(v.'').
"}. The soul that sinneth, it shall die
Of other OT writings the two most important are the Psalms and Job. Tlie eye of tlie writers may at times be on the nation, but even tliat is part of their personal piety, and to our day the unfailing interest of the Psalms is in the experience of the individual walking with las God. The Book of Job is wholly occupied with tlie problem of the individual, even if this individual be supposed to stand for the nation ; and no one has ever stated with greater splendour of imagination or intel- lectual daring his right to fair dealing, not only from his fellow-men but from his God.
The OT conception of the relation of the moral individual to God, moreover, necessarily reached out toward the hope of immortality, — and that not merely as an extension of man's desires beyond time, but as the just requirement of an indiWdnal- ity that defied time and lived by the eternal.
That our Lord entered upon this heritage and accepted the estimate of each individual wliich we indicate by calling him an immortal soul, and that on the ground of the OT conception of the blessed- ness of the man whom God hears, appears from His argument with the Sadducees (Mt 22^-, Mk 12'-'', Lk 20^), and is a postulate of His whole teaching. The saying, ' What shall it profit a man, if he gain the whole world and lose his own soul ?' (Mk 8^*), may only indicate a man's value to himself, and the other, ' How much then is a man better than a sheep !' (Mt 12'-), may not seem to go very far. Christ's true conception of the individual rather appears in the belief He offers for man's acceptance and the dutiy He requires that man should perform.
Of this belief the centre of everything is the manifestation of the Father. As revealed through the Son, He is a Father, which means tliat He does not, as a mere Kuler, deal with men in groups, but that each man has to Him the distinctiveness, the importance, the whole significance he can have to himself. The side of God's infinity which our Lord insists on, is the infinity of His care for the indivi- dual. In God's sight also, nothing can be given in exchange for a soul. By His care and guidance, that frail thing, an inclividual spirit, can walk without anxiety amid all the forces which might threaten his destruction, not only sure of protection, but sure that everything will be used to serve his true welfare. This attitude toward earthly cares is not sustained by hardness or indiflerence, 'but by a belief that God regards these things as the servants of His children, whose individual well- being He sets far above material things. It is not a low view of the world, but a liigh view of the spiritual individual, which our Lord" teaches.
Speaking, as He always does, with this thought of God towards man in the foreground, Jesus is led to dwell rather on the worth of the insignificant and imperfect individual in the concrete than on the
general worth of the individual in the abstract. Hard-hearted religious people spoke lightly of 'this multitude' being 'accursed' (Jn T"). He called none accursed, and warned His followers against calling any one Eaca (Mt 5^-) ; and when He used the word ' lost,' it became in His mouth tender and compassionate and full of the heart of God. The parables of the Lost Sheep, the Lost Piece of Money, and above all of the Prodigal Son (Lk 15), speak of God's unwillingness to let any- thing so precious as an individual be lost. The little child is the type of what is greatest (Mt IS'- -), and the little one in moral stature, whom to otTend is worse than death, is guarded by the very angels of the Presence (18'").
The same estimate of the worth of the indivi- dual appears in the ideal of human diiti/. There is no one, however poor or hnmble, who should not set before him the goal of being perfect as our Father in heaven (Mt 5*8). It is better to cut off the right hand than use another individual for our lusts, or to put out an eye than purpose such a thing (5-'"*). Most distinctive is the duty of forgiveness. Our Lord takes for granted that it will be diffi- cult. We shall have so much respect for our own individuality that we must be hurt, and for the individuality of others that we cannot pass over their faults easily. Only by rising to the height of God's thought can we hope to attain to God's way of dealing mtli the unthankful and evil. We are to understand that God also does not pardon lightly. He does not regard the whole mass of good and bad indifferently. On the contrary, He sets each individual before Him as something of great significance to Him, something whereby He can be deeply hurt and grieved, and then, out of the same love that can be hurt. He pardons him. It is the significance of the individual that gives its whole importance to the doctrine of pardon, whether on God's part or on man's.
But the very greatness of this relation to God might seem to withdraw something from the distinc- tiveness of man as an individual. The worth of the individual is not ultimately from himself but from God. ' If a man abide not i'unie, he is east forth as a branch, and is withered' (.In I.V). This might almost seem to be a denial that th^'ic is smh a thing as an individual. "The individual would then be a mere manifestation of God. Spinoza's formula, otmiix determinatio est negatio, would obtain, and the assertion of one's own individuality w-ould only be as cutting off a certain portion of the air with a knife. But the inalienable secret of the gospel is that it enables a man to find God and himself at the same time. It does not deal with the endless substance, but with a Father. That He is an indi- vidual is not His limitation, but the condition of all His greatness ; for it is the condition of His working by love, and love is greater than power. Conversion is thus not only a turning to God, but a finding of oneself (Lk 15"), and a com- ing to one's true home and to one's right posses- sion. While no succour of God fails a man who will have it, it remains a necessity of God's love to set a man by himself in the task of working out his own destiny. He is allowed to go into the far country and waste his substance. In all the de- scriptions which glance out into the future tliere is a strange aloneness of the indivi.lu.il who has gone his own way, into which God Iliui^ilf cannot intrude. Just because every human ]iiTsoiiality is so definitely an individual, we cannot be sure that, in the end, "there may not be a lost individual. A relation of love in Christ's sense necessarily means a relation of individuals, and that means such a marking oft' of a man from God that even God cannot enter that personality again, except the door is opened to Him, as it were, from the inside.