55 CHAPTER III. IN THE RULE OF LIFE. "How readest thou?”—Luke x. 26. THERE is no doctrine of the gospel so much resisted by the natural mind unenlightened by the Spirit, as that of the utter corruption of human nature, and its total alienation from all goodness. Man's pride refuses the imputation, and he thinks his experience refutes it. In vain the testimony of Scripture is made plain before him, wherein He who knows the heart of man declares it. "God looked upon the earth, and behold it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. Every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually."* This was what God saw when He determined in his anger to destroy him. And when He looked again and determined not to destroy him any more, what He saw was still the same: "For the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth."+ He found neither judgments nor mercies could amend him: "For who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? Not one;"‡ not God himself till he has cleansed it. The briar by longer growing would not bring forth grapes; no, though he had digged about it and fenced it. "And what could have been done more for it that He had not done," when again "He looked down from heaven upon the children of men to see if there were any that did understand, that did seek God?" Every one of them is gone back, they are altogether become filthy, there is none that doeth good, no not one."|| Had there indeed been any germ of good in man, it must have shown itself under such a culture; in immediate communication with the Deity; Job xiv. || Ps. liii. *Gen. vi. + Ib. viii. under his miraculous guidance; taught by Him and chastened by Him every day; with all his goodness and all his vengeance made to pass before him. But they wore out his vengeance, as they wore out his love, till He exclaims, "And why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more; the whole head is sick, and the whole heart is faint; from the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it.”* Was the Almighty mis taken in his choice, unfortunate in the selection of a specimen, to try the value of the mass? Not so. "I knew that thou wouldest deal very treacherously, for thou wast called a transgressor from the womb;" "but thou knewest not." Man did not know the extent of his corruption, and nothing could be more calculated to manifest it than the trial of our nature under circumstances so favourable, it would seem perversity itself could scarcely have resisted them. But man did resist them; and the prophet of Israel, for himself and his * Isa. i. + Ib. xlviii. 首 people, and the church that should come after him for ever, thus confesses: "We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities like the wind have taken us away." And a later prophet thus confirms his word: "The heart of man is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked."+ Lest it should be thought that there is any change, the Holy Spirit repeats again by St. Paul his word immutable: "There is none righteous, no not one; there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God; they are all gone out of the way, they are together become unprofitable, there is none that doeth good, no not one."+ And lest they whom grace had changed into another state of being, should forget their assimilation to the corrupted mass of nature, he thus addresses them: "You hath he quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins, and were by nature the children of wrath even as others." || * Isa. lxiv. + Jer. xvii. Rom. iii. || Eph. ii, To this continuous testimony of the unerring word of God, the word of every true church has been added-of none more than decisively our own. In every service we are made to say that there is no health in us. We appeal to God's omniscience, that we can of ourselves do no good thing; that we are unable to think a good thought. But it is all in vain; no natural man believes it; he appeals against it to his own reason and his own experience, and thinks they are on his side. It has been so from the beginning. Cain thought he could offer something acceptable to God, without having recourse to the appointed sacrifice; and Cain thought he had reason on his side, for the fruits of his fields, the produce of his own labour, seemed quite as reasonable an offering as the slain beast. The king of Israel had reason on his side when he spared what seemed to him the good things of the Amalekite, the unoffending kine, to be offered in sacrifice to the Lord; and I suppose the pharisee, with his tithing and his morality, had reason too when |
