Jesus said:  “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.”  A tittle is a very small point in a letter.  Many Hebrew letters have dots or tittles.  A change in the tittles of the letters that compose a word changes the meaning of the word.  But Jesus says not a tittle shall pass from the law.  It will to eternity mean just what it means now, and will continue to be the bond of union with saints and angels forever in heaven.  It is all love.  Love is the alpha and the omega of the law; for the law is of God, and “God is love.”

Some people call MERCY God’s darling attribute.  They clothe her in a white robe down to the feet; they fill her eyes with the milk of human kindness and her mouth with the tender words of forgiveness.  But JUSTICE is a very different personification in their eye.  He is not only masculine as to gender, but all his looks and ways have an air of condemnation in them.  He is a dark-faced, frowning judge, forever watching with keenest eye not only the outward life of every man, but his mind and heart within; and is always ready to pass judgment against every one guilty of the slightest transgression and disobedience.

Such conceptions may not be sinful; but they are very far from agreeing with the revelations God has made of himself to men.  In these he discloses himself as “a God merciful and gracious; abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands; slow to anger; ready to pardon; and of great kindness.” (Nehemiah 9:17.) He is just, it is true.  But what is justice?  I answer that justice, in its highest and divinest sense, is equal good and equal right to all.  And does not this imply love?  I do unhesitatingly declare that there is quite as much love in the administrations of justice as there is in the bestowments of mercy.

In justice, however, the love appears in one light; and in mercy or grace the love appears in another.  God’s love for the holy angels and the spirits of just men made perfect is unmixed love, or the love of complacency.  This manifestation of his love is JUSTICE in its highest and purest sense.  God’s love for sinners who have transgressed his law, and who, on this account, are “miserable and wretched, and poor, and blind, and naked,” is mixed love.  It is mixed with pity, and is what is called the love of compassion.  This manifestation of his love is GRACE in its highest and purest sense.  This is just what our Lord Jesus Christ brought with him.  If all the race of mankind had continued righteous, as man was when first brought into being, the word GRACE would never have had a place in heaven’s vocabulary.  But since man has fallen, fallen into sin, into death both corporeal and spiritual, into sickness and sorrow, into labor for his bread, into hunger and thirst, and anxieties and cares, God has ever pitied him.  Instead of our Lord’s saying, “God so loved the world,” he might have said, “God so PITIED the world.”