^j A girl of twelve lay dying, and her mother said, " Are you afraid, my darling, to go and meet God ? " " Oh no," she replied, " I am not afraid ; I look to the justice of God to take me to heaven." The mother thought her child must be wandering, so she said, " My darling, you mean His pity, His love." " No, mother," she said, " I mean His justice ; He must take me to heaven, because Christ is my righteousness, and I claim Him as
1 R. J. Campbell.
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my own ; I am as He is now in God's sight, and God would never reject His own child." x
Here where the loves of others close The vision of my heart begins. The wisdom that within us grows Is absolution for our sins.
We took forbidden fruit and ate Far in the garden of His mind. The ancient prophecies of hate We proved untrue, for He was kind.
He does not love the bended knees, The soul made wormlike in His sight, Within whose heaven are hierarchies And solar kings and lords of light.
Who come before Him with the pride The Children of the King should bear, They will not be by Him denied, His light will make their darkness fair.
To be afar from Him is death Yet all things find their fount in Him: And nearing to the sunrise breath Shine jewelled like the seraphim.2
II.
Salvation Secured. " In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely."
Jeremiah sought to comfort the Jews by telling them that the time of their sorrows and sufferings in captivity should pass away, and the days should come in which they should once more be safe from their enemies. Out of the royal house of David, now brought so low, so decayed, that it was but as a dry root in the ground there should spring a fresh Branch, even the Messiah.
1 H. W. Webb-Peploe, The Titles of Jehovah, 168. 3 "A. E.," Collected Poems, 247.
106 THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS
He should reign over the true Israel, His Church, and should protect, guard, and keep them from harm. He should gather His people together, and unite them once more ; and so glorious and blessed would this deliverance be that, compared with it, the coming out of the bondage of Egypt would be as nothing.
1. God's purpose for the earth was that it should be replenished and subdued and governed by a race which in that activity should themselves come to perfection. Human failure intervened, and a Divine interference was necessary by which in the midst of human history a new race was created, related to all the other races and part of the entire race, their responsi- bility being that of realizing the Divine intention, and the secret of their greatness being that all the people should be righteous ; until, in process of time, failure having followed upon failure, we have the supreme Divine interference in the coming of the God- man, the new birth of man, and the creation of a new race, an elect race, a royal priesthood, a chosen nation, a people for God's possession ; and the great Christian apostle is seen devoting time and strength and toil and energy to every individual that every man may be presented perfect in Christ Jesus.
In national life the true prosperity of the nation depends upon the multitude of her people in order to the fulfilling and subduing of natural resources, and in order to the making of a people by such toil. There is nothing more important in national life than the multitude of the people ; and in order to the people's true strength industry is sacred. The Pauline principle may be stated by way of illustration : " If a man will not work, neither shall he eat." This is no mere word of political significance, in the narrower sense of the word political. It is fundamental. It is fundamental to national prosperity. In order to the realiza- tion of the natural resources of the land, their subduing, their government, their proper use, their leading out to all fulfilment, the most important thing is the multitude of the people; and the toil that subdues is most important to the people. The scattering of a people is therefore a crime. Its restoration and increase mean stability and strength.
TJ The final test of all legislation is the effect it produces upon the people that create the national strength. In proportion as a
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nation learns the value, as to its supreme welfare, of its sons and its daughters, its little children, in that proportion the nation is moving in the true line of progress, that of the Divine purpose and programme, which brings it into right relationship with the ultimate intention of God. In proportion as children are allowed to fade and wither and die in evil conditions, for the enrichment of a few, the blight of the curse of humanity and Deity rests upon the national life. In proportion as we realize that our wealth consists in our people we approximate to that Divine intention expressed in the words, " Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish and subdue and have dominion over the earth." In that way, and in that way alone, we approximate to national strength.1