em that we are made for righteousness, but sin is in this world so
universal that there must surely be some way of accounting for it which
shall also excuse it. Had righteousness been to be our life, surely some
few would have attained it. There must be some necessity of sin, some
impossibility of attaining perfect righteousness, and therefore we need
not seek it. Here comes in the proof our Lord speaks of: "The Spirit
will convince of righteousness, because I go to the Father."
Righteousness has been attained. There has lived One, bone of our bone,
and flesh of our flesh, tempted in all points like as we are, open to
the same ambitious views of life, growing up with the same appetites and
as sensitive to bodily pleasure and bodily pain, feeling as keenly the
neglect and hatred of men, and from the very size of His nature and
width of His sympathy tempted in a thousand ways we are safe from, and
yet in no instance confounding right and wrong, in no instance falling
from perfect harmony with the Divine will to self-will and self-seeking;
never deferring the commandments of God to some other sphere or waiting
for holier times; never forgetting and never renouncing the purpose of
God in His life; but at all times, in weariness and lassitude, in
personal danger and in domestic comfort, putting Himself as a perfect
instrument into God's hand, ready at all cost to Himself to do the
Father's will. Here was One who not only recognised that men are made to
work together with God, but who actually did so work; who not only
approved, as we all approve, of a life of holiness and sacrifice, but
actually lived it; who did not think the trial too great, the privation
and risk too dreadful, the self-effacement too humbling; but who met
life with all it brings to all of us--its conflict, its interests, its
opportunities, its allurements, its snares, its hazards. But while out
of this material we fail to make a perfect life, He by His integrity of
purpose and devotedness and love of good fashioned a perfect life. Thus
He simply by living accomplished what the law with its commands and
threats had not accomplished: He condemned sin in the flesh.

But it was open to those whom the Apostles addressed to deny that Jesus
had thus lived; and therefore the conviction of righteousness is
completed by the evidence of the resurrection and ascension of Christ.
"Of righteousness, because I go to My Father, and ye see Me no more."
Without holiness no