with twenty
thousand to war against her that has but ten thousand on her side.

Again I say, let us understand our terms. I suppose, there are few of
the keywords of the New Testament which have lost more of their
radiance, like quicksilver, by exposure in the air during the
centuries than that great word Grace, which is always on the lips of
this Apostle, and to him had music in its sound, and which to us is a
piece of dead doctrine, associated with certain high Calvinistic
theories which we enlightened people have long ago grown beyond, and
got rid of. Perhaps Paul was more right than we when his heart leaped
up within him at the very thought of all which he saw to lie
palpitating and throbbing with eager desire to bless men, in that
great word. What does he mean by it? Let me put it into the shortest
possible terms. This antagonist Queen is nothing but the love of God
raying out for ever to us inferior creatures, who, by reason of our
sinfulness, have deserved something widely different. Sin stands
there, a hideous hag, though a queen; Grace stands here, 'in all her
gestures dignity and love,' fair and self-communicative, though a
sovereign. The love of God in exercise to sinful men: that is what
the New Testament means by grace. And is it not a great thought?

Notice, for further elucidation of the Apostle's conception, how he
sacrifices the verbal correctness of his antithesis in order to get
to the real opposition. What is the opposite of Sin? Righteousness.
Why does he not say, then, that 'as Sin hath reigned unto death, even
so might Righteousness reign unto life'? Why? Because it is not man,
or anything in man, that can be the true antagonist of, and victor
over, the regnant Sin of humanity; but God Himself comes into the
field, and only He is the foe that Sin dreads. That is to say, the
only hope for a sin-tyrannised world is in the out-throb of the love
of the great heart of God. For, notice the weapon with which He
fights man's transgression, if I may vary the figure for a moment. It
is only subordinately punishment, or law, or threatening, or the
revelation of the wickedness of the transgression. All these have
their places, but they are secondary places. The thing that will
conquer a world's wickedness is nothing else but the manifested love
of God. Only the patient shining down of the sun will ever melt the
icebergs that float in all our hearts. And wonderful and blessed it
is to think that, in whatsoev