The skeptic examines the present condition of man's body, which Scripture declares and every one knows to be mortal; and states, that as it is constituted it must be so, and hence argues that it must have been so in a state which he knows nothing about. And that is called logic! Is it impossible that it should have been in another state? Of course, as it is, it is mortal. But could not God have sustained it? All things subsist by Him. An animal that lives a century or two, or an insect that closes its life with the evening of its birthday, are all constituted so by Him with whom are the issues of life. Could He not have ever sustained the life of him whom He had made in His own image? A heathen, Callimachus, will tell him, that in Him we live and move and have our being. The skeptic will tell us that the earth could not have held them. Who told him they would have staid there? All this is mere gratuitous supposition. One thing is certain, that some dire and ruinous confusion is entered in; and, whatever the skeptic may dream in his closet, the misery, the violence, the horrors of the four quarters of the globe proclaim an unintelligible Deity, or a desolated and ruined, because a sinful, world. He must be as hardhearted as the god his imagination would content itself with, or admit that sin has brought in desolation and misery. Death is but the seal and stamp that characterizes an existence over which it casts its fear, if thought allows anything but a willful folly which is worse, and extends its power and gloom over man in spite of folly, so as to make a Savior weep, though he that denies Him can look at it with indifference, because he can hide it from his heart, till it meets his eye, or—which God forbid—too late, appalls his conscience.
But the skeptic will teach us more than Scripture. Man is like the brutes that perish, and must have always been so. Death could not have come upon animals. Geology, he says, tells us so. Now I do not pretend to judge this absolutely! The apostle, in speaking of death entering into this world, says nothing whatever of what has happened in others, or with other creatures. He does not even speak of beasts. Now man has not been found in any ancient fossil remains.
What the apostle says is this: “By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.” Now here he evidently is entirely occupied with the effect of sin in bringing man under death, as the beginning of death declares. Neither in Genesis, nor in Romans, is anything said of the beasts. In both, men alone are spoken of as the specific subject. In Genesis, and to that the apostle refers, it is a sentence previously pronounced on man. When man was created, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, a thing never said of beasts. Death was pronounced in case of failure. As far as any other testimonies go, the New Testament rather speaks of beasts, as indeed does the Old, as perishing beings. “The beasts that perish.” Peter says, “Natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed.” Now I grant this does not positively prove anything, because the Psalmist and Apostle may refer to their present condition. But it shows how little ground there is for the objection; for with a holy wisdom, the word of God does not answer our curiosity, but leaves beasts as they are before our eyes. We are told, indeed, that the creature has got into misery and ruin by our fall, and, as a system, will not be restored till we are manifested in glory; and this is true even of our bodies. This was morally important for us to know, that we might be humbled by the sense of the way in which we had dragged down subordinate creation with us, encouraged by the thought that our glory would be the occasion of the restoration of the blessing. But no further curiosity is indulged.
To talk of physiology is mere nonsense, because physiology can only examine man as he is—a state which Scripture and all men pronounce to be that of mortality. What he was is the question; and of that I apprehend a dissecting infidel surgeon is about as ignorant as his neighbors; and more so than many, if he supposes that the God who created man could not sustain him in a present immortal condition. No creature can subsist per se, that is, independently of God. God had constituted man not dying, and then sentenced him to be a dying creature as he is. Why is “wear and tear” essential to life? Now it is, no doubt; but this is not essential to life, but to man's present state of life. The Paradisiacal state is mentioned by Plato in a curious passage; he says: “They lived naked in a state of happiness, and had an abundance of fruits, which were produced without the labor of agriculture, and that men and beasts could then converse together. But these things we must pass over, until there appear some one to interpret them to us.”
It is certainly remarkable, how everything in the Mosaic history is preserved, at least as dijecta membra, bits of truth amidst masses of error and superstition corrupted into a mythological system by Egyptians, a fabular system by Hesiod and Homer, a monstrous system by Hindus, but preserved; while Moses, who certainly did not derive it from extracting it by morsels from Hindus, Egyptian, Grecian, and Mexican fables, or from Plato, who lived centuries after him, has given a concise, simple account of immense moral import, infinitely elevated above the whole range of the heathen fables which pervert its elements, placing the Supreme God—man—good—evil—responsibility—grace—law—promise—the creatures—marriage—all in their place; which short statement accounts for all that we find dispersed over the whole world, of traditionary notions of the primeval history of man; so accounts for it, that with a little pains, we can trace all the fables to their source. How comes this? It is God's most brief, but divine account of the whole matter; preserving, by its very brevity, its true character of the moral seed, so to speak, of all that has been afterward developed of good and evil. It was meant to be such and not more. The germ of all was there in that form. It is divinely given. With further details it would have lost this character. It would have had only its own moral consequences for the parties concerned, like other acts of individual men. But in the Mosaic account, creative goodness, the knowledge of good and evil, conscience, judgment, the way of the tree of life closed, and promise in the woman's seed given, all involving immense principles are brought out. We see ourselves that the whole world is concerned in it: the immense drama of which angels and principalities and powers are the wondering spectators, and the conflict of good and evil, the moral of the tale, is opened with those in whose persons it was to be all developed, and the suggestion of His coming in grace and power, who would close in the glorious triumph of good, putting down evil, what had begun in the solemn lessons of a lost paradise. But the drama was a reality—and all was involved in that one man and his failing companion. Yet from her who failed recovery was to spring; for grace was to be brought out and magnified; that is, God in His dealings with man. And these things angels desire to look into.