"Righteousness," said the Judge, with his regulation court-room air, "has but one meaning. Philologically, legally, morally, and spiritually it means right doing. Legally, righteousness consists in obeying the law, and, by implication, refraining from offending the law. Morally, it is the very highest attainment possible to man; in its fulfillment every ordinary duty of man toward man is accomplished. Spiritually, either under the old dispensation or the new, its range of application is increased and its nature strengthened and elevated. By no correct line of reasoning, nor by any honest interpretation of the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, can the imperative obligation of man to do righteousness be set aside. Because the term is frequently used as a synonym for piety, there is no excuse for substituting religious belief for it, for true piety must include righteousness, and has no foundation without it. The religious sentiment may suddenly take possession of a man who has previously been unrighteous; but it is reputable and valuable only so far as it induces its subject to attain, not only to negative righteousness, the refraining from misconduct, which the law holds to be sufficient, but also to that positive, active virtue, enjoined by all the inspired teachers, which shall make a man actively virtuous, and from higher motives than that of merely escaping penalties and gaining rewards. Christ himself said of the moral law that every jot and tittle of it should be fulfilled." "And it _was_ fulfilled, on the Cross, when he cried, 'It is finished,'" interrupted Builder Stott. "That's so," said young Mr. Waggett, now thoroughly aroused. "If it hadn't been, we never could have been saved." "If the gentlemen really infer from Christ's last words that he meant to set aside the moral law," resumed Judge Cottaway, "the Church has been making a sad blunder during the twenty centuries which have followed the scene on Calvary. During all these years, she has been a teacher of morality; she has restrained, sometimes by persuasion, oftener by authority, sometimes by mistaken methods, sometimes in too lukewarm a manner, the baser passions of mankind, and encouraged the nobler qualities. In legal righteousness, the ancient Romans surpassed the world, and gave the models of all codes in operation to-day in the civilized world. And yet righteousness among the Romans, while wise, was often vindictive, and always wholly selfish. The smallest, most ignorant community in our neighborhood to-day has a higher, purer conception and practice of morality than the central city of the world had in the time of Christ, and though it is not under the special direction of the Church, its growth can be traced back to no other source."