attempt is made to penetrate the mysteries of the far future, or to draw aside the veil from the all-embracing counsels of the Divine Wisdom. We must allude, however, to one remarkable passage which is opposed to the unlimited nature of punishment, and lays down the principle that punishment will be proportioned to guilt: "That slave who knew the will of his Lord, and did not prepare, or do according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes; but he that knew not, and did things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes." These great principles, then, remain : that righteousness receives its own reward of evergrowing life; that sin entails inevitable suffering; that punishment varies with guilt; and that God is love and with these we may be content to prepare for the great revealing when our mortal eyes are closed in death, and we may trustfully commit even the erring and sinful to the care of that Father who may be forgotten, but who cannot forget or cease to love.

One other point of great importance is involved in what has already been said; but it must receive a moment's separate attention. The future judgment is

1 Luke xii. 47 sq.

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invariably represented as based upon moral distinctions; and the later barbarity of condemning men for supposed intellectual errors is one of the strangest examples which history affords of the departure of professed disciples from the teaching of their Master. In the grand vision of the judgment of all nations, the men who are accepted are those who ministered lovingly to the wants of the needy; those who are condemned are the men who selfishly neglected the duties of benevolence.1 The slave who is cast into outer darkness is the one who failed to make a diligent use of his talent;2 and another slave who called down his lord's displeasure was a drunken tyrant. It is those who work iniquity that Christ declares that he will reject, however they may have called him Lord, Lord, and professed to prophesy and work miracles in his name. Even when he speaks (according to the words ascribed to him) of confessing or denying himself before men, he is clearly assuming the presence of belief in him; and what he commends is the moral courage which dares to avow an unpopular faith, what he condemns is the moral

1 Matt. xxv. 31 sqq.

2 Matt. xxv. 14 sqq.

3 Matt. xxiv. 48 sqq.; Luke xii. 45 sq.

4 Matt. vii. 21 sqq.

cowardice which conceals its convictions through fear of worldly consequences. And so Christianity remained, a moral and spiritual movement, an organized brotherhood of holy living, till it was corrupted by philosophy and vain deceit, after the traditions of men, and not after Christ.

In following this outline of Christian ethics, we can hardly fail to have been struck with the identity of moral conception pervading the several writings of the New Testament. Our limits have not permitted us to treat this subject in detail; but sufficient has been said to suggest the predominance of one controlling mind, whose moral teaching reappears in spiritual unity amid great variety of expression. Critics have correctly laid stress on the diverse types of doctrine presented by different writers; but all the more remarkable is the extent of their agreement, all the stronger is the proof that the devious channels of thought flowed from a single fountain-head. Paul and James are probably the most remote from one another, and represent quite different orders of intellect. The latter is without the fiery energy, the speculative genius, the profound insight, of the former, and what

1 Matt. x. 32 sq.; Luke xii. 8 sqq.

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we may venture to call their ethical philosophy does not move upon the same lines. Nevertheless, both insist on that great commandment of love to one's neighbour which Christ selected as the groundwork of social morality; James is full of reminiscences of Christ's teaching; and Paul, who is sometimes said not to have known, or cared to know, anything of that teaching, reproduces it, in his own words indeed, but with an identity of principle, and a depth and clearness of intelligence, which are very surprising if he drew them altogether from his own imagination. The moral and spiritual force that came into the world in Christ, the grand conception of children of God, of men and women moving in loving obedience to the Father's will, and pouring forth his love upon the world, has remained through all the Christian centuries, the same luminous ideal amid changing modes of civilization, and in the darkest times of superstition and unbelief finding chosen souls to dwell in. And still it abides with us as the common life of all genuine disciples of Christ, caring nothing for the partition-walls which sects have built, withdrawing mournfully from the strife of factions, and at times choosing for its tabernacle the bosom of some sad protestor against the

arrogant heathenism of professing Christians. But it has yet to come in all its conquering power, to subdue the brute empires, civil and spiritual, that have oppressed mankind with cruelty and war, and to establish the reign of a divine humanity. Meanwhile, amid the mist and confusion of ecclesiastical assumption, and wistful thought, and carping doubt, those who will may see light; for now, as ever, "abide faith, hope, love, and the greatest of these is love."