What man, for
instance, who loves not his neighbour and yet wishes to keep the law,
will dare be confident that never by word, look, tone, gesture,
silence, will he bear false witness against that neighbour? What man
can judge his neighbour aright save him whose love makes him refuse to
judge him? Therefore are we told to love, and not judge. It is the sole
justice of which we are capable, and that perfected will comprise all
justice. Nay more, to refuse our neighbour love, is to do him the
greatest wrong. But of this afterwards. In order to fulfil the
commonest law, I repeat, we must rise into a loftier region altogether,
a region that is above law, because it is spirit and life and makes the
law: in order to keep the law towards our neighbour, we must love our
neighbour. We are not made for law, but for grace--or for faith, to use
another word so much misused. We are made on too large a scale
altogether to have any pure relation to mere justice, if indeed we can
say there is such a thing. It is but an abstract idea which, in
reality, will not be abstracted.
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