it, and this energy was given to him; and he lived and died in order to fulfil the purpose which he so truly felt was committed to him.

There is one part of this burden with which his epistles have principally to do. He felt how difficult, how all but impossible, it was to keep these Romans and Corinthians and Galatians and Ephesians alive to a consciousness of their exalted vocation. He had to lift them by his teaching and inspiration to the conception of God and His purposes to which he had himself only attained after years of intense thought and often painful experience. They were already forging for themselves and wished to forge for others fresh chains in ordinances and creeds. He had to combat this tendency not only in his immediate but in all his successive followers; and yet, in spite of his most earnest efforts, the pure doctrines he taught have become corrupted, and the Church has made for itself systems of theology and ordinances in direct opposition to all the principles for which St. Paul so ardently strove. His professed followers make up systems out of sentences and phrases extracted from his writings, and neglect the broad and universal truths which he lived to diffuse among mankind.

His one aim was to exhibit the grace of God and the obligation of men, especially of those who believe. He does so historically and philosophically. He shows over and over again the simultaneous working of God in the history of Jews and Gentiles, and the fulfilling of all previous purposes, and the clearing up of all ancient mysteries by bringing them together in Christ. He then looks forward to the glorious development of the kingdom of God. He points to themselves as the first-fruits, elected as the primary agents in the grand crisis of humanity; and having laboured painfully and with all his soul to make this clear to them, he connects with it the obligation that is upon them to live this new life; to be examples in the world of humanity transformed by the spirit of God; to live themselves as the representatives of Christ on earth; not, however, as wielding His authority, but sharing His sufferings for the advantage of their race, and so exhibiting, as far as it was possible for them, the divineness of self-sacrifice and the reality of the life of God in Man.

IV.

JUSTICE AND MERCY.

ONE of the most common fallacies of orthodoxy is the misrepresentation of justice and mercy. These two divine attributes are constantly described as being in a state of irreconcilable opposition. According to orthodox theologians, justice has only to do with punishment, and mercy only has to do with forgiveness. They do not see that it is often just to forgive and merciful to punish, and that what is merciful is just and what is just is also merciful. They confess that in condemning an offender it is merciful to take into consideration all extenuating circumstances, but I urge that it is also just to do so. In our rough and approximate administration of justice or law in human affairs, we are constantly unable to take much into consideration that ought to be considered, and our judgments and sentences are therefore generally unmerciful and

frequently unjust, but we must not apply our standard to the divine method.

In Scripture justice and mercy are not opposed, but united. And it must be admitted, upon consideration, that righteousness, truth, justice, are only modifications of or different representations of the same attribute; as, on the other hand, mercy, peace, love, are manifestations of another. But as there is no opposition between righteousness and peace, or between truth and love, neither is there between justice and mercy: rather they are inseparable; and to be without mercy is to be without justice, and to be without justice is to be without mercy.

The orthodox doctrine is that the justice of God was implacable and unrelenting and powerful, while the mercy was mild and kind and benevolent and helpless until some unique means of reconciling these contradictory attributes was found in the death of Jesus. Justice said, Punish, torture, slay.' Mercy said, 'Overlook, pass by, forgive.' This is very dramatic and interesting, but unreal and baseless, for it supposes that God was divided within Himself, and that love could be loving and unloving at the same time. That which demands punishment, pain, or death, with

out relenting, is not justice; it may be vindictiveness, harshness, or even fear, but not justice. Justice is not hard, harsh, unrelenting, but considerate, kind, patient, gentle even as mercy is; for mercy is not mere thoughtless soft-heartedness, but restrictive and even stern in its kind

ness.

And our great trust in God is always founded, not only on the hope that He will be merciful, but on the certainty that He will be just. 'Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?' is our final appeal against all inhuman theology or hopeless scepticism. He will rectify all wrong; he will punish us not beyond our demerits; all extenuations will be considered-birth, temptation, weakness, bias. He knoweth our frame: He remembereth that we are dust;' and to do so is both just and merciful, and therefore divine. Theologians talk glibly and unfeelingly enough of God's judgments upon the wicked, of the final doom of the impenitent, of the ultimate fate of the ante-Christian heathen and the post-Christian infidel, but they forget to take into consideration either justice or mercy, and distress themselves and others with the image of an implacable judge and an unrelenting law, the substance of which,