The Biblical Conception of Sin 17 tered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, because that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12) . The following words of the late Principal Fairbaim in his monu mental work, “The Philosophy of Religion” (p. 165), go to support the Scriptural position: “Man is to God a whole, a colossal individual, whose days are centuries, whose organs are races, whose being as corporate endures immortal amid the immortality (mortality ?) of its constituent units. Hence there must be a Divine judgment of the race as a race, as well as of the individual as an individual.” But in any case, whether confirmed or contradicted by modern thought, the doctrine of Scripture shines like a sunbeam, that man is “conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity” (Psa. 51:5) , that children are “estranged from the womb and go astray” (Psa. 58:3) , that all are by nature “children of wrath” (Eph. 2 : 3 ) , that “the imagination of man’s heart is evil from his youth” (Gen. 8:21) , and that everyone requires to have “a new heart” created in him (Psa. 51:10) , since “that which is bom of the flesh is flesh” (John 3 : 6 ) , and “no man can bring a clean thing out of an unclean” (Job 15:14). If these passages do not show that the Bible teaches the doctrine of original, or transmitted and inherited, sin, it is difficult to see in what clearer or more emphatic language the doctrine could have been taught. The truth of the doctrine may be challenged by those who repudiate the authority of Scripture; that it is a doctrine of Scripture can hardly be denied. IV. THE CULPABILITY OF SIN By this is meant not merely the blameworthiness of sin as an act, inexcusable on the part of its perpetrator, who, being such a personality as he is, endowed with such faculties as are his, placed under a law so good and holy, just and spiritual, simple and easy as that prescribed by God, and having such motives and inducements to keep it as were offered to him—to the first man and also to his posterity,—ought never
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