of beings prone to pronounce as confidently on the farthest results of the great plan, as if they lived at its centre, and saw all round to the circumference, as if all the data of the universe were before them, though they have yet to know even themselves!

SECT. III.

The twofold reason of the method in its application to the first man.

1. We have been referring to the inexplorable conditions of that scheme which, while it maintains every part of the human family in complicated relationship to every other part, and world to world, and the remotest past to all the future, harmonizes, with the utmost accuracy, in the case of every individual, and through every moment of time, the claims of his freedom with the fact of his dependence. We have now to carry our thoughts back to the moment when the first of our race silently took his place in this all-related system, and was formally apprised that his probation had commenced. And, with the lessons of modesty derivable from the preceding section, we have to approach the first great practical event in man's historyhis guilty fall.

2. In order, at once, to disarm prejudice, as far as is consistent with fidelity to truth, we may be permitted to premise, first, that the existence of sin is assumed. Even the rejector of revelation will surely allow that "there is something else than goodness in the world;" that every virtue finds its antithesis here; that every man believes that every other man might be somewhat better than he is; that moral evil ranks as truly among the realities of the earth as poisons, storms, and volcanic fires. Secondly, that man's sinful condition is not his normal and original state; that disorder could not have been a law of his primary condition; that in no sense can God be regarded as the author of sin; that its origin commenced after man became a free agent. Thirdly, that unless the existence of sin itself could be disproved, the rejection of the Biblical account of its introduction would avail nothing. Even if that account had never been supplied, or were it to be now entirely set aside, the presence of sin would still remain the same dreadful reality as ever. We are not sinners because the Bible affirms the fact; the Bible affirms it because we are sinners. It is a prior and independent fact of our consciousness. And fourthly, that to

reject the scriptural representation of the origin of human sinfulness- a subject on which inspiration alone is competent to speak, and on which no other report worthy of serious attention has ever been ventured is irrational and suspicious; especially, too, if it can be shown that all the leading accompaniments of the events, as scripturally related, are strictly congenial with whatever we know of human nature, and of moral government. This accordance it will be our duty to demonstrate. And our conviction is, that, as a subject for devout admiration, next to the mercy which caught man in his guilty fall, and provided the means of his recovery, is the holy benevolence which placed man on the height from which he fell within one easy step of endless life.

3. Before proceeding to expound the reasons of the probationary law in its harmony with man's nature and destiny, let us glance at the condition in which it found him, as implied in the law itself. Whatever the nature of the primal law might have been, and whatever the result of its enactment, it would surely have been a subject of profound retrospective interest to every member of the race of man. If a nation, which, in the lapse of ages, has acquired historical distinction, looks back with interest to its first rude efforts at legislation, and discovers with delight the earliest records or intimations of its laws, how much more interesting should it be for every descendant of Adam to look back on the first law given verbally by the Divine Legislator to the father of the race! To know the statute by the enactment of which the Creator first announced the responsibility of his creature, and by which moral government formally commenced on earth, is surely a subject to absorb, for a time, the most incurious mind. Law even human law-is now everywhere. As domestic, or social, or national, or international, it is everywhere—in private, in the family, in public life, on the land, on the sea, by night and by day; while the law of God, ubiquitous like Himself, is felt to be present with the movements of the mind within, and to surround us like an atmosphere from which there is no escape; surely it must interest every man to know how positive* law began, or what was the form which it first assumed. Now, Divine revelation in

* Positive law as distinguishable from moral law; the latter being of immediate obligation, the former only of mediate obligation; binding, that is, not owing to anything right in itself, but on account of its dependence in something which is right in itself-obedience to the will of God.

forms us. Taking us back to the earliest moments of man's existence, it shows us the Creator in the act, so to speak, of binding the creature to Himself by the first-made verbal law. "And Jehovah God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden eating thou mayst eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat of it; for in the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die.”

4. On considering the nature of this command, we think we may confidently affirm, that had it remained inviolate, no one would ever have thought of impeaching its rectitude or propriety; but that all would have joined in admiring its simplicity, easiness, and adaptation, and in adoring the sovereign goodness of the Lawgiver. Or, even, when violated, had the attendant penalty been a mere momentary infliction on the transgressor, each of all his posterity would doubtless have acquiesced in the Divine arrangement. The quarrel is, then, not with the nature of the law, but with the supposed consequences of its violation. Its character is left unconsidered, and all that is thought of is its issue. Or, if its character be glanced at, it is only to impugn it on account of its issue. And thus, indulging in the very spirit which led to the transgression of the law, men judge of its character by its results. The first transgressors acted on the persuasion that, judging by the fallacious advantage of its violation, it would be better to break it than to keep it; their posterity are apt to think that it would have been better had it not been enacted; · - both uniting in the implied sentiment, that man's will, and not God's, should rule. The first law appears to be as good a test, still, of man's moral disposition, as it was on the day of its Divine appointment.

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5. In our sketch of man's primeval condition, in a previous chapter,* we saw that his first exercises were those of a man, and not of a child; that his powers, physical, mental, and moral, were capable of adult activity, and, as such, responded to their appropriate objects. We saw, also, that the theology of unfallen man, as implied especially in the primal law, was powerful, wise, and beneficent Creator; that Creator his equitable moral Governor; and immortal life or gain in prospect as the reward of his obedience; and a threatened death or loss as the deserved penalty of disobedience. We have now to consider man's condition as a being placed by that law on probation. And first, the law implied, as it issued from the mouth of God,

*Supra, p. 179, etc.

hat, at that moment, man's constitution was in harmony with itself the lower powers being subordinated to the higher,

and that he was enabled and required so to maintain it; but that if he willed the subversion of this internal harmony, a state of derangement and evil would, not arbitrarily, but naturally, ensue. We know, indeed, from familiar experience, that we cannot will anything leading to such derangement, even ignorantly, without incurring the evil effects. Nor do we see why, in equity, the first man might not, as far as his own personal responsibility alone was concerned, have been left to the same liability. But let it be remarked, that from all such danger (one point excepted) the prohibition implies that he was specially protected. From that solitary point, nothing was withdrawn, we believe, in the hour of trial; but man simply remained without any special protection at that point, as he might have been left in every other particular.

6. It implied, again, that the whole of man's subjective nature was in harmonious relationship to the whole objective universe, including God himself; and that man was enabled and required to maintain himself in this position; but that if, knowing this to be the will of God, he yet willed to do anything contrary (though it should be only the performance of a physical act, such as eating and drinking) then, besides the internal evil flowing naturally from the act, he will become conscious of guilt in having violated his relations to God.

We have said "if he willed to do any thing contrary;" but that which demands peculiar attention is, that there was only one thing contrary to the will of God which the first man was left in danger of doing. The law implies that every avenue of evil was, for him, closed up, one excepted. For surely it was not to be understood that he might violate every other obligation, natural and moral, with impunity. Neither could it have meant that, if left to himself, there was no other liability to which he was exposed than the one specified. As a free agent, his liabilities would, apart from a special provision to the contrary, be co-extensive with his multiplied obligations. His na

ture is a living law-table. How is it, then, that his attention is drawn off from every other point of duty, as a point of danger, to be concentrated exclusively on this solitary liability? How is it that his well-being, involving as it does the discharge of numerous and diversified obligations, should be suspended on this one point? We can account for the fact only by concluding that, by a special provision, the first man was preserved, in

a manner consistent with his moral freedom, from violating any duty excepting that of the prohibitory law.

Here, again, we believe that, viewing the first man in his personal as distinguished from a representative capacity, he might have been left equitably without any such special provison. He was a free agent, capable of self-government, and held responsible for a life of obedience. Nor was the Divine Being under any obligation to put it out of his power to violate any one of the diversified duties binding on him. And yet the probationary law implies that such an arrangement actually existed; that, by a Divine influence, or sovereign appointment, of some kind, man's thousand liabilities were reduced to one. He was rendered invulnerable, excepting at one point. Looking abroad over the wide field of duty, he might already foretaste the security of heaven, save in one spot. This was moral liability reduced to its minimum.

7. And the law implied further, that man, continuing in his present state of inward and outward conformity to the Divine will, should continue to enjoy the ever-enlarging results, in the growing excellence of his character, and the corresponding improvement of his outward condition, or the corresponding manifestations of the Divine favor; but that, voluntarily failing in obedience to the one probationary law, he would experience a change of condition answering to his change of character and relations he would, in some sense, die. And it implied, moreover, that, as the head and representative of his race, the consequence of his obedience would be the perpetuation of life, such as he enjoyed, to his posterity; while his failure would incur the forfeiture of that life for them, as well as for himself.

And here, again, we behold an arrangement immeasurably exceeding all that equity could have required, and calculated to astonish by its goodness. Man, we have seen, had come into a pre-existing constitution, in which physical evil, or pain and death, were already known; and as the partaker of a material nature, he was naturally subject to all the material laws of the constitution. Why should he be specially exempted from the law of dissolution? Why should not his enjoyment of life be subject to the same simple condition as it is in the case of all the animal tribes that have preceded him- that of eventually surrendering it? But this is not all; his posterity are, conditionally, exempted also. Why should "the way of all flesh" be suspended —a law of nature be repealed-for a race of be