fore, would expect an announcement of political revolution, and military enterprise, and armed achievement, and conquering triumph; and great would be their disappointment to hear from this long-expected Messiah simply an announcement of the perfecting of existing law.

Others there would doubtless be who were haters of law, who deemed Moses' law too rigorous and severe, and who looked to the new teacher, if not for its abrogation, yet for its relaxationfor a religious code less arduous and awful than that of Sinai; and great would be their consternation when they heard Christ say, that, instead of loosening the foundations of the Mosaic law, or relaxing its demands, he was come to carry them out to their proper and perfect issues.

And there were fanatics and Pharisees, who deemed the law of Moses already perfect, and who, either conscientiously or hypocritically, plumed themselves on being most rigid observers of it; and great would be their indignation when they heard Christ, first implying that it was imperfect, and next declare that he was come to perfect it.

And if there were spiritual and holy listeners, "longing for the consolation of Israel," they would be surprised, perhaps disappointed, when, instead of a preaching of forgiveness and redemption, of reconciliation and salvation, they heard him proclaim a holy moral law. Had they not law enough already, more than they could keep? It was not law that they wanted, but forgiveness and moral strength. Still Christ preached a holy moral law, and the fulfilment in it of the moral demands of Judaism. And it was a fitting theme, for, with the exception of the last, all these classes of hearers were self-righteous Pharisees; they did not feel their legal shortcomings; they needed the law to give them a knowledge of sin-the "law as a schoolmaster to bring them to Christ."

It is one of the profoundest thoughts of Christianity, that Christ gives utter

ance to—its relations as a new dispensation to that which preceded it; and it has a doctrinal as well as an ethical import of almost immeasurable amplitude and meaning. The full significance of it is, that Christianity throughout, in its doctrines, morality, and privileges, is the fulfilment, development, and perfecting of Judaism. Christianity is the "better thing that God has provided," and without which Judaism could not be made perfect. Christ declares, therefore, that nothing that he taught was to be detached from Judaism as its proper root and basis-that there was an internal and essential connexion between the new dispensation and the old-that the Old Testament law was of unimpaired authority, and that the new was the natural and proper development of it that law in its moral essence was unchangeable, and that, consummated as it would be in Christianity, it would be eternal. "Heaven and earth might pass away, it could not." Christ had come to carry out and complete that which the law and the prophets had begun to realize the end to which they pointed-to fill up the outline which they laid down—to erect a superstructure upon the foundation which they constituted, so that the law should be glorified in its more perfect and spiritual embodiment, and prophecy in its perfect accomplishment; the prediction was now to pass into history-the type into reality-the foreshadowing into substance--the flower into fruit. speaks not according to the measure of their knowledge, but of his own mighty purposes; he regarded all that he would accomplish by his mission - all the mighty results of restored holiness that his mediation would secure-the whole progress, and compass, and consummation of his kingdom-the entire effect that his coming would produce upon human history and morality; "all things were to be subdued unto him," in holy obedience and honour to his law; and the entire result was to be Judaism "fulfilled." Judaism and Christianity, therefore, are to be regarded as but one or

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ganie whole-the Jewish being the preliminary and preparatory part-the Christian the substantial and final part. Judaism was the sced-plot out of which the Christian harvest sprung; and the two are still further connected by the common elements of a divine origin, a divine revelation, and a divine government.

Instead of being "destroyed," therefore, Judaism was simply to undergo such a formal change as should develop it into Christianity as the chrysalis changes into the butterfly-the seed-corn into the blade-the blossom into the fruit; --that which is external in form is changed, while that which is internal in essence remains. Hence, the retention by the Jews now of formal Judaism, is as if one were to enshrine the rotten pulp of the seed-corn, or the withered leaves of the blossom. They "destroy the law" who divert it from Christ -who keep it from being fulfilled in him-who adhere to it for its own sake, as an end and not a means. Modern Judaism destroys it, by keeping it for ever a shadow, preventing it from becoming a reality. Its natural tendency is to develop itself-they arrest its development; it would grow to perfection-they stereotype it in its immaturity; they give it nothing to "fulfil," but take it as a fulfilment itself—a body without a soul. This explanation will indicate not only the sense in which the old dispensation was fulfilled, but the sense also in which it was destroyed, for a great number of passages speak of Judaism as passing away when Christ came, and of Christianity as an emancipation from the "yoke" of Judaism. The ritual of Judaism passed away, its moral principle remained; the form was dissolved, the substance was preserved; the one great principle of salvation through atonement changed its form of type and prophecy into a form of substance and history.

Christ does not tell us how far he fulfilled prophecy; and the correspondence between Jewish prediction and his personal history is too obvious

and familiar to need demonstration; he limits himself to an exposition of what he means by "fulfilling the law," and this exposition occupies the rest of the chapter.

The legal part of Judaism consisted of two elements-the one institutional or ceremonial, the other moral.

1. The ceremonial law. Dispensational Judaism was a great institute of rites, of which the temple at Jerusalem was the great theatre. It consisted in acts of religious ceremony and sacrifice, enjoining minute observances, which, in themselves, and without reference to their latent and hidden meaning, seemed arbitrary and trivial, and were costly and burdensome. The entire of this great and complicated system was typical. "It could not make the comers thereunto perfect." There was neither verbal instruction nor verbal praise in the Jewish temple; for these the Jew went to his synagogue or to his scribe. The temple was simply the theatre of a prophetic drama; its ritual was a dumb pageant, having dignity and meaning only in its wonderful and complex symbolism. Everything in it was a figurative prophecy of Christ; and wonderful it was that God should have selected an entire nation-its history and its worship-to be for hundreds of years a prefiguration of the Messiah. An insuperable fact this for the disbeliever of the divine origin of Christianity. If Christianity be not true, Judaism is one of the most wonderful accidents and coincidences in the universe. Our only alternative is to have recourse to Strauss, and to believe that the Christ of the Gospel is a myth, and that the history of his life was invented upon Jewish principles, and for the embodiment of Jewish ideas -a clever termination of the Jewish system which, however, the Jews themselves bitterly opposed.

All this wonderful ritual of Judaism Christ" fulfilled;" he did not "destroy" it, save as a book is destroyed when its truth has been received; he realized all the idea of it-fulfilled all the prophecy of it-embodied all the shadows of it.

Were it needful, its sacrifices, feasts, and institutions might be adduced seriatim, and their fulfilment by and in Christ demonstrated; and the more minute and trivial the type, the more wonderful is the exactness of the antitype. Nothing, indeed, that God institutes can be destroyed. Every idea that is his, is lasting and eternal. The only change that it can know is from a lesser glory to a greater-from a lower form to a higher. The form changes, but it is only as embryo life changes into life that is articulate and perfect. The outward phenomena cease, but it is only that the inward and essential spirit may reappear in another and higher manifestation. Just as the soul lives while the body moulders in death, and is reproduced in resurrection glory. Not only does it live through change of form, but the later form is always more perfect and exalted than its predecessor. The old Hebrew ritual was the first body in which the soul of divine idea dwelt. That has become a corpse. It mouldered away in the grave of the later Hebrew formalism; but it had its glorious resurrection in Christianity, in which its divine idea again presented itself. "There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body," and these in their proper order; "that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural, and afterward that which is spiritual." The divine idea of salvation through atonement, of renewal through the Holy Spirit, of holiness, and obedience and fellowship with God, is the same throughout.

2. Our Lord's chief reference, however, is obviously to the moral element of the Jewish law; as against the licentiousness of the Sadducees, and the hypocrisy of the Pharisees, he was peculiarly solicitous to maintain its sacredness and inviolability. Christ, therefore, came not to dissolve or destroy but to fulfil to give full effect to its principles and precepts-to rescue them from dishonour or neglect―to"magnify and make them honourable."

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meaning far beyond that which his immediate hearers apprehended meaning, upon which his death and resurrection, and the after teachings of Scripture, have cast a solemn and awful light. To fulfil a law is to satisfy it if it be broken, and to carry it out to the full perfection of all its principles and requisitions. In both these respects Christ fulfilled the moral law.

The moral element of Jewish law was no peculiarity of Judaism, rather was it the law of God's universe-the law of humanity from the creation-and which, therefore, Judaism, as a matter of course, incorporated. Still our Lord's hearers knew the moral law only as a part of Judaism.

The first great work of the Mediator was to satisfy the broken law. Man had violated its requirements, and had incurred its penalty - a penalty of death. It is of the very nature and necessity of law, that if it be not obeyed its penalty must be exacted, it must be "fulfilled" in one sense or the other. No man had fulfilled its obedience. "There is none that is righteous, no, not one;" "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God." In one form and degree or another every man has consciously violated God's law. And if it inflict its penalty, every soul that has sinned must die. In this sense, therefore, no sinning man can "fulfil the law” and live. Every offering of obedience falls short of its holy requisition-every penance of its terrible penalty. Having done all, and suffered all, every man, as a matter of fact, still needs a "wherewithal" to " appear before God." Conscience persists in telling us that the law is not satisfied, that its penalty has not been awarded. The law can find no satisfaction or fulfilment in our present human sufferings. Hence, Christ is represented as looking in vain for a way of satisfying the penalty of the law before he proffered his substitution. "I looked, and there was none to help; I wondered, and there was none to uphold; therefore, mine own arm brought

But what man could not do himself, Christ by his incarnation and death has done for him; by his incarnation he took upon him a human life, that he might obey the law; by his death he laid down his life that he might satisfy the penalty of the law, and thus be a substitution for the death of the guilty. And more than even the punishment of the sinner himself does such substitution vindicate the majesty of the law, and proclaim its sacredness and inviolability; it is hereby made manifest that sooner than indulge his mercy at the expense of it, God" spares not his own Son."

Another way in which Christ fulfilled the law, was by recognising its moral excellence, and incorporating its principles and precepts with his religious system.

By moral law we mean the principles and precepts of virtue, purity, holiness; it is no arbitrary or conventional law, that God might or might not have given; so long as virtue and vice remain distinguished, every moral being must come under the moral law. Virtue, or holiness, therefore, is the great end of every moral being. Holiness is the end of the Divine Being; and wher. God made man he made him holy; and when man sinned, it was because he became unholy, that Christ came as a Saviour; and the sole end of his coming was to restore him to holiness, to secure the forgiveness of his guilt, and the moral renewal of his heart. The Messiah was "called Jesus, because he saved his people from their sins." The great end of redemption, therefore, and the only end so far as we are concerned, is our recovery to perfect holiness. Hence Christ's work as a Saviour must, in all its parts, provisions, and tendencies, be designed and adapted for our holiness. Whatever does not tend to our holiness, is no part of our salvation. Hence it is but a feeble way of expressing it, to say that Christ incorporated the moral law with his religious system; his religion throughout, in all its facts, and principles, and precepts,

and promises, is founded upon and permeated with the moral law; it is moral law in its highest type. And here a wide field of examination opens itself to our examination, and one that would richly repay an extensive survey, viz., the moral tendency of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity, especially of its great doctrine of salvation by grace, "justification by faith"

forgiveness not "for works of righte ousness," but for the simple sake of Christ.-Whether the teaching that personal virtue can never be a meritorious cause of forgiveness and of Heaven, but that both are bestowed of God's undeserved, unpurchased mercy, tends to make men holy, or to encourage them in licentiousness? A question which the apostle elaborately argues in the Epistles to the Romans and Galations; coming to the conclusion that salvation by faith, instead of "making void the moral law, establishes it."

We may not enter into particulars, but we hesitate not, on the grounds both of moral philosophy and experience, to affirm that the peculiar doctrines of Christianity, either taken singly, or collectively as constituting a system of salvation by grace, tend to and produce a morality or holiness that has hitherto been without a parallel in the world; so that in the design and tendency of his doctrines, his "doctrines of grace" as they are called, so far from destroying the law, Christ fulfils or establishes it. Christ exalts it from a ground of necessity to a ground of gratitude; from a ground of duty to a ground of love-rests it upon new principles. Under the old economy the principle was, obey and live; under the new it is, live and obey.-"The love of Christ constrains us."

Again, Christ fulfils the moral law in the preceptive part of his religious system. He makes every injunction of it a Christian duty. He does not leave out of his Christian code a single moral virtue or a single moral grace-so far from this he demonstrates a depth and a compass in it that even the Jews had

never surmised. He shows that their own moral law, of which they boasted so much, extended a great deal farther than ever they imagined. He lifted it from the low and narrow ground of verbal technicality and admeasurement, into the high and boundless region of spiritual principle; they had reduced it to the narrowest dimensions possible, until it had become a dry and barren formula; the letter remained, but the spirit was evacuated; no matter there- | fore how much they violated the spirit of the law, if they attended to its letter. Hence the severe denunciations of Christ upon their pharisaical hypocrisy; they' "devoured widows' houses," and made "long prayers;" they were full of unrighteousness, and "made broad their phylacteries;" they were "ravening wolves," and yet they scrupulously "washed their hands;" they were "full of rottenness," and yet "made white the outside of the moral sepulchre" of their hearts; they denied their parents the commonest charities of life, and said, "Corban."

But instead of such a narrow and verbal interpretation of the law, Christ gave them an ample and liberal one; he interpreted it in its spirit and not only in its letter; he gave them a deeper insight into its spiritual meaning and requirements; he disclosed the full depth of its principles and precepts; not only are we not to do a wrong, but we are "to do to others as we would that others should do to us;" not only are we not to kill, but we are to avoid all the evil passions which generate murder, for latent anger is, according to this Divine commentator, incipient murder; not only are we forbidden the adultery of the life, but the adultery of the heart, the slightest entertainment of lustful desire. The law of Moses punished adultery with death, and yet when the woman guilty of this crime came before this great Lawgiver, he delivered her over to the consciences of her pharisaic accusers, and they left her alone with the forgiving Master. Christianity abolishes

death punishment for this crime, and promises forgiveness to all who repent and seek it; but it does not thereby destroy the law, for it brings out a higher and more awful conclusion, and solemnly delivers up the sinner to the final judgment; "whoremongers and adulterers God will judge!" Again, we are not only forbidden a breach of oath, but all needless asseverations; not only are we forbidden revenge, but we are taught that if "we do not forgive, our heavenly Father will not forgive us;" and we are taught even thus to limit our prayer, "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them who trespass against us." Such is the comprehensive latitude given by this Divine commentator on the moral law. He fills up the outline of law, so to speak; sheds new light upon it; brings fresh meaning out of it; affirms its spirituality; shows how it enters men's motives, and affections, and desires; divinely translates it, and publishes it as it were afresh; removes it out of a mechanical region into a spiritual one; he makes his demands upon the heart, not upon the hands; he presents the law not as a mere "letter which killeth," but as a "spirit which calls forth the moral life;" it asks not our doings but ourselves. It does not say, "Do," but "Be." Its demands, therefore, are unlimited; it never says, enough; it demands "all the strength, and all the heart, and all the soul."

And, having thus defined and determined the law, he places his disciples within its circle, and surrounds them as it were with its omnipresence. In this way, then, he sublimely “fulfils the law."

Another sense in which Christ fulfilled the law was, by himself exem→ plifying it, embodying its principles and precepts in their utmost perfection; realizing the exalted theory of morality which he had himself laid down. In this sense the law had never before been fulfilled in any human instance, every man had broken it; there was no successful instance to demonstrate its practicability-that it was other