justified, glorified. “What then shall we say to these things ? If God is for us, who is against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth, who is he that shall condemn? It is Christ Jesus that died, yea rather, that was raised from the dead, who is at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or anguish, or per- secution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword ? Even as it is written,
‘For Thy sake we are killed all the day long ; We were accounted as sheep for the slaughter.’
Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Tim that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Finally, the whole passage carries a protest and an antidote against an introverted, morbidly subjective and self-scrutiniz- ing type of piety, which habitually studies self for the evidence of right spiritual relation and condition: which tests growth in grace by tension of fecling, and reckons spiritual latitude and longitude by spiritual moods. Feeling, religious sensibility, has its place, and a high and sacred place it is; but its place is not the judgment-seat ; and right feeling in Christian experi- ence is always based upon right relation to the facts of the plan of redemption. The Christian consciousness gives no valid testimony, save as it reflects the great objective verities of the Christian faith. If our spirit witnesses with the Spirit, the Spirit must first bear witness ¢o our spirit that we are children
of God.