ctical convictions of life, and
determines the shape and quality of the judgments. Nay, one might
legitimately use the figure of a finer medium still, and say that in
all the spacious reaches of the apostle's life the redemptive work of
his Master is present as an atmosphere in which all his thoughts and
purposes and labors find their sustaining and enriching breath. Take
this epistle to the Romans in which my text is found. The earlier
stages of the great epistle are devoted to a massive and stately
presentation of the doctrines of redemption. But when I turn over the
pages where the majestic argument is concluded, I find the doctrine
persisting in a diffused and rarefied form, and appearing as the
determining factor in the solution of practical problems. If he is
dealing with the question of the "eating of meats," the great doctrine
reappears and interposes its solemn and yet elevating principle:
"destroy not him with thy meat for whom Christ died." If he is called
upon to administer rebuke to the passionate and unclean, the shadow of
the cross rests upon his judgment. "Ye are not your own; ye are bought
with a price." If he is portraying the ideal relationship of husband
and wife, he sets it in the light of redemptive glory: "Husbands, love
your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself up
for it." If he is seeking to cultivate the grace of liberality, he
brings the heavenly air around about the spirit. "Ye know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that tho he was rich, yet for your sakes
he became poor." It interweaves itself with all his salutations. It
exhales in all his benedictions like a hallowing fragrance. You can
not get away from it. In the light of the glory of redemption all
relationships are assorted and arranged. Redemption was not degraded
into a fine abstract argument, to which the apostle had appended his
own approval, and then, with sober satisfaction, had laid it aside, as
a practical irrelevancy, in the stout chests of orthodoxy. It became
the very spirit of his life. It was, if I may be allowed the violent
figure, the warm blood in all his judgment. It filled the veins of all
his thinking. It beat like a pulse in all his purposes. It determined
and vitalized his decisions in the crisis, as well as in the lesser
trifles of the common day. His conception of redemption was regulative
of all his thought.

But it is not only the immediacy of redemption in the apostle's
thought by w