What  he  says  —  whatever  he  means—  ^s


that  our  ,own  righteousness  —  in  every  item  and(


316  FAITH  AND  LIFE

degreejof  jt — is^  wholly  excluded  from  the  ground
of  our  salvation;  andjhe  righteousness  provided
by_God  in  Christ  is  the  sole  ground  of  our  accept-
ance  in  His  sight.  According  to  his  express
statements,  at  least,  we  are  saved  entirely  on  the
ground  of  an  alien  righteousness  and  not  at  all  on
the  ground  of  anything  we  are  or  have  done,  or
can  do, — be  it  even  so  small  a  matter  as  believing.
For  the  rest,  true  as  it  is  that  in  this  matter
Paul  was  involved  in  an  ineradicable  conflict  with
the  Judaizers — in  what  may  be  with  good  right
called  indeed  * '  the  conflict^  of  his  life ' ' — it  is
very  easy  to  press  beyond  the  mark  in  our  esti
mate  of  the  effect  of  this  conflict  upon  his  thought
or  even  upon  his  language.  After  jail,  Paul's  jn_-
terest  in  the  ground  of  human  salvation  was_a.
Ijositive  one,  rather  than  a  negative  one.  In  the
providence  of  God  he  was  led  to  develop  his  doc
trine  of  salvation  for  the  benefit  of  his  disciples  in
conflict  with  Judaizers;  and  we_yiew  it_ to-day
injthe  forms  of  statement  given  it  under  the  necej-
sities  ofjthat  controversy.  But  there  is  no  reason
to  believe  that  he  would  not  have  taught  precisely
that  same  doctrine  of  salvation,  though,  doubt
less,  in  different  forms  of  statement,  had  he  been
required  to  meet  erroneous  teaching  of  a  totally
different  kind,  proceeding  from  a  wholly  different
quarter — that  is,  if  we  really  believe  that  .the.
