Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 1.djvu/58

Rh 2. Next, survey the history of the chosen people for the several first centuries after taking possession of Canaan. The exactness of Moses was unavailing. Can a greater contrast be conceived than the commands and promises of the Pentateuch, and the history of the Judges? "Every man did that which was right in his own eyes." Judges xvii. 6.

Samuel attempts a reformation on the basis of the Mosaic law; but the effort ultimately fails, as being apparently against the stream of opinion and feellng then prevalent. The times do not allow of it. Again, contrast the opulent and luxurious age of Solomon, though the covenant was then openly acknowledged and outwardly accepted, more fully than at any other time, with the vision of simple piety and plain straightforward obedience, which is the scope of the Mosaic Law. Lastly, contemplate the state of the Jews after their return from the captivity; when their external political relations were so new, the internal principle of their government so secular, God's arm apparently so far removed. This state of things went on for centuries. Who would suppose that the Jewish Law was binding in all its primitive strictness at the age when Christ appeared? Who would not say that length of time had destroyed the obligation of a projected system, which had as yet never been realized?

Consider too the impossible nature, (so to say,) of some of its injunctions. An infidel historian somewhere asks scoffingly, whether "the ruinous law which required all the males of the chosen people to go up to Jerusalem three times a-year, was ever observed in its strictness." The same question may be asked concerning the observance of the Sabbatical year;—to which but a faint allusion, if that, is made in the books of Scripture subsequent to the Pentateuch.

3. And now, with these thoughts before us, reflect upon our Saviour's conduct. He set about to fulfil the Law in its strictness, just as if He had lived in the generation next to Moses. The practice of others, the course of the world, was nothing to Him; He received and He obeyed. It is not necessary to draw out the evidence of this in detail. Consider merely His emphatic words