reason and their conscience,-becoming thus, in the phrase of the Confession, a law written on their hearts. Its authority lies partly in what it is thus seen by reason and felt by the conscience to be, but ultimately in Him who enacted it,-the Lawgiver standing always behind the law for its proper enforcement. Its rewards and penalties are found, partly in what nature may bring upon obedience or its opposite, but are chiefly such as involve character whether holy or unholy, and such as God in infinite wisdom chooses to bring on the obedient soul or on the transgressor. Its administration is supremely and eternally equitable; each subject being judged by it according to his ability,-no harsh or cruel exaction ever made,-no sin ever escaping penalty, and no obedience ever failing of reward. In the exalted phrase of Scripture, the law of the Lord is perfect, his testimonies are sure, his statutes right, his commandments pure, his administration clean and enduring, and his judgments true and righteous altogether.

The supremacy of that law over man is by the nature of the case absolute: its right to rule over him is both legitimate and irresistible. Man cannot alter it; he cannot question it; he cannot evade it. He can no more throw off its imperatives than he can dethrone its Maker. It is as far above him as God is, and its sway is as imperial as that which controls the stars. Both by its own nature and by the will of him who enacted it, it is ever dominant and regal over mankind. In respect to time, it must continue thus to rule from the first creation of finite moral existences onward to the remotest ages of eternity. In respect to space, it extends through every realm of moral being from the most central heavens outward to the farthest orb where thought, feeling, conscious personality are found. As to contents, it comprehends in its vast sweep every act, every choice or impulse, or even thought that springs up within the conscious soul of man. As to application, it fits every conceivable case that can arise within the myriad varieties and manifestations of human experience. In every aspect it is indeed perfect, whether men obey or resist it: it would shine out eternally with undiminished splendor, though the entire universe of moral beings should conspire for its overthrow.

It is in the contemplation of such a law and of a government thus administered, that we gain some just conception of the nature and scope of human responsibility before God. The term, responsibility, simply implies the intrinsic and inevitable obligation of every soul to render proper obedience to yield complete, cordial, perpetual allegiance to this administration in whatever form it may present itself. It is, in other words, absolute amena

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bility to the divine law, and to him who has enacted it as, in the language of the Confession, a rule of life for the reasonable creature. Such responsibility implies the possession of power or ability to render obedience: it cannot apply to the animal, the child, the imbecile, who are incapable of recognizing the law as enforced. It implies the exercise of personal choice in view of the demands of that law; intelligence, conscience, personal volition, are always involved in it. Obligation, personal and free, is the universal correlative, the binding of the soul by an indissoluble bond to the throne of the holy Lawgiver. The,word, duty, is another term which signifies what, in the nature of things, is due from us or owed by us to him who is our Creator and our eternal Sovereign. Still another term is accountability-the answer of the soul to God, judicially required, for the manner in which it has regarded his law, and has lived and acted under its righteous authority. How fully the Westminster divines recognized all that is implied in such terms-how fully they emphasized the cardinal fact represented in them, will appear more in detail when we come to consider the second great division of the Symbols-that which treats, not of what we are to believe concerning God, but of what duty God requires of man.

19. Failure of man under law: miseries of disobedience: possible deliverance.

One further truth remains to complete our survey of the anthropology of the Symbols. It is that which describes in such solemn terms the failure of man to keep what is called the covenant of life, or the covenant of works, and the estate not merely of sin but of misery, into which by that failure humanity has fallen and is continuously falling. It is probably a defect in their presentation, that they dwell so much relatively on this misery as an entailed or hereditary infliction, and too little relatively on it as the immediate consequence of that individual probation, that personal choice and action under the divine law, which is the chief spring and source of all retributive miseries. It surely involves no denial or minifying of the awful fact of transmitted sinfulness and consequent retributive exposure, if we emphasize also, and even more earnestly, that personal responsibility under which each soul of man consciously exists, or lay stress on the miseries that flow in directly upon the soul as the result of its individual failure in duty and in obedience. It is the safe position of an eminent American teacher, (Smith, H. B. Theol.) that the sin common to the race first shows itself in the individual in the form of personal preference or consent; and that then, and not till then, are personal

liabilities and desert incurred. He rightly adds that it is not a true statement, that each individual of the race is personally deserving of eternal damnation, as is sometimes said, on account of the sinful act of Adam.

The Confession (VII) strongly teaches both that death in sin rests on all the posterity of Adam because they are sinful, and that all personal sin binds the transgressor as a criminal over to the wrath of God, and makes him subject to death, with all miseries temporal and eternal. The Shorter Catechism (19), declares in similar terms that all men as fallen are made liable to all the miseries of this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever. The Larger Catechism (27), varies the statement by affirming further that the sinner has lost the favor of God and is under his displeasure,—that he is the child of wrath and a bondslave to Satan,-—and that he is justly liable to all punishments in this world and in that which is to come. It also proceeds (28), to describe with painful minuteness the punishments of sin in this world as both inward and outward; inward, as blindness of mind, a reprobate sense, strong delusions, hardness of heart, horror of conscience, and vile affections; outward, as the curse of God upon the creatures for our sake, and all other evils that befall us in our bodies, names, estates, relations and employments, as well as physical death itself. We have here a marked illustration, not of the inhuman severity or cold indifference to the miseries of their fellow men, sometimes charged as characterizing the divines of Westminster, but rather of their unswerving fidelity to truth and to fact, and to the spiritual and eternal welfare of mankind. There is nothing in their enumeration which is not essentially true in the case of every one who refuses to obey God and his government; and in setting forth to the view of all these earthly miseries of sin, they were only following the example of Him who faithfully warned men of the multiplied evils of sin in this life, while he also spoke with solemn emphasis of the outer darkness, of the worm that dieth not, and the fire that is never quenched. It is guilty weakness rather than holy courage, which leads to the ignoring or concealment of the essential truth on such a matter, and which beguiles men into the destructive belief that sin is but a slight evil, an occasional fall, an incidental and superficial taint, which God is always ready to overlook and to forgive, even though the indulgence in it goes on without restraint.

Postponing all reference to the miseries of sin in the life to come, as these are faithfully set forth in the Symbols, we may close our survey of the natural man as they describe him, with the question

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of questions whether deliverance from such moral miseries, and restoration to the favor and image of God, are possible to a being who has so far fallen from his high estate, and by his refusal to yield perfect and perpetual obedience, has become involved in such criminality before that Being to whom, by his moral constitution, endowments and position, he is made forever responsible. Contemplating man as we thus find him, we may still claim in answer, that there are gracious possibilities remaining in him and in his providential environment, which do justify the hope that he may yet be saved from his sin and its condemnation. He cannot indeed escape by his own act from either his moral corruption or his personal guiltiness. The verdict of the law has already been pronounced upon him; the solemn decision of the Judge is already uttered. Nor has the sinner any such compensatory or restorative power in himself, as justifies the expectation that by his own energies he may yet come back to duty and to God. But on the other hand, man is not a devil, and behind the sinning man there stands a better man, ever summoning the recreant soul to obedience. The moral nature though corrupted is still capable of being regenerated and restored, by divine though not by human power. And the very discords within the soul, as well as its better aspirations, the longing of the sinning race for deliverance, its sacrifices and its prayers and worship, all point to such a possibility. The providence of God toward the sinner, in its tender constraints and its faithful warnings, also seems to warrant the expectation that the God of providence will not leave the transgressor to perish forever. In like manner, his moral administration strangely mingles delay with penalty, limits the influence of the evil and stimulates toward the good, and in an thousand multiplied ways of mercy suggests the hope, the expectation, that sinful man may yet be saved. Such are the natural intimations in the case, all pointing toward such a happier issue; and the divine response to all such anticipations and longings, as Christian symbolism universally declares, is CHRIST.

LECTURE SIXTH-CHRIST THE MEDIATOR..

HIS INCARNATION: HIS PERSON, DIVINE AND HUMAN : HIS MISSION-MEDIATION: HIS MEDIATORIAL OFFICESPROPHET, PRIEST, KING: HIS HUMILIATION AND EXALTATION.

C. F. CH. VIII. CH. II, iii. L. C. 36-56, 85-90. S. C. 21-28.

Protestantism was in essence a movement for the restoration of Christ and his Mediation to that supreme place from which Romanism by its excessive exaltation of the Church with her sacraments and priesthood, had in effect removed them. The Roman theology, while recognizing in form the work and passion of the Son of God as the ultimate ground of salvation, had thrust the Church forward, just as in later times it has thrust forward the immaculate Mary, between Christ and the believer,-representing the ministries of the Church as mediatorial, and making salvation turn primarily on what the Church could do for and upon the soul. The intrinsic grace of her sacraments, her official intercessions, her absolution and benediction, were declared to be indispensable: men could attain and enjoy eternal life only through her. Protestantism at a stroke reversed all this by its strong and just doctrine that salvation turns immediately upon the relationship directly established between the believer and Christ, the one and only Redeemer, through personal faith alone, and without any intervening churchly mediation. As Romanism required that the soul should come to Christ through the Church, Protestantism held that the soul could come into the Church only through Christ; and that her sacraments, her intercessions, her grace and benediction, were to be granted only to those who had already consciously embraced the Savior himself, and had entered already on the Christian life through personal union with him. Christ was in this way brought directly into the foreground of vision and of faith; his mediation became at once the primal and the essential thing; and the mediating ministries of the Church had efficacy only when that supreme mediation had first wrought out its blessed result in the justifying of the sinner before God. Everything was centered finally in Christ. Behind the finished and the glorious