Journal: Bibliotheca Sacra
Volume: BSAC 28:110 (Apr 1871)
Article: Justice —What Is It?
Author: Leonard Withington

BSac 28:110 (April 1871) p. 235

Justice —What Is It?

Rev. Leonard Withington

Τίς εἴη ἡ παραβολὴ αὕτη.— Luke 8:9.

Some of our most obvious ideas are obvious only to a superficial attention. They grow obscure when we begin to think. They open a door into a dark temple; but every one to whom the door is open does not explore the recess. When an opponent denies the truism, though at first he may seem very absurd, yet his denial excites inquiry, and new difficulties only lead to new solutions. Suppose a column of some old temple should be found in the sands of Palmyra, and some one should deny that it was a column, but say it was brought there by foreign aid, and, on digging, should find that it rested on a stone pedestal, and that pediment on charcoal, and the charcoal on shells; every step of our investigation would go to remove our first impression, and to show that the column was placed there by art, and was a relic of a now desolated edifice. So some common words challenge investigation, and every step in the progress serves to modify our views and lead us to a longer examination and a profounder principle.

No word is more common in our discourses than “Justice”; and no word opens a sharper investigation, or leads to a longer train of thought.

Such a remarkable word calls for examination: First, we shall consider what justice is; and, secondly, consider its importance to a local polity, limited in extent and duration, and then to a whole universe of immortal beings.

BSac 28:110 (April 1871) p. 236

It is a growing idea. It resembles that fish in Hindu story, — one of the incarnations of Vishnu; first seen in a basin, then in a tub, then in a cistern, then in a lake, and last in the vast ocean; and, in whatever receptacle thrown, instantly filling them all. Justice is as essential to the moral world as space is to the material; as we survey it more, we better comprehend its vast extent. It passes through successive gradations. It begins with children in their family experience, and accompanies them in their sports and games. Most children have experienced this in the discipline of the family; however kind or just their parents may have been, it is impossible for them always to proportion their blame or punishment or their rewards exactly to the disposition of their child. Hence most children can remember occasions when they received more censure than they expected, and rewards which they felt they did not deserve; all signifying that they had formed an idea and expected the execution of strict justice. So in the sports and plays of boys you will frequently hear, as you pass along the streets, sharp disputes; and, in ...