y are involved in the moral as well as in the natural unity of the
race. But leaving them out of account, is there any real difficulty in
the others? any real objection to the Biblical idea that sin and death in
humanity are essentially related? I do not think there is. To say that
many people are unconscious of the connection is only another way of
saying that many people fail to realise in full and tragic reality what
is meant by death and sin. They think very little about either. The
third chapter of Genesis could never have been written out of their
conscience. Sin is not for them all one with despair: they are not,
through fear of death, all their lifetime subject to bondage. Scripture,
of course, has no difficulty in admitting this; it depicts, on the
amplest scale, and in the most vivid colours, the very kind of life and
death which are here supposed. But it does not consider that such a life
and death are _ipso facto_ a refutation of the truth it teaches about the
essential relations of death and sin. On the contrary, it considers them
a striking demonstration of that moral dulness and insensibility in man
which must be overcome if he is ever to see and feel his sin as what it
is to God, or welcome the Atonement as that in which God's forgiveness of
sin is mediated through the tremendous experience of death. I know there
are those who will call this arrogant, or even insolent, as though I were
passing a moral sentence on all who do not accept a theorem of mine; but
I hope I do not need here to disclaim any such unchristian temper. Only,
it is necessary to insist that the connection of sin and death in
Scripture is neither a fantastic piece of mythology, explaining, as
mythology does, the origin of a physical law, nor, on the other hand, a
piece of supernaturally revealed history, to be accepted on the authority
of Him who has revealed it; in such revelations no one believes any
longer; it is a profound conviction and experience of the human
conscience, and all that is of interest is to show that such a conviction
and experience can never be set aside by the protest of those who aver
that they know nothing about it. One must insist on this, however it may
expose him to the charge of judging. Can we utter any truth at all, in
which conscience is concerned, and which is not universally acknowledged,
without seeming to judge?

Sometimes, apart from the general denial of any connection between death
and s