The Law Passing Away, Not by Destruction But By Fulfillment [pp. 439-445]

440 TThe Law Passing Away, not by [July,
treasury or lambs and turtle-doves for its altar. The temple
he purified, but did not destroy. He drove out the men who
defiled its sacred precincts by fraud and avarice, but molested
none who resorted thither for instruction and worship.
Nor, again, did Jesus come to destroy the civil law. He
expressed no purpose or wish to free his countrymen from
their political obligations. Never did he pander to the plotting
discontent of party faction. Not by act or word did he
stimulate or encourage revolutionary zeal. Never did he seek
to intensify the uneasy spirit of his time, or rally it to the
support of any ambitious scheme of his own. Rather he
strove to allay the fever of insurrectionary turbulence by
directing the thoughts of his fellow-citizens to that prevailing
corruption which was the true cause of their national humilia tion. He had no quarrel with government. He did not com plain of taxation. He spoke no rebellious words against
Caesar. On an attempt to inveigle him with some disloyal
utterance, asking the loan of an imperial penny, with exquisite
adroitness he inquired who was represented by the image and
superscription stamped upon the coin; and when it was an swered "Caesar," " Render then," he said, "unto Caesar the
things that are Cesar's." As much as to say, " Do not expect
that I shall justify your impatient bitterness under the restraints
of civil order. Do not hope for my aid in dissolving the bands
of political authority. I am not come to destroy the civil, any
more than to destroy the moral, or the ceremonial, law."
This earnest declaration was an admonition to the progres sive thought of those who imagined that the Messiah was to
inaugurate a freer and easier system of both religion and gov ernment; that he would discard the old for one entirely new,
with precepts less strict, and duties less onerous; who were
weary of incessant painstaking in matters of religion; who
were tired of restrictions, tired of exhausting performances,
tired of monotonous and never-ending routine; who chafed
under the triple yoke of restraint, service and penalty. For
them the law was too severe in its exactions, the prophets
were too harsh in their denunciations. They wished that both
might be overthrown and pass away. At least, they longed
that both might be disarmed: the law of its rigor, the proph ets of their maledictions.