Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE FIRST AND THE SECOND MAN.71renewed to Noah for the whole race ; and thefalse worship, so blent and mingled with heathenism,which seemed as if it were the soul of itsbody, is the sign and stamp of that captivity tothe evil spirit which the first man's sin inaugurated.How powerful was the bond between Adamand his race, how great and influential the headshipwhich the Divine choice had vested in him,we see in that mysterious transmission of guiltwhich passed from him to his children. And itmust be expressly noted that it was not a transmissionof punishment alone. Eather, the divinejustice cannot punish where there is no guilt; andas in this case Adam's fall, and that of his posteritywith him, was not merely a loss but a punishment,so it had the special nature of guilt, notonly in him but in his posterity, and was a sinboth of the person and of the nature in him, ofthe nature only in them. We see the force andrange of the divine endowment of Adam here,though it be in the tenacity of the calamity whichensued to his race ; but it must be rememberedthat such in this respect as the punishment was,the blessing would have been. Adam was createdboth an individual and a race. In him were twothings-the single man and the head ; but of thesetwo things the headship was peculiar to himself,while such as the individual Adam was, his racewas to be. He had it in his power to break the