The Pentateuch, for instance, contains the principles on which the
Jewish theocracy was founded, a dispensation that was, according to
prophetic declarations, only to last for a certain time. In the first
eleven chapters of Genesis we find a few outlines of the Patriarchal
dispensation, and some of the ordinances of that dispensation are
referred to without any detailed account. The last chapters of Genesis
contain merely a brief historical sketch of the transition from the
patriarchal dispensation to the Mosaic dispensation. The remaining
books of Moses (as indeed all of the Old Testament) are chiefly an
incomplete history of the dealings of God with that one nation which
He had chosen for the purpose of communicating His will to mankind,
until the appearance of the promised "Seed." But the dispensation
itself was a transient one. The principles upon which it was founded
must necessarily {353} also be subject to such modifications as a new
dispensation would require. Paul, the greatest Jewish scholar of his
age, is very emphatic on this point. "It (the Mosaic law) was added
because of transgression, _till_ the Seed should come to whom the
promise was made." "Before faith came we were kept under the law,
shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed. Wherefore
the law _was_ our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might
be justified by faith. But after that faith is come we are no longer
under a schoolmaster." (Galatians iii, 23-25.) "(God) also has made
us able ministers of the New Testament; not of the letter, but of the
spirit; for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. But if the
ministration of death (the Mosaic law), written and engraven in stones,
was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly
behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory
was to be done away, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be
rather glorious? * * For if that _which is done away_ (the law) was
glorious, much more that which remaineth." (II Cor. iii, 6-11.)
The laws of the Mosaic dispensation have, according to the same
apostle, no more claim or binding force, relative to the members of
the Christian dispensation, than a dead husband has to a living wife:
"For the woman which has a husband is bound by the law to her husband
as long as he lives; but if the husband be dead, she is loosed from the
law of her husband; * * wherefore, my brethren, ye also are become dead
to the law by the body of Christ." (Rom. vii, 2-4.)