It was, thus, the design of God, by this legal and preparatory dispensation, to disclose to man his ruined and helpless condition, and his need of looking to Him for everything that pertains to redemption.  And he did it, by so arranging the dispensation that the Jew might, as it were, make the trial and see if he could be his own Redeemer.  He instituted a long and burdensome round of observances, by means of which the Jew might, if possible, extinguish the remorse of his conscience, and produce the peace of God in his soul.  God seems by the sacrifices under the law, and the many and costly offerings which the Jew was commanded to bring into the temple of the Lord, to have virtually said to him:  “Thou art guilty, and My wrath righteously abides within thy conscience,—­yet, do what thou canst to free thyself from it; free thyself from it if thou canst; bring an offering and come before Me.  But when thou hast found that thy conscience still remains perturbed and unpacified, and thy heart still continues corrupt and sinful, then look away from thy agency and thy offering, to My clemency and My offering,—­trust not in these finite sacrifices of the lamb and the goat, but let them merely remind thee of the infinite sacrifice which in the fulness of time I will provide for the sin of the world,—­and thy peace shall be as a river, and thy righteousness as the waves of the sea.”

But the proud and legal spirit of the Jew blinded him, and he did not perceive the true meaning and intent of his national religion.  He made it an end, instead of a mere means to an end.  Hence, it became a mechanical round of observances, kept up by custom, and eventually lost the power, which it had in the earlier and better ages of the Jewish commonwealth, of awakening the feeling of guilt and the sense of the need of a Redeemer.  Thus, in the days of our Saviour’s appearance upon the earth, the chosen guardians of this religion, which was intended to make men humble, and feel their personal ill-desert and need of mercy, had become self-satisfied and self-righteous.  A religion designed to prompt the utterance of the greatest of its prophets:  “Woe is me!  I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips,” now prompted the utterance of the Pharisee:  “I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.”

The Jew, in the times of our Saviour and his Apostles, had thus entirely mistaken the nature and purpose of the Old dispensation, and hence was the most bitter opponent of the New.  He rested in the formal and ceremonial sacrifice of bulls and goats, and therefore counted the blood of the Son of God an unholy thing.  He thought to appear before Him in whose sight the heavens are not clean, clothed in his own righteousness, and hence despised the righteousness of Christ.  In reality, he appealed to the justice of God, and therefore rejected the religion of mercy.