CHAPTER VIII.

AS this work is about to be concluded, it will be of importance to the reader that a comprehensive view be taken of the mission of Christ to the Jewish nation. In doing which, an opportunity will be given to such of my readers as may hitherto have been afraid to doubt the truth of the Divine authority of the Bible, to see, at one glance, its absurdity.

In the four Gospels, which contain the sayings and doings of Jesus during his ministry among the Jews, and also in the Epistles of the Apostles, it is uniformly declared and enforced, that the main purpose of Christ's (_the anointed of God_) coming into the world was, to die. And this death was required by the Father as an atonement for the sins of mankind, that whosoever believed in and obeyed him, their pardon should be sure, not for any thing which they had done as it related to justice, chastity, or humanity, but for the ransom paid for their sins by the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. An apostle, in speaking on this subject, says--"_He (Christ) being delivered by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have, by wicked hands, crucified and slain._" This decree, then, was absolute, and every movement then made by Jesus, and also his preaching and conversation with the Jews, was so arranged, that die he must, to save a lost and ruined world.

This, according to the Scriptures, was the divine arrangement between the Father and the Son. This doctrine is taught in the New Testament. And in such a lost condition were the human race, that Jesus _freely gave himself as a ransom to be completed in due time_. If the New Testament does not teach this, it is not possible to know what it does teach. To die, then, as a sacrifice for sin, included the sum and substance of the Gospel, or good news.

Having laid down the ground-work of human redemption, we proceed to carry through the plan said to be the work of mercy and goodness flowing from the mighty God, the author of all things. In the examination of such an arrangement, it appears impossible to conclude that the Author of the Universe can be considered as the God of the Jews and Christians. The Jews had always been taught to believe that they were God's favorite people, and they retain the same faith to the present day. For ages before the Christian era, they not only expected the coming of the Messiah, but also, that no nation but their own would be interested in that glorious event. It never entered their minds that he would come in any disguise, for many impostors had appeared, who, being discovered, their Messiahship procured them certain destruction. The Jews, therefore, inferred, that when the proper time should arrive for the long-expected and ardently-looked for Messiah to appear among them, their nation would be raised to more than its former greatness, and God's chosen people would be held up to the nations of the earth as confirming the truth of what their ancient prophets had foretold of their future prosperity.

It could never, therefore, have entered the minds of the Jews, as a nation, that the Messiah would come in any disguise. And it must have been far from their thoughts to expect that he, when he should arrive, would load them with violent abuse, and reproach them as being too low to be considered as any thing else than a nation of hypocrites. If Jesus came into this world to die, then every thing which he taught, and also all the intercourse which he had with his own people, was preparatory to that event. That the Messiah would come to the Jewish nation to dwell among them, to be their leader, to exalt them above all other nations, was what they had been taught to expect. Instead of which, he calls them "_a generation of vipers!_" and pronounces terrible things against the heads of the nation, commencing his denunciations with "_Woe unto you, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites!_" Such violence and abuse surprised them, coming from one who said "_he came to seek and to save that which was lost._"

Again, Jesus said that "_he came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance._" But Jesus gave them no quarter, but sent them head and heels to the Devil. The Jewish rulers must have been more than human to have quietly taken such vulgar abuse. Sometimes, Jesus seemed to soften down in his conduct, as when he says, "_O Jerusalem! Jerusalem! how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings, but ye would not._" So erratic is Jesus depicted, in the account we have transmitted down to us, that we are at a loss as to forming an opinion concerning his manner of treating his own people. But as it was "_by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God_" that he was to be a "_sacrifice for the sins of mankind,_" his mode of addressing the rulers of Israel was calculated to bring about the "_will of his Father._"

Admitting, for the sake of argument, that Jesus was the true Messiah, the Jews were in a worse state than if he had not appeared among them. The statement made by Jesus of the destruction of Jerusalem, and of his second coming, confounded all their ideas of the Messiah's kingdom. In the twenty-third and twenty-fourth chapters of Matthew, after having pronounced a number of dreadful predictions against them, he winds up in