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56 —nor, after spending all the night in debauchery, profess to lecture to the young men on moral philosophy in the morning, and take pay for it. That's what vexes him.

Phil. And you, Menippus—are you not sorry to die?

Men. How should I be, when I hastened to death without any call to it? But, while we are talking, don't you hear a noise as of some people shouting on the earth?

Merc. Yes, I do—and from more than one quarter. There's a public rejoicing yonder for the death of Lampichus; and the women have seized his wife, and the boys are stoning his children; and in Sicyon they are all praising Diophantus the orator for his funeral oration upon Crato here. Yes—and there is Damasias's mother wailing for him amongst her women. But there's not a soul weeping for you, Menippus—you're lying all alone.

Men. Not at all—you'll hear the dogs howling over me presently, and the ravens mournfully flapping their wings, when they gather to my funeral.

Merc. Stoutly said. But here we are at the landing-place. March off, all of you, to the judgment-seat straight; I and the ferryman must go and fetch a fresh batch.

Men. A pleasant trip to you, Mercury. So we'll be moving on. Come, what are you all dawdling for? You've got to be judged, you know; and the punishments, they tell me, are frightful—wheels, and stones, and vultures. Every man's life will be strictly inquired into, I can tell you.


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, that had it not been for the opportunity which the banquet afforded of developing the convivial qualities of the guests, and drawing out, by the assistance of generous wine, their most kindly sentiments, and most engaging feelings, it is very probable that the appointment for the transaction of the business would never have been made at all.

There certainly was every appearance that "the great business," as the Marquess styled it, would not be very much advanced by the cabinet dinner at Château Desir. For, in the first place, the table was laden "with every delicacy of the season," and really when a man is either going to talk sense, fight a duel, or make his will, nothing should be seen at dinner, save rump steaks, and the lightest Bourdeaux. And, in the second place, it must be candidly confessed, that when it came to the point of all the parties interested meeting, the Marquess's courage somewhat misgave him. Not that any

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 reason occurred to him, which would have induced him to yield one jot of the theory of his sentiments, but the putting them in practice rather made him nervous. In short, he was as convinced as ever, that he was an ill used man of first rate talent, but then he remembered his agreeable sinecure, and his dignified office, and he might not succeed.—"The thought did not please.""

But here they were all assembled; receding was impossible; and so the Marquess dashed off a tumbler of Burgundy, and felt more courageous. His Lordship's conduct did not escape the hawk eye of one of his guests, and Vivian Grey was rather annoyed at seeing the Marquess's glass so frequently refilled. In fact the Marquess was drinking deep, and deep drinking was neither my Lord Carabas' weak, nor strong point, for he was neither habitually a toper, nor one who bore wine's sweet influence like a docile subject.

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Rh The Cynic Menippus, introduced to us in this amusing dialogue,—"a dog of the real old breed," as Lucian calls him, "always ready to bark and bite" —is a great favourite with the author, and reappears very frequently in these imaginary conversations. He was a disciple of Diogenes, and had been a usurer in earlier life, but having lost his wealth by the roguery of others, at last committed suicide. The banter with which he treats Charon in the little dialogue which follows is very humorous.

Charon (calling after Menippus, who is walking off). Pay me your fare, you rascal!

Menippus. Bawl away, Charon, if it's any satisfaction to you.

Cha. Pay me, I say, for carrying you across!

Men. You can't get money from a man who hasn't got it.

Cha. Is there any man who has not got an obolus?

Men. I know nothing about anybody else; I know I haven't.

Cha. (catching hold of him). I'll strangle you, you villain! I will, by Pluto! if you don't pay.

Men. And I'll break your head with my staff.

Cha. Do you suppose you are to have such a long trip for nothing?


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 The venison was so prime, that not one word relative to the subject of their meeting was broached during the whole dinner; and Lord Beaconsfield, more than once, thought to himself, that had he ever been aware that business was so agreeable, he too would have been a statesman. But the haunch at last vanished, and the speech from the throne commenced.

"My Lords and Gentlemen," began the Marquess, "although I have myself taken the opportunity of communicating to you singly my thoughts upon a certain subject, and although, if I am rightly informed, my excellent young friend has communicated to you more fully upon that subject; yet, my Lords and Gentlemen, I beg to remark, that this is the first time, that we have collectively assembled to consult on the possibility of certain views, upon the propriety of their nature, and the expediency of their adoption." Here the bottle passed, and the Marquess took a bumper.

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 "My Lords and Gentlemen, when I take into consideration the nature of the various interests, of which the body politic of this great empire is regulated; (Lord Courtown, the bottle stops with you) when I observe, I repeat, this, I naturally ask myself what right, what claims, what, what, what,—I repeat, what right, these governing interests have to the influence which they possess? (Vivian, my boy, you 'll find Champagne on the waiter behind you.) Yes, gentlemen, it is in this temper (the corkscrew's by Sir Berdmore,) it is, I repeat, in this temper, and actuated by these views, that we meet together this day. Gentlemen, to make the matter short, it is clear to me that we have all been under a mistake; that my Lord Courtown, and my Lord Beaconsfield, and Sir Berdmore Scrope, and my humble self, are not doing our duty to our country, in not taking the management of its affairs into our own hands! Mr. Vivian Grey, a gentleman with whom you are

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58 Men. Let Mercury pay for me, then; it was he put me on board.

Mercury. A very profitable job for me, by Jove! if I'm to pay for all the dead people.

Cha. (to Men). I shan't let you go.

Men. You can haul your boat ashore, then, for that matter, and wait as long as you please; but I don't see how you can take from me what I don't possess.

Cha. Didn't you know you had to pay it?

Men. I knew well enough; but I tell you I hadn't got it. Is a man not to die because he has no money?

Cha. Are you to be the only man, then, who can boast that he has crossed the Styx gratis?

Men. Gratis? Not at all, my good friend,—when I baled the boat, and helped you with the oar, and was the only man on board that didn't howl.

Cha. That has nothing to do with the passage-money; you must pay your obolus. It's against all our rules to do otherwise.

Men. Then take me back to life again.

Cha. Yes—a fine proposal—that I may get a whipping from Æacus for it.

Men. Then don't bother.

Cha. Show me what you've got in your scrip there.

Men. Lentils, if you please, and a bit of supper for Hecate.

Cha. (turning to Mercury in despair). Where on earth did you bring this dog of a Cynic from, Mercury?—chattering, as he did, all the way across, cutting his jokes and laughing at the other passengers, and singing while they were all bemoaning themselves.


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 all acquainted,—Mr. Vivian Grey is younger than myself, or you, my Lord Courtown, or you, my Lord Beaconsfield, or even you, I believe. Sir Berdmore. Mr. Vivian Grey has consequently better lungs than any of us, and he will, I make no doubt, do, what I would, if I were of his age, explain the whole business to us all; and now my Lords, and Gentlemen, let us have a glass of Champagne."

A great deal of "desultory conversation," as the reporters style it, relative to the great topic of debate, now occurred; and, as the subject was somewhat dry, the Carabas Champagne suffered considerably. When the brains of the party were tolerably elevated, Vivian addressed them. The tenor of his oration may be imagined. He developed the new political principles, demonstrated the mistake under the baneful influence of which they had so long suffered, promised them place, and power, and patronage, and personal consideration, if they

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Rh Merc. Didn't you know, Charon, who your passenger was? A most independent fellow, who cares for nobody. That's Menippus.

Cha. (shaking his fist at him as he moves of). Well, let me only catch you again!

Men. (looking back and laughing). Ay, if you catch me; but 'tis hardly likely, my good friend, that you'll have me for a passenger twice.

Mercury. Let us have a reckoning, if you please, Mr Ferryman, how much you owe me up to this present date, that we mayn't have a squabble hereafter about the items.

Charon. By all means, Mercury—nothing like being correct in such matters; it saves a world of unpleasantness.

Merc. I supplied an anchor to your order—twenty-five drachmæ.

Cha. That's very dear.

Merc. I vow to Pluto I gave five for it. And a row-lock thong—two obols.

Cha. Well, put down five drachmæ and two obols.

Merc. And a needle to mend the sail. Five obols I paid for that.

Cha. Well, put that much down too.

Merc. Then, there's the wax for caulking the seams of the boat that were open, and nails, and a rope to make halyards of,—two drachmæ altogether.

Cha. Ay; you bought those worth the money.

Merc. That's all, if I've not forgotten something in


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60 my account. And now, when do you propose to pay me?

Cha. It's out of my power, Mercury, at this moment; but if a pestilence or a war should send people down here in considerable numbers, you can make a good thing of it then by a little cheating in the passage-money.

Merc. So I may go to sleep at present, and put up prayers for all kinds of horrible things to happen, that I may get my dues thereby?

Cha. I've no other way of paying you, Mercury, indeed. At present, as you see, very few come our way. It's a time of peace, you know.

Merc. Well, so much the better, even if I have to wait for my money a while. But those men in the good old times—ah! you remember, Charon, what fine fellows used to come here,—good warriors all, covered with blood and wounds, most of them! Now, 'tis either somebody who has been poisoned by his son or his wife, or with his limbs and carcase bloated by gluttony,—pale spiritless wretches all of them, not a whit like the others. Most of them come here owing to their attempts to overreach each other in money matters, it seems to me.

Cha. Why, money is certainly a very desirable thing.

Merc. Then don't think me unreasonable, if you please, if I look sharp after your little debt to me.

When the Cynic philosopher has been admitted


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And the sum of these four $${}_n\!(ab) + {}_n\!(ac) + {}_n\!(bc) - 2 {}_n\!(abc)$$, is the measure of the probability that some two at the least, out of these three lives, will survive the term.

144. Let the number of years purchase that an annuity on the life of A is worth, that is, the present value of L. 1, to be received at the end of every year during the continuance of that life, be denoted by $$\text{A}$$; while the present value of an annuity on any number of joint lives A, B, C, &c. that is, of an annuity which is to continue during the joint existence of all the lives, but to cease with the first that fails, is denoted by $$\text{ABC}$$, &c.

Then will the value of an annuity on the joint continuance of the three lives A, B, and C, be denoted by $$\text{ABC}$$.

And on the joint continuance of the two A and B, by $$\text{AB}$$.

145. Also Iet $${}^t\!\text{A}$$ and $$\text{A}_t$$ denote the value of annuities on lives respectively older and younger than A, by $$t$$ years: While $${}^t\!(\text{ABC}\ \&\text{c.})$$ designates the value of an annuity on the joint continuance of lives $$t$$ years older than A, B, C, &c. respectively; and $$(\text{ABC}\ \&\text{c.})_t$$ that of an annuity on the same number of joint lives, as many years younger than these respectively.

146. Let $$\frac{1}{1+r}$$, the present value of L. 1 to be received certainly at the expiration of a year, be denoted by $$v$$.

Then will $$v^n$$ be the present value of that sum certain to be received at the expiration of $$n$$ years.

But if its receipt at the end of that time, be dependent upon an assigned life A, surviving the term, its present value will, by that condition, be reduced in the ratio of certainty to the probability of A surviving the term, that is, in the ratio of unity to $${}_n\!a$$, and will therefore be $${}_n\!an^n$$.

In the same manner it appears, that if the receipt of the money at the expiration of the term be dependent upon any assigned lives, as A, B, C, &c. jointly surviving that period, its present value will be $${}_n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n$$.

147. Let us denote the sum of any series, as $${}_1\!(abc)v + {}_2\!(abc)v^2 + {}_3\!(abc)v^3 + \&\text{c.}$$ thus, $$S {}_n\!(abc)v^n$$, by prefixing the italic capital $$S$$ to the general term thereof. Then, from what has just been advanced, it will be evident, that $$\text{ABC }\&\text{c.} = S {}_n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n$$.

When there are but three lives A, B, and C; this becomes $$\text{ABC} = S {}_n\!(abc)v^n.$$

When there are but two, A and B, it becomes $$\text{AB} = S {}_n\!(ab)v^n$$.

And in the same manner it appears, that for a single life A, $$\text{A} = S {}_n\!av^n$$.

148. $${}_n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n = \frac{{}^n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n}{abc\ \&\text{c.}}$$ (138), where the denominator ($$abc$$ &c.) is constant, while the numerator varies with the variable exponent $$n$$. And the most obvious method of finding the value of an annuity on any assigned single or joint lives, is to calculate the numerical value of the term $${}^n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n$$ for each value of $$n$$, and then to divide the sum of all these values by $$abc$$ &c.; for $$\frac{S {}^n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n}{abc\ \&\text{c.}} = S {}_n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n = \text{ABC}\ \&\text{c.}$$

In calculating a table of the values of annuities on lives in that manner, for every combination of joint lives, it would be necessary to calculate the term $${}^n\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v^n$$ for as many years as there might be between the age of the oldest life involved and the oldest in the table; and the same number of the terms $${}^n\!av^n$$ for any single life of the same age.

But this labour may be greatly abridged as follows:

149. Given $${}'\!(\text{ABC},\ \&\text{c.})$$, the value of an annuity on any number of joint lives, to determine $$\text{ABC}$$, &c. that of an annuity on the same number of joint lives respectively one year younger than them.

If it were certain that the lives $$\text{ABC}$$, &c. would all survive one year, the proprietor of an annuity of L. 1, dependent upon their joint continuance, would, at the expiration of a year, be in possession of L. 1, (the first year’s rent,) and an annuity on the same number of lives, one year older respectively than $$\text{ABC}$$, &c. therefore, in that case, the required present value of the annuity would be $$v \left [ 1 + {}'\!(\text{ABC},\ \&\text{c.}) \right ]$$, (146.)

But the probability of the lives A, B, C, &c. jointly surviving one year, is less than certainty, in the ratio of $${}_\prime\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})$$ to unity; therefore $$\text{ABC }\&\text{c.} = {}_\prime\!(abc\ \&\text{c.})v[1 + {}'\!(\text{ABC}\ \&\text{c.})]$$.

150. ''Corol. 1. When there are but three lives, A'', B, and C, this becomes $$\text{ABC} = {}_\prime\!(abc)v[1 + {}'\!(\text{ABC})]$$.

151. ''Corol. 2. When there are only two, A and B'', $$\text{AB} = {}_\prime\!(ab)v[1 + {}'\!(\text{AB})]$$.

152. ''Corol. 3. And for a single life A'', it appears, in the same manner, that $$\text{A} = {}_\prime av(1 + {}'\!\text{A})$$.

153. Hence, in logarithms, we have these equations, Rh


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 Lamp. A lamp casts bright light in a 15-‐‑foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. Once lit, it burns for 6 hours on a flask (1 pint) of oil.

Lantern, Bullseye. A bullseye lantern casts bright light in a 60-‐‑foot cone and dim light for an additional 60 feet. Once lit, it burns for 6 hours on a flask (1 pint) of oil.

Lantern, Hooded. A hooded lantern casts bright light in a 30-‐‑foot radius and dim light for an additional 30 feet. Once lit, it burns for 6 hours on a flask (1 pint) of oil. As an action, you can lower the hood, reducing the light to dim light in a 5-‐‑foot radius.

Lock. A key is provided with the lock. Without the key, a creature proficient with thieves' tools can pick this lock with a successful DC 15 Dexterity check. Your GM may decide that better locks are available for higher prices.

Magnifying Glass. This lens allows a closer look at small objects. It is also useful as a substitute for flint and steel when starting fires. Lighting a fire with a magnifying glass requires light as bright as sunlight to focus, tinder to ignite, and about 5 minutes for the fire to ignite. A magnifying glass grants advantage on any ability check made to appraise or inspect an item that is small or highly detailed.

Manacles. These metal restraints can bind a Small or Medium creature. Escaping the manacles requires a successful DC 20 Dexterity check. Breaking them requires a successful DC 20 Strength check. Each set of manacles comes with one key. Without the key, a creature proficient with thieves' tools can pick the manacles' lock with a successful DC 15 Dexterity check. Manacles have 15 hit points.

Mess Kit. This tin box contains a cup and simple cutlery. The box clamps together, and one side can be used as a cooking pan and the other as a plate or shallow bowl. Oil.

Oil usually comes in a clay flask that holds 1 pint. As an action, you can splash the oil in this flask onto a creature within 5 feet of you or throw it up to 20 feet, shattering it on impact. Make a ranged attack against a target creature or object, treating the oil as an improvised weapon. On a hit, the target is covered in oil. If the target takes any fire damage before the oil dries (after 1 minute), the target takes an additional 5 fire damage from the burning oil. You can also pour a flask of oil on the ground to cover a 5-‐‑foot-‐‑square area, provided that the surface is level. If lit, the oil burns for 2 rounds and deals 5 fire damage to any creature that enters the area or ends its turn in the area. A creature can take this damage only once per turn.

Poison, Basic. You can use the poison in this vial to coat one slashing or piercing weapon or up to three pieces of ammunition. Applying the poison takes an action. A creature hit by the poisoned weapon or ammunition must make a DC 10 Constitution saving throw or take 1d4 poison damage. Once applied, the poison retains potency for 1 minute before drying.

Potion of Healing. A character who drinks the magical red fluid in this vial regains 2d4 + 2 hit points. Drinking or administering a potion takes an action.

Pouch. A cloth or leather pouch can hold up to 20 sling bullets or 50 blowgun needles, among other things. A compartmentalized pouch for holding spell components is called a component pouch (described earlier in this section).

Quiver. A quiver can hold up to 20 arrows. Ram, Portable. You can use a portable ram to break down doors. When doing so, you gain a +4 bonus on the Strength check. One other character can help you use the ram, giving you advantage on this check.

Rations. Rations consist of dry foods suitable for extended travel, including jerky, dried fruit, hardtack, and nuts. Rope.

Rope, whether made of hemp or silk, has 2 hit points and can be burst with a DC 17 Strength check.

Scale, Merchant's. A scale includes a small balance, pans, and a suitable assortment of weights up to 2 pounds. With it, you can measure the exact weight of small objects, such as raw precious metals or trade goods, to help determine their worth.

Spellbook. Essential for wizards, a spellbook is a leather-‐‑bound tome with 100 blank vellum pages suitable for recording spells.

Spyglass. Objects viewed through a spyglass are magnified to twice their size.

Tent. A simple and portable canvas shelter, a tent sleeps two.

Tinderbox. This small container holds flint, fire steel, and tinder (usually dry cloth soaked in light oil) used to kindle a fire. Using it to light a torch—or anything else with abundant, exposed fuel—takes an action. Lighting any other fire takes 1 minute. Torch. A torch burns for 1 hour, providing bright light in a 20-‐‑foot radius and dim light for an additional 20 feet. If you make a melee attack with a burning torch and hit, it deals 1 fire damage.

Adventuring Gear


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 the fight against human selfishness and narrowness and for a finer, juster law, we are brothers—at the remotest, half-brothers.

Chesterton isn't a Socialist—agreed! But now, as between us and the Master of Elibank or Sir Hugh Bell or any other Free Trade Liberal capitalist or landlord, which side is he on? You cannot have more than one fight going on in the political arena at the same time, because only one party or group of parties can win.

And going back for a moment to that point about a Utopia, I want one from Chesterton. Purely unhelpful criticism isn't enough from a man of his size. It isn't justifiable for him to go about sitting on other people's Utopias. I appeal to his sense of fair play. I have done my best to reconcile the conception of a free and generous style of personal living with a social organisation that will save the world from the harsh predominance of dull, persistent, energetic, unscrupulous grabbers tempered only by the vulgar extravagance of their wives and sons. It isn't an adequate reply to say that nobody stood treat there, and that simple, generous people like to beat their own wives and children on occasion in a loving and intimate manner, and that they won't endure the spirit of Mr. Sidney Webb.


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 Spellcasting

An event in your past, or in the life of a parent or ancestor, left an indelible mark on you, infusing you with arcane magic. This font of magic, whatever its origin, fuels your spells.

Cantrips

At 1st level, you know four cantrips of your choice from the sorcerer spell list. You learn additional sorcerer cantrips of your choice at higher levels, as shown in the Cantrips Known column of the Sorcerer table.

Spell Slots The Sorcerer table shows how many spell slots you have to cast your spells of 1st level and higher. To cast one of these sorcerer spells, you must expend a slot of the spell’s level or higher. You regain all expended spell slots when you finish a long rest.

For example, if you know the 1st-‐‑level spell burning hands and have a 1st-‐‑level and a 2nd-‐‑level spell slot available, you can cast burning hands using either slot.

Spells Known of 1st Level and Higher You know two 1st-‐‑level spells of your choice from the sorcerer spell list.

The Spells Known column of the Sorcerer table shows when you learn more sorcerer spells of your choice.

Each of these spells must be of a level for which you have spell slots. For instance, when you reach 3rd level in this class, you can learn one new spell of 1st or 2nd level. Additionally, when you gain a level in this class, you can choose one of the sorcerer spells you know and replace it with another spell from the sorcerer spell list, which also must be of a level for which you have spell slots.

Spellcasting Ability

Charisma is your spellcasting ability for your sorcerer spells, since the power of your magic relies on your ability to project your will into the world. You use your Charisma whenever a spell refers to your spellcasting ability. In addition, you use your Charisma modifier when setting the saving throw DC for a sorcerer spell you cast and when making an attack roll with one.

Spell save DC = 8 + your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier

Spell attack modifier = your proficiency bonus + your Charisma modifier

Spellcasting Focus

You can use an arcane focus as a spellcasting focus for your sorcerer spells.

Sorcerous Origin

Choose a sorcerous origin, which describes the source of your innate magical power, such as Draconic Bloodline.

Your choice grants you features when you choose it at 1st level and again at 6th, 14th, and 18th level.

Font of Magic

At 2nd level, you tap into a deep wellspring of magic within yourself. This wellspring is represented by sorcery points, which allow you to create a variety of magical effects.

Sorcery Points

You have 2 sorcery points, and you gain more as you reach higher levels, as shown in the Sorcery Points column of the Sorcerer table. You can never have more sorcery points than shown on the table for your level.You regain all spent sorcery points when you finish a long rest. Flexible Casting

You	can use your sorcery points to gain additional spell slots, or sacrifice spell slots to gain additional sorcery points. You learn other ways to use your sorcery points as you reach higher levels.

Creating Spell Slots. You can transform unexpended sorcery points into one spell slot as a bonus action on your turn. The Creating Spell Slots table shows the cost of creating a spell slot of a given level. You can create spell slots no higher in level than 5th.

Any spell slot you create with this feature vanishes when you finish a long rest. Creating Spell Slots

Converting a Spell Slot to Sorcery Points. As a bonus action on your turn, you can expend one spell


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Rh of their position, and it was not long before Saadiah came into conflict with the Exilarch. The struggle ended in the Gaon’s exile from Sura. During his years of banishment, he produced his greatest works. He arranged a prayer-book, wrote Talmudical essays, compiled rules for the calendar, examined the Massoretic works of various authors, and, indeed, produced a vast array of books, all of them influential and meritorious. But his most memorable writings were his “Commentary on the Book of Creation” (Sefer Yetsirah) and his masterpiece, “Faith and Philosophy” (Emunoth ve-Deoth).

This treatise, finished in the year 934, was the first systematic attempt to bring revealed religion into harmony with Greek philosophy. Saadiah was thus the forerunner, not only of Maimonides, but also of the Christian school-men. No Jew, said Saadiah, should discard the Bible, and form his opinions solely by his own reason-


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A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 6

 * To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: 'Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: "God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get."
 * 'But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner."
 * 'I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.’
 * Luke 18:9-14

Jack and Joe went to church one evening. Jack knew his way around. Well, he'd been brought up in the place, hadn't he? Sunday School from the age of three, and all that. He knew his parents would be there, too, in one of the other pews, watching him proudly. He wanted to make sure they saw him. So he walked right up to the front and sat in the first row. He bowed his head and shut his eyes for a few moments. He'd seen dad do that; he knew it looked holy.

Jack, you see, took his religion very seriously. He carried a big Bible and knew all the latest choruses. He liked the image of being a highly principled young man, too. Unlike many of his peers he never consumed alcohol or cigarettes. He was also extremely self-righteous about sex. No messing around behind the school bike sheds for him. He and his girlfriend had intellectual conversations about vegetarianism and the nuclear issue. Instead of going to discos they went to prayer meetings at the youth leader's house.

As Jack reflected on his life in those few moments before the service began, he glowed with inward satisfaction. How reassuring it was to know that you were a good Christian! Nothing to confess, nothing to feel ashamed about, nothing...

Good grief, it couldn't be! Out of the comer of his eye he caught sight of a familiar figure who had just entered the church behind him. 'It's Joe,' he thought incredulously. 'What on earth is he doing here? He's no right to come to church, the old hypocrite!' But if he had been able to read Joe's mind he would have realized that precisely the same thoughts were going through his head too.

What right, Joe thought, did he have to be in church? He hadn't been in church for years. In fact he felt thoroughly uncomfortable in the place. He kept looking around nervously as if he expected somebody in authority to appear at any moment and tell him he had no business to be there. He was unsure where to sit, or if there was some special ritual he should observe before committing himself to stay. Didn't Christians cross themselves before they sat down in church? Or was that Muslim? He really couldn't remember. In the end he slid cautiously into the very back row. 'Oh no,' he wailed inwardly, 'that's Jack in the front, and he's seen me. I'll never live this down in the neighbourhood now.' He crumpled up, his legs tucked under the pew, his head sagging down between his knees, trying to hide.

As you may have guessed, Joe was not the religious sort. In fact he had a reputation as a bit of a lad. If there was trouble with the police on the estate, you could bet on the fact that he'd be involved. Nicotine stained his fingers and there was a distinct smell of beer on his breath. In fact he'd been in the pub down the road only fifteen minutes before.

Why on earth had he come to church? Was it because of the row he'd had that morning at home, thrown out on his ear for stealing his mother's housekeeping again? Or was it because of the sense of humiliation he was feeling as a result of Julie slapping him around the face last night and telling him in unambiguous four-letter words to get out of her life, just because she discovered he was also sleeping with Karen? Yes, it was both of those things and neither of them. Somehow, as he tried unsuccessfully to drown his sorrows in that pint, he'd just been overcome with a sense of how dirty he was, and what a mess he'd made of things. Suddenly, sitting in that back pew, guilt and shame brought tears to his eyes, a blush to his cheek and a lump to his throat. 'Oh, God,' he sighed quietly, into clenched fists. 'Oh, God.'

I tell you, it was Joe who went home a believer that night, not Jack.

 * For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:14).

We said earlier that one of the great problems in reading the parables today is the difficulty of recovering the shock factor that they undoubtedly possessed for Jesus' original hearers. Too often, familiarity with these stories has disarmed them of their punch for us, deprived us of the sting in the tale.

Take the story of the good Samaritan which we studied in chapter 2. The very word 'Samaritan' has become proverbial for goodness. So when Jesus tells us that it was a Samaritan who stopped to help the injured man, we're not surprised, still less outraged. There's no scandalized intake of breath at the mere mention of the word, as there certainly would have been when the parable was first told. The hammer-blows the parable delivered to the prejudices of Jesus' original audience are reduced, for us, to the caress of a reassuring feather. We know all about good Samaritans.

Even more is that true of the parable to which we turn in this chapter. I have retold it in modem dress in an attempt to help us feel more powerfully the contradiction of conventional expectation that it represents.

Think about it for a moment. Two men went up to the temple to pray. A self-evidently laudable ambition, you would have thought. Both came to pray and both went home believing sincerely that they had prayed. Yet the extraordinary lesson of this parable is that while one of them truly did have dealings with God in his devotions that day, the other, in spite of his avowed good intentions, was conducting a soliloquy all the time he was in the temple.

The text which our translation renders 'prayed about himself' (verse 11) could equally be translated, 'prayed to himself'. The prayer was indeed a soliloquy. That alone should be sufficient to worry us, shouldn't it? Yet Jesus says it is possible to come to church thinking that you want to meet with God, and leave believing you have done so, and all the time be self-deceived. What a disturbing challenge to the reality of our own spiritual experience that must be!

But the paradox is even sharper than that. And it's here that the modem reader so easily forfeits the scandalous element in the story. For Jesus tells us that the man whose prayer was heard was a tax man. For us, that occasions no surprise. In our society, representatives of the Inland Revenue, generally speaking, are pillars of the Establishment; we make occasional sarcastic jokes about them, but none of us would question their respectability.

Not so this tax man. In Jesus' day a tax man was a crook, a treacherous, despicable collaborator with the Roman enemy, who made himself rich by exploiting his fellow countrymen. Think of some provincial mayor in France lining his fat pockets during the days of the Occupation by licking the boots of the Nazis, and you get the feel of how Jews felt about tax men in the first century. They didn't make sarcastic jokes about tax men, they lynched them. They spat on them when they passed and cursed the ground they walked on. Yet God heard the tax man's prayer—the very person they would never have listened to, let alone helped, in a thousand years.

On the other hand, the man who went home unheard, Jesus tells us, was a Pharisee. Once again, as modem readers we so easily miss the outrage of such a suggestion. For if we know from childhood that Samaritans are proverbially good, then even more do we know from childhood that Pharisees are proverbially bad. As soon as Jesus identifies this man as a Pharisee, we conclude that he's going to be the villain of the piece. All kinds of negative and damning associations flow into our minds at the mere mention of the word 'Pharisee'.

Once again, that would not have been the reaction of Jesus' original hearers. For the Pharisee was the churchman, the Bible student; fundamentalist in his view of Scripture, scrupulous in his observance of God's law, a patriot, a philanthropist, a model of holiness, an enthusiastic supporter of Mary Whitehouse, 'Keep Sunday Special' and the Moral Majority.

This is one parable the shock factor of which we just can't afford to miss. Jesus has got something vital to teach us here about the whole nature of religion, of prayer, of guilt, of righteousness; and we dare not allow our twentieth-century images of tax men and Pharisees to blunt the force of his warnings.

So try hard with me to get under the surface of this parable into the shoes of Jesus' original hearers, and benefit from it.

First, let's ask a question. What was so wrong with the Pharisee's prayer and right about the tax man's prayer, that God's assessment of them should be so radically different from our expectations? I don't think the answer is difficult to spot. Notice how the Pharisee begins. 'Lord,' he says, 'I thank you that I am not like other men.'

Can you imagine a man going to his doctor and saying, 'Doctor, I want you to know that I am in superb health; my lungs are functioning perfectly, my muscle tone is ideal, my digestion couldn't be better, my circulation is A-1, I have no infections, no ailments, no diseases. In short, Doctor, unlike the rest of the miserable specimens I observe in your waiting-room, there's absolutely nothing wrong with me at all.'

What could a doctor do for such a man? He would leave the surgery unchanged, unbenefited in any way. There's little point in visiting at all, except to parade as a kind of one-man medical beauty show. He could receive nothing, because he asked for nothing. And why does he ask for nothing? Because he feels no need.

Had he allowed the doctor to examine him, his confidence may have been rather diminished. 'Your blood pressure's a bit high,' the doctor might have said. 'And we must do some tests on that mysterious lump, and I would let the dentist have a look at that tooth if I were you. And did you know you were diabetic?'

But such is the man's complacency, he never invites such an examination. The absence of any felt need renders his attendance at the doctor's clinic totally redundant.

That is exactly the point Jesus makes in another saying: 'It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick' (Matthew 9:12). This Pharisee is a perfect example of that observation. He came into the temple to congratulate himself on his spiritual and moral health. Augustine wisely comments on him, Thou hast said thou hast all; thou hast asked for nothing. In what respect then hast thou come to pray?' He hadn't come to pray at all, but to prate. It was all exhibitionist boasting and nothing more.

I suspect that the tax man knew for whose benefit the Pharisee's 'prayer' was really intended. He overheard him, of course; how could he help it? 'God, I thank you', said the Pharisee loudly, 'that I'm not like other men, rogues, swindlers, traitors, or like that tax man over there.' It was a deliberate dig at him. But then he was used to such abuse. He didn't resent it; why should he? He knew he deserved it, he was under no illusions about his moral and spiritual condition, he was painfully aware of the disease of his soul. There was a mark of judgment set against his destiny, he knew.

And for this reason we hear no self-congratulatory expressions of mock gratitude from his lips. He feels his need. He beats his breast with the sense of it—a gesture no Jew made except in times of profound emotional distress. It bursts out of him in three staccato gasps of inner torture. 'God, be merciful to me, the sinner.' That's what he says literally; 'the sinner', for at this moment he feels like the only sinner in the universe. Yet, says Jesus, that's the kind of prayer God hears. That sort of worshipper goes home a different person, whereas the proud and complacent, for all their eloquent supplications, leave the house of God in exactly the same unacceptable state in which they arrived. One recalls Mary's words: 'He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty' (Luke 1:53).

This question of personal felt need may very well be the crunch issue for many. How hungry are we for God? How desperate are we for his grace?

Much has been said in recent years about the renewal of worship in the church; in fact it made the headlines when the present Archbishop of Canterbury was enthroned. But it does seem to me that much of that controversy is concerned with things of interest to the Pharisee but not to the tax man. It's preoccupied with matters of external form. What type of music—traditional hymns or modem choruses? What sort of atmosphere—quiet and meditative or loud and excited? What kind of congregational participation—passive and restrained or active and exuberant? What degree of predictability—fixed prayer-book liturgy or extemporary charismatic spontaneity? These are the issues we discuss. Frankly, while that sort of debate may well signal major changes in worship style, I'm not at all convinced that it has anything to do with renewal of worship in the spiritual sense at all.

Charles M. Schulz, the Peanuts cartoonist, suggested thirty years ago that most people attending church on Sunday do so with the same feelings as they attend the theatre; simply to enjoy what's going on. And he was absolutely right, in my view. The only thing he didn't take note of is that there are different kinds of entertainment, and how you express your enjoyment depends on the nature of the event. Schulz is quite right that some people come to church to sit passively listening as if at the theatre. But there are others who come with the same attitude with which they would attend a football match. And there are others who come with the same attitude with which they would attend a disco. With whatever attitude they come, however, they all come to enjoy what's going on. The worship style in which the church engages is no ground at all on which to judge the spirituality of those who are participating. Indeed, those of us who have travelled know that worship style is largely culturally determined. You go to a black Baptist church in the southern states of the USA and then to a Free Presbyterian in the Scottish Highlands and compare the difference! But the difference has nothing whatever to do with the spiritual authenticity of the worshippers. It's a cultural difference.

What determines whether we have real dealings with God when we go into his house to pray is not the music or the atmosphere, or even the degree of our physical participation in it. To think of worship in such terms is to think like a Judaistic Pharisee and not like a Christian at all. It is the hallmark of new-covenant religion that it is indifferent to cultural forms. 'A time is coming and has now come', said Jesus, 'when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshippers the Father seeks' (John 4:23).

You want to know why that tax man was heard? It was because he had a heart for God. He felt the need for God. Worship for him was a matter of spirit and truth. That's why he went to church; not to be entertained, or, like the Pharisee, to entertain others. He went there as a sick man goes to a doctor, because he felt a profound personal moral desperation. God always hears the prayers of people like that, whoever they are: crooks, rogues, adulterers. Why, he even heard the eleventh-hour appeal of a thief on a cross. But he ignores, he snubs, those who come to his house as if they were attending a circus, simply to enjoy what's going on. After all, it's not as though they come to meet him, is it?

We will never have real dealings with God until we get beyond religious entertainment, until we reach this point of felt need which the tax man had reached. Then we will pray and get answers.

That brings us to the second thing Jesus highlights for us in this paradoxical little story: two kinds of guilt. The more you think about it, the more ironic it is: there was the tax man feeling guilty, yet Jesus says he went home acquitted; and there's the Pharisee feeling innocent, and Jesus implies he went home condemned. That pinpoints for us a very important distinction, between guilt as an emotional experience and guilt as an objective fact. And this little story points out that the presence or absence of the former doesn't necessarily imply the presence or absence of the latter.

We all know that there is such a thing as irrational guilt, guilt which feels out of proportion to any wrong we've actually committed. Psychiatrists have to deal with that kind of anxiety all the time. But what many people forget today is that it is equally possible to feel no guilt at all when in fact we should feel guilty. A complacent conscience may be psychologically innocuous. It may reduce our stress levels. I'm sure the Pharisee was far more relaxed and at ease with himself than this tax man was. And yet in ultimate spiritual terms, such a complacent conscience is dreadfully perilous.

For there is such a thing as real guilt. Guilt isn't just a feeling; it is a fact. Unfortunately the feeling and the fact don't always run together. In our increasingly psychologically aware generation we must not allow that objective reality of guilt to become obscured.

Some years ago I had a discussion with some GCSE English students who were studying Shakespeare's Macbeth. We were discussing the scene where Lady Macbeth, after the murder, is racked with anxiety about the image of blood which she sees indelibly clinging to her hands. What struck me was that their reaction was almost unanimous: not 'Here is a vicious criminal dreadfully convicted of her sin, who badly needs to find a sense of forgiveness,' but 'Here is a pathetic nutcase, seriously mentally disturbed, badly in need of a psychiatrist.'

Guilt has ceased to be an acceptable part of normal human experience in the twentieth century. It has become pathological. It's a symptom of emotional illness or mental abnormality now, rather than an appropriate moral response to personal sin. No longer do we send the guilt-stricken individual to the priest for absolution as we once did; we send them to the psychiatrist for treatment. And increasingly people think of the church itself as nothing more than an alternative form of such treatment. They go to church in order to feel better about themselves, in order to feel that they are OK people.

That, I suggest to you, was precisely the function of the Pharisee's piety. His religion was just a form of psychotherapy by which he got rid of his guilt feelings. Notice the three very obvious techniques he uses.

First, he majors on negative obedience. I commented on this in relation to the behaviour of the priest and the Levite in the story of the good Samaritan. Here it is again. Our Pharisee comforts himself with all the sins he had not committed, like robbery or adultery. This is always good for the peace of our conscience, because of course such negative obedience forms a convenient smokescreen behind which we may conceal the many sins we have committed.

It's the kind of attitude which, as we said in our second study, lies behind a great deal of evasion of social responsibility today. It enables people to see a murder committed on a city street and do nothing about it, because they aren't personally holding the knife.

It's also the reason, incidentally, that religion has such a killjoy image in many people's minds. All those 'thou shalt nots'. Many think of God as a prohibitive spoilsport who wants to stop us doing all the things we want to do. Joy Davidman tells a lovely story of a missionary trying to convert an African chief. On being told that a long list of sins were indeed prohibited by Christian morality, he remarked that he was much too old to commit any of them anyway. 'So to be old and a Christian, they are the same thing!'

For many, that is exactly what being a Christian is: being old, being past it, giving oneself to God when the devil wants nothing more to do with us. They picture Christianity as something sapless and joyless, the enemy of ah delights. And they think that way because so many religious people are trying to escape guilt by defining obedience in purely negative terms.

Secondly, he majors on legalistic obedience. He lists all the unnecessary good works of supererogation which he doesn't really have to do at all. Like fasting twice a week, when Moses said once a year was quite enough; or giving a tithe of absolutely everything he had—even the herbs in the kitchen which he used for flavouring his food—when Moses said a tithe of one's income was adequate.

Once again, legalism of this type is a classic method of guilt avoidance. By accumulating a record of this kind of superfluous piety you can deceive yourself into thinking that you're compensating for any real sins that you may have committed. It's quite illogical, of course. You can never really make up for anything by subsequent penances of this sort. It's like going to the magistrate and saying, 'Yes, I did drive at 100 mph down the High Street yesterday. But unlike some people I never park on a double yellow line. Surely you can take that into consideration.'

Yet there are thousands of religious people whose minds work essentially in that fallacious fashion, preoccupied with the trivial details of their lives in a desperate attempt to camouflage, and compensate for, a formidable monster of moral corruption that they know secretly lurks within. Some men take great pride in the fact that they don't smoke or drink, others are perfectionists in their hobbies, or workaholics in their careers. Some women are fanatically house-proud. They try to purge their conscience by liberal use of disinfectant in the bathroom. And of course there are those endless numbers of religious people who salve their consciences by attending church, giving money to charity, saying prayers, and so on. There's a certain kind of obsessive personality that enjoys ritual, discipline, self-denial, and that sort of thing. An ascetic, puritanical lifestyle is a form of self-indulgence for them.

And that's what the Pharisees were like. All such behaviour is driven by the desire to avoid guilt. By concentrating on the observance of petty rules and regulations which we set ourselves—rules which, though irksome, we know we can fully keep if we really try—our attention is diverted from God's big rules, with regard to which our obedience can never be satisfactory and which therefore provide us with an inexhaustible source of potential moral anxiety.

Third, he majors on comparative obedience. 'I am not', the Pharisee says, 'like other men, that tax man for instance.' This strategy of self-justification never fails, for there are always people more guilty than ourselves. That is why we read the gutter press: to feed our own smug self-satisfaction. 'Tut, tut!' we say under our self-righteous breath as we read the salacious headlines. 'Who could imagine anybody doing such a thing?' The implication being, 'I never would.'

Our moral censure of others is once again just a device to distract attention from our own guilt. We think that by adopting a tone of shocked indignation over the sins of others, our own sin will go unnoticed. As Jesus put it, we point out the speck in other people's eyes in order to distract attention from the great plank in our own (Matthew 7:3). Or as the apostle Paul says, we try to escape judgment by making ourselves into judges (Romans 2:3). By this type of comparative obedience many of us will probably succeed today in avoiding the chastening effect of this very parable upon our lives.

Have you heard of the Sunday School teacher who told this story to his class? Afterwards he drew what he thought was the obvious moral lesson. 'Now, children,' he said, 'let's thank God we're not like that proud Pharisee.'

The trouble is it's all too easy for Christians to slip into the Pharisee's shoes without even realizing we are doing it, in the very act of trying to distance ourselves from him.

By these three classic techniques our Pharisee succeeds, then, in feeling good about himself. By these means he coped with his guilt feelings very well. So very well that they had been completely repressed. No flutter of moral anxiety disturbed this man's conscience at all. And yet Jesus insists that for all the effectiveness of his self- administered psychotherapy, his real guilt remained. It had not been diminished one jot. He felt all right, but his feelings did not correspond to the state of his soul. He might have been more emotionally stable as a result of his religious exercises, but he was nearer hell.

Am I not right, then, to be concerned that there may be many today suffering from the very same delusion? Or that I myself may be falling into this very same trap by using this parable to critique the religion of others when I should rather be examining myself? How do I deal with my guilt? That's the issue. Am I content simply to ease the pangs of conscience by persuading myself that 'I'm OK, thank you very much'? Or do I, like that tax man, yearn for some much more radical solution than that to the pollution of my soul?

This issue of handling guilt was brought home to me some years ago with peculiar force. I had to counsel a young university student who had just had an abortion to avoid the inconvenience of a pregnancy that would have interrupted her degree course. To her surprise she found herself overwhelmed with guilt in the aftermath of the operation. So devastated was she by what she had done that she had even attempted suicide, and that's why I'd been asked to see her. What do you say to a young woman like that?

I'll tell you what a lot of her friends were saying. 'Don't be so silly. You're just suffering from a form of post-natal depression. It's your hormones. You've got nothing to be ashamed of. Snap out of it! What's the difference between an abortion and a spontaneous miscarriage?'

Some of her colleagues were studying psychology, and had gladly analysed her guilt feelings in terms of Freud and Jung. She herself was a social scientist and was well aware of the argument that all moral convictions are just the result of human societal conditioning. Maybe if she'd looked hard enough she could have found some culture somewhere that regularly procured abortions without any conscience about it whatsoever. But she still felt guilty. And no amount of rationalizing would take the feeling away.

She had discovered what her friends, employing the modem secular equivalents of pharisaical religion, had succeeded in hiding from themselves: that guilt is real. It's not just a mental state. She did not want to be sent to the psychiatrist to get her guilt neurosis erased. She didn't want to be reassured with the smooth talk of some nondirective student counsellor. She didn't want to be deprogrammed like one of Pavlov's dogs. She wanted to be treated like a responsible human being. What she wanted was not some therapy to make her feel better, but an answer to the guilt she had incurred; a guilt which she was persuaded was not a psychological aberration, but an objective stain on her life. In a word, she wanted forgiveness.

She'd reached the same point of personal desperation as the tax man. He wouldn't rationalize his guilt away either. He wouldn't persuade himself that he wasn't so bad after all, or try to cloak his sin with legalistic observances or unfavourable comparisons with others. He made no feeble excuses, pleaded no mitigating circumstances, offered no compensatory penances. He simply begged: 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner.' And, says Jesus, that man went home not just feeling better, but with his moral status dramatically reversed in the eyes of God.

 * I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God (Luke 18:14).

'Justified' is a word not from the vocabulary of the psychiatrist but from the law courts. It does not describe how the tax man felt. It describes how he stood legally before God's bar of justice. It means quite literally that God had declared him innocent. Just as a judge might acquit an accused person, so God had passed a verdict of 'not guilty' on this conscience-stricken man. And Jesus would have us learn from this story that the discovery of such justification is what true religion is all about. It is the spiritual remedy by which we are liberated, not just from guilt feelings but from the fact of guilt. It's not merely a method for easing our consciences. Justification is about the cleansing of our lives. It's not a psychological analgesic. It is a moral purgative.

Martin Luther wrote, There are only two sorts of people in the world: sinners who think themselves righteous, and the righteous who think themselves sinners.' It's a bold generalization, as Luther's so often are, and it needs qualification if it's not to be misunderstood. But essentially he's right. And the Pharisee and tax man epitomize the point he's making.

Fundamentally the difference between these two was the grounds upon which they sought acquittal in the eyes of God. The Pharisee was one of those who, Luke observes, 'were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else' (18:9). He could make it to heaven by his own efforts. He would have nothing to be ashamed of before God's tribunal. Why, he'd be able to boast about how hard he had worked to get there!

How many tragic people there are in church every Sunday who tread that path! I sometimes think this is going to be the greatest irony of hell, that it will be full, not of shame or even regret, but of self-righteous indignation. Many of those there will be convinced that they don't deserve it. 'How dare God damn me,' they'll be saying, 'after all I did for him?' Sometimes I shudder to imagine the shock that there will be on that last day, as they present their self-manufactured ticket at the gate of heaven and hear it declared a counterfeit.

Why do they try it on? Jesus surely puts his finger on the nub of the matter in that postscript:

 * Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted (Luke 18:14).

It was conceit that lay at the root of the Pharisee's religion. He wanted to get to heaven with his dignity unscathed. He wanted to go through those pearly gates with his head held high. He wanted a righteousness he could be proud of. But no such righteousness exists. For, as a matter of unvarying policy on God's part, everyone who exalts himself will be humbled.

This is the essential lesson of Jesus's own example. He accepts the title 'Lord', but he takes the role of a servant. He shares equality with God, but he hangs voluntarily on a cross. No wonder he offended and perplexed people. In those days humility was a vice, a despicable sign of weakness. Yet Jesus insists that not only must we be humble; he reveals in his incarnation and in his passion that the heart of God himself is humble.

No wonder this Pharisee can't go to heaven, then; he is contemptuous of humility. By contrast, for the tax man it was his only hope of salvation: 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner' (Luke 18:13).

Again, 'mercy' is a weak translation, for it's not the normal word for 'mercy7 at all. In fact if we were going to translate it accurately in English we'd have to use an old- fashioned phrase like he propitiated towards me'. This word was associated with the sacrificial ritual of the temple and had to do with atonement for sins.

This tax man's hope is not just in God's loving and compassionate character, you see. Remember where he is. His eyes are on the altar where the temple priest at the hour of prayer has just offered sacrifice for the sins of the people. 'Please, God,' he says, 'I see the bloodstains there on the altar. Accept that sacrifice on my behalf, be propitiated towards me.' He's not just appealing to God's better nature when he says, 'Be merciful to me.' He's laying claim to God's own remedy for the sinner's plight. And in doing so, he highlights one more vital lesson that a morally complacent world too easily forgets: that there can be no real assurance of pardon without an act of atonement that satisfies God.

Some people think that forgiveness is easy for God. 'Of course God will forgive me,' they say, 'it's his business.' Not so. It's dreadfully hard for God to forgive sin. He's the moral governor of the universe. If he overlooks a sin it's as good as saying that sin doesn't matter. The integrity of his own righteousness means that he must disassociate himself from wickedness wherever he sees it. He can't lay himself open to the charge of moral indifference or moral inconsistency. If he did, he wouldn't be a righteous God any longer. And that's why in Old Testament times there had to be an altar, there had to be a sacrifice.

That sacrifice was first of all a symbol of the seriousness of sin in God's eyes. We human beings are squeamish about blood. Well, God is squeamish about sin. He is repulsed by its stench and stain. That blood sacrifice on the altar was the sign of his moral revulsion.

More than that, though: sacrifice was a symbol of the penalty for sin. For as blood speaks of death, so sin demands death. No less a price is adequate to express the horror and the indignation of a holy God. Forgiveness may be offered freely in the Bible, but never make the mistake of thinking it's cheap. The Bible knows nothing of cheap forgiveness. Our tax man realized that. 'Oh God,' he cried, 'be propitiated towards me, let my sin be atoned for. I don't minimize the seriousness of my crimes. I don't underestimate the penalty they deserve. I see the blood, I know the cost. So please, God, turn your anger from me; be satisfied that a sacrificial substitute has died on the altar in my place today. And so have mercy on me, the sinner.'

This may seem a strange question, but I fear I must ask it. Have you sought God's pardon the tax man's way, through God's merciful provision of an atoning sacrifice? Or do you seek a righteousness like the Pharisee's, built on your religious reputation and your moral achievements?

Extraordinary as it may sound, I find pastorally that there are an enormous number of professing Christians today who come to church regularly to pray and yet have never really made this most fundamental discovery. Deep down they know they are guilty, but instead of resolving their guilt God's way, they bury it.

The symptoms of that buried guilt are so easy to spot. A lack of self-esteem, a low self-image, an inferiority complex. They go around complaining, 'I'm no good at being a Christian. I don't feel excited about being a Christian, I've got no assurance of salvation, no joy in worship, no enthusiasm to witness. I'm a lame-duck Christian, that's what I am.' Countless people are burdened in this way. They say they're depressed, that they can't cope, that they always make a mess of things, that they're no use to anybody and it's pointless trying to improve themselves. What's wrong with these people? What's the source of this spiritual debility?

I don't want to oversimplify by generalization. The pastoral problems involved may be very complex. But I am convinced that a considerable proportion of these folk are suffering from unresolved feelings of repressed guilt. Christians though they are, or say they are, their attitudes are shaped by this guilt-denying world of ours. And as a result they have never been truly convicted of sin, never properly understood God's remedy for sin, and therefore have never really felt truly pardoned of sin. That's why they feel inadequate, that's why assurance eludes them. The one person you can never forgive is yourself. So long as this spectre of unacknowledged guilt deep within their psyche haunts them, they will continue to suffer the destructive consequences of subconscious self-hatred eating away inside them, destroying their motivation, their ambition, their assurance.

What's the answer? The answer is that they must come and stand where the tax man stood. Justification by faith must cease to be a cerebral article of their creed and become instead an experimental truth in their hearts. They must stand where the tax man stood, with all the defensive masks removed, all the illusions of moral respectability shattered, all pretence of self-righteousness abandoned. They must look where the tax man looked, to a sacrifice; but to a far nobler and more costly sacrifice than ever was slain on a temple altar. They must look to a cross where the Son of God himself shed his blood once and for all, to make atonement for the sin of the world. And they must pray as that tax man prayed, 'God, have mercy on me. I ask for no cheap forgiveness; I do not underestimate the seriousness of my crime. I know that the penalty of my sin is death, but please, God, be satisfied that a worthy substitute has paid the price in my place, and so be merciful to me, the sinner.'

And most of all, they need to hear that reassuring verdict of Jesus upon such a penitential prayer: 'I tell you that this man... went home justified' (Luke 18:14). He stood in the presence of God now not as a despised and condemned criminal, but as a beloved and accepted child. Justified by faith, he could now have peace with God. Not the peace of the Pharisee, that self-manufactured psychological fiction which would one day be stripped from him to his horror in final judgment. No, a peace with God based on God's own irreversible, incontestable declaration of pardon through Jesus' blood.

So much depends on how we deal with our guilt. Are we content merely with a little religious therapy that enables us to feel good about ourselves, or do we long for a radical cleansing of the real guilt that lies on our souls? It will depend on what sort of righteousness we seek. A righteousness of our own that comes through our own moral efforts, or a righteousness from God that depends on faith?

The theologian Karl Barth expresses the reason for our resistance to that divine remedy insightfully:

 * We dislike hearing that we are saved by grace alone. We don't really appreciate that God does not owe us anything, that we are bound to live from His goodness alone, that we are left with nothing but the great humility of a child presented with many gifts. To put it bluntly, we do not like to believe.

But believe we must. Believe in the greatness of the merciful heart of God. Believe in the sufficiency of Christ's atoning sacrifice. Believe most of all, perhaps, in the truth of that extraordinary promise, 'Everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but he who humbles himself will be exalted.'

In the topsy-turvy world of heaven, it is the poor who are rich, the humbled who are great. In the paradoxical topography of the kingdom of God, the way up is down.

title: A Sting in the Tale/Chapter 6


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148 grandson Moses continued the line of faithful but inelegant translators. Judah had turned into Hebrew the works of Bachya, Ibn Gebirol, Jehuda Halevi, Ibn Janach, and Saadiah. Samuel was the translator of Maimonides, and bore a brave part in the defence of his master in the bitter controversies which arose as to the lawfulness and profit of studying philosophy. The translations of the Tibbon family were in the first instance intended for Jewish readers only, but later on the Tibbonite versions were turned into Latin by Buxtorf and others. Another Latin translation of Maimonides existed as early as the thirteenth century.

Of the successors of the Tibbons, Jacob Anatoli (1238) was the first to translate any portion of Averroes into any language. Averroes was an Arab thinker of supreme importance in the Middle Ages, for through his writings Europe was acquainted with Aristotle. Renan asserts that all the early students of Averroes were


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76 interpreted Mohammedanism in accordance with authorized tradition, and the Shiites, who relied exclusively upon the Koran. Similarly, in Judaism, the Rabbinites obeyed the traditions of the earlier authorities, and the Karaites (from Kera, or Mikra, i. e. “Bible”) claimed the right to reject tradition and revert to the Bible as the original source of inspiration. Such reactions against tradition are recurrent in all religions.

Karaism, however, was not a true reaction against tradition. It replaced an old tradition by a new one; it substituted a rigid, unprogressive authority for one capable of growth and adaptation to changing requirements. In the end, Karaism became so hedged in by its supposed avoidance of tradition that it ceased to be a living force. But we are here not concerned with the religious defects of Karaism. Regarded from the literary side, Karaism produced a double effect. Karaism itself gave


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 slot and gain a number of sorcery points equal to the slot’s level.

Metamagic

At 3rd level, you gain the ability to twist your spells to suit your needs. You gain two of the following Metamagic options of your choice. You gain another one at 10th and 17th level. You can use only one Metamagic option on a spell when you cast it, unless otherwise noted.

Careful Spell

When you cast a spell that forces other creatures to make a saving throw, you can protect some of those creatures from the spell’s full force. To do so, you spend 1 sorcery point and choose a number of those creatures up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one creature). A chosen creature automatically succeeds on its saving throw against the spell.

Distant Spell

When you cast a spell that has a range of 5 feet or greater, you can spend 1 sorcery point to double the range of the spell. When you cast a spell that has a range of touch, you can spend 1 sorcery point to make the range of the spell 30 feet.

Empowered Spell

When you roll damage for a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to reroll a number of the damage dice up to your Charisma modifier (minimum of one). You must use the new rolls. You can use Empowered Spell even if you have already used a different Metamagic option during the casting of the spell.

Extended Spell When you cast a spell that has a duration of 1 minute or longer, you can spend 1 sorcery point to double its duration, to a maximum duration of 24 hours.

Heightened Spell

When you cast a spell that forces a creature to make a saving throw to resist its effects, you can spend 3 sorcery points to give one target of the spell disadvantage on its first saving throw made against the spell. Quickened Spell When you cast a spell that has a casting time of 1 action, you can spend 2 sorcery points to change the casting time to 1 bonus action for this casting. Subtle Spell When you cast a spell, you can spend 1 sorcery point to cast it without any somatic or verbal components.

Twinned Spell

When you cast a spell that targets only one creature and doesn’t have a range of self, you can spend a number of sorcery points equal to the spell’s level to target a second creature in range with the same spell (1 sorcery point if the spell is a cantrip). To be eligible, a spell must be incapable of targeting more than one creature at the spell’s current level. For example, magic missile and scorching ray aren’t eligible, but ray of frost is.

Ability Score Improvement

When you reach 4th level, and again at 8th, 12th, 16th, and 19th level, you can increase one ability score of your choice by 2, or you can increase two ability scores of your choice by 1. As normal, you can’t increase an ability score above 20 using this feature.

Sorcerous Restoration

At 20th level, you regain 4 expended sorcery points whenever you finish a short rest.

Sorcerous Origins

Different sorcerers claim different origins for their innate magic, such as a draconic bloodline.

Draconic Bloodline

Your innate magic comes from draconic magic that was mingled with your blood or that of your ancestors. Most often, sorcerers with this origin trace their descent back to a mighty sorcerer of ancient times who made a bargain with a dragon or who might even have claimed a dragon parent. Some of these bloodlines are well established in the world, but most are obscure. Any given sorcerer could be the first of a new bloodline, as a result of a pact or some other exceptional circumstance. Dragon Ancestor At 1st level, you choose one type of dragon as your ancestor. The damage type associated with each dragon is used by features you gain later.

Draconic Ancestry


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Rh birth to an original and splendid literature, and, on the other hand, coming as it did at the time when Arabic science and poetry were attaining their golden zenith, Karaism aroused within the Rabbinite sphere a notable energy, which resulted in some of the best work of medieval Jews.

Among the most famous of the Karaite authors was Benjamin Nahavendi, who lived at the beginning of the ninth century, and displayed much resolution and ability as an advocate of free-thought in religion. Nahavendi not only wrote commentaries on the Bible, but also attempted to write a philosophy of Judaism, being allied to Philo in the past and to the Arabic writers in his own time. At the end of the ninth century, Abul-Faraj Harun made a great stride forwards as an expounder of the Bible and as an authority on Hebrew grammar.

During the ninth and tenth centuries, several Karaites revealed much vigor and


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Rh God left man to discover for himself. In the mind of Maimonides, Moses and Aristotle occupied pedestals side by side. In the “Strong Hand,” he had codified and given orderly arrangement to Judaism as revealed in Bible and tradition; he would now examine its relations to reason, would compare its results with the data of philosophy. This he did in his “Guide of the Perplexed” (Morch Nebuchim). Maimoides here differed fundamentally from his immediate predecessors. Jehuda Halevi, in his Cuzari, was poet more than philosopher. The Cuzari was a dialogue based on the three principles, that God is revealed in history, that Jerusalem is the centre of the world, and that Israel is to the nations as the heart to the limbs. Jehuda Halevi supported these ideas with arguments deduced from the philosophy of his day, he used reason as the handmaid of theology. Maimonides, however, like Saadiah, recognized a higher function for reason. He placed rea-


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You can speak, read, and write Draconic. Additionally, whenever you make a Charisma check when interacting with dragons, your proficiency bonus is doubled if it applies to the check.

Draconic Resilience

As magic flows through your body, it causes physical traits of your dragon ancestors to emerge. At 1st level, your hit point maximum increases by 1 and increases by 1 again whenever you gain a level in this class. Additionally, parts of your skin are covered by a thin sheen of dragon-‐‑like scales. When you aren’t wearing armor, your AC equals 13 + your Dexterity modifier. Elemental Affinity Starting at 6th level, when you cast a spell that deals damage of the type associated with your draconic ancestry, you can add your Charisma modifier to one damage roll of that spell. At the same time, you can spend 1 sorcery point to gain resistance to that damage type for 1 hour.

Dragon Wings

At 14th level, you gain the ability to sprout a pair of dragon wings from your back, gaining a flying speed equal to your current speed. You can create these wings as a bonus action on your turn. They last until you dismiss them as a bonus action on your turn. You can’t manifest your wings while wearing armor unless the armor is made to accommodate them, and clothing not made to accommodate your wings might be destroyed when you manifest them.

Draconic Presence

Beginning at 18th level, you can channel the dread presence of your dragon ancestor, causing those around you to become awestruck or frightened. As an action, you can spend 5 sorcery points to draw on this power and exude an aura of awe or fear (your choice) to a distance of 60 feet. For 1 minute or until you lose your concentration (as if you were casting a concentration spell), each hostile creature that starts	its turn in this aura must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw or be charmed (if you chose awe) or frightened (if you chose fear) until the aura ends. A creature that succeeds on this saving throw is immune to  your aura for 24 hours.


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 Warlock Class Features As a warlock, you gain the following class features. Equipment

Hit Points

You start with the following equipment, in addition to the equipment granted by your background: Hit Dice: 1d8 per warlock level Hit Points at 1st Level: 8 + your Constitution modifier Hit Points at Higher Levels: 1d8 (or 5) + your Constitution modifier per warlock level after 1st • (a) a light crossbow and 20 bolts or (b) any simple weapon • (a) a component pouch or (b) an arcane focus • (a) a scholar’s pack or (b) a dungeoneer’s pack • Leather armor, any simple weapon, and two daggers

Proficiencies Armor: Light armor

Weapons: Simple weapons Tools: None Saving Throws: Wisdom, Charisma Skills: Choose two skills from Arcana, Deception, History, Intimidation, Investigation, Nature, and Religion

Otherworldly Patron

At 1st level, you have struck a bargain with an otherworldly being of your choice: the Archfey, the Fiend, or the Great Old One, each of which is detailed at the end of the class description. Your choice grants you features at 1st level and again at 6th, 10th, and 14th level.

Pact Magic

Your arcane research and the magic bestowed on you by your patron have given you facility with spells.

Cantrips You know two cantrips of your choice from the warlock spell list. You learn additional warlock


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20 , says the proverb, never come singly. There is a philosophy underlying these simple expressions of the quaint wisdom of our ancestors, and in this instance the esoteric meaning doubtless is that the combination of circumstances that make matters ripe for the birth of one event also prepares for that of others of a similar kind. How often does it happen—or has it happened, as I must now say—that after centuries of preparation two inventors, whether in the field of theory or practice, have hit upon the same idea at almost precisely the same moment!

To moralise is the privilege of age, but I must not abuse it or tax your patience too far. The efforts of ages had prepared the blow, the hour was ripe, and now it fell; not here or there, but in every quarter at once, with a suddenness which paralysed the efforts of those who might have been expected to venture something in defence of their country, their families, nay, of themselves.


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Rh Not only from the banks of the Yellow Creek, but from North and South, from factory after factory, came, as the days and weeks flew by, the same awful tale. The mischief, which determination and courage might have nipped in the bud, was allowed to grow without restraint. Superstition came to the aid of Terror to make it more terrified yet. The machines which by some obscure process of development had at last become capable of reproducing their kind were popularly supposed to be possessed by demons. Who can wonder?

Needless to say trade was at a standstill, and the violence of starving mobs was added to other terrors. The railways were deserted, neither passengers nor drivers being forthcoming. Steamships ceased to ply to and fro between our once busy ports. Those whom business or affection compelled to travel were content to jog along the weary roads in wagons, or beat up against contrary winds in ancient unseaworthy sailing ships. What might be happening in those once busy haunts of human skill, the workshops, none dared enquire.

But much was happening there, for each day the


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