As a recent writer has said: "....the observance of the Sabbath, which had been intended to secure for weary men a rest full of love and peace and mercy, had become a mere national Fetish--a barren custom fenced in with the most frivolous and senseless restrictions."(2) Jesus restored its original significance. In restricting some of the permissive clauses of the Law, on the other hand, he acted precisely in the same spirit. He dealt with the Law not with the temper of a revolutionist, but of a reformer, and his reforms, so far from affecting its permanence, are a virtual confirmation of the rest of the code.(3) Ritschl, whose views on this point will have some weight with apologists, combats the idea that Jesus merely confirmed the Mosaic moral law, and abolished the ceremonial law. Referring to one particular point of importance, he says:--"He certainly contests the duty of the Sabbath rest, the value of purifications and sacrifices, and the validity of divorce; on the other hand, he leaves unattacked the value of circumcision, whose regulation is generally reckoned as part of the {126} ceremonial law; and nothing justifies the conclusion that Jesus estimated it in the same way as Justin Martyr, and the other Gentile Christian Church teachers, who place it on the same line as the ceremonies. The only passage in which Jesus touches upon circumcision (John vii. 22) rather proves that, as an institution of the patriarchs, he attributes to it peculiar sanctity. Moreover, when Jesus, with unmistakable intention, confines his own personal ministry to the Israelitish people (Mk. vii. 27, Mt. x. 5, 6), he thereby recognises their prior right of participation in the Kingdom of God, and also, indirectly, circumcision as the sign of the preference of this people. The distinction of circumcision from ceremonies, besides, is perfectly intelligible from the Old Testament. Through circumcision, to wit, is the Israelite, sprung from the people of the Covenant, indicated as sanctified by God; through purification, sacrifice, Sabbath-rest must he continually sanctify himself for God. So long, therefore, as the conception of the people of the Covenant is maintained, circumcision cannot be abandoned, whilst even the prophets have pointed to the merely relative importance of the Mosaic worship."(1) Jesus everywhere in the Gospels recognises the divine origin of the law,(2) and he quotes the predictions of the prophets as absolute evidence of his own pretensions. To those who ask him the way to eternal life he indicates its commandments,(3) and he even enjoins the observance of its ceremonial rites.(4) Jesus did not abrogate the {127} Mosaic law; but, on the contrary, by his example as well as his precepts, he practically confirmed it.(1)