nely established system swept along by the flood as wreck. There is
profound instruction concerning the method of development in
Christendom--how the Church grows, and strikes deeper root through the
ages, while that which men call the Church and cling to suffers constant
shocks, and is ever dropping piecemeal into decay and death--in this
sketch of the philosophy of the most remarkable and startling
development recorded in man's spiritual history. Whether Paul wrote it
or not, it is the work of a man with Paul's grasp of intellect, and
saturated with Paul's ideas both of Judaism and Christianity. One can
hardly imagine Paul's life-work complete to his own mind without the
production of such an essay as this. He alone grasped with perfect
clearness the vital relation of the two dispensations; and we can well
imagine with what intense earnestness this Hebrew of the Hebrews must
have desired to justify his apostolic ministry to his countrymen and to
mankind. Be this as it may, and these a priori judgments are of little
worth in criticism, the book is one of large thoughts, views, and
principles, reaching deep down to the foundations on which the edifice
of man's spiritual faith and hope is built.

Let us try to realize some of the main difficulties of those to whom it
is addressed, whose tormenting doubts and apprehensions it was intended
to remove. They would be chiefly, I think, of two kinds; and they might
be put into the shape of questions.

1. Can anything which is ordained of God be abrogated?

2. Can the Messiah, the kingly Son of David, be come, while those who
follow Him are the world's outcasts, spoiled, persecuted, and slain?

The first is a standing difficulty with all the students of the
mysteries of God, in all ages of the world. It pressed on the Hebrew
Christians with peculiar force. They and their fathers for ages had
believed that a certain visible system had been established on earth by
God's own hand, and sustained by His almighty power. It seemed to them
as if the very foundations of the universe were shaken, when their
temple, their priesthood, their glorious Jerusalem, their beautiful
fertile Palestine, vanished like a dream, and left them the beggars and
outcasts of mankind.

The second difficulty was equally grave. It touched men where they are
ever most sensitive, in their individual experiences and hopes. Can the
head of this Christian Church be the God-man, the glorious Being of whom
our p