been in any way injured in effecting his arrest. Plainly when the conduct of the prophets is thus dissimilar, the deity whom they represent on earth is dissimilar also.
Another very marked alteration to be observed in passing from the character of Jehovah to that of God, is the emancipation of the object of worship from the limits of race. Jehovah was altogether a Jew. He kept the Sabbath-day; he loved fasts and festivals; he believed strongly in the virtue of circumcision; he was interested not so much in the general well-being of the human species, as in the success of the single people of whom he was the true leader in battle and the ultimate sovereign at home. What happened to all the remainder of mankind was to him a matter of trivial moment, although it might suit him occasionally to use them as instruments either for the chastisement or the restoration to favor of his beloved Israel. But God in the New Testament has largely cast off the special features of his race, and although he sometimes betrays his Judaic origin, he is in the main cosmopolite in his sympathies and impartial in his behavior. Though by no means catholic in religion, but holding exclusively to a single faith, he receives all who embrace that faith, of whatever nation, within the range of his favor. This great and deeply important change, though begun by Jesus, was in the main the work of Paul. If it was Jesus who constructed the tabernacle, it was Paul who built the temple.
While, however, there is an enormous improvement if we compare the administration of human affairs by Jehovah and by God, there is nevertheless a blot upon the character of God which suffices, if rigorously balanced against the failings of Jehovah, to outweigh them all. It is the eternity of the punishment which he inflicts in a future life. No amount of sophistry can ever justify the creation of beings whose lives are to terminate in endless suffering. But while the reality of condemnation to such endless suffering would be a far more gigantic crime than any of the merely terrestrial penalties inflicted by the Hebrew Jehovah, the belief in such endless suffering is quite consistent with a much higher general conception of the divinity than the one that coëxisted with the belief in those terrestrial penalties. The explanation of this apparent paradox is to be
