men justifying iniquity and approving the wicked, or condemning righteousness, we condemn them. The conscience and the Bible are alike severe in their condemnation of false moral judgments. The woe is upon those who "call good evil, and evil good; who put light for darkness, and darkness for light." If a man is blind to moral excellence, so that he does not appreciate and love it, we condemn him. In this region of what we may, so to speak, call moral aesthetics, such want of discernment of the beauty of moral excellence is the very core of depravity and guilt; and, so far as the soul is blinded, the necessity of spiritual illumination in regeneration becomes indispensable. This, whatever theories we may have, accords with the uniform representations of scripture. The language of the apostle (Eph. iv. 18), describing the blindness induced by sin, cannot readily be misunderstood: "Having the understanding darkened, being alinated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their hearts." All familiar with these subjects know that abundant citations, no less significant and unequivocal can be made; to some of which we may yet refer, as we come to speak of sin and grace.

THE NATURE OF VIRTUE.

Our theology rejects all utilitarian theories of the nature of virtue, or moral goodness; that is to say, theories which deny that it is a good intrinsically, and make it a mere means to some extraneous good beyond itself, such as happiness. We deny that it can be analyzed into a mere means of anything other, simpler, better, than itself. We not only deny the Epicurean form of this theory, that it is a mere means of the happiness of the agent; but its broader and more generous form, which asserts virtue to be merely the means of happiness to the sentient universe. We hold that right is an intrinsic quality of actions, involving obligation to do them; that what is right is what ought to be done, and is meritorious; that what is wrong is what ought to be VOL. XXI. No 81.

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shunned, and, if done, deserves punishment. We hold it right indeed, within due limits, to pursue our own happiness and the happiness of the universe. We hold that it is evermore right and obligatory to obey the will of God, because the will of God is evermore conformed to the perfect goodness and absolute rectitude of his own nature, wherein is found the first original standard, the norm of all righteousness. But much as might be said on this point we must hasten forward, to the

DEFINITION OF CERTAIN THEOLOGICAL TERMS.

"Sin is any want of conformity to, or transgression of, the law of God" (avoμía). Shorter Catechism, 9. 1 John iii. 4.

Righteousness is perfect obedience or conformity to the law of God. "For whosoever shall keep the whole law and offend in one point shall be guilty of all" (James ii. 10).

To justify is to declare or adjudge righteous, not to make inherently righteous. It is the opposite of condemning. "He that justifieth the wicked, and he that condemneth the just, even they both are abomination to the Lord" (Prov. xvii. 15).

To impute means, not the transfer of inherent qualities, but to reckon or put to the account of any one, as a ground of judicial treatment. This is the uniform scriptural meaning of the word, and also that which it bears in our standards. That this is the scriptural meaning can hardly be the subject of rational dispute to those who candidly examine the passages in which it is found, especially Rom. iv. 5. and the Greek words translated "impute," viz. XoyiCoμal and exλoyśw. What else, indeed, can it mean when ζομαι ἐλλογέω. the apostle speaks of "not imputing iniquity," of "imputing righteousness without works," or, as the same original Greek word is employed in the phrase "counted for righte ousness." That this is the meaning of the word in our symbols and standard theological writers is no less evident.

Guilt is equivalent to the Latin reatus, and means obligation to, or the being obnoxious to, the punishment of sin. Says Turretin (Loc. IX. Quaest. 3): "Duo vulgo peccati effecta dicuntur, Macula Reatus. M teacula est pollutio spiritualis et ethica, quo hominis anima inficitur. Reatus est obligatio ad poenam ex praevio delicto." Two effects. of sin are commonly noted, its stain and guilt. Its stain is the moral and spiritual pollution with which the soul of man is infected. Guilt is obligation to punishment arising from previous fault." This is beyond doubt the usage of scripture. Thus one word translated guilty is ἔνοχος, (ἐνέχω) held or bound to. When Christ's accusers charged him with blasphemy, they said, "he is guilty (evoxos) of death;" i.e. held obnoxious to the punishment of death (Matt. xxvi. 66; Mark. xvi. 64). The same word is translated "in danger of," in the phrase "in danger of eter nal damnation," for the sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost (Mark iii. 29). The word translated guilty (Rom. iii. 19), in "all the world shall become guilty before God," is ÚTÓDIKоs, under condemnation, or obnoxious to punishment. In Matt. xxiii. 16, ¿peiλe is rendered "he is a debtor," in vs. 18, "he is guilty," showing very clearly that it means the debt of, or obligation to, punishment. When David prays (Psalm li.): "Deliver me from blood-guiltiness," what else does or can he mean, than from my exposure to punishment for blood-shedding? Even the lexicographer Webster tells us that, according to one probable derivation of the word, "it denotes a debt contracted by an offence, a fine, and hence came its present signification." He also quotes Chancelier Kent as saying: " A ship incurs guilt by the violation of a blockade," in illustration of the definition "exposure to forfeiture or other penalty." We have dwelt thus on the theological definition of this word as used in the Reformed theology and confessions, because it appears so unwarrantable to many, who have been accustomed only to its present popular meaning of personal criminality in the subject of it. Such criminality is the normal ground

of guilt, and criminality in some person is the only ground of guilt or obnoxiousness to punishment. But the latter may be transferred from those who are to those who are not personally subjects of the former, as in all cases, under the providence of God, of bearing the iniquities of others; which means simply to bear their punishment.

Punishment is evil judicially inflicted for sin. It is correlative to guilt. It may be inflicted on the offender personally, or on those who, through a representative or other relation, have such a community with him, that the punishment of his sins may be justly laid upon them.

ANTHROPOLOGY. THE DOCTRINE OF SIN.

As the doctrine of sin logically precedes and underlies that of grace and redemption, so it may be considered in three aspects with regard to the subjects, the degree, and the origin of it. Although the question of its origin may be logically first, yet it is so related to the degree and subjects of it, that it will be most readily solved, in the present state of controversy among evangelical schools, by some preliminary consideration of the subjects and degree of it. With regard to these, to the best of our knowledge, all parties recognized, or claiming to be recognized, as evangelical, agree that the present condition of human nature is such, or that all men are found in such a state, that they are subject to suffering and liable to death from the first; and that they sin, and sin only, from the beginning of moral agency in the knowledge of the moral law, except so far as any may have been the subjects of a saving change of character. Indeed, these are undeniable facts of divine provi dence, which exist with or without a divine revelation. The Bible does not make them. Nor are believers in the Bible, which in some degree explains them, and provides the only adequate remedy for them, nor is any school of theologians, specially bound to account for them. Whatever burdens or perplexities these facts may involve, they equally burden all schools, not only of Christians, but of theists, who are

concerned to justify the ways of God to man. But, with this amount of agreement, there is still a wide margin fo disagreement, in regard to this antecedent connatural stater which brings with it suffering, liability to death, and a dread certainty of sinning on the opening of moral agency. Some regard it as a weakness, wholly devoid of moral character. Others as more than a weakness, as a debasement, but still indifferent as to moral quality. Another class regard it as indeed moral depravity, or a corruption of the moral nature, and some of them are willing to call it sinful, but still insist that it is innocent and not justly obnoxious to punishment. All these go upon the ground that nothing can be morally corrupt or, if so, punishable which is not produced by the will of the subject of it. They include some parties in both the Protestant and Romish churches. But a much larger class, including many Romish divines, all the Reformed and Lutheran, as shown by their confessions, the adherents of the Westminster and Savory confessions, the Edwardeans and Hopkinsians in this country (many of the latter, however, believing in moral agency from birth) hold that this. native moral depravation is truly and properly sin, and constitutes the essence of original sin, in whole or in part. It is hardly necessary to say that the Articles of the Episcopal church pronounce this to be "original or birth-sin," and also that "in every person that cometh into the world it deserveth God's wrath and damnation." It is hardly necessary to show that the Presbyterian symbols, in common with those of the Reformation, aver the same thing, viz. that "original sin, together with all actual transgressions which proceed from it," is "conveyed from our first parents unto their posterity by natural generation, so as that all who proceed from them in that way are conceived and born in sin,” 2 and that "every sin, both original and actual, being a transgression of the righteous law of God, and contrary thereunto, doth, in its own nature, bring guilt upon the sinner, whereby be is bound over to the wrath of God and curse of the 1 Shorter Catechism, 2, 18. Larger Catechism, 2, 26.

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