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paltry possession of earthly gain, or the acquisition of shadowy honours, they have sold themselves.

Dear friends, think of this: pray that God may take away from you, and from those who are dear to your hearts, the hardness under which you have been suffering so long; that the understanding being enlightened, and the nature of the inner man being altogether changed, you may seek the Lord while he may be found, and call upon him while he is near.

THE SECOND ADAM "A QUICKENING SPIRIT."

REV. W. DODSWORTH, A.M.

MARGARET STREET CHAPEL, CAVENDISH SQUARE, EASTER SUNDAY, 1835.

"There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body. And so it is written, The first man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit.”—1 CORINTHIANS, xv. 44, 45.

THE various relationships which subsist among men are strictly correspondent with those relationships which subsist between Jesus Christ and his people. This correspondence is not accidental, but it is designed; and it is an indication of the unity of plan which pervades the works of God, whether we regard him as the God of nature, or the God of providence, or the God of grace. If we trace human relationships to their true origin, we shall find it here: They shadow forth those spiritual relationships which God had assumed towards his people in the person of his Son: and doubtless they were constituted as they are for this very end.

For instance: If we look at the great features of human redemption as they are exhibited to us in the leading facts of the Gospel history which we have been commemorating at this season, we may see Jesus Christ standing to us in several of the most interesting of these relationships. In procuring the redemption of his people by the shedding of his own blood, he assumes the standing of a husband, who, by uniting himself to us in the closest union, made himself capable of standing in our place, and answering for our acts. As a husband he paid the redemption price for his spouse. So it is written, "Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might sanctify and cleanse it by the washing of water by the word, that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing: but that it should be holy and without blemish." Again: in advocating our cause-in order that he may do this effectually, and with an experimental feeling of our wants, he assumes the place of a brother unto us. Having partaken of our nature, he submits to its conditions in the most trying and degrading circumstances, that he might have a fellow-feeling with us in all our trials, and in all our sufferings. And so it is written: "For both he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren." "Wherefore in all things it behoved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God, to make reconciliation for the sins of the people. For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted." In this capacity he still acts as our brother, our fellow, our kinsman; and therefore is evidently fitted to be our advocate.

There is another relationship which he assumes to his people, and on which he entered more peculiarly by the event which we this day commemorate-by his resurrection from the dead: and this is, the relationship of a father—the quickener, the giver of life and of being to his people. Under this aspect he is represented in the text. We are here directed, either in the way of resemblance or in the way of contrast-or, as I think, and shall endeavour to show, in both -to the great father of the human race, in illustration of the relationship and office which Jesus Christ sustains to his people, in applying to them the redemption which, by his death upon the cross, he procured. "The first

man Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

In order to enter into the true meaning and the full force of these words, it will be necessary to glance at the context; and it will be necessary also (I will add) that you should give me your close and undivided attention: for the difficulty of preserving in our translation the peculiar emphasis of the original, renders the interpretation of the text somewhat intricate.

The text occurs in a passage in which the Apostle is answering the objection to the doctrine of the resurrection, deduced from the difficulty of conceiving how these bodies of ours, after they have been resolved, and the particles of them scattered abroad, should be raised again, and re-formed into bodies. "Some men will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come?"

In reply to this objection the Apostle brings several illustrations from nature, in order to show that there are different bodies suitable to different existences, or different modes of existence. For instance: the form of wheat, or of any other grain, has quite a different body as it exists in the bare grain, and as it exists in the full grown ear. So all flesh is not the same flesh for there is one kind of flesh which is proper to man; another kind which is proper to beasts; another kind which is proper to fishes; and another kind which is proper to birds. In like manner a difference may be observed among the heavenly bodies, one greatly differing from another in glory. "So also is the resurrection of the dead," says the Apostle: that is, a difference, analogous to these which I have just mentioned, is to be found between the body as it now exists in its humiliation, and as it will exist subsequent to its resurrection for "it is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption; it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power." And then follows the expression with which the text stands more immediately connected: "It is sown a natural body;" or, to preserve the enphasis of the origin, as well as to shew its connexion with the words before us ---" It is sown a body proper to a soul:""it is raised a spiritual body;" or, a body proper to a spirit." For as there is a body proper to a man, as well as a body proper to a beast; so, by analogy, in the case of the resurrection, there is a body proper to a soul, and there is a body which is proper to a spirit. "And so it is written, The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening spirit."

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What I wish to observe, and what is lost-perhaps necessarily lost-in our translation, is this: That when it is said, "The first Adam was made a living soul," there is a plain reference to the assertion in the preceding verse,

"There

is a natural body"—or, if one might use such an expression, "There is a soulish body; that is, a soul properly suited to the body-opa uxixòv: and when it is said, "The last Adam was made a quickening spirit," there is a plain reference to the other assertion, "There is a spiritual body," or, a body proper to a spirit—owμa anupalıxóv. And so in the verse following the text, "Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual "—or, proper to a spirit-" but that which is natural" to a soul: and afterward "that which is spiritual," proper to a spirit.

If I have made myself understood in pointing out this connexion of the text with the context-which will be quite obvious at once to every reader of the original-I think it furnishes us with the true key to the nature of the comparison which is here made between the first Adam and the last Adam. It is a comparison, first, in the way of resemblance; and, secondly, in the way of distinction or contrast. The point in which our Lord, the last Adam, resembles the first man Adam, is this—in that he is the federal head of a race; the covenant head of a race. For as Adam by creation was constituted the head, the representative, and the fountain of derivation, to all mankind who were to spring out of his loins; so the man Christ Jesus, by resurrection (which in Scripture is called "a new creation") and by being endowed with the fulness of the Spirit, was constituted the head, and representative, and fountain of derivation, as it were, to the whole body of the church, or of the elect; who were to be begotten again from the womb of death by him, as the “quickening spirit," by the power of the Holy Ghost, which he possessed in its fulness.

Here, then, is the point of resemblance between the first and the last Adam. As the natural life, or the life of the soul, is by every one to be traced to the first man Adam, as its great original; so the spiritual life in the believer, or the life of the spirit, is to be traced to Jesus Christ, the last Adam, as its great original.

But here, however, the resemblance between the two Adams ends. The contrast on the other hand is two-fold. There is, first, the contrast between the substance of each; that whereas the first man, Adam, was made a soul, the last Adam was made a spirit: and secondly, there is a contrast between the quality or the character of each substance; that whereas the soul was but a "living" soul, the spirit was a "quickening," life-giving, or life-causing, spirit. That is, as I conceive, that while Adam-endued with a soul, or lower life-had placed within him the power of continuing, by means of his descendants, that life which he himself possessed; so Jesus Christ-raised from the dead, constituted a spirit, partaking (that is) of a higher life is invested with the power, not only of continuing life, but of quickening others into the same life with himself-causing them to live-communicating life unto the dead. Adam was but a living soul, capable of continuing the same life in others who should succeed him; but Christ, by his resurrection from the dead, has become “a quickening spirit," capable of giving life unto the dead; thus verifying his own words-" As the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.”

Having thus endeavoured to explain the meaning of the text by the light thrown upon its context, I shall now seek to make a practical use of it, by

showing its bearing, first, on the foundation of the Christian's salvation; secondly, on the trial of his present condition; and, thirdly, on the blessedness of his future prospects.

First, see the practical bearing ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHRISTIAN'S SALVATION. The passage opens before us that which constitutes the great mystery both of our fallen condition and of our redemption. The Apostle here enumerates only two men of all the men that have ever lived: because all men stand in such a relationship to the first Adam, and all in the church of Christ stand in such a relationship to the second Adam, as they can stand in to no other man. Though we are not the immediate sons of Adam, we are born in his likeness, and we inherit his condition and this is the way in which it can be inherited from no other man. We do not see, in the ordinary course of human generation, that all children are born with what is peculiar in the sinful propensities, or in the degraded habits, of their immediate progenitors. True it is that bad example, and the neglect of instruction, and the absence of prayer for God's blessing, do often cause the sins of men to be in a measure hereditary: but this is easily traced to its true cause. Put the child of the most worthless and degraded of parents into Christian training, and under the advantages of the instructions of piety and of virtue; and you will not discover in him-at least, generally-any traces of those crimes which disgrace his parents.

Whence, then, do we derive the tenet of the universal corruption? For if you should imagine that all sin arises from evil example, and the absence of education, experience will soon undeceive you. Although, by dint of care, you may guard against the outbreaking of those sins which have been peculiar to the immediate progenitor; though you may in this way stop the progressive and accumulating power of evil, which otherwise, in successive generations, would grow and increase to such an extent as to render life in this world absolutely intolerable, you will not be able by your utmost care to root out the evil which is in the heart of man. Though the child does not, as it were, commence its sinful career at the point which its profligate parent may have reached, (for what would become of the world if it were so?) yet there is an evil within human nature-there is an evil in every human being which no care, no training can eradicate—which no absence of bad example can prevent from exhibiting itself at some season. And what is the inference from this, but that there is a connexion between us and the first man Adam, which does not subsist between us and our immediate parents, or any intermediate link of the chain by which we are connected with our first progenitor? And so it is written of Adam, that he "begot a son in his own image, after his own likeness;" who thus deriving from him his life of nature, shared with Adam in all the miserable circumstances of his fallen condition. Thus "by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed on all men, for that all have sinned." All have sinned in Adam. In fact, when God created Adam, he created all men: there has been no creation of the human species since that creation. All therefore stood, and all fell in Adam: all in him became not only exposed to the consequences, but also infected with the very nature, of his sin.

This, it is admitted, is an unopened mystery as to the way and the method of

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