So it is exactly also in the teaching of Paul. God stands, according to Paul, in a vital relation to all men. He is the author of the being of all; He cares for all; He has planted His law in the hearts of all. He stands thus in a relation toward all which is analogous to that of father to child. The Book of Acts is quite in accord with the Epistles when it makes Paul say of all men, "For we are also His offspring." But in Paul just as in Jesus the lofty term "Father" is reserved for a more intimate relationship. Paul accepts all the truth of natural religion; all the truth that reappears in the vague liberalism of modern times. But he adds to it the truth of the gospel. Those are truly sons of God, he says, who have been received by adoption into God's household, and in whose hearts God's Spirit cries, "Abba, Father." There was nothing narrow about such a gospel; for the door of the household of faith was opened wide to all. Jesus had died in order to open that door, and the apostle went up and down the world, enduring peril upon peril in order to bring men in. There was need for such service, because of sin. Neither in Jesus nor in Paul is sin covered up, nor the necessity of a great transformation concealed. Jesus came not to reveal to men that they were already children of God, but to make them God's children by His redeeming work. In the third place, Paul is like Jesus in presenting a doctrine of grace. Of course he is like the Jesus of the Gospels; for the Jesus of the Gospels declared that the Son of Man came to give His life a ransom for many. But He is even like the Jesus of modern reconstruction. Even the liberal Jesus taught a doctrine of grace. He taught, it for example, in the parables of the laborers in the vineyard and of the servant coming in from the field. In those two parables Jesus expressed His opposition to a religion of works, a religion which can open an account with God and seek to obtain salvation by merit.[92] Salvation, according to Jesus, is a matter of God's free grace; it is something which God gives to whom He will. The same great doctrine really runs all through the teaching of Jesus; it is the root of His opposition to the scribes and Pharisees; it determines the confidence with which He taught His disciples to draw near to God. But it is the same doctrine, exactly, which appears in Paul. The Paul who combated the legalists in Galatia, like the Jesus who combated the scribes and Pharisees, was contending for a God of grace. [92] Compare W. Morgan, _The Religion and Theology of Paul_, 1917, p. 155: "The essential import of Paul's doctrine [of justification by faith] is all contained in the two parables of the Pharisee and the publican and the servant coming in from the field."