tliat He assumed, in the language of tlie older theologians, " our law-place."' He undertook to answer the demands of justice for the sins of men, or, as it is expressed by the Apostle, to be made a curse for them. In like manner, when it is said that the righteous- ness of Christ is imputed to believers, it does not mean that they wrought out that righteousness, that they were the agents of the acts of Christ in obeying the law ; nor that the merit of his righ- teousness is their personal merit ; nor that it constitutes their moral character ; it simply means that his righteousness, having been wrought out by Christ for the benefit of his people, in their name, by Him as their representative, it is laid to their account, so that God can be just in justifying the ungodly. Much of the difficulty on this subject arises from the ambiguity of language. The words righteous and unrighteous have two distinct mean- ings. Sometimes they express moral character. A righteous man is an upright or good man. At other times, these words do not express moral character, but simply relation to justice. In this sense a riohteous man is one with regard to whom the demands of justice are satisfied. He may be personally unrighteous (or ungodly) and legally righteous. If this were not so, no sinner could be saved. There is not a believer on earth who does not feel and acknowledge himself to be personally unrighteous, ill-de- serving, meriting the wrath and curse of God. Nevertheless he rejoices in the assurance that the infinitely meritorious lighteoiis- ness of Christ, his full atonement for all sin, constitutes Him legally, not morally, righteous in the sight of divine justice. When, tlierefore, God j)ronounces the vinrighteous to be righteous. He does not declai'e them to be what they are not. He simply de- clares that their debt to justice has been paid by another. And when it is said that the sin of Adam is imputed to his posterity, it is not meant that they committed his sin, or were the agents of his act, nor is it meant that they are morally criminal for his trans- gression ; that it is for them the ground of remorse and self- reproach ; but simply that in virtue of the union between him and his descendants, his sin is the judicial ground of the condem- nation of his race, precisely as the righteousness of Christ is the judicial ground of the justification of his people. So much for the statement of the question.
It is no less a doctrine of Scripture than a fact of experience that mankind are a fallen race. Men universally, under all the circumstances of their being in this world, are sinful, and exposed to innumerable evils. Many of these, and that in many instances,
19G PART n. Cn. Vm. -SIN.
the most apjDalling, come upon the cliildren of men in early mfancy, anterior to any possible transgressions of their own. This is a fact which cannot be denied ; and for which the human mind has tortured itself to find a solution. The Scriptural solution of this fearful problem is, that God constituted our first parent the federal head and representative of his race, and placed him on probation not only for himself, but also for all his posterity. Had he retained his integrity, he and all his descendants would have been con- firmed in a state of holiness and happiness forever. As he fell from tlie estate in which he was created, they fell with him in his first transgression, so that the penalty of that sin came upon them as well as upon him. ^ Men therefore stood their probation in Adam. As he sinned, his posterity come into the world in a state of sin and condemnation. They are by nature the children of wrath. The evils which they suffer are not arbitrary impositions, nor simply the natural consequences of his apostasy, but judicial inflictions. The loss of original righteousness, and death spiritual and temporal under which they commence their existence, are the penalty of Adam's first sin. We do not say that this solution of the problem of man's sinfulness and misery, is without its difficul- ties ; for tlie ways of God are past finding out. But it may be confidently asserted, first, that it is the Scriptural solution of that problem ; and secondly, that it is far more satisfactory to the rea- son, the heart, and the conscience, than any other solution which the ingeimity of man has ever suggested. This is proved by its general acceptance in the Christian Church.
The Ground of the Imputation of Adam's Sin.
The ground of the imputation of Adam's sin, or the reason why the penalty of his sin has come upon all his posterity, according to the doctrine above stated, is the union between us and Adam. There could of course be no propriety in imputing the sin of one man to another unless there were some connection between them to exi)lain and justify such imjYntation. The Scriptures never speak of the imputation of the sins of angels either to men or to Christ, or of his rigliteousness to them ; because there is no such relation between men and angels, or between angels and Christ, as to involve the one in the judicial consequences of the sin or right- eousness of the other. The union between Adam and his poster- ity which is the ground of the imputation of his sin to them, is both natural and federal. He was their natural head. Such is the relation between parent and child, not only in the case of