with the tears of compassion shining in them, and say: 'Lo! This is
our God! We have waited for Him and He will save us.' That is a better
truth, a deeper truth than prophets and righteous men of old
possessed; and to us there has come, borne on the wings of the mighty
angel of His grace, the precious revelation of the Father-God whose
heart is love. 'The law was given by Moses,' but brighter than the
gleam of the presence between the Cherubim is the lambent light of
gentle tenderness that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. Grace,
and therefore truth, a deeper truth, came by Him.

And, still further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne
out by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a
shadow and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come.
Temple, priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic
constitution of things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road
in advance by the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but
when He came the shadow disappeared. The former was a system of types,
symbols, pictures. Here is the reality that antiquates and fulfils and
transcends them all. 'The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ.'

II. Now, secondly, look at the other contrast that is here, between
giving and coming.

I do not know that I have quite succeeded in making clear to my own
mind the precise force of this antithesis. Certainly there is a
profound meaning if one can fathom it; perhaps one might put it best
in something like the following fashion.

The word rendered 'came' might be more correctly translated 'became,'