consider not the beam that is in
their own eyes. St. Paul's witness then is only the same as the
Christ's.

Here then St. Paul turns abruptly upon a Jew who may be supposed to
have been listening to the indictment of the Gentiles with expressions
of sympathy, and bids him look {89} within and recognize that the Jew
also falls under the same indictment and on the same grounds. And he
proceeds sternly to cut away any possible ground of confidence which he
might derive from the thought that he had 'Abraham to his father.'
God's judgement is directed by an absolutely impartial 'truth' or
estimate of the facts in their inner reality. If in any particular
case of persistent sin His judgement seems to linger, it is not that He
has forgotten or will overlook; it is only that He is merciful and
forbearing, and gives long space for repentance[1]. But, meanwhile, if
the opportunity is not taken, if the heart is hard and impenitent, a
store is being laid up against the offender in the place of judgement,
which will break out in the great day in manifested wrath. God's
principle of judgement is absolutely free from partiality. There are
men {90} who have steadily in view the true aim of human life, its
imperishable glory, its final and permanent honour, and, therefore,
preferring eternal to temporal things, patiently go on doing good; they
may be Jews or Greeks, but in either case indifferently, the reward
that they have sought will be theirs with the accompaniment of inward
peace. There are other men who are contentious, and refusing the
leading of the truth, make themselves servants to unrighteousness.
They may be Jews or Gentiles, but the divine wrath, showing itself in
outward suffering and inward anguish, will be upon them all equally.
For God judges men impartially in the light of their opportunities.
Those who have the advantage of a revealed law shall be judged and
acquitted according as they have, not listened to it merely, but obeyed
it. For a law known and not kept, so far from commending us to God, is
but the instrument of our judgement. And those who have not this
advantage are yet not without an inward light in the natural moral
consciousness of mankind. Those who have sinned against this light
shall find nothing else was needed to bring them to their ruin. And
those, on the other hand, who by its help keep the moral law in effect,
without {91} any assistance from a revealed law, are their own law for
thems