he might be, remained unweakened. The people whose right it was to look for the fulfilment of the messianic expectation, must needs perform the national duty of purification. Till this, their part of the bargain, had been carried out, they could not deem themselves a fit instrument for Jehovah's self-vindication. The Law was an epitome of the Lord's requirements, and in proportion as it was faithfully observed, so was he brought nearer and nearer to the nation. It had not entered into the mind of the Hebrews to frame the notion of a personal obligation. And naturally, a purification, which was primarily the interest of the nation, came to be in the end of secondary moment to the individuals who composed it. The sublime ideas of the prophets, having been long known to all, gradually lost their living significance. But the conception of deity, to which they bore witness from the first, remained as a potential force, even amid the pseudo-religious religion of the Scribes and Pharisees. The Law, as it has been said, performed the same function for the Jews which Greek philosophy fulfilled for the Gentiles. It was "the schoolmaster to bring them to Christ." The Law of Moses, in the sense that it kept alive Israel's knowledge of Jehovah, to whom great debts were due, it was also the Law of God, because it protected the pure Jewish conception of the divine nature, which was to pass from under the Law into the life of every man. For, as has been remarked of the beginnings of legalism, "behind the legal aspect of the movement of reformation, as it is expressed in the Deuteronomic code, there lay a larger principle, which no legal system could exhaust, and which never found full embodiment till the religion of the Old Testament passed into the religion of Christ. The voice of spiritual faith rises high above all the limits of the dispensation that was to pass away, and sets forth the sum of true religion in words that can never die.”1 The Law did not destroy, but protected the prophetic ideal. Nor was legalism itself entirely barren of results which tended in the direction of purer religion. If the idea of God had been proclaimed more directly and with greater sublimity in prophetic times, it had also been far removed from the comprehension of ordinary men. But later Judaism, though it did much to render this idea secondary to ceremonial observance, and to debar the worshipper from direct contact with deity, by the obtrusion of a priestly mediator, also aided not a little in the universalising and denationalising of religion by the institution of the synagogue. The habit of regularly assembling themselves together for worship, and for instruction in the Law, rendered the people personal partakers in religion far more effectually than the preaching of the inspired prophets had done. They were exceptional men called forth by the stress of unique circumstances. What they gave in the shape of idea, the Law diffused, after its manner, in observance. Few could become prophets, all might hear the Law, and, under the guidance of the priest, give due heed to its more rigorous requirements. In the Book of Psalms some instances of the best results of this popularisation of religion are preserved. The "Songs of Ascent," though differing widely from the earlier psalms in respect of their popular origin, represent a 1 The Prophets of Israel, Robertson Smith, pp. 369, 370, 373. 2 Cf. The Old Testament in the Jewish Church, p. 191 sq. practical interest in matters of religion which has a distinct value of its own. The Law was not the vehicle of a new revelation, and so must be regarded as subsidiary to other creative periods in Jewish religion. But it served to arouse personal participation in acts of duty, and if it did not, at the same time, kindle new faith, it was valuable as the emblem of a religious intuition that could not be utterly destroyed. 201 CHAPTER X. JUDAISM AND JESUS. IN that progressive revelation which we call history, the office of Jewish religion and character was to evolve and to preserve in purity a fitting ideal of the divine being. By this, Judaism is once and for ever marked off from the other pre-Christian religions. Thus, the indisputable historical fact that Christianity arose from the midst of Judaism, may be further enforced by reference to an equally obvious spiritual continuity. Not only was Jesus a Jew "made under the law," but Judaism itself contained the elements necessary to nascent Christianity. The ideal of God which it possessed implicitly pointed to certain demands that the Old Testament dispensation could not supply. In other words, at its birth Christianity was not affected by Greek philosophy, but by the innate logic of the Jewish religion. Apart altogether from theological dogma, and as the result of a natural historical development, the person of its founder is unique. His character was moulded by a consciousness of God's nature and purposes, which Judaism, alone among the earlier religions, exhibited. The Old Testament litera ture does not present us with a series of systematised dogmas, but it tells of a nation's progress which was ever conditioned by relation to a specific ideal. The theologia civilis of "Deuteronomy" represents far more the means of natural approximation to this ideal here, than any scheme for securing individual bliss hereafter. Yet the God whose exaltation and holiness it attests, cannot but be a person who enters into personal relations with men. His exaltation, so overpowering to the Hebrews, was inseparable from the preservation in purity of man's conception of the transcendent being. But another revelation was required to bring down to earth, as it were, God's power of imparting holiness to the individual sinner. The conception of deity is common to the Law and the Gospel alike. But in each case the manifestation of God's nature is different. Ezra, in the light of the Babylonian Isaiah's teaching, knew that God was; and the ceremonial law made this knowledge common property. But what God was, Ezra only comprehended in part. The rest of His nature was revealed by one who, as a matter of sober historical truth, stood in a relation to deity which no other ever occupied. No doubt Christianity was also determined by the desire of its founder to transcend or destroy the mechanical legalism into which religion, fenced by the law, had fallen. But, in order to accomplish this, a return to the nobler prophetic vision of Jehovah was necessary. In this return the monotheistic ideal was revivified, and the dignity of man as the friend, and not the mere slave, of God was vindicated. God remains, as with the Jews, but a new way of access to Him is opened up, and in this a hitherto unseen element in the divine nature is |