ment the germ of Christianity. In developing this germ lay the future of righteousness itself, of Israel's primary and immortal concern; and the incomparable greatness of the religion founded by Jesus Christ comes from his having developed it. Jesus Christ is not the Messiah to whom the hopes of his nation pointed; and yet Christendom with perfect justice has made him the Messiah, because he alone took, when his nation was on another and a false tack, a way obscurely indicated in the Old Testament, and the one only possible and successful way, for the accomplishment of the Messiah's function:—to bring in everlasting righteousness.[1] Let us see how this was so.
Religion in the Old Testament is a matter of national and social conduct mainly. First, it consists in devotion to Israel's God, the Eternal who loveth righteousness, and of separation from other nations whose concern for righteousness was less fervent,—of abhorrence of their idolatries which were sure to bewilder and diminish this fervent concern. Secondly, it consists in doing justice, hating all wrong, robbery, and oppression, abstaining from insolence, lying, and slandering. The Jews' polity, their theocracy, was of such immense importance, because religion, when conceived as having its existence in these national and social duties mainly, requires a polity to put itself forth in; and the Jews' polity was adapted to religion so conceived. But this religion, as it developed itself, was by no means fully worthy of the intuition out of which it had grown. We have seen how, in its intuition of God,—of that 'not ourselves' of which all mankind form some conception or other,—as the Eternal that makes for righteousness, the Hebrew race found the revelation needed to breathe emotion into the laws of morality, and to make morality religion. This revelation is the capital fact of the Old Testament,
