+III. There was a preparation in the moral experience of mankind.+--The dreadful picture of the pagan world which St. Paul draws at the close of the first chapter of his epistle to the Romans is not a darker picture than that of pagan writers--of moralists like Seneca, of satirists like Juvenal, of historians like Tacitus; and yet enough survived of moral truth in the human conscience to condemn average pagan practice. It led them to yearn for a deliverer, although their aspirations were indefinite enough. This widespread corruption, this longing for better things, marked the close of the epoch of moral experiments. +Lessons.+--1. _The earthly life of Christ stood in a totally different relation towards moral truth from that of every other man._ 2. _It was a life at harmony with itself and a revelation of higher truth._ 3. _His incarnation delivers us from false views of the world and of life, from base and desponding views of our human nature, and from bondage.--H. P. Liddon._ _Christ Obedient to the Law._ +I. This obedience was not a matter of course,+ following upon His incarnation. He might have lived and died, had it been consistent with His high purpose, in sinless purity, without expressly undertaking as He did openly to fulfil the law. It was a voluntary act, becoming and fit for the great work He had in hand. +II. This obedience was not only an integral but a necessary part of His work of redemption.+--Had this not been so, redemption would have been incomplete. Not only God's unwritten law in the conscience, but God's written law in the tables of stone, must be completely satisfied. It being shown, by both Gentile and Jew, that neither by nature nor by revealed light was man capable of pleasing God, all men were left simply and solely dependent on His free and unmerited grace. All cases of guilt must be covered, all situations of disobedience taken up and borne and carried triumphantly out into perfection and accordance with the Father's will, by the Son of God in our flesh. +III. This obedience for man was to be not only complete,+ so that Christ should stand in the root of our nature as the accepted man, +but was to be our pattern,+ that as He was holy so we might be holy also. +IV. This obedience arose from the requirements of His office connected with the law.+--He was the end of the law. It all pointed to Him. Its types and ceremonies all found fulfilment in His person and work. All has been fulfilled. All looked forward to One that was to come--to one who has come, and in His own person has superseded that law by exhausting its requirements, has glorified that law by filling out and animating with spiritual life its waste and barren places. So that God has not changed, nor has His purpose wavered, nor are His people resting on other than their old foundation.--_Dean Alford._ Ver. 5. _Under the Law_--