flesh, and of the flesh the family reaps corruption.' For the law of growth and reproduction obtains in the moral order as in the natural order, and in the sphere of the bad no less than in the sphere of the good.

The law of progress of sin in the family is the law of continuous penalties descending from generation to generation, agreeably to the teaching of the second Commandment: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them that hate me," a principle that is illustrated by universal experience.

3. The same law of self-multiplication reigns in national life. In the earlier stages of the history of the Greeks reverence for the gods and the recognition of moral right had a degree of commanding influence. The same thing may be affirmed of other pagan nations. But as one generation succeeds another the good becomes weaker, the bad becomes stronger. Religious rites degenerate. Belief in the gods passes into unbelief or theoretic doubt; the moral nerve of the social economy is enfeebled or para-, lyzed; manners lose reserve; depravity increases; wickedness, vices and crimes acquire greater ascendency; and slowly, sometimes rapidly, the nation decays. The best

3

Of

'Gal. vi. 8.

3

2 Ex. xx. 5.

pagan nations Athanasius says: "Even in their misdeeds men had not stopped short at any set limits; but gradually pressing forward, have passed on beyond all measure: * * while later on, having turned aside to wrong and exceeding all lawlessness, and stopping at no one evil but devising all manner of new evils in succession, they have become insatiable in sinning. As to corruption and wrong, no heed was

*

*

paid to law, but all crimes were being practiced everywhere; each man vying with his fellows in lawless deeds.”—De Incar., ? 5.

'Says Max Müller: "If there is one thing which a comparative study

example is furnished by the decline and fall of the Roman Empire as represented by the classic work of Gibbon.

In Christian nations the law of degradation and dissolution is held in check by the conservative and regenerative virtue of Christianity. If the Christian life be vigorous and healthy the unifying and consolidating energy of love to God and love to man will not only hold in check but may also triumph over the disintegrating forces of selfishness and worldliness, and instead of being retrogressive a nation's history may for ages be progressive.

4. The history of sin in a nation is the history of sin in the Adamic race. Humanity as a whole repeats in every succeeding period the wickedness and follies of preceding generations. Sin gains fresh momentum with the birth of every new age. The pagan world becomes worse, as from one century to another sin multiplies sin under manifold forms of transgression. An epoch of pagan reform may for a time modify the phenomena of moral evil, but reform cannot repress the upheavals of iniquity, nor check the flow of its tidal wave. Adamic humanity hides in its bosom no latent power of moral or spiritual recuperation.

In

5. Pessimism has in it one element of truth. The present actual condition of the race, of nations, of individuals, is evil; the controlling forces of the family and of society in the non-Christian world work from bad to worse. mankind not touched by Christianity there is no hope, either in science or art or literature or in material progress.

of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. * * Without constant return to its fountain head, every religion, even the most perfect, suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of its being breathed."-Chips from a German Workshop, I. Pref., XXIII.

But pessimism is not a sound philosophy of moral and physical evil. Evil expresses but one aspect of the condition of the Adamic race. The fundamental law operative

in history is righteousness, not wickedness; the entire economy of human life is designed for and adapted to wellbeing, not to suffering. Misery is grounded, not in the original constitution of things, which is good, but in violence done to this constitution. The normal action of natural and moral law can issue only in the good.

Miseries exist, miseries multiply, because the moral order of the world is resisted. The 'natural man' wilfully persists in warfare against God, warfare against the economy of the world as ordained and upheld by God's righteous will. Instead of overthrowing God's moral order, the moral order standing firm overthrows its enemies.

What then is this that is written, The stone which the builders rejected, the same was made the head of the corner? Every one that falleth on that stone shall be broken to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter him as dust.

CHAPTER VIII.

ADAMIC DEATH.

§ 219.

The sum of the consequences of the fallen condition. and sinful activity of the Adamic race is expressed by the word death. Of sin death is the product and the penalty. Like sin death is unnatural, abnormal, false, being contrary to the purpose of man's creation, contrary to the moral economy of original manhood.

་

I. It is the death of man that is challenging inquiry, not the cessation of individual existences of the vegetable and animal kingdoms. The two are different creations, and may not be confounded without prejudice to sound anthropology.

That the plant or the animal lives through a given cycle of time and then passes away, may be according to its original nature. Neither, as Dorner expresses it, can be immortal, for neither has in and for itself absolute worth, but only finite adaptations.' The animal is an impersonal organism, from which man differs generically. Though human life includes many vegetal and animal qualities, these qualities are not distinctive of man. The principle of manhood, that in virtue of which man is man, is other than his animal history.

Man as to his essence is spirit, self-conscious, selfdetermining spirit, akin to God. As to the principle of his existence a spiritual being, he lives his life by recip

1 Dogmatics, 38, 2.

St

rocal communion with absolute Spirit, a communion which is first sub-conscious and spontaneous, then becomes also conscious and voluntary. Whilst receiving nourishment from the fruits of the earth, the conditions on which the efficiency of such nourishment of body and soul depends are the perpetual spiritual communications flowing to man from God and by him spontaneously appropriated. In God, as Paul teaches, we live and move and have our being.' Not in ourselves do we live, but in Him. Bengel says: "In, expresses the most influential presence arising from the most intimate relationship, so that we cannot feel ourselves without feeling Him." Objectively, this sub-conscious relationship, this hidden bond of connection between divine being and human being, is unchangeable. As contrasted with animal life man has a godlike existence. By virtue of his godlikeness, though debased by sin, he is relatively superior to the kind of decay and dissolution extant in the lower kingdoms of

nature.

The body, existing in vital union with spirit in the organism of manhood, shares the intrinsic vitality of divine spirit. If his spiritual condition were normal and ideal his animal nature would be inaccessible to that process of disintegration and dissolution which is normal in the constitution of plants and animals.

It

2. In the human kingdom death is contra-natural. contravenes the design and the laws of genuine manhood. The word nature in its application to man has to be used in a twofold sense. The word denotes, first, his original constitution or man as fashioned by the creative Hand; and, secondly, his degraded condition brought

1 Acts xvii. 28.