^ I am not quite sure that the sole, or even chief, end of punishment is the reformation of the offender. I think a great deal of law. Law rules Deity ; and its awful majesty is above individual happiness. That is what Kant calls " the categorical imperative," that is, a sense of duty which commands categorically or absolutely — not saying " it is better," but " thou shalt." Why ? Because " thou shalt," that is all. It is not best to do right — thou must do right ; and the conscience that feels that, and in that way, is the nearest to Divine humanity. Not that law was made, like the Sabbath, for man, but man was made for it. He is beneath it, a grain of dust before it ; it moves on, and if he will not move before it, it crushes him ; that is all, and that is punishment. I fancy that grand notion of law is what we have lost, what we require to get, before we are in a position to discuss the question of punishment at all, or to understand what it is.^
2. To behold fully how wonderful the law is — how sacred God regards it to be — how terrible disobedience to it is — it is to the ^ Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W, Robertson, 236.
436 THE WONDROUS LAW
cross we must look ; to the cross, towering high above all other subjects, in the midst of the ages, in the presence of the nations, to show sin in all its hideousness and righteousness in all its per- fections. If we can see no wonders in the law which Christ died to satisfy and glorify, if we do not see it to be imspeakably more wonderful than all the other laws, assuredly our blindness is great indeed, and we cannot too earnestly cry to a merciful God, " Open Thou mine eyes."
^ In a letter to her father Miss Nightingale says : " What I dislike in Kenan is not that it is fine writing, but that it is all fine writing. His Christ is the hero of a novel ; he himself, a successful novel-writer. I am revolted l)y such expres- sions as charmant, delicieux, religion du pur sentiment, in such a subject. ... As for the ' religion of sentiment,' I really don't know what he means. It is an expression of Balzac's. If he means the ' religion of love,' I agree and do not agree. We must love something loveable. And a religion of love must certainly include the explaining of God's character to be something loveable — of God's * providence,' which is the self-same thing as God's Laws, as something loving and loveable. On the other hand I go along with Christ, not with Kenan's Christ, far more than most Christians do. I do not think that ' Christ on the Cross ' is the highest expression hitherto of God — not in the vulgar meaning of the Atonement — but God does hang on the Cross every day in every one of us; the whole meaning of God's 'providence,' i.e. His laws, is the Cross. When Christ preaches the Cross, when all mystical theology preaches the Cross, I go along with them entirely. It is the self-same thing as what I mean when I say that God educates the world by His laws, i.e. by sin — that man must create mankind — that all this evil, i.e. the Cross, is the proof of God's goodness, is the only way by which God could work out man's salvation without a contradiction. You say, but there is too much evil. I say, there is just enough (not a millionth part of a grain more than is necessary) to teach man by his own mistakes, — by his sins, if you will — to show man the way to perfection in eternity — to perfection which is the only happiness." ^
IV.
Man's eyes are veiled, so that he sees but a little way into God's law. Our intellectual perception of law is one thing and ' Sir Edward Cook, Tlu Life of Florence NigJitingale, i. 486.
PSALM cxix. i8 437
our spiritual perception of God in law is a very different thing. To see law itself we need only a clear and disciplined under- standing. To see God in law we need spiritual discernment. The eye sees only what it brings with it the power of seeing. And neither mere bodily vision nor mere intellectual vision will enable us to behold spiritual reality. The things of the spirit must be spiritually discerned.
^ When on a serene night millions of stars sparkle in the depths of the sky, any man who has bodily eyes, although he may have no talent and culture, has only to raise them upwards to embrace at a glance all the splendours of the firmament, and thereby to receive into his soul, at least in some measure, the impressions which so sublime a spectacle is fitted to produce. But there may stand beside him one whose intellectual ability is far greater, and who has improved that ability to the utmost by diligent and carefully directed exercise, yet if Providence have denied to him the blessing of sight, in vain for him will there be all magnificence. There is another sky, and one far grander than the azure vault which is stretched over our heads, and this mystic sky is filled with the stars of Divine truth, the wonders of creative power, the mysteries of infinite wisdom, the bounties of Divine beneficence, the beauties of absolute holiness, the marvels of redeeming love, the riches of the Godhead, the glories of Father, Son, and Spirit, shining far more bright and pure than the sun at noonday. And yet to great men, to the wise of this world, to the most scholarly and the most scientific of men, they may be quite invisible, although they are lighting up with their Divine radiance the path of the simple peasant and causing his heart to leap and sing with joy as he beholds them.^