MY DEAR―, I am truly grateful to you for your kind reception of my letter giving the account of my conversion, though I own your comment on it much surprised me; and yet, when I remember my own wrong thoughts on these subjects, perhaps I should not wonder after all. You said (I am informed), “He must have thought me very wicked or he would not have sent it to me.” No, dear—, I did not intend to convey the thought to you that you were in my opinion an especially wicked person; on the contrary, as people go, I should have considered you decidedly above the usual level in the way of amiability and kindness; my every recollection of you leads me to this conclusion; but while I say this, I deem it right to set before you the ruin of the whole human family, and that you, amongst the number, share its consequences. If you intelligently grasp this truth, you will understand how all distinctions of class, education, and moral attainment are at an end, and the whole human family are on an equal footing in the sight of God.
As you have often read and know, the race of man takes its origin from Adam and Eve. He was formed out of the dust of the ground; she was made of his substance—bone of his bone, flesh of his flesh. When thus created they were set to stand for God, the center of the first creation, over which the dominion was entrusted to them (Genesis 1:2828And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth. (Genesis 1:28)); but attached to their tenure of these rights for God was one condition. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil (God’s prerogative) was absolutely and definitely debarred from them. You know their subsequent history, how Satan’s craft succeeds too well, how Eve becomes his victim, how her husband is seduced by her, and thus how the place allotted to them is forfeited and lost to them forever. Man in his first condition, created sinless but liable to sin, fails under the primal test applied to him, and thus becomes a fallen creature, and is consequently banished from the presence of God. God is changeless in His holiness. Adam and Eve are sinners now, no longer innocent, and consequently an insuperable barrier exists between them, and our forefathers are driven out from the face of their Creator. Does not this failure influence us? Do we not feel its effects? Most assuredly we do. Just as when a forest tree succumbs to the strokes of the woodman’s ax, every branch and tendril, every bud or blossom, each bough and leaf will feel the influence of its fall, and lose of course vitality. So with us: as yet unborn, but all foreseen according to the mind of God, the whole of Adam’s race must feel the effects of the one act of disobedience resulting in his banishment from God. He falls; his children yet unborn fall with him. When they enter the world in infancy, they are found shut out from God, “far off” from Him, and “dead in trespasses and sins.” (Eph. 2:1:13.) What a solemn thought it is, and one we do well to ponder, that all alike are thus shut out from God by nature! The infant in its mother’s arms, the full-grown man in all the vigor of his maturity, the centenarian in his old age, are all alike in this their death by nature, and their natural distance from God.
This truth, once clearly grasped, sets at rest all thoughts of intrinsic goodness, natural fitness to approach God. We are a fallen race, a race in whom the poison of sin is found by nature, and as such cannot draw near to a holy God, who cannot for a moment brook the presence of evil. It is of course quite true that cultivation and moral attainment may work wonders, but where can the man be found in whom there is not the germ, the root of evil? And even were this perfectly kept under by restraint and strict self-government, we must admit it were enough to forever preclude him from the presence of Him who is “of purer eyes than to behold evil, and cannot look upon iniquity.” We value, and justly, the amiable and the good, and prefer association with them to companionship with the violent and corrupt; but alas! we must admit that those most gifted with the amiabilities of nature are before the Lord as much “the lost,” as those whose walk and ways preclude us from their company. Adam and Adam’s race are doomed forever. Not one exception to the rule has ever been or ever will be found.
Surely you too, dear—, are not without your place in this general ruin, universal failure; you too may trace your pedigree to Adam, and discover that through his transgression, you are amongst the banished from God’s presence.
But perhaps it might occur to you that man in later days recovered himself, and was enabled to regain his lost position, and that thus like him you too might have a chance of earning God’s good pleasure. On the contrary, the patient study of the Scriptures will most clearly prove that though the utmost opportunity was given to the race of man to show themselves once more the worthy objects of God’s confidence, they only sinned more grievously than before, and thereby increased if possible the distance that already separated Him and them, and proved beyond all question that root and stem alike were past improvement. Like a farm that some adventurous agriculturist becomes the tenant of, he tries his utmost skill upon the land, the most approved courses of rotation, the most skillful husbandry, the various manures of the newest and best recommended kinds, but all in vain. Crop after crop fails—year after year results in sorrow and disappointment, so at last he gives it up reluctantly, and recommences laboring on new soil altogether, and under different auspices.
So with the human race. They had failed under the first experiment. God begins again, and now leaves them to themselves to answer to the dictates of the conscience they had obtained through the fall, and choose the good and avoid the evil if they could; the knowledge of which they had sought, obtained, but could not profit by. Under the light of conscience, man was left from Adam’s day to that of Moses; but the murder of Abel, the wickedness that brought in the flood, the independent action of the building of Babel’s tower, with many another, are the proofs to us that Adam’s race, under this new experiment, only prove themselves more utterly unworthy than before of God’s good pleasure.
This crop has failed as well as its precursor, and now the God of patience tries a new experiment, and puts one race, a sample of the whole family, under a revealed code of instructions. What nation more favored than they; what people therefore better entitled to respond to all the care and culture granted to them! But their ways from first to last reveal the utter vileness of the human heart. They had hardly got the law they’d volunteered to keep, when they are found, in rank defiance of its first enactment, worshipping a golden calf! Their subsequent history only shows them even more unworthy of their place as God’s witnesses on earth, God’s servants; and at last, after many a century of long-suffering and forbearance, God gives them up, and makes them the slaves of those who should have been their vassals, had they been obedient to His law. And now another plan begins, another course of testing what the heart of man is, and whether under any trial it can bear fruit for God. The Gentile might have said, “My Jewish neighbor I despise, and had I had his privileges I had not been found like him so utterly disregardless of the claims of God and man,” and therefore God takes him up next, in the person of Nebuchadnezzar, Babylon’s king, and puts the scepter of power into his hands. Can he say, “I have never sinned, my history records no failure?” On the contrary, scarcely had the reins of government been entrusted to him than, afraid to lose them, and without the holy fear of God that should have filled his soul, he plunges all within his realm into open idol worship. Thus the Gentiles too are found swelling the ranks of those whose ways are contrary on every hand to God. But yet again the balances of the sanctuary are put into exercise, and the most searching test of all is now before us. “It may be,” God had said, “they will reverence my Son when they see Him,” and Jesus enters on the scene. Could there be one more inoffensive, winning, gracious, gentle, one less calculated to provoke the enmity of man? He took no place when here; He interfered not with the schemes of man, and all their plans of human aggrandizement and worldly honor; but such was their natural hatred of God, that the very presence of one like God aroused their wrath, and in result we find that king and ruler, priest and elder, soldier and civilian of the lower rank, coined together to crucify the only one that ever thoroughly returned good for evil, blessing in exchange for cursing. How completely is now exposed the utter baseness of the human heart, the unreclaimable condition of the human race! What pan God do now but give it up? His tests are all exhausted; experiments He has no more to try; and the Cross is not only the most glaring display of the corruption and wickedness of the natural heart, but the evidence that man has come to an end before God, and that in the last Adam the race of the first runs out and is no more seen.
Like an hour-glass, whose sand is gradually seen to ebb as moment after moment fleets away, the last grain has now passed through the narrow aperture and the space above is vacant, while the heap below has reached its fullest measure. In Christ crucified, the race of Adam, man in the flesh, is judged, ends forever before God.
But now the hand of God is seen to exercise its energies to turn the glass, and once more the sand is seen in motion—not the same ‘tis true, though similar in many ways. Christ is raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, the Head of a new race, the firstborn of the new creation, and from Him flows out, as formerly there came from Adam, the stream of life that widens out into the countless masses of the heavenly family. The source of the first race was corrupt and tainted, and, therefore, to everyone that took their origin from it, the taint was conveyed, and consequent corruption was their state.
The Headspring of the new stream is infinitely pure, and therefore all who draw from it their source of life are like it pure and holy and without the chance of decay. The first life was liable to fail, and before it came to us had failed; the new existence, placed within the reach of all, can never fail—it comes from an incorruptible source, it is preserved in One who is Himself the incorruptible. Christ is the source of this new stream of life, and all who receive Him (John 1:12, 1312But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: 13Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. (John 1:12‑13)) have part in it, and swell the waters that are fast rising to their proper level. The first to have their part in it were those on whom the risen Saviour breathed (John 20:2222And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost: (John 20:22)), though centuries before God had a people spared amid the universal ruin, from Adam down to Christ, and from that day to this the stream has still been swelling on, and by the power of God souls “lost” through Adam’s fall have turned their eye to Christ, and thus, through faith in Him, exchanged their place in Adam for a place in Him, stepped out of the ruin of the first creation to stand before God in all the liberty and blessedness of the new race that He now sees in Christ, His own beloved Son.
This was the truth that He Himself explained to Nicodemus (John 3), this was the truth the Jewish teacher found so hard to understand, “Ye must be born again.” “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”— the first creation; “that which is born of the Spirit is spirit”— the new race. But here He did not stop. He further said, “The Son of Man must be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” And thus before the astonished ruler’s eyes was unfolded the way in which he was to be transferred from the low level of the first creation to the high platform of the new creation. And, as we judge from chapter 7 and 19, He believed on Jesus, renounced himself in Adam, and became possessor of eternal life in Christ the Son of God. As to the wondrous privileges and blessings inseparable from this life the scripture is not silent, as a careful study of John 14 to 20 will show clearly. His “life” is ours as we have seen, His “Father” thus becomes our Father, His “God” our God, His “peace” is ours, His “joy,” His “love,” His “words,” refresh our hearts, His “word” directs our pathway, until His “glory” becomes ours, and we become like Him, and, far more, live with Him forever. I do not dwell on these, but I would rather pause and ask you, dear—, whether it is not sadly true that you with all the human race are on an equal footing in the sight of God, and therefore need like I did “conversion.” This is freely offered to you now. Do not refuse it, but like me confess your lost, dread condition, and believe on the Lord Jesus unto everlasting life. (1 John 5:1313These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God. (1 John 5:13).) Believe me, ever yours affectionately.