acter. Or, lastly, it might proclaim that Christ had abolished the Jewish system, and so, by releasing the Jew from its obligations, put him on a common ground of freedom with the Gentile.

The first of these three courses was probably that which the greater part of the nation anticipated, and to which the drapery of the ancient prophets gave countenance. Yet it would have been self-destruction for the gospel to perpetuate or even long to endure a union of the spiritual with the ceremonial, of the thing signified with the type. The mind, enlightened by it, at once asked why, if Christ procured forgiveness, the blood of bulls and goats was any longer needed. It was, moreover, impossible for the dwellers in remote parts of the world to fulfil the requirements of the ritual, which had an eye towards a narrow land, whose inhabitants could with ease meet together. And the Jews themselves had already paved the way for the neglect of the law by the system of proselytes, who might, in some sort, share the religious blessings of the nation without being incorporated into it. It needed, therefore, no long experience of the manner in which the gospel took hold of the Gentile mind to see that it was more efficacious, more beneficial without than with Judaism, and that if it allowed the old religion to go with it over the world, there would arise a strife of principles to be terminated by ultimate rejection and overthrow of the one or of the other.

The second course, that of giving a dispensation from the law to the Gentile but not to the Jew, was a half way measure, a method of compromise, by which Jewish national feeling was reconciled to Christianity, and many zealous Jews might be retained in the church who would otherwise have deserted it. On this ground stood the Apostles for a time, and only by degrees gave it up. But in truth it was almost as objectionable as the first course, if not more so. How could two such churches have walked hand in hand, the one of which would regard as worse than useless the ceremonies which the other clung to as God's law to the fathers? How could Christ have reigned supreme amid the sacrifices kept up from age to age, which had no meaning, unless they did some good to the worshiper which he could not do? The Jewish church then, by

a logical necessity, would fall away from Christianity,—a fate that actually overtook a portion of it, which tried to har monize the new and the old. On the other hand, the Gentiles might fairly argue that if there had been a progress in religion as there was from Abraham onward, and if a new era had begun, and the religion had put on its universal character, there must be some change in forms and outward institutions to fit it for mankind. Of what possible use could it be to keep up a difference between Jew and Gentile, if the rights of both were the same under the gospel, if both had the same access by Christ to the Father.

The third course then, that of doing away with whatever was local and symbolical, was the only logical, the only safe, the only beneficial one. But the steps by which the church among the Jews was led towards it were remarkable, as disclosing to us God's way of letting light by degrees fall into minds blinded and swayed by national partialities. First, Christ had uttered a few sayings looking that way, as that glorious one, "the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father." Next it needed special revelations of a very remarkable kind, to show to Peter and the other disciples that there was to be no caste in the church, that a Jew might eat and mingle freely with a Gentile Christian, like Cornelius, as with a brother. Then the church was called upon to decide whether the Gentiles who believed should be bound to observe the law of Moses, and by inspired directions it freed them from the useless and deadly yoke. Then the apostle Paul was raised up to show that the law was done away by Christ, the shadow by the substance, and his disciples pursued the same line of thought, until it became the triumphant and general view of the Christian body. And finally, the destruction of Jerusalem gave the death blow to a half Jewish half Christian religion; the temple in ruins, the nation destroyed, the rites neglected or made impossible, who with a Christian mind could longer hold on to that which fanatical Jews had abandoned? Thus, not by any me revelation directly bearing on the point, but by various hints as it were, did divine wisdom purge and separate the gospel from the old leaven of the Mosaic law.

As the gospel seized on Jewish minds, it by degrees burst its fetters, it felt its freedom and power at once, it uttered to the world and for the world the noble words "where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, bond nor free, but Christ is all and in all."

This was a vital, a momentous advance. We are so far removed from Jewish ways of thinking that it may seem to us as if the Apostle to the Gentiles is wasting energy when he is battling with Jews concerning the law. But in fact he is the truest exponent of the gospel in all this, and by no means exaggerated the importance of the question at issue. But for him, humanly speaking, the religion of Christ could not have reached mankind. He, or some one less fitted by inward experience and acquaintance with the feelings of the Jews, was wanted to settle that question, for on it the destinies of the Gentile world depended.

II. The universality of the gospel, we add in the second place, was favored by its clear disclosures concerning a future life. It is remarkable that so soon as the gospel embraced the world as its place of action, it embraced this world and the next 3 its time of action. Everywhere and forever were its watch words. The little Jewish state was held together without a very explicit doctrine in relation to the last things, although such a doctrine was held, and was, at the time of Christ, widely entertained. The mind was in a condition of childhood; it lived under an immediate Providence, whose rewards and punishments were not put off until after death, and so while it was a local, it was also, in a sense, an earthly religion, earthly, that is, to all except a few nobler men among the people.

But when the gospel came into the world and when it travelled over the world, it was necessary that it should throw light upon a future life and the future destinies of man. We refer not to a logical necessity, to the fact that so great an event as the incarnation of the Son of God would seem destitute of meaning and out of proportion to the wants of man, if its bearings reached only to the end of the present life. Nor do we refer to the demands which the human family would inevitably make upon the new revelation, that it must and ought

to clear up the mystery of man's position in the world, which philosophy had vainly attempted to explore. But it was necessary for the success of the gospel, necessary in order to attract and sober and alarm the nations, necessary in order that men should perceive the greatness of the gift which the gospel offers, that it should speak a word of authority on the duration of the soul. It cannot be conceived that men would long listen to a story of redemption, broken off in the midst, before it told of a hereafter. But on the other hand, when it brought the world to come before the eyes of men, it satisfied a longing which no mythology, no system of human wisdom, had met. And it put the life beyond the grave into such a connexion with the life this side, that all its teachings became interesting, momentous, imperative.

III. More, far more, than all things else in the gospel, the doctrine of Christ dying for the sins of the world, and dying on the cross to procure forgiveness, contains a power over the universal human family. The elements of the old dispensation, which the new carried along with it, the doctrine of God, and of man's fallen condition, are indeed fundamental truths of a universal nature, as interesting to the Greek as to the Jew, to the barbarian as to the Greek, and without them there could have been no gospel. But our remark now is that what belongs exclusively to the gospel, the manifestation of God to the world by his own Son in a state of humiliation, and above all through his atoning death, contained in itself a power and an attractiveness as wide as mankind. The death of Christ for sin did not draw its strength from those universal docrines of the old religion with which it was in company, so much as by its own strength it lent them a force they had not before.

“And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what manner of death he should die." It was surely a daring word for a Galilean to utter, when about to die a malefactor's death, he said that such an event would cast Satan from his throne of empire and draw men unto himself. No other human being then living dreamed of such a thing. And almost every one who believed in a Messiah would have called him a dreamer for entertaining such a thought. But the facts of all lands and of all centuries since have proved

that Jesus knew mankind better than all wise men, Jew or pagan-that he knew man's heart as well as he knew himself; and so the double fact of his consciousness of coming from God, and of his knowledge where the strength of his religion lay, is an evidence, never to be overcome, that he is the Saviour for mankind. At the time when he uttered these words his lowliness was proof to many that he was an impostor. But his lowliness of station and of temper has reached to ten thousand dark, depraved places, where no kingly virtues could penetrate. When he hung on the cross his enemies thought that an end was put to his pretensions and his faction. But what has interested the heart of the world since so much as this great moment? Let Christian tears, let Christian song and art, let Christian theology in all its shapes, answer the question. Or let the new convert from heathenism in any quarter-the Hindoo, or Sandwich Islander, or Hottentot, or American Indian-answer; and he will tell of a strange power coming from the dying Christ. And this, whether he may have had instilled into him a theory of atonement or not. Let him follow the simple narrative and have no dogma-the narrative breaks and subdues him, as it did when told by the artless disciples of the Redeemer.

Now, if we may get behind and analyze the feelings of Christian souls, in what consists the great power of the cross -of the cross, we mean, as taken in connection with the rising from the dead and the exaltation. What is there which gives their universal sway over men to these distinctive facts of the gospel?

In the first place the influence of the death of Christ on all races and times arises from its being a fact and not a dogma. The strength of heathenism lay in its mythologies, and when these were found to be false, no philosophy could hold them up or take their place. Mankind have ever had a longing to be brought into the presence of the Godhead, to have something authoratative from him; and the revelation needs to take the shape of history to be powerful and attractive. Doctrine must come out of facts to have any power: it is dead being alone.