djust His demands to the alterations which sinful man makes
in himself. This would be to annihilate all demands and obligations.
A sliding-scale would be introduced, by this method, that would reduce
human duty by degrees to a minimum, where it would disappear. For, the
more sinful a creature becomes, the less inclined, and consequently the
less able does he become to obey the law of God. If, now, the Eternal
Judge shapes His requisitions in accordance with the shifting character
of His creature, and lowers His law down just as fast as the sinner
enslaves himself to lust and sin, it is plain that sooner or later all
moral obligation will run out; and whenever the creature becomes totally
enslaved to self and flesh, there will no longer be any claims resting
upon him. But this cannot be so. "For the kingdom of heaven,"--says our
Lord,--"is as a man travelling into a far country, who called his
own servants and delivered unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five
talents, and to another two, and to another one; and straightway took his
journey." When the settlement was made. Each and every one of the parties
was righteously summoned to account for all that had originally been
intrusted to him, and to show a faithful improvement of the same. If any
one of the servants had been found to have "lacked" a part, or the whole,
of the original treasure, because he had culpably lost it, think you that
the fact that it was now gone from his possession, and was past recovery,
would have been accepted as a valid excuse from the original obligations
imposed upon him? In like manner, the fact, that man cannot reinstate
himself in his original condition of holiness and blessedness, from which
he has fallen by apostasy, will not suffice to justify him before God for
being in a helpless state of sin and misery, or to give him any claims
upon God for deliverance from it. God can and does _pity_ him, in his
ruined and lost estate, and if the creature will cast himself upon His
_mercy_, acknowledging the righteousness of the entire claims of God upon
him for a sinless perfection and a perfect service, he will meet and find
mercy. But if he takes the ground that he does not owe such an immense
debt as this, and that God has no right to demand from him, in his
apostate and helpless condition, the same perfection of character and
obedience which holy Adam possessed and rendered, and which the unfallen
angels possess and render, God will leave