B O O K   F I F T H.

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CHAPTER I.

ADOPTION.

      ANTECEDENT and consequent are relative terms. A consequent is that which follows from, or is dependent upon an antecedent;--the result of an instituted connection between it and that which precedes it, in nature or by appointment.

      There is a conventional and artificial, as well as a natural and necessary, connection between antecedents and consequents. Consequents in grammar, logic, mathematics, religion, though always dependent in some way upon their respective antecedents, are not in the same sense, nor always, when in the same sense, in the same degree dependent upon their antecedents.

      In nature, the succession of day and night, of summer and winter, of seed-time and harvest are essentially natural consequents, because the effects of the motions of the earth. While the earth remains, they must continue. But the motions of a wheel, by the weight and motion of water upon it, are consequents both of nature and of art combined.

      In things mental and spiritual, the connection between moral and spiritual antecedents and consequents is not to be measured by time, or the motions of bodies. A perception, a thought, a volition, and an action may be so simultaneous as to baffle all the measures of time. Still they are, in nature or by divine appointment, antecedent and consequent, though they may not stand to each other as cause and effect. But who can satisfactorily trace the connection between antecedents and consequents in the operations of nature in many of her most beautiful and beneficent developments? Take, for example, some of her sublime processes in crystallization. Who can explain her operations in converting certain fluids into various solid bodies of the most [274] beautiful and grotesque forms and of the most variegated colours. Who can explain the phenomena of their polarity, which causes one particle of matter to attract an atom of another particle and to repel the other parts of it, so as to form numerous sides bounded by plane surfaces? Who can enumerate and arrange the antecedents and consequents acting and reacting in converting the contents of an egg into a well-formed and well-fledged peacock?

      The mysteries of a spiritual process on the inner man are not more incomprehensible than the mysteries of that incubation which forms bones, muscles, arteries, veins, skin, feathers, and hairs out of the yolk of an egg. Still, it is in the way of antecedents and consequents, in action and in reaction.

      In making a son of God out of a son of man, as he now is, the process may be more sublime and spiritual, but not more mysterious and incomprehensible. There is the spirit of man, paralyzed and dead in trespasses and sins, energized, quickened, and transformed by the power of Divine truth, perceived, received, and obeyed. Here are antecedents and consequents not governed by the laws of matter. Hence faith, repentance, and baptism are severally essential to the exhibition, development, and perfection of the Christian man. Faith and truth, repentance and death unto sin, baptism or a burial and resurrection with Christ, are as much antecedents and consequents respecting one another as are oxygen, caloric, and light to animal life and comfort.

      But we do not separate these, in nature nor in operation, from one another: no more can we separate faith, repentance, and baptism, in regeneration or conversion, according to the spiritual agencies concurrent in forming a new man out of an old man. We are, indeed, enlightened, converted; or, rather, we are enlightened, quickened, regenerated, justified, adopted, sanctified, and saved by the truth believed and obeyed. Faith and obedience are in embryo, twin sisters in the heart of a convert; and are developed, manifested, and perfected by the overt acts of confession and profession, or by faith and baptism.

      When, then, we say that justification, sanctification, and adoption are consequent upon faith, repentance, and baptism, we mean not to place repentance and baptism on a level with faith, or as worth any thing without it. Nay, indeed, we rather regard baptism as deriving all its value from faith, and as being [275] an embodied and formal profession of it. "For, as faith, without works, is dead, being alone," so baptism, without faith, is a mere useless ceremony, and in no respect benefits, rather, indeed, injures its subject. Even faith itself is of no value separated from the blood of Christ. Our life spiritual is found in the moral of his blood. For, as nothing which we eat can enter, but by its death and dissolution, into our blood and life, so nothing that Christ did, apart from what he suffered, can ever enter into our spiritual life, health, and moral constitution.

      Baptism being the last of the series of truth, faith, repentance, love, and profession, it is properly styled, in figure, "being born again," or being "born of water and of the Spirit." And faith being an active, operative principle, containing in it all that is in the gospel of Christ's blood, it is the vitalizing principle of Christian activity and of all Christian excellence and enjoyment.

      Adoption is usually placed after justification, in our systems of scholastic theology. We are not in possession of any good reason for this peculiar arrangement. "Because you are sons," says Paul, "God has sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, breathing Abba, Father."

      Adoption, indeed, is a mere act of Divine favour, much more glorious on the part of God, than the adoption of a squalid wretch on the part of a king, to be an heir in common with his own son. In our baptism, we are born into the Divine family, enrolled in heaven. We receive justification or pardon, we are separated or sanctified to God, and glorified by the inspiration of his own Spirit.

      While justification and sanctification, especially the latter, occupy a very large space in Apostolic Christianity, adoption is but occasionally named or alluded to. It is wholly and exclusively a work of Divine grace. But justification and sanctification--although the former is really no more than pardon, and the latter no more than separation to God, to his service, to his and our glory--cover a large space in the remedial economy.

      We shall, therefore, develop more at length justification and sanctification; the former of which changes our state, and the latter not only our state, but our character. We shall, however, in doing this, present them as the consequents of [276] Christian baptism, as Paul does, when he says, "But you are washed," in baptism "but you are justified, but you are sanctified in the name of the Lord Jesus and by the Spirit of our God."

[CBAC 274-277]