two covenants of different contexts-the one demands as a right, the other grants freely. The difference between Paul and Philo strikes one more forcibly from this passage than from any other. For reasons of his own St Paul could not find freedom in allegory : the law even when interpreted allegorically represented a demand for him.

St Paul's theology pursues an entirely independent course of its own. His criticism establishes two propositions hitherto unheard of: the law cannot be the way of salvation; Christ by His death has freed us from the law.

1. The law cannot be the way of salvation, because it only demands, it does not give. It presupposes God as lawgiver and judge: man has to perform a task, God rewards or punishes. St Paul never wearies of describing this relationship of wages without toning down any of the difficulties. "Now to him that worketh, the reward is not reckoned as of grace but as of debt." Thereby, however, the result of the law is merely a negative one. The law brings the full knowledge of sin: by its continual injunctions and prohibitions it actually stimulates transgression and drives a man to sin. So it works wrath and has death as its doom. Despair is the result of the service of the law.

The picture which St Paul thereby presents to us of later Judaism is a very strange one. He characterizes it as a religion of wage service and of fear, a slave's religion suitable for bondsmen only. To be a sincere adherent of Judaism is tantamount to despairing of one's salvation. For God is the stern Judge before whom even the most pious Jew cannot

stand. In the Epistle to the Romans St Paul proves this point from Scripture, quoting passages from the Psalms and the prophets. "None is righteous; no, not

one." In the Epistle to the Galatians he argues from the law itself: "Cursed is every one which continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law," and hence he draws the conclusion that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God.

and grace.

Now, is St Paul's criticism of later Judaism just? What would a Jewish Rabbi think of this representation of his faith? He would say this is a caricature of our religion. The Jewish Church is law The law presupposes grace. To be a Jew, a child of Abraham and a member of the chosen people, is already a mark of grace. Circumcision is a symbol of God's covenant grace. The whole Jewish Church is an organization for the attainment of salvation. It has sacrifices, repentance, the great day of atonement, the good works of the fathers, personal merits, the forgiveness of God in answer to prayer. He who has fear in the presence of the law may take refuge in the grace of God. For Israel has a God who is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, a faithful God.

How was it that St Paul thus entirely ignored the grace that was in the Jewish Church and the justification that was already within reach? There is a double reason-one personal, one apologetic.

St Paul saw to the bottom of contemporary Judaism. It was really in the main a service for wages and a slavish form of piety. A man could not breathe freely in God's love, could not feel himself free as a child of God. Jesus could retain complete

personal freedom because the law did not stand between God and Himself. But wherever legalism thus formed a wall of separation, it fostered an artificial and slavish form of piety. The Church and the Sacraments do not give the one thing that is needful: the trust of the individual soul in the grace of God and the certainty of His love. The question as to the personal assurance of salvation still remained unanswered: it was only the day of judgment that was to clear up all that was now doubtful. An unbiassed examination must allow St Paul to have been justified in his criticism.

But now, of course, St Paul's apologetic and ecclesiastical interests came into play. Besides the grace in Christ he could not possibly allow any Jewish means of grace to have any efficacy. The despair which the law produced in pious souls was welcome to him, because it was the only way to get them to accept Jesus as their Redeemer. The whole of St Paul's criticism of the law, instead of being based on Jewish premises, always presupposes the Christian salvation that has already been won. As a Christian St Paul had become so entirely estranged from the law and the Jewish Church that he could never again judge it objectively. He was obliged, therefore, in writing Rom. vii. to learn to understand it again. Hence a Jew could never have written as St Paul did. Christ and His Church stand everywhere between the apostle and the law.

2. The despair to which legalism leads has been clearly set forth. The law is not the way of salvation, but as it is nevertheless divine, how can we escape our obligation to it? Christ was sent by God to set

men free from the law. Christ is the end of the law.

Christ sets us free from the law in a twofold manner, in both instances by suffering vicariously for us. In the first place, Christ's whole life upon earth was a free and vicarious service of the law. He was made under law to them that are under law. For the Son of God who descended from heaven was, as such, free from the law. If He subjected Himself to the law He did it for our sakes that we might become the free children of God.

But above all the death of Christ was a vicarious suffering endured to set us free. St Paul's line of argument is a masterpiece after the true rabbinical fashion. One passage in the law pronounces every transgressor to be accursed; another says that every one that is hanged is accursed of God. Therefore he

that is hanged is accounted a transgressor in the eyes of the law. Now, Christ hung upon the tree, but naturally without being a transgressor or accursed. Therefore, He became a curse for us, and our transgression has received its due punishment in His death. Thereby we have been set free from the law.

The passage in which he employs the argument from the marriage law describes exactly the same thing. From a legal point of view death puts an end to marriage and sets the surviving partner free. In a similar manner our obligation to the law would be ended by our death. Christ died in our stead; that is as much as to say that the connection between us and the law had been severed. We are dead to the law. That is to say, we are free men.

It is clear of course that all these arguments deal with legal abstractions and have nothing whatever to do with the Jesus of history. The question, does Jesus set us free from the law or not, could surely only be answered from the point of view of His position in history. This St Paul, however, absolutely refuses to take. The Jesus of history is for him a servant of the law just like every other Jew, but as Son of God voluntarily and vicariously. Now, without going any further, St Paul is at fault in his premises, and so the whole of this theory is an ingenious conjuring with ideas and nothing more. All this strikes us as so unnatural that many have found it hard before now to take St Paul seriously here. But for all that he was in serious earnest, and the idea that he had in his mind was a great one. He rightly understood Jesus when he conceived of Him as our Redeemer from the law. He revealed the contradiction between the respect which Jesus paid to the law and His actual relation to legalism. drew that inference from the Gospel of Jesus, which His disciples neither had the courage nor the perspicacity to draw for themselves. Jesus was in very deed the end of the law; with Him began a new mediatorship and a new religious relation. The struggle against Scribes and Pharisees reached its rightful conclusion only when their legalism—the system which stood behind their persons was annulled. That St Paul based this true understanding of Jesus on a very lame theory which disregarded facts, we have to take into the bargain. And, besides, St Paul's mistake must be put down to the account of those who had been

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