GOD is Life, self-imparting; God is Light, self-revealing.  But what, in itself, is the Divine Nature, the communication of which is Life and the revelation of which is Light?  It is solely within the ethical sphere that the Epistle contemplates this question; and in the unity of God's moral being, two, and only two, elements are distinguished - Righteousness and Love.  From these the whole moral activity of the Divine Life proceeds; and, as a necessary consequence, it is by the impartation of these same qualities to human nature that the whole development of the regenerate life is determined.

    The words Righteous and Righteousness (di,kaioj, dikaiosu,nh) are used only in the broadest sense.  They express neither the Pauline idea of forensic status nor the specific virtue of justice, the voluntas suum cuique tribuendi, but the sum of all that is right in character and conduct.  Righteousness includes all of which sin is the negation.  "Every one that doeth righteousness is begotten of God" (2²⁹), but "He that doeth sin is of the devil" (3⁸); and again, "Whosoever doeth not righteousness is not of God" (3¹⁰), but "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth not sin" (3⁹).  Righteousness and sin divide between them the whole area of moral possibility.

    That such Righteousness belongs to, or rather is, the character of God, and that this is the basis of all Christian Ethics, is everywhere implied, and is categorically asserted in (2²⁹) eva.n eivdh/te o[ti di,kaio,j evstin ginw,skete¹ o[ti kai. pa/j o` poiw/n th.n dikaiosu,nhn evx auvtou/ gege,nnhtai.  "If ye know that He is righteous, know (or, ye know) that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of Him."

    The argument presupposes, in the first place, that Righteousness in God and in man is one and the same.  Like begets like; the stream has the quality of the fountain.  It presupposes, in the second place, that God, and He alone, is originally and essentially righteous there is no other source from which human righteousness can be derived.  The Righteousness that belongs to the inward character of God extends also to His action; it ensures rightness, unfailing self-consistency, in all that He does.  Thus, "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous (pisto,j evstin kai. di,kaioj) to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."  When, on the ground of Christ's propitiation, God forgives those who by confession make forgiveness possible, He is "righteous"; and because He is "righteous," He is "faithful."  He does not deny Himself (2 Tim. 2¹³).  He does what is according to His character, because He does what is right.

    But the activity of God's Righteousness, which is most conspicuous in the Epistle, is that in which it is directly and imperatively related to the whole moral action of His creatures.  The² Righteousness of God is that which renders sin inadmissible in them; inadmissible de jure in all, inadmissible de facto in those who are "begotten of Him."

    This the writer maintains with unexampled strenuousness and rigour.  The Righteousness of God is Law for all men and for all their actions.  "Sin is lawlessness; and every one that doeth sin doeth also lawlessness" (3⁴).  Nothing excites in St. John a warmer indignation than the supposition of compatibility between a life of actual wrong-doing and fellowship with the Righteous God.  "He that saith, I know Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him" (2⁴).  "Every one that doeth not righteousness is not of God" (3¹⁰), but is "of the devil" (3⁸).  Not less absolutely is it insisted that all who are "begotten of Him" and in fellowship with Him partake of His Righteousness.  "Every one that is begotten of God doth not commit sin, because His seed abideth in Him; and he cannot sin, because He is begotten of God" (3⁹).  "We know that every one that is begotten of God sinneth not; but he that was begotten of God keepeth himself, and the Wicked One toucheth him not" (5¹⁸).  It is an inveterate misreading of the Epistle that represents its author as being almost exclusively the "Apostle of Love."  Intense as is St. John's gaze into the heavenly abyss of the Divine Love, it seems impossible that any writing could display a more impassioned sense, than this Epistle does, of the tremendous imperative of Righteousness - a more rigorous intolerance of sin.  So long as the Church lays up this Epistle in its heart, it can never lack a spiritual tonic of wholesome severity.

    It is true, however, that in its doctrine, of Divine Righteousness, thoroughly spontaneous as it is, the Epistle makes no remarkable contribution to the development of New Testament thought.  It does no more than restate, in a peculiarly forceful fashion, and with all the glow of an original intuition, that conception of the Divine Nature which is fundamental to the whole Biblical revelation.  It must be conceded, moreover, that the assertion of the impeccability of the regenerate, into which the Writer, apparently at least, is led by the vehemence of the polemical interest, has tended to detract from the full usefulness of his teaching on this head.  However effectively the unique form of expression employed may have been adapted to the peculiarities of the immediate situation, it has been to later generations a paradox and a puzzle rather than a source of instruction or a practical stimulus.  It is far otherwise with the next of the great affirmations which constitute the Epistle's doctrine of God.

    Here the Epistle rises to the summit of all revelation; and, for the first time, enunciates that truth which not only is the profoundest, gladdest, most transforming that the mind can conceive, but is the beginning and the end the truth in which all truths have their ultimate unity, the innermost secret of existence.

    The New Testament word for Love, avga,ph, is virtually a coinage of Christianity.  It may be that it is an old word reminted; but it is one of the curiosities, at least, of philology that, while the verb avga,pa/n is fairly common in classical Greek from Homer downwards, the noun avga,ph is not found in any extant classical text; a single passage in Philo supplying the solitary instance of its extra-Biblical use.³  This does not prove, indeed, that it was unknown to non-literary Greek; and Deissmann may be right in supposing it to have been current in the Egyptian vernacular.⁴  The fact remains, however, that though the Greek language is rich in terms⁵ answering to "love" in its various shades of meaning, the comparatively unused avga,ph was, as it were, providentially reserved to express that purely ethical love the conception of which Christianity first made current among men.

    In the Epistle the words avga,ph and avga,pa/n are used to express an energy of the moral nature in God towards men, in men towards God, in men towards one another.  And one of its profound truths is that, in whatever relation it may operate, Love is one and the same.  All love has its origin in God; and human love is the moral nature of God incarnate in man.  "Every one that loveth is begotten of God" (4⁷).  And, since nothing moral can exist merely in the form of action, Love is, primarily, a disposition, a permanent quality of the Will, an inherent tendency of the moral nature.  The quality of this disposition is indicated by the fact that the object of Love in the human relation is invariably our "brother."⁶  We may disregard the fact that brotherhood here denotes not physical but spiritual relationship; for the spiritual presupposes the physical analogue.  And though, in fact, it is not brotherhood that makes Love (2¹¹ 3¹²), but Love that makes brotherhood, Love may be said to be that mutual disposition which ideally exists among brothers in the same family - the disposition to act towards our fellow-men as it is natural for those to do who have all interests in common, and who instinctively recognise that the full self-existence of each can be realised only through a larger corporate existence.  Love is the power to live not only for another, but in another, to realise one's own fullest life in the fulfilment of other lives.

    Love is such a disposition, and such a disposition of necessity issues in appropriate action.  In the Epistle nothing is more incisively dealt with than the fiction of a love that is inoperative in practice.  "Whoso hath this world's good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" (3¹⁷).  That which terminates in the mere self-satisfaction of "feeling good," whatever it may be, is something else than Love.  Love is the giving impulse.  And it rejoices, not only in imparting benefits, the cost of which is imperceptible and the bestowal of which is a sheer luxury: it expresses itself most fully in sacrifice.  It is that complete identification of self with another which makes it sometimes imperative, and always possible, to lay down even our lives for our brethren (3¹⁶), and which, indeed, realises an exquisite joy in suffering endured for the beloved's sake.

    In human history, Love has its one absolute embodiment in the self-sacrifice of Christ.  "Hereby know we love," says the Epistle in one of its pregnant sentences, hereby do we perceive what Love is, "in that He laid down His Life for us" (3¹⁶).  This is the Absolute of Love - its everlasting type and standard.  The world had never been without the dower of Love.  It had known love like Jacob's, like David's and Jonathan's, the patriot's and the martyr's self- devotion.  But till Jesus Christ came and laid down His Life for the men that hated and mocked and slew Him, the world had not known what Love in its greatness and purity could be.

    And the Love of Christ in laying down His Life for us is the manifestation, under the conditions of time and sense, of the Love of God, eternal and invisible.  God is Love; but what God is can be known only through His self-manifestation.  Wherein does this consist?  Not in word only.  It was not enough that He should say that He is Love (cf. 3¹⁸).  Not in the works of Nature and Providence alone.  These are but starlight.  The Epistle points us to the Sun (4^9,10).

    "Herein was manifested the Love of God toward us, that God hath sent His Son, His Only Begotten, into the world, that we might live through Him.  Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us, and sent His Son (as) a propitiation for our sins."⁷

    The first of these two verses emphasises the fact that God is Love, and exhibits the proof of it ("Herein was the Love of God manifested"); the second, the nature of Love itself, so manifested.  But, taking both in one view, we perceive that there are five factors which here contribute to the full conception of Divine Love.

    (1) First, the magnitude of its gift is set forth.  "His Son, His Only Begotten."  Elsewhere, the title of Our Lord is simply "the Son," the argument turning upon the relation of Father and Son; or "His Son," or the "Son of God," where the element of Divine power and dignity in the Sonship is made more prominent.  Here only,⁸ where he would display the infinite Love in the infinite Gift, does St. John use the full title, to.n ui`on auvtou/ to.n monogenh.  The essence of the manifestation is in the fact, not that God sent Jesus, but that Jesus, who was sent, is God's OnlyBegotten Son.  The full being of God is present in Him.  Other gifts are only tokens of God's Love.  Its all is given in Christ.  It is His own bleeding heart the Father lays on Love's altar, when He offers His Only-Begotten Son (cf. Gen. 22<sup>12</sup> and Rom. 8<sup>32</sup>).  (2) Secondly, the magnitude of the Love is exhibited in the person of the Giver.  It was a father who thus sent his only-begotten son; but that father was God (o` qeo,j, not o` path,r, as in 4¹⁴).  It was the Divine Nature whose whole wealth was poured out in the sacrifice of Calvary.  (3) Thirdly, the Love of God is manifested in the purpose of the mission of the Son.  This purpose is "that we might live through Him,"⁹ in which is implicitly contained the "should not perish" of John 3¹⁶.  The Love of God is thus seen to be His self-determination not only to rescue men from what is the sum of all evils, but to impart to them the supreme and eternal good, Life.  (4) Fourthly, the Love of God is manifested in the means by which this purpose is achieved, God shrinks not from the uttermost cost of Redemption.  His Son is sent as a "propitiation for our sins."  He not only dies heroically on our behalf, as the good shepherd lays down his life in defending his helpless flock from the fangs of the wolf or the assault of the robber; but, as a father drinks a full cup of sorrow and humiliation in striving to make atonement for the criminal profligacies of an unworthy son, even so, Almighty God, in the person of His Son, humbles Himself and suffers unto blood for the sins of His creatures.  Such is the Love of God to men; and what can be said of it, except that it is at once incredible that the fact should be so, and impossible that it should be otherwise?  It is what never did, never could, flit within the horizon of man's most daring dream; it is that which, when it is revealed, shines with self-evidencing light.  It needs no argument.  Apologetic is superfluous.¹⁰  Such Love is Divine.  The Being whose nature this is, is God.

    But these statements ought, perhaps, to have been reserved until we had considered the final moment in the full conception of Divine Love, its objects.  (5) "Herein is Love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us."  The interpretation popularly put upon this verse, as equivalent to "Herein is love, that, although we did not love God, God loved us," is grammatically untenable,¹¹ and it misses the point in one of the profoundest sentences in the Epistle.  The Apostle does not say that we have not loved God.  What he says is that we have loved God, but that this is not love to call love.  That we have loved God is nothing wonderful.  The ineffable mystery of Love reveals itself in this, that God has loved us, who are so unworthy of His Love, and so repulsive to all the sensibilities, so to say, of His moral nature.  The full glory of the Divine Love is seen in the fact that it is wholly self-created and self-determined.

    It may be permissible to elucidate this truth somewhat more fully.  As we have seen, Love is that mysterious power by which we live in the lives of others, and are thus moved to benevolent and even self-sacrificing action on their behalf.  Such love is, after all, one of the most universal things in humanity.  But always natural human love is a flame that must be kindled and fed by some quality in its object.  It finds its stimulus in physical instinct, in gratitude, in admiration, in mutual congeniality and liking.  Always it is, in the first place, a passive emotion, determined and drawn forth by an external attraction.  But the Love of God is the ever-springing fountain.  Its fires are self-kindled.  It is love that shines forth in its purest splendour upon the unattractive, the unworthy, the repellent.  Herein is Love, in its purest essence and highest potency, not in our love to God, but in this, that God loved us.  Hence follows the apparently paradoxical consequence, upon which the Epistle lays a unique emphasis, that our love to God is not even the most godlike manifestation of Love in us.  It is gratitude for His benefits, adoration of His perfections - our response to God's love to us but not its closest reproduction in kind.  In this respect, indeed, God's love to man and man's love to God form the opposite poles, as it were, of the universe of Love, the one self-created and owing nothing to its object, the other entirely dependent upon and owing everything to the infinite perfection of its object; the one the overarching sky, the other merely its reflection on the still surface of the lake.  And it is, as the Epistle insists, not in our love to God, but in our Christian love to our fellow-men, that the Divine Love is reproduced, with a relative perfection, in us (4^12,19,20; cf. Eph. 4³²-5²).

    Such is the conception of the Love of God that St. John sets before us.  In this entirely spontaneous, self-determined devotion of God to sinful men, this Divine passion to rescue them from sin, the supreme evil, and to bestow on them the supreme good, Eternal Life: in this, which is evoked by their need, not by their worthiness, which goes to the uttermost length of sacrifice, and bears the uttermost burden of their self-inflicted doom - in this, which is for ever revealed in the mission of Jesus Christ, God's Only-Begotten Son - is Love.

    This is at once the norm and the inspiration of all that is most truly to be called Love.  Love is no merely passive, involuntary emotion awakened in one person by another.  In the Epistle, as everywhere in the New Testament, it is a duty (4^7,11), a subject of commandment (2^7,8 3^23b 4²¹), and is, therefore, a moral self-determination which, in man, must often act in direct opposition to natural instinct and inclination.  And this is a self-determination to do good, good only, and always the highest good possible (4⁹), without regard to merit or attractiveness in the object (4^10a), and that even at highest cost to self¹² (4^10b).

    Yet such a definition would be adequate only to one half of what Love is.  Love is not solely benevolence issuing in beneficence.  In its highest as well as in its lowest forms it contains the element of appetency.  In its lower forms Love is predominantly an egoistic and appropriative impulse; in its highest form it becomes that marvellous power which reconciles and identifies the apparently opposite principles, egoism and altruism.  One finds one's richest satisfaction in the happiness of others, one's own fullest self-realisation in promoting theirs.  Love seeks not its own, yet makes all things its own.  It is the utmost enrichment and enlargement of Life.  "My beloved is mine" - a possession of which nothing can rob me.  The more perfect the love, the more completely achieved is this mysterious result, this self-enlargement by self-communication, this self-losing which is the real self-finding.  If I love my neighbour as myself I regale myself with his prosperity, even as I share the bitter cup of his adversity; I am honoured in his praise, promoted in his advancement, gladdened in his joy, even as I am humbled in his shame or distressed in his sin.  In short, we might define the highest Love as that state of the moral nature in which the egoistic and the altruistic principles coalesce and are fused into one living experience.  Such is the perpetual miracle of Love.  Such is it in man.  Such also is it in God, as it is delineated in the New Testament.  No less than benevolence, God's Love displays the element of infinite desire and yearning quest.  It seeks the lost as the shepherd seeks the strayed sheep upon the mountains; as a father's heart yearns after a wayward son.  It becomes the source of an infinite Divine joy over the sinner that repenteth; and because of the joy, it endures the cross and despises the shame.  It is in God's Love, and transcendently in His self-sacrifice for the sinful and lost, that the Divine Life comes to its fullest self-realisation.  And, though it is the self-communicating aspect of Divine Love that alone is presented in the Epistle, yet, always, Love is that for which self-communication is the fullest self-assertion, and all that Love is, is ascribed in its supreme perfection to God.  God is Love.

    (1) He is Love essentially.  Like the sunlight which contains in itself all the hues of the spectrum, Love is not one of God's attributes, but that in which all His moral attributes have their unity.  The spring of all His actions, the explanation of all He does or ever can do is Love.  (2) Therefore, also, His Love is universal.  If there were any of His creatures whom He did not love this would prove that there was something in His nature that was not Love, but was opposed to Love.  Whatever be the mysteries of the past, present, or future, God is Love.  That is St. John's great truth.  He does not attempt to reconcile with it other and apparently conflicting truths in his theological scheme; possibly he was not conscious of any need to do so.  But of this he is sure - God is Love.  That fact must, in ways we cannot yet discern, include all other facts. No being is unloved.  Nothing happens that is not dictated or overruled by Love.  (3) And if essential and universal, the Love of God is also eternal and unchangeable.  It does not depend on any merit or reciprocation in its object, but overflows from an infinite fulness within itself.  Our goodness did not call it forth; neither can our evil cause it to cease.

We may refuse to the Divine Love any inlet into our nature, may refuse to let it have its way with us, may so identify ourselves with evil as to turn it into an antagonistic force.  This is the most awful fact in human life.  But the sun is not extinguished, though shutters be closed and blinds drawn at midday; and though we may shut out God from our hearts, no being can by any means shut himself out from the great Heart of God.  God is Love.  It is the surest of all intuitions; the strongest cornerstone of the Christian Faith.  Having known and believed the Love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord - the Love that came not by water only, but by blood also - we can tolerate no other conception of the Divine.  (4) From all this it follows that we cannot ultimately conceive of God as a single and simple personality.  Love, no more than Thought, can exist without an object.  If we say that God was eternally the object of His own Love, we deny to Him the supreme prerogative of Love, self-communication.  If we say that, either in time or from eternity, God created the universe in order to have an object for His Love, we make the Universe as necessary to God as God is to the Universe.  His Love in creation was not the overflowing of the fountain, but the craving of the empty vessel.  It is at this point that the Trinitarian doctrine becomes most helpful.  It enables us to think of the Life of God not as an eternal solitude of self-contemplation and self-love, but as a life of communion: - the Godhead is filled with Love, the Love of the Father and the Son in the unity of the Spirit.  So far from being a burden to faith, the doctrine of the Divine Trinity sheds a welcome light upon the mystery of God's Eternal Being, both as self-conscious personality and as Love.  It is a mystery, but a mystery which "explains many other mysteries, and which sheds a marvellous light on God, on nature, and on man."  It is the "consummation and only perfect protection of Theism"; and it will be ultimately found not only to influence every part of our theological system, but to be the vital basis of Christian Ethics.

    God is Love; God is Righteous.  The two conceptions appear to be equally fundamental; and a problem of no small perplexity is presented by the inevitable inquiry - what is their relation to each other?  When it is said that God is Love, the only possible interpretation seems to be that Love is that essential moral quality of the Divine Nature in which all God's purposes and actions have their origin.  But when it is said that God is Righteous, it seems equally inevitable to regard His Righteousness as determining all His purposes and ways.  Both statements, moreover, are intuitively felt to be true.  We can assert the one and then, the next moment, assert the other without any sense of contradiction.  How, then, are we to think of the moral nature of God?  Is it a unity, or is it a duality?  Is it, to use a mathematical analogy, a circle having a single centre, or is it an ellipse formed around two different foci?

    The latter solution of the problem has been most widely and authoritatively maintained.  Righteousness and Love, it is held, are essentially different and mutually independent.  They are not conterminous, Righteousness occupying the whole area of moral character and obligation, while Love covers only a part of it.  God is righteous in all His ways; in some only is He loving.  Righteousness is a necessity with Him; Love is secondary, and can be exercised only when it does not conflict with Righteousness.  Let us consider whether this view is tenable.

    (1) In the first place, Love is included in Righteousness.  A distinction is drawn between duties of Right and duties of Love.  But there certainly are duties of Love.  Love is not a mood or inclination that may or may not be exercised at one's option.  The maxim is laid down by Dorner¹³ that duties of Right precede duties of Love -  "We must be just before we are generous."  But in what is this precedence grounded?  Assuredly, not in any essential difference in the nature of the obligation.  We are not under one sort of obligation to be honest and under another and inferior obligation to be kind. It is a mere and inevitable fact, indeed, that is expressed by the axiom, "We must be just before we are generous."  We cannot in reality be generous before we are just.  If we act as if we could, we are generous with what is not ours but another's; that is to say, we are not generous at all.  The apparent self-communication is altogether unreal.  And it is because the temptation to forget this is, for many persons, peculiarly strong that the maxim, "We must be just before we are generous," is so needful.  But morally it is no whit less imperative that a man be generous according to his real ability, than that he be honest; that he forgive an injury, than that he refrain from committing one.  Such difference as exists between duties of Right and duties of Love is not qualitative but quantitative.  To succour the needy is as truly a duty as to pay one's mercantile debts; but to be dishonest is a more flagrant violation of the law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself," than to be ungenerous.  The distinction between the two classes of duties is only a convenient expression of certain moral measurements, which experience has taught mankind to make, as to the duties that are the more universal and important, and the neglect of which works greater and wider injury.

    The duties of love, then, are included in the area of Righteousness.  According to all Christian Ethics, indeed, Love is the chief part of that sum of moral obligation which is Righteousness.  (According to Matt. 22^35-40 and Rom. 13^8-10 it is the whole.)  Love itself is the supreme duty, and the withholding of it the worst sin.

    (2) But, further, it is clear that nothing that is truly called Love can be outside the area of Righteousness.

    For since, ex hypothesi, Love always seeks for its object the greatest good possible to it, and cannot consent to sacrifice the greatest to any lower good, it seeks for moral beings always the same thing that Righteousness seeks - their highest moral excellence.  Human love may be blind and mistake its way, and give instead of bread a stone; but when enlightened it cannot, if true to its own ends, seek aught less than the best.  And, on the other hand, enlightened Love never becomes an impulse to undutiful conduct in the person who loves, never permits the supposition that we can promote another's good by means that involve inferior conduct on our own part; on the contrary, it becomes the strongest impulse to realise the full moral worth of one's own personality.

    All that is truly called Love is included in the area of Righteousness.  (3) We come to a more disputed question when we ask - Is all Righteousness included in the area of Love?  Can there be action that is righteous in which there is no Love?  Or could there exist a person who, though destitute of Love, possessed the attribute of Righteousness?  Without attempting to show in detail that all duties can be resolved into diverse applications of the law of Love, one may state the general question: - whether, if Love were non-existent, consciousness of any moral obligation whatsoever is conceivable. The answer it seems to me, is that it is not conceivable.  If my normal and proper state of soul towards my neighbour were one of absolute indifference to his well-being, I could no more stand in any moral relation to him than to a stone.  We find, in fact, that this is the case.  In those abnormal natures in which benevolence seems to be completely extinct, the whole moral consciousness seems to be equally a blank.  It is true, indeed, that there are social virtues, such as truthfulness, honour, equity, that are frequently regarded as existing in an entirely self-centred form - "I shall keep honour with that scoundrel, not because it is due to him, but because it is due to myself."  But such an attitude (not to say that it is not that of Christian morality) is not really so self-centred as it seems.  He who thus acts is importing into the particular instance a feeling derived from his sense of obligation to mankind in general.  He acts upon a code and habit of honour which are to him of such worth that he would not be compensated for their violation by any satisfaction derived from paying a rascal in his own coin.  But this code and habit of honour are not self-centred.  The self-respect to which honourable dealing with our neighbour is felt to be due is reflex.  We could not even be conscious that such conduct is necessary to self-respect, unless we were, in the first place, conscious that it is due from us to our neighbour.

    It is in respect to Justice, and especially punitive Justice, that the question we are considering comes to its acutest point.  And without discussing the ultimate origin of the idea of Justice, I again submit that if we were so constituted that the interests of our fellow-men were nothing to us, it would be impossible that we should be sensible of any obligation to justice, equity, or impartiality in our dealings with them.  Whether or not the idea of Justice is directly derivable from Love as the distributive method by which Love deals with competing interests in such wise as to advance the best interests of all without detriment to any, it is at least evident that Justice is the instrument of Love.  Love demands that we do justly.  Nor is this less true of punitive Justice.  In the popular understanding of the words, the Love of God is regarded as acting only in the direct communication of good; while the judicial, punitive, and destructive energies of the Divine Nature, which are evoked by evil, are assigned exclusively to Righteousness.  But this is a false antithesis, based upon an inadequate and one-sided conception of Love.  Love, as seeking the highest good of its objects, is constrained to oppose, and to oppose passionately, all that works for the defeat of its purpose.  Love is not merely a sweet, suave, and benignant disposition.  Love has in it the sharpness of the sword and the fierceness of flame.  Love hates hates - evil, which is opposed to Love.  Love in the right-minded parent hates evil in the child; in the right-minded ruler, hates evil in the society which he governs, and encounters it with the full force of his opposition and displeasure.  Love cares for social as well as for individual well-being.  The more truly loving a parent is, the more inflexible will he be in rebuking and correcting evil within the home; in exercising justice, and preventing one member of the household from acting wrongfully towards another; and, when the interests of the individual or of the whole family require it, in punishing and making an example of the wrong-doer, and even, should he prove incorrigible, in excluding him from the home.  Yet all this Righteousness will he do for the ends and in the spirit of Love.  Even so, the Love of God must assert itself in infinitely intense antagonism to all that works for the defeat of the eternal purpose of Love - Love that seeks the highest moral excellence of His creatures - for which He created and governs the universe.  It is in accordance with that purpose that right shall be rewarded and wrong punished; nay, this must be inherent in the constitution of a universe created and ruled by Love.  In the interests of the sinner himself sin must be punished. Even if there be no hope of his amendment, in the interests of the moral universe God must still encounter sin with the full force of His displeasure.  Yet all this Righteousness God will do for the ends and in the spirit of Love.

    It is a strong point in the Calvinistic tradition to maintain that punitive justice cannot be derived from Love.  Yet it is not only consistent with, it is a necessity of God's changeless purpose of Love that wrong be punished.  And I fail to conceive the nature of a Justice that has no connection with this purpose.  There is, doubtless, a genuine moral satisfaction in the humiliation of triumphant wrong, in beholding the evil-doer receive the due reward of his deeds; but this satisfaction is ultimately derived from sympathy with the central purpose of Love; it is the satisfaction of beholding the beneficent moral order of the universe reasserting itself repairing the breaches that have been made in it, and guarding itself against similar infringements in the future.  And, again, I fail to conceive how, apart from such a purpose of Love, the punishment of wrong would be right or rational; how, if the infliction of suffering let us suppose the case - could be of no possible benefit either to the sinner himself or to any other being in the universe, present or future, there would still remain a ground of reason or of obligation for inflicting it.  Nay more, I fail to conceive how a being without Love, wholly indifferent to the well-being of others, could ever be conscious of Justice as a moral obligation, or be capable of finding any moral satisfaction in it.  If, indeed, this were possible, if there could exist a being of whose moral consciousness Justice were the sole content,¹⁴ for whom Love did not exist, or existed only as a secondary and accidental attribute, of whom it could be said¹⁵ that "Love is an attribute which he may exercise or not as he will," that "Mercy is optional with him," that "he is bound to be just, he is not bound to be generous," such a being would be morally of an infra-human type and vastly remote in character from the God who is revealed in Jesus Christ.  This whole theory rests, in fact, upon the idea which, as has been already said, is the negation of Christian Ethics, that Love is something over and above what is strictly right, a work of supererogation, a comely adornment of character, but not the very fibre of which its robe is woven.

    The conclusion, then, at which I arrive is that Righteousness and Love are conterminous in area; that as little can Righteousness exist without Love as Love, truly so called, without Righteousness.  But the question remains, how we are to conceive their relation to one another.

    An interesting and fruitful view - true, I believe, as regards the fundamental position, though I cannot find myself in agreement with the conclusion reached - is that presented by Dorner.¹⁶  "The essence of morality consists in an unchangeable but also eternally living union of a righteous will and a loving will.  The two together and inseparably one constitute a holy love."  Dorner then construes Righteousness as the necessity of self-assertion in the Divine Nature, Love as the necessity of self-communication; and he has no difficulty in showing that without self-assertion ethical self-communication would be impossible.  It would cease to be voluntary, and would become a merely instinctive benevolence, akin to a physical expansion like that of light or heat.  But then it would seem to be equally true that, without self-communication, ethical self-assertion is impossible.  The self-assertion or righteousness of God is that in all He does He must be true to Himself, must act according to the voluntary self-determination of His own moral nature.  But that nature is holy love; and only by acting in holy love can God truly assert Himself.  This, however, Dorner refuses to admit, maintaining that ethical self-assertion is possible without self-communication.  And when we ask wherein this consists, he replies that it is in God's assertion of His non-communicable attributes of His self-existence, His glory and majesty, of "Himself in the distinction which, to thought and in fact, exists between Him and the non-self-existing universe."  "It is a guarding of the difference between Him and the world, even when He imparts Himself to it and wills to be self-imparting."  But this is far from satisfactory.  It amounts to this, that in communicating all of His own nature that is communicable, life, physical, rational, and spiritual, - God is both loving and righteous; while in asserting what is incommunicable - His self-existence and supremacy as Creator and Lawgiver - He is not loving, but is exclusively righteous.  But this does not seem to yield that living, inseparable union of a loving and a righteous will which Dorner rightly posits as "the essence of morality."  For those of God's attributes that are not directly communicable may yet be employed for the ends of Love; as, for example, His self-existence for Creation, His power and omniscience for beneficent providential rule, His moral authority for the moral education and discipline of His creatures; and, if they were not so employed, His will would not be to its utmost possibility a loving will God would not be Love.  But if God's assertion of all His attributes is directed to the highest good of His creatures; if, as Christianity teaches, it is in blessing them, and, above all, in employing all His attributes, communicable and non-communicable, for their rescue from the death of Sin unto Life Everlasting; if Christ is the moral image of the Invisible God, and if it is in that He "counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant," that the Divine Self is supremely asserted and the difference between God and the world supremely manifested, - then His fullest self-communication is also His highest self-assertion.  The twain constitute that living and inseparable union of a loving and a righteous will which is the essence of all morality.  And, in short, a moral nature cannot be thus divided into compartments.  Separate attributes exist only as abstractions.  If a person is perfectly loving, he is loving always and in everything; if he is perfectly righteous, he is righteous always and in everything; and if he is both perfectly loving and perfectly righteous, he is loving in his righteousness and righteous in his love.

    The weakness of Dorner's argument lies in regarding Love as exclusively self-communication, and not rather as that in which self-communication and self-assertion coalesce.  But accepting his definition of the essence of morality as the living, inseparable union of a loving and a righteous will, we may, perhaps, reach a conception of the correlation of the Righteousness and the Love of God along the following lines.

    1.  The perfect moral state is that in which self-communication is also self-assertion.  This is the mind that was in Christ Jesus (Phil. 2^5-8).  Such Love, therefore, is the content of all moral excellence (Matt. 22^35-40, Rom. 13^8-10).  It is the inner principle without which even actions that are formally right are morally worthless (I Cor. 13¹⁴).  All graces and virtues are either special manifestations of Love, as gentleness, compassion, reverence; or are constitutional qualities of the will - as truthfulness, obedience, gratitude, perseverance, courage - or of the mind - as wisdom - which are ancillary to the perfect work of Love.  All duties spring ultimately from the one duty of Love.  Even the duty of justice or equity does so; for, if we were so constituted as to be conscious of no obligation to seek the well-being of others, there would be no reason, except a prudential one, for doing to others as we would that they should do to us.

    2.  Because Love is that power by which self-communication and self-assertion coalesce in the unity of Life, it is not only the sum of all moral excellence, but the source of the highest moral satisfactions.  It is by means of Love that Life runs its full circle, as if a river should carry back to its source all the wealth its fertilising influences have produced.  And because it thus unites the egoistic and the altruistic principles, it is also the highest impulse to all duty.  It is as much the supreme and universal power in the moral realm as gravitation is in physics.

    3.  As being, thus, - the content of and the impulse to all moral excellence, and, at the same time, the source of the highest moral satisfactions, Love is the summum bonum.  Without it no real good is possible; and there is no blessedness conceivable beyond that of a society of persons all united in perfect love.  Each communicates himself to all and all to each.  Each seeks the joy and well-being of all, and, in turn, enjoys the joy and is blessed by the well-being of all.  Such a society would be the perfect organism for the perfect life; and such an organism God is fashioning and perfecting in the Body of Christ.

    4.  God is Love; and, because He is Love, it is His Will to impart this highest good to all beings capable of participating in it.  Because He is Love, it is His Will to make Love the law of His universe, His gift to all beings made after His own likeness, and His requirement from them.  And this, I take it, is the Righteousness of God - that He asserts Love, the law of His own Life, as the law of all life that is derived from Him.  This assertion necessarily acts in two directions; in the communication of Love, the highest good; and in antagonism to all that is opposed to it.  These modes of action are not derived from conflicting or mutually independent principles, but are diverse applications of the same principle.  If the eternal purpose of God is to produce beings capable of the highest good and to impart it to them, then, by His very character as Love, He is also constrained so to order the universe that whatever tends to the defeat of that purpose shall meet His unceasing antagonism.  This will take the form of what we call punitive Justice.  And what makes the punitive Justice of God so terrible is that it is the Justice of one who is Love, and that even Infinite Love can find no alternative.

    Thus, then, we may see that the moral nature of God is a unity, not a duality.  Righteousness is Love in the imperative mood; is Love legislative and administrative; is the consistency of Love to its own high and eternal end.  The Righteousness of God is that He makes Love the law of His own action, and that He, in His Love, can tolerate nothing less and nothing else as His purpose and requirement for His creatures than that what He acts upon they also shall act upon, and that the character He possesses they also shall possess.  And nothing else than this is Righteousness in man.  Duty is the obligation which is inherent in the very nature of Love and could not conceivably exist in a being destitute of Love, to seek the highest attainable good of all whom one's conduct affects, that is to say, to be faithful to Love's highest ends.  And when, in popular language, Duty is contrasted with Love, the true significance of this is that Duty is the consistency of Love to its higher end, in the face of egoistic inclination or of temptation to decline upon some lower end.

    It will be seen that the view here presented involves these fundamental positions.  (1) All moral life is necessarily social.  As self-consciousness is psychologically possible only by the distinction of the ego from the non-ego, so moral self-consciousness is awakened only in our relation to other personalities.  An absolutely solitary unit (without God or neighbour) could have no moral consciousness.  Our moral ideal of self is our conception of the ideal man in all his relations to God and his fellows; and apart from such relations moral self-love is inconceivable.  (2) The supreme end is Life.  All that we call moral excellence - Righteousness or Love - is the "Way of Life," the means to that fullest, highest Life which St. John calls Eternal.  For it is only by our entering with that vivid, spontaneous response, which is at once self-communication and self-assertion, into all the relations, human and divine, amid which we have our being, that Life is realised.  Hence, while it has just been said that Life is the summum bonum, this may be also said of moral excellence, that is, of Love.  Love is not only the way to Life, it is the living of the Eternal Life.  (3) All this implies, as has been shown, that the Divine Nature is not a simple unity, but, in some ineffable sense, a fellowship.