promised to the Jews, it falls under the same category with that of John the Baptist, as properly belonging to the old dispensation. For, in strictness of language, the earthly life of Christ did not form part of the new economy of grace. He came "a minister of the circumcision," and "made under the law;" and He continued so, until, by His dying and rising again, He had redeemed His people from the curse of the Law. Then, and not until then, He became, in the proper sense of the word, the head of His Church; for it is not of Christ in His earthly, but in His glorified state, that the apostle affirms that "we" (Christians) “are members of His body, of His flesh, and of His bones."* Under the Christian dispensation, we no longer know "Christ after the flesh;" and they who, as the Apostles, enjoyed this privilege, exchanged it, when once the Spirit-the true connecting link between the Head and the body-had been vouchsafed, for a new and heavenly apprehension of Him. Hence possibly may be explained Christ's words to Mary: "Touch me not, for I am not yet ascended to my Father." The risen Saviour was no longer to be the subject of earnal intercourse, while that mystical incorporation in Him, which is the effect of the descent of the Spirit, had not yet taken place; so that in the interval between His resurrection and ascension into heaven, believers remained in the imperfect condition proper to the legal dispensation, needing, in order to be brought into mystical union with their glorified Head, the special efflux of the Spirit by which the Christian Church was formally constituted. It is not with His earthly, but with His heavenly, life that Christ has drawn up His Church into union: it is "in heavenly places" that God, having "quickened us together with Christ," has "made us sit together" with Him.§ In perfect harmony with His belonging, as concerning the flesh, to the elder dispensation, it was that our Lord was circumcised, and presented in the temple "after the custom of the Law;" that he, though greater than John, received John's baptism, deeming it right "to fulfil all righteousness," i. e. to comply with every divine ordinance; and that his personal ministry was confined to Judæa, and, with few exceptions, to Jews, He Himself declaring that He was "not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Hence it is that, as every attentive reader of the Gospels will have observed, the doctrinal teaching of Christ bears so much of * Ephes. v. 30. † 2 Cor. v. 16. ? Ephes. ii. 5, 6. an anticipatory character; that is, refers to a state of things which did not then exist, but which was just about to come into being. To Christ, the kingdom of heaven,—i. e. the Gospel dispensation was as much a future thing as it was to John the Baptist, except in so far as it was present in Christ Himself, in whom the will of God and the will of man existed, upon earth, in perfect unison. His statements on the cardinal doctrines and mysteries of the Gospel were at the time for the most part unintelligible, not only to the carnally-minded Jew, but even to His own followers: His expressions wore to them an air of undefined mystery, which was not dissipated until Christ was fully formed in them by the descent of the Spirit. That they appear plain to us is owing to our possessing in the last, or apostolic, revelation, which throws a flood of light upon the law, the prophets, and the teaching of our Lord Himself, the key to their meaning. Perhaps it is needless to insist further upon the fact (which, however, has not always been kept in mind), that the Christian dispensation formally commenced, not with the incarnation of Christ, but with the descent of the Spirit; and that, as the provisions which our Lord made for the visible separation of His Church from Judaism-such as the formation of the apostolic college and the Sacraments-remained, until He was perfected, forms without substance, -the visible receptacle without the informing spirit, so His teaching partook of the same anticipatory, and so far imperfect, character. Had this been recollected, the disputes which have arisen upon the question, how far was the Gospel preached by Christ Himself? might have been avoided. The Gospel was preached by our Lord as it had been preached by the prophets, only much more explicitly; but the teaching both of Christ and of the prophets needed, for their illustration, the fuller disclosure of the counsels of God which was given through the apostles. To affirm this is not to disparage the teaching of our Lord; unless it be a disparagement to it to maintain that the revelation of God, having been throughout progressive, the concluding portion of it may be expected to throw light upon all that preceded it. But to return;-the state of religion among the Jews, when Christ and his forerunner appeared, may be gathered with sufficient accuracy from the notices on the subject furnished by the Gospel history. The repeated chastisements which its ancient propensity to idolatry had drawn down upon the nation had at length produced the desired effect; and after the Babylonish captivity, the Jews appear to have been thoroughly weaned from the favourite sin of their forefathers. Simultaneously however with this remarkable change for the better in the national sentiment, certain less favourable characteristics began, for the first time, to exhibit themselves, or, at least, assumed a prominence which had not hitherto belonged to them. The Jews had been always prone to overvalue the external privileges which, as the chosen people of God, they enjoyed; but after the Babylonish captivity, this feeling became more intense, and gave rise to a spiritual pride of the most virulent character. The deeper the political degradation of the nation, the closer it clung to its religious prerogatives; and consoled itself, under the yoke of its temporal conquerors, with the hope, that the time was approaching when they who now trampled Zion under foot would approach her as suppliants, and acknowledge the universal sway of Messiah. It was at this period of their history that the peculiar spirit of vindictive contempt and rancour towards other nations, which attracted the notice, and awakened the curiosity, of heathen historians, displayed itself among the Jewish people. In the sect of the Pharisees, the peculiar characteristics of which are so strikingly portrayed in the New Testament Scriptures, this phase of Jewish feeling found, in our Lord's time, its chief exponent. A rigid formalism in religion, which however was compatible with the utmost laxity in morals, distinguished this sect. The course of religious progress, as it is discernible in the prophetic revelation, was by the Pharisees completely reversed: religion once more became a matter of law, or external prescript; the letter stifled the spirit; positive enactments superseded moral duties; and a ceremonial worship took the place of the inward communion of the heart with God. The legalism of the Pharisee, however, was of a more onerous character than the original institute of Moses; for to the appointments of the latter he added a multitude of traditionary prescriptions, placing them on a level with the divine commands. By his traditionary interpretations of Scripture, or additions to the written Word, he evaded compliance with the plainest precepts of the moral code. The relative importance of duties he was unable, because he was unwilling, to discern; and, unlike the prophets, postponed "the weightier matters of the law-judgment, justice, and mercy"—to its ritual appointments. With a conscience thus destitute of moral sensitiveness, it was but natural that he should be indifferent to the anticipatory notices of the Gospel which the volume of prophecy furnished; or, if he did bestow attention upon them, should wrest their interpretation to suit his carnal tastes. Hence the secular views which the Pharisees entertained respecting the Messiah, and the nature of His kingdom. In combination with these peculiarities, this sect exhibited an intense zeal for the propagation of their religion; compassing sea and earth to make proselytes, but little solicitous to promote the moral improvement of those whom they induced to submit to the yoke of the law. And yet, revolting as Pharisaism was in its practical aspect, the Pharisees, as contrasted with the other Jewish sects, were the representatives of orthodox Judaism. They sat in Moses's seat. Whatever unwritten traditions they might append to the written Word, that Word itself they received in all its integrity. Their sectarian spirit had, at least, one good effect: repelling every admixture of foreign elements, it preserved them from the taint of heathen philosophy and oriental mysticism, which, whenever they were combined with the Jewish revelation, corrupted it, as they afterwards did Christianity. The effect of the infelicitous combination alluded to was especially visible in the Jews of the Alexandrian school, of which the sect of the Sadducees was, in all probability, an offshoot. Presenting in many points a favourable contrast with the exclusiveness and formalism of the Pharisees, and exhibiting a laudable desire to elicit the full spiritual meaning of Scripture; the tendency, nevertheless, of this school was to merge the historical objects of the national faith in cold abstractions. The Alexandrine Jew lost his hold of that which constituted the central idea of the ancient theocracy, the expectation of a personal Messiah; and interpreted the glowing visions of prophecy upon this subject as denoting the dissemination of religious light and knowledge from Jerusalem, as from a centre, throughout the world. "It is the destiny of the Jews," says Philo, "to be the prophets and priests of mankind."* So vague, so rationalistic, a view of the Old Testament Scriptures could supply no historical basis for Christianity; and the sects in which it prevailed, such as that of the Essenes, proved less susceptible of the Gospel than the Pharisees themselves. In Sadduceeism, the latitudinarian tendencies of Alexandrine Judaism had worked themselves out into positive unbelief, leading to a rejection of the doctrines of the separate existence of the soul, and of a resurrection of the body; both of them, in our Lord's time, articles of the popular faith. For this reason it is, that so large a portion of Christ's discourses, as recorded in the Gospels, is addressed to the Pharisees. * Quoted by Neander, Church History, vol. i. part 1. p. 63. However great the change that must take place in the moral sentiments of the Pharisee before he could enter the kingdom of heaven, he had nothing dogmatically false to unlearn; and the orthodox faith, to which he clung, offered a point of connexion with Christianity, which was wanting in the irreligious indifference to the peculiar hopes and privileges of Israel which characterised the other sects. Hence, too, it was, that the sect of the Pharisees was both numerous and influential, while the Sadducees had comparatively few adherents, and were not in popular favour; the abstractions of a speculative religion have never been found capable of gaining a strong hold upon the popular mind. There is every reason to believe that in Pharisaism, the general national feeling of the Jews, in the time of Christ, expressed itself in a concentrated form. The foregoing remarks upon the prevailing cast of religious sentiment among the Jews, when our Lord and His forerunner entered on their public ministry, will enable us the better to understand the special scope of that ministry, which may be briefly described as an endeavour to awaken the dormant moral sense, and vivify the conscience, by a full exposition of the spiritual import of the moral law; in which point of view it was partly a repetition, and partly an enlargement, of the prophetic revelation, in the points. which are characteristic of the latter. The immediate forerunner of Christ came, as it had been predicted he should, in "the spirit and power of Elias,"* exhibiting in his character, and even in his outward appearance, the earnestness and austerity which distinguished that great prophet. His ministry has been sometimes described as forming the connecting link between the old and the new dispensations; but, in truth, it belonged exclusively to the old. In John the Baptist the law is seen consummating its proper office of producing conviction of sin; beyond this his ministry did not advance; nor could it have done so without trenching upon the peculiar province of the Gospel. The necessity of repentance, as a preparation for the approaching kingdom of heaven, was all that he was empowered to preach. To unfold the spirituality and strictness of the divine law, to tear the mask from hypocrisy, to break up the fallow ground of the conscience, this was the object of his mission; not to offer either pardon for past sin or strength from above for future obedience.t • Mal. iv. 5, 6. "He came into all the country about Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance for |