a difficulty to understand the Apostle's course of thought. But I
shall hope to show you that the true understanding of the context, as
well as of the words I have taken for my text, requires the
exhortation and not the affirmation.

One more remark of an introductory character: is it not very
beautiful to see how the Apostle here identifies himself, in all
humility, with the Christians whom he is addressing, and feels that
he, Apostle as he is, has the same need for the same counsel and
stimulus that the weakest of those to whom he is writing have? It
would have been so easy for him to isolate himself, and say, 'Now you
have peace with God; see that you keep it.' But he puts himself into
the same class as those whom he is exhorting, and that is what all of
us have to do who would give advice that will be worth anything or of
any effect. He does not stand upon a little molehill of superiority,
and look down upon the Roman Christians, and imply that they have
needs that he has not, but he exhorts himself too, saying, 'Let all
of us who have obtained like precious faith, which is alike in an
Apostle and in the humblest believer, have peace with God.'

Now a word, first, about the meaning of this somewhat singular
exhortation.

There is a theory of man and his relation to God underlying it, which
is very unfashionable at present, but which corresponds to the
deepest things in human nature, and the deepest mysteries in human
history, and that is, that something has come in to produce the
totally unnatural and monstrous fact that between God and man there
is not amity or harmony. Men, on their side, are alienated, because
their wills are rebellious and their aims diverse from God's purpose