mity to God's law.

This one process in its triple aspects, says Paul, constitutes a man a
Christian. What correspondence is there between it, in any of its
parts, and a carnal ordinance? They belong to wholly different
categories, and it is the most preposterous confusion to try to mix them
up together. Are we to tack on to the solemn powers and qualities, which
unite the soul to Christ, this beggarly addition that the Judaisers
desire, and to say, the essentials of Christianity are a new creature,
faith, obedience--and circumcision? That is, indeed, sewing old cloth on
a new garment, and huddling together in grotesque chaos things which are
utterly diverse. It is as absurd bathos as to say the essentials of a
judge are integrity, learning, patience--and an ermine robe!

There would be less danger of being entangled in false notions of the
sort which devastated Galatia and have afflicted the Church ever since,
if people would put a little more distinctly before their own minds what
they mean by 'religion'; what sort of man they intend when they talk
about 'a Christian.' A clear notion of the thing to be produced would
thin away a wonderful deal of mist as to the way of producing it. So
then, beginning at the surface, in order to work inward, my first remark
is that religion is the harmony of the soul with God, and the conformity
of the life to His law.

The loftiest purpose of God, in all His dealings, is to make us like
Himself; and the end of all religion is the complete accomplishment of
that purpose. There is no religion without these elements--consciousness
of kindred with God, recognition of Him as the sum of all excellence and
beauty, and of His will as unconditionally binding upon us, aspiration
and effort after a full accord of heart and soul with Him and with His
law, and humble confidence that that sovereign beauty will be ours. 'Be
ye imitators of God as dear children' is the pure and comprehensive
dictate which expresses the aim of all devout men. 'To keep His
commandments' goes deeper than the mere external deeds. Were it not so,
Paul's grand words would shrink to a very poor conception of religion,
which would then have its shrine and sphere removed from the sacred
recesses of the inmost spirit to the dusty Babel of the market-place and
the streets. But with that due and necessary extension of the words
which results from the very nature of the case, that obedience must be
the obedience of a man, and n