The Pharisees were active and zealous. The Gospel was an active religion, and Pharisaism was an active religion ; particular virtues were common to both. But the Gospel was an active religion founded upon love, and Pharisaism was an active religion founded upon egoism.
In our own day also a conscious obedience to particular laws of the Gospel determines the lives of large numbers among us ; we pray, we worship, we learn the knowledge of Divine things, we give alms, we even fast, we follow the approved methods of repentance, we practise intercession, we bring all our daily interests, — our politics, our friendships, our households, to the feet of God in prayer ; we could not be safe or happy for half a day of our lives without God being in all our thoughts ; yet when our work for God is over, or even in the dread intervals of silence which stop the heart's pulses in the stir of work, there comes to all of us this question, "Have I, after all, any true love for God? If God and I were alone in the world where would be my love for God ? If there were no work to be done — that work which I love — should I love God at all ? "
^ I put a loaded gun in the corner of a room, and tell my child not to touch it. There is a rule or maxim. Knowing nothing of the reason of my command, his plain duty as a child is implicit servile obedience to my order; his conscience should be grieved if, even to prevent its being broken by a fall, he is induced to touch it, because there is a harm in doing it which is to him mysterious and unknown. But suppose him older, and suppose him to understand by natural intelligence, that the reason of my prohibition was to prevent the possibility of its exploding, and suppose him to see a sheet of paper fall from the table on fire close to it, what would his duty be — to cleave to the maxim, or to cut himself adrift from it ? Surely to snatch up the forbidden gun directly. His first duty, in point of time, ROMANS — 24
370 LOVE AND THE LAW
is to obey the rule ; his first in point of importance, is to break it. Indeed, this is the very essence, according to St. Paul, of the difference between the legal and the G-ospel state. In the legal state we are under tutors, governors, and must not go beyond rules; for rules are disciplining us to understand the principles of themselves. But in the Gospel state we are redeemed from this bondage, serving in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter. We discern principles, and are loyal to them; we use rules or dispense with them, as they save or destroy the principle for which they exist.^
II.
Fulfilling the Law.
1. To fulfil a thing is to fill it full, so that no part of it is left void or empty. It is an image taken from a cup filled to the brim, as full as it can hold ; and it is applied to a number of things both in Scripture and in common life. We read in the Book of Exodus, that Pharaoh's taskmasters compelled the children of Israel to fulfil their daily tasks of making brick as heretofore, after they had taken away the straw from them. In other words, they had to give in quite as many bricks as they had been accustomed to make when the straw was duly supplied them. They were not to diminish the tale or quantity of bricks demanded of them. And in the same way, to fulfil a promise is to keep it fully and completely ; and also if we fulfil a duty we discharge it fully and completely, leaving no part of it unperformed.
Now this is what St. Paul means by " fulfilling the law." He means that we should do to the very utmost everything required of us. It is incumbent upon us to give in every single one of the tale of bricks, or rather of the fine hewn stones, which God demands from us towards building up the edifice of duty. We must not, we dare not, break, or neglect, or overlook any part of any one of the commandments, for the reason that it is a little one, or that it is a trifle, that it cannot signify, that there is no use in being too particular. We are to remember the words of the Sermon on the Mount, where our Lord says that whosoever ^ F. "W. Robertson, Life and Letters, 358.
ROMANS XIII. TO 371
shall break one of the least of these commandments or shall teach men so, shall be reckoned the least in the Kingdom of heaven.
^ Men are apt to think that they cannot have too much of a good thing — too much piety, too much religious feeling, too much attendance at the public worship of God. They forget the truth which the old philosophy taught, that the life of man should be a harmony; not absorbed in any one thought, even of God, or in any one duty or affection, but growing up as a whole to the fulness of the perfect man. That is a maimed soul which loves goodness and has no love of truth, or which loves truth and has no love of goodness. The cultivation of one part of religion to the exclusion of another seems often to exact a terrible retribution both in individual characters and in churches. There is a Nemesis of believing all things, or indeed of any degree of intellectual dishonesty, which sometimes ends in despair of all truth.i