ght as well as life[4], and to speak the truth is the very
atmosphere of this new life[5]. As it comes natural to many people to
say 'upon my word as a gentleman,' it comes natural to St. Paul to say,
'speaking as in Christ, who is the light.' And his natural
conscience--that is the faculty of passing judgement on one's own
actions, {19} which in St. Paul's case bears witness to the truth of
what he says by passing no censure on him--that too does not act of
itself merely, but in the Spirit of the new life, the Holy Spirit of
Christ, which inspires and ratifies the moral judgement, otherwise so
liable to be degraded or perverted or silenced: his conscience bears
witness with his word in the Holy Ghost. Here, then, is the whole
secret of Christian truthfulness. The Christian is truthful because he
lives and speaks in God, in Christ, in the Spirit.

As to St. Paul's half-expressed prayer ('I was praying,' he says, i.e.
'I caught myself praying'), it resembles that of Moses for his
rebellious people[6]. 'And now, O Lord, if thou wilt forgive their
sin--; and if not, blot me, I pray thee, out of thy book which thou
hast written.' But St. Paul's instinctive desire is not apparently
like that of Moses, to perish with his people rather than be saved
without them; but to offer himself for rejection with a view to their
salvation. The prayer is, as St. Paul implies, an impossible prayer,
but it expresses, as hardly anything else could, the intensity of his
feeling. And such intensity of feeling was natural to the deep
religious patriotism of a Jew.

{20}

We may illustrate St. Paul's feeling by comparing a fine expression of
a more commonplace sorrow over the ruin of Israel from a period after
the destruction of Jerusalem[7]. 'Now therefore I will speak; touching
man in general, thou knowest best; but touching thy people will I
speak, for whose sake I am sorry; and for thine inheritance, for whose
cause I mourn; and for Israel, for whom I am heavy; and for the seed of
Jacob, for whose sake I am troubled.' 'Thou seest that our sanctuary
is laid waste, our altar broken down, our temple destroyed; our
psaltery is brought low, our song is put to silence, our rejoicing is
at an end; the light of our candlestick is put out, the ark of our
covenant is spoiled, our holy things are defiled, and the name that is
called upon us is profaned; our freemen are despitefully treated, our
priests are burnt, our Levites are gone into