ho went
wrong, but the son who had never done anything but right, yet had done
it in such a way that it had begotten in him a vile, censorious,
loveless temper. No one can be just who does not love; and so, once
more removing the story into that unseen world which Christ called in
to redress the balance of this visible world, we sinful men and women
build our hopes upon the great saying that God's forgiveness is God's
justice: if we confess our sins, He is not only faithful, but JUST in
forgiving us our sins.

LOVE IS JUSTICE

_THE WAY OF WOUNDS_

_He touched the leper tenderly,
So in His hands there came to be
Wide wounds that were not wrought with nails.
Alas, my hands are smooth and fair,
No wound is on them anywhere,
Nor any scarlet scar of nails._

_His lips lay on the mouth of death,
God's healing dwelt within their breath,
Wherefore his lips grew pale with pain,
And no man shall that pain divine;
Alas, my lips are red with wine,
And they have scorned His draught of pain._

_His feet were torn of stone and thorn,
Full slow He moved on roads forlorn,
But joyous hearts accompanied Him;
Alas, my feet are softly shod,
And on the road that leads to God,
They have not sought to move with Him._

_And so all wounded by the way,
He came home at the close of day,
And angels met Him at the Gate.
Alas, His way I have not known--
The road forlorn, the wounding stone--
And no one waits me at the Gate._

IV

LOVE IS JUSTICE

Love is the only real justice--never was there a more revolutionary
ethic! If Christianity is to be judged by its institutions, it must be
reluctantly confessed that twenty centuries of Christian teaching have
almost wholly failed to make this strange ethic acceptable to mankind.
The elder brother still makes broad his phylacteries in the home, in
the Church, and on the seat of justice. The elder brother's sense of
offended respectability still masquerades as virtue. Who forgives as
this father forgave, with such completeness that he who has wrought the
wrong is encouraged to forget that the wrong was ever wrought? Where
is the loving and tolerant spirit of the father less visible than in
the Church, which crucifies men for a word, and makes a difference of
opinion the ground for deadly enmity? Of what administration of law
can we say that its chief object is not the punishment of the
wrong-doer, but h