pravity could not be felt to involve guilt, and repentance and improvement would be no duties. Thirdly, that the universality of human depravity betrays only the universal absence of the right dispositions, or, at least, of the proper strength of the right dispositions. Now all that God owes to accountable beings are the powers essential to accountability, implying, of course, the absence of all necessarily overpowering force. He can not owe to them also a disposition to employ these powers aright, so as infallibly to secure obedience. This would be either to make failure impossible, or else to remove all responsibility from the creature, and to devolve it entirely on the Creator. For the presence of such dispositions man is held responsible, just because the power and means of acquiring and exercising them are among the grounds of his accountability. He is blameworthy, not for being destitute of any of the elements of responsibility, but for possessing without employing them aright. Fourthly, that while the invariableness of depravity discloses an ultimate law of the creature's dependence, it no more casts a doubt on man's responsible adequacy than the fall of Adam did. For he sinned, not owing to any degeneracy, or to the withdrawment of any such provision from the point at which he fell. There he had been left to his own responsible powers. The withdrawment of the special provision from every other point took place in con'sequence of his failure in that particular. So that the dif ficulty with which we are now dealing is only the recurrence of the original difficulty respecting the entrance of sin. The depravity of every separate individual is only an additional aspect of the general question respecting origin of evil.” Explain (we might say) how sin is possible "the in a sinless being, and we doubt not we shall be in a condition to explain and vindicate that constitution of things by which man's original loss and his transmitted degeneracy are permitted to result in universal depravity. As a fact, it needs no defense in peculiar from us. In reality, however, the vindication of such a constitution—if, indeed, any vindication be necessary-devolves alike on all who believe in a personal God and the fact of the universality of sin. Our acceptance of the Biblical account of the subject, loads us, in this respect, with no peculiar responsibility. Even if we reject that account, the fact of human sinfulness remains. The Bible only finds it. The call to explain the fact belongs as much to the Deist, who believes only in the existence of moral government, as it does to us. While, as we think, the view which we take, in the light of Scripture, gives us the advantage of seeing the nature of the required remedy, and of being prepared to welcome it. The "Second Adam," by introducing himself into the line of transmitted humanity, so as to become truly related to all its inheritors, can not only restore our disturbed relations to God, but, by recovering for us a Divine influence more abiding than that which was originally lost, can heal alike our degeneracy and the depravity in which it results. Man's constitu means of Divine manifestation. Resuming our proposition, that the constitution is still a tion of man continued after the Fall unimpaired, as a means of Divine manifestation, we have merely to point to the fact that he was still the subject of moral government. No power was lost from the soul. His emotions retained their susceptibility, though diverted from their highest object: His power of moral discrimination was not destroyed, though overruled. His will remained as active and energetic as before. His chosen motives came now, indeed, from an inferior domain; the right disposition of his powers was gone, each being placed in a new and a false relation to the others, but all remained. Man's second sin was as free as his first. His individual the family. It is important to remember, also, that, ity not merged in owing to the indestructibleness of man's responsible nature, his individuality is not merged in his social relations, but is carried on into them. The individual is made for the family only in a subordinate sense. The family exists for the individual in this respect, that it attains its own and best by enabling him to attain his end, and only as it helps him to attain it. It is here that the first crude and overbearing impulse of his personality to assert itself in all directions begins to be restrained. Other personal beings are here found to enter into the sphere of his personality, limiting and defining its activity. His blind wishes and aims are reduced to personal rights as the only form in which they can dovetail in with the rights of others. And every step of the process renders his consciousness of his own accountableness more wakeful and profound. Condition of fal- We are led to expect, further, that the len man is the con- condition of the first man, as exposed to suffering and death, will be the condition of all his posterity. And it is so. Long as had been the lives of his antediluvian successors, and varied as had been their moral character, concerning each of those whose names are on record (with a single exception) it is said"and he died." "Death reigned from Adam." And, as if to put the question at rest, that their death was not the result of their own personal transgression, we find that infants, incapable of personal transgression, died also. "In Adam all die." dition of his pos terity. "But are not the young of animals, though unconnected with man, subject to the law of mortality also ?" Yes, and the young of both die by the operation of the same natural law, though not for the same moral reason. The animal dies in consequence of the operation of a law from which it was never exempt; but the infant in consequence of the operation of the same law from which the father of the race was conditionally exempt; but which exemption, on the violation of that condition, was repealed, and the preexisting law of death in the animal kingdom was allowed to prevail universally. Man was recalled to the condition above which for a time he had been raised, and was allowed to fall down as a sinner to the level of the more ancient law of animal suffering and death. Such, indeed, would have been our condition if no probationary law had existed, but the first man had been guilty of some other act of disobedience. Then, as now, death would have been introduced objectively by Adam, and would have been continued as a law of sentient existence, from which our race had never known exemption. Notwithstanding the perverting tendency of sin, then, man still retained the natural capacity with which he had been originally endowed for knowing, appreciating, voluntarily promoting, and enjoying the Divine manifestation. Not less did his constitution and condition illustrate the power, and wisdom, and goodness of God than on the day of his creation. And even more strikingly than at first did they disclose the holiness and justice of which they were designed to be the special manifestation.* The law now under consideration leads us Thirdly, direct Divine communi- to expect that the third means of human education and of Divine manifestation enjoyed cations. * Man Primeval, pp. 471, 472. by innocent man-namely, direct supernatural communications-will be brought forward into this succeeding economy. If no power had been lost from the human constitution, neither had any law of moral government been repealed, nor any perfection of the Divine character obscured. The theology of unfallen man, as implied especially in the primal law, was-a powerful, wise, and beneficent. Creator; that Creator his equitable moral Governor; and immortal happiness in prospect as the reward of his obedience; and a threatened death or loss as the deserved penalty of disobedience. And this was no less the theory of fallen man. The new revelation of Mercy involved no withdrawment of the claims of Justice; and this perhaps, in the present connection, is the only point calling for remark. The sin of man was no frustration of moral government; for that government showed itself capable of enforcing its sanctions. With man's first moment of conscious guilt commenced a process of self-punishment, for that very consciousness involved suffering. The external sentence only interpreted. his fears, and ratified his self-pronounced condemnation. Nor was he less a subject of moral government after Mercy had arrested him in his guilty descent than he was before. That mercy involved no relaxation of law, no apology for the government under which man had fallen. So far from arraigning the equity of that rule, mercy supported it, forgiveness proclaimed it. Sacrifice and expiation were the methods of indemnifying and celebrating it. Mercy left man in the hand of justice still, and only rescued him from its punishment; and just so much of mercy as there was in the rescue was there of justice in the punishment. Hence, |