the human will and trust in the divine mercy. The immanent Christ is ever urging man individually and collectively toward such decision. But the acceptance or rejection of the offered grace is left to man’s free will. This principle enables us properly to estimate the view of Dr. Henry E. Robins which follows.

H. E. Robins, Harmony of Ethics with Theology, 51—“All men born of Adam stand in such a relation to Christ that salvation is their birthright under promise—a birthright which can only be forfeited by their intelligent, personal, moral action, as was Esau’s.” Dr. Robins holds to an inchoate justification of all—a justification which becomes actual and complete only when the soul closes with Christ’s offer to the sinner. We prefer to say that humanity in Christ is ideally justified because Christ himself is justified, but that individual men are justified only when they consciously appropriate his offered grace or surrender themselves to his renewing Spirit. Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 312—“The grace of God is as organic in its relation to man as is the evil in his nature. Grace also reigns wherever justice reigns.” William Ashmore, on the New Trial of the Sinner, in Christian Review, 26:245-264—“There is a gospel of nature commensurate with the law of nature; _Rom. 3:22_—‘_unto all, and upon all them that believe_’; the first ‘_all_’ is unlimited; the second ‘_all_’ is limited to those who believe.”

R. W. Dale, Ephesians, 180—“Our fortunes were identified with the fortunes of Christ; in the divine thought and purpose we were inseparable from him. Had we been true and loyal to the divine idea, the energy of Christ’s righteousness would have drawn us upward to height after height of goodness and joy, until we ascended from this earthly life to the larger powers and loftier services and richer delights of other and diviner worlds; and still, through one golden age of intellectual and ethical and spiritual growth after another, we should have continued to rise towards Christ’s transcendent and infinite perfection. But we sinned; and as the union between Christ and us could not be broken without the final and irrevocable defeat of the divine purpose, Christ was drawn down from the serene heavens to the confused and troubled life of our race, to pain, to temptation, to anguish, to the cross and to the grave, and so the mystery of his atonement for our sin was consummated.”

For replies to the foregoing and other objections, see Schaff, in Bib. Sac., 5:230; Shedd, Sermons to the Nat. Man, 266-284; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 507-509, 529-544; Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 134-188; Edwards, Original Sin, in Works, 2:473-510; Atwater, on Calvinism in Doctrine and Life, in Princeton Review, 1875:73; Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 96-100. _Per contra_, see Moxom, in Bap. Rev., 1881:273-287; Park, Discourses, 210-233; Bradford, Heredity, 237.

Section VI.—Consequences Of Sin To Adam’s Posterity.

As the result of Adam’s transgression, all his posterity are born in the same state into which he fell. But since law is the all-comprehending demand of harmony with God, all moral consequences flowing from transgression are to be regarded as sanctions of law, or expressions of the divine displeasure through the constitution of things which he has established. Certain of these consequences, however, are earlier recognized than others and are of minor scope; it will therefore be useful to consider them under the three aspects of depravity, guilt, and penalty.

I. Depravity.

By this we mean, on the one hand, the lack of original righteousness or of holy affection toward God, and, on the other hand, the corruption of the moral nature, or bias toward evil. That such depravity exists has been abundantly shown, both from Scripture and from reason, in our consideration of the universality of sin.

Salvation is twofold: deliverance from the evil—the penalty and the power of sin; and accomplishment of the good—likeness to God and realization of the true idea of humanity. It includes all these for the race as well as for the individual: removal of the barriers that keep men from each other; and the perfecting of society in communion with God; or, in other words, the kingdom of God on earth. It was the nature of man, when he first came from the hand of God, to fear, love, and trust God above all things. This tendency toward God has been lost; sin has altered and corrupted man’s innermost nature. In place of this bent toward God there is a fearful bent toward evil. Depravity is both negative—absence of love and of moral likeness to God—and positive—presence of manifold tendencies to evil. Two questions only need detain us:

1. Depravity partial or total?

The Scriptures represent human nature as totally depraved. The phrase “total depravity,” however, is liable to misinterpretation, and should not be used without explanation. By the total depravity of universal humanity we mean:

A. Negatively,—not that every sinner is: (_a_) Destitute of conscience,—for the existence of strong impulses to right, and of remorse for wrong-doing, show that conscience is often keen; (_b_) devoid of all qualities pleasing to men, and useful when judged by a human standard,—for the existence of such qualities is recognized by Christ; (_c_) prone to every form of sin,—for certain forms of sin exclude certain others; (_d_) intense as he can be in his selfishness and opposition to God,—for he becomes worse every day.

(_a_) _John 8:9_—“_And they, when they heard it, went out one by one, beginning from the eldest, even unto the last_” (_John 7:53-8:11_, though not written by John, is a perfectly true narrative, descended from the apostolic age). The muscles of a dead frog’s leg will contract when a current of electricity is sent into them. So the dead soul will thrill at touch of the divine law. Natural conscience, combined with the principle of self-love, may even prompt choice of the good, though no love for God is in the choice. Bengel: “We have lost our likeness to God; but there remains notwithstanding an indelible nobility which we ought to revere both in ourselves and in others. We still have remained men, to be conformed to that likeness, through the divine blessing to which man’s will should subscribe. This they forget who speak evil of human nature. Absalom fell out of his father’s favor; but the people, for all that, recognized in him the son of the king.”

(_b_) _Mark 10:21_—“_And Jesus looking upon him loved him._” These very qualities, however, may show that their possessors are sinning against great light and are the more guilty; _cf._ _Mal. 1:6_—“_A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?_” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:75—“The assertor of the total depravity of human nature, of its absolute blindness and incapacity, presupposes in himself and in others the presence of a criterion or principle of good, in virtue of which he discerns himself to be wholly evil; yet the very proposition that human nature is wholly evil would be unintelligible unless it were false.... Consciousness of sin is a negative sign of the possibility of restoration. But it is not in itself proof that the possibility will become actuality.” A ruined temple may have beautiful fragments of fluted columns, but it is no proper habitation for the god for whose worship it was built.

(_c_) _Mat. 23:23_—“_ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy, and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to have left the other undone_”; _Rom. 2:14_—“_when Gentiles that have not the law do by nature the things of the law, these, not having the law, are the law unto themselves; in that they show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing witness therewith._” The sin of miserliness may exclude the sin of luxury; the sin of pride may exclude the sin of sensuality. Shakespeare, Othello, 2:3—“It hath pleased the devil Drunkenness to give place to the devil Wrath.” Franklin Carter, Life of Mark Hopkins, 321-323—Dr. Hopkins did not think that the sons of God should describe themselves as once worms or swine or vipers. Yet he held that man could sink to a degradation below the brute: “No brute is any more capable of rebelling against God than of serving him; is any more capable of sinking below the level of its own nature than of rising to the level of man. No brute can be either a fool or a fiend.... In the way that sin and corruption came into the spiritual realm we find one of those analogies to what takes place in the lower forms of being that show the unity of the system throughout. All disintegration and corruption of matter is from the domination of a lower over a higher law. The body begins to return to its original elements as the lower chemical and physical forces begin to gain ascendancy over the higher force of life. In the same way all sin and corruption in man is from his yielding to a lower law or principle of action in opposition to the demands of one that is higher.”

(_d_) _Gen. 15:16_—“_the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet full_”; _2 Tim. 3:13_—“_evil men and impostors shall wax worse and worse._” Depravity is not simply being deprived of good. Depravation (_de_, and _pravus_, crooked, perverse) is more than deprivation. Left to himself man tends downward, and his sin increases day by day. But there is a divine influence within which quickens conscience and kindles aspiration for better things. The immanent Christ is “_the light which lighteth every man_” (_John 1:9_). Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “In so far as God’s Spirit is at work among men and they receive ‘_the Light which lighteth every man_,’ we must qualify our statement of total depravity. Depravity is not so much a state as a tendency. With growing complexity of life, sin becomes more complex. Adam’s sin was not the worst. ‘_It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgment, than for thee_’ (_Mat. 11:24_).”

Men are not yet in the condition of demons. Only here and there have they attained to “a disinterested love of evil.” Such men are few, and they were not born so. There are degrees in depravity. E. G. Robinson: “There is a good streak left in the devil yet.” Even Satan will become worse than he now is. The phrase “total depravity” has respect only to relations to God, and it means incapability of doing anything which in the sight of God is a good act. No act is perfectly good that does not proceed from a true heart and constitute an expression of that heart. Yet we have no right to say that every act of an unregenerate man is displeasing to God. Right acts from right motives are good, whether performed by a Christian or by one who is unrenewed in heart. Such acts, however, are always prompted by God, and thanks for them are due to God and not to him who performed them.

B. Positively,—that every sinner is: (_a_) totally destitute of that love to God which constitutes the fundamental and all-inclusive demand of the law; (_b_) chargeable with elevating some lower affection or desire above regard for God and his law; (_c_) supremely determined, in his whole inward and outward life, by a preference of self to God; (_d_) possessed of an aversion to God which, though sometimes latent, becomes active enmity, so soon as God’s will comes into manifest conflict with his own; (_e_) disordered and corrupted in every faculty, through this substitution of selfishness for supreme affection toward God; (_f_) credited with no thought, emotion, or act of which divine holiness can fully approve; (_g_) subject to a law of constant progress in depravity, which he has no recuperative energy to enable him successfully to resist.

(_a_) _John 5:42_—“_But I know you, that ye have not the love of God in yourselves._” (_b_) _2 Tim. 3:4_—“_lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God_”; _cf._ _Mal 1:6_—“_A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I am a father, where is mine honor? and if I am a master, where is my fear?_” (_c_) _2 Tim. 3:2_—“_lovers of self_”; (_d_) _Rom. 8:7_—“_the mind of the flesh is enmity against God._” (_e_) _Eph. 4:18_—“_darkened in their understanding.... hardening of their heart_”; _Tit. 1:15_—“_both their mind and their conscience are defiled_”; _2 Cor. 7:1_—“_defilement of flesh and spirit_”; _Heb. 3:12_—“_an evil heart of unbelief_”; (_f_) _Rom. 3:9_—“_they are all under sin_”; _7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing._” (_g_) _Rom. 7:18_—“_to will is present with me, but to do that which is good is not_”; _23_—“_law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is in my members._”

Every sinner would prefer a milder law and a different administration. But whoever does not love God’s law does not truly love God. The sinner seeks to secure his own interests rather than God’s. Even so-called religious acts he performs with preference of his own good to God’s glory. He disobeys, and always has disobeyed, the fundamental law of love. He is like a railway train on a down grade, and the brakes must be applied by God or destruction is sure. There are latent passions in every heart which if let loose would curse the world. Many a man who escaped from the burning Iroquois Theatre in Chicago, proved himself a brute and a demon, by trampling down fugitives who cried for mercy. Denney, Studies in Theology, 83—“The depravity which sin has produced in human nature extends to the whole of it. There is no part of man’s nature which is unaffected by it. Man’s nature is all of a piece, and what affects it at all affects it altogether. When the conscience is violated by disobedience to the will of God, the moral understanding is darkened, and the will is enfeebled. We are not constructed in water-tight compartments, one of which might be ruined while the others remained intact.” Yet over against total depravity, we must set total redemption; over against original sin, original grace. Christ is in every human heart mitigating the affects of sin, urging to repentance, and “_able to save to the uttermost them that draw near unto God through him_” (_Heb. 7:25_). Even the unregenerate heathen may “_put away ... the old man_” and “_put on the new man_” (_Eph. 4:23, 24_), being delivered “_out of the body of this death ... through Jesus Christ our Lord_” (_Rom. 7:24, 25_).

H. B. Smith, System, 277—“By total depravity is never meant that men are as bad as they can be; nor that they have not, in their natural condition, certain amiable qualities; nor that they may not have virtues in a limited sense (_justitia civilis_). But it is meant (1) that depravity, or the sinful condition of man, infects the whole man: intellect, feeling, heart and will; (2) that in each unrenewed person some lower affection is supreme; and (3) that each such is destitute of love to God. On these positions: as to (1) the power of depravity over the _whole_ man, we have given proof from Scripture; as to (2) the fact that in every unrenewed man some lower affection is supreme, experience may be always appealed to; men know that their supreme affection is fixed on some lower good—intellect, heart, and will going together in it; or that some form of selfishness is predominant—using selfish in a general sense—self seeks its happiness in some inferior object, giving to that its supreme affection; as to (3) that every unrenewed person is without supreme love to God, it is the point which is of greatest force, and is to be urged with the strongest effect, in setting forth the depth and ‘totality’ of man’s sinfulness: unrenewed men have not that supreme love of God which is the substance of the first and great command.” See also Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 248; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 510-522; Chalmers, Institutes, 1:519-542; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:516-531; Princeton Review, 1877:470.

2. Ability or inability?

In opposition to the plenary ability taught by the Pelagians, the gracious ability of the Arminians, and the natural ability of the New School theologians, the Scriptures declare the total inability of the sinner to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God’s sight (see Scripture proof below). A proper conception also of the law, as reflecting the holiness of God and as expressing the ideal of human nature, leads us to the conclusion that no man whose powers are weakened by either original or actual sin can of himself come up to that perfect standard. Yet there is a certain remnant of freedom left to man. The sinner _can_ (_a_) avoid the sin against the Holy Ghost; (_b_) choose the less sin rather than the greater; (_c_) refuse altogether to yield to certain temptations; (_d_) do outwardly good acts, though with imperfect motives; (_e_) seek God from motives of self-interest.

But on the other hand the sinner _cannot_ (_a_) by a single volition bring his character and life into complete conformity to God’s law; (_b_) change his fundamental preference for self and sin to supreme love for God; nor (_c_) do any act, however insignificant, which shall meet with God’s approval or answer fully to the demands of law.

So long, then, as there are states of intellect, affection and will which man cannot, by any power of volition or of contrary choice remaining to him, bring into subjection to God, it cannot be said that he possesses any sufficient ability of himself to do God’s will; and if a basis for man’s responsibility and guilt be sought, it must be found, if at all, not in his plenary ability, his gracious ability, or his natural ability, but in his _original_ ability, when he came, in Adam, from the hands of his Maker.

Man’s present inability is natural, in the sense of being inborn,—it is not acquired by our personal act, but is congenital. It is not natural, however, as resulting from the original limitations of human nature, or from the subsequent loss of any essential faculty of that nature. Human nature, at its first creation, was endowed with ability perfectly to keep the law of God. Man has not, even by his sin, lost his essential faculties of intellect, affection, or will. He has weakened those faculties, however, so that they are now unable to work up to the normal measure of their powers. But more especially has man given to every faculty a bent away from God which renders him morally unable to render spiritual obedience. The inability to good which now characterizes human nature is an inability that results from sin, and is itself sin.

We hold, therefore, to an inability which is both natural and moral,—moral, as having its source in the self-corruption of man’s moral nature and the fundamental aversion of his will to God;—natural, as being inborn, and as affecting with partial paralysis all his natural powers of intellect, affection, conscience, and will. For his inability, in both these aspects of it, man is responsible.

The sinner can do one very important thing, _viz._: give attention to divine truth. _Ps. 119:59_—“_I thought on my ways, And turned my feet unto thy testimonies._” G. W. Northrup: “The sinner can seek God from: (_a_) self-love, regard for his own interest; (_b_) feeling of duty, sense of obligation, awakened conscience; (_c_) gratitude for blessings already received; (_d_) aspiration after the infinite and satisfying.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 85—“A witty French moralist has said that God does not need to grudge to his enemies even what they call their virtues; and neither do God’s ministers.... But there is _one_ thing which man cannot do _alone_,—he cannot bring his state into harmony with his nature. When a man has been discovered who has been able, without Christ, to reconcile himself to God and to obtain dominion over the world and over sin, _then_ the doctrine of inability, or of the bondage due to sin, may be denied; _then_, but _not till then_.” The Free Church of Scotland, in the Declaratory Act of 1892, says “that, in holding and teaching, according to the Confession of Faith, the corruption of man’s whole nature as fallen, this church also maintains that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in the image of God; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of duty; that he is responsible for compliance with the moral law and with the gospel; and that, although unable without the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy.”

To the use of the term “natural ability” to designate merely the sinner’s possession of all the constituent faculties of human nature, we object upon the following grounds:

A. Quantitative lack.—The phrase “natural ability” is misleading, since it seems to imply that the existence of the mere powers of intellect, affection, and will is a sufficient quantitative qualification for obedience to God’s law, whereas these powers have been weakened by sin, and are naturally unable, instead of naturally able, to render back to God with interest the talent first bestowed. Even if the moral direction of man’s faculties were a normal one, the effect of hereditary and of personal sin would render naturally impossible that large likeness to God which the law of absolute perfection demands. Man has not therefore the natural ability perfectly to obey God. He had it once, but he lost it with the first sin.

When Jean Paul Richter says of himself: “I have made of myself all that could be made out of the stuff,” he evinces a self-complacency which is due to self-ignorance and lack of moral insight. When a man realizes the extent of the law’s demands, he sees that without divine help obedience is impossible. John B. Gough represented the confirmed drunkard’s efforts at reformation as a man’s walking up Mount Etna knee-deep in burning lava, or as one’s rowing against the rapids of Niagara.

B. Qualitative lack.—Since the law of God requires of men not so much right single volitions as conformity to God in the whole inward state of the affections and will, the power of contrary choice in single volitions does not constitute a natural ability to obey God, unless man can by those single volitions change the underlying state of the affections and will. But this power man does not possess. Since God judges all moral action in connection with the general state of the heart and life, natural ability to good involves not only a full complement of faculties but also a bias of the affections and will toward God. Without this bias there is no possibility of right moral action, and where there is no such possibility, there can be no ability either natural or moral.

Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 21—“Hatred is like love Herein, that it, by only being, grows. Until at last usurping quite the man, It overgrows him like a polypus.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 1:53—“The ideal is the revelation in me of a power that is mightier than my own. The supreme command ‘Thou oughtest’ is the utterance, only different in form, of the same voice in my spirit which says ‘Thou canst’; and my highest spiritual attainments are achieved, not by self-assertion, but by self-renunciation and self-surrender to the infinite life of truth and righteousness that is living and reigning within me.” This conscious inability in one’s self, together with reception of “_the strength which God supplieth_” (_1 Pet. 4:11_), is the secret of Paul’s courage; _2 Cor. 12:10_—“_when I am weak, then am I strong_”; _Phil. 2:12, 13_—“_work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure._”

C. No such ability known.—In addition to the psychological argument just mentioned, we may urge another from experience and observation. These testify that man is cognizant of no such ability. Since no man has ever yet, by the exercise of his natural powers, turned himself to God or done an act truly good in God’s sight, the existence of a natural ability to do good is a pure assumption. There is no scientific warrant for inferring the existence of an ability which has never manifested itself in a single instance since history began.

“Solomon could not keep the Proverbs,—so he wrote them.” The book of Proverbs needs for its complement the New Testament explanation of helplessness and offer of help: _John 15:5_—“_apart from me ye can do nothing_”; _6:37_—“_him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out._” The palsied man’s inability to walk is very different from his indisposition to accept a remedy. The paralytic cannot climb the cliff, but by a rope let down to him he may be lifted up, provided he will permit himself to be tied to it. Darling, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., July, 1901:505—“If bidden, we can stretch out a withered arm; but God does not require this of one born armless. We may ‘_hear the voice of the Son of God_’ and ‘_live_’ (_John 5:25_), but we shall not bring out of the tomb faculties not possessed before death.”

D. Practical evil of the belief.—The practical evil attending the preaching of natural ability furnishes a strong argument against it. The Scriptures, in their declarations of the sinner’s inability and helplessness, aim to shut him up to sole dependence upon God for salvation. The doctrine of natural ability, assuring him that he is able at once to repent and turn to God, encourages delay by putting salvation at all times within his reach. If a single volition will secure it, he may be saved as easily to-morrow as to-day. The doctrine of inability presses men to immediate acceptance of God’s offers, lest the day of grace for them pass by.

Those who care most for self are those in whom self becomes thoroughly subjected and enslaved to external influences. _Mat. 16:25_—“_whosoever would save his life shall lose it._” The selfish man is a straw on the surface of a rushing stream. He becomes more and more a victim of circumstance, until at last he has no more freedom than the brute. _Ps. 49:20_—“_Man that is in honor, and understandeth not, Is like the beasts that perish_;” see R. T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 121. Robert Browning, unpublished poem: “ ‘Would a man ’scape the rod?’ Rabbi Ben Karshook saith, ‘See that he turn to God The day before his death.’ ‘Aye, could a man inquire When it shall come?’ I say. The Rabbi’s eye shoots fire—‘Then let him turn to-day.’ ”

Let us repeat, however, that the denial to man of all ability, whether natural or moral, to turn himself to God or to do that which is truly good in God’s sight, does not imply a denial of man’s power to order his external life in many particulars conformably to moral rules, or even to attain the praise of men for virtue. Man has still a range of freedom in acting out his nature, and he may to a certain limited extent act down upon that nature, and modify it, by isolated volitions externally conformed to God’s law. He may choose higher or lower forms of selfish action, and may pursue these chosen courses with various degrees of selfish energy. Freedom of choice, within this limit, is by no means incompatible with complete bondage of the will in spiritual things.

_John 1:13_—“_born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God_”; _3:5_—“_Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God_”; _6:44_—“_No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him_”; _8:34_—“_Every one that committeth sin is the bondservant of sin_”; _15:4, 5_—“_the branch cannot bear fruit of itself ... apart from me ye can do nothing_”; _Rom. 7:18_—“_in me, that is, in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing; for to will is present with me, but to do that which it good is not_”; _24_—“_Wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me out of the body of this death?_” _8:7, 8_—“_the mind of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can it be: and they that are is the flesh cannot please God_”; _1 Cor. 2:14_—“_the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; __ and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged_”; _2 Cor. 3:5_—“_not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_dead through your trespasses and sins_”; _8-10_—“_by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works_”; _Heb. 11:6_—“_without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto him._”

Kant’s “I ought, therefore I can” is the relic of man’s original consciousness of freedom—the freedom with which man was endowed at his creation—a freedom, now, alas! destroyed by sin. Or it may be the courage of the soul in which God is working anew by his Spirit. For Kant’s “Ich soll, also Ich kann,” Julius Müller would substitute: “Ich sollte freilich können, aber Ich kann nicht”—“I ought indeed to be able, but I am not able.” Man truly repents only when he learns that his sin has made him unable to repent without the renewing grace of God. Emerson, in his poem entitled “Voluntariness,” says: “So near is grandeur to our dust, So near is God to man, When duty whispers low, _Thou must_, The youth replies, _I can_.” But, apart from special grace, all the ability which man at present possesses comes far short of fulfilling the spiritual demands of God’s law. Parental and civil law implies a certain kind of power. Puritan theology called man “_free among the dead_” (_Ps. 88:5_, A. V.). There was a range of freedom inside of slavery,—the will was “a drop of water imprisoned in a solid crystal” (Oliver Wendell Holmes). The man who kills himself is as dead as if he had been killed by another (Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:106).

Westminster Confession, 9:3—“Man by his fall into a state of sin hath wholly lost all ability of will to any spiritual good accompanying salvation; so, as a natural man, being altogether averse from that good and dead in sin, he is not able by his own strength to convert himself, or to prepare himself thereunto.” Hopkins, Works, 1:233-235—“So long as the sinner’s opposition of heart and will continues, he cannot come to Christ. It is impossible, and will continue so, until his unwillingness and opposition be removed by a change and renovation of his heart by divine grace, and he be made willing in the day of God’s power.” Hopkins speaks of “utter inability to obey the law of God, yea, utter impossibility.”

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:257-277—“Inability consists, not in the loss of any faculty of the soul, nor in the loss of free agency, for the sinner determines his own acts, nor in mere disinclination to what is good. It arises from want of spiritual discernment, and hence want of proper affections. Inability belongs only to the things of the Spirit. What man cannot do is to repent, believe, regenerate himself. He cannot put forth any act which merits the approbation of God. Sin cleaves to all he does, and from its dominion he cannot free himself. The distinction between natural and moral ability is of no value. Shall we say that the uneducated man can understand and appreciate the Iliad, because he has all the faculties that the scholar has? Shall we say that man can love God, if he will? This is false, if will means volition. It is a truism, if will means affection. The Scriptures never thus address men and tell them that they have power to do all that God requires. It is dangerous to teach a man this, for until a man feels that he can do nothing, God never saves him. Inability is involved in the doctrine of original sin; in the necessity of the Spirit’s influence in regeneration. Inability is consistent with obligation, when inability arises from sin and is removed by the removal of sin.”

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:213-257, and in South Church Sermons, 33-59—“The origin of this helplessness lies, not in creation, but in sin. God can command the ten talents or the five which he originally committed to us, together with a diligent and faithful improvement of them. Because the servant has lost the talents, is he discharged from obligation to return them with interest? Sin contains in itself the element of servitude. In the very act of transgressing the law of God, there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less able than before to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. To do wrong destroys the power to do right. Total depravity carries with it total impotence. The voluntary faculty may be ruined from within; may be made impotent to holiness, by its own action; may surrender itself to appetite and selfishness with such an intensity and earnestness, that it becomes unable to convert itself and overcome its wrong inclination.” See Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,—noticed in Andover Rev., June, 1886:664. We can merge ourselves in the life of another—either bad or good; can almost transform ourselves into Satan or into Christ, so as to say with Paul, in _Gal 2:20_—“_it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me_”; or be minions of “_the spirit that now worketh in the sons of disobedience_” (_Eph. 2:2_). But if we yield ourselves to the influence of Satan, the recovery of our true personality becomes increasingly difficult, and at last impossible.

There is nothing in literature sadder or more significant than the self-bewailing of Charles Lamb, the gentle Elia, who writes in his Last Essays, 214—“Could the youth to whom the flavor of the first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering of some newly discovered paradise, look into my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when he shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will; to see his destruction, and have no power to stop it; to see all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise; to bear about the piteous spectacle of his own ruin,—could he see my fevered eye, fevered with the last night’s drinking, and feverishly looking for to-night’s repetition of the folly; could he but feel the body of this death out of which I cry hourly, with feebler outcry, to be delivered, it were enough to make him dash the sparkling beverage to the earth, in all the pride of its mantling temptation.”

For the Arminian “gracious ability,” see Raymond, Syst. Theol., 2:130; McClintock & Strong, Cyclopædia, 10:990. _Per contra_, see Calvin, Institutes, bk. 2, chap. 2 (1:282); Edwards, Works, 2:464 (Orig. Sin, 3:1); Bennet Tyler, Works, 73; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 523-528; Cunningham, Hist. Theology, 1:567-639; Turretin, 10:4:19; A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology, 260-269; Thornwell, Theology, 1:394-399; Alexander, Moral Science, 89-208; Princeton Essays, 1:224-239; Richards, Lectures on Theology. On real as distinguished from formal freedom, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:1-225. On Augustine’s _lineamenta extrema_ (of the divine image in man), see Wiggers, Augustinism and Pelagianism, 119, note. See also art. by A. H. Strong, on Modified Calvinism, or Remainders of Freedom in Man, in Bap. Rev., 1883:219-242; and reprinted in the author’s Philosophy and Religion, 114-128.

II. Guilt.

1. Nature of guilt.

By guilt we mean desert of punishment, or obligation to render satisfaction to God’s justice for self-determined violation of law. There is a reaction of holiness against sin, which the Scripture denominates “the wrath of God” (Rom. 1:18). Sin is in us, either as act or state; God’s punitive righteousness is over against the sinner, as something to be feared; guilt is a relation of the sinner to that righteousness, namely, the sinner’s desert of punishment.

Guilt is related to sin as the burnt spot to the blaze. Schiller, Die Braut von Messina: “Das Leben ist der Güter höchstes nicht; Der Uebel grösstes aber ist die Schuld”—“Life is not the highest of possessions; the greatest of ills, however, is guilt.” Delitzsch: “Die Schamröthe ist die Abendröthe der untergegangenen Sonne der ursprünglichen Gerechtigkeit”—“The blush of shame is the evening red after the sun of original righteousness has gone down.” E. G. Robinson: “Pangs of conscience do not arise from the fear of penalty,—they are the penalty itself.” See chapter on Fig-leaves, in McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 142-154—“Spiritual shame for sin sought an outward symbol, and found it in the nakedness of the lower parts of the body.”

The following remarks may serve both for proof and for explanation:

A. Guilt is incurred only through self-determined transgression either on the part of man’s nature or person. We are guilty only of that sin which we have originated or have had part in originating. Guilt is not, therefore, mere liability to punishment, without participation in the transgression for which the punishment is inflicted,—in other words, there is no such thing as constructive guilt under the divine government. We are accounted guilty only for what we have done, either personally or in our first parents, and for what we are, in consequence of such doing.

_Ez. 18:20_—“_the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father_”—, as Calvin says (Com. _in loco_): “The son shall not bear the father’s iniquity, since he shall receive the reward due to himself, and shall bear his own burden.... All are guilty through their own fault.... Every one perishes through his own iniquity.” In other words, the whole race fell in Adam, and is punished for its own sin in him, not for the sins of immediate ancestors, nor for the sin of Adam as a person foreign to us. _John 9:3_—“_Neither did this man sin, nor his parents_” (that he should be born blind)—Do not attribute to any special later sin what is a consequence of the sin of the race—the first sin which “brought death into the world, and all our woe.” Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:195-213.

B. Guilt is an objective result of sin, and is not to be confounded with subjective pollution, or depravity. Every sin, whether of nature or person, is an offense against God (Ps. 51:4-6), an act or state of opposition to his will, which has for its effect God’s personal wrath (Ps. 7:11; John 3:18, 36), and which must be expiated either by punishment or by atonement (Heb. 9:22). Not only does sin, as unlikeness to the divine purity, involve _pollution_,—it also, as antagonism to God’s holy will, involves _guilt_. This guilt, or obligation to satisfy the outraged holiness of God, is explained in the New Testament by the terms “debtor” and “debt” (Mat. 6:12; Luke 13:4; Mat. 5:21; Rom. 3:19; 6:23; Eph. 2:3). Since guilt, the objective result of sin, is entirely distinct from depravity, the subjective result, human nature may, as in Christ, have the guilt without the depravity (2 Cor. 5:21), or may, as in the Christian, have the depravity without the guilt (1 John 1:7, 8).

_Ps. 51:4-6_—“_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, And done that which is evil in thy sight; That thou mayest be justified when thou speakest, And be clear when thou judgest_”; _7:11_—“_God is a righteous judge, Yea, a God that hath indignation every day_”; _John 3:18_—“_he that believeth not hath been judged already_”; _36_—“_he that obeyeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him_”; _Heb. 9:22_—“_apart from shedding of blood there is no remission_”; _Mat. 6:12_—“_debts_”; _Luke 13:4_—“_offenders_” (marg. “_debtors_”); _Mat. 5:21_—“_shall be in danger of_ [exposed to] _the judgment_”; _Rom. 3:19_—“_that ... all the world may be brought under the judgment of God_”; _6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_”—death is sin’s desert; _Eph. 2:3_—“_by nature children of wrath_”; _2 Cor. 5:21_—“_Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf_”; _1 John 1:7, 8_—“_the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin._ [Yet] _If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us._”

Sin brings in its train not only depravity but guilt, not only _macula_ but _reatus_. Scripture sets forth the _pollution_ of sin by its similies of “a cage of unclean birds” and of “wounds, bruises, and putrefying sores”; by leprosy and Levitical uncleanness, under the old dispensation; by death and the corruption of the grave, under both the old and the new. But Scripture sets forth the _guilt_ of sin, with equal vividness, in the fear of Cain and in the remorse of Judas. The revulsion of God’s holiness from sin, and its demand for satisfaction, are reflected in the shame and remorse of every awakened conscience. There is an instinctive feeling in the sinner’s heart that sin will be punished, and ought to be punished. But the Holy Spirit makes this need of reparation so deeply felt that the soul has no rest until its debt is paid. The offending church member who is truly penitent loves the law and the church which excludes him, and would not think it faithful if it did not. So Jesus, when laden with the guilt of the race, pressed forward to the cross, saying: “_I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!_” (_Luke 12:50; Mark 10:32_).

All sin involves guilt, and the sinful soul itself demands penalty, so that all will ultimately go where they most desire to be. All the great masters in literature have recognized this. The inextinguishable thirst for reparation constitutes the very essence of tragedy. The Greek tragedians are full of it, and Shakespeare is its most impressive teacher: Measure for Measure, 5:1—“I am sorry that such sorrow I procure, And so deep sticks it in my penitent heart That I crave death more willingly than mercy; ’Tis my deserving, and I do entreat it”; Cymbeline, 5:4—“and so, great Powers, If you will take this audit, take this life, And cancel these cold bonds!... Desired, more than constrained, to satisfy, ... take No stricter render of me than my all”; that is, settle the account with me by taking my life, for nothing less than that will pay my debt. And later writers follow Shakespeare. Marguerite, in Goethe’s Faust, fainting in the great cathedral under the solemn reverberations of the Dies Iræ; Dimmesdale, in Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, putting himself side by side with Hester Prynne, his victim, in her place of obloquy; Bulwer’s Eugene Aram, coming forward, though unsuspected, to confess the murder he had committed, all these are illustrations of the inner impulse that moves even a sinful soul to satisfy the claims of justice upon it. See A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 215, 216. On Hawthorne, see Hutton, Essays, 2:370-416—“In the Scarlet Letter, the minister gains fresh reverence and popularity as the very fruit of the passionate anguish with which his heart is consumed. Frantic with the stings of unacknowledged guilt, he is yet taught by these very stings to understand the hearts and stir the consciences of others.” See also Dinsmore, Atonement in Literature and Life.

Nor are such scenes confined to the pages of romance. In a recent trial at Syracuse, Earl, the wife-murderer, thanked the jury that had convicted him; declared the verdict just; begged that no one would interfere to stay the course of justice; said that the greatest blessing that could be conferred on him would be to let him suffer the penalty of his crime. In Plattsburg, at the close of another trial in which the accused was a life-convict who had struck down a fellow-convict with an axe, the jury, after being out two hours, came in to ask the Judge to explain the difference between murder in the first and second degree. Suddenly the prisoner rose and said: “This was not a murder in the second degree. It was a deliberate and premeditated murder. I know that I have done wrong, that I ought to confess the truth, and that I ought to be hanged.” This left the jury nothing to do but render their verdict, and the Judge sentenced the murderer to be hanged, as he confessed he deserved to be. In 1891, Lars Ostendahl, the most famous preacher of Norway, startled his hearers by publicly confessing that he had been guilty of immorality, and that he could no longer retain his pastorate. He begged his people for the sake of Christ to forgive him and not to desert the poor in his asylums. He was not only preacher, but also head of a great philanthropic work.

Such is the movement and demand of the enlightened conscience. The lack of conviction that crime ought to be punished is one of the most certain signs of moral decay in either the individual or the nation (_Ps. 97:10_—“_Ye that love the Lord, hate evil_”; _149:6_—“_Let the high praises of God be in their mouth, And a two-edged sword in their hand_”—to execute God’s judgment upon iniquity).

This relation of sin to God shows us how Christ is “_made sin on our behalf_” (_2 Cor. 5:21_). Since Christ is the immanent God, he is also essential humanity, the universal man, the life of the race. All the nerves and sensibilities of humanity meet in him. He is the central brain to which and through which all ideas must pass. He is the central heart to which and through which all pains must be communicated. You cannot telephone to your friend across the town without first ringing up the central office. You cannot injure your neighbor without first injuring Christ. Each one of us can say of him: “_Against thee, thee only, have I sinned_” (_Ps. 51:4_). Because of his central and all-inclusive humanity, Christ can feel all the pangs of shame and suffering which rightfully belong to sinners, but which they cannot feel, because their sin has stupefied and deadened them. The Messiah, if he be truly man, must be a suffering Messiah. For the very reason of his humanity he must bear in his own person all the guilt of humanity and must be “_the Lamb of God who_” takes, and so “_takes away the sin of the world_” (_John 1:29_).

Guilt and depravity are not only distinguishable in thought,—they are also separable in fact. The convicted murderer might repent and become pure, yet he might still be under obligation to suffer the punishment of his crime. The Christian is freed from guilt (_Rom. 8:1_), but he is not yet freed from depravity (_Rom. 7:23_). Christ, on the other hand, was under obligation to suffer (_Luke 24:26_; _Acts 3:18_; _26:23_), while yet he was without sin (_Heb. 7:26_). In the book entitled Modern Religious Thought, 3-29, R. J. Campbell has an essay on The Atonement, with which, apart from its view as to the origin of moral evil in God, we are in substantial agreement. He holds that “to relieve men from their sense of guilt, objective atonement is necessary,”—we would say: to relieve men from guilt itself—the obligation to suffer. “If Christ be the eternal Son of God, that side of the divine nature which has gone forth in creation, if he contains humanity and is present in every article and act of human experience, then he is associated with the existence of the primordial evil.... He and only he can sever the entail between man and his responsibility for personal sin. Christ has not _sinned_ in man, but he takes responsibility for that experience of evil into which humanity is born, and the yielding to which constitutes sin. He goes forth to suffer, and actually does suffer, in man. The eternal Son in whom humanity is contained is therefore a sufferer since creation began. This mysterious passion of Deity must continue until redemption is consummated and humanity restored to God. Thus every consequence of human ill is felt in the experience of Christ. Thus Christ not only assumes the guilt but bears the punishment of every human soul.” We claim however that the necessity of this suffering lies, not in the needs of man, but in the holiness of God.

C. Guilt, moreover, as an objective result of sin, is not to be confounded with the subjective consciousness of guilt (Lev. 5:17). In the condemnation of conscience, God’s condemnation partially and prophetically manifests itself (1 John 3:20). But guilt is primarily a relation to God, and only secondarily a relation to conscience. Progress in sin is marked by diminished sensitiveness of moral insight and feeling. As “the greatest of sins is to be conscious of none,” so guilt may be great, just in proportion to the absence of consciousness of it (Ps. 19:12; 51:6; Eph. 4:18, 19—ἀπηλγηκότες). There is no evidence, however, that the voice of conscience can be completely or finally silenced. The time for repentance may pass, but not the time for remorse. Progress in holiness, on the other hand, is marked by increasing apprehension of the depth and extent of our sinfulness, while with this apprehension is combined, in a normal Christian experience, the assurance that the guilt of our sin has been taken, and taken away, by Christ (John 1:29).

_Lev. 5:17_—“_And if any one sin, and do any of the things which Jehovah hath commanded not to be done; though he knew it not, yet is he guilty, and shall bear his iniquity_”; _1 John 3:20_—“_because if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart, and knoweth all things_”; _Ps. 19:12_—“_Who can discern his errors? Clear thou me from hidden faults_”; _51:6_—“_Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts; And in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom_”; _Eph. 4:18, 19_—“_darkened in their understanding ... being past feeling_”; _John 1:29_—“_Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away_ [marg. “_beareth_”] _the sin of the world._”

Plato, Republic, 1:330—“When death approaches, cares and alarms awake, especially the fear of hell and its punishments.” Cicero, De Divin., 1:30—“Then comes remorse for evil deeds.” Persius, Satire 3—“His vice benumbs him; his fibre has become fat; he is conscious of no fault; he knows not the loss he suffers; he is so far sunk, that there is not even a bubble on the surface of the deep.” Shakespeare, Hamlet, 3:1—“Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all”; 4:5—“To my sick soul, as sin’s true nature is, Each toy seems prologue to some great amiss; So full of artless jealousy is guilt, It spills itself in fearing to be spilt”; Richard III, 5:3—“O coward conscience, how thou dost afflict me!... My conscience hath a thousand several tongues, and every tongue brings in a several tale, And every tale condemns me for a villain”; Tempest, 3:3—“All three of them are desperate; their great guilt, Like poison given to work a great time after, Now ’gins to bite the spirits”; Ant. and Cleop., 3:9—“When we in our viciousness grow hard (O misery on’t!) the wise gods seel our eyes; In our own filth drop our clear judgments; make us Adore our errors; laugh at us, while we strut To our confusion.”

Dr. Shedd said once to a graduating class of young theologians: “Would that upon the naked, palpitating heart of each one of you might be laid one redhot coal of God Almighty’s wrath!” Yes, we add, if only that redhot coal might be quenched by one red drop of Christ’s atoning blood. Dr. H. E. Robins: “To the convicted sinner a merely external hell would be a cooling flame, compared with the agony of his remorse.” John Milton represents Satan as saying: “Which way I fly is hell; myself am hell.” James Martineau, Life by Jackson, 190—“It is of the essence of guilty declension to administer its own anæsthetics.” But this deadening of conscience cannot last always. Conscience is a mirror of God’s holiness. We may cover the mirror with the veil of this world’s diversions and deceits. When the veil is removed, and conscience again reflects the sunlike purity of God’s demands, we are visited with self-loathing and self-contempt. John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 2:25—“Though it may cast off every other vestige of its divine origin, our nature retains at least this one terrible prerogative of it, the capacity of preying on itself.” Lyttelton in Lux Mundi, 277—“The common fallacy that a self-indulgent sinner is no one’s enemy but his own would, were it true, involve the further inference that such a sinner would not feel himself guilty.” If any dislike the doctrine of guilt, let them remember that without wrath there is no pardon, without guilt no forgiveness. See, on the nature of guilt, Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:193-267; Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, 208-209; Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:346; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 461-473; Delitzsch, Bib. Psychologie, 121-148; Thornwell, Theology, 1:400-424.

2. Degrees of guilt.

The Scriptures recognize different degrees of guilt as attaching to different kinds of sin. The variety of sacrifices under the Mosaic law, and the variety of awards in the judgment, are to be explained upon this principle.

_Luke 12:47, 48_—“_shall be beaten with many stripes ... shall be beaten with few stripes_”; _Rom. 2:6_—“_who will render to every man according to his works._” See also _John 19:11_—“_he that delivered me unto thee hath greater sin_”; _Heb. 2:2, 3_—if “_every transgression ... received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?_” _10:28, 29_—“_A man that hath set at nought Moses’ law dieth without compassion on the word of two or three witnesses: of how much sorer punishment, think ye, shall he be judged worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God?_”

Casuistry, however, has drawn many distinctions which lack Scriptural foundation. Such is the distinction between venial sins and mortal sins in the Roman Catholic Church,—every sin unpardoned being mortal, and all sins being venial, since Christ has died for all. Nor is the common distinction between sins of omission and sins of commission more valid, since the very omission is an act of commission.

_Mat. 25:45_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least_”; _James 4:17_—“_To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin._” John Ruskin: “The condemnation given from the Judgment Throne—most solemnly described—is for all the ‘undones’ and not the ‘dones.’ People are perpetually afraid of doing wrong; but unless they are doing its reverse energetically, they _do it all day long_, and the degree does not matter.” The Roman Catholic Church proceeds upon the supposition that she can determine the precise malignity of every offence, and assign its proper penance at the confessional. Thornwell, Theology, 1:424-441, says that “all sins are venial but one—for there is a sin against the Holy Ghost,” yet “not one is venial in itself—for the least proceeds from an apostate state and nature.” We shall see, however, that the hindrance to pardon, in the case of the sin against the Holy Spirit, is subjective rather than objective.

J. Spencer Kennard: “Roman Catholicism in Italy presents the spectacle of the authoritative representatives and teachers of morals and religion themselves living in all forms of deceit, corruption, and tyranny; and, on the other hand, discriminating between venial and mortal sin, classing as venial sins lying, fraud, fornication, marital infidelity, and even murder, all of which may be atoned for and forgiven or even permitted by the mere payment of money; and at the same time classing as mortal sins disrespect and disobedience to the church.”

The following distinctions are indicated in Scripture as involving different degrees of guilt:

A. Sin of nature, and personal transgression.

Sin of nature involves guilt, yet there is greater guilt when this sin of nature reasserts itself in personal transgression; for, while this latter includes in itself the former, it also adds to the former a new element, namely, the conscious exercise of the individual and personal will, by virtue of which a new decision is made against God, special evil habit is induced, and the total condition of the soul is made more depraved. Although we have emphasized the guilt of inborn sin, because this truth is most contested, it is to be remembered that men reach a conviction of their native depravity only through a conviction of their personal transgressions. For this reason, by far the larger part of our preaching upon sin should consist in applications of the law of God to the acts and dispositions of men’s lives.

_Mat. 19:14_—“_to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—relative innocence of childhood; _23:32_—“_Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers_”—personal transgression added to inherited depravity. In preaching, we should first treat individual transgressions, and thence proceed to heart-sin, and race-sin. Man is not wholly a spontaneous development of inborn tendencies, a manifestation of original sin. Motives do not _determine_ but they _persuade_ the will, and every man is guilty of conscious personal transgressions which may, with the help of the Holy Spirit, be brought under the condemning judgment of conscience. Birks, Difficulties of Belief, 169-174—“Original sin does not do away with the significance of personal transgression. Adam was pardoned: but some of his descendants are unpardonable. The second death is referred, in Scripture, to our own personal guilt.”

This is not to say that original sin does not involve as great sin as that of Adam in the first transgression, for original sin _is_ the sin of the first transgression; it is only to say that personal transgression is original sin _plus_ the conscious ratification of Adam’s act by the individual. “We are guilty for what we _are_, as much as for what we _do_. Our _sin_ is not simply the sum total of all our _sins_. There is a _sinfulness_ which is the common denominator of all our sins.” It is customary to speak lightly of original sin, as if personal sins were all for which man is accountable. But it is only in the light of original sin that personal sins can be explained. _Prov. 14:9, marg._—“_Fools make a mock at sin._” Simon, Reconciliation, 122—“The sinfulness of individual men varies; the sinfulness of humanity is a constant quantity.” Robert Browning, Ferishtah’s Fancies: “Man lumps his kind i’ the mass. God singles thence unit by unit. Thou and God exist—So think! for certain: Think the mass—mankind—Disparts, disperses, leaves thyself alone! Ask thy lone soul what laws are plain to thee,—Thou and no other, stand or fall by them! That is the part for thee.”

B. Sins of ignorance, and sins of knowledge.

Here guilt is measured by the degree of light possessed, or in other words, by the opportunities of knowledge men have enjoyed, and the powers with which they have been naturally endowed. Genius and privilege increase responsibility. The heathen are guilty, but those to whom the oracles of God have been committed are more guilty than they.

_Mat 10:15_—“_more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city_”; _Luke 12:47, 48_—“_that servant, who knew his Lord’s will ... shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not ... shall be beaten with few stripes_”; _23:34_—“_Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do_”—complete knowledge would put them beyond the reach of forgiveness. _John 19:11_—“_he that delivered me unto thee hath greater sin_”; _Acts 17:30_—“_The times of ignorance therefore God overlooked_”; _Rom. 1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them_”; _2:12_—“_For as many as have sinned without the law shall also perish without the law: and as many as have sinned under the law shall be judged by the law_”; _1 Tim. 1:13, 15, 16_—“_I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief._”

_Is. 42:19_—“_Who is blind ... as Jehovah’s servant?_” It was the Pharisees whom Jesus warned of the sin against the Holy Spirit. The guilt of the crucifixion rested on Jews rather than on Gentiles. Apostate Israel was more guilty than the pagans. The greatest sinners of the present day may be in Christendom, not in heathendom. Satan was an archangel; Judas was an apostle; Alexander Borgia was a pope. Jackson, James Martineau, 362—“Corruptio optimi pessima est, as seen in a drunken Webster, a treacherous Bacon, a licentious Goethe.” Sir Roger de Coverley observed that none but men of fine parts deserve to be hanged. Kaftan, Dogmatik, 317—“The greater sin often involves the lesser guilt; the lesser sin the greater guilt.” Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book, 227 (Pope, 1975)—“There’s a new tribunal now Higher than God’s,—the educated man’s! Nice sense of honor in the human breast Supersedes here the old coarse oracle!” Dr. H. E. Robins holds that “palliation of guilt according to light is not possible under a system of pure law, and is possible only because the probation of the sinner is a probation of grace.”

C. Sins of infirmity, and sins of presumption.

Here the guilt is measured by the energy of the evil will. Sin may be known to be sin, yet may be committed in haste or weakness. Though haste and weakness constitute a palliation of the offence which springs therefrom, yet they are themselves sins, as revealing an unbelieving and disordered heart. But of far greater guilt are those presumptuous choices of evil in which not weakness, but strength of will, is manifest.

_Ps. 19:12, 13_—“_Clear thou me from hidden faults. Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins_”; _Is. 5:18_—“_Woe unto them that draw iniquity with cords of falsehood, and sin as it were with a cart-rope_”—not led away insensibly by sin, but earnestly, perseveringly, and wilfully working away at it; _Gal. 6:1_—“_overtaken in any trespass_”; _1 Tim. 5:24_—“_Some men’s sins are evident, going before unto judgment; and some men also they follow after_”—some men’s sins are so open, that they act as officers to bring to justice those who commit them; whilst others require after-proof (An. Par. Bible). Luther represents one of the former class as saying to himself: “Esto peccator, et pecca fortiter.” On sins of passion and of reflection, see Bittinger, in Princeton Rev., 1873:219.

_Micah 7:3_, marg.—“_Both hands are put forth for evil, to do it diligently._” So we ought to do good. “My art is my life,” said Grisi, the prima donna of the opera, “I save myself all day for that one bound upon the stage.” H. Bonar: “Sin worketh,—Let me work too. Busy as sin, my work I ply, Till I rest in the rest of eternity.” German criminal law distinguishes between intentional homicide without deliberation, and intentional homicide with deliberation. There are three grades of sin: 1. Sins of ignorance, like Paul’s persecuting; 2. sins of infirmity, like Peter’s denial; 3. sins of presumption, like David’s murder of Uriah. Sins of presumption were unpardonable under the Jewish law; they are not unpardonable under Christ.

D. Sin of incomplete, and sin of final, obduracy.

Here the guilt is measured, not by the objective sufficiency or insufficiency of divine grace, but by the degree of unreceptiveness into which sin has brought the soul. As the only sin unto death which is described in Scripture is the sin against the Holy Spirit, we here consider the nature of that sin.

_Mat 12:31_—“_Every sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men; but the blasphemy against the Spirit shall not be forgiven_”; _32_—“_And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come_”; _Mark 3:29_—“_whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin_”; _1 John 5:16, 17_—“_If any man see his brother sinning a sin not unto death, he shall ask, and God will give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin into death: not concerning this do I say that he should make request. All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death_”; _Heb. 10:26_—“_if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, then remaineth no more a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and a fierceness of fire which shall devour the adversaries._”

Ritschl holds all sin that comes short of definitive rejection of Christ to be ignorance rather than sin, and to be the object of no condemning sentence. This is to make the sin against the Holy Spirit the only real sin. Conscience and Scripture alike contradict this view. There is much incipient hardening of the heart that precedes the sin of final obduracy. See Denney, Studies in Theology, 80. The composure of the criminal is not always a sign of innocence. S. S. Times, April 12, 1902:200—“Sensitiveness of conscience and of feeling, and responsiveness of countenance and bearing, are to be retained by purity of life and freedom from transgression. On the other hand composure of countenance and calmness under suspicion and accusation are likely to be a result of continuance in wrong doing, with consequent hardening of the whole moral nature.”

Weismann, Heredity, 2:8—“As soon as any organ falls into disuse, it degenerates, and finally is lost altogether.... In parasites the organs of sense degenerate.” Marconi’s wireless telegraphy requires an attuned “receiver.” The “transmitter” sends out countless rays into space: only one capable of corresponding vibrations can understand them. The sinner may so destroy his receptivity, that the whole universe may be uttering God’s truth, yet he be unable to hear a word of it. The Outlook: “If a man should put out his eyes, he could not see—nothing could make him see. So if a man should by obstinate wickedness destroy his power to believe in God’s forgiveness, he would be in a hopeless state. Though God would still be gracious, the man could not see it, and so could not take God’s forgiveness to himself.”

The sin against the Holy Spirit is not to be regarded simply as an isolated act, but also as the external symptom of a heart so radically and finally set against God that no power which God can consistently use will ever save it. This sin, therefore, can be only the culmination of a long course of self-hardening and self-depraving. He who has committed it must be either profoundly indifferent to his own condition, or actively and bitterly hostile to God; so that anxiety or fear on account of one’s condition is evidence that it has not been committed. The sin against the Holy Spirit cannot be forgiven, simply because the soul that has committed it has ceased to be receptive of divine influences, even when those influences are exerted in the utmost strength which God has seen fit to employ in his spiritual administration.

The commission of this sin is marked by a loss of spiritual sight; the blind fish of the Mammoth Cave left light for darkness, and so in time lost their eyes. It is marked by a loss of religious sensibility; the sensitive-plant loses Its sensitiveness, in proportion to the frequency with which it is touched. It is marked by a loss of power to will the good; “the lava hardens after it has broken from the crater, and in that state cannot return to its source” (Van Oosterzee). The same writer also remarks (Dogmatics, 2:438): “Herod Antipas, after earlier doubt and slavishness, reached such deadness as to be able to mock the Savior, at the mention of whose name he had not long before trembled.” Julius Müller, Doctrine of Sin, 2:425—“It is not that divine grace is absolutely refused to any one who in true penitence asks forgiveness of this sin; but he who commits it never fulfills the subjective conditions upon which forgiveness is possible, because the aggravation of sin to this ultimatum destroys in him all susceptibility of repentance. The way of return to God is closed against no one who does not close it against himself.” Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 97-120, illustrates the downward progress of the sinner by the law of degeneration in the vegetable and animal world: pigeons, roses, strawberries, all tend to revert to the primitive and wild type. “_How shall we escape, if we neglect so great a salvation?_” (_Heb.2:3_).

Shakespeare, Macbeth, 3:5—“You all know security Is mortals’ chiefest enemy.” Moulton, Shakespeare as a Dramatic Artist, 90-124—“Richard III is the ideal villain. Villainy has become an end in itself. Richard is an artist in villainy. He lacks the emotions naturally attending crime. He regards villainy with the intellectual enthusiasm of the artist. His villainy is ideal in its success. There is a fascination of irresistibility in him. He is imperturbable in his crime. There is no effort, but rather humor, in it; a recklessness which suggests boundless resources; an inspiration which excludes calculation. Shakespeare relieves the representation from the charge of monstrosity by turning all this villainous history into the unconscious development of Nemesis.” See also A. H. Strong, Great Poets, 188-193. Robert Browning’s Guido, in The Ring and the Book, is an example of pure hatred of the good. Guido hates Pompilia for her goodness, and declares that, if he catches her in the next world, he will murder her there, as he murdered her here.

Alexander VI, the father of Cæsar and Lucrezia Borgia, the pope of cruelty and lust, wore yet to the day of his death the look of unfailing joyousness and geniality, yes, of even retiring sensitiveness and modesty. No fear or reproach of conscience seemed to throw gloom over his life, as in the cases of Tiberius and Louis XI. He believed himself under the special protection of the Virgin, although he had her painted with the features of his paramour, Julia Farnese. He never scrupled at false witness, adultery, or murder. See Gregorovius, Lucrezia Borgia, 294, 295. Jeremy Taylor thus describes the progress of sin in the sinner: “First it startles him, then it becomes pleasing, then delightful, then frequent, then habitual, then confirmed; then the man is impenitent, then obstinate, then resolved never to repent, then damned.”

There is a state of utter insensibility to emotions of love or fear, and man by his sin may reach that state. The act of blasphemy is only the expression of a hardened or a hateful heart. B. H. Payne: “The calcium flame will char the steel wire so that it is no longer affected by the magnet.... As the blazing cinders and black curling smoke which the volcano spews from its rumbling throat are the accumulation of months and years, so the sin against the Holy Spirit is not a thoughtless expression in a moment of passion or rage, but the giving vent to a state of heart and mind abounding in the accumulations of weeks and months of opposition to the gospel.”

Dr. J. P. Thompson: “The unpardonable sin is the knowing, wilful, persistent, contemptuous, malignant spurning of divine truth and grace, as manifested to the soul by the convincing and illuminating power of the Holy Ghost.” Dorner says that “therefore this sin does not belong to Old Testament times, or to the mere revelation of law. It implies the full revelation of the grace in Christ, and the conscious rejection of it by a soul to which the Spirit has made it manifest (_Acts 17:30_—‘_The times of ignorance, therefore, God overlooked_’; _Rom. 3:25_—‘_the passing over of the sins done aforetime_’).” But was it not under the Old Testament that God said: “_My Spirit shall not strive with man forever_” (_Gen. 6:3_), and “_Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone_” (_Hosea 4:17_)? The sin against the Holy Ghost is a sin against grace, but it does not appear to be limited to New Testament times.

It is still true that the unpardonable sin is a sin committed against the Holy Spirit rather than against Christ: _Mat. 12:32_—“_whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but whosoever shall speak against the Holy Spirit, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, nor in that which is to come._” Jesus warns the Jews against it,—he does not say they had already committed it. They would seem to have committed it when, after Pentecost, they added to their rejection of Christ the rejection of the Holy Spirit’s witness to Christ’s resurrection. See Schaff, Sin against the Holy Ghost; Lemme, Sünde wider den Heiligen Geist; Davis, in Bap. Rev., 1862:317-326; Nitzsch, Christian Doctrine, 283-289. On the general subject of kinds of sin and degrees of guilt, see Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:284, 298.

III. Penalty.

1. Idea of penalty.

By penalty, we mean that pain or loss which is directly or indirectly inflicted by the Lawgiver, in vindication of his justice outraged by the violation of law.

Turretin, 1:213—“Justice necessarily demands that all sin be punished, but it does not equally demand that it be punished in the very person that sinned, or in just such time and degree.” So far as this statement of the great Federal theologian is intended to explain our guilt in Adam and our justification in Christ, we can assent to his words; but we must add that the reason, in each case, why we suffer the penalty of Adam’s sin, and Christ suffers the penalty of our sins, is not to be found in any covenant-relation, but rather in the fact that the sinner is one with Adam, and Christ is one with the believer,—in other words, not covenant-unity, but life-unity. The word “penalty,” like “pain,” is derived from pœna, ποινή, and it implies the correlative notion of desert. As under the divine government there can be no constructive _guilt_, so there can be no _penalty_ inflicted by legal fiction. Christ’s sufferings were penalty, not arbitrarily inflicted, nor yet borne to expiate personal guilt, but as the just due of the human nature with which he had united himself, and a part of which he was. Prof. Wm. Adams Brown: “Loss, not suffering, is the supreme penalty for Christians. The real penalty is separation from God. If such separation involves suffering, that is a sign of God’s mercy, for where there is life, there is hope. Suffering is always to be interpreted as an appeal from God to man.”

In this definition it is implied that:

A. The natural consequences of transgression, although they constitute a part of the penalty of sin, do not exhaust that penalty. In all penalty there is a personal element—the holy wrath of the Lawgiver,—which natural consequences but partially express.

We do not deny, but rather assert, that the natural consequences of transgression are a part of the penalty of sin. Sensual sins are punished, in the deterioration and corruption of the body; mental and spiritual sins, in the deterioration and corruption of the soul. _Prov. 5:22_—“_His own iniquities shall take the wicked, And he shall be holden with the cords of his sin_”—as the hunter is caught in the toils which he has devised for the wild beast. Sin is self-detecting and self-tormenting. But this is only half the truth. Those who would confine all penalty to the reaction of natural laws are in danger of forgetting that God is not simply immanent in the universe, but is also transcendent, and that “_to fall into the hands of the living God_” (_Heb. 10:31_) is to fall into the hands, not simply of the law, but also of the Lawgiver. Natural law is only the regular expression of God’s mind and will. We abhor a person who is foul in body and in speech. There is no penalty of sin more dreadful than its being an object of abhorrence to God. _Jer. 44:4_—“_Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!_” Add to this the law of continuity which makes sin reproduce itself, and the law of conscience which makes sin its own detecter, judge, and tormentor, and we have sufficient evidence of God’s wrath against it, apart from any external inflictions. The divine feeling toward sin is seen in Jesus’ scourging the traffickers in the temple, his denunciation of the Pharisees, his weeping over Jerusalem, his agony in Gethsemane. Imagine the feeling of a father toward his daughter’s betrayer, and God’s feeling toward sin may be faintly understood.

The deed returns to the doer, and character determines destiny—this law is a revelation of the righteousness of God. Penalty will vindicate the divine character in the long run, though not always in time. This is recognized in all religions. Buddhist priest in Japan: “The evil doer weaves a web around himself, as the silkworm weaves its cocoon.” Socrates made Circe’s turning of men into swine a mere parable of the self-brutalizing influence of sin. In Dante’s Inferno, the punishments are all of them the sins themselves; hence men are in hell before they die. Hegel: “Penalty is the other half of crime.” R. W. Emerson: “Punishment not follows, but accompanies, crime.” Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 59—“Corruption is destruction, and the sinner is a suicide; penalty corresponds with transgression and is the outcome of it; sin is death in the making; death is sin in the final infliction.” J. B. Thomas, Baptist Congress, 1901:110—“What matters it whether I wait by night for the poacher and deliberately shoot him, or whether I set the pistol so that he shall be shot by it when he commits the depredation?” Tennyson, Sea Dreams: “His gain is loss; for he that wrongs his friend Wrongs himself more, and ever bears about A silent court of justice in his breast, Himself the judge and jury, and himself The prisoner at the bar, ever condemn’d: And that drags down his life: then comes what comes Hereafter.”

B. The object of penalty is not the reformation of the offender or the ensuring of social or governmental safety. These ends may be incidentally secured through its infliction, but the great end of penalty is the vindication of the character of the Lawgiver. Penalty is essentially a necessary reaction of the divine holiness against sin. Inasmuch, however, as wrong views of the object of penalty have so important a bearing upon our future studies of doctrine, we make fuller mention of the two erroneous theories which have greatest currency.

(_a_) Penalty is not essentially reformatory.—By this we mean that the reformation of the offender is not its primary design,—as penalty, it is not intended to reform. Penalty, in itself, proceeds not from the love and mercy of the Lawgiver, but from his justice. Whatever reforming influences may in any given instance be connected with it are not parts of the penalty, but are mitigations of it, and they are added not in justice but in grace. If reformation follows the infliction of penalty, it is not the effect of the penalty, but the effect of certain benevolent agencies which have been provided to turn into a means of good what naturally would be to the offender only a source of harm.

That the object of penalty is not reformation appears from Scripture, where punishment is often referred to God’s justice, but never to God’s love; from the intrinsic ill-desert of sin, to which penalty is correlative; from the fact that punishment must be vindicative, in order to be disciplinary, and just, in order to be reformatory; from the fact that upon this theory punishment would not be just when the sinner was already reformed or could not be reformed, so that the greater the sin the less the punishment must be.

Punishment is essentially different from chastisement. The latter proceeds from love (_Jer. 10:24_—“_correct me, but in measure; not in thine anger_”; _Heb. 12:6_—“_Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth_”). Punishment proceeds not from love but from justice—see _Ez. 28:22_—“_I shall have executed judgments in her, and shall be sanctified in her_”; _36:21, 22_—in judgment, “_I do not this for your sake, but for my holy name_”; _Heb. 12:29_—“_our God is a consuming fire_”; _Rev. 15:1, 4_—“_wrath of God ... thou only art holy ... thy righteous acts have been made manifest_”; _16:5_—“_Righteous art thou, ... thou Holy One, because thou didst thus judge_”; _19:2_—“_true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great harlot._” So untrue is the saying of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia: “The end of all punishment is the destruction of vice, and the saving of men.” Luther: “God has two rods: one of mercy and goodness; another of anger and fury.” Chastisement is the former; penalty the latter.

If the reform-theory of penalty is correct, then to punish crime, without asking about reformation, makes the state the transgressor; its punishments should be proportioned, not to the greatness of the crime, but to the sinner’s state; the death-penalty should be abolished, upon the ground that it will preclude all hope of reformation. But the same theory would abolish any final judgment, or eternal punishment; for, when the soul becomes so wicked that there is no more hope of reform, there is no longer any justice in punishing it. The greater the sin, the less the punishment; and Satan, the greatest sinner, should have no punishment at all.

Modern denunciations of capital punishment are often based upon wrong conceptions of the object of penalty. Opposition to the doctrine of future punishment would give way, if the opposers realized what penalty is ordained to secure. Harris, God the Creator, 2:447, 451—“Punishment is not primarily reformatory; it educates conscience and vindicates the authority of law.” R. W. Dale: “It is not necessary to prove that hanging is beneficial to the person hanged. The theory that society has no right to send a man to jail, to feed him on bread and water, to make him pick hemp or work a treadmill, except to reform him, is utterly rotten. He must deserve to be punished, or else the law has no right to punish him.” A House of Refuge or a State Industrial School is primarily a penal institution, for it deprives persons of their liberty and compels them against their will to labor. This loss and deprivation on their part cannot be justified except upon the ground that it is the desert of their wrong doing. Whatever gracious and philanthropic influences may accompany this confinement and compulsion, they cannot of themselves explain the penal element in the institution. If they could, a _habeas corpus_ decree could be sought, and obtained, from any competent court.

God’s treatment of men in this world also combines the elements of penalty and of chastisement. Suffering is first of all deserved, and this justifies its infliction. But it is at the beginning accompanied with all manner of alleviating influences which tend to draw men back to God. As these gracious influences are resisted, the punitive element becomes preponderating, and penalty reflects God’s holiness rather than his love. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, 1-25—“Pain is not the immediate object of punishment. It must be a means to an end, a moral end, namely, penitence. But where the depraved man becomes a human tiger, there punishment must reach its culmination. There is a punishment which is not restorative. According to the spirit in which punishment is received, it may be internal or external. All punishment begins as discipline. It tends to repentance. Its triumph would be the triumph within. It becomes retributive only as the sinner refuses to repent. Punishment is only the development of sin. The ideal penitent condemns himself, identifies himself with righteousness by accepting penalty. In proportion as penalty fails in its purpose to produce penitence, it acquires more and more a retributive character, whose climax is not Calvary but Hell.”

Alexander, Moral Order and Progress, 327-333 (quoted in Ritchie, Darwin, and Hegel, 67)—“Punishment has three characters: It is retributive, in so far as it falls under the general law that resistance to the dominant type recoils on the guilty or resistant creature; it is preventive, in so far as, being a statutory enactment, it aims at securing the maintenance of the law irrespective of the individual’s character. But this latter characteristic is secondary, and the former is comprehended in the third idea, that of reformation, which is the superior form in which retribution appears when the type is a mental ideal and is affected by conscious persons.” Hyslop on Freedom, Responsibility, and Punishment, in Mind, April, 1894:167-189—“In the Elmira Reformatory, out of 2295 persons paroled between 1876 and 1889, 1907 or 83 per cent. represent a probably complete reformation. Determinists say that this class of persons cannot do otherwise. Something is wrong with their theory. We conclude that 1. Causal responsibility justifies preventive punishment; 2. Potential moral responsibility justifies corrective punishment; 3. Actual moral responsibility justifies retributive punishment.” Here we need only to point out the incorrect use of the word “punishment,” which belongs only to the last class. In the two former cases the word “chastisement” should have been used. See Julius Müller, Lehre von der Sünde, 1:334; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 70-73; Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:238, 239 (Syst. Doct., 3:134,135); Robertson’s Sermons, 4th Series, no. 18 (Harper’s ed., 752); see also this Compendium, references on Holiness, A. (_d_), page 273.

(_b_) Penalty is not essentially deterrent and preventive.—By this we mean that its primary design is not to protect society, by deterring men from the commission of like offences. We grant that this end is often secured in connection with punishment, both in family and civil government and under the government of God. But we claim that this is a merely incidental result, which God’s wisdom and goodness have connected with the infliction of penalty,—it cannot be the reason and ground for penalty itself. Some of the objections to the preceding theory apply also to this. But in addition to what has been said, we urge:

Penalty cannot be primarily designed to secure social and governmental safety, for the reason that it is never right to punish the individual simply for the good of society. No punishment, moreover, will or can do good to others that is not just and right in itself. Punishment does good, only when the person punished deserves punishment; and that _desert_ of punishment, and not the good effects that will follow it, must be the ground and reason why it is inflicted. The contrary theory would imply that the criminal might go free but for the effect of his punishment on others, and that man might rightly commit crime if only he were willing to bear the penalty.

Kant, Praktische Vernunft, 151 (ed. Rosenkranz)—“The notion of ill-desert and punishableness is necessarily implied in the idea of voluntary transgression; and the idea of punishment excludes that of happiness in all its forms. For though he who inflicts punishment may, it is true, also have a benevolent purpose to produce by the punishment some good effect upon the criminal, yet the punishment must be justified first of all as pure and simple requital and retribution.... In every punishment as such, justice is the very first thing and constitutes the essence of it. A benevolent purpose, it is true, may be conjoined with punishment; but the criminal cannot claim this as his due, and he has no right to reckon on it.” These utterances of Kant apply to the deterrent theory as well as to the reformatory theory of penalty. The element of desert or retribution is the basis of the other elements in punishment. See James Seth, Ethical Principles, 333-338; Shedd, Dogm. Theology, 2:717; Hodge, Essays, 133.

A certain English judge, in sentencing a criminal, said that he punished him, not for stealing sheep, but that sheep might not be stolen. But it is the greatest injustice to punish a man for the mere sake of example. Society cannot be benefited by such injustice. The theory can give no reason why one should be punished rather than another, nor why a second offence should be punished more heavily than the first. On this theory, moreover, if there were but one creature in the universe, and none existed beside himself to be affected by his suffering, he could not justly be punished, however great might be his sin. The only principle that can explain punishment is the principle of _desert_. See Martineau, Types of Ethical Theory, 2:348.

“Crime is most prevented by the conviction that crime deserves punishment; the greatest deterrent agency is conscience.” So in the government of God “there is no hint that future punishment works good to the lost or to the universe. The integrity of the redeemed is not to be maintained by subjecting the lost to a punishment they do not deserve. The wrong merits punishment, and God is bound to punish it, whether good comes of it or not. Sin is intrinsically ill-deserving. Impurity must be banished from God. God must vindicate himself, or cease to be holy” (see art. on the Philosophy of Punishment, by F. L. Patton, in Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878:126-139).

Bowne, Principles of Ethics, 186, 274—Those who maintain punishment to be essentially deterrent and preventive “ignore the metaphysics of responsibility and treat the problem ‘positively and objectively’ on the basis of physiology, sociology, etc., and in the interests of public safety. The question of guilt or innocence is as irrelevant as the question concerning the guilt or innocence of wasps and hornets. An ancient holder of this view set forth the opinion that ‘_it was expedient that one man should die for the people_’ (_John 18:14_), and so Jesus was put to death.... A mob in eastern Europe might be persuaded that a Jew had slaughtered a Christian child as a sacrifice. The authorities might be perfectly sure of the man’s innocence, and yet proceed to punish him because of the mob’s clamor, and the danger of an outbreak.” Men high up in the French government thought it was better that Dreyfus should suffer for the sake of France, than that a scandal affecting the honor of the French army should be made public. In perfect consistency with this principle, McKim, Heredity and Human Progress, 192, advocates infliction of painless death upon idiots, imbeciles, epileptics, habitual drunkards, insane criminals, murderers, nocturnal house breakers, and all dangerous and incorrigible persons. He would change the place of slaughter from our streets and homes to our penal institutions; in other words, he would abandon punishment, but protect society.

Failure to recognize holiness as the fundamental attribute of God, and the affirmation of that holiness as conditioning the exercise of love, vitiates the discussion of penalty by A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith, 243-250—“What is penal suffering designed to accomplish? Is it to manifest the holiness of God? Is it to express the sanctity of the moral law? Is it simply a natural consequence? Does it manifest the divine Fatherhood? God does not inflict penalty simply to satisfy himself or to manifest his holiness, any more than an earthly father inflicts suffering on his child to show his wrath against the wrongdoer or to manifest his own goodness. The idea of punishment is essentially barbaric and foreign to all that is known of the Deity. Penalty that is not reformatory or protective is barbarism. In the home, punishment is always discipline. Its object is the welfare of the child and the family. Punishment as an expression of wrath or enmity, with no remedial purpose beyond, is a relic of barbarism. It carries with it the content of vengeance. It is the expression of anger, of passion, or at best of cold justice. Penal suffering is undoubtedly the divine holiness expressing its hatred of sin. But, if it stops with such expression, it is not holiness, but selfishness. If on the other hand that expression of holiness is used or permitted in order that the sinner may be made to hate his sin, then it is no more punishment, but chastisement. On any other hypothesis, penal suffering has no justification except the arbitrary will of the Almighty, and such a hypothesis is an impeachment both of his justice and his love.” This view seems to us to ignore the necessary reaction of divine holiness against sin; to make holiness a mere form of love; a means to an end and that end utilitarian; and so to deny to holiness any independent, or even real, existence in the divine nature.

The wrath of God is calm and judicial, devoid of all passion or caprice, but it is the expression of eternal and unchangeable righteousness. It is vindicative but not vindictive. Without it there could be no government, and God would not be God. F. W. Robertson: “Does not the element of vengeance exist in all punishment, and does not the feeling exist, not as a sinful, but as an essential, part of human nature? If so, there must be wrath in God.” Lord Bacon: “Revenge is a wild sort of justice.” Stephen: “Criminal law provides legitimate satisfaction of the passions of revenge.” Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:287. _Per contra_, see Bib. Sac., Apr. 1881:286-302; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 46, 47; Chitty’s ed. of Blackstone’s Commentaries, 4:7; Wharton, Criminal Law, vol. 1, bk. 1, chap. 1.

2. The actual penalty of sin.

The one word in Scripture which designates the total penalty of sin is “death.” Death, however, is twofold:

A. Physical death,—or the separation of the soul from the body, including all those temporal evils and sufferings which result from disturbance of the original harmony between body and soul, and which are the working of death in us. That physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, appears:

(_a_) From Scripture.

This is the most obvious import of the threatening in Gen. 2:17—“thou shalt surely die”; _cf._ 3:19—“unto dust shalt thou return.” Allusions to this threat in the O. T. confirm this interpretation: Num. 16:29—“visited after the visitation of all men,” where פקד = judicial visitation, or punishment; 27:3 (LXX.—δι᾽ ἁμαρτίαν αὐτοῦ). The prayer of Moses in Ps. 90: 7-9, 11, and the prayer of Hezekiah in Is. 38:17, 18, recognize plainly the penal nature of death. The same doctrine is taught in the N. T., as for example, John 8:44; Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17, where the judicial phraseology is to be noted (_cf._ 1:32); see 6:23 also. In 1 Pet. 4:6, physical death is spoken of as God’s judgment against sin. In 1 Cor. 15:21, 22, the bodily resurrection of all believers, in Christ, is contrasted with the bodily death of all men, in Adam. Rom. 4:24, 25; 6:9, 10; 8:3, 10, 11; Gal. 3:13, show that Christ submitted to physical death as the penalty of sin, and by his resurrection from the grave gave proof that the penalty of sin was exhausted and that humanity in him was justified. “As the resurrection of the body is a part of the redemption, so the death of the body is a part of the penalty.”

_Ps. 90:7, 9_—“_we are consumed in thine anger ... all our days are passed away in thy wrath_”; _Is. 38:17, 18_—“_thou hast in love to my soul delivered it from the pit ... thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. For Sheol cannot praise thee_”; _John 8:44_—“_He_ [Satan] _was a murderer from the beginning_”; _11:33_—Jesus “_groaned in the spirit_” = was moved with indignation at what sin had wrought; _Rom. 5:12, 14, 16, 17_—“_death through sin ... death passed unto all men, for that all sinned ... death reigned ... even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression ... the judgment came of one_ [trespass] _unto condemnation ... by the trespass of the one, death reigned through the one_”; _cf._ the legal phraseology in _1:32_—“_who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death._” _Rom. 6:23_—“_the wages of sin is death_” = death is sin’s just due. _1 Pet. 4:6_—“_that they might be judged indeed according to men in the flesh_” = that they might suffer physical death, which to men in general is the penalty of sin. _1 Cor. 15:21, 22_—“_as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive_”; _Rom. 4:24, 25_—“_raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was delivered up for our trespasses, and was raised for our justification_”; _6:9, 10_—“_Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him. For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God_”; _8:3, 10, 11_—“_God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ... the body is dead because of sin_” (= a corpse, on account of sin—Meyer; so Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:291) ... “_he that raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall give life also to your mortal bodies_”; _Gal. 3:13_—“_Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us; for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree._”

On the relation between death and sin, see Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ, 169-185—“They are not antagonistic, but complementary to each other—the one spiritual and the other biological. The natural fact is fitted to a moral use.” Savage, Life after Death, 33—“Men did not at first believe in natural death. If a man died, it was because some one had killed him. No ethical reason was desired or needed. At last however they sought some moral explanation, and came to look upon death as a punishment for human sin.” If this has been the course of human evolution, we should conclude that the later belief represents the truth rather than the earlier. Scripture certainly affirms the doctrine that death itself, and not the mere accompaniments of death, is the consequence and penalty of sin. For this reason we cannot accept the very attractive and plausible theory which we have now to mention:

Newman Smyth, Place of Death in Evolution, holds that as the bow in the cloud was appointed for a moral use, so death, which before had been simply the natural law of the creation, was on occasion of man’s sin appointed for a moral use. It is this _acquired_ moral character of death with which Biblical Genesis has to do. Death becomes a curse, by being a fear and a torment. Animals have not this fear. But in man death stirs up conscience. Redemption takes away the fear, and death drops back into its natural aspect, or even becomes a gateway to life. Death is a curse to no animal but man. The retributive element to death is the effect of sin. When man has become perfected, death will cease to be of use, and will, as the last enemy, be destroyed. Death here is Nature’s method of securing always fresh, young, thrifty life, and the greatest possible exuberance and joy of it. It is God’s way of securing the greatest possible number and variety of immortal beings. There are many schoolrooms for eternity in God’s universe, and a ceaseless succession of scholars through them. There are many folds, but one flock. The reaper Death keeps making room. Four or five generations are as many as we can individually love, and get moral stimulus from.

Methuselahs too many would hold back the new generations. Bagehot says that civilization needs first to form a cake of custom, and secondly to break it up. Death, says Martineau, Study, 1:372-374, is the provision for taking us abroad, before we have stayed too long at home to lose our receptivity. Death is the liberator of souls. The death of successive generations gives variety to heaven. Death perfects love, reveals it to itself, unites as life could not. As for Christ, so for us, it is expedient that we should go away.

While we welcome this reasoning as showing how God has overruled evil for good, we regard the explanation as unscriptural and unsatisfactory, for the reason that it takes no account of the ethics of natural law. The law of death is an expression of the nature of God, and specially of his holy wrath against sin. Other methods of propagating the race and reinforcing its life could have been adopted than that which involves pain and suffering and death. These do not exist in the future life,—they would not exist here, if it were not for the fact of sin. Dr. Smyth shows how the evil of death has been overruled,—he has not shown the reason for the original existence of the evil. The Scriptures explain this as the penalty and stigma which God has attached to sin: _Psalm 90:7, 8_ makes this plain: “_For we are consumed in thine anger, And in thy wrath are we troubled. Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, Our secret sins in the light of thy countenance._” The whole psalm has for its theme: Death as the wages of sin. And this is the teaching of Paul, in _Rom. 5:12_—“_through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin._”

(_b_) From reason.

The universal prevalence of suffering and death among rational creatures cannot be reconciled with the divine justice, except upon the supposition that it is a judicial infliction on account of a common sinfulness of nature belonging even to those who have not reached moral consciousness.

The objection that death existed in the animal creation before the Fall may be answered by saying that, but for the fact of man’s sin, it would not have existed. We may believe that God arranged even the geologic history to correspond with the foreseen fact of human apostasy (_cf._ Rom. 8:20-23—where the creation is said to have been made subject to vanity by reason of man’s sin).

On _Rom. 8:20-23_—“_the creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own will_”—see Meyer’s Com., and Bap. Quar., 1:143; also _Gen. 3:17-19_—“_cursed is the ground for thy sake._” See also note on the Relation of Creation to the Holiness and Benevolence of God, and references, pages 402, 403. As the vertebral structure of the first fish was an “anticipative consequence” of man, so the suffering and death of fish pursued and devoured by other fish were an “anticipative consequence” of man’s foreseen war with God and with himself.

The translation of Enoch and Elijah, and of the saints that remain at Christ’s second coming, seems intended to teach us that death is not a necessary law of organized being, and to show what would have happened to Adam if he had been obedient. He was created a “natural,” “earthly” body, but might have attained a higher being, the “spiritual,” “heavenly” body, without the intervention of death. Sin, however, has turned the normal condition of things into the rare exception (_cf._ 1 Cor. 15:42-50). Since Christ endured death as the penalty of sin, death to the Christian becomes the gateway through which he enters into full communion with his Lord (see references below).

Through physical death all Christians will pass, except those few who like Enoch and Elijah were translated, and those many who shall be alive at Christ’s second coming. Enoch and Elijah were possible types of those surviving saints. On _1 Cor. 15:51_—“_We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed,_” see Edward Irving, Works, 5:135. The apocryphal Assumption of Moses, verse 9, tells us that Joshua, being carried in vision to the spot at the moment of Moses’ decease, beheld a double Moses, one dropped into the grave as belonging to the earth, the other mingling with the angels. The belief in Moses’ immortality was not conditioned upon any resuscitation of the earthly corpse; see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 364. When Paul was caught up to the third heaven, it may have been a temporary translation of the disembodied spirit. Set free for a brief space from the prison house which confined it, it may have passed within the veil and have seen and heard what mortal tongue could not describe; see Luckock, Intermediate State, 4. So Lazarus probably could not tell what he saw: “He told it not; or something sealed The lips of that Evangelist”; see Tennyson, In Memoriam, xxxi.

Nicoll, Life of Christ: “We have every one of us to face the last enemy, death. Ever since the world began, all who have entered it sooner or later have had this struggle, and the battle has always ended in one way. Two indeed escaped, but they did not escape by meeting and mastering their foe; they escaped by being taken away from the battle.” But this physical death, for the Christian, has been turned by Christ into a blessing. A pardoned prisoner may be still kept in prison, as the best possible benefit to an exhausted body; so the external fact of physical death may remain, although it has ceased to be penalty. Macaulay: “The aged prisoner’s chains are needed to support him; the darkness that has weakened his sight is necessary to preserve it.” So spiritual death is not wholly removed from the Christian; a part of it, namely, depravity, still remains; yet it has ceased to be punishment,—it is only chastisement. When the finger unties the ligature that bound it, the body which previously had only chastised begins to cure the trouble. There is still pain, but the pain is no longer punitive,—it is now remedial. In the midst of the whipping, when the boy repents, his punishment is changed to chastisement.

_John 14:3_—“_And if I go and prepare a place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also_”; _1 Cor. 15:54-57_—“_Death is swallowed up in victory ... O death, where is thy sting? The sting of death is sin; and the power of sin is the law_”—_i. e._, the law’s condemnation, its penal infliction; _2 Cor. 5:1-9_—“_For we know that if the earthly house of our tabernacle be dissolved we have a building from God ... we are of good courage, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be at home with the Lord_”; _Phil. 1:21, 23_—“_to die is gain ... having the desire to depart and be with Christ; for it is very far better._” In Christ and his bearing the penalty of sin, the Christian has broken through the circle of natural race-connection, and is saved from corporate evil so far as it is punishment. The Christian may be chastised, but he is never punished: _Rom. 8:1_—“_There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus._” At the house of Jairus Jesus said: “_Why make ye a tumult, and weep?_” and having reproved the doleful clamorists, “_he put them all forth_” (_Mark 5:39, 40_). The wakes and requiems and masses and vigils of the churches of Rome and of Russia are all heathen relics, entirely foreign to Christianity.

Palmer, Theological Definition, 57—“Death feared and fought against is terrible; but a welcome to death is the death of death and the way to life.” The idea that punishment yet remains for the Christian is “the bridge to the papal doctrine of purgatorial fires.” Browning’s words, in The Ring and the Book, 2:60—“In His face is light, but in his shadow healing too,” are applicable to God’s fatherly chastenings, but not to his penal retributions. On _Acts 7:60_—“_he fell asleep_”—Arnot remarks: “When death becomes the property of the believer, it receives a new name, and is called sleep.” Another has said: “Christ did not send, but came himself to save; The ransom-price he did not lend, but gave; Christ _died_, the shepherd for the sheep; We only _fall asleep_.” _Per contra_, see Kreibig, Versöhnungslehre, 375, and Hengstenberg, Ev. K.-Z., 1864:1065—“All suffering is punishment.”

B. Spiritual death,—or the separation of the soul from God, including all that pain of conscience, loss of peace, and sorrow of spirit, which result from disturbance of the normal relation between the soul and God.

(_a_) Although physical death is a part of the penalty of sin, it is by no means the chief part. The term “death” is frequently used in Scripture in a moral and spiritual sense, as denoting the absence of that which constitutes the true life of the soul, namely, the presence and favor of God.

_Mat. 8:22_—“_Follow me; and leave the_ [spiritually] _dead to bury their own_ [physically] _dead_”; _Luke 15:32_—“_this thy brother was dead, and is alive again_”; _John 5:24_—“_He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life_”; _8:51_—“_If a man keep my word, he shall never see death_”; _Rom. 8:13_—“_if ye live after the flesh, ye must die; but if by the Spirit ye put to death the deeds of the body, ye shall live_”; _Eph. 2:1_—“_when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins_”; _5:14_—“_Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead_”; _1 Tim. 5:6_—“_she that giveth herself to pleasure is dead while __ she liveth_”; _James 5:20_—“_he who converteth a sinner from the error of his way shall save a soul from death_”; _1 John 3:14_—“_He that loveth not abideth in death_”; _Rev. 3:1_—“_thou hast a name that thou livest, and thou art dead._”

(_b_) It cannot be doubted that the penalty denounced in the garden and fallen upon the race is primarily and mainly that death of the soul which consists in its separation from God. In this sense only, death was fully visited upon Adam in the day on which he ate the forbidden fruit (Gen. 2:17). In this sense only, death is escaped by the Christian (John 11:26). For this reason, in the parallel between Adam and Christ (Rom. 5:12-21), the apostle passes from the thought of mere physical death in the early part of the passage to that of both physical and spiritual death at its close (verse 21—“as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”—where “eternal life” is more than endless physical existence, and “death” is more than death of the body).

_Gen. 2:17_—“_in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die_”; _John 11:26_—“_whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die_”; _Rom. 5:14, 18, 21_—“_justification of life ... eternal life_”; contrast these with “_death reigned ... sin reigned in death._”

(_c_) Eternal death may be regarded as the culmination and completion of spiritual death, and as essentially consisting in the correspondence of the outward condition with the inward state of the evil soul (Acts 1:25). It would seem to be inaugurated by some peculiar repellent energy of the divine holiness (Mat. 25:41; 2 Thess. 1:9), and to involve positive retribution visited by a personal God upon both the body and the soul of the evil-doer (Mat. 10:28; Heb. 10:31; Rev. 14:11).

_Acts 1:25_—“_Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place_”; _Mat. 25:41_—“_Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared for the devil and his angels_”; _2 Thess. 1:9_—“_who shall suffer punishment, even eternal destruction from the face of the Lord and from the glory of his might_”; _Mat. 10:28_—“_fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell_”; _Heb. 10:31_—“_It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God_”; _Rev. 14:11_—“_the smoke of their torment goeth up for ever and ever._”

Kurtz, Religionslehre, 67—“So long as God is holy, he must maintain the order of the world, and where this is destroyed, restore it. This however can happen in no other way than this: the injury by which the sinner has destroyed the order of the world falls back upon himself,—and this is penalty. Sin is the negation of the law. Penalty is the negation of that negation, that is, the reëstablishment of the law. Sin is a thrust of the sinner against the law. Penalty is the adverse thrust of the elastic because living law, which encounters the sinner.”

Plato, Gorgias, 472 E; 509 B; 511 A; 515 B—“Impunity is a more dreadful curse than any punishment, and nothing so good can befall the criminal as his retribution, the failure of which would make a double disorder in the universe. The offender himself may spend his arts in devices of escape and think himself happy if he is not found out. But all this plotting is but part of the delusion of his sin; and when he comes to himself and sees his transgression as it really is, he will yield himself up the prisoner of eternal justice and know that it is good for him to be afflicted, and so for the first time to be set at one with truth.”

On the general subject of the penalty of sin, see Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 1:245 _sq._; 2:286-397; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 263-279; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 194-219; Krabbe, Lehre von der Sünde und vom Tode; Weisse, in Studien und Kritiken, 1836:371; S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 369-384; Bartlett, in New Englander, Oct. 1871:677, 678.

Section VII.—The Salvation Of Infants.

The views which have been presented with regard to inborn depravity and the reaction of divine holiness against it suggest the question whether infants dying before arriving at moral consciousness are saved, and if so, in what way. To this question we reply as follows:

(_a_) Infants are in a state of sin, need to be regenerated, and can be saved only through Christ.

_Job 14:4_—“_Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one_”; _Ps. 51:5_—“_Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity; And in sin did my mother conceive me_”; _John 3:6_—“_That which is born of the flesh is flesh_”; _Rom. 5:14_—“_Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression_”; _Eph. 2:3_—“_by nature children of wrath_”; _1 Cor. 7:14_—“_else were your children unclean_”—clearly intimate the naturally impure state of infants; and _Mat. 19:14_—“_Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me_”—is not only consistent with this doctrine, but strongly confirms it; for the meaning is: “_forbid them not to come unto me_”—whom they need as a Savior. “Coming to Christ” is always the coming of a sinner, to him who is the sacrifice for sin; _cf._ _Mat. 11:28_—“_Come unto me, all ye that labor._”

(_b_) Yet as compared with those who have personally transgressed, they are recognized as possessed of a relative innocence, and of a submissiveness and trustfulness, which may serve to illustrate the graces of Christian character.

_Deut 1:39_—“_your little ones ... and your children, that this day have no knowledge of good or evil_”; _Jonah 4:11_—“_sixscore thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand_”; _Rom. 9:11_—“_for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad_”; _Mat. 18:3, 4_—“_Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven._” See Julius Müller, Doct. Sin, 2:265. Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:50—“Unpretentious receptivity, ... not the reception of the kingdom of God at a childlike _age_, but in a childlike _character_ ... is the condition of entering; ... not blamelessness, but receptivity itself, on the part of those who do not regard themselves as too good or too bad for the offered gift, but receive it with hearty desire. Children have this unpretentious receptivity for the kingdom of God which is characteristic of them generally, since they have not yet other possessions on which they pride themselves.”

(_c_) For this reason, they are the objects of special divine compassion and care, and through the grace of Christ are certain of salvation.

_Mat. 18:5, 6, 10, 14_—“_whoso shall receive one such little child in my name receiveth me: but whoso shall cause one of these little ones that believe on me to stumble, it is profitable for him that a great millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be sunk in the depth of the sea.... See that ye despise not one of these little ones: for I say unto you, that in heaven their angels do always behold the face of my Father who is in heaven.... Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish_”; _19:14_—“_Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for to such belongeth the kingdom of heaven_”—not God’s kingdom of nature, but his kingdom of grace, the kingdom of saved sinners. “Such” means, not children as children, but childlike believers. Meyer, on _Mat. 19:14_, refers the passage to spiritual infants only: “Not little children,” he says, “but men of a childlike disposition.” Geikie: “Let the little children come unto me, and do not forbid them, for the kingdom of heaven is given only to such as have a childlike spirit and nature like theirs.” The Savior’s words do not intimate that little children are either (1) sinless creatures, or (2) subjects for baptism; but only that their (1) humble teachableness, (2) intense eagerness, and (3) artless trust, illustrate the traits necessary for admission into the divine kingdom. On the passages in Matthew, see Commentaries of Bengel, De Wette, Lange; also Neander, Planting and Training (ed. Robinson), 407.

We therefore substantially agree with Dr. A. C. Kendrick, in his article in the Sunday School Times: “To infants and children, as such, the language cannot apply. It must be taken figuratively, and must refer to those qualities in childhood, its dependence, its trustfulness, its tender affection, its loving obedience, which are typical of the essential Christian graces.... If asked after the _logic_ of our Savior’s words—how he could assign, as a reason for allowing _literal_ little children to be brought to him, that _spiritual_ little children have a claim to the kingdom of heaven—I reply: the persons that thus, as a class, typify the subjects of God’s spiritual kingdom cannot be in themselves objects of indifference to him, or be regarded otherwise than with intense interest.... The class that in its very nature thus shadows forth the brightest features of Christian excellence must be subjects of God’s special concern and care.”

To these remarks of Dr. Kendrick we would add, that Jesus’ words seem to us to intimate more than special concern and care. While these words seem intended to exclude all idea that infants are saved by their natural holiness, or without application to them of the blessings of his atonement, they also seem to us to include infants among the number of those who have the right to these blessings; in other words, Christ’s concern and care go so far as to choose infants to eternal life, and to make them subjects of the kingdom of heaven. _Cf._ _Mat. 18:14_—“_it is not the will of your Father who is in heaven, that one of those little ones should perish_”—those whom Christ has received here, he will not reject hereafter. Of course this to said to infants, as infants. To those, therefore, who die before coming to moral consciousness, Christ’s words assure salvation. Personal transgression, however, involves the necessity, before death, of a personal repentance and faith, in order to achieve salvation.

(_d_) The descriptions of God’s merciful provision as coëxtensive with the ruin of the Fall also lead us to believe that those who die in infancy receive salvation through Christ as certainly as they inherit sin from Adam.

_John 3:16_—“_For God so loved the world_”—includes infants. _Rom. 5:14_—“_death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the likeness of Adam’s transgression, who is a figure of him that was to come_”—there is an application to infants of the life in Christ, as there was an application to them of the death in Adam; _19-21_—“_For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous. And the law came in besides, that the trespass might abound; but when sin abounded, grace did abound more exceedingly: that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord_”—as without personal act of theirs infants inherited corruption from Adam, so without personal act of theirs salvation is provided for them in Christ.

Hovey, Bib. Eschatology, 170, 171—“Though the sacred writers say nothing in respect to the future condition of those who die in infancy, one can scarcely err in deriving from this silence a favorable conclusion. That no prophet or apostle, that no devout father or mother, should have expressed any solicitude as to those who die before they are able to discern good from evil is surprising, unless such solicitude was prevented by the Spirit of God. There are no instances of prayer for children taken away in infancy. The Savior nowhere teaches that they are in danger of being lost. We therefore heartily and confidently believe that they are redeemed by the blood of Christ and sanctified by his Spirit, so that when they enter the unseen world they will be found with the saints.” David ceased to fast and weep when his child died, for he said: “_I shall go to him, but he will not return to me_” (_2 Sam. 12:23_).

(_e_) The condition of salvation for adults is personal faith. Infants are incapable of fulfilling this condition. Since Christ has died for all, we have reason to believe that provision is made for their reception of Christ in some other way.

_2 Cor. 5:15_—“_he died for all_”; _Mark 16:16_—“_He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved; but he that disbelieveth shall be condemned_” (_verses 9-20_ are of canonical authority, though probably not written by Mark). Dr. G. W. Northrop held that, as death to the Christian has ceased to be penalty, so death to all infants is no longer penalty, Christ having atoned for and removed the guilt of original sin for all men, infants included. But we reply that there is no evidence that there is any guilt taken away except for those who come into vital union with Christ. E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 166—“The curse falls alike on every one by birth, but may be alleviated or intensified by every one who comes to years of responsibility, according as his nature which brings the curse rules, or is ruled by, his reason and conscience. So the blessings of salvation are procured for all alike, but may be lost or secured according to the attitude of everyone toward Christ who alone procures them. To infants, as the curse comes without their election, so in like manner comes its removal.”

(_f_) At the final judgment, personal conduct is made the test of character. But infants are incapable of personal transgression. We have reason, therefore, to believe that they will be among the saved, since this rule of decision will not apply to them.

_Mat. 25:45, 46_—“_Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of these least, ye did it not unto me. And these shall go away into eternal punishment_”; _Rom. 2:5, 6_—“_the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God; who __ will render to every man according to his works._” Norman Fox, The Unfolding of Baptist Doctrine, 24—“Not only the Roman Catholics believed in the damnation of infants. The Lutherans, in the Augsburg Confession, condemn the Baptists for affirming that children are saved without baptism—‘damnant Anabaptistas qui ... affirmant pueros sine baptismo salvos fieri’—and the favorite poet of Presbyterian Scotland, in his Tam O’Shanter, names among objects from hell ‘Twa span-lang, wee, unchristened bairns.’ The Westminster Confession, in declaring that ‘elect infants dying in infancy’ are saved, implies that non-elect infants dying in infancy are lost. This was certainly taught by some of the framers of that creed.”

Yet John Calvin did not believe in the damnation of infants, as he has been charged with believing. In the Amsterdam edition of his works, 8:522, we read: “I do not doubt that the infants whom the Lord gathers together from this life are regenerated by a secret operation of the Holy Spirit.” In his Institutes, book 4, chap. 16, p. 335, he speaks of the exemption of infants from the grace of salvation “as an idea not free from execrable blasphemy.” The Presb. and Ref. Rev., Oct. 1890:634-651, quotes Calvin as follows: “I everywhere teach that no one can be justly condemned and perish except on account of actual sin; and to say that the countless mortals taken from life while yet infants are precipitated from their mothers’ arms into eternal death is a blasphemy to be universally detested.” So also John Owen, Works, 8:522—“There are two ways by which God saveth infants. First, by interesting them in the covenant, if their immediate or remote parents have been believers; ... Secondly, by his grace of election, which is most free and not tied to any conditions; by which I make no doubt but God taketh unto him in Christ many whose parents never knew, or were despisers of, the gospel.”

(_g_) Since there is no evidence that children dying in infancy are regenerated prior to death, either with or without the use of external means, it seems most probable that the work of regeneration may be performed by the Spirit in connection with the infant soul’s first view of Christ in the other world. As the remains of natural depravity in the Christian are eradicated, not by death, but at death, through the sight of Christ and union with him, so the first moment of consciousness for the infant may be coincident with a view of Christ the Savior which accomplishes the entire sanctification of its nature.

_2 Cor. 3:18_—“_But we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit_”; _1 John 3:2_—“_We know that, if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is._” If asked why more is not said upon the subject in Scripture, we reply: It is according to the analogy of God’s general method to hide things that are not of immediate practical value. In some past ages, moreover, knowledge of the fact that all children dying in infancy are saved might have seemed to make infanticide a virtue.

While we agree with the following writers as to the salvation of all infants who die before the age of conscious and wilful transgression, we dissent from the seemingly Arminian tendency of the explanation which they suggest. H. E. Robins, Harmony of Ethics with Theology: “The judicial declaration of acquittal on the ground of the death of Christ which comes upon all men, into the benefits of which they are introduced by natural birth, is inchoate justification, and will become perfected justification through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, unless the working of this divine agent is resisted by the personal moral action of those who are lost.” So William Ashmore, in Christian Review, 26:245-264. F. O. Dickey: “As infants are members of the race, and as they are justified from the penalty against inherited sin by the mediatorial work of Christ, so the race itself is justified from the same penalty and to the same extent as are they, and were the race to die in infancy it would be saved.” The truth in the above utterances seems to us to be that Christ’s union with the race secures the objective reconciliation of the race to God. But subjective and personal reconciliation depends upon a moral union with Christ which can be accomplished for the infant only by his own appropriation of Christ at death.

While, in the nature of things and by the express declarations of Scripture, we are precluded from extending this doctrine of regeneration at death to any who have committed personal sins, we are nevertheless warranted in the conclusion that, certain and great as is the guilt of original sin, no human soul is eternally condemned solely for this sin of nature, but that, on the other hand, all who have not consciously and wilfully transgressed are made partakers of Christ’s salvation.

The advocates of a second probation, on the other hand, should logically hold that infants in the next world are in a state of sin, and that at death they only enter upon a period of probation in which they may, or may not, accept Christ,—a doctrine much less comforting than that propounded above. See Prentiss, in Presb. Rev., July, 1883: 548-580—“Lyman Beecher and Charles Hodge first made current in this country the doctrine of the salvation of all who die in infancy. If this doctrine be accepted, then it follows: (1) that these partakers of original sin must be saved wholly through divine grace and power; (2) that in the child unborn there is the promise and potency of complete spiritual manhood; (3) that salvation is possible entirely apart from the visible church and the means of grace; (4) that to a full half of the race this life is not in any way a period of probation; (5) that heathen may be saved who have never even heard of the gospel; (6) that the providence of God includes in its scope both infants and heathen.”

“Children exert a redeeming and reclaiming influence upon us, their casual acts and words and simple trust recalling our world-hardened and wayward hearts again to the feet of God. Silas Marner, the old weaver of Raveloe, so pathetically and vividly described in George Eliot’s novel, was a hard, desolate, godless old miser, but after little Eppie strayed into his miserable cottage that memorable winter night, he began again to believe. ‘I think now,’ he said at last, ‘I can trusten God until I die.’ An incident in a Southern hospital illustrates the power of children to call men to repentance. A little girl was to undergo a dangerous operation. When she mounted the table, and the doctor was about to etherize her, he said: ‘Before we can make you well, we must put you to sleep.’ ‘Oh then, if you are going to put me to sleep,’ she sweetly said, ‘I must say my prayers first.’ Then, getting down on her knees, and folding her hands, she repeated that lovely prayer learned at every true mother’s feet: ‘Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.’ Just for a moment there were moist eyes in that group, for deep chords were touched, and the surgeon afterwards said: ‘I prayed that night for the first time in thirty years.’ ” The child that is old enough to sin against God is old enough to trust in Christ as the Savior of sinners. See Van Dyke, Christ and Little Children; Whitsitt and Warfield, Infant Baptism and Infant Salvation; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 1:26, 27; Ridgeley, Body of Div., 1:422-425; Calvin, Institutes, II, i, 8; Westminster Larger Catechism, x, 3; Krauth, Infant Salvation in the Calvinistic System; Candlish on Atonement,