The old Dispensation had been worked out morally, because it had issued in a narrow and dead formalism. Another reason was, that the human heart had begun to repudiate exclusiveness, which had been one of the requirements of the old Dispensation, and to catch glimpses of, and to yearn for, universal fraternity. A higher form of religion and of morality could now be imagined, indeed was suggested by the condition and the circumstances of the world, and was seen to be within men’s reach—a morality, and a religion, which would take their start from the idea and sentiment of the brotherhood of mankind. And in morality and religion, as soon as anything better begins to appear, that which is not so good, _ex rerum naturâ_, and _ex vi terminorum_, begins to lose its hold, to decay, and to cumber the ground. And as respected its sanction, as well as its morality, had the old Dispensation been worked out. Centuries of foreign domination, and that of Rome was now the apparently immovable order of the world, had rendered impossible the supposition that the law was being executed, here and now, by God. For that supposition national independence was the primary, and one absolutely indispensable, condition. But God was no longer supreme, administratively and executively, among His own people. That position was now occupied by the Roman Governor. Under these circumstances, a new religion, in the old form of statute law, and supported by the old sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, the execution of which was superintended by God, might conceivably have been at that time promulgated, though with certainty of failure, from Imperial Rome, but not from subject and provincial Jerusalem. That was inconceivable. For these reasons, then, it was that the new Dispensation could not be cast, as the old had been, in the mould of, and be made dependent on, statute and municipal law. The same conclusion resulted also from the fact that it was foreseen that it must be of its very nature and essence that it should embrace all people, whatever their statute and municipal law might be. That this feeling was springing up, coupled with the fact that the old Dispensation was evidently worked out, both morally and in respect of its sanction, is the meaning of the statement that the fulness of time had come. It was evident, therefore, that no further use could be made, either at the present, or, as far as could then be seen, for the future, of the sanction of immediate rewards and punishments, which fall entirely within the sphere of statute and municipal law. The only rewards and punishments the new doctrine could resort to, as sanctions, must be those of a future life. It was to this state of things that the teaching of the Saviour was addressed. And as His teaching grew out of, was founded upon, and was logically deducible from, the existing state of things, to see this will also be to see why what He taught had not been taught fifteen hundred years earlier.