202 ORIGINAL SIN 



for meritorious ones. Scripture threatens sinners — 

 I mean actual sinners — with divine penalties and 

 promises the reward of eternal life to the righteous.* 

 When it is said that we cannot deserve heaven by our 

 good works, two things are meant: that they are re- 

 duced in value by the sins which we continue to com- 

 mit; and that in any case they are inadequate to deserve, 

 as a wage, so great a blessing as that of eternal life 

 with God. It is only by reason of their being done in 

 Christ that they are effectual, and it is by reason of 

 His merit that they are so superabundantly rewarded.^ 

 (b) Obviously, to speak of a state as deserving wrath, 

 where no actions of the person involved are referred to, 

 is to use the word in a derivative sense, and this deriva- 

 tive sense is found in common speech as well as in 

 theology. It is practically equivalent to ''fit for" and 

 "entitled to," by reason of such fitness. Thus a brute 

 is said to deserve such treatment as its nature fits it 

 to receive, and not to deserve either inferior or superior 

 treatment. The same language is employed with 

 reference to man. "A man is a man for a' that," and 

 deserves humane treatment. His created nature is 

 entitled, in brief, to be satisfied within the hmits of its 

 existing physical and moral capacities. He deserves 

 that much. But he does not deserve more; and this 

 negation may be expressed in positive form by saying 



1 St. Matt. vi. 4, 6, i8; xvi. 27. The word fucrdbs, wage, is often 

 employed to describe the reward of the righteous; e.g., St. Matt. v. 

 12; I Cor. iii. 14; 2 St. John 8. 



2 St. Luke xvii. 10; Rom. vi. 23; Ephes. ii. 8. 



