the means by which christian piety is produced in us, and this is the substance of the New Testament. But faith cannot be of a superior kind without a higher development of the moral consciousness, which is indeed advanced by it, but which is presupposed to a certain degree. Now, can any one perceive the worth and greatness of the divine mercy, who is not deeply impressed with the fact that the anger and wrath of God are directed against us on account of our sins, who does not acknowledge with deep pain the greatness of his guilt? How can one seek for higher aid, who has not learned by experience that he cannot help himself? Indeed, would not faith in redemption, instead of giving consolation to the sorrowful and despairing, rather afford aid to the thoughtless, and be a sort of offset to man for his imperfections, while he is a stranger to the anguish of a terrified conscience and to true repentance? Hence the gospel first exerts a saving influence when man has been brought through another school-the school of the law, which places before him the strictness of the divine command and the severity of the divine justice. This for the Israelites was the school of the Mosaic, divine economy - the cardinal idea of the Old Testament.

Still, God did not permit them to want revelations of mercy and grace, though in a great degree in the form and under the shadow of the law. Yet, this legal, sacred economy with its ceremonies and observances was arranged, not merely that through these external means, a revelation of God might be maintained and that purity preserved which he requires of his people, but also in order that the repentant sinner might be led to him to seek through him freedom from guilt and pollutionthe emblem of the greater sacrifice which was afterwards to be offered up for the sins of the world. It was under the shadow of the law; so that the posterity of Abraham, being held together by a covenant embracing political and religious regulations, might not only retain a belief in the true God, while religion degenerated and became disfigured by the general prevalence of idolatry, but also that a prospect might be kept open towards the more perfect revelation, and that circumstances might be in readiness for the Redeemer to commence his benevolent labors. Under the protecting shadow of the law, the germ of faith in the divine mercy was preserved and developed itself-a faith, indeed, which from the beginning had not reference merely to the existing time, but extended into futurity,

and gradually passing over the limits of the law, and evermore forming itself in such a manner so that in the end nothing was wanting to bring the true Israelite to Christ, but the joyful εvonxaμɛv, John 1: 42, 46.

Promises had been made to the patriarchs besides those which received their accomplishment during the lives of their descenMoses had given the sustaining hope of higher revelations to such as might be anxiously waiting for them, when he referred the people to a prophet who should come after him. The ideal image of a theocratic king which hovered before the vision of the holy songsters in their hymns, was of a loftier kind than could be realized in David or Solomon. Still less could circumstances, as they presented themselves in the following period of degeneracy and degradation, satisfy the earnest, longing mind of the pious and wise among the people. The harder the fortunes were which pressed upon them, the firmer and more trustingly they fastened on a condition of things delineated in prophecy, where God, having forgiven his people, would send them a Saviour, not merely from external oppression and poverty, but also from their religious and moral degeneracy ;not simply to restore the ancient religion in its purity, but to establish a new covenant, his Spirit being poured out upon all, and all nations being led to know him. These prophetic delineations are such that we are led to the conclusion, that even when the prophets had in their minds persons or events of their own times, the Spirit which was in them, 1 Pet. 1: 11, intended and foretold something different. This longing hope for a future salvation, this dwelling on the image of a perfect theocracy, which found constantly new nourishment in the predictions of the Old Testament, and which could be shaken by no mistake respecting the true time, (a mistake which has been noticed as not uncommon in respect to human nature,) while it did not remain free from impure mixtures, still maintained its foundations in truth. This has always remained a peculiarity in the Jewish people; a trait in the highest degree remarkable, which, as it appears to us, must lead them sooner or later from Moses on to Christ.

We thus find announced in the Old Testament, not merely the divine mercy in general, but mercy in its reference to a future, more perfect revelation of the same as it appeared in Christ; and also the idea, which could not feel itself to be satisfied in the existing religious constitution, but which hoped for

a new covenant, and for that higher development of the divine kingdom which followed in Christ,-intimated indeed in the precepts of the law, and which was unveiled more clearly in the promises of the prophets. So far we can say that the religion. of the Old and New Testaments is the same in its true substance; not only in relation to its origin, (as we trace both back to divine revelations), but in reference to its object-the Messiah to whom the Old Testament points-when not directly yet mediately. They differ in relation to this point, only as the Old Testament points to one who is to come; the New, makes known one who has already appeared, (though not without reference to another period still future, 1 Cor. 11: 26. The one, indeed, contained the principal lineaments of the idea, but the actual appearance (the humanity of Christ, the Mediator) could be anticipated only by significant images, while, on the contrary, the other places him before our eyes, as he dwelt among us full of grace and truth, John 1: 14. Hence the New Testament is truly the key of the Old, and must open for us, (as Christ did once for the apostles Luke 24: 27,) the idea of its true contents. Still, however, to the enlightened mind, which knows to what object all things tend, the Old Testament will ever be able, as in the case of Timothy, 2 Tim. 3: 15, to make wise unto salvation, not by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

But in as far as the Old Testament is particularly an inculcation of the law, so far we may say, its religion is in contrast to that of the New Testament. As Christians we are not under the law, but under grace, Rom. 6: 14,-yet not as if Christ did not demand what is essential in the law, Matt. 7: 12. 22: 40. Christ came not to destroy the law, but to fulfil it, Matt. 5: 17; yea, the righteousness of Christians must be more perfect than that of the Pharisees, Matt. 5: 20, who observed the law in the strictest manner, Acts 26: 5. But Christianity demands a disposition which is not meant to be able to work out its own righteousness by the deeds of the law, (a fundamental mistake of the Jews, Rom. 10: 3), but to receive by faith the righteousness of Christ, in like manner as Paul, Phil. 3: 9,-and which requires that it be done with inward freedom, without the letter of the law, which the law aspired after, and which, accompanied by threatenings of Divine punishment, prescribes in external methods, what we have to do and to suffer. Where this is still wanting, there is no true Christianity; there still, the opposing lust of the flesh predominates over the spirit, and not

the spirit over the flesh, while the latter from the first gradually frees us from sin and from the law, Gal. 5: 17, 18, 22. And, indeed, for him who has not yet come to the point where the most earnest language of the law has a salutary effect, as well as the alluring voice of the gospel,* a part of the law has lost its validity; its destination has become merely preparatory,partly political, which must have given to the Jewish theocracy an external support till the Author and Head of the true christian theocracy appeared, and partly ritual, which could only preserve the need of redemption and expiation, until he came who could alone satisfy that need. In reference hereto, Christ is, with peculiar propriety, named, not only the object, but the end of the law, Rom. 10: 4. So then who among us has occasion for the law as a schoolmaster and a tutor, Gal. 4: 24. 5: 2? He does not aspire after the freedom of the children of God, who has already found it in the christian church, which ceases not to make known the righteousness and mercy of God, not merely through the preaching of the divine word, but in its very existence and through its entire manifestation.

Thus we may now easily see, how far the Old Testament can be yet for us a rule of faith and life. We here speak, not of its worth in respect to a learned acquaintance with the history of religion, or for a learned commentary on the New Testament, (its historical and hermeneutical use, although this has an important aspect, not merely for learned men, but for every Christian). We speak especially of its value for religion itself, in so far as it can always secure for us an incitement to pious feeling, as awakening those dispositions on which depend the fear of God, love, confidence, self-knowledge, faith, obedience, and as it respects the desire to seek for information concerning God, his mercy and righteousness, his law and promises. This is its doctrinal and moral use. Then, indeed, we ought always to recollect that the special object of the New Testament is not to make known to us the law, but the gospel, not in dark images and predictions, but in the clear light of actual fulfilment. There is present with us one who is greater than the lawgiver, or the priests, the kings and prophets of the Old Testament, Luke 10: 24. 11: 31, 32. Heb. iii. and vii., through whom mercy and truth have come, John 1: 17, from whose fulness, a living

* So the Lutheran Catechism rightly places the ten commandments before faith.

fountain of new life and of higher knowledge streams forth on those who believe upon him, John 7: 38. It is not, simply, however, that there is a revelation of the hitherto concealed and secret mysteries of the divine counsels, Rom. 16: 25. Eph. 3: 15., but also that the covering was removed away from those things, which even to the prophets themselves, who predicted the grace that was to come, was rather a point for investigation and search than a clear vision, 1 Pet. 1: 10. It is now settled not only in relation to that which is old and abolished, but also in what manner that is to be understood which contains profounder and more permanent truth. It cannot therefore be doubted that there is in the New Testament a far more perfect norm and source of christian knowledge, than in the Old. The one is an original fountain, the other a secondary one.* We would as little over-estimate the latter, on the one hand, by drawing from it alone the whole system of christian faith, † as, on the other hand, unite in undervaluing it, in which extreme we find some of the Gnostics, who went so far as to ascribe to it a wholly different design from the revelations which were made by Christ;-consequently on the ground, that though the Old Testament had a divine origin, yet it was limited (according to the opinions of the anabaptists and some other modern sects) to things merely earthly and sensual -to the exclusion of a spiritual germ. This view is in opposition to Christ and his apostles, with whom the coat was ever the πληρώσαι; the καταργῆσαι was always placed in connection with the oroa, Rom. 3:31. The effect has been to obstruct the right interpretation of the New Testament.

Of the former error-a one-sided, over-estimate of the Old Testament, we can by no means acquit our older theologians, either as it regards their view of the Old Testament in general, or their handling of particular passages. It was not enough to find the germ of the peculiar laws of Christianity in the Old Testament; the entire delineation must be discovered. It was not simply concluded, that we must find a general reference to Christ, but also that futurity was clearly revealed to the pious

* With this readily agrees Schleiermacher's Ansicht von der normalen "dignität des Altens Testaments, Darstell. des Gla. § 150 Zusatz.

+ As was attempted to be done on the broadest scale by John Wigand and Matth. Judex in their Syntagma or Corpus doctrinae ex V. T. tantum collectum, dispositum et concinnatum, Basil. 1564. Particular examples may be found in the older systems.