This 'doctrine of the law' involves both its necessary function and its failure. There can be indeed to no thoughtful mind any doubt as to its necessary function. Conscience, individual and social, is continually going to sleep. It may be taken quite for certain that if Christ were amongst us in manifest power by His Spirit to-day--as He ought to be in the Church--our society as a whole would be smitten anew with a sense of sin, and not least of social sin[7]. Our familiar excuses for our selfish indulgence of our lusts, for our weak surrenders to passion and impulse, for our commercial dishonesties, for our failures to carry righteousness into politics, for our social injustices, for our selfishness and {258} luxury, for our scamped and half-hearted work--the familiar pleas of commercial or physical necessity, or political exigencies, or lack of knowledge, or absence of responsibility, or the influence of heredity--would dry up and wither on our lips under the powerful glare of the divine 'letter'--Thou shalt, Thou shalt not. God hath not 'given any man license to sin,' He hath given no man exemption from the trouble or the suffering or the loss involved in doing right. The obligation is peremptory to be just, to be merciful, to be honest, to be self-denying, to be pure. And if we do not care to take the trouble to be so, the only alternative is to have Christ for our adversary, and find at last the horrible depth of meaning which His words contain--'Thus and thus have ye made void the word of God by your tradition.' 'Inasmuch as ye did it not, depart, ye cursed, into eternal fire!' 'It is good for thee to enter into the kingdom of God maimed or halt or with one eye, rather than having two hands or feet or eyes to be cast into hell, where their worm dieth not and the fire is not quenched.' These and the like words are metaphorical--but metaphors which are intended to teach the heart only the more vividly because they are metaphorical. {259} Indeed, in each age, and therefore in ours, most fertile of excuses, we need the letter to kill us; the stern, outward, unmistakable announcement of God's will to assure us that God does not change with our whims or feelings, and cannot accommodate Himself to immoral necessities. In each age, and therefore in ours, most capable of moral self-deception, we need continual and forcible reminders that a quiet conscience is no adequate guarantee of agreement with God, unless we have taken pains to keep our conscience enlightened by meditating on the divine word.