and the identification which was needed Jesus Christ effected. Henceforth the true Israelite was, undoubtedly, he who allied himself with this identification; who perceived its in comparable fruitfulness, its continuance of the real tradition of Israel, its correspondence with the ruling idea of the Hebrew spirit: Through righteousness to happiness! or, in Bible-words: To him that ordereth his conversation right shall be shown the salvation of God![1] That the Jewish nation at large, and its rulers, refused to accept the identification, shows simply that want of power to penetrate through wraps and appearances to the essence of things, which the majority of mankind always display. The national and social character of their theocracy was everything to the Jews, and they could see no blessings in a revolution which annulled it.
It has often been remarked that the Puritans are like the Jews of the Old Testament; and Mr. Froude thinks he defends the Puritans by saying that they, like the Jews of the Old Testament, had their hearts set on a theocracy, on a fashioning of politics and society to suit the government of God. How strange that he does not perceive that he thus passes, and with justice, the gravest condemnation on the Puritans as followers of Jesus Christ! At the Christian era the time had passed, in religion, for outward adaptations of this kind, and for all care about establishing or abolishing them. The time had come for inwardness and self-reconstruction,—a time to last till the self-reconstruction is fully achieved. It was the error of the Jews that they did not perceive this; and the old error of the Jews the Puritans, without the Jews' excuse, faithfully repeated. And the blunder of both had the same cause,—a want of tact to perceive what is really most wanted for the attainment of their own professed ideal, the reign of righteousness.
