The election of the Jewish people from among the nations had fulfilled its promised end. Their fortunes had displayed the alliance between transgression and punishment, obedience and reward, in the temporal dispensations of God; and suggested an analogy between these and the spiritual allotments of a state future and afar. They had treasured up, with a reverence approaching to superstition, the literal language of the old inspiration, the human echo of the voice of the Lord. But the national custody of prophetic evidence and typical illustration was no longer demanded from those guardians of the oracles of God. Prediction had been fixed and identified by event, and type had expired in substantive fulfilment. The ritual also of the old covenant was one of fugitive and local designation. The enactments of their civil code anticipated miraculous support; and, had this been vouchsafed to many nations, miracle, instead of an interruption in the harmony of nature, would have been in the common order of events. The observance, again, of their ceremonial law, restricted to one temple and a single altar, was impracticable to all save those in the vicinity of that particular land; many, indeed, were merely possible under peculiar adaptations of climate, manners, and governments. Even the solemn recognition of the old morality embodied in the Scripture of Moses, and made imperative by the signature of God; inasmuch as it exacted utter obedience, and yet indicated no ceremonial atonement for defect, was another argument of a mutable creed. The impress of change, the character of incompletion, were traceable on every feature of the ancient faith. The spirit of their religion, as well as the voice of prophecy, announced that the sceptre must depart from Judah, and a new covenant arrive for the house of Israel. It was not thus with the succeeding revelation. When the fulness of time was come (that is to say, when the experiment of ages had ascertained the Gentile world that the sagacity of man was inadequate to the counsels of God), and when the long exhibition of a symbolic ritual by the chosen Israelites had conveyed significant illustration of the future and final faith, God sent his Son. Then was brought to light the wisdom and coherence of the one vast plan. The history of man was discovered to be a record of his departure from a state of original righteousness (after the intervention of a preparatory religion) and eternal existence, and his restoration thereto by a single Redeemer for all his race. For this end, the Word, that is to say, the Revealer, was made flesh. That second impersonation of the sacred Trinity "took our manhood into God." The Godhead did not descend, as of old, in partial inspiration, nor were its issues restrictive and particular to angel or prophet; but, because the scheme about to be developed was to be the religion of humanity, its Author identified himself with human nature, and became, in his own expressive language, the Son of man. He announced, in the simple solemnity of truth, the majestic errand of his birth,—to save sinners; repealed, by a mere declaration, every previous ritual, and substituted one catholic worship for the future earth. Now, the elements of durability were blended with every branch of this new revelation. Firstly, unlike the old covenant, it had no kingdom of this world, it depended on no peculiar system of political rule, interfered not with any civil right, but submitted to every ordinance of man as supreme to itself. The Christian faith was obviously meant to cohere with the political constitution of any country and all lands; to be the established religion of republic or monarchy according to the original laws, or any fundamental compact between ruler and realm; as, for example, this our Church of England received solemn recognition as a public establishment, and had assurance of the future protection of her liberties and privileges unharmed, in the Charter of King John. The new ceremonial usages again were as watchfully calculated for stability, as the forms of the old law had been pregnant with change. The simplicity of baptism—that rite of all nations—was invested with a sacramental mystery, and constituted the regenerative and introductory rite of a vast religion.