Now it is evident that this answer gets rid of the difiiculty by denying the plain fact of the total depravity of each child from birth and by nature, antecedent to all moral action, which is proved as well by an unex- ceptional experience as by revelation. The self-deter- mining power of the human will may prove that sin is impreventable, and may account for the existence of sin in a few cases. As it is absolutely impossible for a man to believe, when the dice are thrown sixes successively a _ thousand times, that the dice are not loaded; so is it a thousand times more impossible to believe, when every human. being of all nations and generations, without a single exception, begins to sin the instant he enters moral agency, that his will is not biased by a previous effectual tendency in his nature to sin. Now the Bible, true psychology, and uniform Christian experience, unite in teaching that this innate previous tendency to sin is it- self sin and worthy of punishment. The preventability of sin or the opposite is not the question, The fact to be accounted for is, that al’ men sin as soon as they begun to act as moral agents. This universal constitution of
* See Dr. J..Young’s Evil and God, pp. 180-280; and Life and Light of Men, pp. 112-117.
CHAPTER WEL,
Pantheis-
tic hypo- thesis—
“ Sin a ne- cessary in-
cident to
moral de-
velop- ment.
82 THE NATURE OF THE ATONEMENT.
things, which produces such uniformly dire effects, is God’s ordering, and he is bringing new souls into it every day. It does not help the matter to say, that the sin of the parent is propagated to the child by genera- tion, or by education and example. For God is the author of the whole system of human generation and social relations. The questions remain unanswered, why? and how? God either permits or effects such re- sults, and yet remains just and holy.
3. The third solution is the one incident to pan- theistic speculations in general, and developed promi- nently by the German philosopher Hegel, adopted by Emerson, and, in a modified form, held by Theodore Parker and many of the advanced Unitarians of America ; namely, that sin is a natural and necessary incident of a finite nature conditioned as man is, and the appointed means of development and ultimate perfection. Sin, according to this view, is limitation, the necessary acci- dent of a process of growth. Even Bushnell regards sin as a favourable incident of spiritual education, which, training the soul for stable and intelligent virtue here- after, involves necessarily an experiment of evil, and consequently a previous fall, and temporary subjection to its power.
This theory at once destroys all proper ideas alike of God and sin. It is absolutely inconsistent with the in- finite power, wisdom, goodness, and holiness of God. Sin is essentially avouca, and the divine law has its norm in the divine nature. Sin, therefore, is intrinsically opposition to God. It is not a lmitation incident to finite existence, nor a condition incident to a stage in the development of a creature’s life, for then it would be according to law. It is the spontaneous reprehensible attitude of a creature’s will in opposition to God. God must hate and resist it and punish it, and no natural
FEDERAL HEADSHIP OF ADAM. 83
constitution of things which he ordains can involve it as a necessary incident. Sin can originate no otherwise than in the free, self-determined act of a personal spirit, acting in violation of, and not in accordance with, the law of its being.