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It was mystic, not dogmatic. It was of the soul and the experi- ence, not of the reason. Faith was not an act, but a being — not what you did, but what you were. The whole truth of the immanence of God and of the essential belonging of the human life to the Divine — the whole truth that God is a power in man and not simply a power over man, building him as a man builds a house, guiding him as a man steers a ship, this whole truth, in which lies the seed of all humanity, all progress, all great human hope, lay in the truth that justification was by faith and not by works. No wonder that Luther loved it. No wonder that he thought it critical. No wonder that he wrote to Melanchthon, hesitating at Augsburg, "Take care that you give not up justification by faith. That is the heel of the seed of the woman which is to crush the serpent's head." x
Tj " For my part," was Stephen Crisp's strong language in one of his sermons — " for my part, my tongue shall as soon drop out of my mouth as oppose the doctrine of being justified by faith in Christ; but let me tell you this may be misapplied. ... If a man hope to be saved by Christ, he must be ruled by Him. It is contrary to all manner of reason that the devil should rule a man, and Christ be his Saviour." 2
II.
The Deeper Interpretation.
1. The note struck in Habakkuk rings on through the whole New Testament. We find the words quoted three times, and applied so comprehensively as to embrace the whole Christian life within their scope. In Gal. iii. 11 they specially refer to the beginning of that life, the justification of the sinner who confides in the redemptive work of the Lord Jesus. By faith he passes from the curse of the Law into the position and privileges of a son of God. In Heb. x. 38 the text is quoted in another sense, and refers to the continuance of the Christian life in stead- fastness and strength through all its probation of earthly trial. The life which was received by faith is maintained by faith to the very end. Then, in Eom. i. 17, St. Paul quotes the words in a way which seems to include both of these ideas. Fiom first to
1 Phillips Brooks, Essays and Addresses, 383. ' F. A. Budge, Annals of the Early Friends, 144.
384 LIFE BY FAITH
last faith admits man to the blessings of the covenant of grace. God unveils His righteousness little by little, stage by stage, to the believer. It is the eye of faith that sees the unfolding vision, the hand of faith that grasps the ever-opening blessing. The revelation of the gospel in its justifying, sanctifying, transforming power is given, not from faith to struggling, as we often mis- takenly think, but " from faith to faith."
St. Paul found in the words a meaning that Habakkuk did not dream of. To the Galatian Judaizers he saw that there was another, truer source of righteousness, and therefore of life, than the rigid observance of rites and precepts, or than the lifelong accumulation of deeds of an outward ethical obedience ; to believe in God and in His righteousness, in His will to give what He demands, in His justice and His love ; to trust that Will in all the chances of life, in all the convulsions of the spirit, was to find peace and life. But the words which follow show the new object of faith which was present to his mind. It was no longer simply the moral government of God. "With an abruptness more impres- sive than any logical precision, he shows what his own mind was dwelling on : " Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us : for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." It was to that he turned as the source of all hope and peace. The Son of the Eternal Father had come to share man's sorrows, to identify Himself with man's sins, to know and bear even the curse which follows upon sin. The very form and manner of His death had upon it the brand of such a curse ; and therefore that death had been mighty in its power to redeem men from the curse. The law required obedience, and here was an obedience perfect even unto death. It demanded nothing less than life, and here the life was offered as a sacrifice, precious, without spot, acceptable. By trusting Him, trusting God manifested in Christ and reconciling the world unto Himself, as the prophet had trusted Him when He made bare His arm in the crash of armies and the fall of empires, the Apostle might hope to find the righteousness and life which on the other track were ever slipping from his grasp.
The teaching of the Epistle to the Eomans is in this, as in other things, an expansion of that of the Epistle to the Galatians. What had before come to St. Paul out of the depths of his own
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