The Fall and Redemption of Man.

The Catechism says, "All mankind by their fall lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all the miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell forever." As against this it is stated, "Christ executeth the office of a priest in his once offering up of himself a sacrifice to satisfy divine justice and reconcile us to God, and in making continual intercession for us." Briefly explained, the travesty is something like this :—The Almighty, after just creating man, passed a terrible judgment upon him and all his posterity for his first offence (read Luke vi. 36, Matthew xviii. 22, on the duty of forgiveness). Creation had miscarried, and he was so wroth over it it repented him that man was ever created, and it grieved him at his heart (Genesis vi. 6); he "cursed" our first parents and the serpent, although on the scene by permission, and the Almighty knew well beforehand what he (the serpent) was conniving at and would do, and also "cursed" the ground. By and bye the race of man turned out so badly he drowned the lot of them save one family, with whom he made a fresh start. All down through the ages he put forth ceaseless efforts to control and improve the race to little purpose. In the end he sent Jesus Christ to earth to teach and organize society upon a better basis, and to die to satisfy some feeling in the divine mind which would otherwise have necessitated the damnation of the entire race of mankind for evermore. Paradoxical as it may appear, Jesus Christ undertaking the rescue is announced as the Saviour of men, sent expressly to "defeat the works of the Devil," in fulfilment of a scheme for the redemption of the world devised in the councils of Omnipotence, this work we are assured he performed (John xvii. 4): "I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do" (the very angels held a jubilee over the "good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people."—Luke ii. 10); and yet, after all is done, the works of the Devil are anything but "defeated." In virtue of the counter schemes of our spiritual adversary, the scheme of redemption falls so far short of efficiency a very large proportion of mankind, for whom also Jesus died, turn out unworthy of any show of mercy, and, although he intercedes for them continually, his intercession availeth not; they fall for evermore into the power and custody of the Devil, who is at once the author and castigator of their disqualifying shortcomings, God and Jesus then both declining to interfere in their behalf. To believe this sort of thing is to be "soun' i' the faith," to be "not far from the kingdom." Not to believe it is to be making tracks for the bad place.

I beg to ask if such a fall as this, caused by the evil one, and such a rescue undertaken by three persons in the godhead—all working to the one end, viz., the salvation of the sinner—could possibly be the outcome of the management of this universe, placed as it is in the sole control of a "Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth?" The Almighty was not trying experiments with men? Reasoning humanly, I should say in reference to Revelations xx. 3, pity Satan, that time he was cast into the bottomless pit, was ever let out again. A pit, open at the one end, would not appear to be a very safe place of incarceration. He, no doubt, would escape at the other end. If there be anything, reader, ludicrous in this brief sketch of the Fall, the blame must be attributed to the proper quarter. One would think, had the Fall entailed such a taint of sin upon the first pair intended as the parents of the future denizens of the earth as would render multitudes, if born, liable to the "pains of hell for ever," that the Almighty in his mercy would not have permitted the earth to be further peopled with such Lazarenes, and would have stopped the race then and there. But he did what was equivalent. Immediately he issued the promise that, in order to defeat the serpent (Genesis iii. 15) the seed of the woman would yet "bruise," or rather break, his head, and Jesus Christ, as we have seen, came for this very purpose.