Judaism and Christianity.
Christ came and hewed out for the waters of the old Judaism a new and fitting channel. He led it away from the political groove where it would have been destroyed by uniting it with a spiritual kingdom. He added to it other and deeper thoughts. Instead of saying that Christ caused a revolution which put back the progress of the world, we should say that He saved the revolution which was necessary from the violence which would have brought about its ruin; that He saved it from having to be done all over again; as, to give a political illustration, has been the case with the French Revolution. What now were the characteristics of the revolution?
I. It was destructive. Christ saw that the time had come, that the whole world of Jews and heathens was so choked up with chaff that a slow process would be ruin. He seized the moment, He accepted its dangers, and He sent forth ideas which flew along like flame, consuming, destroying, but also assimilating. "The chaff He burned up with unquenchable fire."
II. But if Christianity was destructive as a revolution it was also preservative. If Christ sent forth ideas which consumed the chaff, He sent them forth also to gather the wheat into His garner. No noble feelings or true thought, either in Judaism or inheathenism, perished. They were taken up and woven into the new fabric.
III. Its third element was a civilising power. Neither Greek science nor Roman culture had power to spread beyond themselves. Rome did not try to civilise in the right way. Instead of drawing forth the native energies of conquered nations, it imposed on them from without the Roman education. It tried to turn them into Romans. The Christian teachers reversed the Roman mode of proceeding. Hence the peculiar character of any nation was not lost in Christianity, but so far as it was good developed and intensified. The people grew naturally into their distinctive place in the world.
S. A. Brooke, Christ in Modern Life,p. 47.
References: Luke 3:18-20. Homiletic Magazine,vol. xi., p. 49. Luke 3:19; Luke 3:20. Ibid.,p. 235; F. W. Robertson, Sermons,3rd series, p. 270.