Accordingly, the divine holiness has two aspects, the overwhelming wrath of His justice and the uplifting grace of His long-suffering. Without justice there could be no fear of God, no moral earnestness; without mercy only condemnation and perdition would remain. As the rabbis tell us, both justice and mercy had their share in the creation of man, for in man both good and bad appear and struggle for supremacy. All generations need the divine grace that they may have time and opportunity for improvement.(301) 7. Thus this conception of grace is far deeper and worthier of God than is that of Paulinian Christianity; for grace in Paul’s sense is arbitrary in action and dependent upon the acceptance of a creed, therefore the very reverse of impartial justice. In Judaism divine grace is not offered as a bait to make men believe, but as an incentive to moral improvement. The God of holiness, who inflicts wounds upon the guilty soul by bitter remorse, offers also healing through His compassion. Justice and mercy are not two separate powers or persons in the Deity, as with the doctrine of the Church; they are the two sides of the same divine power. “I am the Lord before sin was committed, and I am the Lord after sin is committed”—so the rabbis explain the repetition of the name JHVH in the revelation to Moses.(302) Chapter XIX. God’s Justice 1. The unshakable faith of the Jewish people was ever sustained by the consciousness that its God is a God of justice. The conviction that He will not suffer wrong to go unpunished was read into all the stories of the hoary past. The Babylonian form of these legends in common with all ancient folk-lore ascribes human calamity to blind fate or to the caprice of the gods, but the Biblical narratives assume that evil does not befall men undeserved, and therefore always ascribe ruin or death to human transgression. So the Jewish genius beheld in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah a divine judgment upon the depraved inhabitants, and derived from it a lesson for the household of Abraham that they should “keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice.”(303) The fundamental principle of Judaism throughout the ages has been the teaching of the patriarch that “the Judge of all the earth cannot act unjustly,”(304) even though the varying events of history force the problem of justice upon the attention of Jeremiah,(305) the Psalmists,(306) the author of the book of Job,(307) and the Talmudical sages.(308) “Righteousness and justice are the foundations of Thy throne”(309)—this is the sum and substance of the religious experience of Israel. At the same time man realizes how far from his grasp is the divine justice: “Thy righteousness is like the mighty mountains; Thy judgments are like the great deep.”(310)