Justice and truth all men can have, and therefore all men are
required to have. About devotional feelings, about religious
observances, however excellent and blessed, we may deceive ourselves;
for we may put them in the place of sanctification, of righteousness
and true holiness. About justice and honesty we cannot deceive
ourselves; for they are sanctification itself, righteousness itself,
true holiness itself, the very likeness of God, and the very grace of
God.
But if so, they come from God; they are God's gift, and not any
natural product of our own hearts: and for that very reason we can
and must keep them alive in us by prayer. As long as we think that
the sentiment of justice and truth is our own, so long shall we be in
danger of forgetting it, paltering with it, playing false to it in
temptation, and by some injustice or meanness grieving (as St. Paul
warns us) the Holy Spirit of God, who has inspired us with that
priceless treasure.
But if we believe that from God, the fount of justice, comes all our
justice; that from God, the fount of truth, comes all our
truthfulness, then we shall cry earnestly to him, day by day, as we
go about this world's work, to be kept from all injustice, and from
all falsehood. We shall entreat him to cleanse us from our secret
faults, and to give us truth in the inward parts; to pour into our
hearts that love to our neighbour which is justice itself, for it
worketh no ill to its neighbour, and so fulfils the law.
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