vance. Looking at Him then, only in His human character, what light does His life and teaching throw upon the origin of the religion in which He was born and trained? There is no room for question that He regarded it as divine, for He constantly asserts this, and while He recognizes no other authority upon earth, He always maintains the divine authority of this. Two suppositions have been made to explain His position while denying that it was right. One, that He was so much under the influence of the prejudices and habits of thought in which He had been trained, that He did not Himself see the falsity of their ground; the other, that while He really saw this, He yet did not think it wise to put Himself in conflict with the prevailing opinions and prejudices of his countrymen.

In regard to the former, the general sagacity of our Lord must be admitted. He had a deep spiritual insight, and thoroughly understood the needs of the human heart; He was able so far to cast Himself loose from the past as to found that new religion of the future which is still only in the midst of its progress; He was a man of deep reflection, to whose nature all shams and conventional deceptions were utterly abhorrent-a man who sought and taught only pure and absolute truth; He was brought into contact with all the forms in which the religion of His day appeared, and He never failed to pierce and expose, as with an Ithuriel's spear, whatever in it was hollow and untrue. Of all who ever lived, He was the "man

in advance of His time," who, unshackled by the past, belonged to the future; nay, He was the very embodiment of the future. The supposition that such an one was mistaken as to the essential character of the religion which He gave His life to complete and supersede, is simply incredible. We may set aside the theory of ignorance and prejudice in "Jesus of Nazareth" in this fundamental matter of His whole life, as a supposition which can have no standing in the court of

reason.

But while He knew better, may He not have judged it wise so to adapt Himself to the prejudices of His countrymen as to avoid stirring up needless opposition to His main work? Certainly his utterances do not have the air of accommodation, but of positive and emphatic teaching. But not to insist on this, what really were the opinions with which He came in contact? Neither the authorities nor the people seem to have been at all occupied with any question as to the original source of the law; that was considered a settled point, the discusssion of which was not moved at all. The whole question in which they were interested was of the authority and binding force of those glosses and interpretations by which they had "made the law of God of none effect." In the defense of these all their narrowness and party rancor was aroused, and to these our Lord showed no consideration or mercy. He thrust them aside, and taught that they were derogatory to His Father, and in contradiction to the law itself. In

the matter of the law, then, our Lord did not conform to the prejudices of His countrymen, but from first to last set Himself and His teaching in absolute contradiction to them. It was this that roused their hatred and led, as He clearly foresaw, to His condemnation as a malefactor and to His death upon the cross.

•

His view, therefore, of the Mosaic law can be accounted for in neither of these ways. The record of that view is in His almost every utterance. It appears in His devout submission to its requirements as of divine authority; in His reference to its teachings as heavenly truth; in His citation of its statutes as embodying the duty of man, and of its representations of the God of Israel as absolute truth. Even when He enlarges or modifies its precepts, He still shows that His teaching was the original intention of the law, temporarily changed for "the hardness of men's hearts." He stood firmly and fully upon the Old Testament in all His promulgation of the New. He ever recognized its authority as absolute and of God, while He admitted no other authority. To Him the "law, the prophets, and the Psalms" were sacred books, divinely given. He certainly was sufficiently well informed, and had a sufficiently deep insight and sagacity. Is it likely that there was a radical error on this fundamental point in Him who spake "as never man spake"?

SUMMARY OF THE ESSAY.

1. Conclusions of Kuenen and others based on the alleged form and contents of the Pentateuch. 2. Claim made by the codes themselves as it respects their origin; how it is to be regarded.

3. Bearings of the literary problem.

4. All the laws might have originated in the Mosaic period.

5. The three phases of the legislation sufficiently accounted for in the history.

6. Coloring of the laws, including linguistic peculiarities, no serious objection to their Mosaic origin. 7. The alleged disproportion between civil and relig ious laws not actual.

8. The alleged contradictions in the matter of the several codes shown not to exist as respects (a) the place of worship; (b) the religious festivals; (c) the relation between the priests and Levites; (d) the tithes of crops and cattle; (e) the firstlings of cattle; (f) the dwellings of priests and Levites; (g) the age at which a Levite began his public service; (h) the manumission of Hebrew servants.