for a good character, and no escaping
with a bad one. The prophets are full of this principle. Our Lord
reasserts it. It is emphasized by St. James, whose plain {107} point
is that we are justified not by right belief (which is what he means by
'faith'), but by a good life. But no one could assert the principle
more simply and absolutely as the basis of all his special evangelical
teaching than St. Paul. And whatever is true about free grace and
justification by faith only, is true because, and only because, this
free grace and this justifying faith are necessary means or steps
towards the realization of actual righteousness. So St. Paul states
it--'that the requirement of the (divine) law might be fulfilled in us
who walk[12]' according to the principles of the 'gospel of the grace
of God.' The doctrine of grace is rooted and based upon the truths of
natural religion, and leads up to their realization. It has been then
a most perilous mistake when missionaries have preached the doctrines
of grace and redemption in regions where there had been no preparatory
training in natural religion--in the truth of the unity and power and
moral character of God: of the reality of our responsibility towards
Him: of His inexorable holiness: of His inaccessibility to any kind of
bribe or attempt to find some substitute for moral obedience. Men must
have known what {108} it is to tremble in the recesses of their being
'as guilty men surprised' before God's awful righteousness; to
'tremble,' like Felix, at the message of 'righteousness, temperance,
and judgement to come,' before they can safely learn the lesson of His
grace and pardon.

And there are two minor elements in natural religion, as commonly
understood, for which St. Paul here makes himself responsible. It has
been generally understood that all men instinctively desire their own
happiness, and that this is natural and right; and that as we should
reasonably prefer our more permanent and deeper good to what is only
transitory and superficial, so we should strive for the happiness and
satisfaction which is eternal--the eternal reward, which only the stern
pursuit of virtue can obtain for us. This deep desire for our own
substantial happiness our Lord sanctions and continually suggests as a
principal motive for right living. The love of others does not
annihilate it. 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour _as thyself_.' So then
St. Paul also, following his Master, recogniz