predominance of the moral element enforced by religion, it is merely an incident of a period of transition to a more comprehensive and harmonious unity, and may have arisen either from the seeming urgency of more directly moral and religious work, or from the incompleteness of moral and religious development at the time.

This more comprehensive unity Christianity, by virtue of its distinctive essence, is competent to effect. Christian civilization belongs to that type of civilization in which the moral forces predominate. But it brings these moral forces into action in a

manner peculiar to itself.

It does not require primarily love to truth, nor love to the right, nor love to the perfect, nor love to the good. It requires primarily love to persons, to God, and to man. To this love of persons all love of truth, law, perfection, and good are subordinated, and under its inspiration and direction all scientific, moral, æsthetic, and prudential pursuits and interests are comprehended in an harmonious unity.

Christianity presents the inexorable law itself as requiring universal love, and reveals that God is love, that he has constituted the universe in accordance with that law, and that the penalty is the privation of good and the suffering of evil which must come on one who anywhere or anywhen in this universe lives a life of supreme selfishness.

Christianity does not put foremost to sinful men law, with its imperative and its penalties, but it puts foremost God in Christ redeeming men from sin and seeking to bring them back to their normal union with himself, and to the life of love in faith in him and the service of good-will in righteousness to God and men. This faith in God, under the influences of the indwelling Spirit, becomes the inspiration of the life of spontaneous love to God and man.

Here, then, in Christianity, is that which saves civilization of the moral type from the gloom, intolerance, and severity which have sometimes characterized it when its primary motive force has been zeal for truth and law. Vitalized by faith in the God in Christ, and acting in the enthusiasm of love to God and man, it retains all its earnestness, energy, and inflexible adherence to truth and right. It has even more, for fidelity to principles, fidelity to truth and law, is vitalized and strengthened by loyalty to a per

sonal sovereign, to Christ, who has redeemed men by his blood, who has revealed in his own person and life at once the selfsacrificing love of God to men, the ideal moral perfection and beauty of man, his greatness in his moral likeness to God and as the object of his redeeming love, and the supremacy, inviolable authority and the unchangeableness of the law, which even in redeeming sinners and forgiving their sins, God himself obeys. But the moral and religious character is no longer one-sided and defective, but comprehends in harmonious unity all that belongs to the intellectual activity, the obedience to law, the perfection and moral beauty, and the true well-being of man.

The Christian life starts, it is true, from the sense of condemnation as a sinner. From this the Christian is delivered when he sees and trusts God's redeeming love in Jesus Christ. In that faith, which is the inspiration of the new life, the gloom of sin and condemnation passes away. Life becomes trustful, hopeful and full of joy. It is the old Greek brightness and joyousness made spiritual and divine; not the joy of carelessness and disregard of evil, but a joy following the full knowledge of sin and evil, and of the deepest spiritual realities of our being; the joy of acquaintance with God and reception of his universal and infinite love in Jesus Christ, renewing, receiving into union with himself, and forgiving sinners. Inspired by this faith, the predominance of the moral element no longer engenders indifference to the world and weariness of life; it is not stern, intolerant, persecuting in the consciousness of law and penalty. But its motive power is spontaneous love like that of Christ. It is not primarily love to truth, or law, or perfection or good, but love to God in Christ, and love to all men. Thus, like Christ, the Christian is able, not only to engage in great enterprises for the welfare of men, and to give his life if necessary in their behalf, teaching the principles and inspiring the progress of a higher and nobler civilization,— but also, like Christ, he is sensitive to every human interest, taking children in his arms and blessing them, weeping with those who weep, touched with the feeling of our infirmities, helping the fallen and sinful in their efforts to rise. Thus Christianity develops a civilization, not of selfish greed of gain and ambition for pre-eminence, manifested in the combative devices of reckless competition and combination, but of the mutual trust and service of universal love pervading all business and all domestic and

social life. Here, then, within the sphere of Christianity, is scope for the expenditure of money, time, talent, and genius on any work or object which satisfies personal tastes, desires and affection, and is accordant with righteousness and promotive of the culture, development and well-being of man.

Christian love, when complete as love, — and not merely onesided, as duty done in mere obedience to law,—and when it has had time to develop its inmost nature, must bloom in beauty. When the gospel has free course it must be glorified. The limping god of work is to be wedded to the goddess of beauty. The moral and spiritual force, which Christianity has made a power in civilization, is essentially an energy of reform and progress. As love to man in manifestation of love to God it is diffusive, not restrictive, it is in its essence democratic, concerned with the interests of humanity, not conservative of any privileges of a class incompatible therewith. There is necessarily a certain revolutionary destructiveness in it, under some conditions, when the vital and spontaneous growth of Christ's kingdom is opposed and obstructed; and this in the imperfect development of man at the time may be vitiated by human passions. The sweeping away of despotism and of the debauchery of an ancient and corrupt régime may sweep away, for the time being, something of refinement and culture. The highest form in which a civilization founded on selfindulgence, on being ministered unto instead of ministering, can appear is that in which the self-indulgence and the corruption incident to it are concealed by a gilding of refinement and culture, and the luxuriousness delights in wit, literature, and art; a civilization like that of the French court under the old régime, epigrammatically but falsely described by Burke as a state of society in which vice lost half its evil by losing all its grossness. The grossness was there beneath all the gilding; of which the infamous parc aux cerfs of Louis XV. is only a single example out of many. In such a civilization the luxurious refinement can be only of the few at the expense of the debasement and misery of the many. When the culture and refinement of such corruption is swept away, it is only clearing the ground for the people as such to have their rights and to participate in the advantages of advancing Christian civilization. Thus, through Christian love, a true culture and refinement, not on the surface only but in the inmost character, will extend among the people

and beautify the rough and unsightly places of human society. Thus Christianity is progressively fulfilling the ancient prophecy : "The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them and the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree" (Isa. xxxv. 1; lv. 13).

There is then scope in Christian service of man for the satisfaction of wants beyond the mere necessaries of life and for the gratification of taste and desire awakened by advancing civilization. But such gratification must not be in indolent and luxurious self-indulgence, but must be subject to the Christian law of universal good-will regulated by righteousness; and the expenditure of time, strength, and money in attaining such gratification must be approved by the reason and conscience as a Christian service of man. It is right to break the alabaster box of precious ointment; but one must see that he breaks it at the Saviour's feet.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE SANCTION OF THE LAW

THE sanction of the law is the punishment inflicted by the government on the transgressor. Blackstone defines it in the civil law: "The sanction or vindicatory branch of the law, whereby it is signified what evil or penalty shall be incurred by such as commit any public wrongs, and transgress or neglect their duty."1 The sanction of the divine law has essentially the same significance. It is the punishment coming from God on the transgressors of his law.

Eschatology, the doctrine of the last things, considers questions of fact as to what will be the final destiny of man, and what will be the events attending the close of the earthly history of mankind. Man is not only under law, but also is a sinner already under condemnation as a transgressor of the law. As such he is the object of God's redeeming grace. The question arises, What will be the ultimate issue of redemption? Will it insure the salvation of all men or only of some men? Will any have the offers and influences of redemption after death, or will the destiny of every individual be decided in this life? These questions of eschatology are all questions of fact. They can be answered only from the revelation which God has made of himself as the redeemer of men from sin culminating in Christ, as recorded in the Bible. With these questions of fact we have no concern here. We consider punishment here only in its significance and necessity in its relation to the law as its sanction. This may be called the ethics of punishment.

I. DEFINITION.-Punishment is suffering or privation inflicted by a government on a transgressor, due to him in accordance with 1 Commentaries on the Laws of England, Introd., sect. 2. Austin's definition is essentially the same; Jurisprudence, vol. i. pp. 6-8.