though they tried hard to be trusted again, no man would trust them. Their calamities made them desperate. They were betrayed into fresh vices. Gradually all their self-respect perished, and whatever moral energy they possessed disappeared. They had slipped into a dark river whose currents were too strong for them, and they have been swept on to hopeless misery and shame.

And among the most honourable and prosperous people living in pleasant houses by which these wretched outcasts creep in their filth and rags, you may find men who were guilty of precisely the same offences, and who for a time seemed to be descending rapidly to the same ruin. But there was a love which clung to them with an agony of earnestness for their salvation; a love which shrunk from no sacrifice to give them a chance of recovering all that they had lost; a love which, by the tenderness of its compassion and by its patience and constancy, restored to the despairing heart its vanished faith in the love of God. At last the victory was won, and those who seemed destined to wretchedness and disgrace were restored to virtue and honour. Human love fought against their evil fate, and conquered it. Where I ask again-is the equality in the penalties of sin? Where is the certainty with which they are alleged to be exacted?

In the actual condition of the world, either some men suffer too much for their sin, or some men suffer too little. Nor is there any reason to believe that those who escape from the visible and external pena!

ties of their crimes endure an exceptional agony of self-reproach. The probabilities seem to point to precisely the opposite conclusion. Physical disease, loss of property, public dishonour-when these come upon a man as the result of his vices-often reveal to him for the first time the magnitude of his guilt, and his inward humiliation and self-contempt increase with the increase of his external calamities. Nor, again, do those whose offences are most numerous and most aggravated suffer most keenly from the stings of conscience. Conscience becomes feebler and feebler as men continue in sin, and those who ought to feel the greatest shame for wrong doing, feel the least. With augmented guilt there is almost uniformly diminished sensibility to the moral sufferings with which the consciousness of guilt ought to be followed.

The vengeance of these eternal laws, which is said. to be so stern and unrelenting in inflicting the complete penalty of every transgression, appears less certain and less exacting than the retributive justice by which the authority of human laws is vindicated. It is soothed and bought off by wealth. It is averted by science, as the lightning is turned aside by a lightning-rod from the towers of a palace or the spire of a church, and buried peacefully in the earth. It penetrates only by accident through disguises which conceal and protect the basest crimes. It surrenders to the pleadings of compassionate love those who had merited the worst terrors it could inflict. All generous hearts are in a perpetual confederacy-a confederacy

extending through all countries, and growing in strength from one generation to another- to rescue the guilty from the evils with which these laws justly menace them, and to alleviate the evils which have come upon the guilty already. And the most terrible sufferings which these laws ever inflict-the sufferings produced by the sharp and vehement reproaches of conscience are felt least by the greatest offenders. The theory that "sin never for an instant fails to receive its desert," that the full penalty of sin, "visible and invisible, to the veriest jot and tittle," is always exacted, is contrary to the uniform experience of the human race.

It is equally contrary to the uniform teaching both of the Old Testament and the New to represent God as an otiose Spectator of the moral order of the universe, having no other function in relation to moral government than to watch and to approve the perfect manner in which rewards and penalties are distributed by selfacting spiritual laws.

The ancient historical Scriptures are crowded with illustrations of the energy with which He punished the wrong-doing both of individuals and nations. It is impossible to read these books and to suppose that they were meant to teach that "self-acting" spiritual laws brought a flood upon the old world, rained fire upon Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed the first-born of Egypt, excluded from the Land of Promise Aaron The Life and Light of Men, page 96.

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and Moses, and nearly the whole generation that crossed the Red Sea. The idea throughout-whatever value may be attached to the history—is too clear to be misapprehended: it was the Jewish faith that God is on the side of righteousness, and that positive punishments are inflicted by His own hand on those that sin. This was the faith of psalmists and prophets. Sometimes they appeal to God's compassion to recall the terrible ministers of His righteous indignation. Sometimes they acknowledge the forbearance which delayed the execution of punishment, that the sinful people might have time to repent. Sometimes they warn their own countrymen and heathen nations that, at last, the anger of God will only be the more terrible, and the calamities it will inflict the more appalling, if His long-suffering does not constrain them to forsake their sin and to keep God's commandments. It is a Living Person, according to these ancient books, who punishes the sins and rewards the righteousness of men.

The New Testament produces the same impression as the Old. The theory that sin is always punished, adequately punished, and instantly punished, by “selfacting" spiritual laws, is in violent antagonism to the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ and of His Apostles. Christ Himself said, "The Father judgeth no man He did not give as the reason of this that "self-acting" spiritual laws render the judgment of God unnecessary; He claims the authority and responsibilities of judgment for Himself -"but hath committed all

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judgment unto the Son." Instead of telling men that rewards and punishments are sufficiently dispensed by "self-acting" spiritual laws, He speaks of a time when "the Son of man shall come in the glory of His Father, with His angels; and then He shall reward every man according to his works."2 St. Peter placed the future judgment of the world by Christ among the most elementary truths which the Apostles had been appointed to proclaim: "He commanded us to preach unto the people, and to testify that it is He who was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead." 3 St. Paul warned the Athenians that God "hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained;" and he reasoned with Felix-not about self-acting" spiritual laws-but about "judgment to come." 5 In the epistles, the future judgment is appealed to as adding fresh solemnity to many Christian duties: "Why dost thou judge thy brother? . . . . we shall all stand before the judgment-seat of Christ: "5 this was the way in which St. Paul enforced the duty of mutual forbearance and toleration among Christian brethren. "We must all stand before the judgmentseat of Christ; that every one may receive the things done in his body, according to that he hath done, whether it be good or bad:"7 the anticipation of that supreme hour was one of the motives which sustained St. Paul himself in the faithful and zealous discharge

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I John v. 22. 2 Matt. xvi. 27.
3 Acts x. 42.
6 Rom. xiv. 10.

5 Ibid. xxiv. 25.

4 Ibid. xvii. 3L. 7 2 Cor. v. IQ.