the broad indictment, in the first place, brought by S. Paul against mankinde. His thesis in his first two All guilty chapters affirms the 'universal guiltiness before God.'

before God;'

coming

short of Righteous

ness:

The First

Thesis of the Apostle. (ch. i. and

He evidently felt that there would be little place for the gospel of renewal which he had been preaching, unless this guiltiness were ultimately pressed on the conscience of all. In declaring the guilt, he unfolds also what we have seen to be its cause, the absence of all fear and knowledge of God-real 'ungodliness' ch.i. 18-23. at the root of the whole demoralization: the fool saying in his heart, no God,' and so becoming corrupt and abominable in his doings.'

ii.)

Unright

eousness is ungodli

ness.

We fasten here too on the fact, assured as we have seen by all testimony, that polytheism had superseded the best instincts of man by devotions to gods of absolute abomination. Human nature, with nothing morally higher than itself, even in its so-called gods, had become less and less able, everywhere, to ch.i.17-31. rally. The Apostle affirmed at once, that to lose the idea of the Divine in morals was to lose everything. It was not because there was no conceivable adjustment of the relations of man and man according to an ideal of fitness and general utility; but because in some dreadful sense it was really found that 'without God' the life of goodness was gone; for theories are nothing without life. It is not possible to put ch.i. 23-28. this in better words than the Apostle's when he says,

'they did not like to retain God in their knowledge;' upon which he points to the consequence, the 'vile affections' which followed, as admitting of no denial.

e Lect. I. p. 10; Lect. II. p. 64.

IV.] UNIVERSAL GUILT, AND POWERLESSNESS.

113

powerless

what it

ὄντων ἡμῶν

ἀσθενῶν.

It is full of interest to mark with what emphasis the Apostle dwells on this as the foundation of his whole philosophy of the position, because it cor- Moral responds so fully with the witness from all other ness; and sources, as to what was then the condition of the implies. world. The 'powerlessness of man,' å☛@éveia, in moral ch. v. 6. trial without religion means nothing less in S. Paul's argument than that the thought of God, the righteous Judge, dwells in the righteous man and not in the unrighteous; and that wherever that thought even waxes faint, virtue immediately becomes languid. This is not at all the same as saying, that the 'hope of future reward from God' is that which forms in man the character of moral goodness; for that is not true. Such hope is very dim at first, and is only appreciated at length by saints, the 'children of the Gen. xv. 1. Highest.' What is meant by the Apostle is rather this, that persistent goodness here on earth is in fact not possible when religion has left the conscience. We affirm now with S. Paul, echoing the Hebrew prophet, that a real faith in God is and ever has been

vital to our moral nature, the only sufficient spring Habak. ii. of goodness. The just shall live by faith.'

4.

ch. i. 17.

Heb. x. 38.

Our own observation of this fact f was recently con- Gal. ini. 11. fined to a limited period, the first century of our era. S. Paul's is a much wider view. He shows that the Its universality problem of human probation was worked out in the stated by world as a whole, first from Adam to Moses, and ch.v.12-21. afterwards, in two different ways, from Moses to the times of the Gospel; in one form among a chosen

f Lect. I. p. 8, &c.

I

S. Paul,

and need

ing to be

Heathen owned it.

people, under conditions peculiar to themselves, and in another among the rest of mankind, outside their pale. The appeal to the facts is made by the Apostle without the least fear of contradiction by Jews or Gentiles. He knows that their consciences will affirm the same. It is no historical rhetoric that he is using as he points to that which at length had become patent all around—and especially visible in Rome--the sense of God well nigh extinct, and the loss of righteousness complete. No one is as much as imagined to rise up and persevere in denying it.

What then could be done to meet the mournful examined. fact? would seem to be the immediate enquiry.—But no; something more is first needed. The acknowledgment of the ruin must not be too lightly made. Even the heathen had superficially owned it, but that was not enough; and the Apostle insisted on a more thoughtful recognition of it. Among the Jews indeed, where the knowledge of God still ch. ii. 1-13. lingered, there were a few who might challenge the accusing words as too comprehensive, and deny the need of a new covenant,' a 'new law.' He turned therefore to them. No doubt their law was a religious as well as moral distinction of a very sacred kind, and they would naturally be less ready to admit the universal ruin than were the intelligent heathen. But the Apostle, without denying that with their ch.ii.17-29. advantages they ought to have been more 'righteous' -nay, rather affirming it holds them to the facts, and shows them that he had alleged no more

It is proved against the

Jews and

heathen alike.

h Lect. I. p. 21, &c.

i Lect. I. p. 7.

Iv.] NONE RIGHTEOUS WITHOUT FAITH IN GOD.

115

than their own prophets had said of them. Alike in ch. iii.1-20. psalm and in history, their own holy books to which they appealed represented generation after generation of Hebrews as frequently worse than the nations around them, and even abandoned to wickedness. ch. ii. 24. With this dreadful reality he will not suffer them to equivocate.

power has

from faith.

He next supposes in his argument, that the Jews confront him with the statement, that among them there had been truly righteous men, even if they were but few; and he meets them at once, and deals with the facts. He does not of course deny that there had been righteous men of old, yet he points out that with the best among them the 'spirit had been willing and the flesh weak,' and that new strength ch. vii. was therefore needed. So far as some had attained All moral righteousness, he shows that it had been on a its rise higher principle than any law of the old time, even though it were that of Moses. It was GOD within them, the life of goodness in the soul. In Abraham ch. iii. 29– their ancestor, before the law, and in all the patri- ch.iv.1-22. archs, there was this well-spring of the hidden lifefaith in God, now reasserted by His Apostle. This faith had been supplanted, they knew, among the heathen by the dark doings of manifold idolatries; but it was not less supplanted, S. Paul shows, by the dead formalism which had made void the very law' of their God. There was in this no difference between them; the world without the law, and Israel with it, haddeparted from the living God;' and without faith in Him there is no living righteousness.

31.

ch. v. 6.

The Apostle's message then, as Christ's ambassador to reconcile men to God,' advances to this, that Faith in all its reality is revived by Jesus Christ; and that God has sent His Son to us, not only to tell us the truth concerning HIMSELF,—not only to create in us a right sentiment towards Him,—but by a new ch. v. 6, 11. and living way, through His Son's Death and Life, 'to bring us to Him, as children of God by faith.'

καταλλαγή :

and Heb.

ii. 10.

Faith;

and its reacting

invisible,

True, God dwells in the invisible, and no eye of man 'has seen Him, or can see;' but that spiritual discernment of Him which may be had now, and which we call Faith, implies a future, and makes trial of it, so as to act towards it, and live for it; and this Analysis of is greatly distinctive of the New Covenant. In the spiritual analysis of that inner apprehension which towards the true faith is, we soon, as the Apostle shows, discover a serene self-forgetting, a consciousness of the infinite, ch. v. 1, 2- and a desire of the abiding and the pure; 'peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.' To sin against God, to depart from the Supreme, is to lose all this. To recover faith is to recover this. To have this faith in our soul is to have in us the moral image of the Eternal, in which He first created us. And thus ch. v. 3. 4. a faith that contemplates HIM, 'beholds His face in Righteousness,' and goes forward patiently towards the Divine.

5.

Such was the teaching of S. Paul to the Romans, the beginning of his entire philosophy of goodness and renewal; he knew no alternative but that to which we challenge men now ka personal faith in

k Lect. II. p. 62; III. p. 83.