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Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of His creatures. Where- fore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath : for the wrath of man worketh not the righte- ousness of God. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and greediness of vice, and receive with meekness the ingrowing word, which is able to save your soiils. But be ye doers of the wonl, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like imto a man beholding his natural face in a glass : for he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continucth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed. If any man among you seem to be religious, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man*s religion is vain. Pure • Compare Neander'^ Planting of Christ tan it tf, or the Rev. A. P. Stanley 'h Sermons and Essays on the Apostolic Age, 8T Paul's conversion. 375 worship and undefiled before our Grod and Father is this, To visit the fatherless aud widows in their aflfliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.' " There might have seemed danger of the faith of Christ becoming a zeal for the law, or a mere reform in the religion of the Jews. But God by His Holy Spirit sent the Apostle Paul, whose turning with all his heart is a great sign of the power of the Gospel, as his life became an instrument in spreading it. His Hebrew name was Saul. He had been brought up in the strictest form of Scriptural Pharisaism*, and was zealous for the Mosaic Law, which he had received by tradition from his fathers. How could he then tolerate *the new way,' which degraded all that he valued into instruments of something higher? He looked on Christians as infidels, and thought it a duty to assail them. If it ever struck him that the old ritual was burdensome, and not even fulfilled by himself, while the life of Christ and of believers in Him shewed a higher right- eousness, he kicked against such goads of conscience, and turned more fiercely to persecute. For this purpose he was on his way to Damascus. But then God gave him a true vision of the risen Saviour, harmless, undefiled, and blessing, and he became a new man* The scales fell from his eyes, and his old thoughts passed away. So he washed away his sins in the bath of new birth, and proclaimed good news of a wider deliverance than that of the Jews, in the name of that Master of the heart, against whom he had striven. He still needed instruction from human instruments, and may have gone through internal con- flicts in his three years of retirement. But he came forth the greatest preacher of such a doctrine as I have expounded firom our Lord's Prayer. He found that not by the written law, with- out something deeper, could man become righteous with God. For even if he fulfilled all its rites, they did not cleanse the conscience. And who could fulfil them? It rather taught a sense of sin, by standing with its threats over against the human * Philippians Hi. 4—^; Acts xxii. 3; Gal. i. 14. 376 THE LAW. FREEDOM. SACRIFICE. soul, not entering into it as a strengthener, but sliewing an im- possible standard. So it became an enemy, slaying the mind with a consciousness of discrepance between desire and perform- ance, and giving even to physical death another terror. But if it could be shewn that this hostile law came out of love, and that undemeat'i it was an eternal purpose to educate in the nature of evil, and to deliver from it, then it might become a schoolmaster to something better. But this Christ had done, having a mission from the Father, as an unction of the mind, to unveil this purpose. He had proclaimed the infinite love of Grod which gives strength to man, and unveiled the better meaning of the sacrifices, and given to faith a higher righteous- ness in reconciliation of our spirits with the Father, who may have ordered for His children precepts and terrors like stewards and governors, but who has loved tlicm all along, and only educated them to do His will, which is their deliverance from evil. Thus the Law became no more a master, but an instru- ment ; its letter was seen to be only the expression of a better spirit ; its water was changed to wine ; it was taken away as a terror, and only its instruction remained. It had been as a grammar which tauglit our souls the language of righteousness ; and when this became instinctive to our tlioughts, the letter of rules might be put aside. What if Christ could not reveal such a will of Grod without stepping Himself into the place of the old sacrifices, and buying our freedom with the price of His Wood ? His dedication of Himself then was that which should give the law of things to come, as well as the interpretation of things old. By remembering it in solemn sacrament, and re- newing it, though imperfectly, in our lives, we should have the same pledge of God's ' frank forgiveness* ' of sin, as the Israelite when he made his sin-offering at the altar. For by lifting up the crucified Saviour from the grave, the Father shewed that His offering was accepted, and that His prayer for the deliver- ance of His people could never fail. Our righteousness then * St Luke vii. 43. JUSTIFICATION. GENTILE CHRISTIANITY. 377 comes not of legal ritual, or of human strength, but of the love of Grod which forgives us, and of His grace which gives life to our soul, and through a faith which makes us partakers of the mind of Christ, and enables us to look up through the Son to the Father. But as love answers to love, so this free gift will awaken gratitude; the unveiling of what God calls righteous- ness, as something not external but converting the heart and reins, will both attract us with its goodness, and give us strength for a higher life, by writing a law in our hearts, and making it part of our spiritual being. As the Jew must not call his written law righteousness, neither must the Gentile anything of the same kind. We shall make no claim for almsgiving, though willing to remember the poor. We shall not think that any outward communion saves us, though desirous to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. Our new law will come of faith in the All-holy, the All-merciful, and the Spiritual Teacher. It would be written in the unseen world, and our faith would apprehend it. The grandest instance of its fulfilment would be the suffering upon the cross, which the Son of God paid as a price for tlie abolition of the old law of the letter. This, therefore, would be the type after which the new life we received from Him would fashion itself. We should offer ourselves willingly, as He was an oflfering. We should die at last to all stain of evil, as He died on the shameful tree ; we should love, as He loved us, and rise out of the death of the soul into a life which His Spirit can sustain in us, and which will grow up into life eternal. " But where then were the exclusive rights of the Jew, or as I might say to you, of any caste? Such a faith as Christ revealed, must be open to whoever would come thereby to the Father. As no claim, so no acceptance of persons. Not Abrar ham's blood, but Abraham's faith. They who thought them- selves a chosen people, had to learn, that such choice was no merit of theirs, but a gift which in the fulness of time, or as men became fitted for it, would extend itself to true hearts everywhere. Nor was this such a new doctrine. The old 378 THE GOSPEL PREDESTINATED. Prophets had spoken of all nations serving the Lord. However much it may have been veiled, yet what the eternal God is doing now, He had intended from of old. As thought in man runs before action, so tlie predestination of the Almighty had gone before Christianity. We could not know if we had not first been known by Him. His grace to Israel was only a local expression of a wider design. We see in all nature an instinctive stretching forward to something which each of its parts is destined to become. So among the Gentiles* there had been a feeling after God, who was not without witness.