those in the way of seeming righteous.  Jesus desires no righteousness for the pride of being righteous, any more than for advantage to be gained by it; therefore, while requiring such purity as the man, beforehand, is unable to imagine, he gives him all the encouragement he can.  He will not enhance his victory by difficulties—­of them there are enough—­but by completeness.  He will not demand the loftiest motives in the yet far from loftiest soul:  to those the soul must grow.  He will hearten the child with promises, and fulfil them to the contentment of the man.

Men cannot be righteous without love; to love a righteous man is the best, the only way to learn righteousness:  the Lord gives us himself to love, and promises his closest friendship to them that overcome.

God’s rewards are always in kind.  ’I am your father; be my children, and I will be your father.’  Every obedience is the opening of another door into the boundless universe of life.  So long as the constitution of that universe remains, so long as the world continues to be made by God, righteousness can never fail of perfect reward.  Before it could be otherwise, the government must have passed into other hands.

The idea of merit is nowise essential to that of reward.  Jesus tells us that the lord who finds his servant faithful, will make him sit down to meat, and come forth and serve him; he says likewise, ’When ye have done all, say we are unprofitable servants; we have done only that which it was our duty to do.’  Reward is the rebound of Virtue’s well-served ball from the hand of Love; a sense of merit is the most sneaking shape that self-satisfaction can assume.  God’s reward lies closed in all well-doing:  the doer of right grows better and humbler, and comes nearer to God’s heart as nearer to his likeness; grows more capable of God’s own blessedness, and of inheriting the kingdoms of heaven and earth.  To be made greater than one’s fellows is the offered reward of hell, and involves no greatness; to be made greater than one’s self, is the divine reward, and involves a real greatness.  A man might be set above all his fellows, to be but so much less than he was before; a man cannot be raised a hair’s-breadth above himself, without rising nearer to God.  The reward itself, then, is righteousness; and the man who was righteous for the sake of such reward, knowing what it was, would be righteous for the sake of righteousness,—­which yet, however, would not be perfection.  But I must distinguish and divide no farther now.

The reward of mercy is not often of this world; the merciful do not often receive mercy in return from their fellows; perhaps they do not often receive much gratitude.  None the less, being the children of their father in heaven, will they go on to show mercy, even to their enemies.  They must give like God, and like God be blessed in giving.