Fear acts chiefly as a restraint. It has checked many in a career of wickedness, and brought a few, perhaps, to the scrupulous observance of some precepts. In all things wliich are thought
1 E. Mellor.
ROMANS XIII. lo 367
necessary to avert vengeance, it has often a strong influence, and its effects may even seem greater for a time than that which better principles produce ; but it never yet brought a man with his whole heart into the service of Christ; nor does it lead to anything from which we think we may with safety be excused. It neither sets the affection on things above, nor kindles any zeal in the cause of the Eedeemer. The dread of God's anger will not make us cheerfully submissive to His will, or cherish the gentler graces which He requires from us to mankind.
While the law on stone is written,
Stone-like is the mighty word; We with chilling awe are smitten,
Though the word is Thine, 0 Lord. Firm it is as mountains old, As their snowy summits cold.^
2. The law may be obeyed from motives of self-interest ; there is profit in obedience. To serve for profit is only the other side of" the same spirit that serves from fear. Obedience is profitable. But there is a great difference between pursuing a course which is profitable, and pursuing it because it is profitable. A faithful servant of a monarch may be paid for his service; but if he serves only for his pay, he is not a faithful servant. The obedience we render only for the sake of what it will bring, we should not render at all if it brought us nothing ; and in such a case the first and ruling motive is not service, but pay.
We cannot in this spirit obey the law of God. The rewards of God, the promised joys and glories of heaven, are far more than the wages of service. The crowns are not given to those who have served for gain; they are given to those who have served from love, who have found the service itself to be a joy, who would be content to serve for love for ever, even if there were no other recompense.
^ We sometimes meet with men who never commit any punishable injury, but who are to the last degree cold, callous, hard-hearted, and selfish. We are quite sure they would not rob or murder us, but we are equally sure they would not move their little finger to do us any good, would not raise their hand to save us from destruction. These men do incalculable mischief,
* T. T. Lynch, The Rivulet, 29.
368 LOVE AND THE LAW
and that of the worst kind. They injure the moral nature of their neighbours, whose best affections are dwarfed, or it may- be destroyed, by their inhumanity, just as fruit is blighted by the frost. They do all that in them lies to make other men into moral pigmies like themselves. Hence, though they are not guilty of any punishable breach of the law, they are guilty of violating it — they do ill to their neighbours.^
3. The law may be obeyed in the letter while its spirit is violated. The letter of the law is enforced by the punishment of society, and just because it is so enforced it is of necessity very limited in its scope. As Bentham explains in his principles of jurisprudence, the written law only takes cognizance of vices which can be clearly defined and readily distinguished. If it attempted to cover a larger area — if, for example, it endeavoured to punish ingratitude or unkindness — it would do more harm than good. It is difl&cult, or rather impossible, to find out when and to what extent such sins have been committed. If, therefore, the law attempted to deal with them, it would be in constant danger of punishing the less guilty or even the innocent, and of allowing the more guilty to get off scot-free. And, further, this unjust administration of justice would involve an amount of inquisitive surveillance which would be more hurtful to society than the evils which, after all, it failed to prevent. For these reasons, then, the spirit of the law, which is " Thou shalt do no ill to thy neighbour," has to be narrowed in the letter, where we read only, "Thou shalt not injure thy neighbour in a certain few definite ways." From this, of course, it follows that the man who is contented with keeping the letter of the law is most undoubtedly guilty of violating its spirit. He goes but a little way along the path of duty.
This was the sin of the Pharisees, the class that Christ denounced most strongly, and the only class that He did denounce. At the time when Jesus first began, with His Gospel of repentance and of Divine love, to teach the simple fishermen of Galilee, scribes and Pharisees had managed, by their interpretation of the law, which was at once a law of religion and a law of righteousness, to bind heavy burdens upon men's shoulders, and to reduce the simple moral code to a series of minute ritual
' A. W. Moraerie.
ROMANS XIII. lo 369
observances. He was held to fulfil the law who could remember what to do ceremonially, and he was held to have disregarded the law, however faithfully, kindly, and nobly he might be living, who had forgotten or who never knew what the proper ritual was. Then came Jesus and swept it all away; and, humanly speaking, He died for doing it. His protest was entered in the name of religion against the burdensome ritual and minute useless observances with which men were troubled in His day.