is at least a certain sense in which sin
has been the cause of death. The essence of death, according to this
use of the word, lies not in the physical transition from one state of
existence to another, which is no more death than it is birth. Death
means destruction, ruin and collapse. And what is called death--the
death of the present body--has only gathered about it such terrible
associations because men have become corrupt, and godless and therefore
short-sighted in their estimate of life. In the moral sense then in
which Christ abolished death, sin certainly introduced it for man.

Now there is, I think, reason to believe more exactly with St. Paul
than is involved in these three positions[21]. But I feel sure that
any one who accepts these three positions--no one of which any believer
in God and morality can well {199} reject--may find himself in complete
practical fellowship with St. Paul's religious thought and with the
whole argument of this epistle.

Humanity, in spite of all its racial differences, is a great unity: it
is, if not 'of one' individual, yet 'of one blood,' and it is as a
whole infected with sin; this is in effect the doctrine of the 'old
Adam.' And because it is one, and universally tainted, therefore
Christ can deal with it as one, in order to accomplish its restoration.
And all St. Paul's argument holds good. God has made humanity one, and
so one that what each does tends to affect all. Thus it has come about
that the force of sin--the wilful refusal of the higher life and choice
of the lower--has passed in its effects into the moral fibre of our
race, and weakened and corrupted the whole. God tolerates this, for
man must be, and must be dealt with as being, one and free. But God
desires the well-being of man. He hates sin. It has all but baffled
His purpose for man. Therefore, if He has tolerated the use which sin
has made of the organic unity of the human race, He can much more be
trusted to use that same unity for the purpose of good. As man is one
in sin, so we can be one in righteousness: as the old Adam has been
{200} universal, so can the new. As sin has been propagated
physically, so Christ can spiritually propagate the new manhood. The
forces of recovery shall spread and permeate more radically than the
forces of evil, and shall finally triumph.

Of course, in view of all the deep racial differences between, for
instance, Europeans, Chinamen, and the races of India,