140 



THE OLIVE LEAF. CHAP. 



tions for their guidance and blessing. But the result 

 of all His impersonal dealings with the human race 

 before the appearance of the Saviour, was like the 

 result of Gehazi's laying the prophet's staff upon the 

 face of the dead child. Some good indeed was done. 

 The decay of religion was prevented ; the process of 

 spiritual decomposition was arrested ; the possibilities 

 of restoration were conserved ; and the body of 

 humanity was kept at least from sinking into a deeper 

 spiritual death, and yielding to the dissolving forces 

 which were assailing it in the world. But no spiritual 

 life was enkindled ; the sleep of death was not broken ; 

 mankind, dead in trespasses and sins, heard no voice, 

 and felt no touch potent enough to break the spell that 

 bound it down in spiritual torpor and coldness. Scrip- 

 ture itself tells us of the insufficiency of all the means 

 and appliances that were used under the old dispen- 

 sations to quicken mankind into newness of life. It 

 tells us that " the law made nothing perfect " ; that 

 it could not effect the restoration which it pro- 

 claimed " in that it was weak through the flesh " ; 

 that it had only "a shadow of good things to 

 come." The whole Bible declares the truth that the 

 law not the ceremonial law, which was done away 

 with by the coming of the Gospel, but the eternal 

 and unchangeable rule of righteousness, which is the 

 transcript of the Divine nature and the harmony of 

 the universe was unable, notwithstanding its awful 

 threatenings and glorious rewards, to cope with human 

 corruption, and remedy the evils of sin. Even when 



