The debate between these two opposing theories, which was fierce in the time of the Reformation and has continued in polemical theology ever since, like the debate respecting God's righteousness, concerns a distinction with no difference. It is true that we may metaphysically distinguish between making right the relation between God and the soul and making right the soul in itself, but the distinction is purely abstract; it has no existence in actual experience. When the prodigal son left his father's house and wandered off into a far country, and associated there with drunkards and harlots, and spent his substance in riotous living, it is clear that he both separated himself from his father and soiled and despoiled his own character. But he did both by the same act. If he had remained under his father's roof and possessed the same spirit, he would have been as truly separated from his father as he was when living in a far country. So, when he would repent, it is equally clear that a double duty was laid upon him, that of abandoning the evil habits of his own life, and that of returning to his father and seeking his father's pardon. But these also, though metaphysically separate acts, are in actual experience inseparable. The son could not take the first step toward a real and radical reform so long as he remained estranged and separated from his father; neither could he bridge the chasm which separated him from his father without earnestness of purpose to reform, without ceasing to do evil, and at least beginning to learn to do well. He might have gone back to his father's house impenitent, driven merely by hunger; but in this case the body, not the soul, would have returned to the father, and the estrangement would have remained as great as before. He might have remained in the far country, endeavoring to cast off every evil habit and association, and to come into a spiritual fellowship with his father, to be at one with him in spirit, and it might have been physically impossible to take the journey back to his father's house, but in spirit he would have been restored to his father by the very act of repentance and the aspiration for forgiveness. The restoration to the father would be impossible without repentance, and the repentance would be impossible without restoration to the father. This truth is beautifully expressed in the parable by the declaration that when he came to himself he arose and went to his Father. Now, the soul that has sinned has both estranged itself from God and impaired and despoiled its own powers. It is impossible to come into right relations towards the Father which is in Heaven without taking

the first steps towards a recuperation of soul, and it is impossible to take the first step toward a recuperation of soul without returning penitently to the Father from whom we have estranged ourselves. Whatever fine-spun distinction may be drawn in the library, in the actualities of human experience the rectification of our relations with God and the first steps in the rectification of our own souls are not merely contemporaneous; they are absolutely the same. When, therefore, Paul speaks of justification or rightening, he means neither a rightening of our soul's relations with God that is, a treating of the soul as though it were just, -nor a rightening of the soul in its own nature—that is, making the soul just; he means this one simple, indivisible process: the setting the soul right in its relations with God, because setting it in the way of righteousness within itself, and the setting of the soul in the way of righteousness within itself, because restored to right, that is, filial relations with God.

It must be freely conceded that the Old Testament use of the words just, justify, justification, has not the largeness of meaning which is here imputed to it. In the Old Testament these words are used ordinarily, if not exclusively, in the forensic sense. To justify is not to set right, but only to declare right. "I will not justify the wicked;" "They shall justify the righteous and condemn the wicked;" "If I justify myself my own mouth shall condemn me;" "God forbid that I should justify you;" "Speak, for I desire to justify thee;" "Which justify the wicked for a reward." The only passage in the Old Testament where the word can be thought to have the larger spiritual meaning is Isaiah liii. 11; "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities;" and even in this passage the meaning is possibly forensic, that is, my righteous servant shall secure their acquittal by bearing their sins for them. The word occurs but twice in the Gospels, and then with the same significance of acquittal: "He willing to justify himself;" "Ye are they which justify yourselves before men." To one who regards the Bible as one book, written on one plane, and with one uniform doctrine or thought, as fully developed by Moses as by Paul, in the first century after the Creation as in the first century after the Incarnation, this Old Testament use of the word will be quite conclusive against the view I am here presenting. I do not so read the Bible. It is a book, but a book which grew from the seed to the fruit; its doctrine is a developed doctrine; between the vague promise to Adam, "The seed of the woman shall

bruise the serpent's head," and the prophecy of Paul, “Then cometh the end, when he shall have delivered up the kingdom to God, even the Father . . Then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all," there is a gap of centuries of spiritual growth. The New Testament is not a repetition of the Old; it is a development out of the Old. The temple is one; but the Old Testament is the foundation, the New Testament is the superstructure. The word which the Old Testament uses in a restricted, narrow, and formal sense, Paul uses with a larger and profounder meaning. How shall I become acquitted before God, is the question of the Old Testament. By having God's nature imparted to you, and receiving him into yourself, replies Paul. There is no escape from God's condemnation except by becoming his freeman, his child, his bride, the temple for his indwelling.

It is the object of Paul's Epistle to the Romans to show how this rightening is to be effected, and what are the joyful results in spiritual experience. And the general conclusion which he formulates in chapter iii. is, that by obedience to law shall no flesh be rightened, but by a life of faith. The Jew knew no other way of securing either rest within himself or peace with God than by obedience to the divine law. This was the burden of the Hebrew prophets. "Cease to do evil; learn to do well."-"What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God?" The preaching of John the Baptist, last of the Hebrew prophets, was to the same effect. "What shall we do then?" said the people. "He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none, and he that hath meat let him do likewise,” was the answer. And this was a necessary moral foundation for the spiritual superstructure to be built thereon by Christ and his Apostles. It must be remembered that in pagan religions-and in some forms of pseudo-Christian religions - there is no organic connection between piety and morality, acceptance with God and right doing toward men. The ancient chronicler who wrote of Cardinal Lorraine that "he is far from truthful, naturally deceitful and covetous, but full of religion," had no intention of writing a biting sarcasm. Louis XV., who kneeled every night to say his prayers with his mistress at his side, had no conception that his religion was a travesty. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart and soul and strength and thy neighbor as thyself, is a marriage rite never performed outside the religion of the Bible. That there can be no pleasing of God by a life evil toward man

was the first lesson to be taught the world, and even the Christian world has not yet fully learned it.

But if the majority of mankind have fondly hoped to find some way of pleasing God without the trouble of right living, the majority of those who have desired to promote right living have imagined that the way to do it is to set up some standard of character and conduct, and then by force of law within or without, law of statute or law of conscience compel conformity to it. They expect to reform the character, not by transforming it from within, but by conforming it from without. They expect not that it will grow into right lines, but that it can be cut and carved or beaten and pressed into right lines. They believe in the efficacy of a moral repoussé work. The political reformer expects to set the country right by making a right constitution and enacting under it right laws. The social reformer expects to remedy the injustice and inequality of society by reorganizing the community upon some type modeled after the pattern of the family. The father misreads the Bible promise, and thinks that it assures him, "Govern a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The individual expects to accept a law over him from some external authority, - human or divine, or to set up one over himself by the edict of his own conscience, and thus reform his character by compelling himself to conform to the standard thus recognized or established. This was the essential spirit of Pharisaism, which sometimes set up an ethical and even spiritual standard, sometimes a merely ceremonial one, but always a standard to be obeyed, whether it was that of Hillel or of Shammai. And this is the essential spirit of Puritanism, which aimed, and still aims, to set right both community and individuals by setting over community and individuals a law of life and conduct, and requiring obedience to it, under penalty of conscience in the individual, of the rod in the family, of fine or stocks or prison in the community. In the first three chapters of Paul's Epistle to the Romans he sets forth this method of reformation, shows how it had been twice tried on a grand scale in human history, and how sublime and sorrowful had been the failure.

Never was an empire so well equipped for trying this method as Rome, mistress of the world, mother of law. Never had any people a stronger conception of the dignity and obligation of law, or an organization better adapted to compel the obedience of the unwilling. She has given law to the world, and with it has furnished models of unswerving, uncorrupted, and incorruptible

administration. Roman justice is to-day a symbol of absolute allegiance to law. Roman justice is the historic type of unswerving impartiality in the execution of law. What is the result of this experiment at making a community pure, and true, and temperate, and good by the force of human law? Paul, in the first chapter of Romans, holds up the mirror before the face of Roman society, and bids it find in its own reflection the answer to this question. Rome had but human law, and human penalty to enforce it. Over against the Jewish people the standard of God's perfect law was set up; behind it thundered and lightened for fifteen centuries his providential judgments. An inspired lawgiver received and promulgated it; prophets were sent to emphasize and to interpret it; the Providence of God followed the nation, punishing disobedience; schools of scribes and rabbis were organized to explain the application of those laws to every conceivable experience of human life, and to invent new statutes where statutes were wanting in the original divinely given collection. The result of this experiment was equally a failure. The mirror held up in the third chapter before the Hebrew society shows no fairer features than the Roman portrait. "What, then, are we better than they? No, in nowise; for we have before proved, both Jew and Gentiles, that they are all under sin as it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." The attempt of men to work out reformation either in the community, the family, or the individual, by laws and penalties, will inevitably fail. This is not the divine way of accomplishing the rightening of either society or the human soul. By the deeds of the law shall no flesh be rightened in his sight.1

To avoid the force of this conclusion, theologians have invented a distinction between the moral and ceremonial law. They have supposed that Christ abolished the ceremonial but retained and reinforced the moral law, and that Paul taught that men could not be justified by obeying the ceremonial regulations without intending to take off from them in the slightest degree the pressure of the obligation of the moral code. In fact, however, no such distinction between the moral and the ceremonial is recognized in the Old Testament or in the New. In the Old Testament the moral and the ceremonial regulations are so woven together that it is impossible to separate them without separating the very warp and woof of the Old Testament books. In the New Testament Christ declares that not one jot nor one tittle—that is, not the smallest 1 Romans i. 26-32; iii. 9-18. The conclusion from this historic study of the effects of the legal method of reform is stated in chapter iii. 19.