WHEN St. Paul wrote, "We should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter;" also, "Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage," he voiced his affection for the democracy of the New Testament as opposed to the theocracy of the Old Testament, and defined the meaning of these terms. He also expressed his deep concern for the future welfare of those who with him had experienced the emancipating influence of the gospel versus the law.
It is today Impossible for a careful student to read the New Testament without noticing how constantly the writers all bore in mind the distinction and strove to make clear the difference between the Old Testament system of religion established by Moses and practised by the Jewish people, and the teachings of Christ Jesus, which open up to the world an entirely new dispensation. Under the old system the people had come to believe that they were not endowed by the creator with the capacity and understanding to work out their own salvation as individuals, but that prescribed laws and rituals and an officiating priesthood had been established for them for this purpose. As individuals they had nothing to do but to comply with the requirements of the church, and in all things the church stood first. It was held to be a divine institution established by the command of the Deity to do for men by a certain method what they by nature are helpless to do for themselves and cannot be expected to do. And as a system established on earth by the creator, it was believed to be absolute and final in its authority and demanded universal recognition, a veritable divinely devised trust, to traffic in and monopolize the work of the true religion on earth.
Under this religious instruction the moral law stated in the ten commandments, instead of being an evidence of spiritual love for God and man experienced in the hearts of men, dwindled into an external formality. But there were always protesting reformers, known as prophets among the Hebrew people, who had the true sense of religion and sounded forth Truth's warnings and rebukes. They saw the inadequacy and utter failure of a material system to lead men higher; that, instead of freeing men, it brought them into bondage, took away from them the power of self-government. They saw that it sought to rob men of their individual initiative and judgment, and would obscure and atrophy their spiritual powers. The system was repressive, external, mechanical. The prophet Jeremiah clearly foresaw that the time must come when every one would have to do his own work in religion, according to a teaching which he could understand and apply for himself, and no longer trust to the rites and ceremonies of the church and officiating priesthood to do it for him, and so he wrote, with divine authority: "The days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant . . . not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers . . . but this shall be the covenant that I will make . . . I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; . . . And they shall teach no more every man his neighbor, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them."
