birth to the righteousness which is owned as complete where that of Rome and of Greece fails. The ideal we seek in modern times is that of a national community knit together in all its relations by righteousness and love, and caring especially for its weaker members. This neither Greece nor Rome did, but only the Jewish nation. Let those who would make Christianity merely a religious system apart from the common life of men, those who ascribe to it a sacerdotal or a dogmatic basis, those who conceive of God as apart from human relations, and of religion as a merely individual connexion with Him, see to it, that they do not fall below the Hebrew ideal. Those who appreciate that ideal most fully, and dwell most on the divine element pervading it, will see very clearly that it points to none of these as its proper development, but to an all-embracing society, including the whole range of human interests and binding all men and classes and nations together in true relations, which are the work and the expression of the Spirit of God.

In the present day there is too great a tendency to disparage the religious importance of the Old Testament, and to doubt its value as an educational instrument, or as a medium for the teaching of practical life. This is, to a large extent, a re-action from the overstrained notions which attributed to it an exact historical accuracy and a perfect sanctity. The Rationalismus Vulgaris, which has been applied with success to destroy such notions, was in its right, and had received abundant provocation. But the fuller and higher criticism of later years which has come to us from Göttingen, from

Leyden, from Aberdeen (may we not say also from Natal, at least in the later volumes?), if it has displaced some parts of the fabric of our religious ideas, has also readjusted them. When the smoke of controversy has passed off, we shall find that the more historical treatment of the Old Testament greatly enhances its religious value for us. It is true that we must make a distinction between various parts of the Old Testament. Christ and St. Paul have taught us this. There are some parts which have already been recognized as unsuitable for reading in our churches, and this process may be carried further. Other parts can only be read with profit if we apply to them constantly a kind of philosophy of history; and this will be more possible with the advance of general education. But, if what has been said in this Lecture be true, not only will the Psalms and the prophets gain through the appreciation of their historical surroundings,-a process which will be greatly furthered by the forthcoming new version of the Old Testament, and by the more open study of Hebrew literature in our universities, but the whole of the Old Testament will be recognized as possessing the highest educational and political value. Through its connexion with Christianity, it knits together the old and the new world without a breach of continuity. And it exhibits the stages of human progress, and also its drawbacks, its incidental failures, its atoning penalties and sacrifices, in a manner which strikes all ages and both sexes, and goes direct to the heart. It is also of extreme value as presenting religion as a matter of public and national concern, which has often been pre

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vented by a misreading of the New Testament. And if the political and moral aspect which I have attempted to restore to prominence be maintained, this will make it still more precious in an age of political changes. For we have in it both a constant stimulus to the reform of our social state, and at the same time a direction for our efforts and a safeguard against our excesses. We may enter upon the path of democratic progress, which seems to open before modern communities without fear, if we apply, like Savonarola, the spirit of the prophets to uphold and to guide it; for no nobler effort can be made in the political sphere than that which they made, to direct the national action towards the raising of the poor and the weak, and the promotion of brotherly relations throughout the community in the name and in the fear of God.

LECTURE III.

THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH.

ST. JOHN Xviii. 37. Pilate saith unto Him, Art thou a king

then? Jesus answered, Thou sayest that I am a king. To
this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the
world, that I should bear witness unto the truth.
is of the truth heareth My voice.

He that

THE establishment of a true theocracy or reign of God, by which, as we have shown, is meant, not a government by priests, but a recognition of divine righteousness in all the relations of life, is the purpose of the whole course of human development. We are not following any narrow or conventional plan when we trace this development in the facts revealed in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures; for the world of our day is led by Western Christendom, and an understanding of Christendom must be sought in the study of the Christian origins, and these again cannot be understood apart from the Old Testament. Other systems, European or Oriental, are accessory; here alone is the main line of development. The principle of life which the Scriptures set forth is brought face to face with those of Greece and Rome, and to some extent of the East, in the early Christian history.

I will not say that the one destroys the others; but it absorbs them; it vindicates itself as supreme, partly by contrast to them, partly by its power of assimilating them. But the battle-ground, or point of contact, is not that of philosophical disquisition, but of the establishment and maintenance of human relations: for this is the true subject-matter of religion; in this lies the kingdom of God. If Judaism and Christianity (which we may take as one whole) formed a peculiar religion, that is, a special system of doctrine and of worship, it could never take the position which experience shows it capable of taking. It is the object of these Lectures to show that it is something different from this, that it is a central principle of spiritual life, which develops into relations, and through these again into organisations and communities; and that, being this, it is capable of becoming, and has constantly sought, and is now seeking to become, the harmonizing, co-ordinating and saving principle of human society universally.

It has been pointed out in the last Lecture that the centre of the Jewish development, of its laws and constitution, of its theology, its history, its literature, was the consciousness of God as a power of righteousness, abiding amongst the people by the law of just relations. This was the true theocracy. This theocracy, it was shown, was cast in various forms suited to the various epochs of the national history; it was necessarily national not universal at first, and was bound up with peculiar forms, which, though they had a moral interpretation, yet constituted a fence round