plaerhoo]) carries the same significance. To "fulfil that which
was spoken by the prophets," means to fill it full of meaning and truth.
Jesus came, not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it; that is, to carry
it out further. He fulfilled Moses and the prophets, not by doing exactly
what they foretold, in their sense, but by doing it in a higher, deeper,
and larger sense. He fulfilled their thought as the flower fulfils the
bud, and as the fruit fulfils the flower. The sense of the fulness of life
in Jesus and in the Gospel seems to have struck the minds of the early
disciples, and powerfully impressed them. Hence the frequency with which
they use this verb and noun, signifying fulness. Jesus fulfilled the law,
the prophets, all righteousness, the Scriptures. He came in the fulness of
time. His joy was fulfilled. Paul prays that the disciples may be filled
full of joy, peace, and hope, with the fruits of righteousness, with all
knowledge, with the spirit of God, and with all the fulness of God. He
teaches that love fulfils the law, that the Church is the fulness of
Christ, that Christ fills all things full of himself, and that in him
dwells all the fulness of the godhead bodily.

One great distinction between Christianity and all other religions is in
this pleroma, or fulness of life which it possesses, and which, to all
appearance, came from the life of Jesus. Christianity is often said to be
differenced from ethnic religions in other ways. They are natural
religions: it is revealed. They are natural: it is supernatural. They are
human: it is divine. But _all_ truth is revealed truth; it all comes from
God, and, therefore, so far as ethnic religions contain truth, they also
are revelations. Moreover, the supernatural element is to be found in all
religions; for inspiration, in some form, is universal. All great births
of time are supernatural, making no part of the nexus of cause and effect.
How can you explain the work of Confucius, of Zoroaster, of the Buddha, of
Mohammed, out of the existing state of society, and the educational
influences of their time? All such great souls are much more the makers of
their age than its result; they are imponderable elements in civilization,
not to be accounted for by anything outside of themselves. Nor can we urge
the distinction of human and divine; for there is a divine element in all
ethnic religions, and a broadly human element in Christianity. Jesus is
as much the representativ