Introduction To The Galatian Epistle. 79

in Romans the dominant conception is justification by faith. Romans is more positively doctrinal ; Galatians more apolo- getic and polemic as against Judaism. Romans treats cir- cumcision as a question of practice; Galatians as a question of law. As in Romans, faith is emphasised over against the works of the law as the ground of justification before God; but equally with Romans the divinity and sanctity of the law are recognised. The law is holy, and just and good. It is the expression of God’s sovereign and righteous will. It reflects his character, and if one could keep it he would live by it Gii. 12); all this, while it remains true that “by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (ii. 16). Accordingly the ethics of the Epistle are stern and uncom- promising. The picture of the works of the flesh is perhaps not as powerful and lurid as that in the first chapter of Romans. It is drawn in fewer lines, and is offset and en- forced by a picture of the fruits of the Spirit. Yet the one is no less distinct and unmistakable than the other. In Romans the sins of the Gentile world are massed in a fearful catalogue; in Galatians single passages here and there afford glimpses of deeply-rooted evil tendencies in the life of the newly-converted Gentile, which show how hard it had been for him to divest himself of his pagan license, and which contain within themselves possibilities of future degeneracy. We see a conceit of higher knowledge and larger liberty which might readily seize upon “occasions to the flesh,” and run into what some one has aptly styled “the bigotry of illumination,” and the selfishness of fancied deeper insight (v. 15; vi. 2-5). The same conceit appears in the weakness and inconstancy which readily succumb to the flattering overtures of pretentious Jewish emissaries (iv. 12 ff.; v.26). Yet with rigid severity against such tendencies there is blended a tender compassion for the erring, a reasonable and kindly appreciation of the weakness of the new convert. Professor Sabatier (/’Apétre Paul) says of the Epistle: “The style does not sustain the thought; it is the thought which sustains the style, giving to it its force, its life, its beauty. Thought presses on, overcharged, breathless and