Christian Theology - Media Sabda Org

unfriendly to the continual support of life; the seeds of dissolution were
engendered in his constitution; and out of these various diseases sprang,
which, by their repeated attacks, sapped the foundation of life, till at last
the fruit of his dissolution verified the judgment of his Creator; for, after
living a dying life, it was at last terminated by death.
There was not only no death before sin, but also no predisposing cause
of death: nothing that in the course of nature could bring it about. The
ground was fertile, and it seems there were neither noxious nor
troublesome productions from the soil; and the benediction of the Most
High rested upon the earth, mountains, hills, plains, and valleys. But
when sin entered, what a change! The glebe becomes stubborn and
intractable noxious and troublesome weeds have their full growth; though
the husbandman exerts all his muscular force in painful and exhausting
labour, his toil is ill repaid; thorns and thistles—every genus, family, and
order of injurious plants spring up with rapid speed into destructive
perfection; and often, when the labourer is about to fill his arms with the
productions of a painfully earned harvest, a blight vitiates the
grain;—tornadoes and tempests shake it out of its husk, and give it to the
fowls of the air, or tear up the stalks from the root and scatter them to the
winds of heaven;—or land floods carry off the shocks which stood nearly
ready to be housed;—and thus the hope of the husbandman perishes. By
these, and by various other means, does the righteous God fulfil the
purposes of his justice, and accomplish his declaration, "In sorrow shalt
thou eat of it;" for on thy account the earth itself is cursed. Thou shalt
return to the ground whence thou wert taken. Thou hast forfeited thy
natural happiness and immortality; death spiritual has already entered thy
soul, and the death of thy body shall soon succeed—THOU SHALT DIE.
Man is not what God made him. Were the Scriptures silent on the
subject, all reason and common sense would at once declare that it is
impossible that the infinitely perfect God could make a morally
imperfect, much less a corrupt and sinful being. Yet God is the maker of
man, and he tells us that he made him in his own image, and in his own
likeness; it follows, then, that man has fallen from that state of holiness