094. III. Further Proofs Of A Fallen State.
III. Further Proofs Of A Fallen State.
Under this head we group a few facts which are common to the present state of man, but inconsistent with his primitive state. The idea of a primitive state of holiness and happiness is at once a scriptural and a rational idea. Paradise, with its blessings, its freedom from wearying toil, from suffering and death, with its open communion with God and joy in his presence, seems a fitting estate for primitive man, morally constituted as he was, and fashioned in the image of God. The absence of such an estate and the presence of strongly discordant facts give proof of a fallen state. We note a few of these facts.
1. Manifold Ills of Human Life.—The present state of man may be characterized as one of frailty and suffering. This is the Scripture view, and the common experience, as voiced in many a lament of weariness and pain. Man is born to trouble, as the sparks fly upward. He is of few days, and full of trouble (Job 5:7; Job 14:1). The comparison of his life is not with strong and abiding things, but with the frail and the quickly vanishing. We are like the grass which flourishes in the morning and in the evening is cut down (Psalms 90:5-6); like the flower of the field which perishes under the passing wind (Psalms 103:15-16; Isaiah 40:6-8); like a vapor, appearing for a little while, and then vanishing away (James 4:14). Such a life of frailty and trouble has no accordance with the primitive state of man, and strongly witnesses to his fallen condition.
2. Mortality of the Race.—Human death is the consequence of Adamic sin. Death preceded the Adamic fall, and from the beginning reigned over all living orders. Nor was there in the physiological constitution of man any natural exemption from such a consequence. In this constitution he was too much like the higher animal orders not to be naturally subject to the same law. Yet he was provisionally immortal—that is, he had the privilege of a providential exemption from death on the condition of obedience to the divine will. This appears in the narrative of the probation and fall of man, and also in the account of the origin and prevalence of human death. The fruit of the tree of life, originally open to the use of man, signifies a provisional immortality. Expulsion from that tree was a deprivation of this privilege, and the subjection of man to death (Genesis 3:22-24). It is the sense of this passage that human death came by sin. What is thus given in an implicit mode is elsewhere openly declared. By one man sin came into the world, and death by sin; and through the universality of sin came universal death (Romans 5:12). While the universality of death is thus connected with the universality of sin, it is yet true that the common mortality is consequent to the Adamic sin and fall. “By the trespass of the one the many died.” “By the trespass of the one, death reigned through one.” “In Adam all die” (Romans 5:15; Romans 5:17; 1 Corinthians 15:22). How shall we explain the universal mortality as consequent to the sin and fall of Adam? The assumption of an immediate effect upon the physiological constitution of man could not answer for an interpretation, because the assumed effect is purely of a physical character and, therefore, would be unnatural to the cause. There could be no such immediate physical effect. The theory which accounts physical death a penal retribution, judicially inflicted upon all men on the ground of a common participation in the sin of Adam, is beset with very great difficulties. Yet, as we have previously shown, the common mortality is in some way consequent to that sin. The subjection of Adam to mortality and death was effected through his expulsion from the tree of life, and the withdrawment of that special providential agency through which, on the condition of obedience, he would have been preserved in life. These were penal inflictions on the ground of sin. In consequence of this subjection of Adam to death, mortality is entailed upon the race. The deprivation of the privilege and means of immortality which he suffered on account of sin descends upon his race. There is this connection of the common mortality with the sin of Adam. In this sense death reigns through his offense and in him all die.
There must be some reason for this consequence; some reason why the race of Adam should be denied the original privilege of immortality with which he was favored. If each one begins life with the primitive holiness, why should he not have this privilege? With such a nature he would be morally fitted for the primitive probation. It is plain, however, that he is not thus fitted. The universality of sin proves his unfitness. The impossibility of righteousness and life by deeds of law, as maintained by Paul, proves the same fact. In consequence of the sin and fall of Adam every man has suffered a moral deterioration which disqualifies him for an economy of works, and requires for him an economy of redemption. Such an economy has been divinely instituted for the race. The privilege of immortality belonged to the former; mortality, with the provision of a resurrection, belongs to the latter. This change of economy, rendered necessary only by a deterioration of man’s moral nature, proves his native depravity. The common mortality, as thus mediated by the common depravity, is, in turn, the proof of this depravity.
3. Small Success of Moral and Religious Agencies. —Everywhere there are convictions of duty, with the activities of conscience approving its fulfillment and reprehending its neglect or violation. This is the case even where there is little exterior light for the moral judgment. Every-where such convictions of duty are embodied in public opinion, and often in statutory law, with the sanction of rewards for the restraint of vice and the support of virtue. In the many religions of the world, even with their many errors, there are lessons of moral duty. Philosophy and poetry have joined in the support of the good against the evil. After due allowance for the errors of moral judgment and the elements of evil in legislation and religion, in philosophy and poetry, there is still a large sum of moral agency which, with a responsive nature in man, must have produced a large fruitage of good. The fruitage has been small because the nature of man has strongly resisted these agencies. Every-where the common life has been far below its moral and religious lessons.
Like facts appear under the more direct agencies of Providence in the interest of morality and religion. Such agencies, often in an open supernatural mode, appear through all the history of the race. We see them in the beginning of that history. God is present with men; present with precepts and promises, with warnings against sin, with blessings for obedience and punishment for disobedience. The evil tendencies of men are stronger than these moral restraints. The tide of iniquity rises above all barriers, and so floods the world as to provoke the divine retribution in its destruction. Against all the force of this fearful lesson iniquity soon again prevailed, and so widely as to provoke again the divine retribution. Later history is replete with moral and religious agencies. We see them in the history of Abraham, in the miracles of Moses and the divine legislation through his ministry. God was with the prophets, and through his Spirit their words were mighty. Through all these centuries of Jewish history such moral and religious agencies, often in a supernatural mode, were in active operation. With a responsive moral and religious nature in man, a prevailing and permanent obedience to the divine will would have been secured. There was no such result. The frequent revolts and rebellions, sometimes in the very presence of the most imposing forms of the divine manifestation, witness, not only to the absence of such a nature, but also to the presence of a nature actively propense to evil and strongly resistant of all these moral and religious agencies (Exodus 32:9; Exodus 32:33; Exodus 33:3; Isaiah 48:3-5; Acts 7:51-53). With the advent of the Messiah came the fuller light of the Gospel. In the life and miracles and lessons of Christ and the ministry of his apostles moral and religious agencies rose to their highest form. Instead of a ready response to such truth and grace, again there is resistance. Like resistance has continued through all the Christian centuries. Nor has this resistance widely taken the form of infidelity, which so bars the soul against the moral forces of the Gospel. The significant fact is its prevalence with so many who accept the deepest verities of Christianity. With the admission of such truths, only a native aversion to a true religious life could in so many instances void their constraining force. In all this resistance to the moral and religious agencies of Providence, and the comparatively small results of good, proof is given of the truth of native depravity.[480] [480]
4. The Common Spiritual Apathy.—This apathy is a manifest fact in human life. It is the mental state of the many. Why is this widely prevalent apathy? Men care for secular good. Self-interest is a potent force in human life. Why are its energies given to mere secular good, while spiritual and eternal interests are so much neglected? Why so much earnest service of mammon in preference to the service of God? Men consent to the paramount duties of religion, and to its infinitely momentous interests, and promise them attention, but slumber again, and slumber on, heedless of all the voices of life and death and the entreating appeals of the divine love. Such spiritual apathy cannot be normal to a soul made in the image of God and for a heavenly destiny. It evinces a moral state which has its only account in the truth of native depravity.