Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 38 Views Of Man's Creation And Destiny As Suggested By The Foeegoing Aspect Of The Fall. From the foregoing considerations we conclude that the design of the Almighty in his Creation of Man, was to raise up and educate a race of subjects of a high order of intelligence, endowed with perfect freedom of will, capable of glorifying Him by the exercise of faith, acquired, proved, and perfected during a short probational life in this world, and thereafter to dwell with Him eternally; enjoy close communion with Himself and to render Him voluntary service in works of love. A necessary consequence of their perfect freedom of will was that some might prove disloyal and persist in refusing obedience to the Divine command. Adam the exponent of the race. We regard Adam as the representative as well as (he progenitor of the human race, and his fall as the exponent of their capacity to endure trial. In Adam all may thus be said to have transgressed?not that his individual disobedience was visited upon his whole posterity?but, that all inheriting the same nature as himself were subject to the same infirmity, needed the same redemption, and shared with him alike the consequences of transgression and the offer of eternal life. "We are, in fact, conscious, each in his individual experience, of inheriting his .weakness and of having continually repeated hisdisobedience in the multiform trials to which we are subjected in this present life. We suffer, like Adam, not because of our disobedience only, but also, and we believe chiefly, for the trial of our faith; for, be it observed, Adam's first trial assailed him whilst he was yet in his innocence, and was not a punishment, but only a test of his faith, the first step in the education of life. All transgression not equally culpable. ...