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We commonly think of God's righteousness as contrary to His mercy; we supplicate His regard for us, personally, to qualify His regard for right. How hard it is to recognize that law is the minister of love, and love the fulfilling of law! Let us now consider some of the ways in which He reveals this to us.

I. PARENTAL RULE is one of these ways. The government of every pious household is, in measure, a revelation of the government of God. "Men are but children of a larger growth." We call ourselves the children of God, and this is much more than a merely endearing name. We have all a child's hold on God's affections, all a child's need of discipline and correction, all s child's power to grieve Him; and He has all a Father's kind determination to train us in right.

II. The tenderness of God's strict rule is revealed to us again in THE EXPERIENCE OF LIFE. It is hard to say whether most injury is done by over-strictness or by over-indulgence. Regard for right is the truest personal regard. God would shield men from woes unnumbered, from confusion of an unregulated will, from the conflict of passion, from the loathing that follows self-indulgence; and, therefore, has He made His laws so severe and certain, and, therefore, does He subdue us to His laws. Truth is not opposed to mercy; where there is no righteousness love works destruction. The experience of life prepares us to turn in gladness to our God, in gladness to rest in the rule of Him in whom we see that "mercy and truth are met together," etc.

III. This revelation, again, is granted in PRAYER. We mourn under some appointment of life, thinking God is punishing us in it for our sins; as we pray to Him, we learn that we are not being punished, but chastened. We ask that God's anger may be taken away and we forgiven; we see that we are already forgiven, and that what we thought was anger was only the fidelity of love.

IV. The tenderness of God's strict law is revealed to us in the Gospel of Christ. It is personal regard for man which we see pre-eminently in Jesus; yet who so much as He makes us feel the constraining bond of righteousness? He is filled with human sympathy; in the fulness of His pity He makes their sorrows, and their shame, and their struggles His own; but the influence of His associations is to make men feel more and more that they cannot escape the rule of God. He delivers them from the penalties of law; but it is to awaken in them a reverence for it, deeper and more solemn than any experience of penalty can be. He frees them from its pains by transforming its painfulness into an entire devotion to it. He shows them that personal regard is not at variance with regard for right; for the Father, who loved the Son, did not out of regard for Him turn aside from strictest law.

V. The closing verses declare THE BLESSED EFFECTS OF THIS DISCOVERY in a true and fruitful, in a trusting, an intelligent and obedient life; in a life hallowed by God's smile and crowned with His constant benediction.

(A. Mackennal, D. D.)

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KJV: Mercy and truth are met together; righteousness and peace have kissed each other.

WEB: Mercy and truth meet together. Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.