e Ten Commandments are not so called in the
Bible, I think. They are called 'words,' I think.

I do not think St. Paul at all restricted _nomos_ to the Ten
Commandments. In fact, I don't know that he ever very clearly
separated those off from all the rest.

Do not in your essay make the same mistake as many of the Jews in St.
Paul's time. Do not try to consider law apart from the Law-giver.
They looked upon law as a dead thing by itself, not as an expression of
the character of a person.

Thus the Commandment about resting on the Sabbath day was considered by
them as an order as though from a tyrant. But God, when He gave it,
did not simply say, 'Here it is: do it'--but 'Do it because,' and He
gives the reason why. The reason is different in Exodus and
Deuteronomy, because the books were, to a certain degree perhaps,
written to {66} illustrate different aspects of God's character.
Exodus says: 'Work and rest, because God's life is work and rest.
Therefore human life made in His image is work and rest.' Deuteronomy
says: 'Work and rest. God has emancipated you from slavery. He bids
you rest.' In both cases God is the ground of the law. Study law--any
law--English law--and in so far as it is law, and not lawlessness under
guise of law, you will be studying God Himself; for if St. Paul's
principles are true at all, they must be true of all law. But, oh!
don't deal with abstractions, which sound well, but mean little. Let
us use what we have. It is a grand thing to know that the highest
ideal we can conceive must be realised, for the highest ideal must be
part of God's idea.

Don't try to look at moral law apart from national life. St. Paul did
not. Law is seen in national life. A nation is a better expression of
God than an individual, because God is three, not simply one. He is a
social Being, a Being of relations. And nations will last for ever.
Law will always be seen worked out in national life. God has more
worlds than one. Each nation is a thought of God worked out in human
clay (cf. Jeremiah xviii. 1-6). Human clay lasts for ever ('I believe
in the resurrection of the body'). Law will always be worked out thus.
We are part of a thought of God--part of an English nation--little
fragments of a huge whole. Our immortality depends on the fact that we
are parts of a nation, parts of a Divine idea, which lasts for ever.
Law is more completely seen in conscious than unconscious life, because
God