account for that procedure at all. It is enough LECT. III. for us to know, that so it seemed good unto Him "who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working." of his mighty plan, both the appointment of a probation and the permission of its anticipated result, formed a part. On that result, as relates to man, it becomes us to look with mingled feelings of humility, resignation, and hope. To rejoice in it, as some would have us, were unnatural and unseemly; to mourn over it, as absolutely, and in all its consequences, deplorable, were to doubt the power and the benevolence of Him whose attribute it is to bring good out of evil, and who will doubtless make this sad event the means of adding immeasurably to the ultimate felicity of the moral universe. Privileged with a revelation of his will, of this, at least, we are assured, that it has already given occasion for a display of the Divine character and perfections, the most wonderful, perhaps, and glorious, which his intelligent creatures have any where, or at any time beheld, in the plan which he has set in operation for restoring his fallen creatures to the enjoyment of his favour and likeness. From the development and operation of this scheme, an amount of intelligence and joy has been already communicated even to the most exalted of God's creatures, which no human mind can adequately estimate, and which, destined to receive continual accessions as the wonders of Divine grace are successively

LECT. III. unfolded, shall fill the eternity of their being, and form the occasion of their loftiest praise.

Penalty attached to transgression;

not temporal

but spiritual

death.

Before proceeding to consider particularly the doctrine of Scripture, respecting this remedial provision, it will be necessary to consider for a little the penalty to which man is exposed, in consequence of sin, and from which it is the design of the provided remedy to save him.

When God first laid upon man the prohibition to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, he coupled with it, as has been already observed, the threatening, "for in the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."* The penalty, then, of transgression was death, and this penalty Adam incurred, and doubtless received on the occasion of his breaking the Divine law. By this term in the primal threatening, many understand nothing more than temporal dissolution, or that which in ordinary language is denominated death; but that this is an interpretation which comes short of the meaning of the warning is, I think, rendered probable by the following considerations. In the first place, the term death is frequently used in Scripture to denote a state of estrangement from God, and subjugation to his displeasure. "In his favour," we are told, "is life," and Wisdom says, "Whoso findeth me, findeth life, and shall obtain favour of the Lord.... all they that hate me, love death." Moses set before the Israelites life and death,

*Gen. ii. 17.

which he explains to mean blessing and cursing.* Lect. III. And in the New Testament no mode of phraseology is more familiar than that which represents the enjoyment of the Divine favour as a state of life, and the absence of that as a state of death.† We may regard this, therefore, as an accredited biblical usage of the term. Secondly, where the term is used in so unqualified a manner as it is in the case before us, it seems fair to understand it in its most unqualified sense. Death here, then, would mean the absence or destruction of all the life that Adam had. But was the union of soul and body the only life he possessed? Did he not besides this enjoy that higher life, which consisted in the moral union of the soul with God? On what ground, then, shall we exclude this from the number of the blessings, with the loss of which Adam was threatened in case of disobedience? Thirdly, in order to estimate aright the import of this threatening, we must bear in mind that at the time it was uttered Adam was a pure and holy being, enjoying the Divine favour, and finding in that enjoyment his richest treasure,-emphatically, his life. Now, to such a being, the most appalling form in which the punishment of sin could present itself would be the loss of that favour, as consequent

Ps. xxx. 5; Prov. viii. 35, 36; Deut. xxx. 15. Comp. also Prov. xii. 28, xiv. 27; Jer. xxi. 8, &c.

See, e. g. John iii. 36, v. 40; Rom. v. 17, viii. 6; 1 Pet. iii. 7, &c.

LECT. III. upon his transgression. No conceivable amount of temporal suffering, not even annihilation itself would, to such a being, convey aught so terrific as the simple idea of the Divine displeasure. To this, doubtless, Adam's mind turned when the threatening was uttered, as that which he certainly should incur by sinning, and which would be to him the most awful penalty he could endure. Whether at such a moment he would so much as think of temporal death at all, may be fairly doubted; but if such a thought did present itself, we may well believe that it appeared only to be instantaneously dismissed, as of too insignificant a character to mingle with the more solemn and appalling images, which the thought of the Divine displeasure would excite. Fourthly, if death in the original threatening mean temporal death, it appears unaccountable that Adam, after his transgression, should have continued in existence upon earth. No language could more forcibly convey the idea of instantaneous sequence between the commission of the crime and the endurance of the penalty than that employed in the primal threatening. "In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," were the words of God,-words which certainly convey to the mind the idea that instant death (whatever that might mean) would be the consequence of man's violating the Divine prohibition. But Adam did not die, in the ordinary sense of that term, at the time of

his eating the forbidden fruit, nor for centuries LECT. III. afterwards, a fact which can be reconciled with the threatening only by giving the word "death" as therein used a spiritual meaning. We thus exclude from it the idea of temporal dissolution entirely, as forming directly and primarily any part of the threatened penalty.

The fact that

Adam incur

objection to

this view.

It may, perhaps, occur to some as an objection to this view of the subject, that in the red death no interview which took place between God and our first parents after their fall, distinct reference is made to temporal death, as forming part of that which they had incurred by their sin. "In the sweat of thy face," said God to Adam, "shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground: for out of it wast thou taken; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."* That these words refer to temporal death there can be no question; but it only requires, I think, a little reflection to satisfy us that this, instead of weakening, rather confirms the interpretation above given of the original penalty denounced against sin. For, first, if that penalty consisted solely in the death of the body, the fact that it had been already incurred, rendered it, to say the least, unnecessary to tell Adam thus solemnly that he must die. Secondly, if we look at the connexion in which this announcement of Adam's corporal mortality stands, we shall find that it follows close upon an assurance of deliverance

* Gen. iii. 19.

K