It is the knowledge of Jesus as the truth, which alone manifests the character of rudiments or elements of the world. The expression is applied by the Apostle Paul to ordinances instituted by God Himself, as well as to the current philosophical dogmas or ordinances. As elements or rudiments simply, it is applied by the same Apostle in the Hebrews, to that measure of the knowledge of Christ, great and blessed as it was, which might have been gathered from the ancient oracles of God, but which fell amazingly below the fulness of that gospel, preached "with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven."

The very expression "rudiments of the world," until Jesus cast His own light upon it, could have had no intelligible meaning. There is a suitable reverence in speaking of the things of God by inspired men; and the difference is great whether they be spoken of absolutely or relatively, as regarded according to their original institution, or as superseded by Christ. Jew and Gentile without any minor subdivision, are regarded as "all the world" by God. The first stood in a distinct covenant relation with God. Jehovah was the God of Israel. The Gentiles stood only in natural relationship to God, "that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after Him and find Him." Christ is ushered in as "a Light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of His people Israel."

Nothing can be more solemn than the giving of the law on the part of Jehovah, or its reception by the people by the hand of Moses. But after the people had corrupted themselves, how gracious as well as solemn are the ordinances given by Jehovah to Moses "out of the tabernacle of the congregation" (Lev. i. 1). It was by these ordinances that they were separated from other people to be the people of Jehovah. The observance of these ordinances was their holiness. "Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean; and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast or fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean, and ye shall be holy unto me; for I the Lord am holy and have severed you

from other people, that ye should be mine." Their holiness consisted "in meats and drinks."

and

The distribution of the law into moral and ceremonial, will not account for the Apostle speaking in so disparaging a tone of the ordinances of God; because the jealousy of Jehovah was especially manifested in vindicating the sanctity of the ceremonial law. "Nadab and Abihu offered strange fire before the Lord, which He commanded them not, and there came out fire from the Lord and devoured them, and they died before the Lord." The soundness of the distinction between the moral ceremonial law is questionable in itself; for so far as access to God was opened to Israel, it was through the ceremonial law; and it was by this law also that the blessed truth of "righteousness without law" was most prominently witnessed (Rom. iii. 21). But God is to be sanctified in them who come nigh Him; and it is for Him alone to prescribe the way. To neglect that way, or to attempt another, is the highest insult to God. The "holy ointment," and "the perfume," were both most minutely ordered, and so solemnly sanctioned, that the imitation of either of them was to be visited with the sentence, "He shall be cut off from his people" (Ex. xxx. 22. 28).

The knowledge of the glory of the person of Christ casts such a light on the ancient ordinances of God, as to make the things which in themselves were a burdensome yoke, to be viewed by faith as lively pictures. There were typical persons, and typical acts, which foreshadowed Christ in his offices and acts. But no typical person,

That the end of the commandment is charity, perfect love to God and to man, is a truth recognised alike by the Law and the Gospel. But the Law lacked power to enforce the carrying out of its own commandments. It was "weak through the flesh." It could not give life," which was the thing needed. The Gospel is "the Law of the Spirit of Life;" so that there is, in every believer, that life communicated by the Spirit, which has in it the principle of perfect love to God and to man; and when the time comes for deliverance from the flesh, and actual conformity to Him unto whose image the Saints are predestinated to be conformed, the practice will be co-extensive with the principle, and not only as now will "the righteousness of the law be fulfilled in us," but by us also. "Blessed are they who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled."

could properly foreshadow the person of Christ. The revelation of the glory of the person of the Son by the Father was the one thing needed. All was enigmatical till He came, of whom it was written in the volume of the book, "Lo! I come to do thy will, O God." "The Light," even Jesus, throwing its rays on Jewish ordinances turned bondage into liberty; but the converse is solemnly true—the removal of the eye from Christ, and recurrence even to the ancient ordinances of God, was not merely turning back from liberty to bondage-but, it was a nullifying of the grace of God, making the sacrifice of Christ needless, and an insult to the Holy Ghost. Such has ever been and is still the principle of making "religious duties" supplemental to man's defective righteousness. It is this principle which calls forth the most cutting reproof from the Apostle, and at the same time leads him to speak in terms so disparaging of the ancient ordinances of God.

Again all the ancient ordinances failed, except in the faintest shadow, to convey the idea of the reality of the sacrifice of Christ. These ordinances testified aloud the purifying power of blood, and that "without shedding of blood is no remission;" but their repetition testified their own inefficacy-the victims commanded to be offered could never remove guilt from the conscience; for there was no real transfer of guilt to the head of the victim. Let but "the One to come appear, covering all these sacrifices by his one sacrifice, and forbidding repetition by such a sacrifice as his own being needed only once to be offered, and what an interpretation is afforded of the Jewish ritual! The soul is almost lost in contemplating the reality of the Holy One become the sin-bearer, bearing it in his own body on the tree; bearing it in his innermost soul under the waves and billows of the wrath of God, when it pleased God to make his soul an offering for sin. When shall we learn the truth, the reality of the sacrifice of Christ? What is it that hinders our having continually before our eyes Jesus Christ evidently set forth crucified among us! Is there a shade of suspicion as to His proper personal glory as the Son? such a suspicion subverts the truth. Is the

thought harboured that He did "need" something to be done on His own account? then is the very idea of His suffering for us nullified. Is it that the anguish of His soul under the stripes of divine justice is overlooked in contemplating His exquisite bodily torture on the cross? then will there be hesitancy in the soul as to the actual removal of the guilt of sin by the offering of Christ. Is it hard to receive the truth that every sacrifice and offering was answered and covered, and therefore set aside by the act of Christ offering HIMSELF once on the cross? then the dignity of the Sufferer is feebly apprehended. Is it that there is backwardness in the soul to regard the one offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all as the only answer to God for all and every sin? then is the doctrine of God inverted; and the sacrifice of Christ is made to be the remembrancer of sin, instead of being the speaking testimony of God to the conscience, as that by which sin is for ever put away. Is it that we take our own instead of the estimate of God as to the perfection of Christ's sacrifice? then are we off the ground of faith, and peace is morally impossible.

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Israel, comparing itself with the nations, might well glory in their advantages, "their civil and religious privileges," as men say; but the moment the glory of Christ bursts on the soul, then that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. The attempt to re-introduce the past and fading glory is characterised by the conclave of the Apostles," as subverting the soul" (Acts, xv). The Apostle Peter speaks of his Jewish privileges as a yoke, which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear," and at the same time testified unto one power alone of purifying the heart, even faith in Jesus presented by God himself as the substance of all sacrifices. Peter and his fellow Apostles had all stood in a certain relationship to God, although they might little understand what the relationship really was-but it was a relationship of nearness to God compared with that of Gentiles; as the Apostle testifies -"and came and preached peace, unto you which

But when

were far off, and to them which were nigh." one like Peter had seen "the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ," then was the discovery made to the soul, that however well adapted were these ordinances to man as in the flesh and in the world, they were entirely destitute of any efficacy to meet his case as a condemned sinner, or to bring him in his own conscience into real nearness to God. He became conscious that he needed redemption out of that very religious standing in which he had gloried. Peter addresses the abiding principle announced in Leviticus-"Be ye holy, for I am holy"--but with what an intensity of meaning to believers in Jesus; "forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathersbut with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."

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In strict keeping with the statements of Peter as to the light in which the holy ordinances of God are regarded by one who "knew the Lord,"-even yoke,"-"vain traditionary conversation,"-we find Paul writing to the Galatians. He speaks of such ordinances as infantine " even so we, when we were children (infants) were in bondage under the elements (or rudiments) of the world, but when the fulness of time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons." It is in this passage that first in order we find the expression elements (or rudiments) of the world," applied to the law, and there are several very significant statements in it. First we have the same idea of "bondage" (as Peter had expressed by yoke) amplified by the idea of utter incapacity to rise above the spirit of a servant. A person might be a son and heir under the law, but by the very fact of being under the law, he was hindered from acting as well as from having the spirit of the one or the other. Again these very ordinances bound down the spirit to the world; they were a hindrance instead of a help to the soul's rising above the world into direct intercourse