Thus the Israelitish party in St Paul’s time and after, hugged the chains of the Jewish Law; then, after turbulent ages of fierce doctrinal dissension, when combative spirits found in polemics the strife which their temperaments required, the Churches of Greece and of Rome took charge of the consciences of men. A revolt at length took place against the external authority of the Church, but there was no more religious freedom under the new regimes than under the old. Confessions of Faith came into vogue, and men tried to tie down after ages to the ways in which the controversialists of the sixteenth century had, with much giving and taking, agreed to regard the insoluble problems of existence. The Bible was now often held up, not to reveal God’s will and ways, but to yield texts for weapons in disputes. Christ’s care to guard against a bondage unto written matter is apparent in the whole form of His teaching; and especially in His leaving no writings of His own, and no directly accredited record of His life; but the craving of men after an unerring touchstone of truth has wrapped them again in bonds like those from which Christ would have set them free; and the Canonical books have been invested with a character of literal inspiration, not unlike what would have attached to writings of our Lord Himself. The verses of John, Chap. xvi. 9, 10 which follow that of which I have been speaking, while leading us to the profoundest Theology, bear on the change from a visible teacher to a spiritual one, and so far they come within my scope. I have only to do with them so far as they illustrate this change. The reason given for the intervention of the Spirit is, that Christ, in the body, will no longer bring home to the world the sense of sin and of righteousness and of judgement. “And he, when he is come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgement: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgement, because the prince of this world has been judged.” John xvi. 8-11. I should place the emphasis on the pronouns—He and I. The Spirit is to take the place of the departed Lord. So long as Christ was in the world He Himself brought home to the men who believed on Him the sense of sin; He presented the ideal of righteousness, and He enforced the conviction that moral evil brought doom and destruction upon men. Henceforth the witness to all this would no longer be Christ in the body, whose contact with the world was necessarily limited to one point, but the Holy Spirit, which could speak to the hearts of all mankind at once. It would lead me too far from my province if I enlarged on the topic of _Judgment_; and I turn to another matter.