WHEN Christ Jesus counseled his little band of followers that they "fear not;" when he said, "Lo, I am with you alway," he no doubt intended to comfort them at a time when they were overwhelmed with the thought of what it would mean to face the world without him. He was moved with that compassion which ever led him to enter so sympathetically into the heart-struggle of humanity. But it is probable that the strengthening of their hope and courage did not compass all his purpose, or measure the full meaning of his assuring words, since they enunciate a law and order of thought and life which is of no less vital significance to us than it was to the early Christians.
The world's sense of government has ever been that of coercive requirement. Law has ever been regarded as the mandate of dominating authority, and to ignore its demands was to merit and receive due punishment. Duty thus appealed to Moses, in large part, as an inhibition, which was summed up in the "thou shalt nots" of the Decalogue, and which was enforced by a penal code, so that fear inevitably became a leading incentive to action. God was thought of as having instituted a series of exactions which He honored in the infliction of sickness and death, not only upon the infractors of law, but upon all their belongings. Innocent children and beasts were to feel the stroke of His anger no less surely than wilfully sinful men and women. All the horrors of heredity had their place in the divine order, and the only virtue which could naturally result from the restrictive influence of such a sense was negative. Instead of being free and spontaneous, its morality was menial, it flavored of the lash.
The fear of God's wrath which characterized this early prophetic period of religious history, reappears in the fear of death and damnation which has characterized the theology of the Christian centuries. In no small degree the self-infliction of present experience has been thought of as a substitute for the terrifying possibilities of future experience; hence the self-compulsion and asceticism that has not yet passed. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews had, however, a very clear perception of the imperfection and inadequacy of this Mosaic concept of divine law and government. He says, "The law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered . . . make the comers thereunto perfect. . . . Wherefore when he [the Christ] cometh into the world, he saith, Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me: . . . Lo, I come ... to do thy will, O God."
