"Do not think that I have come to destroy the Law or the Prophets."

   This is held to refer to the Old Testament, its principles and prophesies, and not merely to the five books of Moses.

"I have come not to destroy, but to fulfill them."

   This fulfillment came in the perfection of the Law, in the sense that the acorn unfolding its design, which God had implanted in it, lives on in perfection in the beautiful spreading oak, "the patriarch of trees." What we see in the oak tree existed potentially in the acorn, as what we see in the teachings of Jesus existed potentially in the Law and the Prophets, whose prophesies He fulfilled. The same thing is evidenced in the caterpillar metamorphosed into a beautiful butterfly. The passing of the caterpillar does not really mean destruction, as does the death of an ordinary worm, for, like the acorn, the caterpillar passes into a higher form of life. So with many of the teachings in the Old Testament, they live on in New Testament teachings and practices, but in a higher state.

"Amen I say to you"

   Jesus was speaking to the Pharisees, who charged Him with breaking the Sabbath by healing on that day; by permitting His disciples to pluck corn while in the cornfield, in order to satisfy their hunger, etc. The petty, unreasonable restrictions placed upon the Jews by the Pharisees were a burden to them, as are the Orthodox Jewish restrictions of today, due to trivial interpretation of God's Law to such an extent that the Ten Commandments were extended to 365 prohibitions. Then, as now, they lost sight of the fundamental teachings of the Old Testament by stressing incidentals to their breaking point.

"Till heaven and earth pass away, no one jot or tittle shall be lost of the Law 'til all things are accomplished."

This Hebraism means that the Law was to end, but only after its purpose was accomplished, when the "new covenant" that God promised had come into being, for, as St. Paul says, after quoting the prophesy of Jeremiah 31:31-34, that

". . . in saying `a new covenant' he has made obsolete the former one; and that which is obsolete and has grown old is near its end" (Heb. 8:13).

   Please note that Jesus spoke in the first person. The "I say" this, and "I say" that, shows that He spoke as one having authority such as no other prophet ever could or did assume to speak including Moses the Law-giver. Only a God-man could legitimately use this form of address in proclaiming divine Law. You know the warranted contempt with which Louis XIV of France is spoken of for the arrogant declaration, "I am the State," attributed to this enemy of the Catholic Church. He was not the State, though he did usurp its powers. But Jesus could claim universal, supernatural authority, laying down the Law, for He is the Law in its perfection. It was therefore entirely within His province to declare, "I have come to fulfill" the Law. Come from whence?  From the place where the Law originated, heaven. Come to destroy?  No, to fulfill, to bring out in its fullness the principles and prophesies actually and potentially in the Old Testament. The Law, the expressed will of God, was virtually the law of expectation; it was what was to be. Jesus, the Messiah, is the realization, the fulfillment of that expectation.
   Before citing instances of Jesus having fulfilled, and not destroyed the Law and the Prophets, I want to forestall the possibility of your coming back at me with the commonplace Jewish claim, that the teachings of Jesus were not new; that they were not fulfillment of Old Testament teachings; that they were but a repetition of teachings taught by the Rabbis of Israel. I refer, for instance, to the Golden Rule -

"Therefore all things whatever you would that men should do to you, even so do you also to them" (St. Matt. 7:12).

   The saying of Rabbi Hillel, in a controversy with Rabbi Shammai (leaders of two opposing schools of thought and controversy that flourished at the time of the coming of Jesus), is usually presented to try and prove that Jesus taught nothing new in ethics or morality. Let Dr. Maurice Simon, Editor of Zangwill's Speeches; joint translator of the Zohar and Babylonian Talmud, tell it -

"Once a heathen came Shammai and mockingly asked him to teach him the Torah while he stood on one leg. Shammai drove him away with his measuring-rod. He then went to Hillel, who said to him `WHAT IS HATEFUL TO THYSELF DO NOT TO ANOTHER.   THIS IS THE WHOLE TORAH; GO AND STUDY IT: THE REST IS COMMENTARY.' "

   It is strange that Jewish university men, intellectually keen in things that are other than Christian, should fail to see, what any unbiased beginner in the study of logic can observe, that the negative pronouncement of Hillel differs as greatly from the positive pronouncement of Jesus as the Christian religion differs from Judaism. Hillel's Rule is purely naturalistic. Self-love, self-protection, not love of fellowman, not self-sacrifice, is the basis of counselling not to do what you hate to have done to yourself. It ought to be called the Leaden Rule instead of assuming to be the Golden Rule, as it only keeps a man from blackjacking his neighbor with a lead pipe because he does not want to be blackjacked himself. The Golden Rule of Jesus is based on the principle of love, and not hate. It is spiritual in its nature, and therefore requires the aid of God, God's grace in one's heart, to obey it.
   The difference between the Golden Rule and this Leaden Rule is plainly seen when applied to the question of democracy, which is uppermost in the minds of the citizens of the "United Nations" at war to safeguard the exercise of the rights it embodies. Following the Golden Rule, the Christian demands freedom of worship, of balloting for public officials, of speaking, printing, being educated, and equality before the law, on the ground that he is a person; because he is a human entity who has unalienable rights with which God had endowed him. He wants others to be permitted to exercise those same rights, because they also are persons made in the image of God, and endowed with the same unalienable rights. Following the Leaden Rule, the Jew would demand those freedoms for the other fellow because he hates to be deprived of those freedoms himself. One might logically stretch such an irreligious principle to the point of saying, that if depriving the other fellow of the exercise of those rights were not likely to cause him also to be tyrannized, he would not bother about the other fellow's rights at all.
   There has come a frank acknowledgment in Jewry that the ethical code of Jesus is of a distinctively higher order than the "Hebrew ethical code," which is further evidence of the elevation and perfection of the Mosaic code. It refutes the assumption that Hillel's standard is the same as the standards of Jesus, and preceded it. The teachings of Jesus are so far above those heretofore taught, that Prof. Joseph Klausner, of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, who rejects the Messiahship, miracles, mysticism, and other things that prove Jesus to be the God-man, ends his 414 page "Jesus of Nazareth," with the statement,

"But in his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables. The shrewdness and sharpness of his proverbs and his forceful epigrams serve, in an exceptional degree, to make ethical ideas a popular possession. If ever the day should come that this ethical code be stripped of its wrappings of miracles and mysticism the Book of Ethics of Jesus will be one of the choicest treasures in the literature of Israel for all time."

   The more one studies the Christian contrast to the Jewish religion, the clearer is seen that one is the positive, while the other is the negative of God's Law. This fact so deeply impresses converts from the Synagogue to the Church, whose spiritual life is nourished regularly with the Bread of Life, Jesus Himself, that they can never again return to the Judaism of our day with any religious satisfaction. Those Israelites who do "back-slide" are usually from Protestantism, where baptism is generally conferred upon the mere request for it. Yet there are exceptions, such as Dr. Alfred Edersheim of Oxford University, a learned Hebrew Protestant Minister. In his informing work, "The Life And Times Of Jesus The Messiah," after telling of the sublimity of the teachings of the Sermon on the Mount, including the text which is the subject of this letter, in contrast to the teachings of Judaism, even in the use of similar terms, says -

"He who has thirsted and quenched his thirst at the living fount of Christ's Teaching, can never stop to seek drink at the broken cisterns of Rabbinism."

   Having forestalled your possible comeback, it is in order to return once more directly to the text of this letter. I have endeavored to prove that Jesus fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, being the realization of them; having elevated the Law to spiritual heights never before attained. This is seen in the Eight Beatitudes, the counterpart of the Ten Commandments, which bestow blessings upon the poor, the meek, the mournful, those who seek justice, are merciful, clean of heart, peacemakers, and the persecuted. They taught man that he is subject not merely to the Law written on tablets of stone, but also to the spirit of God that is written on the fleshly tablets of the heart.
   The fulfillment of the Law by Jesus is seen in the declaration that set the standard of marital relation back to the design of God, when man and wife were made two in one flesh. Perfection is seen in the pronouncement, that "what God hath joined together" no man has a legitimate right to "put asunder"; by declaring that the remarriage of either separated party to a marital union is adultery.
   The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the spiritual food given to man by Jesus, the Blessed Sacrament, the Bread of Eternal Life, in contrast to the manna that typified it, upon which our fathers in Israel lived in the wilderness (St. John 6:48-52).
   The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the Messiah as High Priest, promised in Genesis 14:18-20 and Psalm 109 to be "According to the order of Melchisedec," that is, without genealogy, not of the Levitical order, not local or national, but universal, catholic.
   The fulfillment of the Law is seen in the Sacrifice Jesus instituted at the last Passover gathering of the Old Law, called the Last Supper. It is the "clean oblation," which Malachi (1:11) said would supersede the bloody sacrifices of Israel. It was to be for "the Gentiles," as well as the Jews, whereas the Mosaic sacrifices were exclusively for Jews. It was to be offered on altars all over the world, instead of the oblations offered from
one altar, in the Temple in Jerusalem, which is no more.
   In the Church established by the Messiah (St. Matt. 16) is seen the fulfillment of the promised kingdom of the seed of David, that was to last "forever" (2 Kings 7:13). Thus the Kingdom of Israel lives on in the Kingdom of God, as the Church is called.
   If the fulfillment of the law is not seen in the institution of a new priesthood and Sacrifice, then how account for the end having come to the Mosaic priesthood and its sacrifices, as well as the Temple?  If that convinces you not, then there is Jesus, who, in Himself, is the Law fulfilled. He is the predicted Messiah, who was born in the time, place and manner; lived, suffered and died, as foretold in about a half a hundred texts in the Old Testament. If all the evidence presented in this letter is not sufficient to get you to realize that Christianity has displaced Judaism by its fulfillment, then there remains but one thing more the claim of Jesus on the Cross that he had fulfilled His Messianic mission, to bring the Old law to fruition, St. John says - (19:28)

"Afterwards Jesus knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, `I thirst.'"

   This thirst was not for drink, as the Roman soldiers imagined when they put a sponge soaked with gall and vinegar into his mouth. It was the eagerness, the longing in the heart of Jesus for your soul and mine, and every other soul, for His mission was to bring man to the Eternal Jerusalem. That thirst you refuse to satiate with your love, for which your Messiah yearns today, as He did nineteen hundred years ago on the Cross. The very last word that Jesus uttered, while in agony on the Cross, was - "It is consummated."  This means that Jesus had completed, had brought to perfection, had fulfilled the mission that the law and the Prophets said the Messiah would fulfill.
   If, after all that is related in this letter you are not convinced that Jesus did not destroy but fulfilled the Law, my only satisfaction is that I sincerely tried to dispel the cloud that keeps you from realizing the glorious inheritance that awaits Jews in Jesus as their Lord and their God.

Sincerely in the Messiah
D.... G........

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