We are now better able to estimate the position of the Twelve when the death of their Master threw them on their own resources, and left them to propagate his Gospel as they themselves understood it. Born a Jew of the race of David, accepting during his life the character of the promised Messiah, and dying with the mocking title "King of the Jews" written upon his cross, Jesus had left his disciples in close communion with the Mosaism which he had spiritualized and ennobled, but had not abolished. He himself had taught them that "it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness," and, from his youth upwards, had set them the example of {140} enlightened observance of the Mosaic law. His precept had not belied his example, and whilst in strong terms we find him inculcating the permanence of the Law, it is certain that he left no order to disregard it. He confined his own preaching to the Jews; the first ministers of the Messiah represented the twelve tribes of the people of Israel;.and the first Christians were of that nation, with no distinctive worship, but practising as before the whole Mosaic ritual. What Neander savs of "many," may, we think, be referred to all: "That Jesus faithfully observed the form of the Jewish law served to them as evidence that this form should ever preserve its value."(1) As a fact, the Apostles and the early Christians continued as before assiduously to practise all the observances of the Mosaic law, to frequent the Temple(2) and adhere to the usual strict forms of Judaism.(3) In addition to the influence of the example of Jesus and the powerful effect of national habit, there were many strong reasons which obviously must to Jews have rendered abandonment of the law as difficult as submission to its full requirements must have been to Gentiles. Holding as they did the Divine origin of the Old Testament, in which the observance of the Law was inculcated on almost every page, {141} it would have been impossible, without counter-teaching of the most peremptory and convincing character, to have shaken its supremacy; but beyond this, in that theocratic community Mosaism was not only the condition of the Covenant, and the key of the Temple, but it was also the diploma of citizenship, and the bond of social and political life. To abandon the observance of the Law was not only to resign the privilege and the distinctive characteristic of Israel, to relinquish the faith of the Patriarchs who were the glory of the nation, and to forsake a divinely appointed form of worship, without any recognized or even indicated substitute, but it severed the only link between the individual and the people of Israel, and left him in despised isolation, an outcast from the community. They had no idea, however, that any such sacrifice was required of them. They were simply Jews believing in the Jewish Messiah, and they held that all things else were to proceed as before, until the glorious second coining of the Christ.(1)