shall die,"
is grappling with the system of things which we are endeavoring to
overthrow. The children of Israel fell into the sentiments of our modern
Calvinists, and claimed that "The fathers had eaten sour grapes, and the
children's teeth were set on edge." By this proverb they understood that
the son was to bear the iniquity of the father. The Lord rebuked them in
the language of our topic, and more severely in the context. [See
Ezekiel, eighteenth chapter.]

The Lord said to them, "Behold, all souls are mine. * * * The soul that
sinneth it shall die. The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father,
neither shall the father bear the iniquity of the son."

The prophet also describes a righteous man, and then adds, "If he begets
a son that is a robber, a shedder of blood, and that doth the like to
any one of these things, and doth none of the duties of a righteous
life, he shall surely die." We would naturally conclude that this vile
person would transmit moral depravity, if such was possible, but how can
moral corruption be transmitted through physical generation? Let some of
the wise crack this shell! If I was passing around through the little
city of Kokomo to-morrow, and was talking upon this theme, I would hear
some one accuse some poor soul of being a natural born thief, without
the ability to refrain from it. There is neither morality nor
immorality, vice nor virtue in an involuntary act. Are the rushings of
the Wild Cat river moral or immoral? If a man could be a natural thief,
and therefore could not help but steal, he would be no more a sinner in
the sight of God, nor responsible, nor morally corrupt than the horse
that breaks into your cornfield and fills himself.

In the saying, "If the wicked will turn," etc., "he shall surely live,
he shall not die," we discover two important things: First, the death
spoken of is not physical, for all die, regardless of character; second,
it is not moral, for the poor fellow is already morally dead--dead in
trespasses and in sin.

The term die being used in the divine law with reference to the
government of God, and under such circumstances as already mentioned,
must indicate simply the forfeiture of citizen life in the paradise of
God, in the world to come, for it is said of the wicked, "They have no
inheritance in the kingdom of God and of Christ." But if Christ took
their law-place, and was punished in their stead, satisfied justice, of
course it was done, and t