CHRISTIANITY 



217 



ami tin- desire for, u true .\li---iali. For in onl.-r 

 that the Saviour might accomplish hi- work of 

 reparation in the name of the human race, it was 

 necessary that lie should ! waited for hy a 

 rliM-rii people, such as could be formed only 

 in a nation separated from the pagan worhf, 

 and subjected to a particular moral and spiritual 

 (duration under special divinely sanctioned institu- 

 tions. Greatest of these was the law of Sinai, 

 intended to awaken in the heart sorrow and 

 hatred for sin. Prophecy completed the work 

 of preparation l>\ announcing to hearts pierced 

 through by the sword of the law the coming of 

 him who was to restore all thing* again, whose 

 work was prefigured by the priesthood of the sons 

 I Aaron and the sacrifices offered to God most 

 holy. These special institutions were proper only 

 to the period of preparation which was called the 

 old Covenant. Everything they contained that 

 was exclusive anil peculiar must disappear when 

 the period of accomplishment had succeeded it. 



The Old Covenant itself was aware of its transi- 

 tory character, for above all its institutions there 

 soared a promise of enlargement which God gave 

 to the father of the chosen race on the day 

 when he bade him leave his country and his 

 kindred : ' In thee shall all the families of the earth 

 be blessed ' ( Gen. xii. 3 ) ; and prophecy was but 

 one long and splendid enrichment or the promise : 

 ' I will also give thee,' he says, a Messian ' for a 

 light to the Gentiles, that thou mayest be my 

 salvation unto the end of the earth ( Isa. xlix. 

 6). As soon as the reconciliation has been con- 

 summated between man and God by the sacrifice 

 of Calvary, the wall of separation between Israel 

 and other nations is broken down ; the barriers 

 between a powerless priesthood and the simple 

 faithful who participate in the priesthood of Christ 

 fall down ; and sacrifices which make no expiation 

 disappear before the only sufficient offering. You 

 are kings and priests, says the apostle Peter to the 

 early Christians (1 Peter, ii. 9). The religion of 

 humanity, which is the religion of the soul, super- 

 sedes the exclusive religion of the circumcised 

 people the religion of the letter which killeth; 

 and this splendid enfranchisement is but the 

 consequence of the redemptive work of Christ 

 which faith assimilates. All this glorious liberty 

 is included in the words : ' The just shall live by 

 faith '{Rom. i. 17). 



It was the mission of Paul, the former Pharisee, 

 the grand freedman of Christ, to set free the new 

 religion from the Ixmds of Jewish legalism ; called 

 as he was by a divine revelation to draw all the 

 consequences from the teaching of the Master. 

 He formulated the charter of this freedom in two 

 sentences, stamped with a kind of divine genius : 

 the first, ' The law was our schoolmaster to brinjj; us 

 unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith ' 

 ( Gal. iii. 24 ). Both its lofty mission and its power- 

 lessness are here recognised together. The second is : 

 ' Before Christ there is neither Greek nor Jew . . . 

 but Christ is all, and in all ' ( Col. iii. 11). Thus 

 the religion of humanity rises on the ruins of the 

 national religion. We see the New Covenant 

 striking its roots deep into the soil of that Jud.-ra 

 whence cometh salvation (John, iv. 22), but grow- 

 ing like a great tree capable of lodging in its 

 branches all the birds of heaven ; and all its liberal 

 and blessed expansion hut brings us back to the 

 work of the Redeemer, as St Paul asserts in the 

 words : 'Stand fast therefore in the liberty where- 

 with Christ hath made us free' (Gal. v. 1 ). 



If we pass from Judaism to the religions of the 

 ancient pagan world, at least to those developed 

 in countries where they came into direct contact 

 with Christianity, we find that they also had their 

 preparation. In the first place, there is not one 



human soul which has riot had engraved upon it 

 the divine law, as St Paul recognises : the Gentiles, 

 says. he, ' show the work of the law written in their 

 hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and 

 their thoughts the meanwhile accusing or else 

 excusing one another' (Rom. ii. 15 ). In the next 

 place, God has not ceased to speak to them by the 

 grand spectacle of the world itself, and of the 

 heavens in which his invisible perfections may be 

 seen as with the bodily eye ( Rom. i. 20). Finally, 

 if he has not granted them direct revelations, his 

 spirit has constantly breathed upon them as it 

 breathed upon the confused waters of chaoH from 

 which was to emerge a world. After all they 

 l>elonged, as St Paul says again, to the offspring 

 of God (Acts, xvii. 29), and there was not a single 

 man among them who had not in him a ray of that 

 light of the word 'which lighteth every man that 

 cometh into the world ' (John, i. 9). The need of a 

 renewing work meets us again everywhere in the 

 very heart of Paganism. There is no nation which 

 has been without its priests and its sacrifices, and 

 which has not sought that atonement for which 

 the human conscience has always longed. But 

 that did not hinder the pagan world from con- 

 tinuing to be sunk in idolatry, for it fell under 

 the dominion of a Nature which it deified. Hence 

 its dreadful errors equalled only by its dreadful 

 corruption. Yet it never ceased to seek for God, 

 groping blindly in the dark (Acts, xvii. 27). The 

 moral conscience which had never been stifled 

 reacted incessantly against the deadening influence 

 of the nature-religions ; it called for a God greater 

 than those which Paganism had fashioned for it; 

 it had its sublime aspirations which never ceased 

 to re-echo through the pagan night one long peni- 

 tential psalm, wliich, sung in the plains of Chaldaea, 

 sometimes became a true supplication to the future 

 Saviour. ' I turn from every side,' says the son 

 of Vedic India to his god, ' desiring to know 

 my sin. Absolve us from the sins of our fathers, 

 and from those which we have committed in our 

 own bodies ' ( Rig Veda, vii. 86 ). 



The preparation of the pagan nations consisted 

 in their being made to experience their inability 

 to find salvation in their idolatrous religions. \Ve 

 may consider that preparation as finished, when 

 out of the ruins of their old idols they raised that 

 altar to the unknown God which St Paul recog- 

 nised as the symbol of aspirations all the more 

 ardent the more they had been deceived, and the 

 more general the decline in the world around. 

 The converted pagans found that peace for which 

 they longed at the feet of Christ. They gave 

 up without difficulty their own peculiar rites 

 that priesthood and those sacrifices which had 

 availed but to express and stimulate their desire 

 for salvation without satisfying it. For them, 

 too, the exclusive and national character which 

 clothed religion before the revelation of God's 

 universal fatherhood needed to be expanded. 

 For the religion of humanity to supersede the 

 various religions of the soil, it was necessary 

 not only for the Jew to renounce his exclusive 

 theocracy, but also for the son of Paganism to 

 recognise that the kingdom of Christ, not being of 

 this world (John, xviii. 36), ought not to le incor- 

 porated with the state as a tiling that belonged 

 to a particular people. \Ve see that Paganism. 

 some admirable ideas alone excepted, brought 

 nothing to Christianity but aspirations frustrated 

 and yearnings unsatisfied. from the doctrinal 

 point* of view, even its noblest philosophies hatl 

 been falsified by the influence of the nature 

 religions. Platonism itself with all its idealism 

 ended in oriental dualism, for unable to triumph 

 over evil, it identified it finally with matter under 

 a fatalism whence man could escape only by an 



