mon was to be restored on a grander scale, the enemies of Israel were to lick the dust, kings were to bring gifts; there was to be the Son of Man coming in the clouds, judgment given to the saints of the Most High, and an eternal reign of the saints afterwards.
Now, most of this has a poetical value, some of it has a moral value. All of it is, in truth, a testimony to the strength of Israel's idea of righteousness. For the order of its growth is, as we have seen, this: 'To righteousness belongs happiness; but this sure rule is often broken in the state of things which now is; there must, therefore, be in store for us, in the future, a state of things where it will hold good.' But none of it has a scientific value, a certitude arising from proof and experience. And indeed it cannot have this, for it professes to be an anticipation of a state of things not yet actually experienced.
But human nature is such, that the mind easily dwells on an anticipation of this kind until we come to forget the order in which it arose, place it first when it is by rights second, and make it support that by which it is in truth supported. And so there had come to be many Israelites,—most likely they were the great majority of their nation,—who supposed that righteousness was to be followed, not out of thankful self-surrender to 'the Eternal who loveth righteousness,'[1] but because the Ancient of Days was to sit before long, and judgment was to be given to the saints, and they were to possess the kingdom, and from the kingdom those who did not follow righteousness were to be excluded. From this way of conceiving religion came naturally the religious condition of the Jews as Jesus at his coming found it; and from which, by his new and living way of presenting the Messiah, he sought to extricate the whole nation, and did extricate his disciples. He did extricate these, in that he
