LECTURES ON THE EPISTLE OF PAUL THE APOSTLE TO THE ROMANS. BY THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. & LL.D., PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, VOL. II. GLASGOW: WILLIAM COLLINS, 7, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET. OLIVER & BOYD, W. WHYTE & CO., & W. OLIPHANT & SON, EDINBURGH; HAMILTON, ADAMS, & CO., & SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO., LONDON. LECTURES ON THE ROMANS. LECTURE XXVI. ROMANS v, 12—14. "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned: (for until the law sin was in the world: but sin is not imputed when there is no law. Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come." AFTER these lengthened preliminary remarks on the doctrine of original sin, we now proceed to the exposition of the verses of this remarkable passage in detail. V. 12. The death which entered into the world by sin, includes in it a great deal more than that temporal death, to which in common language the term is restricted. It is very true that death, in the ordinary sense of the word, formed part of the punishment laid upon our first parents and their posterity. But there was a sentence of death executed on the very day of the transgression. "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die"-And yet Adam survived his expulsion from Paradise several hundred years; and the way in which the truth of the threatening was accomplished, was by the infliction of spiritual death. By the fall he lost that, which Christ by his salvation restores to our species. If a title to eternal life hereafter, and spiritual life here, came by Christ-it is because they went away from us by Adam. He on that day lost the light of the divine countenance. A sense of God's favour died away from his heart; and it was this which cheered and sustained him in all the joys of existence. Hope, that sunshine of the soul, took its departure; and left the blackness of desolation behind it. The death in trespasses and sins, began with the commission of the first sin. It was then that trust gave place to terror. It was then that jealousy of God put out from the bosom its wonted joy in God. It was then that the righteousness of the soul expired, because it was left without a principle and without an object—alike unable to recover the acceptance that had been lost; and unwilling for the labours of a service, when all love for the master had been extinguished, among the fears and the suspicions and the chilling alienation of guilt. This was a death which took place long before the dissolution of the body; and when the body falls into dust, this is a death which the soul carries with it into the place of its separate habitation. The literal death is only a stepping-stone to the full accomplishment of that sentence-the opera |