"It seems to me that unless hungering and thirsting after righteousness is a special virtue, it would not have been brought into this small group of qualities for which special blessings are promised. If it is of so much consequence, we ought, in gratitude to God, to be anxious to learn just what righteousness is. What we are to get for practicing it isn't of so much consequence. And as there aren't many of us who have had so much reason to study the meaning of the word as our friend Judge Cottaway has, I think the class will be willing to waive the regular order of answering for once, and hear from the Judge his opinion of this important word."
Every one looked at the Judge, and Deacon Bates remarked that he would assume that Mr. Buffle expressed the sentiments of every one.
"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."
"I've often heard," said Mr. Jodderel, "that so an Episcopalian admits the authority and divine origin of his Church, he can believe anything he pleases, and the address we have just listened to convinces me that the statement is true. Why, gentlemen, while nobody has a higher respect for Judge Cottaway's character and attainments than I have, it seems to me that he isn't much different from a Unitarian or any other freethinker that imagines he has some hold upon religion. Why, gentlemen, what's the good of Christ having lived and died at all, if we're still in bondage under the law? I don't mean that we're not to do right when we can—I want to do right as much as any man ever did—but if I've got to be bothered about all the little points that the Scribes and Pharisees fussed over, I don't see how much better off I am than they were."
"The gentleman is better off, as he expresses it," said the Judge, "because he has the benefit of the clearer light which Christ shed upon the law, and because through the life and death of Christ he has incentives to that love for the Source of all goodness which enables a man to overcome difficulties which, to the merely selfish moralist, are utterly insurmountable. It is thus that love becomes the fulfillment of the law, for it enables the weakest man to overcome his worst inclinations."
"What becomes, then, of the doctrine of justification by faith—the corner-stone of all Protestantism?" asked President Lottson.