ove
thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets."

Here we have a wonderful statement from a wonderful source. So clear-cut
is it that any wayfaring man, though a fool, cannot mistake it.
Especially is this true when we couple with it this other statement of
Jesus: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I
am not come to destroy, but to fulfil." We must never forget that Jesus
was born, lived, and died a Jew, the same as all of his disciples--and
they never regarded themselves in any other light. The _basis_ of his
religion was the religion of Israel. It was this he taught and
expounded, now in the synagogue, now out on the hillside and by the
lake-side. It was this that he tried to teach in its purity, that he
tried to free from the hedges that ecclesiasticism had built around it,
this that he endeavoured to raise to a still higher standard.

One cannot find the slightest reference in any of his sayings that would
indicate that he looked upon himself in any other light--except the
overwhelming sense that it was his mission to bring in the new
dispensation by fulfilling the old, and then carrying it another great
step forward, which he did in a wonderful way--both God-ward and
man-ward.

We must not forget, then, that Jesus said that he did not come to
destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them. We must not
forget, however, that before fulfilling them he had to free them. The
freedom-giving, God-illumined words spoken by free God-illumined men,
had, in the hands of those not God-illumined, later on become
institutionalised, made into a system, a code. The people were taught
that only the priests had access to God. They were the custodians of
God's favour and only through the institution could any man, or any
woman, have access to God. This became the sacred thing, and as the
years had passed this had become so hedged about by continually added
laws and observances that all the spirit of religion had become crushed,
stifled, beaten to the ground.

The very scribes and Pharisees themselves, supposed to minister to the
spiritual life and the welfare of the people, became enrobed in their
fine millinery and arrogance, masters of the people, whose ministers
they were supposed to be, as is so apt to be the case when an
institution builds itself upon the free, all-embracing message of truth
given by any prophet or any inspired teacher. It has occur