1. The idea of moral conduct as work done for a master who will in due time pay wages for it, was a natural growth on Semitic soil. It grew up among the _fellahin_, to whom the day’s work brought the day’s wages, and whose work was scrutinized before the wages were paid. It is found in many passages of the New Testament, and not least of all in the discourses of our Lord. The ethical problems which had vexed the souls of the writers of Job and the Psalms, are solved by the teaching that the wages are not all paid now, but that some of them are in the keeping of the Father in heaven. The persecuted are consoled by the thought, “Great are your wages in heaven.”[414] Those who do their alms before men receive their wages in present reputation, and have no wages stored up for them in heaven.[415] The smallest act of casual charity, the giving of a cup of cold water, will not go without its wages.[416] The payment will be made at the return of the Son of Man, whose “wages are with him to give to every man according as his work is.”[417] So fundamental is the conception that “he that cometh to God must believe,” not only “that He is,” but also that He “pays their due to them that seek after Him.”[418] So also in the early Christian literature which moved still within the sphere of Syrian ideas. In the “Two Ways,” what is given in charity should be given without murmuring, for God will repay it:[419] in the Epistle of Barnabas, the conception of the paymaster is blended with that of the judge.[420] “The Lord judges without respect of persons: every one shall receive according as he has done: if he be good, his righteousness shall go before him: if he be wicked, the wages of his wickedness are before his face.” 2. God is at once the Lawgiver and the Judge. The underlying conception is that of an Oriental sovereign who issues definite commands, who is gratified by obedience and made angry by disobedience, who gives presents to those who please him and punishes those with whom he is angry. The punishments which he inflicts are vindictive and not remedial. They are the manifestation of his vengeance against unrighteousness. They are external to the offender. They follow on the offence by the sentence of the judge, and not by a self-acting law. He sends men _into_ punishment. The introduction into this primitive Christianity of the ethical conceptions of Greek philosophy, raised difficulties which were long in being solved, if indeed they can be said to have been solved even now. The chief of these difficulties were, (i.) the relation of the idea of forgiveness to that of law; (ii.) the relation of the conception of a Moral Governor to that of free-will.