obedience to it, doing less good and working less earnestly than any of those whose weaknesses and inconsistencies seem so glaring to us.

1

But if this law of God's kingdom has its warnings and its fears, it has also hopes and blessings for us. 'Blessed are they who sow beside all waters.' Blessed are they who do their work constantly and calmly, and possess their souls in patience, who commit themselves and their labours to God, and seek His help to strengthen them. Blessed are they, whether they are called to plant, or to water, or to reap; for God will give the increase; and both he that soweth and he that reapeth shall rejoice together. In the 'morning' they 'will sow their seed,' and in the 'evening' they will not withhold their hand." Though they know not whether shall prosper, either this or that, they will not slacken in their work; for they will sow in hope even though they sow in tears, and in the end they shall reap in joy.

1 Isa. xxxii. 20.

2 Eccles. xi. 6.

XXI.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH AND ITS FIRST PREACHER.1

'The just shall live by his faith.'-HABAK. II. 4.

N this instance, as in a thousand others in

IN

which a great truth has been embodied in a few simple words, there is a profound interest in tracing the progress of its birth, watching its expanding influence, seeing how from age to age it has varied in its form or application. We stand at the fountainhead, and behold the clear, bright spring which the Word of the Lord has brought forth from the flinty rock; and lo! the trickling stream becomes a brook, and the brook becomes a river, and the river flows on, fertilizing and blessing, making glad the city of our God. At times it may be troubled and discoloured, at times roughened by the storm, but it sweeps on in its strength, and we wonder whether he whose fevered thirst first hailed the freshening music of the bubbling spring, whose parched lips first drank eagerly of the

1 Preached before the University of Oxford, October 29, 1865.

clear waters of life, ever dreamt of all that it would grow to, what tributaries it would receive, what faroff nations it would bless with its mighty waters.

Not otherwise may we think of the moment when the truth that the 'just by faith shall live' was first brought home to the mind of the prophet. It came to him as the solution of many dark and difficult problems; it gave him strength for the battle of his life, and was to him, as the 'prophetic word' has ever been, as a light shining in the darkness; but, unless we ascribe to him a foresight differing in kind as well as degree from anything that Scripture warrants us in connecting with a prophet's work, we cannot think of him as seeing far into its future history. Not for him was the vision of all the wondrous destiny of those wondrous words, how they were to be the starting-point of a new stage in the spiritual life of mankind, the glad tidings of great joy to myriads of penitent and contrite hearts,-kindling in the heart of St. Paul the fire which was never to be extinguished,stirring the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews to his long muster-roll of the heroes of a faith which overcomes the world,-casting a ray of brightness even across the dreariness of the Talmud, starting ever and anon, in Augustine and Luther, and a thousand lesser prophets, as on a fresh career of victory, conquering and to conquer,

-the trumpet-call of the Church's warfare, the watchword of mighty controversies, the articulus stantis vel cadentis Ecclesiæ. Yes, in the very van of that goodly fellowship of preachers was that prophet of whom we now know so little, whom we have almost lost out of our sight in the great procession of his followers. The first preacher of the truth of Justification by Faith was not Luther, or Augustine, or Paul, but the prophet Habakkuk.

Short as are the extant writings of that prophet, they unfold, like most other inspired books, not only the truth itself, but the process of its conception, the discipline by which the prophet was led to perceive and to embrace it. To follow that process we must picture to ourselves what were the surroundings of his life, how they affected his inner spiritual being. Living, as Habakkuk did, at a time when the Assyrian monarchy was tottering to its fall, and the Chaldeans, under Nabopolassar or his son, were raising Babylon to its proud position as 'the lady of kingdoms,' it was given to him to see that, at no distant day, that 'bitter and hasty nation' should be to his own people as the scourge of God, smiting and laying waste. He saw them as in vision 'terrible and . dreadful,' their 'horses swifter than leopards' and 'more fierce than the evening wolves,' 'deriding every stronghold and gathering their captives as

2

the sand,' 'flying as the eagle that hasteth to eat." As the prophet saw the coming darkness, and felt the first pulses of the storm, his mind was torn by many conflicting feelings. The sins of his own. people, their spoiling, violence, and contention,' might deserve this chastisement. The 'everlasting mercy' of the Holy One might be a pledge that it should not be utterly destructive. The prophet could utter his hope-Art thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? we shall not die. O Lord, thou hast ordained them for judgment; and, O mighty God, thou hast established them for correction.' But were the instruments of the chastisement, who exulted in conquest, one whit better or more godly than those whom they chastised? Were they not infinitely worse, imputing their power unto their god,' 'devouring those that were more righteous than themselves,' 'sacrificing unto their net, and burning incense unto their drag'? The cry of the prophet went up in his perplexity with the question, so often asked before and since, O Lord, how long shall I cry and thou wilt not hear?' 'Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look upon iniquity: wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously?'*