ersonal rule, which runs through nearly all the Old
Testament, beginning with the Books of Samuel and revealing itself in
Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Daniel. But our Lord's teaching is original and
distinctive. And it is more distant from the popular Jewish idea of a
Hebrew counterpart to the Roman empire than the east is distant from
the west.

Nowhere else is our Lord shown to have given such an unmistakable
sanction to the Law. It is here only that we {45} read, "Think not
that I came to destroy the Law, or the prophets: I came not to destroy,
but to fulfil" (v. 17).[10] Here, too, we find an allusion to the
observance of the sabbath _after_ the Ascension (xxiv. 20), a temporary
prohibition of preaching to the Gentiles and Samaritans (x. 5), and the
statement of our Lord, "I was not sent but unto the lost sheep of the
house of Israel" (xv. 24). Most remarkable of all is the direction to
obey the scribes and Pharisees (xxiii. 3). On the other hand, there is
a rigorous denunciation of the rabbinical additions to the Jewish Law.
Mercy is preferable to sacrifice (xii. 7), the Son of man is Lord of
the sabbath (xii. 8), moral defilement does not come from a failure to
observe ceremonial (xv. 11), the kingdom will be transferred to a more
faithful nation (xxi. 43), even the strangers from the east and the
west (viii. 11), the Gospel will be for all people (xxiv. 14), and the
scribes and Pharisees are specially denounced (xxiii. 13).

It has been said that there is an absolute opposition between these two
classes of sayings; that either Jesus contradicted Himself, or the
evangelist drew from one source which was of a Judaizing character, and
from another source which taught St. Paul's principle of justification
by faith _versus_ justification by the Law. But the same divine
paradox of truth which we find in Matt. runs through most of the New
Testament, and is found plainly in St. Paul. In the Epistle where he
exposes the failure of contemporary Judaism most remorselessly, he
asserts that "we establish the Law." The true inner meaning of the
divine revelation granted in the Old Testament _is_ fulfilled in
Christ. Not only so, but Christ Himself was "the servant of the
circumcision," living "under the Law." The limits which He imposed
upon His own ministry (xv. 24) and that of His apostles (x. 5) were
entirely fitting until Christ at His resurrection laid aside all that
was peculiarly Jewish with its limits and humiliat