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itself on his doctrine of justification by faith. This was the watchword of Luther, and the soul of the reformation. Luther and his companions armed themselves with this doctrine to contend against the great power of the Papacy and the Romish Church.

Let us, then, endeavor to see what we can of the truth there may be in this doctrine.

§ 2. Its Meaning and Importance.

And, first, let us see

what the doctrine does not mean, and what it does mean.

To be justified by faith does not mean that we are to be saved by our opinions. To say that a man can be saved by holding certain opinions, instead of certain other opinions, is to say what is contradicted by all experience; for experience shows us that there are good men holding every variety of opinion, and bad men holding every variety of opinion. But God saves men by making them good: therefore men are not saved by their opinions. Let us suppose that men are to be saved by the opinion that Jesus is the Christ: then we ought to find that all men holding that opinion are on the way of salvation; that is, are becoming good men. But this is far from being the case. In fact, the connection between mere opinion of any kind, and goodness, is very distant and indirect. No doubt, in the long run, opinion affects character; but it is only in the long run that it does so. And, at all events, the doctrine of the New Testament is very distinct and decided, that men may hold very sound opinions, and yet not be in the way of salvation. The Scribes and Pharisees held very sound opinions; and Jesus told his disciples to do whatever they said, but not to imitate their works; for their doctrine was much better than their lives.

Nor does the apostle mean to say that one can be saved without morality. He certainly does not mean to undervalue goodness; for, in that case, he would contradict his own teachings, which uniformly declare, as all the rest of the Bible declares, that without holiness no man can see the

Lord. It is certainly a very superficial view which is satisfied with supposing that an earnest man, as the apostle certainly was, devoting his life, as he certainly did, to the teaching of Christianity, with such a grand intellect as he certainly possessed, could assert with so much energy a doctrine plainly contradicting common sense, daily observation, the plain teachings of Jesus, and his own uniform doctrine elsewhere. Some persons have a short method of getting over the dif ficulty by saying that Paul did not himself know what he meant.

They assume that he was talking at random. It would be about as wise, when we open Newton's "Principia," and cannot understand it, to say that Newton was talking at random; or, when we cannot understand Plato or some other profound metaphysician, to declare directly that he did not himself know what he was talking about. No doubt, this is the shortest and easiest way of getting out of such difficulties, but perhaps not the most modest, nor the most wise.

When an earnest man, a profound man, a man in the highest degree practical, a man who has done the greatest work for Christianity which has been done since its foundation, sums up his doctrine in a comprehensive maxim like this, it is, perhaps, wise to admit, at once, that he had a meaning, and probably an important one.

"No doubt he had a meaning," it may be said; "but has he any meaning now? His formula meant something for the Jews; but does it mean anything for us? Is not this merely a Jewish question, with which we have nothing to do?"

This is another easy way of getting over difficulties. In reading the New Testament, when we come to a place where we are stopped by something which looks deep and is dark, we are often told, "That darkness is not depth it is the shadow of a Jewish error which lies across the path."

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Have we not often felt dissatisfied, when, approaching some great saying of Christ and his apostles from which we hoped to gain new insight, we have been told, "That has

nothing to do with us. The Jews had such and such an opinion, and this was meant to show them their mistake"? So the great and earnest words of the Bible, which we thought to be full of spirit and life, are found to be only fossil remains of old opinions, of opinions long since passed away-good for nothing but to be put into the museums of antiquaries, and paraded by scholastic pedants.

But, after all, take it on the lowest ground, were not the Jews men? Did they not, as a race, represent some element, common, in a less degree, to the rest of mankind? and therefore is there not in each of us something of that Jewish ele ment? Are not we also sometimes Jews, therefore liable to Jewish errors, and needing to have them corrected? The Jews did not live in vain: their struggles, errors, hopes, were for the benefit of humanity. We were to learn something by their mistakes, and to be taught something by their experience.

Another way of treating such a passage is to translate it into some trivial, insignificant commonplace. Thus, we are told, our doctrine only means that "God does not approve a man merely for going through a routine of outward, formal ceremonies, but for a thoroughly religious life." This expla nation assumes that the apostle is here talking to simpletons, and that what he says is no more worth listening to by us than the prattle of a nurse to her infant.

There are, therefore, four ways of explaining this passage, none of which are satisfactory. These are, that Paul, 1. Was teaching a self-evident absurdity;

2. Was teaching a self-evident truism;

3. Was teaching nothing, and only talking at random ; 4. Was correcting a Jewish error, which only the Jews ever had, or are ever likely to have.

If these views are not satisfactory to us, the simplest way would seem to be, first, to endeavor to understand precisely what the Jewish error was, and then to see if there is any thing like it in ourselves, and if there be anything which we

can learn from this old argument which will be, not old, but new for our time and for all time, because a part of the tendencies of man. Let us translate these old terms — justification, faith, works into their modern equivalents, and see what they mean for us at the present time.

We have shown that we may be mistaken in supposing this Orthodox doctrine of justification to be of merely local and temporary interest, having no permanent value. It is not likely that a man like Paul, of so large, so deep, so philosophic a mind, should have devoted himself so earnestly, and returned so fondly, to a theme involving no universal and eternal principles, whose interest was to perish with the hour. It is not probable that, in this small volume of writings of the new covenant, - this precious gift of God to the world in all ages and in every nation, · so large a portion should be devoted to a wholly temporary argument; and, more than all, it is a most remarkable fact, that whenever there arises a man uniting a deeper spirit of piety with a larger sense of liberty than other men, -a man commissioned by God to give a new religious impulse to his age, and to help Christianity to shake itself free from the cumbrous mass of human forms and traditions which have crushed it, and to go forth in its native grace and loveliness agaiu, some profound instinct should always lead him to this doctrine as to a weapon effectual for pulling down the strongholds of bigotry, scepticism, and spiritual death. Sir James Mackintosh somewhere says, that the great movement which shook Christendom to its centre, and did more to change and reform society than the political revolutions and wars of a thousand years, originated with an obscure Augustinian monk preaching the doctrine of justification by faith. This acute Scotchman saw, what all must see who read Luther's writings with any attention, that it was no accident, no temporal interest, which led him to lay such stress on this doctrine. It was the soul of his preaching, the essence of his doctrine, the secret of

his strength, the life of his life. And so, when Wesley and the early Methodists were called upon to pour new religious life into the English Church, they fell back on this doctrine. - this ancient sword of the Spirit. And so we may believe that it has a value for all ages; that it did not relate merely to Jewish usages, but is a principle of vital and everlasting application.

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No doubt that if by faith we understand intellectual belief, or the assent to opinions, and if by works we understand true obedience, and by justification final salvation or actual goodness, there can scarcely be a greater absurdity than to say that a man is justified by faith, and not by works. To say that goodness, in the sight of God, consists in receiving certain opinions, rather than in true obedience, is a most unscriptural and irrational doctrine.

But none of the great reformers of whom I have spoken, and no profound theologians of any sect or school, have ever held the doctrines of justification by faith in this way. Neither Luther nor Wesley ever made faith synonymous with intellectual belief or opinion. "What is faith?" said Wesley. "Not an opinion, nor any number of opinions put together, be they ever so true. A string of opinions is no more Christian faith than a string of beads is Christian holiness. It is not an assent to any opinion, or any number of opinions. A man may assent to three or three and twenty creeds, he may assent to all the Old and New Testament, and yet have no Christian faith at all."

But what is the true doctrine of justification by faith, as taught in the Scriptures, and as inspiring these great reformers? This is naturally our next inquiry.

There is

§ 3. Need of Justification for the Conscience. nothing in the nature of man more paradoxical than conscience. It is that which lifts him to God; and yet it is that which makes him capable of sin, and without which he could not be a sinner. It gives him the sense of right, but

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