say, that has watched Puritanism,—the force which so strongly Hebraises, which so takes St Paul's writings as something absolute and final, containing the one thing needful,—handle such terms as grace, faith, election, righteousness, but must feel, not only that these terms have for the mind of Puritanism a sense false and misleading, but also that this sense is the most monstrous and grotesque caricature of the sense of St. Paul, and that his true meaning is by these worshippers of his words altogether lost?
Or to take another eminent example, in which not Puritanism only, but, one may say, the whole religious world, by their mechanical use of St Paul's writings, can be shown to miss or change his real meaning. The whole religious world, one may say, use now the word resurrection,—a word which is so often in their thoughts and on their lips, and which they find so often in St Paul's writings,—in one sense only. They use it to mean a rising again after the physical death of the body. Now it is quite true that St Paul speaks of resurrection in this sense, that he tries to describe and explain it, and that he condemns those who doubt and deny it. But it is true, also, that in nine cases out of ten where St Paul thinks and speaks of resurrection, he thinks and speaks of it in a sense different from this;—in the sense of a
