JEREMIAH xxiii. 5, 6 103
stream cannot rise above its own source ; with all my trying I cannot rise above my own standard for myself, and that standard is marred by my sins, is limited by the fact that after all it is only part of me. It is just that that I want to get away from. I want to be lifted above myself. In my best moments (and they, after all, are the moments that we must try to live by) I yearn, not only to be free from the limitations of my own lower nature and the web of bad habits that I have woven about myself, but to be lifted to a higher level altogether. Yes, I easily forget; the world and the flesh and the devil are very near and very insistent, but I hunger and thirst after a righteousness which shall not be my own : I long to be righteous " even as he is righteous."
Tf " I have vowed above a thousand times," said Staupitz, Luther's friend, " that I would become better, but I have never performed that which I vowed. Hereafter I will make no such vow, for I have now learned from experience that I am not able to perform it." Even Bernard Shaw has pointed out with much penetration that "it is possible for a man to pass the moral catechism, Have you obeyed the Commandments ? have you kept the law ? and at the end to live a worse life than the sinner who must answer Nay ! all through the questions " ; while W. E. Greg, content with low ideals, can only hope " that men may attain the measure of the stature of — William and Eobert Chambers." x
Tf In Mr. Zangwill's masterly studies of the children of the Ghetto in olden days he describes with wonderful pathos and power the feelings of a Jewish boy when it was first brought home to him that beyond the walls of the Ghetto was a glorious world he was not allowed to enter, or, if he did, he must wear a badge of shame ; on no condition whatever would he ever be permitted to share in its rich and brilliant life ; he was born of an accursed race. Victor Hugo does much the same in his delineation of the life of that curious criminal underworld of mediaeval Paris called the kingdom of Argot. The poor wretches who belonged to that kingdom were all outlaws, mostly thieves and vagabonds. It was tolerated by the officers of justice so long as its members kept within bounds. It had its own laws, administered by the outcasts themselves ; and a certain standard of honour and good conduct was enforced, too. But once included in that community, whether by birth or by evil fortune, no one could ever get out of it ; no amount of well-doing therein was of any use as a pass to citizen- ship in the kingdom of France. And so with the soul of man.
1 T. Whitelaw, Jehovah-Jesus, 96.
104 THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
Here on earth it is bound to an order of things which has its own constantly changing distinctions between good and evil, noble and ignoble, worthy and unworthy ; but sometimes a vision is vouch- safed to it of a state of perfect freedom which knows none of these, nor needs to know them, but which it cannot enter ; no earthly excellence is sufficient to open a pathway there.1
(3) Christ is "made unto us righteousness." — He who has put the yearning into our hearts has not left it unsatisfied. Because nothing less than that would do, He has given us His Son. Christ is our righteousness not merely as a teacher of what is righteous, not merely as a guide to the discovery of righteousness, but as the Procurer, the Author, the Source of that righteous- ness which we need. By Him the price of our redemption has been fully paid, and on the ground of what He has done, God, the Judge of all, stands ready to confer pardon and legal acquittal on all who come to Him through His Son. The righteousness, therefore, in which we are to be accepted of God is not a righteousness which we have to bring to Him, but a righteousness we have to receive from Him. It is already in His hands, and from Him alone can we obtain it. The Lord is our righteousness.
Sometimes we hear the criticism passed upon the gospel that it is unethical, that it disregards human merit as a means of access to eternal blessedness. " Salvation by magic " someone has called it. There is a semblance of truth in the charge. But why should not God be able to endue us with His own righteousness, share with us His own perfection, without any other qualification on our part than that of the faith that accepts the gift ? If we have to wait for that consummation until our human standards of moral worth have risen high enough to qualify us for it, we shall not gain heaven in a million years ; nor, indeed, shall we gain it at all, for there is something in the righteousness Divine which bears no ratio to any earthly good.