Upon this principle, then, that a Divine mission requires the proper man, we discern in Abraham the type which in modern language we call that of the man of thought, upon whom some deep truth has fastened with irresistible power, and whose mind dwells and feeds upon the conviction of it. The truth in the case of Abraham was the conception of one God. And we may observe that this great thought was accompanied in his mind, as it has been in all minds which have been profoundly convinced of it, by another which naturally attaches to it. We may recognize in Abraham's colloquy with God over the impending fate of Sodom something like the appearance of that great question which has always been connected with the doctrine of the unity of God-the question of the Divine justice. The doctrine of the unity of God raises the question of His justice for this reason, that-one God, who is both good and omnipotent, being assumed-we immediately think, Why should He who is omnipotent permit that which He who is in His own nature supremely good cannot desire-that is, evil? The thought, it is true, does not come out in any regular or full form in this mysterious colloquy; and yet it hovers over it; there are hints and forecastings of this great question, which is destined to trouble the human intellect, and to try faith, and to absorb meditation, as long as the world lasts. A shadow passes over, the air stirs slightly, and there is just that fragment of thought and questioning which would be in place as the first dawn of a great controversy. “That be far from thee, that the righteous should be as the wicked; shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
God's justice on offenders goes not always in the same path, nor the same pace; and he is not pardoned for the fault, who is for a while reprieved from the punishment; yea, sometimes the guest in the inn goes quietly to bed, before the reckoning for his supper is brought to him to discharge.1 [Note: Thomas Fuller, Holy and Profane State, v. 19.]
I believe that the justice of God is the righteousness of God, and that His righteousness requires righteousness in man, and can be satisfied with nothing else, and that punishment is God's protest that He is not satisfied. But it is evident that if this be so the judicial office is incomplete in itself, and must be subordinate to the teaching office, so that the condemnation of wrong may minister to the inculcation and acquisition of right.2 [Note: Letters of Thomas Erskine of Linlathen, ii. 208.]
