PROOFS OF NATIVE DEPRAVITY

"The Orthodox Creeds of Christendom uniformly note an inclination to evil or to sin as a characteristic fact of native depravity. Man as fallen and corrupt is of HIS OWN NATURE INCLINED TO EVIL AND THAT CONTINUALLY" (Miley).

"The corruption of human nature means its tendency to sin" (Chalmers). "Original sin is an inclination born with us; an impulse which is agreeable to us; a certain influence which leads us into the commission of sin" (Melanchthon).

Miley, however, decides that this inclination to evil is the result of depravity, not its constitutive fact. Depravity itself lies deeper; the tendency to evil is a mode of its activity (Vol. I,'p. 445).

What are the proofs of this depravity?

1. The Scriptures abound in assertions of the universal wickedness of the human heart. "God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually (Gen. 6:*5). "The imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth" (Gen. 8: 21). "All we like sheep have gone astray" (Isaiah S3: 6). "They have all turned aside. There is none righteous" (Rom. 3: 10-18). A corrupt heart as a universal fact, a race-wide straying from God, a persistent, continual wickedness can only be explained in one way-a race-wide inheritance of depravity, just as the Scripture asserts.

2. We are told that, "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God"; "Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified in his sight" (Rom. 3: 9 and 20). Now the law of God only requires obedience and righteousness. This is equivalent, then, to a declaration that the whole race has come short of being what God had a right to expect of it, and all have sinned. "The man that doeth the righteousness which is of the law, shall live thereby" (Rom. 10: S). But nobody can be justified by the law, because none have kept it. Now such a universality of moral defection and shortcoming can only be accounted for by some racial difficulty that lies deep at the fountain of moral action. We do not, as some do, affirm the impossibility of obedience to the moral law. We do not declare that all men could not obey God; we only say that all men have not obeyed God. There must be a universal reason for universal sinfulness. The reason does not lie in the fault of God's original creation of the race, nor in the injustice of a too exacting law. The difficulty, then, must lie in the lapsed condition of the race.

3. There is the universal necessity of regeneration. Regeneration is an inward renewal of the spiritual nature. The ground of this necessity lies in a native quality, of our nature. "That which is bora of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto you, Ye must be born again" (John 3: 3-7). The word "flesh" cannot here refer to the physical body. "Such a sense could neither express the necessity for, spiritual regeneration, nor allow its possibility. The Scriptures draw a contrast between the flesh and Spirit, or the fleshly mind and the spiritual mind, and between the works of the flesh and the works of the Spirit. We thus have the sense of flesh as our Lord used the term in His doctrine of regeneration. It must mean a depraved state, a corrupt nature" (Miley, Vol. I, pp. 450, 451).

It will be seen from the above that this question of depravity is no trifling side-issue. It is fundamental to all the great doctrines of salvation-atonement, justification, regeneration and sanctification. Native depravity is the presupposition of all. If these doctrines are true, the fallen state of man must be a truth. John Fletcher well asks, "If he is not a depraved, undone creature, what necessity for so wonderful a Restorer and Savior as the Son of God? If he is not enslaved to sin, why must he be redeemed by Jesus Christ? If he is not polluted, why must he be washed in the blood of the immaculate Lamb? If his soul is not disordered, what occasion is there for such a divine Physician? If he is not helpless and miserable, why is he personally invited to secure the assistance and consolations of the Holy Spirit? And, in a word, if he is not "born In sin," why is a "new birth" so absolutely necessary, that Christ declares, with the most solemn assentations. 'Without it, no man can see the kingdom of God?' "

4. As we have already seen, there is the universality of actual sin. No race, no tribe, no family of men have ever appeared in any generation of the world's history, who have not been sinful. All languages and literatures and religions bear witness to the mournful fact of abounding sin. No adventurous traveler like Speke, or Grant, or Livingstone, or Stanley, ever discovered one small community of men in any land who were not burdened with a sense of sin. No bold voyager on unknown seas ever landed on one little island whose inhabitants were not vainly trying to propitiate offended deities, and make their peace with the unknown God. If the consciousness of man may be permitted to bear witness, a sinless man has not appeared.

Such a universality of experience points to a common cause. The race has fallen and the stream of moral life was poisoned at its fountain.

Man is a totally depraved being. By this we do not mean: 1. That every man is as bad as he can be; or, 2. That there is no good in any man; or, 3. That all are equally sinful; or, 4. That each is given to the commission of all sins; or, 5. That there have not been, or are not, good men. We simply mean that the whole man (totus homo) has been injured in every department and faculty of his being, and is not now what he would have been, but for the fall. As a result, no man claims to have led a sinless life. The truest and best look back with regret upon many things in their past. No man, known or unknown could claim that his entire life had been sinless, without offending the common moral judgment of man, and by the very assertion, proving himself to be sinful. And such a judgment is based on the known and admitted universality of human sinfulness. "If we say we have not sinned we make him a liar, and his word is not in us" (1 John 1: 10).

5. There is a universal tendency to sin. Tendency is proved by the observation of continuous and uniform results. The constancy of events or conduct or actions prove a tendency. A million ducks of whatever variety, hatched in whatever land, will all take to water as soon as they see it. It proves a tendency. Beech trees growing in whatever land or soil will produce beechnuts. So the uniformity of human sinfulness, and the ease with which children everywhere and always commit sin, even against their own sense of duty and the protests of their conscience, proves to a demonstration, a tendency to sin. There is in the human family a uniformity in sinful action. With all the differences of race and temperament and environment, and social condition, and education and religious training, there is this uniformity of moral action. This universality of sin proves an evil tendency in human nature. It is scientific evidence of an abnormal condition of man's moral nature, called in the language of the world DEPRAVITY.

Those who deny this depravity of nature try to account for this universal sinfulness;

1. On the ground of bad example and education, but the bad example and bad education must themselves be universal to produce universal sin. And where did this universal bad example come from, and how came there to be a universal bad education? Logically, these are only evidences of the universal depravity, and forms of the universal sinfulness. It is absurd to make a thing account for itself; and still worse to make a part of a thing account for the whole. And, further, how came the bad example to be so willingly and universally followed, if there were not some equally universal susceptibilities to temptation with an accompanying propensity to sin? This only could account for a universal yielding to bad influence. But if there are universally deranged sensibilities with a bias toward evil, then depravity, the thing objected to, is proved to a demonstration.

2. People have tried to show that the simple possession of free-will is adequate to explain all actual sin, without depravity. It is true that a third part of the angels by the abuse of their free-wills sinned and fell, though they were previously holy, and free from depravity. We have explained how holy beings have fallen and can fall. So our first parents yielded to temptation when as yet they were not depraved. We answer, with regard to the angels that they did not all sin, as all our race have done. As to Adam we can say that a single act may be performed that is out of harmony with the life, and is not induced by a natural tendency in that direction. But to account for a habit of life in all the innumerable beings of the race, we do require an inward universal tendency or disposition. A single act of sin of one man does not explain why the continuous multiplied acts of billions of men should be sinful. "Native depravity is the only rational account of universal sin, and its reality is thus proved" (Edwards and Miley).

"So far as the race-connection works to the extension of evil through transmission and social influences, it is the nature of this process to continue indefinitely, in proportion to the strength of the evil. It is destined to last as long as the evil lasts; it can be stopped only by influences that renovate the race, and turn its powers to better use. Sin has in itself no tendency to return upward; it is essentially a moral gravitation, drawing ever downward.

"What the race connection perpetuates is depravity, or corruption of the common stock of mankind. The human nature that is passed from generation to generation always possesses in itself the elements of the old strife between the higher and the lower. It is also depraved, or "baddened," as the word simply means; that is, it is so affected by previous evil in the race as to have predispositions to the wrong. Depravity is the moral badness that has been, imparted to that common stream of life out of which successive individuals are produced. It is corruption of the common stock, perpetuated through heredity and the influence of life. In consequence of this perverted strain in the transmitted humanity, children are; not born either wholly good, or neutral between good and evil, but with evil tendencies which grow into sin when responsible life begins. This corruption appears in various degrees, but experience finds it everywhere, and confirms the testimony of Scriptures that; all have sinned. The early appearance in personal lives of the fundamental moral evil, grasping self-will, gives evidence of the predisposition to it that dwells in the common nature.

"The corruption of the human stock which is transmitted by race-connection, must be carefully distinguished from guilt. Guilt can be neither transmitted nor transferred. Guilt is necessarily personal, the sinner's own. It is the result of sinning, and can belong to no one but the one who has sinned. It is impossible for one to be guilty of another's sin, unless the other's sin leads him to sin also. Hence there is no such thing as inheriting guilt before God from the first sinner, or from any other ancestor. Heredity conveys depravity down the stream of life, but not guilt, for sins already committed. Sin cannot be imputed to a sinner's offspring. If then could be imputation of guilt at all it should move in the other direction" (toward Adam instead of toward his offspring). (Dr W. N. Clarke, D. D., "Christian Theology," pp. 243, 244.):

"Guilt is the personal blameworthiness that follows the commission of sin. It consists in the fact that the person in question ii the one who has done the deed, and upon whom the blame of rests and must rest. Such is the guilt, for example, of murder; The guilt consists in the fact that the man, wherever he is and whatever he is doing, sleeping or waking, working or playing, following his pursuits or kissing his innocent children, is the man who has murdered another, and upon whom the responsibility an" wickedness of the act abide. Sleeping, or waking, working, playing or praying, living or dying and waking in another world, he is the man who has done the sinful thing and is justly to be blamed for; doing it. Herein lies his guilt. Liability to punishment is a consequence of guilt, but not guilt itself. It cannot be prevented from following sin, nor annihilated by any act of the sinner after it has come; NOR CAN IT BE TRANSFERRED TO ANY OTHER BEING WHATSJ EVER. Its nature is to abide forever, upon the one who has committed sin" (Ibid, pp. 246-248). This Baptist Theological professor of Colgate University, voices the best Christian thought of the day on this subject. 1. "The stream of human life" was poisoned at its fountain. 2. This "moral badness" or "corruption of the common stock" is perpetuated by race-connection, and leads all to commit sin. 3. Sin has no tendency to correct itself. 4. Sin produces guilt. 5. Guilt cannot be transferred or imputed to anyone else. The sinner himself must bear it. This is the teaching of Scripture, the voice of reason, the verdict of conscience. "If thou art wise, thou art wise for thyself; and if thou scoffest, thou alone shalt bear it" (Prov. 9: 12). "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 righteousness of the righteous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the wicked shall be upon him" (Ezek. 18: 20).

3. It is objected that there are many natural virtues, and many good men even among those who did not have the light of revelation. We have admitted the possibility of this, even with depravity. These natural virtues, not connected with regeneration, have appeared in all nations and all walks of life. All along the centuries men have lived whose lives were an ornament to the race, whose virtues were conspicuous, whose purity, and integrity and uprightness were above reproach. Some were gentle and lovable, full of sympathy and kindness; others had the strong heroic virtues that would sacrifice and suffer for the public good. We have no interest whatever in detracting from the honor and worth of such men. They have been called by a great writer "the outside saints." A doctrine of depravity, however, that would not leave room for such possible results, would be untrue to fact and to life. Human j life is not made by depravity totally and irredeemably bad. But those who offer this objection to the doctrine of depravity overlook the following facts:

(1) That all these noble souls had a perpetual struggle with internal propensities. Their goodness was no accident. Socrates confessed that he would have been grossly vile but for the influence of philosophy upon his life;

(2) That the race has not been left by God to all the evil effects of depravity, unaided. The unconditional benefits of the atonement have come to all and "the true light that lighteth every man, coming into the world," has blessed all lives.

(3) That God has by his restraining providences, held the evil tendencies of men in check and kept depravity from having full expression.

(4) God has raised up men in all nations and ages to disseminate moral and religious influences which were calculated to create a counteracting force against the evil tendencies of human hearts.

(5) A spontaneous good conduct, the result of fortunate environment, and happy birth, may exist, without any exalted sense of God or duty, and have the outward seeming of virtues without being virtues at all. As Miley says: "These natural virtues may exist, not only in the absence of a true spiritual life, but with aversion to such a life, with propensity to evil, and with actual evil, and give no proof against the doctrine of native depravity" (Vol. I, p. 457).

6. Another line of evidence that the race is somehow estranged from God and in an abnormal state, is the universality of death. "Wherefore, as by one man THE SIN principle entered into the world and the death through THE SIN: and so death passed upon all men for that all have sinned" (Rom. 5: 12). This is the literal translation. We call attention to the striking fact that the Greek noun for sin "Hamartia" is found thirty-six times between Romans S: 12 and Roman 8: 10, and in twenty-nine of these times it has the definite article "the" before it, and always in the singular number. We suspected that it meant a particular kind of sin-namely, depravity, or the sin-principle. In several of the seven other times, it means actual sin. The best commentators confirmed our opinion. DR. WHEDON says: "By the sin many understand the state of sin into which man has fallen as a nature. Sin is not in action alone; there may be a permanently wrong and wicked state of mind. DEAN ALFORD says: "The kind of sin spoken of in this whole passage is both original and actual." GODET says: "The principle of revolt, the corrupt inward disposition, is what the Apostle is speaking of. Lange says: "The definite article before 'hamartia' and 'thanatos' denotes sin and death as a power or principle, which controls man and reveals itself in hereditary corruption and every actual sin." Augustine and Calvin make it mean "native depravity." Koppe, Olshausen, Webster, and Wilkinson say it means "sinfulness; sinfulness personified, a sinful disposition." With such endorsement we are sure of our footing. "The sin" means "the sin principle"; that brought to our race the death principle.

Theologians have argued that if "all" sinned and so died, then the babies who died during past ages must have sinned; therefore they either sinned in Adam, or his sin was imputed to them. But there is no need of any such forced and unnatural not to say absurd, argument. St. Paul was simply using language in a popular way, as we all do, and little children died, not because they had sinned in some fanciful, imaginary way before they were born, but because they were born with the sin-principle and therefore, also, with the death-principle in them.

But to match this awful misfortune God gave us the grace of an atoning Savior, and if we became depraved and sinful and doomed to death through Adam, we also have the "much more" salvation of justification and sanctification, and resurrection from the dead through Christ.

7. Another evidence of the depravity of the race is the slow progress of Gospel agencies. Granted that the ministry is trusting too much to natural resources of their education, mental powers, social gifts and oratory, and that the churches are relying upon ecclesiastical power and numbers and wealth and machinery, instead of pastors and churches alike leaning upon the power of the Holy Ghost, yet all these admissions fall short of explaining the feebleness of Gospel efforts, and the meager triumphs of the kingdom of God. There is a dead inertia of public sentiment, a stolid indifference to Gospel warnings and appeals, a persistent, open-eyed, conscious resistance to truth and God which can only be explained by the speedy operation of some power in the soul that is hostile to goodness and God. The fruitage of Gospel effort has been small because the nature of man has strongly resisted every uplifting influence. God is everywhere graciously present, with men, moving upon the citadel of the heart with precepts and promises, with warnings against sin, with punishments of evil, and blessings for obedience. But the evil tendencies of men have held out against every restraining and gracious influence of God. They go on in sin, rejecting mercy and grace, refusing to have the fear of God before their eyes, until they provoke the retribution of divine wrath. Even the holy apostles and Jesus Himself could not woo men in accents gentle and tender enough to overmatch this internal resistance and win everyone to abandon sin and accept Christ and His salvation.

Even self-interest, that potent force in every life, which is so effective in every other field of influence, fails here. Men go on in pursuit of evil, deaf to all appeals, blind to the certain consequences of wickedness, in an apathy of moral indifference which must be an amazement to sympathetic angels, and the grief of a loving God. There is but one rational explanation-universal depravity.

A theological student of mine sat in a great audience and heard Bishop M-- of the M. E. Church lecture. In the course of his address he said: "There is nothing but good in the human heart; wars are merely incidental and spring from secondary causes." He illustrated this universal human goodness by the Chicago fire, telling of the wonderful assistance that was rendered the inhabitants of the stricken city in the way of provisions and money by the outside world.

Shame on such cheap playing to the galleries for popularity from such a quarter, regardless of ordination vows and denominational theology, and the Holy Word. The orator should have gone on and told a little more about that same Chicago; that "there were eight hundred homicides and murders in the city in a little over two years, while the profits on the houses of shame (not the income) was sixteen million dollars annually, and the gifts of the whole city to Christian work was but four millions a year!" Big ecclesiastics may flatter fashionable worldliness, and say with a silly leer that "there is nothing but good in the human heart"; but we need no Bible to prove the depravity of such bishops and of the race. The daily papers, without asking, will prove it every twenty-four hours.