and, in fact, disastrous than even 'the lust
of the flesh and the lust of the eyes.' Thus if we can only get St.
Paul's doctrine of the necessity of faith rightly understood, there is
no teaching more necessary for these times.

And, on the other hand, where men are really ready to follow the light
and do God's will, they {43} need--they need exceedingly for the good
of the whole body--to realize St. Paul's teaching about justification,
that is, about God's constant attitude towards men, in order to obtain
that peace which is meant to be, not the far-off goal of Christian
life, but its basis and foundation. When a person is continuously
apprehensive and excited about his spiritual state, he is not in the
temper of mind in which he can best serve God or work out his own or
other men's salvation. 'Peace must go before as well as follow after;
a peace, too, not to be found in the necessity of law (as philosophy
has sometimes held), but in the sense of the love of God to His
creatures. He has no right to this peace, and yet he has it.' In
these words of the same writer whom we just now were obliged to
criticize we may find a simple expression of the truth. 'Wherefore,
being accepted of God simply because we take Him at His word, let us
have and hold peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ[44].' Then
we can throw ourselves without embarrassments into the life of love and
sacrifice, the life which has the love of God in Christ for its motive,
and reflects it among men.

No doubt we must admit that St. Paul's {44} doctrine of justification
has not been generally appreciated in the Church--the fact is strange,
but it is indisputable. No doubt also we must admit that those who
have chiefly been identified with it have often even disastrously
distorted it. No doubt, as a result both of this neglect and of this
distortion, the ordinary religious Englishman of the present day is
disposed to pass it by as having little meaning for him. Nevertheless
it remains true that no revival of religion can ever attain to any
ripeness or richness unless this central doctrine of St. Paul's gospel
resumes its central place with us also. For, as St. Paul preached it,
it means this above all else--personal devotion to Jesus Christ as our
redeemer. This personal devotion begins by accepting from Him the
unmerited boon of forgiveness of our sins, and (what is only the other
side of such forgiveness) inheritance in the consecrated b