e Jewish race, either by
descent or adoption, with ceremonial blamelessness in belief and
act. Do you belong to the chosen family of Abraham, and are you
undefiled in relation to all the requirements of our code? Then
you are one of the elect. Are you a Gentile, an idolatrous member
of the uncircumcision, or a scorner of the Levitic and Rabbinical
customs? Then you are unfit to enter beyond the outer precincts of
the Temple; you are a hopeless alien from the kingdom of heaven.
Thus the Jewish test of acceptance with God was national,
external, formal, a local and temporal peculiarity.

When Jesus arose and began to teach, his transcendent genius,
working under the unparalleled inspiration of God, an unprecedented
sensibility to divine truth in its utmost purity and freedom,
expanded beyond all these shallow material accidents and
bonds; and he propounded a perfectly moral and spiritual test of
acceptance before God; namely, the possession of an intrinsically
good character. He made nothing of the distinction between Jew and
Gentile, declaring, "My father is able of these stones to raise up
children unto Abraham." He affirmed the condition of admittance
into the kingdom of God to be simply the doing of the will of God.
When he saw the young lawyer who had kept the two commandments,
loving God with all his soul, and his neighbor as himself, his
heart yearned towards him in benediction. And, finally, in his
sublime picture of the last judgment, he, in the most explicit and
unmistakable manner, makes the one essential condition of
rejection to be inhumanity of life, cruel selfishness of
character; the one essential condition of acceptance, the spirit
of love, the practical doing of good. He utters not a solitary
syllable about immaculateness of ceremonial propriety or soundness
of dogmatic belief. He only says, Inasmuch as ye have or have not
visited the sick and the imprisoned, fed the hungry, and clothed
the naked, ye shall be justified or condemned at the divine
tribunal. This test of personal goodness or wickedness, benevolent
or malignant conduct, proclaimed by Jesus, is the true standard,
free from everything local and temporary, fitted for application
to all nations and all ages.

But no sooner had Christianity obtained a foothold on earth,
multiplied its converts, and gained some outward sway, than its
Judaizing disciples and promulgators, fastening on that which was
easiest to comprehend and practise, that whic