uct which is its natural sequence. Who can
deny that the devils have a 'right belief' in the existence of God?
Faith, in fact, without {169} works--orthodox belief without moral
obedience--is a lifeless form, a body without spirit[10].

To all this St. Paul would of course have agreed, in St. James' sense
of the word faith. In fact, St. James' faith, i.e. bare orthodox
belief, is closely akin to, and apt to keep company with, formal
ecclesiastical observance, which is part of what St. Paul means by
'works.' Both were characteristic of the Pharisaic Jews. St. Paul and
St. James would have been at one in saying, 'There must be life in this
dead shell of orthodox belief, if it is to have value with God; and
what alone can give it life is the real spirit of moral obedience to
the will of the holy and good God'--which is what St. James means by
'works.' The disagreement between them is then, so far, only verbal.
But St. Paul goes deeper, into a region where St. James does not follow
him, and asks what is the real starting-ground of the truest
obedience--the real root of the moral life? And he finds this
starting-ground, this fundamental establishment of the right relation
to God, in what he called faith; that is, no mere orthodoxy of
intellect, but a fundamental relationship of man towards God--the
utterly receptive faculty, {170} the profound quality of the
self-surrendering will.

3. There is a young philosophical inquirer in Plato's Dialogue of the
_Republic_ who is so anxious to get at the ultimate principle of
justice, as distinct from its consequences and secondary qualities,
that Socrates laughingly tells him he is 'scrubbing and polishing it
like a statue.' Now St. Paul has the philosopher's instinct to get at
a principle in its pure simplicity. He scrubs faith clean of all
extraneous accidents. He is most anxious that we should disengage its
activity from all the other closely-interconnected elements in human
nature; and so perceive that, whatever a man has been or is in race or
conduct or antecedents, once let him exhibit faith, the faith which
takes God at His word, and by that very fact and no other, all the
obstacles to God's acceptance of him are overcome. The true relation
of the man to God is restored in its elementary principle. And nothing
but this, however elaborate its apparent performances, can restore the
fundamental relationship. It is faith only, and not works, however
splendid, which j