There are many other differences kindred to those which have been mentioned or gro'wing out of them. Christianity is not, in the view of its Founder, a legal religion. It is a dispensa tion of inner, not of outer, law. In this re spect its closest analogue in Hebraism is the teaching of the prophets. The New Testament writers see in the gospel the fulfilment of the prophecy that the new covenant should not be like the old; that the chief mark of the Mes sianic era should be that God would write his law on the heart. Hence Christianity finds its norm not in statutes, but in a personal life in which it beholds all its motives operative and all its principles illustrated.
The Relation of Christianity to Other Re ligions.—The principle which the Founder of Christianity announced when he said that he had not come to destroy but to fulfil was not • applicable solely to Judaism. Jesus recognized goodness and truth under whatever form of religious belief or practice it might be found. While it is true that he saw in Israel's life and history a unique revelation of God and recog nized in the Jewish Scriptures the product and record of that revelation, it is also true that he found a revealing and saving activity of God outside Judaism. He could see in the nobility and generosity of a heathen soldier a faith not matched in all Israel. He had other sheep who were not of the Jewish fold whom he would bring into the one flock. In the opinion of many interpreters the judgment parable in Mat thew xxv is intended to describe the testing of the heathen, many of whom are accepted because they have shown the spirit of love and service; having done kindness to Jesus' fellowmen, they are regarded as having done it unto him.
The primitive Church more or less fully ap prehended this conception of the relation of the gospel to other forms of religion. Paul de dared that God had not left himself without a witness among any people; that he had made of one blood all nations• of men; that the Greeks had been seeking after God and that there was a law of God written in the hearts of all men. The apostle recognized elements of truth in the crude beliefs and •worship of the heathen. Despite their ignorance, he saw in their more than ordinary religiousness an evidence of a sin cere aspiration after God and in their devotions and moral judgments a proof of their native kinship to him.
These views obviously rest upon the concep tion that, in some real sense, revelation is uni versal. God's eternal power and divinity are known to mankind, says Paul, because God has Made these truths known to them. Other New Testament writers teach the same in other terms. In the Fourth Gospel Christ is iden tified with the Logos of Greek speculation.
Accordingly in his preincarnate activity he is conceived as the in um of a universal revela tion. Like an eternal sun he has been shining down into the world's darkness and•sin, enlight ening the mind of every man. He was operative in the life of Israel of old, however blind this favored people may have been to his presence. Paul expresses allegorically the same thought when he says that the spiritual rock of which the Israelites drank in the wilderness was Christ. But this of the pre-existent Christ was not exceptional. He was the light of men universally. writing is ppon the wall, whether of the Indian fane, or of the porticos of Greece?) (J. H. Newman). From these various forms of thought and of e sion it is seen that Christ and the early tian teachers recognized truth in other religions than Judaism and Christianity and regarded the teaching and work of the Founder of the Chris tian religion as a clarification and completion of such truth. Christianity builds on the constitu tional religiousness of man, upon his native and persistent sense of God, which' it aims to en lighten and to' quicken into a rational, moral faith.
The Doctrinal Contents of Christianity.— What has been said concerning- the early his tory of Christianity, its monotheism and its esti mate of Christ, may serve at a point of begin ning for a somewhat fuller illustrative statement of its doctrinal contents. As we have seen, Christianity inherited the monotheism of Israel, but gradually developed it by the elaboration of the doctrine of the Trinity. The motives to this development were chiefly two: (1) The primitive Christian estimate of the person of Christ, and (2) the Biblical teaching regard ing the Spirit of God. Instead of conceiving of God as a simple, distinctionless essence, speculative thought began to analyze the divine nature until in the 4th century an elaborate theory of a threefoldness in God appears. In this Nicene or Athanasian form of thought God is said to consist of three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, all equally eternal, power ful and glorious. It was held that this tri personality of God Is not inconsistent with monotheism, since the Father is the tons et origo of Deity from whom the Son and Spirit are derived by an eternal process of generation, and because the divine Essence is one. The doctrine thus included these three elements : (1) The coequal eternity of the three persons; (2) the subordination and derivation of the second and third from the first; and (3) the conse quent oneness of the divine Nature in which all three persons alike partake.