sins of the whole world.”  We would not have been “made conformable to his death,” nor have known “the power of his resurrection.”  We could not have loved the Holy Ghost as revealing to us the Father and the Son, as opening the eyes of our understanding, bringing us out of darkness into His marvelous light, renewing the image of God in our soul, and sealing us unto the day of redemption.  So that, in truth, what is now “in the sight of God, even the Father,” not of fallible men “pure religion and undefiled,” would then, have had no being:  inasmuch as it wholly depends on those grand principles, “By grace ye are saved through faith”; and “Jesus Christ is of God made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.”

We see then what unspeakable advantage we derive from the fall of our first parent, with regard to faith:  faith both in God the Father, who spared not His own Son, His only Son, but wounded Him for our transgressions and bruised Him for our iniquities; and in God the Son, who poured out His soul for us transgressors, and washed us in His own blood.  We see what advantage we derive therefrom with regard to the love of God, both of God the Father and God the Son.  The chief ground of this love, as long as we remain in the body, is plainly declared by the apostle, “We love him, because he first loved us.”  But the greatest instance of His love had never been given if Adam had not fallen.

And as our faith, both in God the Father and the Son, receives an unspeakable increase, if not its very being, from this grand event, as does also our love both of the Father and the Son:  so does the love of our neighbor also, our benevolence to all mankind:  which can not but increase in the same proportion with our faith and love of God.  For who does not apprehend the force of that inference drawn by the loving apostle, “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another.”  If God so loved us—­observe, the stress of the argument lies on this very point:  so loved us! as to deliver up His only Son to die a curst death for our salvation.  “Beloved, what manner of love is this,” wherewith God hath loved us?  So as to give His only Son!  In glory equal with the Father:  in majesty coeternal!  What manner of love is this wherewith the only begotten Son of God hath loved us, as to empty Himself, as far as possible, of His eternal Godhead; as to divest Himself of that glory, which He had with the Father before the world began; as to take upon Him “the form of a servant, being found in fashion as a man”!  And then to humble Himself still further, “being obedient unto death, even the death of the cross”!  If God so loved us, how ought we to love one another?  But this motive to brotherly love had been totally wanting if Adam had not fallen.  Consequently we could not then have loved one another in so high a degree as we may now.  Nor could there have been that height and depth in the command of our blest Lord.  “As I have loved you, so love one another.”