KINGDOM AND AGE TO COME.
“And in their days, even of those kings, the
God of heaven shall set up A KINGDOM which shall never perish, and A DOMINION
that shall not be left to another people. It shall grind to powder and
bring to an end all these kingdoms, and itself shall stand for ever.”—DANIEL.
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THE RELIGION AND MORALS OF THE NINETEENTH
CENTURY.
We
reproduce the following well written and truthful sentiments, from an article
which appeared in No. 8, Volume 17, of the “Southern Literary Messenger,”
intitled “The Nineteenth Century.” The writer seems well convinced of the fact,
in regard to popular religion and morals, that “all is not gold that glitters.”
He sees many dark spots on the disc of “the glorious Nineteenth Century.” He
has not been struck by the sun of “gospel light now shining;” therefore he
retains his senses, and can see things very much as they are—a mere travesty of
the truth. We do not remember that we wish to alter a sentence; but would
earnestly commend it to the attentive perusal of the reader, that seeing “the
corruption that is in the world through lust,” he may repent and turn to
God, and obtain forgiveness, and eternal life and glory in his kingdom, which
is destined to rule over all. The following is the extract:
“Estimated by their immediate and
material results, the arts and sciences were probably never in a more
flourishing or brilliant condition than they are at present. They subserve all
the purposes of Aladdin’s lamp and have proved the magic instruments of the
wonderful development of our material resources. The augmentation of wealth by
their aid, and its rapid diffusion through all the viaducts of national
production, have been such as might have amazed even the wildest credulity. We
may well speak in terms of high laudation of the present intellectual condition
of the world, and deem that a boundless heritage of good is before us, if we
are content to judge of intellectual achievements by the beggarly and false
canon of a monetary scale, and to estimate science with the spirit of Mammon.
If a man was designed to be a mere money-making machine, then great is Diana of
the Ephesians, and greatest of all her worshippers is Demetrius, the
silversmith. But if human destiny points to other aims, the Nineteenth Century
must be judged by other standards. All may be gilding and glitter without, but
when we look more closely, and with less sordid vision, at the condition of the
world, what is the fruit of the aggregate operation of all our arts and
sciences, and systems, and intellectual schemes? What is the harvest which we have
reaped from our alleged intellectual greatness in Religion and in Morals, in
Politics, in Society, and in Private Life?
“Growing
discords and dissensions in Religion: —the abandonment of old doctrines and the
substitution of new ones in accordance with the dictates of a vague,
unreasoning fantasy: —a fretful restlessness and a feverish lust of change:
understanding subordinated to inconsiderate zeal, and the meek performance of
duty exchanged for an ignorant and verbose faith—a general indifference to
every thing but the lifeless shell of the various creeds—the soulless formulae
which do not so much serve to embody truth, as they suffice for a mystic
incantation, by which to recognise the initiated: * —the severance of religious prescription
from any controlling influence over our ordinary avocations: —the impotence of
such Christianity as is current in the world to check the lust of gold, or to
direct to ends sincerely, not ostentatiously, charitable the employment of our
means; —its utter isolation from all practical authority over our relations to
our neighbours in life; —and its almost meaningless restriction to ascetic,
splenetic, individual, dreams and fancies. We greedily grasp at the rewards
which religion offers in the promise of heaven, and we enter into the service
of God with the same spirit with which we seek the mines of
*
“Formularia,” says Leibnitz, “sunt quaedam umbrae veritatis, ac plus minusve ad
puram mentis lucem accedunt. * * Sed pluris contingent ut devotio ritibus
suffocetur, lumenque divinum humanis obscuretur opinionibus.” Praef. Theod.
Leibnitzii Opera. Ed. Dutcris. Tom.
“When
the ordinary apprehensions of men, religious in their professions and
self-estimation, attach so little real importance to religion, it is not to be
wondered at that the spirit off the age should be marked by wide-spreading
infidelity; nor that the arrogance of Science and Philosophy should endeavour
to reconcile the popular practice with the conclusions of reason, by explaining
away the divine nature and supernatural significance of Christianity, as has
been done by Strauss and the German Rationalists; or by overwhelming, after the
fashion of Hippo and Epicurus, all divine agency under the play of phenomena,
and the functions of secondary laws, as has been attempted by Comte. The human
mind yearns for obedience to the supremacy of a law: the heart of man pines for
submission to the authority of a God: —these are necessities of our nature:
—and the law will be recognised and the God adored, although, through our blindness,
we fancy the dream of a fevered imagination to be the one, and discover the
other in the calf made with our own hands. But, when the aspect of religion in
the world is such as has been represented; —oscillating as it is through all
the shades and degrees of infidelity, indifferentism, mysticism, ignorant zeal,
adhesive credulity, and ascetic formalism; —assuredly it is as bad as the blind
boasting off their sight, when we lend our voices to swell the noisy chorus of
those who laud and magnify the intellectual glories of the present time.
“Does
the world fare better in point of Morals than it does in respect of Religion?
Is the age of implicitly believed Illuminism entitled to all its own praises on
the score of its sublimated morality? When our Religion is so impotent and
inoperative in regulating and determining the procedure of our daily actions,
it could hardly be anticipated that men would yield a permanent obedience to
the feebler dictates of the unsanctified conscience. It is true that the distinction
has been widely drawn even by Christian philosophers between Religion and Moral
Prudence, and between religious practice and moral propriety of conduct. It is
a distinction which we are reluctant to admit; for we think that, if permitted
to be drawn, it concedes the argument to all the infidel casuists, and that it
has tended more than any thing else to ostracise Religion from the ordinary
avocations of life. It is reverting in principle, if not in terms, to the
difference conceived by Sulpicius and Varro between the religion appropriate to
the philosophers and that which is requisite for the vulgar. Moreover, even in
the hands of those who have established the distinction, it has left morals a
purely negative virtue, comprising little more than abstinence from those open
vices and flagrant crimes which are punished by the secular laws. But,
conceding the distinction, what is the moral condition of this enlightened and
purified generation? We may be referred to Penitentiary Reports and Statistical
returns, which furnish only the anatomy of crime, inasmuch as it may be a
violation of the municipal law: —yet even they bear but feeble testimony to the
supposed excellence of the age. But when we look more carefully into the
phenomena of the civilised world around us, do we find that any obligation is
habitually regarded as sacred in private practice; or is any duty habitually
enforced by the strong coercion of public sentiment, or the stronger influence
of the conscientious observance of the right? There is none. The ideas of
obligation and duty have given place to considerations of gain and expediency:
immutable right and unchangeable wrong are measured and tested by the surplus
or deficit of their aggregate money returns. Our lives are guided over the vast
ocean of existence, without compass and without rudder, at the mercy of the
shifting gales of interest, passion and caprice: impulse has usurped the
functions of principle, and calculation is substituted for conscience. Rare
indeed are those who are actually governed by the noble maxim: Fais ce que
dois, advienne que pourra. (Mde. De Stael. De l’Allemagne. Ptie. iii., chap.
xiii.) Not merely our systems of Moral Science, but still more our ordinary
practices, are desecrated by beggarly notions of Benthamite expediency. Both
are controlled by the wretched fallacy of the greatest happiness-principle,
which transferred from the Benthamee Cabala into what Touchstone calls “the
vulgar,” means not the truest happiness of the greatest number, but the
immediate gratification of the most important number—Number One. Thus all
action is introverted, and turned from the contemplation of duty and of God to
the isolating, debasing, corrupting consideration of self. The bounds of
society are thus rotted and broken asunder; communities are no longer held
together by the latent, because deep-seated ties of dutiful correlation among
its members: they exist by the mere force of outward pressure, by temporary
interest, or by the pure apathy to every thing but money, which prevents their
internal disorganisation from producing actual severance. Of those great
principles of duty, which are the foundations of all domestic, individual and
public morals—family rights and obligations—which one has not been publicly
scorned and is not habitually disregarded? The reverential obedience of
children to parents is a dim recollection of a less enlightened age: —the
sanctity of the marriage tie is obliterated in the advocacy of the freedom of
divorce, and the assertion of the chimerical rights of women. Respect for age,
and veneration for the dead, promise no returns for our outlays, and are
therefore cashiered as sentiments unworthy of our intellectual advancement.
These cankers of our domestic tranquillity have eaten their way into the very heart
of society, which is thus left without the regulating influence of the vital
principle within: —without the moral restraint of unquestioned obligations:
—and is wholly given up to the fluctuating and factitious guidance of transient
expediencies. How the hollowness and corruption of the age are illustrated by
the demoralisation off the vicious eras which have preceded it! The pages of
Aristophanes and Thucydides, off Machiavelli and Guicciardini, portray the
rottenness of our present social system as clearly and not less truthfully than
the philosophic expositions of Comte, or the wild declamations of Carlyle.
“When
private morals are so loose and unstable, whence should we expect any
fertilising dews to descend upon public virtues? All our political organization
is effete and corrupt: Cabinets held together by the private interests or the
peculation of their members: —governments sustaining themselves by plunder and
systematised bribery: —parties united by the greed of appropriating the spoils
of office, and warring with each other for their possession: —catchwords
usurping the place of principles of statesmanlike policy—public men staking the
interests off their country, often even of humanity, with their consciences and
votes, on the hazard of a die, which is more important as settling their own
temporal prospects, or as deciding the loss or gain of a bet, than as
determining the procedure of great nations, or as affecting the welfare or
misery of a large portion of mankind. Such are the phenomena of politics here
and in
* * *
DIFFICULTIES PRESENTED.
Dear Sir:
I
have read the book you have published by the title of Elpis Israel, and am much
pleased with it, especially that portion treating of the promises made to the
fathers, the Kingdom, &c. But I find in reading the New Testament, some
portions of scripture that do not appear to agree with your exposition. In
Matthew 16 it is written, “that there be some standing here which shall not
taste of death till they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” Matthew
24: 30, it is written, “they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds
of Heaven, with power and great glory.” Matthew 13: 26, testifies to the
same thing. See Luke 9: 27. It is true that the power of God was in the Roman
army at the destruction of Jerusalem; but in what sense did Christ come in his
kingdom then; and if this be his second coming, where is the promise of the
third? In relation to the dead sleeping in the dust of the earth till the
resurrection, it is written in John 3: 13, that “no man hath ascended up to
heaven, but he that came down from heaven,” &c; but then I find it
recorded in 2 Kings 2: 11, that Elijah was taken up into heaven by a whirlwind.
There is the case of Enoch also; and of Moses and Elijah on the mount, at the
transfiguration. I should like very much to hear your views on the above named
passages. By so doing you will confer a great favour on one that wishes to know
the truth as it is in Jesus Christ.
Very
respectfully,
Your friend and well wisher,
J. T. NORMENT.
Henderson, Kentucky, April 14, 1852.
* * *
DIFFICULTIES CONSIDERED.
CHRIST COMING IN HIS KINGDOM—RETURN OF JEHOVAH’S
GLORY TO JERUSALEM—CHRIST’S PERSONAL APPEARANCE AT HIS COMING—THREE COMINGS,
BUT ONLY TWO APPEARINGS—ELIJAH NOT WITH JESUS—CHRIST NOT YET AN ENTHRONED
CONQUEROR.
Dear Sir:
In
the preceding communication you propose the inquiry—In what sense did Christ
come in his kingdom, (at the destruction of Jerusalem,) and if this be
his Second Coming, where is the promise of the third? —in reply to which I
would say that if you have understood me to teach that Christ, that is, the
Anointed One, came as king in his kingdom, in the sense off that kingdom being
set up, at that epoch, you have mistaken my words. You will see by Matthew 10:
23, that the Son of Man was to come in some certain sense before the apostles
had preached “the Gospel of the Kingdom” in all the cities of Israel’s
land. The sense in which he did come in those days is indicated in Matthew 22:
7. —He came in sending forth his
armies of Romans, and by them destroying his murderers, and burning up their
city Jerusalem. This was coming according to the legal maxim, which is a
scriptural one also, that what is done by one’s agent is done by one’s self.
That Gentile and Pagan armies may be God’s armies is testified in Joel, where
the Chaldeans who destroyed Zion are styled “his army”—Joel 2: 11; and
in Isaiah, where the Medes under Cyrus are termed Jehovah’s sanctified
and mighty ones for his anger—Isaiah 13: 17, 19, 3.
If
you turn to the Herald of the Kingdom, Vol. 1 No. 10, page 217, you will find
how variously the word “kingdom” is used in the common version of the
Bible. When the Son of Man sent his armies to destroy Jerusalem he came to his
kingdom, in the sense in which Louis Phillippe (to compare great things with
small) would have gone to his kingdom had he sent an army into France to
overthrow the Republic there. If the Son of Man were present at the siege of
the city he was not visible to the combatants. Visible or invisible, it matters
not which, so that he was there, he had both come to his kingdom, and
was in his kingdom, in the sense of being in the royal territory
or land of Israel, which is a basilial, and not a ducal, or republican,
domain—a territory, where kings have, and “a King will reign and prosper,
and execute judgment and justice”—Jeremiah 23: 5; 33: 15.
But
the passages you have quoted do not refer to the coming of the Son of Man to
destroy his murderers and their city. They refer to his coming in power and
great glory as King de facto as well as de jure—in manifestation
as well as of right; an appearing which Jesus says shall occur when he shall reward
every man according to his works—Matthew 16: 27; and which no one, I
suppose, will pretend to say happened at the destruction of the city. This
context of the scripture, cited by you, likewise indicates the coming of the
Son of Man in his kingdom at the time of his appearing in the glory of his
Father with his angels; “and then,” saith the word, “he shall reward
every man;” for “Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his
arm shall rule for him: behold his reward is with him, and his work
before him”—Isaiah 40: 10; 62: 11; Revelation 22: 12.
By
taking the twenty-seventh verse of Matthew sixteenth, with the twenty-eighth,
you will perceive that the coming of the Son of Man in his appearing in his
Father’s glory, as well as in his own glory, and that of the holy angels—Luke
9: 26, —even that glory which is to be given to him when he is brought before
the Ancient of Days to receive the “dominion, glory, and kingdom,”
as revealed in Daniel, “that all people, nations, and languages should serve
him”—Daniel 7: 13-14, 27. So obvious is this that in some original
manuscript copies of Matthew the phrase en tee basileia hautou, rendered
in the common version in his kingdom, is represented by en tee doxee
hauton “in his glory.” Both phrases convey the same data to
him who reads the New Testament in harmony with the Old; because, for the Son
of Man to come in his kingdom with the angels, is for him to appear in the
glory which he receives of his Father; and to appear in his glory, or majesty,
is to come in his kingdom—this coming and appearing are concomitant and
inseparable events. They are the manifestation of what Ezekiel saw in vision
when standing, as it were, at the gate of that temple hereafter to be erected
in Jerusalem by “the man whose name is The Branch”—Zechariah 6; 12-13;
even by that man whom he describes as of a bright and glowing, amber-like
appearance, sitting upon a sapphire throne—Ezekiel 2: 26-28; 40: 3. From this
similitude of Jesus in his glory a voice proceeded, revealing to him the things
off the invisible future pertaining to the kingdom. In vision he was brought to
“the gate that looketh toward the east,” that is, towards the mount of
Olives; “And, behold,” says he, “the glory of the God of
Israel came from the way off the east: and His voice was like a noise of
many waters—Revelation 1: 13-15: and the earth shined with his glory”—Revelation
18: 1; Ezekiel 43: 2. This Glory-Bearer of Jehovah in Israel having in vision
entered the Millennial Temple, thus addressed Ezekiel from within concerning
the place in which he was speaking—“The place of my throne,
and the place of the soles of my feet, where I will dwell in the midst off
the children of Israel for ever, and my holy Name shall the children of
Israel no more defile, neither they nor their kings * * *. Now let them
put away their whoredom, and the carcasses of their kings far from me, and I
will dwell in the midst of them for ever”—Ezekiel 43: 7-9. By
consulting the scriptures referred to it will be clearly seen, that Ezekiel,
Daniel, Zechariah and John, all write of one and the same personage, that is,
Christ, and therefore of Jesus whom we believe to be the Messiah of Israel.
Jehovah reveals to us through them that Christ is his terrestrial gory-bearer,
even the chief of the Cherubim of glory, through whom he will shine forth in
the Age to Come. That he will come from the way of the east, and alight upon
mount Olivet, where Jehovah’s glory stood when about to ascend from Israel’s
land in the reign of Zedekiah—Ezekiel 11: 23—to return no more until it shall
be borne by Christ (who also ascended from the same spot) when he shall appear
in power. He reveals also that when Christ shall shine forth from the east as
the Sun of the New Heavens, he shall rise upon Jerusalem and them that love her
“with healing in his beams;” and upon his sapphire-throne therein
established reign in the midst of Israel as king off the whole earth for ever.
This is the New Testament appearing of the Son of Man in his glory and kingdom,
unto which we are invited as joint-inheritors with him in the gospel of the
great salvation—1 Thessalonians 2: 12.
But
do you inquire, How will he appear to human eyes when he is thus manifested in
the glorious majesty of his kingdom? Read the narrative of the transfiguration,
and your inquiry will find the best answer that can be given. Here were three
witnesses who tasted not of death till they saw “his majesty,” or
the glory with which he will be invested when he sits as King of Israel on the
throne of his father David’s kingdom, which is also “his kingdom,”
and “the kingdom of God.” These eyewitnesses in mortal flesh saw him ass
he will appear “at his appearing and at his kingdom”—kata
with accusatives at in the sense of in. His personal appearance
will be earth-illuminating wherever he goes, and shining as the sun—the Spirit
of the Father as from electro-magnetic poles glowing through an incorruptible
body. He will “shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars,
for ever and ever.” Hence he is styled “the Bright and Morning Star”—Revelation
22: 16, having “a countenance as the sun shining in his strength”—Revelation
1: 16—the Day-Star of the morning that dawns—2 Peter 1: 19—at
eventide—Zechariah 14: 6-7. Moses’ face shone with glory—the Spirit glowing
through mortality as the changed exterior of Jesus; how much more enduringly
brilliant the Spirit’s glow through incorruption! “The moon shall” then
indeed “be confounded, and the sun ashamed, when (Jesus) the Lord of
hosts—Revelation 19: 11—shall reign on mount Zion; and in Jerusalem, and
before his ancients gloriously”—Isaiah 24: 23.
Now
this transfiguration scene is styled by one of the eyewitnesses “the coming
of the Lord Jesus Christ,” “his majesty,” “the receiving from God the Father honour
and glory”—2 Peter 1: 16-18. Peter had made known to the elect
sojourners off the dispersion “the power” of Jesus, and reminds them in this
place that he had made known to them also “the coming” as illustrated in the
representation on the mount. He says, that what he told them was “no
cunningly devised fable,” but a reality which will assuredly come to pass.
He saw it, and John and James also saw it; yet he saith, “We have a more
sure word of prophecy to which ye do well to take heed, as unto a light
that shineth in a dark place.” In this saying Peter magnified the testimony
of the prophets above his own. Consult the prophets, and remember their words;
they will remove a multitude of difficulties imagined by those who consult only
the brief narratives and epistles of six of the apostles and two of their
companions; and among these obscurities that off the coming of the kingdom, and
Jesus in it, in the last days of Israel’s commonwealth under the Mosaic law.
The
phrase “second coming” is not scriptural. “Christ will appear a
second time,” says Paul, “to them that look for him * * * unto
salvation.” There are three comings, but only two appearings.
John the Baptiser preached Christ’s coming—Acts 13: 24, which was the first;
Jesus declared of himself that he would come before the apostles should have
preached in all the cities of Israel, which coming was the second; and
lastly, the apostles preached his coming to subdue all things to himself, to
raise the dead, and to reign over the nations, which is the third.
Christ’s first coming was an appearing in humiliation; the third coming will be
a second appearing, not however in humility and suffering, but in exaltation
with power and great glory. At the second coming there was no appearing at all.
In
regard to your difficulty concerning Elijah, I would remark, in view of the
words of Jesus you refer to, that Elijah, though in heaven, is not in the heaven
indicated by him. Jesus really said, “No one hath ascended into the
heaven, except he from the heaven having descended, the Son of Man he being in
the heaven.” When he spoke these words he had not ascended—John 20: 17; but
when John wrote them he was in the heaven where he hath remained ever since. “Being
in the heaven” he will yet descend from it at his second appearing; and
being descended he will then be the only one on earth who hath ascended
to the heaven, and descended from it. But you will perhaps inquire, where is
this particular heaven? I reply, where the Father is en tois ouranois tois
hypseelois in the highest heavens—the region of light “which no man can
approach unto”—1 Timothy 6: 16. It is there the Uncreated Majesty of the
Universe resides sitting upon his throne. Neither Enoch, Moses, Elijah, nor any
other terrestrial, hath gone there. Jesus, of all terrestrials, is nearest to
that throne, but not upon it. He is “at the right hand” of the Paternal
Majesty—Hebrews 1: 3; 8: 1; 12: 2. There may be others at that right hand from
other systems of the Universe; but there is none other than Jesus there from
ours. Even he is at the Eternal Father’s right hand in the highest heavens for
a time only; that is, until the time comes to re-establish Jehovah’s
terrestrial throne in Zion, when he will be seen by mortal eyes at the right
hand of power in our terrene abode—Matthew 26: 64. “I sit down (ekathisa)
with my Father on his throne,” saith the Lord Jesus. When? We ask the
question, because ekathisa is in the indefinite tense. It is not now
certainly, because it is testified that he is at present “at the right hand
of the throne of God,” and therefore not upon it. When does he sit down
upon the Father’s throne? When Jehovah’s throne, upon which David and Solomon
sat, shall be restored. This restoration will be the result of Christ’s foes
being subjected to him by omnipotence; therefore saith the Father, “Sit thou
at my right hand until I make thy foes thy footstool. I will send the
sceptre of thy power out of Zion: rule thou in the midst of thine
enemies”—Psalm 110: 1-2. Jesus doth not grant to sit down in his throne
hereafter, because he hath overcome and is now set down on the
throne of the Universe; but because he overcomes and sits down upon Jehovah’s
throne, restored in Zion at his appearing in his kingdom. Enikeesa and ekathisa
in the twenty-first verse off the third of Revelation are both aorists,
leaving the time of the conquest and enthronement unfixed; the nineteenth
chapter, however, shows that they will both be subsequently to the overthrow of
the kings of the earth and their armies, which is contemporary with the utter
destruction of the Beast and False Prophet. It can no more be said of Jesus
that he has overcome or conquered, than it can that he is enthroned, while “the
powers that be” exist and do according to their will, and tread his land, city
and people, under foot. When he shall have overcome, and shall have been
enthroned in David’s kingdom, he will then be able to reward his joint-heirs by
giving them “power over the nations,” and a share with him in his
throne. But not before.
I
know not in what part of the heavens Enoch, Moses, and Elijah are. All the
information given us upon the subject is that they are in heaven; that is, not
on the earth. It is certain that they are not “at the right hand of God.”
That is the place of honour for Jesus only; he alone being “the Man of
Jehovah’s right hand, whom he hath made strong for himself”—Psalm 80: 17;
that he may “strike through kings in the day of his wrath”—Psalm 110: 5.
Thither hath no man ascended save the Son of Man. He has been there many centuries,
but the time of his departure from that far country is near at hand, when he
will come suddenly and stealthily, and spoil Satan of all his ill-gotten goods,
chattels, and effects.
May
we not only “watch,” but all put on the wedding garment, and keep it
unspotted from the world, that when he appears we may not walk naked, and be
put to shame.
In
earnest hope of Israel’s consolation,
I remain,
Yours faithfully,
THE EDITOR.
April, 28th, 1852.
* * *
INFANT-RHANTISM INSTEAD OF CIRCUMCISION UNTENABLE.
Dear
Brother:
The
Paedo-baptists in their controversies with us believe that they have in the
substitute relation of Christian baptism to circumcision, a stronghold of
defence for the practice of infant sprinkling: deducing from this proposition the
conclusion that, as infants were of old the divinely appointed recipients of
the primal token of the first ordained “Covenant of Promise,” the new
one conveyed in baptism, which has superseded it, may, by a parity of
reasoning, be legitimately communicated to them now. Their inference would be
plausible, perhaps, if sprinkling were baptism, which it is not; and the
immersion of an infant the “one baptism” of the Messiah’s institution,
which it is not either. But if the propriety of calling the name of the Lord in
immersion of an infant were a correct deduction, it is obvious, that the doing
so in sprinkling might not be such at all. To those, however, who view the
subject in the light irradiated by the doctrine of Christ, the fallacy of their
conclusion in itself, as well as their erroneous application of it, is fully
apparent; and their stronghold is seen to be a very insecure entrenchment.
Permit me to exhibit this in a few remarks on the Covenant tokens of
circumcision, and the name of the Lord.
As
I have intimated I believe their premises to be true and scriptural, and
therefore reconcilable and consistent with the scripture truth, that an
enlightened, faithful, adult is the only fit recipient of the three-fold name
of God.
Of
the import of circumcision there can be no dispute. Concerning it God said to
Abraham, “It shall be a token of the covenant betwixt me and you;”
and Paul declares, “Abraham received the sign of circumcision, a seal
of the righteousness of his faith.” It was at once a seal and a token;
a seal in submitting to whose impress he received a ratification of the “exceeding
great and precious promises,” which God had given to him; and a token, a
memorial of them, and witness to him of their certain fulfilment hereafter. To
his descendants also in the line of Isaac and Jacob, circumcision was an individual
ratification of the covenant made with their federal head; certifying to each
of them their joint participation with him, so long as they walked in the
footsteps of his faith. And found without it, they had no part with Abraham;
for Jehovah had said of the uncircumcised “That soul shall be cut off from
his people.” Thus circumcision, as an indispensable seal of conveyance,
invested each obedient Israelite with a title to inherit the blessings of the
covenant when the time should come for its promises to be present realities;
these being an everlasting and coetaneous occupancy with the Christ whom
Abraham “saw afar off,” of the land of Canaan; and of the incalculable
increase of Israel, with their future dominion over, and ministry of blessing
to, the nations. I am aware that it is urged against this view of the
significancy of circumcision, that that institution was connected with the law
rather than the gospel; in proof of which, Paul declares its recipients under
an obligation to keep the law; resulting simply and solely from their being
circumcised. It is true that he does this, but circumcision is nevertheless, as
to its design, “not of Moses, but of the fathers.” It was instituted antecedently
to the law, though it bore afterwards an important relation to it. This arose
from its character as a mark distinguishing Israel from the gentile world
around. It exhibited their separation from the nations, as a people consecrated
to their God and King; to whom beneath Sinai’s mount, they had vowed fealty and
subjection. By affixing on each one a badge of his relationship to Abraham and
Abraham’s God, is asserted Jehovah’s right to his loyal obedience; showed him a
subject of Israel’s Divine Monarch; and therefore “a debtor to do the
whole law” promulgated by his sovereign. But this was not the primary
import of the “token;” its bearing on the law was accidental and irrespective
of its design. We see this illustrated in the fact, that its observance
was discontinued, and even in apostolic teaching, prohibited; whilst the
disciples remained subject to the Mosaic code in many things. Though they did
not look for justification from it, they were nevertheless obedient to its
civil requisitions; and did not scruple on some occasions, to conform to its
religious ceremonial, as in the case of Paul, who, to convince the Jews that he
walked orderly and kept the law, fulfilled with four others the vow of a
Nazarite; to complete which, he must offer by the priest two lambs and a ram
for a burnt offering, sin offering, and peace offering.
But
to return. This covenant still remains the charter of the rich recompense of
our reward. Its seal of circumcision is set aside; it has no longer
significancy. But the covenant, being in force, must have, judging by the
analogy of the past, now, as formerly, some initiative and memorialising
“token.” That the name of Jesus communicated in baptism, the only institution
of our Lord’s, except the commemorative supper, is the substitute of
circumcision, may fairly be inferred from its supplying its place as an
inductive and indispensable ordinance, bringing its subjects into a new
position towards God and towards his people, essential to the realisation of
covenant blessings in the future. “The uncircumcised shall be cut
off from his people;” and the parallel is, “except a man be born
of water and of the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.”
“Baptism doth now save us.” Admitting its substitute relation to
circumcision, the substitution itself—the change of the ordinance may be
accounted for as resulting from events which transpired in relation to the
Christ, viz: his manifestation, death, burial, and resurrection; or rather from
Jewish incredulity of his Messiah-character of whom they were witnessed. —These
facts formed as it were a codicil to Jehovah’s will, bringing in the death of
his representative testator, and affirming that Jesus of Nazareth was he. These
supplementary articles being of equal force and verity with the testament
itself, their rejection necessarily invalidated faith, which had respect only
to the covenant as dissevered from them; for it is not a part of the truth, but
the whole—the things of the kingdom and the name—which constitutes the
one essential faith. Had Israel as a nation received these truths, it does not
appear that an alteration of the covenant token would have been requisite; for
though it might have been expedient for Gentile introduction into the church,
yet we cannot say that these would ever have been “grafted in,” but for
Israel’s unbelief. Had they nationally acknowledged Jesus of Nazareth for their
king, the new ordinance might have been superfluous. But as they rejected the
superadded codicil there was hence a necessity for an institution, in which the
minority who received it might express their faith therein; might be
identified, and distinguished from the rest. —This was supplied in the command,
“Go and teach all nations, baptising them into the name of the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.” The ambassadors of Israel’s King
went forth accordingly; and, as we read, “baptised into the name of the Lord
Jesus.” Thenceforth circumcision became a rite of the past, and was put away as
a thing effete; for it was a “token” only to those who believed promises,
independently of the then present commencement of their fulfilment. To the mark
in the flesh was substituted the name of Jesus, called upon the believer in Him
in an immersion of divine ordinance. This is christian baptism—a taking of
the name of Jesus indicative of a recognition of his Messiah character in
the bath of “pure water” of his appointment. In view of this, how significant
is this name? How pregnant with meaning our invocation of it! The name—it is
for us the badge of saintly citizenship as circumcision was of old; the title
to every faithful one who bears it to an everlasting possession of Palestine in
resurrection glory. And one reception of it—it is our witness to Jesus that he
is very Christ; our testimony before God, and angels and men, that he is
Jehovah’s Son, and Israel’s Prophet, Priest and King.
Now
it will be evident that a recognition of the Messiahship of Jesus having become
indispensable to participation in “the blessing of Abraham” an
individual interest in this could no longer be ratified to an infant of days,
because it must of necessity be incapable of acknowledging the Son of Mary. It
is therefore that we see the voluntary subjection of an intelligent adult
required to the new token instead of the passive reception of infancy. Baptism
is predicated on a confession of Jesus as the Christ, and this no babe is
capable of; therefore to baptise, to say nothing of to rhantise, an infant,
either Jewish or Gentile, is a palpable absurdity.
But
apart from this consideration, the Gentile is ineligible to receive the token
of a covenant made with Israel only. Abrahamic sonship is the divinely
appointed qualification for admittance to heirship with Abraham. Jehovah said
to him “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed.”
Every Israelite being of his seed by natural birth, was, in virtue of this,
entitled to receive the token until it, and, by necessary consequence, its
subjects were changed. But the Gentile
was excluded by the very terms of the covenant. The Paedo rhantists lose sight
of this. Because the infants of Israel were eligible to the primal token they
suppose the offspring of Gentiles are so now in relation to its substitute,
which is certainly a not very logical deduction. They do not consider that the
Gentile is born an alien from Israel’s commonwealth, and
consequently cannot enjoy the citizen’s privileges. He can stand naturally in
no relation to it save that of a stranger. His name is not found in the
provisions of the will, hence to confer on him the token of inheritance is an
empty and deluding mockery. It is true that God has provided for this natural
disqualification in “the mystery of the gospel,” making the Gentiles
conditionally fellow-heirs with his people by adoption. But it is only
conditionally; on a principal of faith and obedience that they can be graffed
into Israel’s olive. “They which be of faith are blessed with faithful
Abraham.” “Ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus; for as many
of you (who believe) as have been baptised into Christ have put on
Christ.” And the principle of his adoption operates towards the Gentile
precisely as the substitution of the name for circumcision did in regard to the
Jew. It makes him, whilst an infant, ineligible to it; it disqualifies him for
partaking of it then. —Faith is essential; but an infant cannot believe;
therefore it cannot be constituted a son of Abraham. The sonship of the Jew is
natural; that of the Gentile is by adoption, spiritual only, and contingent on
character. Since the day of Peter’s vision on the tanner’s roof, God has
admitted all who possess a believing apprehension of “the things of the
kingdom of God, and of the name of Jesus Christ,” on their baptism to the
degree of faithful Israelites; but never in apostolic records do we read of the
introduction of a characterless babe into saintly fellowship. To profess to
engraft such into Christ’s Body by any immersion, pouring, or sprinkling; by
any formula scriptural or unscriptural, accompanied with prayers, is simply to
exhibit the wilfulness of the flesh, in an attempted usurpation of the office
of him who alone can change the “child of wrath into a child of grace.” This is
God’s work. “No man can come unto me except the Father who hath sent me,
draw him.” He does this through providential actings suited to
individual circumstances, by his Word as the instrument of
transformation, producing voluntary obedience as the consummation. He graciously makes us co-workers with
himself, but then it is our part to follow his guiding, not to lead him. To
attempt to direct or anticipate the actings of the Lord our God, in his union
of members to his Body, is a mere fleshly assumption, and utter presumption.
His name may be called on the passive, unconscious being, and it may be said to
be “born again,” but it is a birth of the will of the flesh, of the will
of man; not of God.
In
conclusion, I would remark that a Gentile, in whom the word of truth has
developed the family likeness of the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty
is, prior to taking hold of God’s covenant by the name of Jesus, in the
position of the Israelitish babe, before the eighth day. —Baptism into Christ
is to him what circumcision was to it—the boundary-line that must be passed, if
he would inherit with Abraham the kingdom of God. Let him cross it, and he
needs then but to endure faithful to the end, and all is well, eternally well
with him, who has come to trust under the sheltering wings of the God of
Israel. But we must take his name if we would be one with Jesus our Lord. “I
have espoused you as a chaste virgin to Christ,” says Paul. This is the
ceremony of the Bride’s espousals; it is the grafting of the branch into the
vine; it is the cementing of the stone to the temple whose foundation is Christ
Jesus. Of old in God’s “holy and beautiful house” he put his name, and now he
records it on every stone of his spiritual temple. Yea, verily, “the name of
the Lord is a strong tower; the righteous runneth into it and is safe.”
PRISCILLA DERBE.
* * *
OUR VISIT TO BRITAIN.
INVITED TO EDINBURGH—RETURN FROM ISLAY TO
PAISLEY—VISIT KERR’S SHAWL-FACTORY—ARRIVE IN EDINBURGH—TWO PARTIES OF
“REFORMERS” THERE—INVITED TO VISIT BOTH—ATTEND A SOIREE—INTRODUCED TO THE
COMPANY—MADE A ROCK OF OFFENCE TO BIGOTRY—SATAN FLOORED—“MODERN ATHENS AND ITS
“SOCIETY”—A QUIET TEA PARTY SUDDENLY TRANSFORMED INTO A SEMI-PUBLIC
CONVERSAZIONI—INVITED TO PRESENT AN OUTLINE OF VIEWS—PROPHECY PRONOUNCED
UNINTELLIGIBLE BY A DIVINE—PROPHECY DEFENDED—ABSQUATULATION OF THE DIVINE INTO
OUTER DARKNESS—STULTIFICATION—CROSS-FIRING—FORLORN-HOPE.
The
Glasgow Convocation brought together delegates from various parts of Scotland
as well as from England. Among these were friends from Edinburgh, now settled
in Wisconsin. They witnessed the violent and unprincipled proceedings of the
Wallis faction in the scene of confusion with disapprobation and disgust. These
delegates were not sympathisers with us. They had heard of us, indeed, through
the British and American Millennial Harbingers; but to hear of us in these
periodicals was to hear of us only that which was evil. The “infidel”
“factious,” and “wicked madman,” they saw for the first time defending the
Lincoln church from expulsion and excommunication, because it had requested him
to represent it in a convention assembled to consider how the gospel might be
best disseminated throughout Britain. Their faith was Campbellistic; his was
altogether the reverse. It cannot be said, therefore, that there was any
factious sympathy between us. They came to the Convention on the side of the
enemy, but departed from it, if not as friends, at least more favourably
disposed than before.
When
they arrived in Edinburgh, they reported to their brethren what they had seen
and heard. The rumours which had reached them concerning us had made an
unfavourable impression; still they felt a curiosity to hear what we had to
say, for they had heard that great interest had been created in Glasgow in our
discourses there. It was determined, therefore, to invite us to visit Edinburgh
at our earliest convenience. We received the invitation before we left Glasgow
for Islay, and were assured of a respectful, if not a cordial, reception in
Auld Reekie. We accepted, of course, being thankful under any circumstances that
a door of utterance to speak the gospel of the kingdom was opened in so
important a city as the Athens of Caledonia.
In
returning from the Hebrides, then, to London, our tour was to take in the city
of Edinburgh. We had intended, when we arrived at East Tarbert, to proceed to
Glasgow by way of Inverary and Loch Goilhead; but the delay occasioned in
getting the cattle on board at Port Askaig, made us too late for the steamer,
which had passed on to Inverary before we arrived. This was disagreeable, as it
detained us in Tarbert till next morning, and compelled us to return the way we
came. But there was no help for it; so it became us, as we endeavour to do in
all cases of disappointment, to mingle contentment with a patient waiting for
deliverance. Morning came, and with it the steamer, which, having taken in a
cargo of Highland cattle, pigs, fish, &c., left the pier at 10 A.M., for
Glasgow. Our destination was Paisley where we were to speak the next day; and
as we wished to vary the route, we concluded to leave the steamer at Greenock,
and take the rail thence to Paisley, where we arrived at 4. 30 P.M. we spoke
twice at this place the next day, which was Lord’s day, October 23, 1848. About
this time twelve persons were immersed by authority into the church; but upon
what premises in each case we are not prepared to say.
Before
leaving this town we visited a shawl factory, said to be the largest in Europe,
owned by Mr. Robert Kerr. The dying, weaving, shearing, washing, drying, and
mangling of shawls and vest patterns, were all processes carried on in the
establishment by hand and machinery on a large scale. The dying department, in
which a hundred men can work, had only one man and two boys employed, so dull
was trade at the time. The highest price (wholesale of course) for shawls
fabricated at those works, was ten guineas. —They were very handsome looking
goods, and a considerable stock of them appeared to be on hand in the
warehouse, which was, fortunately, not attached to the factory, which, in about
ten days after our visit, was totally consumed by fire. It was considered quite
a privilege to view the place which was not accessible to all; for some
Russians, not long before, had been refused admittance by the proprietor.
We
arrived in Edinburgh on the 27th October. We were met at the station
by two friends, who conducted us to a Mrs. Petries, 21 Lothian Street, near the
University. As nobody in Edinburgh had any confidence in us, we were kept at
such a distance as was compatible with civility. This was the reason of our
being taken to private lodgings, and not permitted to share in the hospitality
of the domestic hearth. We did not know that this was the feeling towards us at
the time. But we had no reason to expect otherwise —All strangers together, and
our proscribed self in bad odour; certainly not in the “odour of sanctity” with
our dear friend Campbell’s coreligionists. Of these, there were two parties,
which had formerly been one church, of which one was much more Campbellistic
than the other. The Oak Hall, and the South Bridge Hall, are the styles by
which their churches are known. The former was said to be of the real covenant
spirit, which did not partake much of the “milk of human kindness.” Law and
authority unencumbered with the bowels of mercy and compassion, were supposed
to hold their own in the Hall of Oak. The demerits of the case between the two
halls we are unable to give. It is no affair of ours. All we knew was, that
there was no union or communion between them; and that we were in questionable
relationship to them both. Our invitation to Edinburgh came from the South
Bridge friends, whom we found, with three or four exceptions, to be kind, just,
and liberal. Their religious theory was Campbellistic; but their disposition
was in advance of their theory. They were willing to hear, and to prove “all
things;” and did not endorse the notion that all wisdom and knowledge was
comprehended in the Bethanian theory of baptism for the remission of sins.
There were three or four among them disposed to kick against the goads. They
found, however, at length, that in kicking they hurt no one but themselves.
They therefore wisely concluded to kick no more; but though they ceased to
kick, the disposition to lift up their heels against us continued hardly latent
to the end.
Our
quarters were very comfortable. It is true, we were alone; but then we are
“never less alone than when alone, nor less idle than when idle.” With the
Bible and materials for writing, we can neither be idle nor alone. Studying this
great book, and writing upon its contents, have become a habit which rather
impatiently endures interruption. The luxury of silence and solitude, after
much speaking and conversing, none can duly appreciate who have not enjoyed it.
But in our three tours we tasted not much of this enjoyment. We were, so to
speak, not our own. We were a bearer of “strange things” to the people’s ears,
and were, therefore, expected to be at the service of every one; and which we
endeavoured to be with as much affability as we could command.
We
were waited on at separate times by individuals from both the Halls. The Oaks
wished us to be at their meetings on the following Lord’s day, but we declined;
intending to be at neither their’s, nor at the South Bridge, but to attend our
own appointments elsewhere in the afternoon and evening. Certain of the South
Bridgians having heard our version of American troubles, in which a more
remarkable effort has been made than history furnishes for many a year, to
extinguish a humble individual for daring to think and speak his convictions
independently of religious factions and their self important inflations, —they
insisted on our attending their meeting, and worshipping with them. We demurred
to this for several reasons. We had not come to Britain to put individuals or
churches to the test of fellowship. We came to announce to them the gospel of
the kingdom, and to call their attention to the signs of the times as
indicative of the Lord’s approach. We asked fellowship of none, but a patient
hearing from all. They insisted. We objected; especially as we understood that
the Campbellite spirit was rampant in a few of them. We had so often been
tilted at by drones of no personal weight or consideration, just to lift
themselves into notice by an affected zeal against heresy in us, who are
regarded as fair game for any unprincipled fowler, that we declined being made
an occasion of unprofitable controversy in the church. They urged that they
wished to test the question, whether one or two were to dictate to all, what
they should hear and whom. We declined being made the test, but agreed to
attend their meeting as an observer of their doings, when in church assembled.
On
the evening of our arrival in the city, we attended, by invitation, a soiree
given by the friends at South Bridge Hall. We found a very respectable company
assembled to partake of the good things provided for the inner and outer man.
It was here we became acquainted with some whom we hope to call our friends “till
the Lord comes;” when, we trust, as the result of their obedience to the
faith originally delivered to the saints by the Spirit of God, and of a patient
continuance in well-doing, we shall rejoice in his presence. The evening, or
soiree, was harmonious and interesting. Pieces, called “sacred,” were well
sung; and speeches, humorous and instructive, delivered with agreeable effect
upon the hearers. Mr. Alexander Melville Bell, Professor of Elocution, and a
very successful practitioner in the art of teaching the tongue of the stammerer
to speak with ease, convulsed us all with mirth, by his imitative illustration
of the pseudo-sublime and real-ridiculous exhibited by speakers, who, fuller of
themselves than their subject, repeat the speeches they have conned by rote.
From this, it will be seen, that the evening was not devoted to the subject of
religion exclusively. The topics were various, and the company, likewise,
persons of other sects, and of no sect partaking in the proceedings as well as
those of the South Bridge congregation, who got up the meeting. —Mr. Bell, whom
we have the pleasure of calling our friend, (for he proved himself such both in
word and deed,) belongs to the Baptist church in Edinburgh, presided over by
the Rev. Mr. Watson; and our humble self, to no human ecclesiastical
organization whatever. We were unexpectedly invited to address the audience,
which we could not very well avoid to do. What we said, or what was our text
even, we do not now remember. Suffice it to say, it was our opening speech in
Edinburgh, and advanced us a “wie bit” in the good graces of them that heard
us.
The
Lord’s day following was October 30th. We were guided to the place
of meeting by the friend who insisted upon our going thither. Very reluctantly
we consented to accompany him, with the assurance that no difficulty would be
provoked. But it availed not. When the congregation was gathered, he arose and
observed that he understood that there would be opposition, by some, to Dr.
Thomas’ breaking bread with them, he therefore wished to know, before the
meeting was opened, what was the decision of the church in the case. He was
opposed to proscription for opinion’s sake, and with American difficulties they
had nothing they had to do. He and another brother were acquainted with both
sides of the question between Dr. Thomas and Mr. Campbell; and without assuming
to judge between them, they were satisfied that there was not just and
sufficient grounds for them to refuse Dr. Thomas the bread and wine, if he
pleased to partake of them. The opposition, whoever they were, seemed taken
aback by this initiative. Whatever they felt, its expression was feeble. Some
dissent was expressed, but their premises were vague, and easily overturned;
and their conclusions, consequently, without effect. The pros and cons
having subsided into silence for want of more to say, we interjected a few
remarks before sentence was pronounced. We observed that we had come there as a
spectator, at the request of the friend who had introduced the subject before
them. We came not to test their fellowship, or to raise any question of the
kind in their midst. We came to Edinburgh at their instance, indeed, but for a
very different purpose—it was to lay before them the Gospel of the Kingdom, and
to define the Signs of the Times as evincing its near approach. We asked none
for their fellowship, but simply to hear with candour what we had to say, and
then to search the scriptures and see if what we said were not the truth of
God. Fellowship was an after-consideration. —We eat bread, not as an act of
fellowship, but as an act of remembrance, discerning no test there, but only
the Lord’s body. If they said we might eat of the bread they had provided, it
was well; if not, it was also well. They would of course do as they pleased.
Either way we were content. Whatever was the opinion of these remarks, nothing
more was said on either side, and it was agreed, on the responsibility of
Messrs. Muir and Gray, who had testified in our favour, that the bread and wine
should not be withheld.
We
were quite pleased at the order of the meeting. The scripture readings were
from the Old and New Testament, in regular course; the prayers were not random
outpourings, but the thoughtful petitions of the thankful and necessitous; the
singing was scientific, melodious, and appropriate to the words chosen from
“the Songs of Zion,” which used to be sung in Israel’s praises of Jehovah and
his goodness forevermore; and the exhortations were words of truth and
soberness. Still there was a something wanting. They were courteous, but there
was not that sunniness of aspect indicative of unanimity and oneness of soul.
It requires a hearty belief of the gospel of the kingdom to bring a church to
this—a faith which, at our advent to Edinburgh, we did not find at all
occupying the minds of the ungodly or devout.
As a society, the South Bridgians were liberal and independent; and
though believing in the Bethanian philosophy, they refused to recognise its
president-Professor as their master; or his Nottingham representative, and the
Fife-Kingdom committee, as the gaolers of their conscience, and directors of
affairs. Had they submitted to their dictation, which they had successfully
resisted before our arrival, we should not have been invited, nor received. But
Providence had ordered all things well. The bigotry which encountered us at the
Glasgow Convention of delegates, was defeated by their co-religionists in
Edinburgh, who, though they believed not, were willing to hear in a Berean
Spirit, and to open to us a door of utterance, that they might know the things
that had excited so much attention and interest among the people.
We sojourned in Edinburgh two weeks,
during which we spoke to audiences amounting sometimes to more than a thousand
people. This was very well for so Presbyterial a city, whose inhabitants,
though mainly addicted to free-churchism, are but little disposed to make
excursions beyond the pale of “orthodoxy,” and conventional “respectability.”
Edinburgh is a beautiful city, favoured of nature and adorned by art. Royalty,
Covenanter-Calvinism, physic, literature, and arms, are enthroned there,
attracting, consequently crowds of retainers, and expectants of the good things
ordinarily dispensed to those upon whom “fortune” smiles. These constitute “society”
in “Modern Athens,” in ministering to whose wants they, who are not “society,”
obtain their daily bread. This is the substratum off the upper soil underlying
which are things villainous and without estimation in the purlieux of the
Cowgate and Grassmarket of the lower town. This is the base upon which
society rests, as base as it is low in the scale of being; the swinish
multitude, whose habitations filthy in the extreme, are a malarious and piggish
exposition of its brutality and desolation. Though sent to the poor and humble,
for “dogs” and “swine” the kingdom’s gospel was not proclaimed—Matthew 7: 6.
The advertisements, therefore, of our meetings, where the holy things and
pearls of God’s truth would be exhibited for the admiration and acceptance of
the public, found no response among the “baser sort.” Neither were they
responded to, to any remarkable extent by Athenian “Society;” which is so
pious, so highly refined, in such favour with Heaven, and on such complacent
terms with itself, knowing and believing all that is “essential to salvation,”
that it cares not to trouble itself with the “strange things” and “new
doctrine” brought to its doors by the “setters forth of strange gods,”
as it regards Jesus and the resurrection prophetically exhibited at this
day. Our audiences were drawn neither from the high nor low, but from the odds
and ends of Edinburgh, who in every city are the most independent and Berean of
the population. We addressed them some ten or a dozen times, mostly at the
Waterloo Assembly Room, in Princes Street, a spacious and elegant apartment,
and capable of seating some thousand to fifteen hundred people. The impression
made upon them was strong, and, for the time, caused many to rejoice that
Providence had ever directed our steps to Edinburgh. Our expositions of the
sure word of prophecy interested them greatly, causing our company to be sought
for at the domestic hearth incessantly, to hear us talk of the things of the
kingdom and name of Jesus, and to solve whatever doubts and difficulties
previous indoctrination might originate in regard to the things we teach.
Our new friends had but little mercy
upon us in their demands upon our time. They seemed to think that premeditation
was unnecessary, and that we had nothing to do but to open our mouth, and out
would fly a speech! Of our two hundred and fifty addresses in Britain, all were
extemporised as delivered. There was no help for it, seeing that we had to go
oftener than otherwise from parlour conversation to the work before us in the
lecture room. Indeed, our nervous system was so wearied by unrest that we could
not have studied a discourse. Present necessity was indispensable to set our
brain to work. Certain subjects were advertised, and had to be expounded. We
knew, therefore, what was to be treated of; and, happily, understanding “the
Word of the Kingdom,” we had but to tell the people what it taught, and to
sustain it by reason and testimony. In this way we got along independently of
stationery and sermon studying, which would have broken us down completely, and
would have absorbed more time than our friends allowed us. “Come,” said one,
“and take a quiet cup of tea with us on Saturday evening?” we hesitated, being
desirous to have the last night in the week to ourselves, at least. “There’ll
only be two or three whom you have met before. You can just take it as easy as
you please—talk or not, as it suits yourself.” This seemed very fair, so we
agreed to go. We found some two or three additions to our friends domestic
circle, as he had said; and among them one of the pastors of the church to
which he belonged. The tea-table conversation was without point: that is,
nothing was touched upon concerning which the pastor and we would find
ourselves in opposition; for he is respectably orthodox according to Athenian
concession, while, as for us, it is well known that we have no pretensions that
way. Wherever “a divine” is present, there is generally formality and stiffness
in the circle, all “feast of reason and flow of soul” being quenched by the
mystic afflation of his presence. His “people” look up to him as their
theological syntax—the rule by which they are expected to order their words in
speech. Hence their sentences are measured, and their tone subdued into harmony
with his supposed approval. This is irksome to a free spirit who knows what is
in the clergy, and, therefore, hath no admiration for them, yet wishes to give
no cause of offence to friends who hold them in esteem. This irksomeness was
fatiguing, and predisposed us to accept, with a good grace, any event that
might turn up to dissolve the spell that bound us.
Nor was a change of affairs far off.
It was even at the doors. The tea service was not removed ere the bell at 13
Hope street, Charlotte Square, announced frequent arrivals from divers parts of
the city. The ladies and gentlemen were ushered into an adjoining room, where
our friend is wont to teach clergymen and others to read their sermons and to
speak with fluency and propriety. Our little quiet tea party was invited to
adjourn to this arena, when, to our surprise, we found there in fashionable
costume a company of from twenty to thirty individuals. This was too bad. “O,”
said our friend, “I thought you wouldn’t mind it!” The assembly was pleasant to
the eye, but how it would prove to the ear was another question. Its materials
were not homogeneous. We cannot define them. Some were deacons, others members
of Mr. Watson’s church, some officers of the United Service, lawyers, sons of
Abraham in flesh and spirit, &c. —all honourable persons, courteous, and
well esteemed. Having been introduced to them, our friend remarked that, “not
wishing to monopolise the good things to himself, in which he knew they were
interested as well as he, he had taken the liberty, without consulting the
doctor, of inviting them to meet him on the present occasion, to hear
conversationally more about them. He hoped, therefore, by way of introduction
to an interchange of ideas, he would favour them with a brief outline of the
subject matter brought to their ears in the interesting lectures they had
attended.” In doing this, we called their attention to what the prophets had
spoken concerning “the powers that be,” the nations, Israel, and the
saints—that “the powers” were to be abolished; the nations to be subsequently
universally blessed; Israel to be organised into the kingdom of God; and, that
to the Saints and their Chief, immortalised and mad equal in nature to the
angels, are to be given eternal glory, honour, and dominion over all the inhabitants
of the earth. That these were the things of the invisible future revealed in
the Scriptures of truth as gospel, or glad tidings of great joy to all people.
The prophets had given us the signs by which we might know the times when those
things were about to be. These signs were political events, whose character was
discernible by the light of their testimony shed upon the present and the past.
That we had more particularly to do with the present in which predicted events
were speaking to us trumpet-tongued, of the speedy coming of the Kingdom of
God. We had come from the sun-setting to call the attention of the people in
Britain, to the prophetic significancy of the notable events affecting the
French, Austrian, Papal, and Turkish dominions, for their practical,
individual, and everlasting weal. If they inquired, how they were to be
benefited by comprehending the import of these things? —we replied, that seeing
the day approaching when the King of the Jews was about to appear in his
kingdom and glory, they might separate themselves from “the error of
the wicked,” and “be found of him in peace, without spot, and
blameless.” To do this they must believe the Gospel of the Kingdom—the glad
tidings of that Kingdom which the God of Heaven had promised in a multitude of
places to set up in Israel’s land, given to the fathers Abraham, Isaac, Jacob,
and their seed in Christ, for an everlasting possession in the Age to Come—not
the gospel of kingdoms beyond the skies. This gospel, which indeed is no
gospel, is “the error of the wicked,” from which a man must cleanse
himself if he would find salvation in the Kingdom of God. The world is full of
gospels. Every sect has its gospel, and the world is full of sects. These are
very well in their way. They give order to society, and give the wicked pause;
but can give no man an introduction to the Kingdom of God. There is but one
gospel can do this; that gospel, namely, preached by Moses, promised and
amplified in the holy prophets, and preached also by John the Baptist, Jesus,
and his Apostles before and after Pentecost: this gospel it is that is the
power of God for the salvation of those who believe—Romans 1: 16. —God’s power
to save is in no other gospel than the Gospel of the Kingdom we advocate. It is
that concerning which the wholesome words of the Lord Jesus aver that, “he
that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, he that believeth not
shall be condemned”—Mark 16: 15-16.
To this effect we spoke as nearly as
we can recollect at this time. Having resumed our seat, our host observed, that
“the subject was now before them, and he doubted not it would afford Dr. Thomas
pleasure to consider any difficulties his outline might have suggested to the
minds of his hearers;” and then turning towards his pastor, sitting on a sofa
near the door, he inquired if he would not favour the company with his views
upon these important themes? To this he replied, that “he agreed with several
of the particulars expressed by Dr. T., but that as to prophecy we could not
know much about it before it was fulfilled, and was of opinion that time be
more profitably engaged in attending to what could be understood.” Thus he
delivered himself substantially, and then relapsed into silence, from which it
is to be inferred, that, though a professional interpreter of the Bible, the
greater part of which is composed of history and prophecy, he had no views upon
these important themes! Being convened for friendly social interchange of
thought, we did not wish to disturb the harmony of the evening, by seeming to
enter the list against our ecclesiastical friend. Having put himself in our
power, we might have made him contemptible before the eyes of all. We might
have demonstrated his utter incompetency for “the work of the ministry” in
which he claimed to be engaged; and have convicted him of extreme presumption
in assuming to speak to men in the name of the Lord, while confessedly and
profoundly ignorant of what the Lord had spoken by the mouth of his holy
prophets. But, out of respect to our worthy host, and that we might not be
accused by any of acting offensively, we lost sight of the pastor, and imposed
silence upon ourselves, for a time at least, that others might offer their
ideas if so disposed.
The silence being unbroken, as we
thought, sufficiently long, we observed that we would briefly hold their
attention to what the scripture testified for our instruction in Peter’s second
epistle—2 Peter 1: 19-21; 3: 17. We then read the words following—“We have
also the prophetic word more sure to which ye do well to take heed as
unto a light that shineth in a dark place, until its day dawn, and a
light-bearer arise in your hearts.” These, we observed, are “wholesome
words,” and the literal rendering of the original. The prophetic word is sure,
and the things Peter, James and John had witnessed on the Mount of
Transfiguration confirmed it, or made it surer. Thus made doubly sure, it
became a shining light, not a feeble invisible light, such as pure
hydrogen burning in day-brightness; but a light blazing as the sun in a place
otherwise dark, dark as Egyptian night with blackness. We need not wonder at
the sure prophetic word being radiant with brightness; for Jehovah who gave it
is light, the Light of the Universe, “in whom is no darkness at all.” It
is “a light that shineth in a dark place.” The heart of man is this dark
place. The word auchmeros signifies not only dark, but “squalid
and filthy.” This is a man’s mental and moral condition, squalid, filthy, and
dark, by nature—a condition before God, if not in the estimation of his
fellow-men, in which he continues hopelessly until the sure word, termed by
Paul, “the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, shine into
him”—2 Corinthians 4: 4. Consider the savage, the semi-barbarian, and the
“civilised” man. Not to go beyond “Christendom” for examples, contemplate the
man of letters, philosophy, politics, and “religion,” not to mention the
thoughtless multitude, whose minds embrace no other topics than such as arise
spontaneously from their “fleshly lusts that war against the soul.”
Converse with these several classes of mankind upon “Moses and the
Prophets,” the apostolic testimony, the mission of Messiah, the future of
nations, the destiny of the earth and of man upon it, &c., and you will
find that “darkness covers the earth, and gross darkness the people;”
and as the necessary consequence of this universal ignorance, or blindness of
heart to the sure prophetic word, their works are evil, and that continually.
Now to this sure prophetic word, or
glorious gospel light, (for the gospel is still almost wholly a matter of
prophecy,) the apostle says, “ye do well to take heed to it.” Surely he
is an authority in the case, and one whose exhortation should be respectfully
entertained. Would he tell us to take heed to the sure prophetic word if it
were unintelligible? Can we take heed to a thing we do not, and cannot
understand? Prosechontes, rendered giving or taking heed, signifies having
in addition to. This is its derivative signification, and imports that we
should have the sure word of prophecy added to our minds; but can this addition
be accomplished unless we apply our minds to the word, or give heed to it? And
what would be the use of studying it if it were essentially enigmatical, and
insusceptible of rational interpretation? On the contrary, we conclude from the
terms of the apostle’s exhortation, that it is clear, worthy of diligent study,
reasonable, and improving.
But Peter’s exhortation was not
confined to his contemporaries. What he said to them he says to us. You do well
to give heed to it “until its day dawn.” The common version has
it “until the day dawn;” but this is not the translation of hoes hou
hemera diaugase. Hou is the relative to its antecedent luckno which
is synonymous with “the word”—hou hemera whose day;
that is, the light’s day, or the word’s day—the day testified of in the
light-imparting word of prophecy, in which God will rule the world in
righteousness by Jesus Christ, whom he raised up from the dead, for that very
purpose—Acts 17: 31. This is the day spoken of by Moses and the Prophets—“the
acceptable year of the Lord,” the year-day, or Age to Come, of a thousand
years duration, (which with the Lord are but as one day, says Peter—2 Peter 3:
8, “the rest which remains for the people of God”—the day when His king
shall come in his kingdom and glory—this is the day—Ezekiel 39: 8—which
succeeds “Today,” coeval with the Gentile governments; the
Gospel-day, when Christ shall sit upon his father’s throne in Zion, and “govern
the nations upon earth”—Psalm 67: 4; 22: 27-28. This day has not yet
dawned. We are in “the evening time of today,” when it shall be light—Hebrews
3: 13; 4: 7; Luke 23: 43; Zechariah 14: 7. We are of “today,” which is “a
cloudy and dark day”—a day of ignorance, superstition, and foolishness; but
when tomorrow comes, the day after “today,” these things will be
abolished to the ends of the earth, and we shall no more need the prophetic
word to give us light. But till then, the “heirs of the kingdom” can no
more do without the shining light of prophecy, than mankind can do without the
brightness of the firmament. Blot out the light of heaven, and confusion and
death would soon pervade the world. The “children off the day”—1
Thessalonians 5: 5—must have daylight, or they would become sickly, and pine
away, and die. They responded to the apostle’s exhortation, and apply
their minds to the sure prophetic word, that in keeping their minds actively
engaged upon it, a light-bearer may spring up in their hearts making
their path “as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the
perfect day.” The way of the wicked is not so. It is darkness, and they
know not at what they stumble.
We remarked, in conclusion, that
prophecy is so intelligible that those who take heed, or apply their minds to
it, can tell assuredly what shall come to pass before it happens. This was the
case with those to whom Peter wrote. After writing about the coming of the Lord
to slay his murderers, and to burn up their city, (his second coming,
not his second appearing at his third coming,) in which he discoursed
also of the passing away of the heavens and the earth constituted by the old
Mosaic covenant then in existence, but since vanished away—he concludes by
saying to them, “seeing ye know these things before, beware,
&c.” They knew what was coming upon Jerusalem and the State; for they were
observant of the Signs of the Times given by the Lord in his prophecy on Mount
Olivet. Their presence enabled them to eschew “the error of the wicked,”
who scoffed at the idea of the Lord’s coming to punish his enemies. It enabled
them to be steadfast; and at length to escape “the judgment and fiery
indignation, which devoured the adversaries.” To deny that we can know
before hand what is to come to pass, is to affirm that we cannot understand the
gospel; for the gospel is glad tidings of what is to be to all nations and to
the saints. It is the report of good things promised. A promise is a
prediction, and a prediction is prophecy. The gospel is a great prophecy of
what God intends to do; and they who intelligently believe it know before hand
what is to be done. The little that has been fulfilled in Jesus is an assurance
to the believer that what remains will certainly be accomplished. He foresees
the crushing down off the thrones, the abolition of all kingdoms, empires, and
republics, the setting up of a divine kingdom in Israel’s land, the blessedness
of all nations under the government of Messiah and his brethren, and the will
of God done on the earth as it is in Heaven; with many more great and glorious
things too numerous to mention at the present time.
When we sat down a dead silence
ensued. Whatever was thought, no one offered, or seemed disposed to offer, a
word of comment on what had been spoken. The pastor had sighed deeply while we
were speaking, thinking, perhaps, that he had fallen upon evil times in
consenting to be one of our quiet tea party. But this is only supposition with
us. He may have been vastly pleased at our vindication of the prophetic word;
for there are some minds so nobly constituted that they rejoice in the triumph
of truth, even when the result of their own defeat. We fear, however, that he
did not rejoice greatly; if he did, it was with joy unspeakable for he said
nothing; but rising and bending sufficiently forward to clear the sofa, he
moved noiselessly toward the door, with his body at an angle of forty-five
degrees with his understandings, and slid off into outer darkness, leaving us
all in blank amazement at his sudden and not very dignified retreat! No remark
was made, but the silence was expressive. The truth proved unanswerable, and
was yielded to with prudence as the “better part of valour.” The fugitive’s
vanishment from the light must have been mortifying to his friends; his
retreat, however, was agreeably covered by a concerto performed on the piano
and flute, which restored the balance of the evening, and prepared us for a new
beginning, without reference to what had gone before.
A natural son of Abraham being
present, a continental Jew who professed conversion to Gentile Christianity,
our kind host invited to deliver himself upon the subject of Messiah’s coming.
It was soon evident, however, that upon whatever topics he might be profound,
he was far from being at home upon this. He had been a candidate for admission
into Mr. W’s church, if we remember rightly, but grounds existed for suspicion
that his motives were not loyal and true, so that he still remained a
candidate. He was aware, doubtless, that the company was divided into believers
of Christ’s personal reign on earth, and those who rejected it. He spoke so as
to please both if possible; at any rate, as far as he was concerned, so as to
leave them both in the right, rather inclining to the idea that it might be
personal. We could not permit such stuff to pass without a word of comment. We
expressed our surprise that a Jew could hesitate distinctly to affirm the
personal appearing and reign of Messiah in Israel’s land as the only reign
taught in the Bible concerning him. The figurative coming and reign of Christ
was a mere Gentile tradition, a fiction of the apostasy, which no Jew
instructed by the prophets could possibly entertain. We hoped he would make
himself sure on this matter, and abandon the illogical supposition, that a proposition
could be at once true and not true according to the opinion of an audience.
The repetition of music, and the
introduction of refreshments, relieved our Jewish acquaintance from his
entanglement, and, together, imparted a gift of tongues to the company at
large. A cross-firing soon after commenced from all sides of the house. One
question led to another, until a lawyer and a deacon, pious members of the
fugitive pastor’s flock, led on a forlorn hope against our gospel-position, the
account of which, for want of room, must be deferred to a future opportunity,
which will not be unnecessarily delayed.
* * *
“Time is painted with a lock before,
and bald behind, signifying thereby that we must take time (as we say) by the
forelock, for when it is once passed there is no recalling it.”—Swift.
“Many have been ruined by their
fortunes; many have escaped ruin by the want of fortune. To obtain it, the
great have become little, and the little great.”—Zimmerman.
* * *
ESCORTING TO GLORY—ERRORS OF THE WISE—THEIR
ORIGENISM.
“He taketh the wise in their own craftiness.”
We have inquired in a previous
article, Whence it comes, that historians, professors, college students, and
their patrons (a classification which comprehends nearly all Antichristendom) with
the Old and New Testaments, or Books of the Covenant, in their hands,
have sunk into such visible darkness, and fallen so far behind the apostles in
a scriptural understanding of the genius, spirit, and character of the kingdom
of Christ? That they have done so is proved from the writings of the Cambridge
historian of Christ’s church, and of our luminous friend, the professor of
Sacred History, in the sun-setting. Here are two great and shining lights in
theology, one a wise man of the east, the other, as wise a man perhaps of the
west, very fit and proper representatives of “the wisdom of the world”—1
Corinthians 3: 19, gravely and complacently imputing error, false ambition, and
ignorance to the apostles, concerning that kingdom, the gospel of which they
had been proclaiming throughout Judea! The reader will remember our quotations
from the historian and the professor which need not be repeated; we shall,
however, favour him with a passage from our millennial friend exegetical of the
real sort of a thing he thinks the apostles ought to have looked for, and which
he, more discerning than they, looks for, instead of the restoration of the
kingdom again to Israel under the Messiah. He is commenting upon the words, “This
same Jesus, who is taken from you into the heaven, shall so come in like manner
as ye have seen him go into the heaven.” Referring to this returning,
the Spirit saith by Zechariah, “His feet shall stand in that day upon the
Mount of Olives, which is before Jerusalem on the east”—that day
characterised in the preceding verses as the day when “all nations shall be
gathered against Jerusalem to battle, and the Lord shall go forth and fight
against them”—Zechariah 14: 1-4. But why is the Lord Jesus to return to
Mount Olivet and fight with all nations? Hear the unvisionary averment of our
imaginative friend—“Two angelic personages, of celestial mien and
grandeur—probably a portion of Messiah’s celestial train—returned to Olivet,
and gave a rich and exhilarating promise, on which the faith of the whole
church reposes with unshaken confidence, and around which its brightest hopes
cluster with joy unspeakable and full of triumph. It is that the identical
Jesus, who thus visibly and gloriously entered the heavens, shall as visibly
and sensibly descend to earth again, to escort all his friends from this
sin-polluted earth to a new paradise of God, in which the tree of life, in all
its deathless beauties, shall bloom and fructify for ever!!” But can the
reader divine what necessity there can possibly be for this return to escort,
and especially to Mount Olivet, seeing that upon the hypothesis of college
theology men’s souls, at death, go direct to Jesus, where he now is, sitting
upon David’s throne, reigning personally over Israel, having gained kingdoms as
indicated by the many crowns upon his head, beyond the range of the solar
system in the Milky Way?! If the souls of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of Moses
and the Prophets, of John the Baptist and the apostles, and of the disciples of
all ages since, be now with him reigning on David’s throne in the Galaxy, and
it was not necessary for Jesus personally to escort them thither, upon what
principle is it necessary that he should return to escort the remainder who may
happen to be alive at the epoch of return? Besides, to escort, is to
attend and guard by land; would not to convoy them be a better word? But
why escort or convoy at all? They both imply danger on the route; or if not,
are appointed as guards of honour. It is not Jesus who is an escort or convoy,
but the honourable personage who is himself to be escorted. Let our critical
friend be a little more choice in his composition. It is better occasionally to
forego a verbal flourish than to be magniloquently small, and grandiloquently
less. In dismissing for the present the “celestial mien and grandeur,”
“Messiah’s celestial train,” the “rich and exhilarating promise,” the “church’s
brightest hopes clustering with joy unspeakable and full of triumph,” around
this wholesale emigration from our “sin-polluted earth,” we would humbly
inquire of our extraordinary friend, “Where, in Moses and the Prophets, and in
all the New Testament construed in harmony with them, is it taught that Messiah
is to empty the earth of all the righteous it contains? Is not this taking
away the righteousness, instead of the sin, of the world? Is it not a
practical abandonment of the controversy between God and Satan upon the earth?
Does not the escort theory indicate that Satan has gained undisputed possession
of the battle-field; and that God is obliged to send assistance to enable his
friends to make good a retreat to some undiscovered country, where their
conqueror cannot pursue them, and whence none shall e’er more return?”
The wisdom of theological historians
and professors, and the foolishness of the apostles! Which does the reader
prefer? Jesus to return to Mount Olivet to become an escort in a flight;
or the Lord Jesus to return to the earth, and at the head of the Saints, and of
Israel as their king, to contend here in battle with Satan’s hosts, to subdue
them on every side, and having thus removed all obstruction, set up the throne
of David, restore the kingdom again to Israel, and then bestow it and the
dominion of the subject nations, upon the apostles and the believers of the gospel
of the kingdom for ever? Which is the only scriptural hope, besides which all
other theories are only superstitious rhapsodies, the airy flights of
imaginations perverted and bewitched? That we believe, is the only true hope
which finds the consummation of the divine purpose upon the earth; and, with
the apostles, looks for the realisation of its expectations in the restoration
of the kingdom again to Israel as in the days of old.
“I have again began to read modern
theology,” writes our professor of Sacred History. We beseech him to let
“theology” alone. He has read too much of it already, intoxicating and
bewildering as it is. We would humbly advise our sublime friend to read the
Acts of the Apostles with all accuracy and reflection before he proceeds
further in his essays, if he would “enlarge the empire of truth by a more rapid
consumption of the Man of Sin.” If our consuming friend would compass this, he
must be accurate. To explain what we mean. Speaking of “the first Acts of the
Apostles” after their return to Jerusalem, Mr. Campbell says, “During the ensuing
forty days, Peter, the first of the Twelve, the Elder Brother of the
apostolic family, arose, and after a short speech, moved the election of an
apostle for the chair vacated by the fall of Judas.” We make no note of the
expressions “apostolic school,” “first convention,” “chair vacated,” scattered
over the page before us. It is natural for our academic friend, himself the
proprietor of a college, and occupant of a chair, and patron of conventions, to
see schools, conventions, and chairs, in things apostolic and prepentecostial,
and to speak according to what he thinks he sees; but we cannot pass over the
palpable error in the above extract without a word or two concerning it.
We beg leave humbly to remark to our
learned friend, that forty days did not ensue from the return of the apostles
to Jerusalem on Ascension-day, to Pentecost. He is altogether out of his
reckoning here. Let him answer this question: How could forty days remain between
the ascension and Pentecost, when it is stated that Jesus was seen alive by the
apostles forty days after his release from death, during which time he
conversed with them concerning the things pertaining to the kingdom of God?
This long period of discourse about the kingdom—discourses which prompted the
question about the restoration of the kingdom at that time to Israel—would
leave only seven days to Pentecost. Our discerning friend, we presume, is aware
that there were only fifty days, not eighty-three, from the crucifixion to
Pentecost! We will take it for granted that he is really aware of this. Now, if
he will put on his Brazilian pebbles, he will perhaps discover the following
division of the fifty days:
From the
Crucifixion to the Resurrection, say— 3
days.
From the
Resurrection discoursing about THE KINGDOM— 40 days
From the
ascension to Pentecost— 7
days
Total
from Crucifixion to Pentecost— 50
days.
Our computative friend has been
misled by not understanding the saying of Jesus to Mary, “Touch me not, for
I am not yet ascended to my Father.” This was a private ascent, which
doubtless occurred; as he afterwards permitted his apostles to handle him
freely. Our discriminating friend has unfortunately confounded the two
ascensions, which may have been the cause of his extraordinary calculation of
forty days between the return from Olivet and the day of Pentecost!
Our rhetoricating friend errs, we
think, in styling Peter “the first of the Twelve, the Elder Brother of the
Apostolic family.” This sounds very popish; and as there are a vast number of
unenlightened and weak-minded people who look up to him as a living oracle;
and, supposing that he knows every thing, receive his quotations and rhetorical
flourishes, as if the words of scripture itself, it behoves that he should
convey in what he writes that only which is in strict accordance with the ideas
of God, and the spirit of his religion. Great errors in past times have
originated from trifling departures from the literal in the beginning. “If
any man speak let him speak as the oracles of God.” These oracles no where
exhibit Peter or any other as “the first,” or as “the Elder Brother.” Christ’s
teaching was, he that would be greatest, or first, let him be the servant of
the least. He himself set the example, by washing the feet of Judas. Just as
though our towering friend should wash the feet of the man with the “big head,”
who is so utterly worthless, as he says! Christ and Judas; Mr. Campbell and the
untaught and unteachable dogmatist, what a confounding antithesis! But not to
lose sight of Peter. To style him “the Elder Brother of the Apostolic family,”
is to place him just where the ignorant and superstitious papists put him, that
is, in the place of Jesus Christ! They make Peter the elder brother, and hence
the transition was easy to ascribe the same position to his pretended
successors, who at length boldly averred the principle in the assumption of
vicegerency for Christ. We would suggest to our unambitious friend, that the
apostles were all brethren and elders, having no one first or last among them. “James,
Peter, and John seemed to be pillars,” says Paul; but of these he places
James first. As for Peter, he says of himself that he was “an elder,”
not the elder. The preaching of the gospel of the kingdom in the name of
Jesus was indeed committed to Peter, as the enunciator thereof to the
circumcised, for the sake of order—to avoid confusion by many speaking at
once—not for primacy; and even this prominence he was appointed to as the
apostle having least ground of all to assume ascendancy over the rest. We offer
these remarks to our child-like and teachable friend to guard him against
indiscreet aspirations on his own part, and ascriptions of dignity to men not
warranted by the scriptures of truth. Knowing how conscientious he is, and how
singularly devoid of all desire of fame and worldly honour, we would strengthen
him in these virtues, and fortify him against the allurements which environ
theological professors, supervisors, and presidents, as with a thick cloud. We
wish to keep primacy out of his head, and to establish ultimacy and minimacy in
his heart, fearing lest, if he come under its influence, “this reformation”
might be transformed into a basket of loaves and fishes, and himself into the
chief baker and elder brother of the craft. Let our unostentatious friend
remember then, that “One is your Master,” that is, the first and the
elder brother, “even Christ, and all ye are brethren.”
But to return, in conclusion, to the
historians, professors, collegiates, and their patrons. These are a generation
of unfortunates. They are the children of a system originated by erring men in
a period of extreme darkness, which had been superinduced by the Origenizing of
the sacred writings; that is, by imposing upon them endless allegorical
interpretations, and torturing their doctrine into platonic notions concerning
the soul of the world, the transmigration of spirits, and the pre-existence of
souls. “Origen’s numberless comments on scripture,” says Milner, “constitute a
system of fanciful allegory, which pervades the whole of the sacred oracles:
the just and plain sense is much neglected; and the whole is covered with thick
clouds of mysticism and chimerical philosophy.” “He threw all things into
inextricable ambiguity.” He flourished in the third century, and is the great
father of the age, to whom may be likened our philosophical friend of the
nineteenth. If our ingenious friend’s theory of spirit-possession be
entertained, we might suppose, that the soul of the learned and pious Origen
had left the realms above at our friends nativity, and having entered into him
then, or wrapped him up as in a spirit-halo, had mantled him until this
present, and had kindly presided over him as his guardian angel, directing his
lucubrations into all their eloquent and sublime rhapsodies, in which our
friend, still soaring in his flights, disappears from mortal ken in the
“grandeur” of “exhilarating” and “celestial” obscurity! “Origen’s quickness of
parts, and his superior ingenuity,” says Milner, “served only to entangle him
more effectually, and to enable him to move in the chaos of his own formation
with an ease and rapidity that rendered him unconscious of the difficulties in
which he had involved himself.”
The sacred scriptures disappeared at length from the generation of unfortunates in the shadow of Origenism, in which they were totally eclipsed for over a thousand years. In the fifteenth century they reappeared under certain men called “Reformers,” who had been thoroughly indoctrinated into the Mystery of Iniquity which was their Alma Mater. The Bible made terrible havoc with the orthodoxy of their age, but failed to enlighten them in the good news of glory, honour, and immortality through Jesus in the kingdom of God restored again to Israel. They saw that justification of life was by faith, but they could not define the subject matter of the faith which justifies. And the generation which glories in them in this particular, without their courage and independence. They founded Protestantism; or schisms, in the Roman church, which protested against the Pope’s jurisdiction over them, instead of which they at length set up popes of their own, living or dead, the dead ones ruling them by the systems of divinity, or religious opinions which survived them. These systems preside over all modern schools and colleges, Bethany among the number; for our orthodox friend says, “it is being well known to all Protestant parties here, that we are just as sound, in all the so-called ‘essential doctrines of Christianity,’ which they call orthodoxy, as any who have, by concession, obtained that name and character.” Protestantism, or reformed Romanism, is Origenism restored and divested of the grosser superstition of a thousand years. It is philosophical religion, which in the hands of our ideal friend assumes a transcendental form, transporting him amid the remotest conceivable nebulae of the Galaxy, on the principle that the spirituality of a hope is in the ratio of the squares of the reality’s distance from the sin-polluted earth on which he dwells. The generation of unfortunates of the nineteenth century is trained and schooled in this double distilled, above-proof, spirituality, of which the apostles, and those who received their word and abode in it, were as ignorant as babes unborn. When it began to appear it was as the tares which the enemy had sown. They vapoured not at all about kingdoms beyond the solar system, a David’s throne there, and escorts from thence to abrept from the earth all the righteous it may then contain. These are the day-dreams of the Origenists—the clouds that obfuscate their intellects, the mirage that tantalises and bewilders their brains. Under its influence they call evil good, and good evil, themselves wise and the apostles foolish. Be it so. Give us the apostles’ foolishness, and be it ours with them earnestly to