The argumentative position and aims of the Divine Master can not be understood, unless these differences are attended to. He taught that His kingdom was not of this world. It could not have been so taught by them of old time. He taught that men must render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar’s. Formerly it could only be taught that God was all in all. When these, and many other similar statements of Christ and of His Apostles are interpreted in accordance with the then existing condition of the chosen people and of the world, we see that they involve the entire abandonment to the civil power of the whole domain of positive legislation, and of the entire and unqualified right of maintaining such legislation; of course, without at all exempting legislators or magistrates from obedience, in the exercise of their legislative or executive functions, to the principles of right, and from ultimate accountability to God. The authority of the old civil and criminal code having thus been transferred from God to man, that of the ceremonial code followed the same rule: though, indeed, these are distinctions which were hardly recognised in early times. The law was not hereby absolutely and necessarily abrogated, but only the idea that it is imposed, enforced, and maintained by God in this life. That was the idea which had given its form and character to the old Dispensation, and upon which it had been founded, and to which the multitude, learned and unlearned, clung, because they could not understand either how polity, religion, or morality could be maintained without it, or how, in these matters, there could be any advance. What, therefore, the promulgators of the new Dispensation had to show was that the abandonment of these old ideas about law was not tantamount to the abandonment of law itself. Man did not cease to be accountable, and accountable to God. The old form of law, as a heaven-originated code, and for that reason containing religion, was abolished; but a higher and better form of law was substituted for what had been abolished. The thing intended could now be fulfilled more completely than before. An expansion and elasticity were given to it, which might enable it to keep pace with every enlargement of our moral consciousness, and of our purest and loftiest aspirations. It was exalted, perfected, and made of universal application. What, though necessary in its day, had, all along, been crippling, distorting, and obscuring it, was now annulled. What was abolished was the old letter, and its sanction; the old heaven-sent, heaven-administered, heaven-executed code. Life and immortality could not be preached, nor understood if that were maintained. What was not abolished, but to which a freer and more enlarged course was given, was the living and life-giving Spirit: the consciousness of right that is in man. That had been in bondage under the old letter. It must now be emancipated: otherwise it would die altogether.