We can see no way in which this could have been done except by terminating that part of the old system which made the letter of every statute, that is to say, the whole organization of society, and every provision of every kind for the maintenance of that organization, of Divine institution; and which, therefore, required that God should execute His own law Himself, here, in this life. Here were two ideas, distinct, but necessarily connected, and now they must be annulled, both of them. Both the legislation, and the enforcement of it, must be transferred from God to the State. Indeed the State—it had been Greek, and now it was Roman—had already got them absolutely into its own hands. The old law had now no existence, except on sufferance, and that only to a limited extent. Legislation could never again be got out of the hands into which it had fallen; and it was, in itself, far better that it should remain in them. Of course it could not have been so with God’s people of old time: but for the future it ought not to be, and it could not be, otherwise. Henceforth God would be the source in men’s hearts of the principles only of right. Legislators must, themselves, apply those principles to the varying circumstances and needs of their respective times and countries. They must also themselves provide means for enforcing the observance of their applications of these principles. But, of course, though this might answer roughly the purposes of human societies, it would be altogether imperfect and inadequate as a machinery either for fairly and completely rewarding and punishing individuals, or for making men good, or for keeping the heart pure, and gentle, and loving. All this must still result from the relation in which man feels that he stands towards God. Man could have little to do with these matters in his fellow man. This world, in which ‘some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,’ was clearly not the place for the perfect adjustment of compensations and retributions. The balance for weighing the things that are seen cannot be exactly trimmed here. How, then, could there be any pretence of weighing the more important things, those that set in motion the whole life, that cannot be seen? This necessitated a future life. The world had passed into a state in which heaven-sent, heaven-administered codes were impossible. But religion itself had not become impossible. It would, however, be obliged henceforth to address itself to what God has willed should be the general conscience of mankind, and to find its sanction in what God has enabled man to anticipate of a life to come. This was a higher form of religion. It belonged to higher conditions of humanity.