the central point of the matter. Culpa, or guilt, might be regarded as simply a standing liability to pœna, or punishment, until the requisite amends were made. It need not involve, and under the prevalent feeling now under consideration it did not involve, that sense of personal disfavour, of the loss of peace and communion with a beloved person, which is the craving from which the reformed principle takes its rise. A similar point may be considered in reference to the word forgiveness, which has practically two meanings, or a double meaning. It may mean the remission of a penalty, the passing over of an offence, with scarcely any reference to personal relations between the person who forgives and the person who is forgiven. But it may also mean the restoration of personal relations, with scarcely any reference to the remission or removal of the material consequences of the offence. In family relations there may be offences of which the consequences are irreparable, and for which the offender must permanently suffer, but which may, nevertheless, be perfectly forgiven, in the sense of entire love, confidence, and favour being re-established between the offending and the offended relatives.

Now, this is the distinction which was brought out with a new vividness by Luther's consciousness and Luther's experience, and which gave rise to the revived apprehension of St. Paul's doctrine of justification. He wanted to know whether he could be assured of his personal acceptance with God; whether he could be taken again to his Father's heart, and live in the light of his Father's countenance. That, he was sure, he could not know, he could not claim, upon the ground of his own condition, or upon the basis of any obedience of his own. Justification meant being forgiven in the personal sense of the wordtaken into favour, given the position of a good child in the heavenly Father's household, or, in technical language, accounted righteous before God. It did not mean, and does not mean, forgiveness in the mere material sense of being relieved from all the penalties of sin. Many of those penalties may be permanent in this world, and may have their effect on our position in the final judgment; but they need not interfere with the blessed personal relations towards God of filial confidence, trust, love, and perfect peace.

Now, justification, conceived in this sense, can only be an act of personal grace, and it may be, and in human relations it often must be, granted from motives which are quite independent of the merits or acts of the person to whom it is offered. It may be offered to a son for the sake of his mother, to a husband or wife for the sake of a child, to another for the sake of a friend; but whatever the cause for which it is offered, there is one thing indispensable to its enjoyment, which is at the same time the only means by which it can be enjoyed. It must be believed and accepted. Not to believe or accept a forgiveness thus offered is, indeed, a renewed offence of the highest kind; it is a refusal of love, an act of ingratitude, which must cause a greater personal separation than ever. But, on the other hand, if it is accepted, it must be accepted simply as an act of grace; and, though it involves the highest obligations for the future, yet to attempt, in accepting it, to plead any merits of one's own, past, present, or future, would be felt among human beings to be evidence of a total want of appreciation of the grace with which the forgiveness is offered. Such is the

gracious, natural, human analogy, by which the doctrine of justification for Christ's sake by faith only may be best illustrated. If a father may offer forgiveness to a son for his mother's sake, we may well conceive of God as offering us forgiveness for Christ's sake, for Christ's love, Christ's suffering, Christ's perfect obedience; and in this sense the righteousness of Christ may well be regarded as covering us, and being imputed to us, not in any fictitious sense, but as the offering for the sake of which God receives us again into His favour, and admits us to communion with Him, if we do but believe Him and accept His love, with all it involves and requires. It may, perhaps, be said, in passing, that there seems something more natural and reasonable than appears often to be realized in the old theological language respecting our Saviour's having fulfilled the law for us, not only by His death, but by His life, and having thus given satisfaction to God's justice. It seems evident, at least, that if the human race had not presented one single instance of the fulfilment of the law of its nature, if every being in human form had failed to realize the Divine ideal, it would have

been impossible for Divine satisfaction to have rested on such a race. Whereas, on the other hand, when that ideal had once been realized, an earnest had at least been afforded of the Divine purpose, and God could once more say of the nature, at least, which He had created, that it was very good.

But we are not here concerned, as a matter of controversy, with the arguments on which the doctrine of justification by faith rests, except so far as is necessary to illustrate its meaning as the starting-point of the reformed theology. The considerations which have been adduced are of importance as illustrating the fact, that the cardinal principle of the Reformation was the revival in men of a sense of their personal relation to God, as the beginning and the end, the Alpha and the Omega, of their religious life. But unless it could be proclaimed to them that that relation was one of peace and love, it would have been impracticable to revive such a sense. Unless men have the assurance that they are at peace with God, they inevitably shrink from Him. They hide themselves among the trees of the garden of the world whenever they hear His voice.