Christianity is not so much the advent of a better doctrine as of a perfect character.
If Christianity were only a development, then Christ was not needed. If Christianity were only a scheme of morals, then the Divine incarnation was a thing superfluous.
The patriarchal, the Jewish, and the Christian dispensations, are evidently but the unfolding of one general plan. In the first we see the folded bud; in the second the expanded leaf; in the third the blossom and the fruit. And now, how sublime the idea of a religion thus commencing in the earliest dawn of time; holding on its way through all the revolutions of kingdoms and the vicissitudes of the race; receiving new forms, but always identical in spirit; and, finally, expanding and embracing in one great brotherhood the whole family of man! Who can doubt that such a religion was from God?
Christianity was the temple that was to be eternal, and on it, as unconscious builders, men were laboring in all the ages from the creation.
In what consists the entire of Christianity but in this,—that feeling an utter incapacity to work out our own salvation, we submit our whole selves, our hearts, and our understandings, to the Divine disposal; and that, relying upon God's gracious assistance, ensured to our honest endeavors to obtain it, through the mediation of Jesus Christ, we look up to Him, and to Him alone, for safety? Nay, what is the very notion of religion, but this humble reliance upon God?
