264 SAVING AND INSTRUCTING GRACE
faded in the distance. As elevation was the note of his oratory, so was magnanimity the note of his character.^
(2) Righteously. — The idea of righteousness springs from the recognition of right. There are certain rights wliich have their origin in the nature of our relations with others, which they are justified in claiming that we should respect, and from which we cannot escape, and the recognition of these rights and the fulfil- ment of these claims is that which we understand by " righteous- ness." We are under certain obligations in the first instance to God, and God has certain rights in us which He cannot for a moment ignore or decline to assert and enforce. In recognizing these rights, and in responding to these claims, we fulfil the law of righteousness so far as God is concerned. Further, there are certain rights which our fellow-men have in us, which we are not less bound to respect. This is the righteousness which the Apostle has in mind.
Now " righteousness " in reference to our fellows demands mercy. The common antithesis which is drawn between a kindly man and a just man, who will give everybody what he deserves and not one scrap more or less if he can help it, is erroneous, because every man has a claim upon every other man for lenient judgment and undeserved help. He may not deserve it, being such a man as he is ; but he has a right to it, being a man at all. And no man is righteous who is not merciful. We do not fulfil the prophet's exhortation, " do justly," unless we fulfil his other, " love mercy." For mercy is the right of all men.
This is something far more than observance of the common maxims of honesty and fairness and justice ; it is righteousness, with God behind it, and with God's very process of gracious love and righteousness going on around us. It makes a great differ- ence whether we live a righteous life out of a sense of this world, or out of a sense of the eternal world ; because the laws require it, or because God requires it ; that is, whether we act from the greater or the lesser motive. It is the motive that gives tone and force to character. Conduct is secondary ; motive is first. God is the only true motive for human conduct.
^ The sublimest lines in English poetry perhaps are those translated by Dr. Johnson from Boethius : —
^ J. Bryce, Studies in Contemjyorary Biography, 477.
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From Thee, great God, we spring ; to Thee we tend ; Path, Motive, Guide, Original, and End.
God the way, the motive, the guide, the beginning and end of all conduct — this is what is meant.^
(3) Godly. — This is the crowning characteristic of the new life and grandest lesson that grace essays to teach. All her other lessons, however important in themselves, are designed to lead up to godliness ; and unless this lesson is learnt, all others must remain incomplete ; for this word brings before us the true end of man. Man was not called into existence in order that an inward harmony might be established within his being, and that he might know the calm and serenity of the sober life. Nor was he sent into the world merely to do his duty to others by whom he might be surrounded, to abstain from violence and wrong, and to cultivate and exercise benevolence. The true end of man is to be attained in his own personality ; it is in the proper development and education of the highest and most spiritual faculties of his nature, and in the concentration of these upon their proper object, that man rises to his true destiny and fulfils the great purpose of his being. That object is God ; and in the development of those faculties which have God for their proper object, and in their concentration upon Him, consists the state or habit of godliness, while the education and training of these faculties is the work of grace.
^ Only the godly man, the man who lives in habitual com- munion with God, who walks humbly with Him, who earnestly seeks His help and rests upon His grace, is able in any worthy manner to discharge personal and relative duties. One might as well attempt to build some Tadmor in the wilderness, without leading to it the streams by which life springs up in the midst of death, and the barren land is made to yield fruits of increase, as attempt to produce in the wastes of our fallen humanity the goodly fruits of a truly sober and truly righteous life without first establishing a living relation to the living God.^
^ You cannot sliver up the unity of life into little sections and say, " This deed has to be done soberly, and that one right- eously, and this one godly," but godliness must cover the whole life, and be the power of self-control and of righteousness. " All
^ T. T. Munger, Character Through Inspiration, 65. ' James Brown, Sermons with Ifemoir, 121.
266 SAVING AND INSTRUCTING GRACE
in all or not at all," Godliness must be uniform and universal. Lacking their supreme beauty are the lives of all who endeavour to keep these other two departments of duty and forget this third. There are many men punctiliously trying to control their natures, and to live righteously ; but all their thoughts run along the low levels, and they are absolutely blind and deaf to voices and sights from heaven. They are like some of those truncated pyramids, broad-based upon the solid earth, and springing with firm lines to a certain height, and then coming to a dead stop, and 80 being but stumps, which leave a sense of incompleteness, because all the firm lines have not gathered themselves up into the sky- piercing point which aspires still higher than it has reached. " Soberly," that is much ; " righteously," that is more ; " godly," that is, not most but all}