up to the standard of the requirements laid down here, the more will he
feel that there is something else needed, and the more will he see that
the great central peculiarity and glory of Christianity is not that it
reiterates or alters God's requirements, but that it brings into view
God's gifts. 'To do justly, to love mercy, to walk humbly with our God,'
is possible only through repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord
Jesus Christ. And if you suppose that these words of my text disclose
the whole truth about God's relation to men, and men's to God, you have
failed to apprehend the flaming centre of the Light that shines from
heaven.

I. So, then, the first thing that I wish to suggest is God's
requirements.

Now, I do not need to say more than just a word or two about the
summing-up in my text of the plain, elementary duties of morality and
religion. It covers substantially the same ground, in a condensed form,
as does the Decalogue, only that Moses began with the deepest thing and
worked outwards, as it were; laying the foundation in a true relation to
God, which is the most important, and from which will follow the true
relation to men. Micah begins at the other end, and starting with the
lesser, the more external, the purely human, works his way inwards to
that which is the centre and the source of all.

'To do justly,' that is elementary morality in two words. Whatever a man
has a right to claim from you, give him; that is the sum of duty. And
yet not altogether so, for we all know the difference between a
righteous man and a good man, and how, if there is only rigidly
righteous action, there is something wanting to the very righteousness
of the action and to the completeness of the character. 'To do' is not
enough; we must get to the heart, and so '_love_ mercy.' Justice is not
all. If each man gets his deserts, as Shakespeare says, 'who of us shall
scape whipping?' There must be the mercy as well as the justice. In a
very deep sense no man renders to his fellows all that his fellows have
a right to expect of him, who does not render to them mercy. And so in a
very deep sense, mercy is part of justice, and you have not given any
poor creature all that that poor creature has a right to look for from
you, unless you have given him all the gracious and gentle charities of
heart and hand. Justice and mercy do, in the deepest view, run into one.

Then Micah goes deeper. 'And to walk humbly with thy God.' Some