The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

elatively. Every man is more guilty absolutely than he is innocent
relatively.
3. There is a relative innocence in the infant as contrasted with the
adult; this the Scriptures freely allow: "In malice be ye children." 1 Cor.
xiv. 20. Even the first budding of sin seems only to lend the charm of
vivacity to the little creature. The baleful passion which, in the matured
Cain, darkens all time with its deed of murder, may have made his father
and mother smile as it flushed and sparkled in the miniature lines of anger
traced on his face in childhood. But the nature of Cain was the same in the
first glow of anger as in the last, and the nature which was in the first glow
of anger was in Cain before that anger arose. That anger did not make his
moral nature, but was made by it. The great need of the human creature is
indeed to be saved from that moral nature, and this can only be done by
giving him a new heart. The moral nature of the new-born infant is as truly
a sinful one as that of the grey-haired old reprobate, even as the physical
nature and mental nature of that babe are as really a human nature, its
body as really a human body, its soul as really a human soul, as those of
the ripe adult. God can no more save sin in nature than he can save it in
character, and hence a new nature is as absolutely needed by an infant as
by an adult. To deny that an infant is capable of regeneration is to deny
that it is capable of salvation. The tree is known by its fruit, not made by it.
While the tree is corrupt, the fruit must be corrupt. If the tree be made
good, the fruit will be good. Our proposition, then, clothing it in the guise
of our Saviour's figure, would be this: That the outgrowth and fruit of this
tree of our human nature must inevitably be deadly, unless the nature of
the tree itself be changed. The oak-nature is the same in the acorn as in the
monarch of the forest who has cast his shade for centuries. If the acorn
grow, it inevitably grows to the oak.
4. For the same great reason the relative innocence which arises from
ignorance cannot save men. There are some in nominal Christendom
whose privileges are so few that their accountability is relatively
diminished. The millions of Jews,