disciples of the Pharisees, Jesus did not "believe in the Bible," but used it with a freedom and discrimination which soon raised against him a swarm of implacable enemies, who, in the charitable judgment of Paul, had "a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge."1

How, then, it will be asked, are we to understand the words in which the permanence of the Law is asserted?" Think not that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the Law till all things be accomplished." 2 Some writers have supposed that these words are so plainly directed against the teaching of St. Paul that they cannot be authentic, but owe their origin to the conflicts of the Apostolic age. This seems to me a needless criticism, partly because the words, if interpreted by their context, yield a sense which is agreeable to the rest of Christ's teaching, partly because their substance is given by Luke also, and partly because St. Paul himself writes as though he were acquainted with them, and understood them 1 Rom. x. 2. 2 Matt. v. 17 sq. 3 xvi. 17.

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in a sense favourable to his own views. According to him, the very object of freedom from the Law through the sending of Christ was "that the ordinance of the Law might be fulfilled in us;" "He that loveth his neighbour hath fulfilled the Law;" "The whole Law is fulfilled in one word, even in this, 'Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."" If Paul could use such language at the very time when he was proving that the Law had served its purpose, and that it contained "weak and beggarly elements" to which only the unspiritual could return, surely Christ might guard himself against suspicions of antinomianism by saying that he had no thought of relaxing the high obligations which were laid upon men by the ancient reli

1 It is well to notice the Greek words. Οὐκ ἦλθον καταλῦσαι ἀλλὰ πληρῶσαι. . . . ἐὰν μὴ περισσεύσῃ ὑμῶν ἡ δικαιοσύνη πλεῖον τῶν γραμματέων καὶ Φαρισαίων κ. τ. λ. (Matt. v. 17, 20). Ινα τὸ δικαίωμα τοῦ νόμου πληρωθῇ ἐν ἡμῖν τοῖς μὴ κατὰ σάρκα περιπατοῦσιν ἀλλὰ κατὰ πνεῦμα (thus reaching the higher righteousness by reversing the Pharisaic method; Rom. viii. 4). ‘O yàp ảɣañŵv τὸν ἕτερον νόμον πεπλήρωκεν. . . . πλήρωμα οὖν νόμου ἡ ἀγάπη (Rom. xiii. 8, 10). Again, "Os éàv ovv λvon píav Tŵv Evroλŵv τούτων τῶν ἐλαχίστων (Matt. v. 19), compared with εἴ τις ἑτέρα ἐντολή, ἐν τῷ λόγῳ τούτῳ ανακεφαλαιοῦται (Rom. xiii. 9), and ὁ γὰρ πᾶς νόμος ἐν ἑνὶ λόγῳ πεπλήρωται, ἐν τῷ ̓Αγαπήσεις τὸν πλησίον σου ὡς σεαυτόν (Gal. v. 14). Compare also, Νόμον οὖν καταργοῦμεν διὰ τῆς πίστεως ; Μὴ γένοιτο· ἀλλὰ νόμον ἱστάνομεν (Rom. iii. 31).

gion; nay, that he intended to carry them to a finer perfection and a greater strictness. It is clear that in the passages quoted from Paul he means by the Law the moral law, that which might be accepted by the conscience as the eternal law of God; and Christ may have used it in the same sense. I do not mean that an explicit distinction was drawn between the moral and the ceremonial. The Law was regarded as a

whole; but it was perceived by the more enlightened minds that, as a whole, it had a moral and spiritual significance, and that its ritual requirements were only symbolic veils of spiritual ideas. As soon, therefore, as the spiritual ideas were realized in life, the foreshadowing symbol fell away of itself, being lost in its fulfilment. It was possible, accordingly, for Paul to say that "the whole Law" was fulfilled in the commandment to love one's neighbour, because this was the culminating idea which gave life and meaning to the whole. In the same way, Jesus refers to every portion of the Law, while at the same time his mind instinctively seizes on the ethical portion as the true expression of its idea, and as alone imparting to it any permanent value. All the examples which follow are from the moral law, and they illustrate what Jesus

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meant by "fulfilling." He did not mean adhering to the letter of the commandment, but penetrating to the spirit of goodness which the commandment sought to embody, and giving to that a nobler and more complete expression. He sums up his meaning in one brief and memorable sentence: "All things, therefore, whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the Law and the Prophets." It was in this large sense, then, that he came not to destroy, but to fulfil. In the kingdom of heaven there was no lowering of the divine requirements. There was to be no explaining away of the commandment to honour one's father and mother, no quibbling distinctions as to the binding nature of oaths, no defining of the term neighbour so as to suit one's narrow and selfish passions; but the divine idea of the old religion was to be carried out in the minutest particulars, till its grandest dream passed into waking reality, and men became the sons of their Father in heaven through participation in his spirit of love. 2

If, now, we put these various lines of evidence together, we obtain a pretty distinct conception of 2 Matt. v. 44 sq.

1 Matt. vii. 12.

Christ's view of the Old Testament. It is clear, in the first place, that he did not, out of repugnance to some portions of its teaching, place himself in revolutionary antagonism to it, as Marcion did at a later time. He set himself in the same line as Moses and the Prophets, and received the Old Testament as the records of their teaching. Many a sublime passage must have found an echo in his heart, and the words of psalmist and seer have often flashed a revealing light into the workings of his own mind. The God whose voice he heard in his own soul was the God who had spoken to them, and he was summoned to carry on and complete their work by leading Israel, and through Israel mankind, to the fulfilment of that Divine idea which for so many ages had been slowly unfolding itself through the imperfect conditions of Hebrew history. But the very notion of fulfilment, of completion, of enlargement, implies the previous existence of the incomplete and limited, and a mingling of the transient and erroneous with the true and permanent; and we have seen that this was clearly recognized by Jesus. The presence and operation of God were no guarantee of infallibility, for they were seen through the dimness of human vision, and the