The Apostle's Ascription

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Greek stands literally thus, "To the only wise God, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever." To whom," if it refers to God, as it is decidedly more probable that it was intended to refer, is ungrammatical. If it is inserted, the words "To him that is able . . . to God, the only wise," are left without government. This might, indeed, under ordinary circumstances be got over, as such broken constructions are frequent with St. Paul, but it is somewhat different in the last solemn words of an Epistle, and would be especially so if this doxology were composed by itself separately from the rest of the Epistle. There would not then be the usual excuse of haste; and for so short a passage it may be doubted whether the Apostle would even employ an amanuensis. The difficulty is heightened when we ask what is meant by the phrase, "through Jesus Christ." Separated, as it would then be, from the ascription of glory, and joined to "the only wise God," it would seem to be impossible to get any really satisfactory sense out of it. "To God, who through Christ has shown Himself as the alone wise," is maintained, but is surely very forced. Our conclusion then, prior to the evidence, would be that there was a mistake in the reading, and that the words "to whom " had slipped in

of Glory and Praise to God.

without warrant. And now we find that a single uncial MS., but that precisely the oldest and best of all the uncials, the Codex Vaticanus, with two cursives, omits these words. The suspicion would indeed naturally arise that they had been left out specially on account of their difficulty. But this is a suspicion from which on the whole, the Vatican MS. is peculiarly free. And, on the other hand, it is just as natural to assume that another common cause of corruption has been at work. Doxologies so frequently begin with the relative, "To whom be glory," &c., that the copyist would be liable to fall into the phrase, even in places where it was not originally written. The probabilities of corruption may therefore be taken to balance each other, and it will seem, perhaps, on the whole, the most probable solution that the relative has really slipped in at a very early date, and that the English version as it stands is substantially right. There are some exceptions to the rule that "the more difficult reading is to be preferred," and this is perhaps one.

The subscription in its present form hardly dates back beyond the ninth century. The earliest form of subscription up to the sixth century was simply "To the Romans."

RIGHTEOUSNESS is necessarily the object of all religions. Religion exists in order to set men right before God, to place them in that relation in which He would have them be, to make them secure of His favour and fit to perform His service.

The conception of "righteousness" entered in a special and peculiar way into the religion of the Jews at the time of our Lord. The word had a clearly defined sense, which was somewhat narrower than that usually attached to it. It meant, not so much the subjective condition of righteousness-that disposition of the heart and mind which necessarily leads to righteous actions as the objective fact of acting in accordance Iwith the divine commands. Righteousness was the fulfilling of the Law. From what kind of motive the Law was fulfilled the Jew did not stay to inquire. The main point with him was that the Commandments of the Law should be kept, and that having thus fulfilled his share in the compact he could lay claim to the blessings which the divine covenant promised.

As might have been expected, the idea of “righteousness "holding so prominent a place in Jewish teaching generally, held an equally prominent place in that group of ideas which centered in the Messiah. Righteousness was to be the main characteristic of the Messianic reign. This appears distinctly in the pre- and postChristian Jewish literature. Thus the Sibylline Books (circ. B.C. 140): "For all good order shall come upon men from the starry heaven, and righteous dealing, and with it holy concord, which for mortals excels all things, and love, faith, hospitality. And from them shall flee lawlessness, blame, envy, anger, folly." "And in righteousness, having obtained the law of the Most High, they shall dwell happily in cities and rich fields." The Book of Enoch (B.c. 150-100): "God will be gracious to the righteous, and give him eternal righteousness, and give him dominion, and he shall be in goodness and righteousness, and walk in eternal light. And some shall go down into darkness for ever and ever, and shall no more appear from that day for ever." The Psalms of Solomon (circ. B.C. 48): He shall not suffer unrighteousness to lodge in the midst of them, and there shall not dwell with them any man who knows wickedness." The Book of Jubilees (before A.D. 70): "After this they will turn to me in all righteousness, with all their heart and all their soul, and I will circumcise their heart and the heart of their seed, and will make for them a holy spirit and purify them, that they may no more turn away from me from that day for ever." The Fourth Book of Ezra (perhaps A.D. 80 or 97): "The heart of the inhabitants of the world shall be changed, and turned into another mind. For evil shall be destroyed, and quite extinguished; but faith shall flourish, and corruption be overcome, and truth, which for so long a time was without fruit, shall be displayed."

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But the righteousness of the Messianic period was to

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be as much ceremonial as moral. The Sibyl prophesied that there was to be "a sacred race of pious men, devoted to the counsels and mind of the Most High, who round about it will glorify the temple of the great God with libation and savour of victims, and with sacred hecatombs and sacrifices of well-fed bulls, and perfect rams, and firstlings of the sheep, and purely presenting on a great altar fat flocks of lambs as whole burnt offerings." The Book of Jubilees declares circumcision to be an everlasting ordinance," and insists upon the obligation of eating the tithe of all produce before the Lord: "It has been established as a law in heaven;" "for this law there is no end of days; that ordinance is written down for ever." The Targum of Isaiah directly connects the Messianic advent with the triumph of the Law: "At that time the Messias of the Lord shall be for joy and for glory, and the doers of the Law for magnificence and for praise;" "they shall look upon the kingdom of their Messiah, and the doers of the Law of the Lord shall prosper in His good pleasure."

Christianity took the conception of righteousness as it stood in the current Jewish beliefs, but gave to it a profounder significance. Much as the Jews insisted upon righteousness, our Lord insisted upon it still more. The righteousness of the Christian was to surpass that of the Jew, both in its amount and in its nature: "Except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the kingdom of heaven." In exposition of this principle, our Lord proceeds to show by a series of examples how the righteousness, which had hitherto been outward, should become inward, and extend to the inmost thoughts and disposition of the heart. At the same time He proposed Himself as the personal object of the religious life. His invitation was, “Come unto Me;" and His reproach was, "Ye will not come unto Me."

St. Paul arrives at the same result, but in a different way. He, too, took as his starting-point the Jewish conception of righteousness. What impressed him most in it was the impossibility that it could really be carried out. It was impossible to keep the whole law, but to transgress it at all was to transgress it, and so to forfeit the Divine favour. But if righteousness was not to be obtained by the Law, how was it to be obtained ? It was to this question that Christianity supplied the great solution through the doctrine of the Messiahship of Jesus. Jesus is the Messiah. With His coming the Messianic reign is begun. But the characteristic of that reign is righteousness. Therefore, by becoming a member of the Messianic kingdom, the Christian enters into a condition of righteousness. This righteousness is, in the first instance, ideal rather than actual. In the language of St. Paul, it is "imputed." It does not necessarily involve a real fulfilment of the Divine Law, but the sincere Christian,

by virtue of the relation into which he enters with Christ, is treated as if he had fulfilled it. He has recovered his lost state of favour with God.

This is, however, only the beginning of his career. The simple entrance into the Messianic kingdom carries with it so much. But the whole of the Christian's life, as a member of the kingdom, is to be a constantly increasing realisation in his own walk and conduct of the ideal righteousness at first attributed to him. This realisation takes place through the same agency as that by which he first entered into the kingdom-faith. Faith, by intensifying his hold upon Christ, gives him a greater and ever greater power to overcome the impulses of sin and adopt the life of Christ as his own. Hence the Apostle speaks of the righteousness of God being revealed "from faith to faith," meaning that faith ends as well as begins the career of the Christian, and that it is the one faculty that he is called upon to exercise all through.

And yet all the righteousness to which the Christian

attains-whether it is as ideal and imputed, or whether it is seen and realised in a course of action consistent with his profession-all this comes to him as a part of his Messianic privileges. He would not have it unless he were a member of the Messianic kingdom. It is not his own making, but he is placed within reach of it by virtue of his participation in the Messianic scheme. Inasmuch, therefore, as that scheme is, in all its parts, a divine act, and the working out of the divine counsel, the righteousness of the Christian is described as a "righteousness of God," i.e., a righteousness proceeding from God-a state produced by divine intervention, and not by human means. The whole scheme is planned and set in motion by God, man's part consisting in taking to himself what God has prepared for him; and merely to do this involves a life-long effort and a constant call upon the will.

[The references to the Jewish Messianic idea in this Excursus are taken from Prof. Drummond's work, The Jewish Messiah, pp. 323-326.]

Faith is the distinctively Christian faculty. So far as concerns the apprehension by man of the divine scheme of salvation, it is the cardinal point in Christian theology. And that it occupies this place is due more than anything else to the teaching of St. Paul.

If we ask how St. Paul himself arrived at his conception of "faith," the answer would seem to be, From reflection upon certain passages of the Old Testament Scripture, seen in the light of his own religious experience.

There were two passages in which faith was brought into direct connection with ideas that lay at the root of all Jewish theology. In Habakkuk ii. 4, "The just shall live by his faith," faith was associated with lifei.e., salvation. In Gen. xv. 6, the faith of Abraham was said to be "imputed to him for righteousness." Faith was here associated with another idea, the importance of which we have just seen-that of righteousness. There appears to be sufficient evidence to show that this second text was one much discussed in the Jewish schools, both of Alexandria and of Palestine. It is, therefore, very possible that the attention of the Apostle may have been turned to it before his conversion.

But what was the Faith which_thus brought with it righteousness and salvation? The answer to this question was furnished to St. Paul by his own religious experience. His own consciousness of a complete revolution wrought within him dated from the time when he accepted Jesus as the Messiah. That one change, he felt, had worked wonders. It placed him in an altogether different relation to his old difficulties. Righteousness was no more impossible to him. If he found a law in his members warring against the law of his mind, he could "thank God through Jesus Christ his Lord." But, apart from this, without any actual righteousness of his own, the mere fact of being assured that he was a member of the Messianic kingdom was enough to give him confidence that righteousness in some sense or other was his. He felt himself bound up with a system of which righteousness was the characteristic. As a member of that system he, too, must be righteous. But that which made him a member of this system was the heartfelt acceptance of the

Messiahship of Jesus. And to this acceptance St. Paul gave the name of Faith. Faith, however, was with him, not a single act which began and ended in itself, it was a continued state-an active energy of loyalty and devotion directed towards Jesus as the Messiah.

Faith in the Old Testament had meant "trust," "reliance"-a firm reliance upon God, and confidence in the fulfilment of His promises. When a similar feeling was entertained towards a definite human person, who had exhibited a character in the highest degree winning and attractive, and who had ended a life of self-sacrifice by a nobly and pathetically selfsacrificing death, it was natural that these emotions should develop into something still stronger. became devotion. Passive reliance strengthened into an ardent and energetic service. The strongest feeling that could bind the soldiers of an army to their captain had its place here. Love, veneration, gratitude, devoted loyalty all were blended into a single feeling, and that feeling was what St. Paul meant by Faith.

Trust

As life went on, and the tie which bound the Christian to Christ was tested by experience, faith became stronger and stronger. Its object being personal, it became more and more concentrated on that Person. By degrees it took a different shape. It brought the Christian so closely within the influence of his Master, it led to such an assimilation of his life to his Master's, that something nearer and more intimate had to be found to express the nature of the relation between them. St. Paul speaks of it as if it were an actual union-a oneness, or fellowship, with Christ. But the agency which brings about this union is Faith-the same faith which began with the simple historical affirmation, "Jesus is the Messiah." When once the Messiahship of Jesus was recognised, the rest all followed by natural train and sequence. The last perfection of Christian character is connected with its first initial step, just as the full-blown flower is connected with the germ that first appears above the ground. Its existence is continuous. The forces which give it vitality are the same. And the forces which give vitality to the religious life of the Christian are summed up in the one word, Faith.

In regard to the terrible description of the state of the heathen world, given at the end of chap. i., two questions may be asked: (1) How far does it correspond with what we gather from other sources? (2) Supposing the picture to be in the main a true one, do the causes and process of corruption appear to have been such as the Apostle describes?

(1) No doubt, if we take the evidence that has come down to us simply as it stands, there is enough to justify the very strongest language. But some considerations, perhaps, may be urged in mitigation of

this.

(a) Our knowledge of the state of morals in that age is largely derived from the satirists. But it may be said that satire has never been quite a fair index of the average state of things. By the nature of the case it seeks out that which is extravagant and abnormal. It deals with exceptions rather than with the rule. And even where it exposes not so much the vices and follies of an individual as those prevailing over a larger section of society, it still presupposes a higher standard of judgment in the public to which it appeals. It assumes that what it reprehends will be generally held to be reprehensible. It would not be able to hold its ground at all unless it could calculate upon the support of the sounder portion of the community.

(b) Accordingly we find that many of the worst forms of corruption are mentioned only to be condemned. It was " burning indignation" which inspired the verse of Juvenal. Historians like Tacitus, moralists like Seneca, Epictetus, and M. Aurelius, lift up their voice to condemn the depravity of the age. Horace, though without being a Puritan himself, complains how the generation to which he belonged had degenerated from their ancestors. Ovid and Martial are obliged to defend themselves against the charge of indecency that was evidently brought against them by some of their contemporaries. Stringent laws were

in existence, if seldom enforced, against some of the crimes of which the satires are fullest. And there was a point beyond which the toleration of law and of opinion would not go. Witness the summary punishment that followed upon the discovery of a gross scandal perpetrated in the temple of Isis. The guilty persons were banished, the priests crucified, the temple razed to the ground, and the statue of the goddess flung into the river. It is only fair to state both sides of the question. If the idolatrous worship led to such things, the judgment of mankind was at least not so far perverted that wrong could be done with impunity.

(c) Nor was this altogether a hypocritical condemnation. There are some conspicuous exceptions to the general corruption. It may be doubted whether any age can produce examples of a more consistent and earnest pursuit of the highest accessible standard than were afforded by Plutarch, Epictetus, and M. Aurelius. If we estimate them, not so much by the positive value of the morality to which they attained as by the strength of their aim and effort to realise a lofty ideal, these men will not easily be equalled. Again, Cicero, Atticus, the younger Pliny, may be taken as types of the cultivated gentlemen of their day, and they would have had a high place even in our own time. The emperors occupied a position singularly open to temptation, and no less than five of

them in succession would have done honour to any throne. The pages of the historian which describe the decline of political and social morals are, nevertheless, lighted up with deeds of heroism and ancient Roman virtue. The women emulated the men. Occasionally, as in the case of the elder Arria, they surpassed them. But many others showed a constancy broken only by death. Descending to lower ranks, the inscriptions tell us not a few touching stories of conjugal fidelity and affection. "She was dearer to me than my life; she died in her twenty-third year, greatly beloved by her friends." "To my dearest wife, with whom I lived for eighteen years, without a complaint." She never caused me a pang but by her death." "I have done for thee those sad rites which thou shouldest have done for me, and which I know not who will do now." Nor are there wanting in ancient literature touches of domestic felicity which show those times to have been akin to that which is best in our own. We are apt to forget that to a Latin poet is due the original of that familiar scene in the Cotter's Saturday Night, and in Gray's Elegy

"For them no more the blazing hearth shall burn, Or busy housewife ply her evening care."

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And the Latin version is the finest of the three-the most intense and the most real.

(d) Besides these considerations, if we look at certain aspects of modern life-at the court of Charles II. or Louis XV., or at some phenomena among ourselves— the contrast with ancient heathenism may seem less striking.

And yet the darker view of the ancient world is, it is to be feared, on the whole the true one.

It is not by any means the satirist alone from whom the evidence is derived. The Christian apologists in the early centuries accumulate charges which they would not have ventured to publish unless they had been largely supported by facts. The satirists themselves are most damaging when, like Horace, they write with careless ease, evidently taking what they describe as a matter of course. And the evidence thus obtained is confirmed beyond dispute or question by the monumental remains that have come down to

us.

It will not be denied that, after all deductions, the standard has been greatly raised. Even Cicero, like Plato and Aristotle before him, accepts much that is now condemned. And even men like Antoninus and Trajan fall short when judged by a Christian standard, especially on the points to which St. Paul is referring.

But it is the condition of the masses that the Apostle has chiefly in view. The elevation of individuals through the gradual development of a purer form of ethics and philosophy, was part of the wide preparation for the gospel which God in His providence had been working. It must not be thought that He had left Himself without witness in the heathen world. The witness was there, and it was listened to by some in every age, while there were more who, under the same divine guidance, were groping their way towards one or another portion of the truth. St. Paul directly contemplates such a class when he speaks of those who having not the law, are a law unto themselves." Judging, however, not by these, but by the average condition of mankind, there can be no doubt that

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