e, any 'other man[2].' And in our
days when the old personal relations of masters to workers have been so
largely merged in the relation of companies to unions or to men and
women in masses, we shall never allow ourselves to forget that
combinations are combinations of individuals, and that neither
individual responsibility, nor responsibility for the individual, can
be obliterated by union or by numbers.

St. Paul, we notice, is here plainly {131} reproducing our Lord's
saying about love and the law[3]; and he would seem to have the
teaching of the parable about the Good Samaritan in his mind; as in the
previous section the saying 'Render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's,' and in the end of the preceding one (xii. 14, 19) the
prohibition of vengeance and the injunction of love to enemies in the
Sermon on the Mount. St. Paul's ethical teaching is in fact found to
be throughout based on our Lord's, whether our Lord's words were with
him in a written form or came to him simply in the oral tradition.

And we do well to remember, as we read this familiar passage, that here
is the centre and kernel of Christianity. It is the revelation of a
new and universal duty, based on a revealed relationship of all men to
a common Father: the duty which lies upon all men of loving all men,
because God loves all men with a father's love, or rather because God
is love, and only by the life of love can we share His fellowship[4].
The {132} Christian 'enthusiasm for humanity' has thus its roots in a
disclosure of the character of God, and of His mind towards every man.

[1] Rom. i. 14.

[2] ver. 8, 'his neighbours': margin, 'the other.'

[3] Matt. xxii. 40; cf. Gal. v. 14, and James ii. 8.

[4] It has been commonly said that Christianity almost created a new
word to express the new duty. But this now appears not to be strictly
the case. _Agape_, love, is a word unknown indeed to classical
writers, but it is found in the popular speech of Alexandria in the
second century B.C. See Deissmann, _Bibelstudien_ (Marburg, 1895), p.
80. (I was referred to this work by Dr. Bernard, _Pastoral Epistles_,
p. 24.) Hence, i.e. from the popular speech of Greek Egypt, it passed
into the Greek Bible and so into Christianity.

{133}

DIVISION V. Sec. 5. CHAPTER XIII. 11-14.

_The approach of the day._

And the motive for paying our debts, in this wide sense, is that we
must 'agree with our adversary quickly, while we ar