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CHAPTER II.

IMMORTALITY BEGUN IN SPIRITUAL LIFE.

HEN the Creating Word covered the earth

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with trees and plants, each was ordained to bear its seed within itself, after its kind, that so, while the first individuals of each species decayed, the species itself should be perpetuated. And we find that through the endless variety of the vegetable creation, the same law of reproduction is preserved, and though some are capable of propagation otherwise than by seeds, in all cases the life of the offspring is nothing more than a detached portion of the life of the parent plant. And thus vegetable life is, generally speaking, an immortal life, and appears to be as vigorous now, as it was in the earliest age. Yet there is only a conditional immortality; certain species of plants have become extinct, and their former existence is known only by their fossil remains. And the same law of reproduction, the same kind of perpetual life is found in animals; among whom the life of the young is in the fullest sense, and exactly in the same way as in vegetables, the life of the parents.

And we have very great reason to believe that the law of decay and reproduction prevailed from the very first, and before the transgression of Adam, throughout the whole inferior and orga

nized creation. For there is no reason to think that only a few individuals of each species were created, as in the case of man: and that the reproductive principle was primarily intended only for the replenishment of the earth. The waters brought forth abundantly the moving creature that had life, and fowl to fly above the earth in the open expanse of heaven; nor need we doubt that the earth also brought forth, in equal profusion, the herb yielding seed, the cattle and creeping thing. All were alike intended to increase and multiply, not only in order to fill the earth, which could have easily been effected at once by the Almighty Word, but to repair the ravages of decay.

That the green herb, at least, was to perish may be concluded from the circumstance that it formed the earliest appointed food of man, and of the lower animals. An irresistible analogy compels us to believe that such mortality was the condition of all created things, man himself not excepted, unless we shall find in Scripture, to which alone reference is now to be made, special reasons for exempting him.

Now Adam was originally, like all other animals, a creature of dust, and, as has been observed in another place, the "breath of life" breathed into his nostrils was merely that of animal life, for it was also breathed into the nostrils of every living creature that moved upon the face of the earth. A Paradise, or garden of Eden was planted by the hand of the Lord, who "there put the man whom he had made;" not forbidding him to "eat

of the fruit of the Tree of Life."

But Adam

transgressed; and he was expelled from Paradise, and that speedily, "lest he should put forth his hand, and take of the Tree of Life, and eating, live for ever." When he thus lost the Divine favour, and was deprived of all super-natural aid, it was made known to him that his originally animal nature would subject him to decay; that henceforth he must, like other creatures, maintain his life by his own exertions, and be exposed, as the originally necessary condition of terrestrial existence beyond Paradise, to sickness and pain, decay and death. "Cursed is the ground for thy sake, thorns also and thistles it shall bring forth to thee,-which yet, for anything revealed to the contrary, it may have brought forth before, though not for Adam,-in the sweat of the face shalt thou eat bread, until thou return to the ground; for out of it thou wast taken; FOR DUST THOU ART, AND UNTO DUST THOU SHALT RETURN." This does not appear to be merely a Fall, like that which attended the expulsion of the rebelangels from heaven; but rather a natural relapse, like the sinking of the apostle Peter, when, appalled by the fury of the waves, his faith failed him.

Now we here maintain, and seek to prove from the New Testament, that man has not, and never had, any principle of perpetual life, other than that which belongs also to the inferior creation, except by the special grace and mercy of God. That he inherits nothing of the kind from his

parents, nor receives it as a birth-right when he comes into the world; and can obtain it only by means of Regeneration.* Many persons deem that to be true of the human soul-of the more excellent part, or according to them, the "only essential" part of the natural man-which is, as we maintain, true only of the Divine Spirit that enlivens the hearts of the regenerate. And these persons commonly draw a distinction between the mind, which they allow to be changeable and perishable, and the soul, which they consider to be in itself immortal. This distinction, however, directly militates against the Scriptural doctrine of original or birth sin. For were the soul or spiritual part, or whatever else it is to be called, essentially distinct from the mind, the intellectual, the corporeal, or animal parts, and did it exist independently of them, by right of its own nature, unaffected by their mutations, being a possession for ever, as they would represent it, with which every man is endowed at his birth, and which forms an original and essential part of the human nature, it would follow unavoidably that this immortal part of man, this soul, would not partake of the corruption, which by corporeal descent "naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam," according to the ninth Article of our Church, and according to the whole spirit and

* The word being employed here in that wider sense which includes all who, under any dispensation, have been moved by the Holy Spirit.

tenour of the Scriptures, both of the Old and New Testament. The law of corruption pervades the whole nature of every soul of man: a fact which is of itself a sufficient proof that the whole nature comes by inheritance, is an off-shoot, a thing naturally engendered. The whole nature: for "the first man," the whole nature of the offspring of Adam, "is of the earth, earthy," a thing, according to the declaration of St. Paul, altogether "mortal," and "corruptible:" "the second man is the Lord from heaven." And there is no third nature, nothing appertaining to humanity, which comes not either through Adam or through Christ, no spiritual or immortal part, therefore, except in those who have part in Him. Men may be impelled by self love to explain away such passages as declare their natural worthlessness; to deny that we are altogether creatures of dust, inheritors of corruption, doomed to return to the earth, from which, through Adam, we all derive our being. But the doctrine of regeneration proves, that these passages are literally and distinctly true. For it is not enough that the nature of the old man should be purified, that flesh and blood should be sanctified, that sin should be pardoned; the doing away of the old man would leave-nothing: FRESH LIFE must be given from above: and it is given not to all men, nor at the period of natural birth, but to those who, by being born again, "by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit," become members of Christ. To exhibit this most important truth in its full extent,