HEBRAISM, OR THE ORIGINS OF THE GOSPEL To understand Christianity we should need to see clearly and in one view the link which connects it with the religious evolution of mankind, the living originality by which it is distinguished, the succession and the character of the forms it has assumed. Such are the three points which we shall take up in turn. We must begin with its origins. There is never a complete break in the chain of history. Every phenomenon arises in its place and at its time. It has its antecedents, which prepare it and _condition_ it. However new Christianity may have been, it is no exception to the rule. It springs from the tradition of Israel by an evident affiliation. The old theology did not dissimulate this kinship of origin; it rather exaggerated it. The Christian Church made the Bible of the Jews the first part of its own. The writings of the prophets were placed in the sacred volume before those of the apostles, as if to intimate that the one could not be understood without the other. _Novum Testamentum in Vetere latet; Vetus in Novo patet_. At bottom, this old adage of the schoolmen is true. It is an excellent rule of biblical exegesis to trace the primary Christian ideas to their Hebraic root, and to regard as foreign and adventitious those which are not attached to it. If there is nothing essential in the New Testament the germ of which is not to be found in the Old, there is nothing truly fruitful in the Old which has not passed into the New. Such is the historical sequence and connection that we must respect and follow. The study of the religion of Israel is the natural introduction to the study of Christianity. The only point to be considered here is how the one was preparatory to the other.[1] [1] Two non-essential sections have here been omitted, one on _The Sacred History_, the other on _The Nation_.--Trans. 1. _Prophetism_ The miracle of the history of Israel is Prophetism. In this is to be found the incomparable force by which the religious evolution we may trace in its annals was effected.