St. Paul's
ideal of Christianity {201} as a life in the light. It has everything
to gain and nothing to lose by disclosure. It has no need to cloak
itself. It can be frank with itself and the world. And, on the other
hand, sin is a great fraud and delusion as well as a great
disobedience. It dwells in a region of lies and excuses and
concealments; it hides from itself and from the world its true
character and true issues. For, in fact, it is not only in itself foul
and rebellious, but it is in its issues fruitless. It leads to
nothing: it produces nothing: it tends only to decay or corruption of
mind and body, while goodness is only another term for life and
fruitfulness. Life, and the production of life, is the good, and it
belongs to the light; on the contrary, what hinders or destroys life
goes against God and belongs to the darkness. This is a judgement
which mis-called disciples of Malthus in our day would do well to
remember. It is not from too much life that the world is suffering,
but from corrupt and perverted life. What we want to secure is not a
limit to the population, but the bringing up of children in health and
simple living, in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.

2. St. Paul, in some passages of his epistles, uses very strongly
'universalist' phrases. He {202} has spoken to the Ephesians of
bringing all things in heaven and earth again into a divine unity in
Christ. And to the Corinthians he spoke of a time when God should be
'all things in all.' It is, therefore, all the more noticeable that
when he comes to speak of the destiny of evil men he does not offer
them any hope if they persist in their evil, but warns them that moral
evil utterly and wholly excludes from the kingdom of God: and he
appears to be not at all anxious to reconcile this warning as to the
eternal consequences of wilful evil with what he has said in other
connexions as to the final inclusion of all things in a great unity.
His example would teach us to aim at being true to the whole truth
rather than at attaining a premature completeness or consistency of
knowledge about a world in regard to which we only 'know in part.'
'Yea, the more part of God's works are hid[5].'

3. We cannot fail to notice how constantly St. Paul associates lawless
lust with lawless grasping at money or the goods of other
men--greediness or avarice. This has led some to suppose that the
Greek word for greediness is really intended to me