rendered it possible for God to be just and yet justify the ungodly. He therefore offers blessings of infinite value, without money and without price, to all who will accept them. He has secured, and offers to us wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption ; to make us kings and priests unto God, and to exalt us to an un- ending state of inconceivable glory and blessedness. Notwithstand- ing all this ; notwithstanding the divine excellence of his person, the greatness of his love, the depth of his sufferings, and the value of the blessings which He has provided, and without which we must perish eternally, men universally, when left to themselves, reject Him. He came to his own and his own received Him not. The world hated, and still hates Him ; will not recognize Him as their God and Saviour ; will not accept of his offers ; will neither love nor serve Him. The conduct of men towards Christ is tiie clearest proof of the apostasy of our race, and of the depth of the depiavity into which they are sunk ; and, so far as the hearers of the gospel are concerned, is the great ground of their condemnation. All other grounds seem merged into this, for our Lord says, that men are condemned because they do not believe in the only begot- ten Son of God. And the Holy Spirit, by the mouth of the Apos- tle, says, " If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ let him be anathema maranatha ; " a sentence which will be ratified in the day of judgment by every rational creature, fallen and unfallen, in the universe.
The Sinfulness of Men Incorrigible.
4. Another proof of the point under consideration is found in the incorrigible nature of original sin. It is, so far as we are con- cerned, an incurable malady. Men are not so besotted even by the fall as to lose their moral nature. They know that sin is an evil, and that it exposes them to the righteous judgment of God. From the beginning of the world, therefore, they have tried not only to expiate, but also to destroy it. They have resorted to all means possible to them for this purpose. They have tried the resources of phihjsophy and of moral culture. They have with- drawn from the contaminating society of their fellow-men. They have summoned all the energies of their nature, and all the powers of their will. They have subjected themselves to the most painful acts of self-denial, to ascetic observances in all their forms. Tho only result of these efforts has been that these anchorites have be- come like whitened sepulchres, which appear outwardly beautiful, while within they are filled with dead men's bones and all unclean- ness. Men have been slow to learn what our Lord teaches, that
236 PART n. ch. vm. — sin.
it is impossible to make the fruit good until the tree is good. An evil, however, which is so indestructible must be very great.
Argument from, the Experience of God's People.
5. We may appeal on this subject to the experience of God's people in every age and in every part of the world. In no one respect has that experience been more uniform, than in the con- viction of their depravity in the sight of an infinitely Holy God. The patriarch Job, represented as the best man of his generation, placed his hand upon his mouth, and his mouth in the dust before God, and declared that he abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes. David's Penitential Psalms are filled not only with the confessions of sin, but also with the avowals of his deep deprav- ity in the sight of God. Isaiah ci'ied out. Woe is me ! I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean lips. The ancient prophets, even when sanctified from the womb, pro- nounced their own righteousnesses as filthy rags. What is said of the body politic is everywhere represented as true of the indi- vidual man. The whole bead is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it ; but wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores. In the New Testament the sacred writers evince the same deep sense of their own sinfulness, and strong conviction of the sinful- ness of the race to which they belong. Paul speaks of himself aa the chief of sinners. He complains that he was carnal, sold under sin. He groans under the burden of an evil nature, saying, O, wretched man that I am, who sliall deliver me from the body of this death? From the days of the Apostles to the present time, there has been no diversity as to this point in the experience of Christians. There is no disposition ever evinced by them to palK- ate or excuse their sinfulness before God. They uniformly and everywhere, and just in proportion to their holiness, humble them- selves under a sense of their guilt and pollution, and abhor them- selves repenting in dust and ashes. This is not an irrational, nor is it an exaggerated experience. It is the natural effect of the appre- hension of the truth ; of even a partial discernment of the holiness of God, of the spirituality of the law, and of the want of conform- ity to that divine standard. There is always connected with this experience of sin, the conviction that our sense of its evil and its power over us, and consequently of our guilt and pollution, is alto- gether inadequate. It is always a part of the believer's burden, that he feels less than his reason and conscience, enlightened by the