ide_ of the cup and of the platter. Their external conduct was
ordered to a rigid conformity to divine law. They endeavored to
establish a righteousness of their own; and to all human appearance
they succeeded; for the Lord himself said to them: "Ye make clean the
_outside_"--as vessels may appear clean _externally_. He also compared
them to beautiful monuments of marble sculptured after the highest
style of art and polished to shining perfection, set up over the dead.
But of this very class of men he said: "Except your righteousness
shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall
in no wise enter the kingdom of heaven." This proves that the
righteousness which they had was not the righteousness of the kingdom
of heaven.

Self-respect, or self-love, inclines almost every one, except the very
abandoned, to make a show of righteousness; that is, they want others
to think they are living right lives. No man who holds himself up to
respectability is willing to be called a thief, or a liar, or an
adulterer, or any other thing that is vile. He may be any or all of
these, yet he is not willing that it should be known, or even
suspected. Even _he_ desires to make a fair show in the flesh.

Others, again, who make no profession of religion, but who yet believe
in a supreme God and a future state of existence, desire to be
righteous before God and man. They are not like the scribes and
Pharisees, who attached virtue and merit to their rigid observance of
the ceremonial law of ordinances in their religion. These that I now
speak of are simply good moral men, who are honest in their dealings
and careful of the conduct of their lives generally. These do not
really desire to make any display of their righteousness. They wish
rather to be esteemed for their real worth; and not for any fancied or
spurious excellencies. They desire to live _above_ the just reproaches
of men, and the condemnation of God. They persuade themselves to think
that their righteousness is all that God can require.

But the most numerous of all the classes that seek after righteousness
is composed of those who trust in the righteousness of faith.
Righteousness or justification by faith was the password of the
Reformation. Martin Luther, misapplying Paul's utterance that "a man
is justified or made righteous by faith without the deeds of the law,"
set a large part of Europe going with the impression that salvation,
in the highest sense, i