ts ever since. _Faith_ in a finished salvation, and yet
_work_; God working all _in_ me, and yet I able and bound to work
likewise; God upholding and sustaining His child to the very end;
'perfecting that which concerns him,' making his salvation certain and
sure, and yet the Christian working 'with fear and trembling,' lest he
should be a castaway and come short of the grace of God;--who does not
recognise in these phrases the mottoes that have been written on the
opposing banners in many a fierce theological battle, waged with much
harm to both sides, and ending in no clear victory for either? Yet here
they are blended in the words of one who was no less profound a thinker
than any that have come after, and who had the gift of a divine
inspiration to boot.

Not less remarkable than the fusion here of apparent antagonisms, the
harmonising of apparent opposites, is the intensely practical character
of the purpose for which they are adduced at all. Paul has no idea of
giving his disciples a lesson in abstract theology, or laying for them a
foundation of a philosophy of free will and divine sovereignty; he is
not merely communicating to these Philippians truths for their creed,
but precepts for their deeds. The Bible knows nothing of an unpractical
theology, but, on the other hand, the Bible knows still less of an
untheological morality. It digs deep, bottoming the simplest right
action upon right thinking, and going down to the mountain bases on
which the very pillars of the universe rest, in order to lay there, firm
and immovable, the courses of the temple of a holy life. Just as little
as Scripture gives countenance to the error that makes religion theology
rather than life, just so little does it give countenance to the far
more contemptible and shallower error common in our day, which _says_,
Religion is not theology, but life; and _means_, 'Therefore, it does
not matter what theology you have, you can work a good life out with any
creed!' The Bible never teaches unpractical speculations, and the Bible
never gives precepts which do not rest on the profoundest truths. Would
God, brethren, that we all had souls as wide as would take in the whole
of the many-sided scriptural representation of the truths of the Gospel,
and so avoid the narrowness of petty, partial views of God's infinite
counsel; and that we had as close, direct, and as free communication
between head, and heart, and hand, as the Scripture has between pre