OW terrible is that malady which death alone can cure! How irremediable that distemper whose termination can be found only in the destruction of the sufferer? How mortal that evil from which there is a refuge only in the grave! How sad that condition where all human appliances are vain, where Life may linger without Hope, and consciousness remain only to perpetuate despair! Yet such a malady as this is sin, inherent in that carnal nature, that depraved moral and physical constitution, that "body of death," in which man is now condemned to fulfill those years of penal [159] servitude which precede the hour of his inevitable doom. "For sin has entered into the world and death by sin, and death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." The penalty of "capital punishment" has been announced against all by an infallible Judge whose sentence is irrevocable. Already, indeed, in its highest sense, has that dread sentence been fulfilled when man is left alienated and separated from God and debarred from those fountains of joy--that spiritual communion which alone can truly constitute the life and blessedness of the soul.

      What varied means, what strenuous efforts have men employed throughout the ages, in the vain hope of discovering for sin, or for its effects, an appropriate and efficient remedy. Philosophy has sought to lull the sufferer into a repose more cruel than wakefulness and vexed with horrid dreams. It has endeavored to benumb all sense, to steep the soul in forgetfulness, or soothe its fretful anguish by the fictions of the imagination. It would impugn the evidence of consciousness in asserting that "pain is not an evil," or in mockery tantalize the wretched [160] victim burdened with the ills of mortality, in declaring that "pleasure is the only good." It would seek to convert the objects of sense into mere appearances, and ideas into reminiscences of the real and eternal patterns familiar to the soul in an ante-natal state of being, as emanations of that divine idea which alone exists. It has traversed the wide regions of speculative thought, but to end its fruitless search for truth and life in darkness and in doubt. A dying Socrates orders a vain oblation to an Esculapius incompetent to afford relief or rescue. The greatest of modern philosophers^* announces that "the highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance." There is here no real power to enlighten, no hope to cheer the desponding, no salvation for the lost. The mysteries of sin are here left unexplored, the secrets of death unrevealed, the light of life undiscovered.

      Again have men supposed that in ritualistic observances, in outward forms, in the fulfillment [161] of the ordinances and commandments of law, they would be able to attain to righteousness and peace. But, alas! how unavailing is delight in even the divine law, when opposed to that imperious "law in the members" which ever wars against the "law of the mind," and takes occasion by the commandment itself, which is holy, just, and good, to bring the soul into condemnation and captivity! How feeble, before the overmastering supremacy of the carnal nature, is the human will! How fatally that commandment, which was ordained to life, becomes transformed into a ministration of death! How sin, by its very means, achieves its greatest victory, and how futile is that mortal struggle when law itself imparts life, and strength, and malignity to sin, and far from aiding in the conflict of the soul, serves but to aggrandize guilt and inflict the dread penalties of its own violation!

      And yet, again, how vain have been the efforts of mankind to obtain deliverance through the sin-offerings whose blood has bedewed their altars! How essentially vain the knowledge that death alone could even typically save the sinner, [162] since in the blood of the victim there was no meritorious efficacy, no power to purge the conscience, no life to energize the soul! What hecatombs have been vainly offered amidst the rites of heathen and of Jewish worship! How unavailing have been all the penances of superstition, the oblations of idolatry, the self-immolations of fanaticism! Through what weary hours of darkness have men sought to find their way--groping after God if haply they might find him--and how fruitless has been their search for truth, for righteousness and life!

      Yet, ah! how near to all has ever been the Divine presence, and how long in patient love has the Almighty borne with man's apostasy and vain devices! How gloriously has he at length himself achieved deliverance and salvation through that righteousness which is "by faith of Christ unto all and upon all them that believe!" How freely is man justified by his grace through the redemption that is in Jesus, whom God himself has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins! Apart from [163] all the avails of human wisdom, and independent of all deeds of law, Christ has appeared in the closing age of the world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Made of a woman, made under the law, he has expiated in our human nature, through the infinite purity and dignity of his own, the accumulated sin of the world. How truly, in that Holy One who was in the likeness of sinful flesh, in that Divine Sin-Offering, has sin in the flesh received its condemnation! How fully has the just and holy law of God been vindicated and magnified! How wondrously has infinite justice been reconciled with mercy in this unspeakable gift of God!

      How sweet, in this hour, the reflection that the work of Christ is perfect! Death hath taken sin away from all who have died with Christ! With him the sinful nature is crucified that the body of sin might be destroyed; and, since he that is dead is freed from sin, sin may no more have the dominion. But it was not the mission of Jesus merely to overcome the Sowers of evil, and secure for us an escape from guilt and [164] punishment. It was not merely to fulfill the requirements of the divine law and give freedom to the condemned, but to impart also light to the benighted, rest to the weary, strength to the feeble, and life to the dead. If, through him, we are dead to sin, it is that we may be alive to God. If we have been crucified with Christ, and through faith planted in the likeness of his death, it is that we should be also in the likeness of his resurrection. As in that loud shout of victory which he uttered upon the cross, he announced his triumph over the malign principalities of the unseen world, and, in that final moment, stripped off from himself those hostile spiritual foes who had ever sought in vain to seduce the human nature which he bore, so may the believer, through the death of Jesus, ever repel the Powers of darkness and overcome the temptations of the world. For in that death was destroyed him that had the power of death, and from the grave has Jesus brought again that human nature of which he is with us a partaker, and over which death can have no more dominion. As, then, in that he died, he died [165] to sin once, but, in that he liveth, he liveth unto God, so may the Christian ever realize that he is "dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto righteousness through Jesus Christ our Lord." [166]

[CITS 159-166]