leges as destined for themselves alone. The favors of heaven should stop with them and be their exclusive possession. This attitude of mind involved the great perversion of Israel's history. By failing to receive Christ and his world-wide conception of salvation, they broke with the sublime purpose of God in their own history, and failed to attain the true goal of their existence as the theocratic people.

These illustrations of Jewish ideas will serve to show how uncongenial to the spiritual truth of Jesus was the soil in which he must plant it. To the thought of his age God was afar off, his service was a round of rites and observances, righteousness was an external, and largely a non-moral, affair, and the great hope of the nation was to subdue, by divine intervention, the surrounding nations and to obtain supremacy over the world. With all these ideas and hopes the teachings of Jesus came into the sharpest collision. He aimed to show men that God was near to them and that they could live in fellowship with him. He taught that all outward rites were valueless in themselves and that God cared most about the state of the heart. For him righteousness consisted in Godlikeness; that is, in love, service, and helpfulness.

CHAPTER II

THE GOSPEL AND THE LAW

IN his teaching Jesus took his stand, as we have seen, upon the Old Testament. He did not aim to introduce a wholly new religion. He clearly foresaw that some of his disciples would suppose that it was his purpose to break with the Old Testament system, and he warned them against this serious mistake by telling them that any of them who should feel themselves free to break the least commandment of the Old Testament law, and should teach others accordingly, should be called the least in the Kingdom of God (Mt. v. 19). His constant manner of speaking in regard to the Jewish religion and Scriptures shows the reverence in which he held them.1

There is in one of his parables a significant expression in regard to the gradual progress of his truth in the world: "First the blade, then the ear, after that the full corn in the ear" (Mk. iv. 28). This statement might be fitly applied to the whole process of revelation of which the Old Testament represents the earlier stages. It would as truly describe Jesus' idea of this process as it does the growth to which he immediately applied it. The Old Testament represents the first steps in a great course of revelation and redemption which reaches its consummation in Christ himself.

While, therefore, Jesus builds upon the Jewish religious system, he also builds far above and beyond it. While

1 On this subject I would refer the reader to the following discussions: R. Mackintosh, Christ and the Jewish Law, 1886; E. Schürer, Die Predigt Jesu Christi in ihrem Verhältniss zum alten Testament und zum Judenthum, 1882; W. Bousset, Jesu Predigt in ihrem Gegensatz zum Judenthum, 1892; L. Jacob, Jesu Stellung zum mosaischen Gesetz, 1893.

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THE SYNOPTIC TEACHING OF JESUS

salvation, historically considered, is from the Jews, it is none the less necessary that the Jewish religion should be greatly elevated and enriched. The actual religion of the FILFILMENT people, though embodying essential and permanent elements of true religion, is not adequate to the needs of the world; it must be further developed, supplemented, and completed at many points before it can become the universal, the absolute religion.

THE

LAW

There were imperfections in the Jewish religion which were incidental to its character and purpose. It was in its very nature provisional and preparatory. It was adapted to an early and rude stage of human development. A convenient illustration is found in the principle of retaliation which, within certain limits, the Old Testament sanctioned. "Ye have heard," said Jesus, "that it was said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: but I say unto you, Resist not him that is evil," etc. (Mt. v. 38, 39). Another example is found in his conversation with the Pharisees when they asked him why, if a man and wife became one in marriage, Moses commanded to give a bill of divorcement. Jesus answered, " Moses for your hardness of heart suffered you to put away your wives: but from the beginning it hath not been so. And I say unto you," etc.

(Mt. xix. 8).

Jesus, in effect, undermined the Jewish law of clean and unclean by setting forth the principle that it is not what enters into a man which defiles him, but that it is that which proceeds out of him, that is, from his heart, which defiles him (Mk. vii. 15). The Levitical system of sacrifices would not long survive among those who appreciated the force of the principle that "to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is much. more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices (Mk. xii. 33). It is obvious, then, that the actual effect of the Gospel in doing away with the Jewish sacrificial and ceremonial system was a natural and logical result of the principles which Jesus laid down, and may be said to have been contemplated by him.

BASIC

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But the question now arises, Did Jesus intend to abrogate the whole Old Testament religious system, and, if so, by what means? This question also involves another, If he did do away with this system, how is the fact to be reconciled with his frequent assertion of its divineness? The most important passage, in its bearing on these problems, is Mt. v. 17: "Think not that I am come to destroy FULFILMENT the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy, but to fulfil." This passage must be read in the light of the explanations and applications which follow it. Jesus proceeds to say that not a jot or tittle shall pass away from the law, a statement which, if read by itself, would seem to indicate the perpetual validity of the whole Old Testament system, ritual, sacrifices, and all. But to the statement in question he immediately adds: "till all things be fulfilled, or accomplished." He does not, therefore, say that no part of this system shall ever pass away (as it has done, and that, too, in consequence of his own teaching), but only that no part of it shall escape the process of fulfilment; that it shall not pass away till, having served its providential purpose, it is fulfilled in the gospel. What, now, is this fulfilment which is to be accomplished for the whole law, even for its least portions?

This question is not to be answered in a single sentence or definition. The fulfilment of the old system by the new is a great historic process, the adequate understanding of which requires a careful study of the whole New Testament. Its salient features, however, may be briefly indicated. Jesus fulfils the Old Testament system by rounding out into ideal completeness what is incomplete in that system. In this process of fulfilment, all that is imperfect, provisional, temporary, or, for any reason, needless to the perfect religion, falls away of its own accord, and all that is essential and permanent is conserved and embodied in Christianity. Some of the elements of this fulfilment are as follows:

(1) Jesus fulfils the law perfectly in his own personal life. The character of Jesus was the realization of the ideal which the law contemplated. He was a perfectly

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righteous person, and it was righteousness which the law demanded and aimed to secure. But it is not merely or mainly the personal fulfilment of the law's ideal to which Jesus refers in saying that he came to fulfil the law.

(2) Jesus fulfilled the law in his teaching by setting forth therein the absolute truths of religion and the uniUNNERSAL versal principles of goodness. This point may best be illustrated from the context of the passage under review. Our Lord says that the true righteousness must exceed that of the scribes and Pharisees (v. 20). Their righteousness consisted in the punctilious observance of the bare letter of the law, quite to the neglect of its spirit. Jesus then proceeds to show the difference between such external, superficial righteousness and that which corresponds to the law's true ideal. He says (v. 21 sq.): You have in the Old Testament the commandment, Thou shalt not kill. It is commonly supposed that to refrain from the actual, overt act of murder is to keep that commandment, but I tell you that he only truly keeps it who refrains from ANYERS HATE anger and hate. In the sight of God, hate is the essence of murder. He thus finds the seat of all goodness, and of all sin in the heart, that is, in the sphere of the motives and the desires.

In like manner, he declares that the essence of adultery is in the lustful desire and the impure look. He thus makes righteousness an inward and moral affair. It depends upon the state of the heart. This truth he next illustrates by reference to a more subtle distinction (vv. 33-37). He cites the commandment which requires men to speak the truth, and to perform their vows unto God. It appears that under cover of this second requirement the Jews permitted themselves to make subtle distinctions between vows or oaths taken "to Jehovah," and those taken, for example, "by the heaven," or "by Jerusalem." Oaths taken in Jehovah's name were regarded as more sacred and binding than those not so taken, and thus an easy way was opened for disregarding the real sacredness of vows and promises. Jesus strikes at the root of all these hollow and dishonest distinctions, and discounte