Page:Literature and Dogma (1883).djvu/253

 we look at the thing closely, we shall find that its effect has been this: Christianity has brought the world, or at any rate all the leading part of the world, to regard righteousness as only the Jews regarded it before the coming of Christ. The world has accepted, so far as profession goes, that original revelation made to Israel: the pre-eminence of righteousness. The infinite truth and attractiveness of the method and secret and character of Jesus, however falsely surrounded, have prevailed with the world so far as this. And this is an immense gain, and a signal witness to Christianity. The world does homage to the pre-eminence of righteousness; and here we have one of those fulfilments of prophecy which are so real and so glorious. 'Glorious things are spoken of thee, O City of God! I will make mention of Egypt and Babylon as of them that know me! behold, the Philistines also, and Tyre, with the Ethiopians,—these were born there! And of Zion it shall be reported: This and that man was born in her!—and the Most High shall stablish her. The Eternal shall count, when he writeth up the people: This man was born there! ' That prophecy is at the present day abundantly fulfilled. The world's chief nations have now all come, we see, to reckon and profess themselves born in Zion,—born, that is, in the religion of Zion, the city of righteousness.

But there remains the question: what righteousness really is. The method and secret and sweet reasonableness of Jesus. But the world does not see this; for it puts, as righteousness, something else first and this second. So that here, too, as to seeing what righteousness really is, the world now is much in the same position in which the Jews, when Jesus Christ came, were. It is often said: 'If Jesus Christ came now, his religion would be rejected.' And this is only another way of saying that the world now, as the Jewish