Thus closed the trial of man, of the Jew, of the first Adam. Four thousand years of probation had run their course. And what is the result of this long trial? Most humiliating to the pride and vanity of man-to the religious imagination and the reasoning powers of the self-righteous, self-sufficient man. The law brought out, and demonstrated in a variety of ways and conduct, what man really is. Not what man might or should have been, as men talk, but what man is as God proved. When tried by a divine standard, and under the most favorable circumstances, no good thing is found in fallen man, but the presence of every principle of evil. Search has been made, and the human heart is found to be deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? is the challenge; I, the Lord, is the answer. None can fathom the depths of its wickedness but Himself. But in the betrayal and crucifixion of Christ, man's sin rose to its fullest height. The presence of perfect love and goodness in the Person of the blessed Lord, brought out the bitter enmity of the heart against God, and demonstrated, beyond a question, that man was utterly incorrigible.
We have now reached the end of man's history, as under trial before God. His moral history closes in the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. Innocence lost; conscience disobeyed; promises despised; covenants broken; prophets persecuted; and, last of all, the Christ of God cast out and crucified. Henceforth man is to be dealt with as morally dead.
All blessing must now flow through Christ the Second man, and be received by faith, on the ground of sovereign grace alone. This has been essentially true from the beginning, but now that man is fully manifested, God takes His place more openly as the Savior of the lost.