RIGHT RELA TION OF REASON TO RELIGION 249 



called, in the strongest image Oriental life could 

 supply, the relation of the son of the house to the 

 father. This Jesus conceives to be the real tie 

 between God and all other spirits, and between all 

 spirits as morally united through God. The soul, 

 as Jesus conceives it, is the direct heir of all the 

 Divine fulness. It is literally and strictly free, and 

 has the spirit of inheritance, not simply of "adoption," 

 as St. Paul names it. This means, if it means any- 

 thing, that in Christ's view of God and the world of 

 spirits the individual soul stands, in reality, and also 

 in the mind of God himself, in quite the same rela- 

 tion of free self-activity toward God as the heir of 

 the Eastern house stands, when he comes into his 

 own, toward the father who went before him ; and 

 that God has the same active interest and purpose 

 toward the intelligent freedom of each soul as the 

 Eastern father has toward the son who is to represent 

 and direct the house when he himself is in the world 

 no more. In the most authentic utterances of Christ, 

 as the storms of the Higher Criticism have left them 

 unharmed,^ it is distinctly taught that God in govern- 

 ing the world employs none at all of the legalism 

 that characterises human administrations, rejects the 

 principle of retaliatory infliction altogether, letting 

 "his sun shine and his rain fall alike on the just 

 and on the unjust," and therefore relies entirely 



1 In the Sermon on the Mount, especially. 



