262

The office of Israel

to the nations.' In Heathendom we follow what we can understand as a natural development of the powers of man, whether dominated by physical forces from without, or by intellectual and moral forces from within. But Israel grows under constraint. The Bible is full of the relapses of the people. They are, from first to last, 'rebellious and stiffnecked.' But the Lord subdues and trains them, moving among them so that His awful presence can be felt. The seriousness of the Jew is a reflection of this divine communion. No præ-Christian literature offers anything which can be compared with the sustained and most truly human solemnity and grandeur of the Psalter. The thoughts are the fruit of discipline.

In order to fit the people for the fulfilment of this unique office they were placed in what they felt to be a direct fellowship with GOD. Their relation to Him was not abstract and intellectual, but living and personal. They were subjected to His discipline, that they might be brought more and more into conformity with Himself (Deut. viii. 2). And under this aspect the successive stages in the history of Israel are seen to be parts of an intelligible education, tending to shape and fix a national character to which the world offers no parallel. For the faith

of Israel was grounded not so much upon definite teaching as upon the facts, the experiences, of their life.

We have then in the Old Testament, to gather up most briefly what has been said, the representative record of the divine discipline of a chosen people. In this history we are allowed to contemplate the clear signs of the action of GOD; and by the help of the lesson all history is felt to be the fulfilment of one eternal purpose.

Each great nation had and still has its peculiar work. The work of the Jews was to receive, to appropriate, to hand down a revelation of GOD. They learnt to know Him not as an abstract object of thought, not as dwelling in a distant heaven, not as reserving His sovereignty for a remote future; but as actually present with them in the business of daily life, making Himself felt in acts even more than in words, vindicating His character in judgments and mercies.

Their life and their hope lay alike in realising that the Lord was dealing with them from day to day. This was enough for their training. To us as we look back the details of their discipline suggest many further thoughts. Some even in old times may have grasped these thoughts by faith. But it does not concern us to attempt to

264 The end of Israel gained in Christ.

The Law accom

determine how far this was so. plished its office (Gal. iii. 24). Fenced in by its stern provisions the people were prepared during a long childhood for the duties of mature age.

The central moral idea which they were thus enabled to define and strive after, even through all failings, was holiness. The idea in its full scope corresponds with the final harmony of man's whole nature. It was offered to the world, it was recognised as the one sufficient end of being, it was found to be beyond human reach, before it was realised in Christ.

Thus the Jewish Dispensation could only find its consummation in one way. It dealt with that which was essentially human, and still in form it was limited and local. The revelation which it embodied was true but not final. It was from first to last a prophecy leading onwards to an issue which seemed at each successive stage to become more indispensable than before and more beyond hope. As we look back we can now see how one Presence and not only one increasing purpose is everywhere found in the Law and in the Prophets. The fathers found refreshment in the wilderness from the streams which flowed from the stricken rock. But far more than this: they drank living waters from a Rock not material but spiritual, from a Rock not fixed and im

Christianity historical in essence.

265

movable but which kept close to their wandering feet, and that Rock was Christ (1 Cor. x. 4). The prophets understood imperfectly the last meaning of the words which they used, but the spirit ' of Christ which was in them testified before'hand the sufferings that should come unto 'Christ and the glories that should follow them (1 Pet. i. 11). From first to last, throughout the long ages of preparation and onwards still till the last vision of the growing Truth be gained, the words of the angel in the Apocalypse hold good, "The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy" (Apoc. xix. 10). The witness to a historic human Saviour, come and coming, is the one unceasing message of GOD to man, the one sure sign of inspiration (1 John iv. 2 f.)

ii. Christianity historical in its essence.

Christianity is the goal of Judaism. Thus we come to that which is the centre and source of all Christian thought and life. For Christianity, as we have seen, is absolute as well as historical; and the Incarnation connects and reconciles the one characteristic with the other. The Incarnation is a historic fact in the experience of time, and it is an absolute truth in the counsel of

266

The Gospel lies in

eternity. This fact, realised in fragments, is the Gospel.

Christ declared to us truths about the nature and the will of His Father and our Father, His God and our God, about human relationships and responsibilities, about man's worth and destiny, which it concerns us most deeply to know; but He did not come simply to lay down a system of doctrine.

He gathered into a brief compass and without admixture of alloy the noblest rules for life: He placed them in a natural connexion with the fulfilment of the simplest offices of common duty: He gave them, so to speak, a natural universality which man as man can at once acknowledge: He embodied them in an example which no lapse of time or change of circumstances can make less supreme in its attractiveness; but the Sermon on the Mount is neither the essence of His message to the world, nor, except incidentally, characteristic of it. The years which He passed in silence and obscurity, the months which He passed in teaching and reproof and discipline, are not, when regarded from without, the sum of His revelation.

The claim which He made for Himself and the claim of the first preachers, as of preachers in every age, was not primarily that men should