THE MORAL LAW.

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commercial world, for instance-because people do not carry out fully the divine laws of honesty and truth? It is not because there is any substantial difference of opinion upon such subjects. There is not. We all pro

fess to be just and honest, and no doubt to some extent we are just and honest, and that is the only reason why human society hangs together at all.

36. Well, then, if you will thus admit the existence of human law which is also divine law, I shall hope to show you to-day how the moral law has been working like a kind of divine leaven in the mass of this world's corruptions, mastering one system of thought after another, moulding one civilisation after another, traversing the ages until it is seen to culminate in the complex moral system to which we give the name of Christianity. And I wish more especially to show you the points of contact between Judaism and Christianity, explaining the pre-eminence of Christian ethics as the crown of Judaism over all other ethics, and showing in what that pre-eminence consists. Such are the subjects which I shall try and bind into one uniform scheme of thought for our meditations this morning.

37. My brethren, God has never left himself without a witness. God has committed certain work to be done, not only to individuals, but also to nations. Just as he committed to the Romans the evolution of law for the world, and to the Greeks the evolution of beauty and symmetry for the world, both in philosophy and in art,

so He has committed to the great Semitic race the evolution of the spiritual law. What do I mean by the Semitic race? We must go back far into the night of antiquity. The Semitic race included that people who dwelt in the country between the shores of the Mediterranean and the shores of the Indian Ocean. The Semitic race started from there, and flowed from that central position into almost every other country of the world, and ended as we shall presently see, by impregnating the civilisation of the world. It is most remarkable, as we look down the long vista of years, to see the wonderful way in which one race has thus been a spiritual leaven to the whole world. That race was the Semitic race; and that portion of the race with which we are mostly concerned sprung from the captive Jews in Egypt.

That profound Rabbinical scholar, Emanuel Deutsch, has pointed out a fact which we believe he was the first to call attention to-that the Jews, the great missionary race of the world, the great spiritual enthusiasts, and the prophetic guardians of the moral law, were brought into contact with the other chief nations of the world just at the time when each had reached its culminating point; that is to say, just at that time when each was most able to receive and be healthily inoculated with the Jewish influence; and it remains an historical fact that so the various nations became more thoroughly impregnated with the moral law than they would otherwise have been.

You know that when the Jews became a tribe of captive slaves in Egypt under the Pharaohs, Egypt was

at the acme of its civilisation. The government of the Pharaohs was, as far as we can gather, a wise and powerful one; and that civilisation which we now read of very dimly on the Egyptian monuments was then the leading civilisation of the world. It was at such a time that Egypt received into its heart a nomad fragment of the Semitic race.

Some centuries afterwards the Jews fell into the hands of the Assyrian Kings, at a time when the Assyrian empire had reached its highest pitch of civilisation; and they not only received a great deal from Babylon, but communicated to it a great deal of their moral force; for you may read that the nations which took them captive were most astounded at the persistence with which the Jews worshipped their one God; and one of their kings —at least one-proclaimed that only the God of Israel should be worshipped, because he was the only true God.

When the Jews returned from Babylon, they came into contact with Greece and with Rome. Greece, it is true, had at that time passed its glory, and had been absorbed into the Roman empire before the Jewish nation became part of the Roman world; and therefore we may say that Rome and Greece were impregnated with Semitic religious influences both together. You know how great an indirect influence the Jews had upon their captors; how steadfastly they adhered to their traditions, how enthusiastic they were for the one God worshipped by Israel. And it was from these poor Jews, who were constantly being taken captive by one

nation after another, who could never take care of themselves, from this despised race came Jesus Christ, who gave to the world the purest and most exalted system of morals which the world has ever had. It was the religion of Jesus Christ which gave to Judaism its imperishable crown. It was the religion of Jesus Christ that gathered into a focus the scattered rays of an ideal humanity; and it was the religion of Jesus Christ that impregnated the Roman empire before the Roman empire split up into a thousand fragments, out of which fragments have arisen the nations of modern Europe.

38. The passage between Judaism and Christianity, between Jewish morals and Christian morals, was not nearly so abrupt as we are in the habit of supposing. I shall try and trace in a few words the moral and • spiritual growth of Judaism up to Christ, showing how the hardness of the Mosaic law was undergoing constant modifications, and how the world, as by a good schoolmaster, was being prepared for the new dispensation in Christ.

When the first temple was destroyed, there were destroyed also the Urim and Thummim, the sacred stones on the breast of the high-priest. This sacred breastplate seems to have served as a sort of divine oracle, whereby the high-priest was inspired to give judgment in cases of doubtful meaning in the law of Moses, or to speak authoritatively on matters of right and wrong. At all events, so long as the Urim and Thummim lasted, so long was there an infallible guide in the Jewish

Church, and an outward and visible oracle prepared to deliver inspired judgments. With the destruction of the first temple the divination of right and wrong passed away, never to return. But there were still prophets in the land, always eager to point the moral of historical events and predict the future. The elaborate obscurity and occasional failure of these predictions at last weakened the popularity of the prophets, although they remain amongst the most sublime teachers of righteousness which the world has ever had. They seem to have been in a permanent state of opposition to both Church and State, and alternately the darlings and victims of the people, according as their predictions came true, were favourable to the popular wishes, or the reverse.

But with Malachi it was generally agreed that the last of the prophets was dead; and now the nation. seemed to be without an inspired sign and without a living voice,

What was left? The sacred records which told them of both these departed glories; the inspired scroll of the Pentateuch, containing the laws given to Moses on the Holy Mount. The life must be hidden there or nowhere. Surely the spark of God's fire does but smoulder; let it be kindled by the breath of man's intellect, and it will shine like a new Urim and Thummim. So thought the most learned and the most religious of the Jews.

They had their Pentateuch, and these records must still be consulted when they were in any difficulty. So, after the return from Babylon, a new life seems to have taken possession of the Jews. They began to awake to