ape in a profound theory of
its place in the divine {256} education of the human race. Ultimately
man is meant to be in such close and harmonious relations to the divine
Spirit that he should both know what is right and do it by an inner
light and power. But an outward written law was a necessary prelude to
this; and that in the main because sin--individual sins and the long
tradition of sin--had hardened men's consciences and blinded their
eyes, and the divine law as proclaimed through the conscience had
become in consequence either utterly inadequate or had even been
silenced altogether. A written law therefore, peremptory and explicit,
and announcing its sanction in definite penalties, was needed to teach
men anew what God really required. It was given in such a mode as
threw men on their own independent moral strength, and by that very
fact convinced the best among them of their inward weakness and sin;
while to many more it appeared rather as involving an impossible
effort--as 'a yoke which neither they nor their fathers were able to
bear.' In either case it was their 'tutor to bring them to
Christ'--with His teaching of God, not as a taskmaster, but as a
Father, righteous indeed, but still more loving. And if there were
others again, shallow or worthless men, whom the law simply hardened
{257} in the superficial self-righteousness of mere 'observances,' or
the worst sort of religious hypocrisy, that was only another way of
demonstrating its inadequacy. It left the world to choose between the
Pharisees and Christ as representing real righteousness.

This 'doctrine of the law' involves both its necessary function and its
failure. There can be indeed to no thoughtful mind any doubt as to its
necessary function. Conscience, individual and social, is continually
going to sleep. It may be taken quite for certain that if Christ were
amongst us in manifest power by His Spirit to-day--as He ought to be in
the Church--our society as a whole would be smitten anew with a sense
of sin, and not least of social sin[7]. Our familiar excuses for our
selfish indulgence of our lusts, for our weak surrenders to passion and
impulse, for our commercial dishonesties, for our failures to carry
righteousness into politics, for our social injustices, for our
selfishness and {258} luxury, for our scamped and half-hearted
work--the familiar pleas of commercial or physical necessity, or
political exigencies, or lack of knowledge, o