^ " Grace " is a word our fathers understood and loved better than we. It was defined as " favour." And favours even of God are not agreeable to the proud spirit of man. But no common term can ever exhaust, or express, this great and rich idea. " Grace " expresses and denotes at once the feeling that prompts the favour and the gratitude the favour begets. It denotes both the beneficence that comes of a joy that cannot be uttered, and yet must be expressed, and the joy that cannot bear the sight of pain and misery, and guilt and death, confronting it on this wide earth.*
^ Do you know what it is to be impressed by a word ? Lately., the word grace, especially as used in Galatians, has come to me morning, noon, and night, with a fullness of meaning it never had before. What an infinite mercy it is that salvation from beginning to end is hy grace ! How useless and how needless to look any- where for merit, and how simple just to take ! This has a commonplace look now it is written, and yet it has meant so much to me.^
^ There is another term that stands near " grace " — the term " love." But the two terms are worlds apart. All grace is love, but not all love is grace. Grace loves to do good in an equal measure to all; but love can never dispense with a fit object. Grace is a thing of nature so infinite that no man who has it dare resist or disobey its command. The beautiful spirit incarnated in beautiful speech is gracious. The gracefulness which is the delight of gods and men comes from the loveliness of perfect deeds. There is a grace which corresponds to the word of the old philosopher, " The best and the last part of beauty is grace." Grace has been called beauty in motion, beauty in action. God
* A. M. Fairbairn, in The Preacher's Magazine, January 1909, p. 8. ' John Brash, in Memorials and Correspondence, 9.
EPHESIANS II. 8 25
is gracious by the nature He bears as Deity. But man is gracious by gift. The beneficence of God creates grace in man. But a heathen man could have spoken of grace in some such terms as we have used. St. Paul, however, took the term, made it Christian, baptized it, and lifted it into a new and splendid sense. It meant to him absolute freedom in all that God gave. God is no infinite creditor, and we are no infinite debtors. Grace cannot be bought, not even by blood ; for He who is gracious gave to the death the Son of His love. See, then, grace is free, sending the Son to make that glorious sacrifice whereby we are all redeemed. Because grace is free it is given without fee, merit, or reward. Only the mercy of God, only the grace of heaven, only the free unfettered love of the Father, can save men.^
2. Through universal grace, all walls of partition fall down, and men stand alike and equal before God. Before St. Paul's day men appended God to a race, a priesthood, a sacrifice. They read God through what they did, and through themselves alone. But St. Paul read man through God. He read history through heaven. St. Paul brought the great and splendid conception of grace to vivify all that man signified, and all that he could achieve. Can you think what was done when, instead of coming to God with all the terror of soul that seeks to buy His grace, and to pay Him in blood, and by pain and suffering have merit before Him, men came to Him simply because of His infinite mercy ? Did you ever think that what happened then was that men, instead of coming to God as an infinite power whose pity they must buy, looked at mankind through God's own eyes ? The eyes of grace brought to the interpretation of man the great and glorious dream of an Eternal and Universal Father who could not will but save. He is a grand King who is the Father of His people, and the grandest of all discoveries was made by the Apostle when he said. Not by might, not by any merit of our own, not by any works, but altogether of grace is God's great action. When he said this, down fell the wall of partition, down came every act which divided and distinguished men. Where God is gracious, men who through His grace are saved become one mankind.
^ Grace is given for the merits of Christ all over the earth ; there is no corner, even of Paganism, where it is not present, present in each heart of man in real sufficiency for his ultimate
^ A. M. Fairbaim.
26 SALVATION THE GIFT OF GOD
salvation. Not that the grace presented to each is such as at once to bring him to heaven ; but it is sufficient for a beginning. It is sufficient to enable him to plead for other grace ; and that second grace is such as to impetrate a third grace ; and thus the soul may be led from grace to grace, and from strength to strength, till at length it is, so to say, in very sight of heaven, if the gift of perseverance does but complete the work.^