We may, without any heretical division of person, economically distinguish our Lord's character as Jesus, and as Christ, so far that during his sojourn on earth, from his baptism at least to his crucifixion, he was in some respects his own Elias, bringing back the then existing Church to the point at which the Prophets had placed it; that is, distinguishing the
ethica
from the
politica,
what was binding on the Jews as descendants of Abraham and inheritors of the patriarchal faith from the statutes obligatory on them as members of the Jewish state.
Jesus fulfilled the Law, which culminated in a pure religious morality in principles, affections, and acts; and this he consolidated and levelled into the ground-stead on which the new temple
not made with hands,
wherein Himself, even Christ the Lord, is the Shechinah, was to rise and be raised.
Thus he taught the spirit of the Mosaic Law, while by his acts, sufferings, death, resurrection, ascension, and demission of the Comforter, he created and realized the contents, objects, and materials of that redemptive faith, the everlasting Gospel, which from the day of Pentecost his elect disciples,
