and striving. Their constant prayer needs to be: "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." All men are sinful; but all men are not equally so. Jesus speaks of good men, who bring forth out of the good treasure of their hearts good things, as well as of evil men who do the opposite (Mt. xii. 35). "Good" and "evil," as applied to men, are relative terms. He assumes that the eye of the heart may be healthy and steadfastly directed to the true good, so that the whole moral being shall be filled with heavenly light and blessedness (Mt. vi. 22). Jesus' estimate of men was generous. He measured them more by what they desired and sought than by their present attainments. He laid more stress upon the direction in which men were going than upon the point of progress which they had reached.

Jesus pictured sin as having its seat in the heart, the inner life, the sphere of motive and desire. Hate is the source of murder (Mt. v. 22). Lust is the essence of adultery (Mt. v. 28). The inner life rules the outer life; the thought is father to the deed. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh" (Mt. xii. 34). The character determines the acts and words of men as a tree the quality of its fruit (Mt. vii. 17-20; xii. 33). It was because Jesus took this view of speech and action that he attached such significance to the words of men: "By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned" (Mt. xii. 37). Hence Jesus set aside the whole Levitical idea of defilement by external acts and contact as superficial. A man is defiled, he said, not by what he eats or touches, but by what he does with evil motive and intent: "That which proceedeth out of the man, that defileth the man. For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: all these proceed from within, and defile the man" (Mk. vii. 20–23). But even where the inner life is sincere and pure in purpose, men are liable to be led astray by their creaturely weakness. Hence in the trying scenes of his last days,

when he was walking in the shadow of the cross, Jesus warned his disciples to seek divine strength that their fidelity to him might not be overcome by doubt and fear, and added: "The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" (Mk. xiv. 38; Mt. xvi. 41); in their hearts they were devoted to him, eager to encourage and support him, but the lower nature, the dread of danger, the fear of death -that was a weakness which still exposed them to the temptation to abandon him, and to desert his cause.

Sin is subject to a development, ranging all the way from ignorance and weakness to the most positive and malignant opposition to God and goodness. To such an utter moral perversion Jesus seems to have referred in what he said of the sin against the Holy Spirit: "Verily, I say unto you, All their sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: but whosoever shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin because they said, He hath an unclean spirit" (Mk. iii. 28, 29; Mt. xii. 31, 32). The occasion of this saying was the calumny of the scribes and Pharisees that Jesus cast out demons by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of the demons; that is, they attributed his benevolent works to an evil source. In reply, Jesus said that slanders against himself and contempt of his mission as the founder of the Kingdom of God, might be condoned, but that to deliberately ascribe deeds of pure and manifest benevolence to a diabolical source was to fall under the woe of those who call evil good and good evil (Is. v. 20); it indicated a radical perversion of the moral nature, or a powerful tendency towards it, in which the soul makes evil. its good, and conversely. The words of Jesus evidently describe not merely a specific act of sin in itself considered, but an act as illustrating a state of complete moral obduracy, —a sin, therefore, which is "eternal" in its consequences because it springs from fixed, persistent hatred of goodness. Such a fearful goal of sinful development would involve the identification of the will with evil-supreme wickedness, culminating in hatred of the most manifest

divine goodness, and excluding the possibility of recovery by its own nature. Jesus is not represented in our sources as saying explicitly that his accusers had fully realized this extreme moral depravation, but the fact that they called his gracious alleviations of human suffering bad instead of good — thus defaming and despising the Spirit of all goodness and pity which wrought in his merciful ministry led him to hold up before them this fearful warning, and must be regarded as showing that he considered it possible for human sinfulness to culminate in that utter moral obliquity which he describes in a depravity so radical and complete as to preclude the possibility of recovery to holiness.

CHAPTER IX

THE TRUE RIGHTEOUSNESS

THE fundamental idea which lies at the heart of all Jesus' teaching concerning righteousness is the idea of love. Love to God and love to man - that is the basis of every obligation, the essence of the whole law (Mk. xii. 28-31; Mt. xxii. 34-40). Hence when he sets before his disciples the lofty ideal of perfection (Mt. v. 48), we easily discover that it is perfection in love of which he speaks. Love is Godlikeness, and therefore includes every specific form of goodness. It is not a particular virtue, but the inner principle of all virtues. It is just at this point that Jesus' view of goodness differed so widely from that which was current in his time. The Pharisaic righteousness was piecemeal; it was made up of a round of ceremonies and duties, which were valued for their own sake, and which possessed no inner unity. Jesus showed that all forms of real goodness may be reduced to a common principle; that all virtues are essentially one. Hence he taught that isolated acts of religion are valueless if the basal principle of all true religion is wanting. The worshipper who is coming to the altar while a wrong done his brother is still unrighted, would better leave his gift unoffered until the requirements of holy love are satisfied by requital (Mt. v. 23, 24).

A very slight attention to the words of Christ serves to show that love and righteousness are for him practically synonymous, or, at any rate, that righteousness is included in love. When he warns his hearers that, if they are to enter his Kingdom, their righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (Mt. v. 20), he at once proceeds to illustrate the difference by showing how the popular

theory permits anger and contempt for one's fellows, while he demands brotherly love; how the legalists condone impurity, untruthfulness, revenge, and hatred, while he demands self-control, truthfulness, generosity, and benevolence towards all (Mt. v. 21-48). When he turns to the more positive illustration of his doctrine of righteousness, he shows that almsgiving, prayer, and fasting have no value if done for their own sake, and in order to make a favorable impression upon observers, but that they are acceptable to God only when done from sincere interest in men, and in filial reverence for God (Mt. vi. 1-18). The "righteousness of God" (Mt. vi. 33) which men are to seek, means the righteousness which is pleasing to God, and the context leaves no room for doubt that it is acceptable, because it springs from love to God and man. Other passages confirm this conclusion. When "a certain lawyer" sought to put Jesus to a test by asking from him a rule for attaining eternal life, Jesus drew from him, by a counter-question, this answer to his own inquiry: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself," and added: “Thou hast answered right: this do and thou shalt live" (Lk. x. 25-28). To the same question, when put to him on another occasion, he answered by citing the commandments (Mk. x. 17-19), whose essential substance he elsewhere defined to be love to God and man (Mt. xxii. 40).

From these considerations it is evident that Jesus placed the true righteousness not in outward actions, however excellent or useful, but in the state of the heart. He demands right conduct, but he first demands right character as its presupposition and guaranty. Righteousness is primarily right disposition. This view completely undermined the current legalism. The scribe who asked him which was the chief commandment, and to whom he replied by citing the requirement of love, discerned the radical difference between Jesus' idea and the popular idea of righteousness, as is shown by his reply: Love to God and man is, as you say, more than all our offerings and sacrifices. "And