may yet possess that rudiment of goodness which Christ called faith. But, on another side, the new Moses is infinitely more exacting than the old. For the most blameless observance of the whole law is not enough to save the Christian from exclusion, unless it has actually sprung from genuine goodness. It may spring from natural caution or long-sighted selfishness, and in the heart of the strict moralist there may be no spark of faith. For such a moralist Christ has no mercy. And so it became a maxim in the Christian Church that faith justifies a man without the deeds of the law.

Faith was described above as no proper Christian virtue, but as that which was required of a man before he became a Christian. This virtue was to be taken by Christ and trained by his legislation and theology into something far riper and higher. But if the training should through untoward circumstances almost entirely fail, and faith remain a scarcely developed principle, bearing fruit but seldom and fitfully in action-never is inconceivable-still in the Christian view it is life to the soul, and the faithful soul, however undeveloped, is at home within the illuminated circle, and not in the outer darkness.

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CHAPTER VIII.

BAPTISM.

WE have before us the new Moses surrounded by those who are waiting to receive from his lips the institutions of a new Theocracy. They have been gathered out of the nation; they form the elect part of it. But no constraint has been used in enlisting some and rejecting others. Those are here in whose hearts there is something which answers to such a trumpet-call as that which John and Christ had caused to resound through the land. Those whose lives are sunk in routine, and no longer capable of aspiring or willing or believing, are not here. But among the followers of the Legislator there is but one common quality. All, except a very few adventurers who have joined him under a mistake and will soon withdraw, have some degree of what he calls faith. All look up to him, trust in him, are prepared to obey him and to sacrifice something for him. He requires no This is a valid title to citizenship in the Theocracy. But in habits and character they differ as much as the individuals in any other crowd. Some are sunk in vice, others lead blameless lives; some have cultivated minds, others are rude peasants; some offer to Jehovah prayers conceived in the style of Hebrew psalmists and prophets, others worship some monstrous idol of the

more.

terrified imagination or passionless abstraction of philosophy. It is the object of the society into which this motley crowd are now gathered gradually to elevate each member of it, to cure him of vice, to soften his rudeness, to deliver him from the dominion of superstitious fears or intellectual conceits. But this is the point towards which the society tends, not that with which it begins. The progress of each citizen towards this perfection will bear proportion to his natural organisation, to the force with which the influences of the society are brought to bear upon him, and to the stage of enlightenment from which he starts. With some it will be rapid, with others so slow as to be almost imperceptible. But the first propelling power, the indispensable condition of progress, is the personal relation of loyal vassalage of the citizen to the Prince of the Theocracy.

The test of this loyalty lay, as we have seen, in the mere fact that a man was prepared to attach himself to Christ's person and obey his commands, though by doing so some risk and some sacrifice was incurred. Christ, however, did not retain everyone who accepted the Call about his person; some he dismissed to their homes, laying upon them no burdensome commands. It was necessary therefore that some mark should be devised by which the follower of Christ might be distinguished, and by consenting to bear which he might give proof of his loyalty. Some initiatory rite was necessary, some public formality, in which the new volunteer might take, as it were, the military oath and confess his chief before men. If such a ceremony could be devised, which should at the same time indicate that the new votary had taken upon himself not merely a new service but an entirely new

mode of life, it would be so much the better. Now there was already in use among the Jews the rite of baptism. It was undergone by those who became proselytes to Judaism. Such proselytes signified by submitting to it that they passed out of their secular life into the dedicated life of citizens in a Theocracy. The water in which they were bathed washed away from them the whole unhallowed and unprofitable past; they rose out of it new men into a new world, and felt as though death were behind them and they had been born again into a higher state. No ceremony could be better adapted to Christ's purpose than this. It was already in use, and had acquired a meaning and associations which were universally understood. By calling upon all alike, Jews as well as Gentiles, to submit to it, Christ would intimate that he did not merely revive the old Theocracy but instituted a new one, so that the children of Abraham themselves, members of a theocracy from their birth, had a past to wash away and a new life to begin, not less than the unsanctified Gentile. And at the same time, being publicly performed, it would serve as well as any other rite to test the loyalty of the new recruit and his readiness to be known by his Master's name.

This ceremony, then, Christ adopted, and he made it absolutely binding upon all his followers to submit to it. In the fourth Gospel there is a story which illustrates in the most striking manner the importance which Christ attached to baptism. A man of advanced years and influential position, named Nicodemus, visited Christ, we are told, in secret, and entered into conversation with him. He began by an explicit avowal of belief in Christ's divine mission. What he would have gone on to say we may

conjecture from these two facts, namely, that he believed in Christ, and that nevertheless he visited him secretly. It appears that he hoped to comply with Christ's demand of personal homage and submission, but to be excused from making a public avowal of it. And when we consider the high position of Nicodemus, it is natural to suppose that he hoped to receive such a special exemption in consideration of the services he had it in his power to render. He could push the movement among the influential classes; he could cautiously dispose the Pharisaic sect to a coalition with Christ on the ground of their common national and theocratic feeling; he might become a useful friend in the metropolis, and might fight against the prejudice which a provincial and Galilæan party could not but excite. These advantages Christ would secure by allowing Nicodemus to become a secret member of his Theocracy, and by excusing him, until a better opportunity should present itself, from publicly undergoing the rite of baptism. On the other hand, by insisting upon this he would at once destroy all the influence of Nicodemus with the authorities of Jerusalem, and with it all his power of becoming a nursing-father to the infant Church. When we consider the great contempt which Christ constantly expressed for forms and ceremonies, and in particular for those washings' which were usual among the Pharisees, we are prepared to find him readily acceding to the request of Nicodemus. Instead of which he shut the petitioner's mouth by an abrupt declaration that there was no way into the Theocracy but through baptism. The kingdom of God, he insisted, though it had no locality and no separation from the secular states of mankind, though it had no law-courts, no lictors and no fasces, was yet a true state. Men were not