But, this spirit is not confined to the Jew.  It pervades the human race.  Man is naturally a legalist.  He desires to be justified by his own character and his own works, and reluctates at the thought of being accepted upon the ground of another’s merits.  This Judaistic spirit is seen wherever there is none of the publican’s feeling when he said, “God be merciful to me a sinner.”  All confidence in personal virtue, all appeals to civil integrity, all attendance upon the ordinances of the Christian religion without the exercise of the Christian’s penitence and faith, is, in reality; an exhibition of that same legal unevangelic spirit which in its extreme form inflated the Pharisee, and led him to tithe mint anise and cummin.  Man’s so general rejection of the Son of God as suffering the just for the unjust, as the manifestation of the Divine clemency towards a criminal, is a sign either that he is insensible of his guilt, or else that being somewhat conscious of it he thinks to cancel it himself.

Still, think and act as men may, the method of God in the Gospel is the only method.  Other foundation can no man lay than is laid.  For it rests upon stubborn facts, and inexorable principles. God knows that however anxiously a transgressor may strive to pacify his conscience, and prepare it for the judgment-day, its deep remorse can be removed only by the blood of incarnate Deity; that however sedulously he may attempt to obey the law, he will utterly fail, unless he is inwardly renewed and strengthened by the Holy Ghost. He knows that mere bare law can make no sinner perfect again, but that only the bringing in of a “better hope” can,—­a hope by the which we draw nigh to God.

The text leads us to inquire:  Why cannot the moral law make fallen man perfect?  Or, in other words:  Why cannot the ten commandments save a sinner?

That we may answer this question, we must first understand what is meant by a perfect man.  It is one in whom there is no defect or fault of any kind,—­one, therefore, who has no perturbation in his conscience, and no sin in his heart.  It is a man who is entirely at peace with himself, and with God, and whose affections are in perfect conformity with the Divine law.

But fallen man, man as we find him universally, is characterized by both a remorseful conscience and an evil heart.  His conscience distresses him, not indeed uniformly and constantly but, in the great emergencies of his life,—­in the hour of sickness, danger, death,—­and his heart is selfish and corrupt continually.  He lacks perfection, therefore, in two particulars; first, in respect to acquittal at the bar of justice, and secondly, in respect to inward purity.  That, therefore, which proposes to make him perfect again, must quiet the sense of guilt upon valid grounds, and must produce a holy character.  If the method fails in either of these two respects, it fails altogether in making a perfect man.