322 THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. 



immortality of the soul, and when other nations outside of 

 Judea began to perceive the necessity of interposing a Mediator, 

 a Divine Redeemer, between man and the Infinite God. 



It has always been a subject of wonder and astonishment, and 

 often a weapon of attack with unbelievers, that the Christian 

 system was brought out at so late a period of the world's progress. 

 If this scheme was devised for, and was the only means of, the 

 salvation of men from the most awful penalty that could possibly 

 be imagined, then surely there were peoples and races of the 

 older times who at least equally merited and could have appre- 

 ciated its provisions and benefits. It would be sad, even humil- 

 iating to think that all the refined and cultivated nations of 

 antiquity had no part nor lot in the great plan of salvation 

 merely because they happened to antedate the Christian era. 

 Rather than entertain so injurious and narrow-minded a conclu- 

 sion, it would be far better, so it seems to me, to enlarge the 

 bounds, to throw down the bars, that restrict the efficacy of Faith, 

 and to hold that a devout and earnest belief in whatever of the 

 eternal truths of God and of nature had been in any manner 

 made known to a people, would relieve them from the " Condem- 

 nation of the Law." 



The Christian very appropriately cherishes the expectation of 

 meeting the Hebrew Patriarchs in the Heaven to which he 

 aspires. Yet certainly these worthies knew not Christ, either 

 symbolically or prophetically ; for the symbols or prophecies 

 which are claimed to indicate a coming Saviour for Israel did not 

 happen and were not written until many hundred years after 

 their time. Besides they had no hope nor knowledge of a future 

 life ; for this tenet had no place in the Jewish theology. The 

 rewards and punishments of the Mosaic Dispensation were 

 wholly temporal.* The New Testament expressly claims that 



*The learned and pious Bishop Whately writes in his Dissertation on 

 Christianity (Enc. Brit., vol. I, p. 473, 8th Ed.): " The nation of Israel was, 

 as we have said, placed under an extraordinary providence, which allotted to 

 them victory or defeat, plenty or famine, and other temporal blessings and 

 punishments, according to their conduct. And these were the rewards and 

 punishments that formed the sanction of the Mosaic Law. As for a future 

 state of retribution in another world, Moses said nothing to the Israelites 

 about that. This was reserved for a greater than Moses, and for 



a more glorious dispensation than his Law." 



