Tuesday, February 23, 2016

    Adam, our father and our head,
    Transgress'd, and justice doom'd us dead;
    The fiery law speaks all despair,
    There's no reprieve nor pardon there.

    Call a bright council in the skies;
    Seraphs, the mighty and the wise,
    Speak; are you strong to bear the load,
    The weighty vengeance of a God?

    In vain we ask; for all around
    Stand silent through the heavenly ground;
    There's not a glorious mind above
    Has half the strength or half the love.

    But, O! unmeasurable grace!
    Th' eternal Son takes Adam's place;
    Down to our world the Saviour flies,
    Stretches his arms, and bleeds, and dies.

    Amazing work! look down, ye skies,
    Wonder-and gaze with all your eyes!
    Ye saints below, and saints above,
    All bow to this mysterious love.
                                       Isaac Watts


....."But, as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so, by the obedience of one, shall many be made righteous," (Rom. 5:19).  The first Adam, through pride, dis-obeyed the most easy precept; and the last Adam obeyed the most difficult command.  The first Adam, being a man, affected to be as God:  the second Adam, being God, was found in fashion as a man.  The first Adam was assaulted by the devil in paradise, and was overcome:  the second Adam was tempted in the wilderness, by the same malicious spirit, but he was a conqueror.  The first Adam, breaking the law in one point, was guilty of all:  the last Adam, observing it in every point, did magnify and make it honourable.  The moment we became the children of Adam, by natural generation, we die for a sin which we could not personally commit:  the moment we become the children of Christ, by regeneration, we are made alive, by a righteousness which we could not actually work out.  In Adam we are condemned for one sin; but in Christ we are justified from innumerable offences.  In the first book of the Bible we have a melancholy relation, how the first Adam was so far from being able to transmit life and happiness to his posterity, or to give them to eat of the tree of life, that himself was driven out from the terrestrial paradise, and debarred from all access to that sacramental tree:  but, in the last book of the sacred oracles, we are presented with a view of the second Adam, in a far more glorious place than that happy garden, and hear him declaring from his own mouth, "To him that overcometh, will I give to eat of the tree of life, that is in the midst of the paradise of God." (Rev. 2:7).
     For ever blessed be the glorious name of God, that what the first Adam could not keep, the second hath amply restored to us:  "For as in Adam sin hath reigned unto death, so grace hath reigned through righteousness unto eternal life, by Jesus Christ our Lord;" (Rom. 5:21) who is not only come, that "we might have life, but that we might have it more abundantly." (John 10:10).
                                                                                                                               Rev. William McEwen

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