to repentance. It therefore could not fail of its saving effect on those hearts which yielded to its
discipline, and conscientiously searched the Scriptures of Moses and the prophets.
Law and prophecy are the two great elements of the Jewish religion, and make it a direct
divine introduction to Christianity, "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the
way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God."- The law of Moses was the clearest expression of the holy will of God before the advent
of Christ. The Decalogue is a marvel of ancient legislation, and in its two tables enjoins the sum
and substance of all true piety and morality—supreme love to God, and love to our neighbor. It set
forth the ideal of righteousness, and was thus fitted most effectually to awaken the sense of man’s
great departure from it, the knowledge of sin and guilt.^598 It acted as a schoolmaster to lead men
to Christ^60 that they might be justified by faith."^61
The same sense of guilt and of the need of reconciliation was constantly kept alive by daily
sacrifices, at first in the tabernacle and afterwards in the temple, and by the whole ceremonial law,
which, as a wonderful system of types and shadows, perpetually pointed to the realities of the new
covenant, especially to the one all-sufficient atoning sacrifice of Christ on the cross.
God in his justice requires absolute obedience and purity of heart under promise of life and
penalty of death. Yet he cannot cruelly sport with man; he is the truthful faithful, and merciful God.
In the moral and ritual law, therefore, as in a shell, is hidden the sweet kernel of a promise, that he
will one day exhibit the ideal of righteousness in living form, and give the penitent sinner pardon
for all his transgressions and the power to fulfil the law. Without such assurance the law were bitter
irony.
As regards the law, the Jewish economy was a religion of repentance. - But it was at the same time, as already, hinted, the vehicle of the divine promise of
redemption, and, as such, a religion of hope. While the Greeks and Romans put their golden age
in the past, the Jews looked for theirs in the future. Their whole history, their religious, political,
and social institutions and customs pointed to the coming of the Messiah, and the establishment of
his kingdom on earth.
Prophecy, or the gospel under the covenant of the law, is really older than the law, which
was added afterwards and came in between the promise and its fulfilment, between sin and
redemption, between the disease and the cure.^62 Prophecy begins in paradise with the promise of
the serpent-bruiser immediately after the fall. It predominates in the patriarchal age, especially in
the life of Abraham, whose piety has the corresponding character of trust and faith; and Moses, the
lawgiver, was at the same time a prophet pointing the people to a greater successor.^63 Without the
comfort of the Messianic promise, the law must have driven the earnest soul to despair. From the
time of Samuel, some eleven centuries before Christ, prophecy, hitherto sporadic, took an organized
form in a permanent prophetical office and order. In this form it accompanied the Levitical priesthood
and the Davidic dynasty down to the Babylonish captivity, survived this catastrophe, and directed
(^59) Rom. 3:20: Διὰ νόμου ἐπίγνωσις ἁμαρτιας.
(^60) Παιδαγωγὸς εἰς Χριστόν
(^61) Gal. 3:24
(^62) Νόμος παρτεισῆλθενcame in besides, was added as an accessory arrangement, Rom. 5:20; comp. προσετέθη the law was
" superadded"to the promise given to Abraham, Gal 3:19.
(^63) Deut. 18:15.
A.D. 1-100.