OMPHALOS. 
129 
of the Governor and the governed, that, so long as they render Him obe¬ 
dience, He will protect them from suffering. 
But we are not left to reason out this conclusion. The Holy Ghost 
(Bom. v. 12, et seq.) distinctly affirms that death entered into the world 
through (Sia) sin. And though I know that this is predicated of man 
primarily (perhaps exclusively), yet the important principle is here 
affirmed (ver. 14), that death is the result of imputed, as well as of actual , 
sin. Why do infants suffer and die,—infants a day old ? In the same 
Epistle, however (viii. 19-22), the very same principle is applied to the 
external creation (/) mlai's). It is declared that “ the creation waiteth 
for the manifestation (dTrotcdXvyfnv) of the sons of God, in hope that the 
creation itself shall be delivered out of the bondage of [consequent on] 
the lapse, into the liberty of [consequent on] the glory, of the children 
of God.” Here I may observe that in the Greek it is very manifest that 
the member of the sentence-“ of the children of God,” is equally 
pendent on the preceding members,—“ the bondage of the lapse” and 
“ the liberty of the glory.” I say “ equally pendent;” by which I mean, 
that we are required constructionally to fill up the ellipsis thus,-—“from 
the bondage of the lapse of the children of God, into the liberty of the 
glory of the children of God.” “Children,” either in the sense that 
Adam was a “ son of God” (as in Luke iii. 38), or, more probably, anti- 
cipatively (as in Heb. ii. 14). 
Here, then, it is implied that the groaning and travailing of “ the 
whole creation” is a slavery (jovXeid) flowing out of the lapse of the 
sinning, but redeemed race ; and that it will be removed when the last 
traces of the curse are lost in their hastening glory. 
But, in a parenthesis thrown into the passage above-cited, this federal 
connexion of the Creation with Man is more broadly stated. As a reason 
why the creation waits for the “apocalypse of the sons of God,” it is 
said,—“ Eor the creation was subjected to vanity [helplessness, suffering, 
death], not willing [not exercising any will in the matter], but through 
him ivho subjected it ” (ver. 20). And this could be none other than Man, 
its federal Head, in whose standing or falling it stood or fell.* 
Geology, however, asserts that death—violent, painful death—was 
in the world through uncounted ages before Man existed. Of whose sin, 
then, was all this “ vanity” the result ? Of the creatures’ own sin ?—the 
sin of the Pl esiosauri, of the Belemnites, of the Corals ? If not, if per¬ 
sonal sin is out of the question when the sufferer is a Cephalopod or a 
Zoophyte, then, whose sin was imputed to them ? Sin, the sin of some 
responsible being, must have preceded the suffering ; and the sin of some 
being who stood in federal relation to the sufferers. But a federal Head 
of Creation, other than Man, could not have been ; for this would be to 
* Of course I am aware that other interpretations of this passage have been given, 
some supposing rov vitoraiavra to mean God Himself; others, Satan. But I am per¬ 
suaded that no other is in the slightest degree relevant to the Apostle’s argument than 
that which makes Adam the person signified. 
