in this sense of the practical accomplishment, we must either conclude that those words, vers. 17-19, in spite of their appearing to have been derived, like the other portions of the Discourse on Righteousness, from the Logia-source, yet could not have been spoken by the historical Jesus, who knew Himself to be the Lord of the Sabbath, who taught His disciples that nothing which cometh into a man from without defileth him, and who opposed His own legislative authority to the authority of the Old Testament law; or we must conclude that Jesus, in vers. 17-19, understood by law something other and higher than the simple historically - delivered form of the Old Testament revelation of the will of God, although no sure ground for such a different acceptation of the idea of the law has been given in the text. In these circumstances, does not the question force itself upon us, whether, in this very saying of Jesus in ver. 17 in regard to the "fulfilment" of the law and the prophets, for which He had come, that idea of a higher and more perfect form of the law than the one already given is expressed,—an idea which otherwise, unsupported by the text, must be presupposed and supplied by us?

In addition to this there is one other consideration, which, while it proves the incompatibility of the meaning of this "fulfilment" with the practical accomplishment, at the same time leads to the only suitable and necessary explanation. In the discourse of Jesus, the idea of "fulfilment" is set in opposition to the idea of "abrogation." But the practical performance of the precepts of the law is by no means

the exact logical opposite of the abrogation of the law. The abrogation of the law means the abolition or the impairing of the validity of the law as a rule for one's self or for another. It is a function which is the opposing counterpart of the legislative function, and which is authoritatively executed through the organ of legislation. As little as practical obedience to a law is identical with the establishment or maintenance of the validity of the law, so little is the practical transgression of a law an abrogation of the law; for the law instituted by the legislative authority, even when it is disobeyed, remains valid as the standard for judging the merit or the blame of the practical conduct. Also the true logical opposite of the idea of the "fulfilment of the law," in the sense of the practical performance of its precepts, would be the idea of transgression (Tapaßaivewv) or neglect (apiévai) of the law. But to the idea presented in the text we are discussing, viz. that of the abrogation of the law, only such an idea can be logically opposed as denotes an exercise of legislative authority. Can the idea of "fulfilment" in that passage bear such a sense?

The idea of fulfilment, not only as applied to other expressions and manifestations of the spiritual life (cf. John xv. 11; Acts xiv. 26; 2 Cor. x. 6; 1 Thess. ii. 16), but also as applied to sayings, can indicate a completion which consists in the said utterance or manifestation being brought to a conclusion, to the highest possible condition, or to a form corresponding to the idea at its best. Where, according to the connection, the "fulfilment" of the law must mean

an exercise of legislative power, there is implied a definitive completion of the promulgation of the law. In order perfectly to understand the exact meaning in which Jesus indicates as His task such a fulfilment of the Old Testament law, we must bear in mind that, in the consciousness of the Jews in the time of Jesus, the "binding" and "fastening" of the law appeared in the foremost rank as that exercise of "legislative authority" which was opposed to the "abrogation" of the law. The law was instituted by God once for all; it was ministered by angels, and mediated by Moses; and this law was to remain inviolate. But those "who had set themselves in Moses' seat" (Matt. xxiii. 2), the Pharisaic scribes, who regarded themselves as the custodians and authorities of the law, sought only to make it their task to "bind" and "make fast" the law as delivered, and to establish, down to the minutest points, its meaning and value by their explanation and specialisation, and thus to draw a hedge around it. This interest of theirs for the strictest "binding" and "fastening" of the law, could be widely removed from zeal for its real practical performance. The Pharisaic scribes, as Jesus said of them, bound heavy burdens and laid them upon men's shoulders, whilst they themselves would not move them with one of their fingers (Matt. xxiii. 4). Now, if Jesus declared it His task not to destroy "the law and the prophets," but to bring them to fulfilment, He makes it clear, by substituting this latter idea for the "fastening" or "binding" aimed at by the scribes, that He sought to indicate His own relation to the law and the prophets, not only as one

opposed to a pure rejection of the Old Testament revelation of law, but also as opposed to the officious zeal which the Pharisaic scribes thought they required to exercise towards the law. He meant that, in the law and the prophets, He recognised a genuine revelation of the will of God, and therefore He did not feel Himself called upon simply to destroy its value for others; but He signified at the same time that He nevertheless would not leave merely as it was the expression of this earlier revelation of the Divine will given in the law and the prophets. He would not only explain and establish that revelation in detail, after the manner of the scribes, but He would rather bring it to a higher and more perfect form, in which the idea of this Old Testament revelation of the Divine will should find a perfectly adequate expression. Were not the law and the prophets, then, a perfectly adequate expression of this idea? Had Jesus sought to abstract the idea of the Old Testament revelation of God's will merely from the historically existing form of this revelation in the law and the prophets, without possessing another means of knowing it, He would, of course, have had again to recognise the actual contents of the law and the prophets as the quite adequate expression of this idea which He had derived from them. But His consciousness showed that He was a true prophet and revealer of He found in Himself, in

God, from the very fact that that most certain revelation of which He was the possessor, a sure vantage-ground from which to judge of what, in the historically given form of the law and the prophets, really corresponded to the true will of

God, and what was only an imperfect expression of that will. He judged the law and the prophets, not according to the standard of an idea derived from themselves, but according to the standard of an ideal, of which He had the certainty that it was the right leading idea of that true revelation of the will of God. His own conception of God, His knowledge and experience of the fatherly goodwill of God, furnished Him with this idea. In so far as He had, on the one hand, expanded and deepened, just from the suggestion and constant guidance of the Holy Scriptures, His own knowledge and inner experience of the character, will, and grace of God, and as He had permanently assimilated from the Scriptures such words as harmonised with the revelation which He had personally experienced, and which afforded a valuable confirmation of that revelation, He had thereby the certainty that the law and the prophets were a true revelation of God, and that their authority was by no means to be simply abrogated. On the other hand, however, so far as He nevertheless found in the law and the prophets an abundance of contents which did not agree with the revelation of which He had inward certainty, and which afforded to Pharisaic Judaism a foundation for a perverted zeal for external legality and earthly hopes, He was led to conclude that the true revelation of God did not exist in perfect form in the law and the prophets, and that it was His peculiar task to set forth in perfect form the revelation of the Divine will. In this sense He could say that He had not come to destroy the law and the prophets, but to "fulfil."