profound writer. This is enough, without adding that he was an inspired writer. As such a man and writer, John understood the established laws of personification, which no man ever transgresses. He knew perfectly when an object might be personified-that is, when all his readers would agree with him in regarding the object described as not a person, and when also the subject allowed the exercise of a vivid imagination.

With a clear understanding of this, John takes up the history of his ascended Redeemer. He does not stop to dwell upon His human nature-how and where He was born and cradled. He passes all this by. His mind grasps a vaster conception. He goes back of the Saviour's birth, back of creation's birth, back into God's eternity. He seizes hold of that sacred name, The Word, familiar and hallowed to the mind of every Jew, as the name of Him who of old had tabernacled between the cherubim, and been worshiped for ages as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That name, inwoven with all the sublimest facts and associations of Jewish history, John takes as having the closest connection with the history of his now glorified Saviour, and says in a way of plain narrative, where there is not the slightest evidence of imagination, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth." Did John, in thus describing the Logos, know that he was speaking of an attribute only of the Deity, which would be so understood by all his readers without a moment's hesitation, and which was so obvious that no one could ever be led into a mistake? No man will

assert this. On the contrary, he knew-and we assert this with the utmost assurance-that he was employing a sacred name, identified with the living God of Israel through long centuries, and so found upon almost every page of their vernacular Scriptures.

In these circumstances the personification of the Logos by John was an absolute impossibility, as certain as any mathematical demonstration. We are therefore shut up by the inevitable necessity of language to the literal meaning of the passage. John referred to a person, of whom he asserts without ambiguity or qualification, that He was in the beginning with God, and was God, the Creator of all things-that He was made flesh and dwelt on earth, revealing to the eyes of men His divine glories.

If, then, we are asked why the Scriptures do not settle the question of the divinity of Christ, we reply, They do settle it. It is plain as language and statement and fact can make it. And the reason why there is controversy still about it, does not arise from any thing that is wanting in the testimony of the Word of God; but wholly from other causes. A blind man may not see the sun, and deny its existence; but it is not for want of any reality or brightness in that luminary. To make the sun visible to such a man, you need to operate; not upon the sun to increase its light, but upon the eyes, to take away their blindness. It is evident, however, from the previous discussion, that many of the difficulties in which this subject has been involved, with the controversies growing out of them, might have been avoided, had we studied this sublime theme in the order and from the point of view in which it is presented to us in the sacred textbook. "Great indeed is the mystery of godliness." God himself knew all its difficulties. He began, therefore, at a point in the history where the elements were simple

and indisputable, and, from these, advanced by easy stages to all the profoundest depths of the mystery. Had we followed God in this His own method of instruction, starting with the unquestioned divinity of Jehovah, God of Israel, dwelling between the cherubim, and tracing out the wondrous history until we behold Him as the Woman's seed, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us, there could have been no room left for doubt as to what the teachings of the Bible were on this subject. We should as soon have questioned the true humanity of our Immanuel, as His divinity.

CHAPTER XV.

HUMAN DEPRAVITY.

HAVING studied the revelations of the Godhead, we return to the point where we paused in the history, the introduction of an economy of grace. We are now to take up this system of redemption, and search out its nature, as unfolded in the Scriptures.

The first question that meets us here, lying at the basis of all correct views of a remedial plan for human recovery, is,

What is the character of our fallen humanity? How was human nature affected by the entrance of sin?

This is a question of vital moment, determining by necessity the nature of the whole work of redemption, since that must be adapted to the character of the race -to the nature and extent of their ruin. Accordingly, there is nothing which so shapes the views of men on religion and the doctrines of the Bible, as their opinions upon their own moral condition, and the nature and desert

of sin. This is the starting point for all theological systems—the foundation upon which all the superstructures are reared. It is the point from which the Divine plan of mercy began, and by which all its provisions were shaped.

It may be observed, also, that there is no point upon which men are more likely to be led astray-none in respect to which they will more willingly be deluded. There is a powerful, controlling bias of mind which perverts the judgment. The eyes of men are blinded, their hearts are hardened. They are not willing to be convicted of sin. It demands an integrity which does not belong to selfish, unrenewed human nature, and which comes alone from Divine grace, to enable us to sit in judgment here, and study out that which will be to our own condemnation and shame. It is grace alone that can make men willing to know all the truth on this subject. If correct views of the Bible and redemption, then, depend upon a proper estimate of human character, it is not strange that there is a great deal of false theology. When the court and the jury are composed of the criminals and their accomplices, we need not wonder that truth and justice are not maintained. Such men certainly would require grace to administer the law righteously by their own hands.

We add another remark. Neither the Bible nor Christianity is responsible for the doctrine of human depravity.

Christianity does not make the doctrine: it simply finds it in existence. Man is responsible for all there is of truth in it. He made it. The Bible simply states it as a fact. If Christianity were blotted out of existence, human depravity would remain untouched. Man would be just the selfish, sinful being that he now is, and then without any remedy. It is therefore unreasonable to charge this doctrine, whatever it be, upon the Bible, as if it had any responsibility for its existence. Man's de

pravity and ruin ante-date Christianity, and will continue the terrible facts they are, even if the Christian system were proved a falsehood. We cannot alter in one iota the doctrine of man's utterly lost condition, by proving that the remedy proposed in the Bible is an ineffectual one, and its salvation vain.

These observations will show how appropriate it is to our plan, to take up this subject at this point of the history. That plan is to consider the facts of the Christian system in the natural order of their development. When, then, did the doctrine of sin and apostasy from God meet our first parents? At the very outset, before even they heard the gracious promise of a Deliverer, or knew there was to be any salvation. They themselves discovered this sad truth to their utter confusion and shame, without any revelation from Heaven. They did not need a revelation to tell them they were naked, or lead to efforts to hide that nakedness, or cause them to flee from their Maker's presence. Their knowledge of their own sin and ruin was prior to all their knowledge of the system of grace, and entirely independent of it. The study of it, therefore, is appropriate here.

What, then, is the true doctrine concerning sin, and human nature as affected by it?

In regard to the existence of sin there is no dispute. The only question is as to its nature and extent.

I. What is the nature of sin?

We shall but briefly discuss this point, although there is a wide field of controversy here, upon which we might

enter.

Sin is a transgression of the law of God, committed by a moral and intelligent being as a subject of the Divine government; and which, in the nature of the case, cannot be committed by any other. Sin pertains to a moral agent. It cannot be predicated of any other. Whatever is neces