seeks righteousness, and is satisfied with nothing other than that." But when Harris adopts the words of the poet: "The very wrath from pity grew, From love of men the hate of wrong," he seems to us virtually to deny that God hates evil for any other reason than because of its utilitarian disadvantages, and to imply that good has no independent existence in his nature. Bowne, Ethics, 171—"Merit is desert of reward, or better, desert of moral approval." Tennyson: "For merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord, to thee." Baxter: "Desert is written over the gate of hell; but over the gate of heaven only, The Gift of God."

(e) Justice in God, as the revelation of his holiness, is devoid of all passion or caprice. There is in God no selfish anger. The penalties he inflicts upon transgression are not vindictive but vindicative. They express the revulsion of God's nature from moral evil, the judicial indignation of purity against impurity, the self-assertion of infinite holiness against its antagonist and would-be destroyer. But because its decisions are calm, they are irreversible.

Anger, within certain limits, is a duty of man. Ps. 97:10 — “ 'ye that love Jehovah, hate evil"; Eph. 4:26"Be ye angry, and sin not." The calm indignation of the judge, who pronounces sentence with tears, is the true image of the holy anger of God against sin. Weber, Zorn Gottes, 28, makes wrath only the jealousy of love. It is more truly the jealousy of holiness. Prof. W. A. Stevens, Com. on 1 Thess. 2:10-"Holily and righteously are terms that describe the same conduct in two aspects; the former, as conformed to God's character in itself; the latter, as conformed to his law; both are positive." Lillie, on 2 Thess. 1:6—“Judgment is 'a righteous thing with God.' Divine justice requires it for its own satisfaction." See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1: 175-178, 365-385; Trench, Syn. N. T., 1: 180, 181. Of Gaston de Foix, the old chronicler admirably wrote: "He loved what ought to be loved, and hated what ought to be hated, and never had miscreant with him." Compare Ps. 101: 5, 6-"Him that hath a high look and a proud heart will I not suffer. Mine eyes shall be upon the faithful of the land, that they may dwell with me." Even Horace Bushnell spoke of the “wrathprinciple" in God. 1 K. 11:9-"And Jehovah was angry with Solomon" because of his polygamy. Jesus' anger was no less noble than his love. The love of the right involved hatred of the wrong. Those may hate who hate evil for its hatefulness and for the sake of God. Hate sin in yourself first, and then you may hate it in itself and in the world. Be angry only in Christ and with the wrath of God. W. C. Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 264 "But we must purge ourselves of self-regard, Or we are sinful in abhorring sin.” Instance Judge Harris's pity, as he sentenced the murderer; see A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 192, 193.

Horace's "Ira furor brevis est "—"Anger is a temporary madness"— is true only of selfish and sinful anger. Hence the man who is angry is popularly called "mad." But anger, though apt to become sinful, is not necessarily so. Just anger is neither madness, nor is it brief. Instance the judicial anger of the church of Corinth in inflicting excommunication: 2 Cor. 7: 11-" what indignation, yea what fear, yea what longing, yea what seal, yea what avenging!" The only revenge permissible to the Christian church is that in which it pursues and exterminates sin. To be incapable of moral indignation against wrong is to lack real love for the right. Dr. Arnold of Rugby was never sure of a boy who only loved good; till the boy also began to hate evil, Dr. Arnold did not feel that he was safe. Herbert Spencer said that good nature with Americans became a crime. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty: "There is one thing worse than corruption, and that is acquiescence in corruption."

Colestock, Changing Viewpoint, 139-"Xenophon intends to say a very commendable thing of Cyrus the Younger, when he writes of him that no one had done more good to his friends or more harm to his enemies." Luther said to a monkish antagonist: "I will break in pieces your heart of brass and pulverize your iron brains." Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:175-178-"Human character is worthless in proportion as abhorrence of sin is lacking in it. It is related of Charles II that he felt no gratitude for benefits, and no resentment for wrongs; he did not love anyone, and he did not hate any one.' He was indifferent toward right and wrong, and the only feeling he had was contempt." But see the death-bed scene of the “ merry monarch," as portrayed in Bp. Burnet, Evelyn's Memoirs, or the Life of Bp. Ken. Truly "The end of mirth is heaviness" ( Prov. 14:13).

Stout, Manual of Psychology, 22-“Charles Lamb tells us that his friend George Dyer could never be brought to say anything in condemnation of the most atrocious crimes, except that the criminal must have been very eccentric." Professor Seeley: "No heart is pure that is not passionate." D. W. Simon, Redemption of Man, 249, 250, says that God's resentment "is a resentment of an essentially altruistic character." If this means that it is perfectly consistent with love for the sinner, we can accept the statement; if it means that love is the only ource of the resentment, we regard the statement as a misinterpretation of God's justice, which is but the manifestation of his holiness and is not an mere expression of his love. See a similar statement of Lidgett, Spiritual Principle of the Atonement, 251-" Because God is love, his love coëxists with his wrath against sinners, is the very life of that wrath, and is so persistent that it uses wrath as its instrument, while at the same time it seeks and supplies a propitiation." This statement ignores the fact that punishment is never in Scripture regarded as an expression of God's love, but always of God's holiness. When we say that we love God, let us make sure that it is the true God, the God of holiness, that we love, for only this love will make us like him.

The moral indignation of a whole universe of holy beings against moral evil, added to the agonizing self-condemnations of awakened conscience in all the unholy, is only a faint and small reflection of the awful revulsion of God's infinite justice from the impurity and selfishness of his creatures, and of the intense, organic, necessary, and eternal reaction of his moral being in self-vindication and the punishment of sin; see Jer. 44: 4 — “Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!" Num. 32: 23-"be sure your sin will find you out"; Heb. 10:30, 31-"For we know him that said, Vengeance belongeth unto me, I will recompense. And again, The Lord shall judge his people. It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." On justice as an attribute of a moral governor, see N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2:253-293; Owen, Dissertation on Divine Justice, in Works, 10:483-024.

VII.

RANK AND RELATIONS OF THE SEVERAL ATTRIBUTES.

The attributes have relations to each other. Like intellect, affection and will in man, no one of them is to be conceived of as exercised separately from the rest. Each of the attributes is qualified by all the others. God's love is immutable, wise, holy. Infinity belongs to God's knowledge, power, justice. Yet this is not to say that one attribute is of as high rank as another. The moral attributes of truth, love, holiness, are worthy of higher reverence from men, and they are more jealously guarded by God, than the natural attributes of omnipresence, omniscience, and omnipotence. And yet even among the moral attributes one stands as supreme. Of this and of its supremacy we now proceed to speak.

Water is not water unless composed of oxygen and hydrogen. Oxygen cannot be resolved into hydrogen, nor hydrogen into oxygen. Oxygen has its own character, though only in combination with hydrogen does it appear in water. Will in man never acts without intellect and sensibility, yet will, more than intellect or sensibility, is the manifestation of the man. So when God acts, he manifests not one attribute alone, but his total moral excellence. Yet holiness, as an attribute of God, has rights peculiar to itself; it determines the attitude of the affections; it more than any other faculty constitutes God's moral being.

Clarke, Christian Theology, 83, 92—“God would not be holy if he were not love, and could not be love if he were not holy. Love is an element in holiness. If this were lacking, there would be no perfect character as principle of his own action or as standard for us. On the other hand only the perfect being can be love. God must be free from all taint of selfishness in order to be love. Holiness requires God to act as love, for holiness is God's self-consistency. Love is the desire to impart holiness. Holiness makes God's character the standard for his creatures; but love, desiring to impart the best good, does the same. All work of love is work of holiness, and all work of holiness is work of love. Confiict of attributes is impossible, because holiness always includes love, and love always expresses holiness. They never need reconciliation with each other."

The general correctness of the foregoing statement is impaired by the vagueness of its conception of holiness. The Scriptures do not regard holiness as including love, or make all the acts of holiness to be acts of love. Self-affirmation does not include self

impartation, and sin necessitates an exercise of holiness which is not also an exercise of love. But for the Cross, and God's suffering for sin of which the Cross is the expression, there would be conflict between holiness and love. The wisdom of God is most shown, not in reconciling man and God, but in reconciling the holy God with the loving God.

1. Holiness the fundamental attribute in God.

That holiness is the fundamental attribute in God, is evident:

(a) From Scripture,-in which God's holiness is not only most constantly and powerfully impressed upon the attention of man, but is declared to be the chief subject of rejoicing and adoration in heaven.

It is God's attribute of holiness that first and most prominently presents itself to the mind of the sinner, and conscience only follows the method of Scripture: 1 Pet. 1:16"Ye shall be holy; for I am holy"; Heb. 12:14-"the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord"; cf. Luke 5:8-"Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Yet this constant insistence upon holiness cannot be due simply to man's present state of sin, for in heaven, where there is no sin, there is the same reiteration: Is. 6: 3-"Holy, holy, holy, is Jehovah of hosts"; Rev. 4:8-"Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God, the Almighty." Of no other attribute is it said that God's throne rests upon it: Ps. 97:2-"Righteousness and justice are the foundation of his throne"; 99: 4, 5, 9—“The king's strength also loveth justice. . . . Exalt ye Jehovah our God. . . . holy is he." We would substitute the word holiness for the word love in the statement of Newman Smyth, Christian Ethics, 45-"We assume that love is lord in the divine will, not that the will of God is sovereign over his love. God's omnipotence, as Dorner would say, exists for his love."

(b) From our own moral constitution,-in which conscience asserts its supremacy over every other impulse and affection of our nature. As we may be kind, but must be righteous, so God, in whose image we are made, may be merciful, but must be holy.

See Bishop Butler's Sermons upon Human Nature, Bohn's ed., 385-414, showing "the supremacy of conscience in the moral constitution of man." We must be just, before we are generous. So with God, justice must be done always; mercy is optional with him. He was not under obligation to provide a redemption for sinners: 2 Pet. 2: 4-“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell." Salvation is a matter of grace, not of debt. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 277-298-"The quality of justice is necessary exaction; but 'the quality of mercy is not ( con ) strained '" [ cf. Denham: "His mirth is forced and strained"]. God can apply the salvation, after he has wrought it out, to whomsoever he will: Rom. 9:18-"he hath mercy on whom he will." Young, Night-Thoughts, 4:233-"A God all mercy is a God unjust." Emerson: "Your goodness must have some edge to it; eise it is none." Martineau, Study, 2: 100-"No one can be just

without subordinating Pity to the sense of Right."

We may learn of God's holiness a priori. Even the heathen could say "Fiat justitia, ruat cœlum," or "pereat mundus." But, for our knowledge of God's mercy, we are dependent upon special revelation. Mercy, like omnipotence, may exist in God without being exercised. Mercy is not grace but debt, if God owes the exercise of it either to the sinner or to himself; versus G. B. Stevens, in New Eng., 1888: 421-443. “But justice is an attribute which not only exists of necessity, but must be exercised of necessity; because not to exercise it would be injustice"; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1: 218, 219, 39, 390; 2:402, and Sermons to Nat. Man, 566. If it be said that, by parity of reasoning, for God not to exercise mercy is to show himself unmerciful,- -we reply that this is not true so long as higher interests require that exercise to be withheld. I am not unmereiful when I refuse to give the poor the money needed to pay an honest debt; nor is the Governor unmerciful when he refuses to pardon the condemned and unrepentant criminal. Mercy has its conditions, as we proceed to show, and it does not cease to be when these conditions do not permit it to be exercised. Not so with justice: justice must always be exercised; when it ceases to be exercised, it also ceases to be.

The story of the prodigal shows a love that ever reaches out after the son in the far country, but which is ever conditioned by the father's holiness and restrained from acting until the son has voluntarily forsaken his riotous living. A just father may banish a corrupt son from the household, yet may love him so tenderly that his banish

ment causes exquisite pain. E. G. Robinson: "God, Christ and the Holy Spirit have a Conscience, that is, they distinguish between right and wrong." E. H. Johnson, Syst. Theology, 85, 86-"Holiness is primary as respects benevolence; for (a) Holiness is itself moral excellence, while the moral excellence of benevolence can be explained. (b) Holiness is an attribute of being, while benevolence is an attribute of action; but action presupposes and is controlled by being. (c) Benevolence must take counsel of holiness, since for a being to desire aught contrary to holiness would be to wish him harm, while that which holiness leads God to seek, benevolence finds best for the creature. (d) The Mosaic dispensation elaborately symbolized, and the Christian dispensation makes provision to meet, the requirements of holiness as supreme; James 3:17-'First pure, then [by consequence ] peaceable.'"'

We are "to do justly," as well as "to love kindness, and to walk humbly with" our God (Micah 6:8). Dr. Samuel Johnson: "It is surprising to find how much more kindness than justice society contains." There is a sinful mercy. A School Commissioner finds it terrible work to listen to the pleas of incompetent teachers begging that they may not be dismissed, and he can nerve himself for it only by remembering the children whose education may be affected by his refusal to do justice. Love and pity are not the whole of Christian duty, nor are they the ruling attributes of God.

(e) From the actual dealings of God,-in which holiness conditions and limits the exercise of other attributes. Thus, for example, in Christ's redeeming work, though love makes the atonement, it is violated holiness that requires it; and in the eternal punishment of the wicked, the demand of holiness for self-vindication overbears the pleading of love for the sufferers.

Love cannot be the fundamental attribute of God, because love always requires a norm or standard, and this norm or standard is found only in holiness; Phil. 1:9-"And th.s I pray, that your love may abound yet more in knowledge and all discernment"; see A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 388-405. That which conditions all is highest of all. Holiness shows itself higher than love, in that it conditions love. Hence God's mercy does not consist in outraging his own law of holiness, but in enduring the penal affliction by which that law of holiness is satisfied. Conscience in man is but the reflex of holiness in God. Conscience demands either retribution or atonement. This demand Christ meets by his substituted suffering. His sacrifice assuages the thirst of conscience in man, as well as the demand of holiness in God: John 6:55-"For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." See Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 280, 291, 292; Dogmatic Theology, 1:377, 378-"The sovereignty and freedom of God in respect to justice relates not to the abolition, nor to the relaxation, but to the substitution, of punishment. It does not consist in any power to violate or waive legal claims. The exercise of the other attributes of God is regulated and conditioned by that of justice. . . . Where then is the mercy of God, in case justice is strictly satisfied by a vicarious person? There is mercy in permitting another person to do for the sinner what the sinner is bound to do for himself; and greater mercy in providing that person; and still greater mercy in becoming that person."

Enthusiasm, like fire, must not only burn, but must be controlled. Man invented chimneys to keep in the heat but to let out the smoke. We need the walls of discretion and self-control to guide the flaming of our love. The holiness of God is the regulating principle of his nature. The ocean of his mercy is bounded by the shores of his justice. Even if holiness be God's self-love, in the sense of God's self-respect or self-preservation, still this self-love must condition love to creatures. Only as God maintains himself in his holiness, can he have anything of worth to give; love indeed is nothing but the self-communication of holiness. And if we say, with J. M. Whiton, that self-affirmation in a universe in which God is inmanent is itself a form of self-impartation, still this form of self-impartation must condition and limit that other form of self-impartation which we call love to creatures. See Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 1:137– 155, 346-353; Patton, art. on Retribution and the Divine Goodness, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1878:8-16; Owen, Dissertation on the Divine Justice, in Works, 10:483-624.

(d) From God's eternal purpose of salvation, in which justice and mercy are reconciled only through the foreseen and predetermined sacrifice of Christ. The declaration that Christ is "the Lamb. . . slain from

the foundation of the world" implies the existence of a principle in the divine nature which requires satisfaction, before God can enter upon the work of redemption. That principle can be none other than holiness.

Since both mercy and justice are exercised toward sinners of the human race, the otherwise inevitable antagonism between them is removed only by the atoning death of the God-man. Their opposing claims do not impair the divine blessedness, because the reconciliation exists in the eternal counsels of God. This is intimated in Rev. 13:8 -"the Lamb that hath been slain from the foundation of the world." This same reconciliation is alluded to in Ps. 85:10 "Mercy and truth are met together; Righteousness and peace have kissed each other"; and in Rom. 3: 26-"that he might himself be just, and the justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus." The atonement, then, if man was to be saved, was necessary, not primarily on man's account, but on God's account. Shedd, Discourses and Essays, 279-The sacrifice of Christ was an "atonement ab intra, a self-oblation on the part of Deity himself, by which to satisfy those immanent and eternal imperatives of the divine nature which without it must find their satisfaction in the punishment of the transgressor, or else be outraged.” Thus God's word of redemption, as well as his word of creation, is forever "settled in heaven" (Ps. 119: 89). Its execution on the cross was "according to the pattern" on high. The Mosaic sacrifice prefigured the sacrifice of Christ; but the sacrifice of Christ was but the temporal disclosure of an eternal fact in the nature of God. See Kreibig, Versöhnung, 155, 156.

God requires satisfaction because he is holiness, but he makes satisfaction because he is love. The Judge himself, with all his hatred of transgression, still loves the transgressor, and comes down from the bench to take the criminal's place and bear his penalty. But this is an eternal provision and an eternal sacrifice. Heb. 9:14-"the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish unto God." Matheson, Voices of the Spirit, 215, 216-"Christ's sacrifice was offered through the Spirit. It was not wrung from a reluctant soul through obedience to outward law; it came from the inner heart, from the impulse of undying love. It was a completed offering before Calvary began; it was seen by the Father before it was seen by the world. It was finished in the Spirit, ere it began in the flesh, finished in the hour when Christ exclaimed: 'not as I will, but as thou wilt' (Mat. 26:39)."

Lang, Homer, 506" Apollo is the bringer of pestilence and the averter of pestilence, in accordance with the well-known rule that the two opposite attributes should be combined in the same deity." Lord Bacon, Confession of Faith: "Neither angel, man nor world, could stand or can stand one moment in God's sight without beholding the same in the face of a Mediator; and therefore before him, with whom all things are present, the Lamb of God was slain before all worlds; without which eternal counsel of his, it was impossible for him to have descended to any work of creation." Orr, Christian View of God and the World, 319-"Creation is built on redemption lines"which is to say that incarnation and atonement were included in God's original design of the world.

2.

The holiness of God the ground of moral obligation.

A. Erroneous Views. The ground of moral obligation is not

(a) In power, - whether of civil law (Hobbes, Gassendi), or of divine will (Occam, Descartes). We are not bound to obey either of these, except upon the ground that they are right. This theory assumes that nothing is good or right in itself, and that morality is mere prudence.

Civil law: See Hobbes, Leviathan, part i, chap. 6 and 13; part ii, chap. 30; Gassendi, Opera, 6: 120. Upon this view, might makes right; the laws of Nero are always binding; a man may break his promise when civil law permits; there is no obligation to obey a father, a civil governor, or God himself, when once it is certain that the disobedience will be hidden, or when the offender is willing to incur the punishment. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 67 — "Mere magnitude of scale carries no moral quality; nor could a whole population of devils by unanimous ballot confer righteousness upon their will, or make it binding upon a single Abdiel." Robert Browning, Christmas Eve, xvii-"Justice, good, and truth were still Divine if, by some demon's will, Hatred and wrong had been proclaimed Law through the world, and right misnamed."