THE KING’S BUSINESS
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ing the rigours of broken law; in human life and government, too, which is nature still, only on a higher plane, mercy and for giveness assert themselves, and society greatly prizes the gracious quality; and it is therefore a mistake, judged by the light of nature, to make an antithesis of equity and grace, as if these qualities were mutually antagonistic and eternally irreconcilable—- they both exist side by side in this tangible human world with which we are so famil iar. Now, the grand burden of the Gospel is to bring into fullest light that doctrine of mercy hinted by nature, and to show us that grace is not arbitrariness, the negation of law, the neglect of justice, but that the fullest and most' splendid revelation of grace may take place on the basis of eternal truth/ and justice. >Michelet calls the Epistle to the Romans “the Marseilles Hymn of the Gospel of Grace, the utter setting at nought of the Law.” [“Bible of Humanity.” ] But this is strangely to misunderstand the significance of that glorious Epistle. It was no part of Paul’s purpose to set at nought the law, or to extol- an arbitrary grace, but exultingly to show the Compatibility of law and grace, and to point out how the death of Christ was the supreme illustration of both. “That He might be just, and the Justifier of the ungodly.” The problem suggested by nature is solved in Christ crucified, and the sublime solution is declared at large in the Marseilles Hymn of the Gospel, the John A. Hawks, Shelburne Falls, Mass.: “Enclosed find my check for $5.00, for which please enter my subscription to T he K ing ’ s B usiness , to continue until March, 1922. The magazine and Institute are doing a good work and filling a great need on the Pacific Coast. It is refreshing to note, also, that it stands ‘four-square’ for the ‘faith once for all delivered unto the saints.’ Wishing you prosperity and success in your various lines of endeavor in the interests of the King, I bid you God-speed until He comes.”
Epistle to the Romans; it is a song of revolt, of liberty, of glory; of revolt from the tyranny of lust, of liberty through the keeping of the law, of glory as it gives peace and immortality through righteous ness. , The great reason why these thinkers are so bitterly opposed to the doctrine of grace is, that it is supposed to encourage men to sin by opening to them a door of escape. That men may turn the grace of God into lasciviousness has been acknowledged by Christianity from the beginning, but the denial of that grace would multiply sin infinitely. It is a mistake to believe that insistence on the inexorableness
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