Romans 5

How amazing that there should be found in all the wide world a single being reluctant to avail himself of the expiation thus made for sin. The utmost eloquence of men, the most terrible warnings in providence, the profoundest experience of the misery springing out of their league with sin, all fail to obtain for this wondrous gospel of the grace of God entrance into the hearts of men. They say unto God, day by day, hour by hour, “Thou holy God, impute unto us all our offenses. Let it be with us as though Christ had not died. Let there be no Gethsemane or Calvary for us.” G. B.

1. THEREFORE being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus 2 Christ: by whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice 3 in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing 4 that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and 5 hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the 6 Holy Ghost which is given unto us. For when we were yet without strength, in due time 7 Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradven- 8 ture for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward 9 us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now 10 justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, 11 we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.

THE one thing which meets man’s great want, which alone fits him to live and prepares him to die, without which he is orphaned from hope, and with which no calamity can more than temporarily depress him, the one thing which leads him to live with a right purpose, which consecrates all his aims, which gives him a constant refuge, which gilds with light the darkest cloud, which brings relief to fear and foreboding, which makes the weary journey of life a pilgrimage to heaven, and which alone teaches the triumphant song, “O death! where is thy sting? O grave! where is thy victory?"—the one thing that does all this is religious faith, the faith by which being justified we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. E. H. G.

Amid all the accusations of the past the believer enjoys permanent calm. He has peace literally, as regards God in the way of atonement, by which all that lies behind him is wholly covered, and the filial relation completely restored. If the conscience is yet wounded at every turning, the balsam of consolation pours forth in streams. God beholds us in Christ; and he who is really one with Him, however much by nature a child of wrath, is in the sight of the Most High unspeakably well-pleasing. Thus has also the redeemed sinner in regard to the future a well-founded hope. Can it be more forcibly expressed than in the heart-elevating passage: “We stand and rejoice in hope of the glory of God?” Verily it might sound too high, were it not preceded by this testimony regarding Jesus Christ, “By whom also we have access by faith into this grace.” Hitherto the entrance had remained closed, no hope, but miserable fear could alone be ours; there could be no mention of standing, but rather of the sinking of despair; of no vaunt of hope, but of an endless lamentation over disappointed expectation. On the other hand, where peace from above has descended into the heart, it can not be otherwise than that the hope of salvation should also come to dwell there; he who sees his sullied past obliterated, knows at the same time his eternal future to be safe. Van O.

With this chapter begins the general statement, for Jew and Gentile alike, of the blessed consequences of this justification by faith; of the nature and extent of the blessings bestowed on us by the death and resurrection of Christ; their extent being as wide in their saving influence as Adam’s sin was in ruining; yea, wider, because the nature of a free gift is of itself wider and more spreading than that of a prescribed and limited condemnation. And the very use of the law was this, to make abundant and multiply the grace of God, by creating sin, over which grace might triumph.

In verse 2, render, “we glory in the hope of the glory of God.” In verses 3, 4, for “patience,” “endurance,” and for “experience,” “approval,” both twice. A.

1-5. Faith is the door of the heart by which peace enters. Love is the tender shelter beneath which peace reposes. The essence of peace consists in the inward assurance of salvation. This assurance brings us the confident hope that we have the love of God, and that we enjoy friendship with him. A. C.—A cordial reception of the two great truths of spiritual Christianity, justification through faith, and the sovereign, indwelling influences of the Holy Spirit, brings with it a settled and affectionate sense of security, or peace and joy in believing, which becomes the spring of holy tempers and virtuous conduct. Through the knowledge of the gospel, and the hearty reception of its promises, we are “made partakers of the divine nature.” But God is “blessed for evermore.” Shall we then be drawing near to this nature continually, without a happy consciousness of the felicity we are approaching? Shall we come up to the fountain of light, and receive thence no illumination? Those do not appear to know much of human nature who are jealous of happiness as an energy of virtue; or who suppose that virtue on earth will not show whence she has descended and whither she is going. I. T.

1. Justified by faith.** If a man believes, he is saved. Not as if in faith itself there was any merit. We often hear belief in the gospel of Christ spoken about as if it, the work of the man believing, was, in a certain way and to some extent, that which God rewarded by giving him salvation. What is that but the whole doctrine of works come up again in a new form? It is Christ’s life, Christ’s blood, Christ’s sacrifice, Christ’s intercession, that saves. Faith is simply the channel through which there flows over into my emptiness the divine fullness; or, to use the good old illustration, it is the hand which is held up to receive the benefit which Christ lays in it. A living trust in Jesus has power unto salvation, only because it is the means by which the power of God unto salvation may come into my heart. On that side is the great ocean, Christ’s love, Christ’s abundance, Christ’s merits, Christ’s righteousness; or, rather, that which includes them all, there is the great ocean, Christ himself; and on this is the empty vessel of my soul—and the little narrow pipe that has nothing to do but to bring across the refreshing water—that is the act of faith in him. There is no merit in the dead lead, no virtue in the mere emotion. It is not faith that saves us; it is Christ that saves us, and saves us through faith. A. M.

Peace. The peace, which by simple faith in Christ the conscience obtains, is the first step in sanctification. And still through our whole course Christ’s blood of atonement and his life of perfect righteousness are the great fountains of peace which travel with us, just as the stream, which flowed from the smitten rock, followed Israel in the pilgrimage. E. M. G.

2. Access by faith.** Thou hast done away with the barrier by thy fulfillment of the law, and we have now free access to God. Thou art our access, our way; for thy fulfillment of the law is ours; thy righteousness is ours. The divine satisfaction which rested on thee now rests on us. A. C.—

Rejoice in hope. Faith, upon the authority and credit of the divine promise, persuades the heart that there is such a glorious state of things reserved for the saints, and so serves instead of eyes in the divine light to view those glories; or it presents them to view, whence hope reaches forth to them and possesses them; gives the soul an early anticipated fruition of them for its present support and relief—so that it rejoices in the hope of the glory of God. Howe.

Faith looks to Christ as dead, buried, and ascended; and hope to his second coming. Faith looks to him for justification, hope for glory. Faith fights for doctrine, hope for a reward; faith for what is in the Bible, hope for what is in heaven. Faith purifies the heart from bad principles, hope from bad manners. Bun.

3-5. “And not only so, but we exult also in our [present] sufferings; for we know that suffering gives the steadfastness of endurance, and steadfast endurance gives the proof of soundness, and the proof of soundness gives strength to hope, and our hope can not shame us in the day of trial; because the love of God is shed forth in our hearts by the Holy Spirit, who has been given unto us.” C.

We have here the genealogy of hope. The experience we have of God’s power and mercy in saving us out of former troubles begets and nourishes hope against future times of trouble. Tribulation worketh patience, and patience experience, and experience hope. Caryl.—Tribulation. It is derived from the Latin tribulum, which was the threshing instrument, or roller, whereby the Roman husbandmen separated the corn from the husks; and “tribulation,” in its primary significance, was the act of this separation. Sorrow and adversity being the appointed means for the separating in men of whatever in them was light, trivial, and poor, from the solid and the true, their chaff from their wheat, therefore these sorrows and trials are called “tribulations,” threshings, that is, of the inner spiritual man, without which there could be no fitting him for the heavenly garner. T.—It is one of the mortifying proofs what stubborn and unteachable pupils of the Divine Master we are, that no way could be found of bringing us to our immortality but through such a system of checks and penalties. We must be baffled, smitten, scourged; we must ache, and weep, and die; we must suffer the stripes of misfortune, of disease, of mortified ambition, of bleeding affections, of mortal separation. The very word “tribulation” predicts the result, as well as describes the process. The flail (tribulum) in the hand of the thresher is to bruise the sheaves and break out the wheat from the straw. In every threshing-floor there is tribulation; and that is the world over. Blows of pain have to divide the spirit and flesh. The pure fruit of goodness does not come from us but by breaking off the worldly crust. F. D. H.

Patience. Patience is the endurance of any evil, out of the love of God, as the will of God. There is nothing too little in which to approve ourselves to God; nothing too little in which, without God, we should not fail; nothing too great which, with the help of God, we may not endure. The offices of patience are as varied as the ills of this life. We have need of it with ourselves and with others; with those who love us and those who love us not; for the greatest things and for the least; against sudden inroads of trouble and under our daily burdens; disappointments as to the weather or the breaking of the heart; in the weariness of the body, or the wearing of the soul; in our own failure of duty, or in others’ failure toward us; in every-day wants, or in the aching of sickness or the decay of age; in disappointment, bereavement, losses, injuries, reproaches; in heaviness of the heart or its sickness amid delayed hopes, or the weight of this body of death, from which we would be free, that we may have no more struggle with sin within, or temptation without, but attain to our blessed and everlasting peace in our rest in God. In all these things, from childhood’s little troubles to the martyr’s sufferings, patience is the grace of God, whereby we endure evil for the love of God, and keep ourselves still and motionless, that we offend not God. Pusey.

Experience. Faith, in its reproductive power and process of growth, may be compared to the great Oriental banyan tree. It springs up in God, rooted in God’s Word, and soon there are the great waving branches of experience. Then from these very branches the runners go down again into God’s Word, and thence spring up again, new products of faith and new trees of experience, till one and the same tree becomes in itself a grove, with pillared shades and echoing walks between. So experience just grows out of faith, and then a greater faith grows out of experience, the Word of God being all the while the region of its roots, and again a still vaster, richer experience grows out of that faith, till every branch becomes not only a product, but a parent stock, set in the same wood. Thus it is that experience is founded in faith, not faith on experience. Faith is from God and in God, and so produces the work of God, a holy experience of God in the soul. G. B. C.

5. This love of God which is poured out in our hearts, and is here declared to be our ground of confidence in him, is his love to us, and not ours to him. T.—Observe how constantly the Scripture word looks to the love of God, for the ingeneration of love in men, and so for their salvation. The radical, everywhere present idea is, that the new love wanting in them is to be itself only a revealment of the love of God to them, or upon them. Thus the newborn life is to be “the love of God, shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Ghost.” The gospel plan proposes the unbosoming of God’s love to man, that it may be shed abroad in him by the Holy Ghost, and become a salvation, as it begets, by the Spirit, an answering love. H. B.—It is through the intimate personal operation of the Spirit of God, by his indwelling light and grace shed abroad in the souls of them that believe, that the heart is discharged of selfishness and sin, and is filled with the holy beauty and triumph of a supreme virtue. The truth is his instrument, but only the instrument. The essential power by which this amazing change is wrought, is that same energy of the Holy Ghost by which prophets and apostles before were inspired, which in the Lord was ever revealed. It reaches the inmost springs of life; turns gloom to gladness, passion to peace; till the soul becomes a temple alight with love, ringing with praise, the breath of constant supplication filling it as with incensed air. R. S. S.

6. Without strength. The old system is right in laying so urgent a stress on conviction of sin. The grand significance of the gospel is help. The measure of man’s eagerness to receive help, is it not his feeling of helplessness? It is no secret, probably, that in most of the persons we meet in the streets, and even in our meeting-houses, it would be difficult to find any such thing as a vital consciousness of sin at all. F. D. H.

Died for the ungodly. He assumed our nature expressly that he might be able to suffer in our stead; for the distinct and deliberate object of pouring out his blood, and of making his soul an offering for sin. He planted a cross, and presented to the world a prodigy of mercy of which this is the only solution, that he “so loved us.” He took our place in the universe, espoused our interest, opened his bosom, and welcomed to his heart the stroke which we had deserved. J. H.—Christ is not a critic on the soul’s frail steps, as it comes tottering home to him, a prodigal from the far country, or a penitent from the sinful ways of the city. Every promise of his gospel is a pledge to accept sinners, not after they have ceased to be sinners—for when would that be?—but while yet they are sinners. This is the glory of the Cross. The dying is for the ungodly. The Physician is for the sick. The scarred shoulders of the Shepherd are for the sheep that was lost. F. D. H.—He died for the unrighteous, the enemies, choosing to be an exile from heaven, that he might carry us back to heaven; a tender Friend, a wise Counselor, a strong Helper. “What shall I render to the Lord for all that he has rendered to me?” I have but two little things, yea, very little, to give—a body and a soul: or rather, one little thing, my will; and shall I not give up that to his will, who, being so great, was the first to visit one so little as I with such great benefits, and bought all that I am with all that he is? Bernard.

7. “Righteous” here is a man who righteously fulfills the duties of life, and “good” is the good and benevolent man with whom we ourselves have been brought into contact. C.—The whole strength of our affections can be elicited only when goodness is manifested toward us individually. That which should call forth our strongest affections would evidently be a being of perfect moral excellence, putting forth effort and sacrifice on our behalf. M. H.

8. Commendeth his love. The very causes, and the only causes, which could check that love, have not checked it, have only served to draw forth its most abundant stream. All our guilt, instead of drawing forth the thunders of the Almighty and sinking us in the flames of his wrath, has only furnished the occasion for the triumph of his mercy. It was in view of this that angels sang with raptures of wonder and joy, “Glory to God in the highest!”

Here is the love of God in meridian brightness and glory. N. W. T.—There has never yet been found an intellectual or moral or social condition too high or too low for this doctrine. No debasement has been too vile, and no natural purity has been too refined, for it. The explorations of Christian missionaries have found no nation or tribe on the face of the earth—even where the very idea of any deity was most nearly extinct—in which this simple message, “Christ died for us,” has not been apprehended, seized, rejoiced in, and lived upon, as the opening eye welcomes light. F. D. H.

10. The first argument is: “If God did so much for us when enemies, what will he do for us when friends?” The second is: “If Christ’s death has done so much for us, what will his life do?” He loved and blessed us when enemies; will he not much more love us when friends? He loved us when we hated him; will he not love us more when we return his love? When subjected to the dominion of him who had the power of death, he yet conquered for us, and won glorious spoils; what will he not do now when he has led captivity captive, and completed his mighty victory? If the Cross and the tomb have done so much for us, what will not the throne secure? Here, then, are two truths which, in assuring us of pardon, assure us of everything. “Jesus died, and Jesus liveth”—these are the truths which contain everything for us. “Jesus died!"—that contains everything that we need for reconciliation and peace: “Jesus liveth!"—that contains everything pertaining to the promised inheritance. “Jesus died—Jesus liveth!” The simple knowledge of these simple truths is salvation, forgiveness, peace, eternal life. All that can come forth from his grave, or down from his throne—all that a dying and a living Saviour can do, is ours! Joy, glory, dominion, royalty, priesthood, and a boundless inheritance—all these are ours, and all of them made irreversibly sure to us from the fact that “Jesus liveth.” He was dead and is alive; yea, and he liveth for evermore. This is our pledge for the perpetuity of our possession. Bonar.

Saved by his life. The powerful influence of the life of Christ upon everything that belongs to complete salvation is manifest in the justification of believers, which, purchased by the death of Christ, is rendered sure and permanent by his restored life. The life of Christ is no less available to insure the sanctification of all who believe on him. For this end did he enter into the heavenly sanctuary, that from thence he might send forth his conquering Spirit to cleanse and purify the hearts of those whom he had washed with his blood; that, as no guilt might be left to provoke the justice of God, so neither should there be any defilement to offend his holiness. Further, the life of Christ doth effectual-

11. By whom we have atonement.** If an atonement were necessary, and for that we must trust the express warrant of Scripture, we know not where the vicarious victim was to be sought without insuperable objections on the score of justice and of goodness, except in the offended Judge himself. Our atonement appears to demand, from the very nature of the case, a Person not less than divine. And thus, hidden in the depths of justice and mercy, is found the solution of this astonishing coalition of glory and of woe. Essential happiness thus embraces essential misery, because the God of happiness is also the God at once of infinite purity and infinite love. We first start aside at the impossibility; we gaze longer and deeper, and the conviction slowly rises that it could not be otherwise, and God be what he is. The sacrifice, strange as it is, is but the natural growth of this being; it is but the child of eternal mercy wedded to eternal truth; and their spousal home is in the heart of God. Hence it is that the life and happiness of the universe, in its love at once of justice and of us, comes, through the medium of the inferior nature, in direct contact with misery and death. W. A. B.

Before going into another division of the discourse, instituting his immortal parallel between the first Adam and the second Adam, between the offense and the grace, between condemnation and salvation, he utters a burst of satisfaction, as he surveys the goodly prospect, and thus expresses the joy of a soul which accepts Christ: “And not only so, but we also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the atonement.” The same Greek word is elsewhere translated reconciliation. The joy here spoken of is that high exulting joy, when the soul is lifted up with complacency in the blessing possessed. This is a summing up of all the bright and stupendous things contained in the foregoing verses. And so all the gospel, the good news, the glad tidings, is in this one word, Reconciliation. This is the message sent by the word of preaching to be believed, that God is reconciled; and he that believes this is saved. J. W. A.

12. WHEREFORE, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death 13 passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (for until the law sin was in the world: but 14 sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam’s transgression, who is the 15 figure of him that was to come. But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by 16 grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift: for the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free 17 gift is of many offences unto justification. For if by one man’s offence death reigned by one; much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness 18 shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.) Therefore, as by the offence of one judgment came upon all men to condemnation; even so by the righteousness of one the free gift came upon 19 all men unto justification of life. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sin- 20 ners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound: 21 that as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.

We can not hesitate to perceive that the powers of evil consist of two great detachments, which speculative men have called physical and moral evil, which plain people are familiar with under the titles of pain and guilt—pain, which seems naturally to tend to weakness and death; and guilt, which, by a process as natural, descends into habitual and irremediable sin. Distinct as are these two forms of evil, even in our own experience we detect traces of a connection between them; but it is to Revelation that we are indebted for the clearest intimation of their secret but indissoluble association; to Revelation, which announces that physical infirmity and death entered our human creation in the footsteps of willful sin, that willful sin is the forerunner of pains eternal. To these powers, then, the two great engines of the adversary, Christ is revealed as the counteracting agent. He came to triumph over both; his work is respectively directed to each. In relation to sin, he is a mediator of justification and holiness; in relation to death and pain, he is the author of endless life and glory. W. A. B.

12-21. Whatever else this important and somewhat difficult Scripture may contain, it contains at least these things: that Adam was a type of Christ, in the extraordinary sense of the latter’s being set over against the former in all moral relations to our race; that as Adam brought sin and death upon all, so Christ brings righteousness and life to all; that as Adam, by one act of transgression, brought condemnation, so Christ, from many acts of transgression, brings justification; and that, while the evils of Adam’s sin are unconditional, absolute, the benefits of Christ’s righteousness are conditional, contingent. By his sin Adam actually, positively brought death, temporal and spiritual, upon all men. By his righteousness Christ brings life, spiritual and eternal, conditionally, under terms, to all men. By his first disobedience, Adam opened and spread the broad roll of a flying curse over the whole race of man. His act, which was one of rebellion, cut the race off from God; and, thus cut off, the whole fell into a state of moral separation from him: a state which rendered it certain that every individual would, on reaching years of moral action, commit actual sin. That state of the race, including this attendant certainty, constitutes original sin. It is a state over which “God’s wrath and damnation” rest; and, at the same time, one which includes every individual of the race, from Adam to the last of his stock. Thus much of the full. In the recovery, Christ, the second Adam, by his obedience unto death, brought in a blessing, which, in the possibilities of its application, is co-extensive with the primal curse. He threw the reach and embrace of mercy around the entire race. He “tasted death for every man.” He opened the door of the kingdom of heaven to all mankind. He made eternal life possible to the whole race, from Adam to the last of his stock. And thus much of the recovery. J. S. S.

The doctrine of the apostle is that as all men are, in certain points, treated as if they were sinners, entirely on account of the first sin of the first man, Adam, so all men who are justified are treated as if they were righteous entirely on account of the obedience to death of him of whom the first man was an image—the Lord from heaven. All the evil that befalls mankind, either in the present or the future world, may be considered as originating in the first sin of the first man, directly or indirectly. Some of these evils are realized, however, only through the individual, in his own person, becoming an actual violator of the divine law, and are realized by him in the degree in which he does so. There are others that come directly on the race, as the manifestation of the displeasure of God at the first sin: Death, including a life longer or shorter, it might be, but liable to disease, doomed to death; and the greater loss of that divine influence which is the soul of the human soul, the principle of its true excellence and highest happiness. These—mortality and destitution of spiritual goodness—come equally on all men, without reference to personal acts of guilt; and these are the evils, the manner of incurring which the apostle employs as an illustration of the manner in which the great blessing of justification is obtained for man. This seems plain from the apostle’s object, for evils not resulting entirely from Adam’s sin would not have corresponded with blessings resulting entirely from our Lord’s obedience; and further, it appears from his obviously contrasting the judgment of the one offense, which is executed, with the judgment of the many offenses, which is graciously removed in justification. J. B.

The meaning of the latter part of this chapter, as Augustine loves to draw it out, is as follows: The apostle had spoken in what went before of Christ’s death, and the fruits of that death; but the question might well present itself: How should the death of one have such significance for all? Paul answers the question. This one is not merely one; he stands in a relation to all men which can only find its analogy in the relation in which Adam stood to all. He may be rightly called a “second Adam.” In Adam the whole natural development of man was included; the entire human race is but the unfolding of that first, that one man. Exactly so Christ is a spiritual head. The whole race of regenerate men was shut up in him, is unfolded from him. As the huge oak with its trunk and all its spreading branches is rudimentally wrapped up in the single acorn; so the world, or mankind natural, in Adam, and the Church, or mankind spiritual, in Christ.

Only from this point of view, of the race, namely, as included in Adam, do we attain any right apprehension of the significance of Adam’s sin. The injury which by that sin Adam inflicted on himself, he did not inflict on himself alone. It was a flinging of poison into the fountain head, and thus an infecting lower down of every drop of the stream. And only so do we attain any right apprehension of the significance of Christ’s righteousness; for that other is but one side, the sadder and the darker side, of the same truth. That which held good for death held good also for life. The same law of intimate union between the members of the race and their head, which made one man’s sin so diffusive of death, has made one man’s obedience or righteousness so diffusive of life. Christ shall diffuse himself no less effectually than Adam, as the one by generation, so the other by regeneration. Nay, there shall be, as there ever must be, a mightier power in the good than in the evil; for while the one sin was sufficient to ruin the world, the righteousness of one did not merely do away with that one sin, but with all the innumerable others which had unfolded themselves from it. T.

The dogma of original sin implies and affirms these propositions: 1. That God, in creating man, has created him an agent, moral, free, and fallible. 2. That the will of God is the moral law of man, and obedience to the will of God is the duty of man, inasmuch as he is a moral and free agent. 3. That, by an act of his own free will, man has knowingly failed in his duty by disobeying the law of God. 4. That the free man is a responsible being, and that disobedience to the law of God has justly entailed on him punishment. 5. That that responsibility and that punishment are hereditary, and that the fault of the first man has weighed and does weigh upon the human race. The authority of God, the duty of obedience to the law of God, the liberty and responsibility of man, the heritage of human responsibility are, in their moral chronology, the principles and facts comprised in the dogma of original sin. Guizot.

Most evangelical divines are divided between the Augustinian or realistic, the federal or forensic, and the Arminian theories. It should be remembered that the main difficulty lies in the fact itself—the undeniable, stubborn, terrible fact—of the universal dominion of sin and death over the entire race, infants as well as full-grown sinners. No system of philosophy has ever given a more satisfactory explanation than the great divines of the Church. Outside of the Christian redemption, the fall, with its moral desolation and ruin, remains an impenetrable mystery. But immediately after the fall appears, in the promise of the serpent-bruiser, the second Adam, and throws a bright ray of hope into the gloom of despair. In the fullness of the time, according to God’s own counsel, he appeared in our nature to repair the loss, and to replace the temporary reign of sin by the everlasting reign of superabounding grace, which never could have been revealed in all its power without the fall. The person and work of the second Adam are the one glorious solution of the problem of the first, and the triumphant vindication of divine justice and mercy. This is the main point for all practical purposes, and in this, at least, all true Christians are agreed. P. S.—We offer a summation of the whole subject: 1. The vast majority, not only of Calvinists, but of Christians, hold that the race so had its probation in Adam’s first trial, that it fell in his fall, and the consequences of his sin to himself passed over to his posterity. 2. The majority hold that his descendants did not sin in him really and literally. 3. A great majority hold that death is the penalty of sin, and includes every kind of penal evil. 4. A great majority hold that death thus extending to soul and body was visited upon Adam and his posterity by sin. 5. A great majority hold that Adam’s sin was so reckoned to the account of (imputed to) the race, that its loss of the divine favor and communion with God, and, by consequence, its lapse into sin, was a visitation in judgment for that sin. 6. A great majority believe that evil inflicted on moral beings for sin, in support of law, is punishment, and that the present degradation of our race came in this way. 7. A great majority believe that Christ bore our sins, only as he bore their penalty, became a curse for us, and had the chastisement of our peace laid upon him, and hence that sin may be so imputed to or reckoned to the account of those who did not personally commit it, that they shall bear its penalty. If this is possible in one extraordinary case, it may be in another. 8. A great majority believe that Christ is the second Adam, of whom the first was a type, inasmuch as, being condemned for the sin of the first Adam, we are justified by the righteousness of the second. “As by the disobedience of one many were made sinners, so by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous.” Herein are found the elements of the true doctrine of original sin. These pregnant words of Pascal can not be gainsaid. “It is astonishing that the mystery which is farthest removed from our knowledge (I mean the transmission of original sin) should be that without which we can have no knowledge of ourselves. It is in this abyss that the clew to our condition takes its turns and windings, inasmuch that man is more incomprehensible without this mystery than this mystery is incomprehensible to man.” C. H.

12. By Jesus we have received the reconciliation (v. 11); by one man sin entered into the world. In stating this similarity, the apostle draws the attention of his readers from Abraham, the father of the Jewish nation, of whom they boasted, and through whom they inherited many blessings, to a more remote ancestor, from whom both Jews and Gentiles were descended, and through whom they both inherited the same dismal legacy. In ascending to Adam, the distinction between Jews and Gentiles is lost, and the necessity of a Saviour is laid in that condition, which is common to all mankind. G. Hill.

13,14. The 12th verse states that all mankind are exposed to death in consequence of the first sin of the first man. The proof of this fact is contained in the 13th and 14th verses, which refer to infants. These die entirely on account of the sin of the first man, without reference to their own personal violation of the divine law. J. B.

17,18. Sin is death’s parent. Had there been no sin, no one would have died. The first man received God’s commandment on condition that if he kept it he should live, if he violated it he should die. By not believing that he would die, he did what caused him to die; and found that to have been true which the Giver of the law had affirmed. Thence came death, thence man became mortal, thence came labor, thence misery, thence the second death after the first, that is, after temporal death, death everlasting. This tradition of death, this law of destruction, binds every man who is born, except that one Man who became Man that man should not perish. For he came bound by no law of death; therefore he is called in the Psalm, “Free among the dead”; who lived without sin, who did not die because of sin; sharing in our penalty, not in our offense. Death is the penalty of offense; our Lord

Jesus Christ came to die, did not come to sin; by sharing in our penalty without our offense, he annulled both our offense and penalty. What penalty? That which was due to us after this life. So he was crucified, that on the Cross he might show the dying out of our old man; and he rose, that in his own life he might show our new life. Aug.

Verse 18 should stand, “Therefore as through one trespass the issue was unto all men to condemnation: even so through one righteous act the issue was unto all men to justification of life.” A.

19-21. When our unrighteousness was consummated, and full proof was given that punishment and death were to be looked for as its reward, and the time was come which God had preordained for the manifestation of his own loving-kindness and power (for the love of God, which proceeds from his transcendent benignity, is peerless), he did not hate us, nor repel us, nor did he remember evil, but showed his long-suffering, bore with us, himself took upon him our sins, gave up, of himself, his own Son as a ransom for us, the Holy for the lawless, the Innocent for the wicked, the Just for the unjust, the Incorruptible for the corruptible, the Immortal for the mortal. For what else but his Son’s righteousness was able to cover our sins? Wherein was it possible for us, the lawless and impious, to be justified, save in the Son of God alone? O that sweet substitution! O that unsearchable plan! O those unexpected benefits! That the transgression of many should be covered by one righteous, and the righteousness of one should justify many that were unrighteous. Epistle of 2d Century.

How by one man’s obedience could many be made righteous? The answer is not far to seek. The transcendent worth of that obedience which Christ rendered, of that oblation which he offered, the power which it possessed of countervailing and counterbalancing a world’s sin, lay in this, that he who offered these, while he bore a human nature, and wrought human acts, was a divine person; not indeed God alone, for as such he would never have been in the condition to offer; nor man alone, for then the worth of his offering could never have reached so far; but that he was God and man in one person indissolubly united, and in this person performing all those acts: man, that he might obey and suffer and die; God, that he might add to every act of his obedience, his suffering, his death, an immeasurable worth, steeping in the glory of his divine personality all of human that he wrought. T.—The obedience of Christ is expressly declared to be the ground of our acceptance, and the sufferings of Christ are but a part of that obedience. Taken together, the active and the passive obedience constitute that one righteousness which is the sole meritorious ground of our acceptance. What he did, and what he suffered, are but one object in the sight of the law; a glorious righteousness, with which we are graciously invested; wrought out by our head, in our nature, but deriving infinite value from the hidden fountain of the Godhead. J. W. A.

WHAT the Scriptures teach on this subject, according to the common doctrine of evangelical Protestants, is, all who die in infancy are saved. The Scriptures nowhere exclude any class of infants, baptized or unhaptized, born in Christian or in heathen lands, of believing or unbelieving parents, from the benefits of the redemption of Christ. C. H.—In the case of those who die in infancy, with original sin only affecting their natures, Christ, it would seem, stands to them for good, over against Adam for evil. As they are brought under the condemnation of original sin through Adam, so they receive remission of it through Christ. And the condition (involuntarily enjoyed, indeed, on their part, but voluntarily secured to them on God’s)—the condition on which they receive this remission is, that they have committed no actual sin. Being taken away from the ordinary conditions of the gospel, they need no other. For if, in receiving this grant of remission, their relation to Christ be involuntary, so, in becoming subject to the sin forgiven, was their relation to Adam involuntary. Is it not reasonable, therefore, that, on the condition named, Christ, the greater, should remove what Adam, the less, entailed? It is the great law of the Church under the gospel that—while, in the case of those who live to commit actual sin, the death of Christ can be rendered effectual only by being applied in the exercises of faith and repentance, or of that inward renewing which is the work of the Spirit in the use of truth—in the case of all who die in infancy and without actual sin the death of Christ itself is effectual, without being so applied. As they have not become voluntary in following the first Adam’s sin, so need they not be voluntary in relying on the second Adam’s righteousness. Had it not been for Christ, the whole race had perished. But since he “hath tasted death for every man,” they only perish who, to the fact of original sin, as an infection from our common head, add the guilt of actual sin, as the intelligent and voluntary issue of their own minds; and who, thus guilty and defiled, never become renewed and sanctified by the Holy Ghost unto repentance, faith, and holiness; but, on the contrary, either by an actual volition, or by cherishing tempers which would prompt such an act, reject the offer of pardon and life through the Saviour, and thus seal, beyond reversal, the sentence of their own condemnation.

This view of the effects of Christ’s death and sacrifice accounts for the fact that so little is said in the Bible of those who die in infancy. Toward infancy and childhood as states of life, the Bible is full of the tenderest regard. The language of Christ to those who would have kept the little children from him may be taken as the best expression of that regard in summary; while it shows that between original sin in infancy and actual sin in subsequent years there is a broad and important difference. But the case of those who die in infancy the Bible leaves in almost unbroken silence. The comforted mourning of the penitent David over his dead

child, “I shall go to him, but he shall not return to me” (2 Sam. 12 : 23), is the plainest and loudest if not the only word ever uttered to break that silence. But, in the remarkable silence which it generally observes, it plainly intimates that this is a case to which the ordinary conditions of the gospel do not apply; that, as “what the law says, it says to them that are under the law,” so what the Bible anywhere says, it says to them that are under the Bible, and can understand its elementary and fundamental teachings; that dying infants not belonging to this class are in God’s hands; and that, as he sees good to take them away from the ordinary lot of sinful men, so he probably takes them to that bosom of mercy, to that freeness of pardon for Christ’s sake, to which the actual transgressor can be admitted in no other way than that fully prescribed in the gospel. This leads to bright and blessed views of their future lot; views full of the sunlight of hope, and rich with the blessedness of anticipated glory, to all whom God, in his chastening goodness, is pleased to beckon away ere the stain of actual sin has rested on their spirits. If they can not have, neither do

they need, that specifically renewing and sanctifying change which God demands of all others. If they do not live to receive that gift of a renewed mind which Christ came to bestow, neither do they live to feel that voluntary breaking out of the disease of sin, the workings of which Christ came to destroy. Through Christ’s sacrifice, the fact of original sin is, it may be believed, forgiven them; through God’s intervention, the stain of actual sin is not contracted. The pains of temporal death come upon them, not in punishment of voluntary guilt, but as that only part of the original penalty which follows involuntary infection. In them, Adam still dies for his first offense. In them, Christ now lives, through his satisfying obedience. The first Adam plunged them into the peril of original sin. The second Adam travailed for them in bloody pain, and delivered them out of their peril. The former left them to a state of misery, as the inevitable consequence of introducing sin into the world. The latter wins them to a life of blessedness, as part of his promised reward for becoming a sacrifice for sin. J. S. S.