+II. It was temporary in its operation.+--"Till the seed should come to whom the promise was made" (ver. 19). The work of the law was preparatory and educative. Centuries rolled away and the promised Seed was long in coming, and it seemed as if the world must remain for ever under the tutelage of the law. All the time the law was doing its work. God was long in fulfilling His promise because man was so slow to learn. When Christ, the promised Seed, appeared, the law was superseded. Its work was done. The preparatory gave place to the permanent; the reign of law was displaced by the reign of grace. The claims of the law were discharged once for all. +III. Its revelation was through intermediaries.+--"It was ordained by angels in the hand of a Mediator" (ver. 19). In the Jewish estimation the administration of the law by angels enhanced its splendour, and the pomp and ceremony with which Moses made known the will and character of Jehovah added to the impressiveness and superiority of the law. In the Christian view these very methods were evidences of defect and inferiority. The revelations of God by the law were veiled and intermediate; the revelation by Grace is direct and immediate. Under the law God was a distant and obscured personality, and the people unfit to enter His sacred presence; by the Gospel God is brought near to man and permitted to bask in the radiance of His revealed glory, without the intervention of a human mediator. The law, with its elaborate ceremonial and multiplied exactions, is a barrier between the soul and God. +IV. It was contingent, not absolute, in its primal terms.+--"Now a Mediator is not a mediator of one, but God is one" (ver. 20). Where a mediator is necessary unity is wanting--not simply in a numerical but in a moral sense, as a matter of feeling and of aim. There are separate interests, discordant views, to be consulted. This was true of Mosaism. It was not the absolute religion. The theocratic legislation of the Pentateuch is lacking in the unity and consistency of a perfect revelation. Its disclosures of God were refracted in a manifest degree by the atmosphere through which they passed. In the promise God spoke immediately and for Himself. The man of Abraham's faith sees God in His unity. The legalist gets his religion at second-hand, mixed with undivine elements. He projects on the Divine image confusing shadows of human imperfection (_Findlay_). +Lessons.+--1. _The law is powerless to remove the sin it exposes._ 2. _The law had the defect of all preparatory dispensations._ 3. _The law imposes conditions it does not help to fulfil._ _GERM NOTES ON THE VERSES._ Vers. 19, 20. _The Law is for Transgressors._