Part 2

Carry your mind back, brethren, to Simon Peter with Andrew his brother, to James and John, the sons of Zebedee, fishing on the sea of Galilee. There is no reason, at I know of, to suppose that they wholly gave up this their occupation immediately upon their endowments at the day of Pentecost. They certainly pursued them as long as their Lord was with them, and after the Crucifixion. Nay, after the Resurrection; after Jesus had appeared unto the Eleven; after He had “breathed on them and said, Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” and conveyed to them, (if any thing could do so,) the priestly power, saying, “Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained,” {12} still Simon Peter said to the rest, “I go a fishing; and they said unto him, We also go with thee.” {13a} Will any one dare to say, Had they been true priests of God, they must have pursued another mode of life, and borne the marks of their office more demonstratively and visibly before the eyes of men? Will any say, We cannot receive it that the hands, engaged one day in casting a hook into the sea, or spreading or mending nets, can be those which exercise, the next, (or the same if so it be,) the Christian ministerial office,—in breaking of bread, and celebrating the most holy Christian mysteries? Will any say that the lips which called to their partners for help, or in direction as to the safety or management of their boats and fishing, must therefore be incapable of preaching the glad tidings of the Gospel, or of exercising the commission given them of binding and loosing in the name of Christ? Or, think of St. Paul, with his fellow-helper and companion in labour, Aquila, working with their hands at their craft, “for by their occupation they were tent-makers;” {13b} aye, even “working night and day,” that they “might not be chargeable” to others: and will any say, Herein they shewed themselves too like to other men to put forward any pretence or claim to have or exercise any priestly or sacerdotal function. Will any again call to mind that St. Peter was certainly a married man; (“Peter’s wife’s mother,” we read at one time, “was sick of a fever;”) as also certainly was Aquila the companion in labour of St. Paul, (for he came “with his wife Priscilla;”) or, once more, St. Paul’s own claim to the right (though he did not exercise it, but still the right) to marry if he thought fit; as he says, “Have we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as other Apostles, and as the brethren of the Lord, and Cephas?” {14} will any consider so much, and then say, you must needs have a celibate priesthood, if you are to have any priesthood at all in the Church of Christ; or, if there be one, it must be one so separated from all earthly pursuit as to be recognised at a glance as of a different order?

Nay, my brethren, such things are surely no arguments of even a feather’s weight in the mouth of any man against a true priesthood in the Church of England; and one can hardly see how they can be supposed, by any sober-minded thinker, to be either contained in, or deduced from, Holy Scripture. They are, in fact, objections merely playing with the prejudices of those who have already come to a foregone conclusion, and intended rather to point an unjust shaft at the Church of England, through a mock admiration of the Church of Rome, than to advance the cause of truth. And this with no justice, even towards Rome herself, either in praise or blame; for Rome herself may have something to say in defence of her practice as to the distinctions with which she marks her priesthood, if looked on merely as matters of expediency and not of faith or doctrine; and at the same time, we certainly have no little reason to maintain that in many of these things, (and however there may be incidental disadvantages which we need not deny, on the ground of expediency also,) yet we come the nearer of the two to the following of the Apostles, in the not making too broad an outward distinction between priests and people, and in the not having laid a yoke hard to be borne, perhaps, as a wide and extended rule, too hard to be borne, upon our priesthood’s neck; and, in short, that we are at any rate close upon the very type and pattern which St. Paul mentions in our text, in that we too have our treasure in earthen vessels, and may, in one sense at least, rejoice that it is so, inasmuch as thereby it may be seen by all “that the excellency of the power is of God, and not of us.”

Further, it needs surely no words to prove that such objections and such line of argument in denial of our priesthood, can have but one effect, if they have any, namely, to forward the interests of the Church of Rome. This, I presume, ought in consistency to be the last wish of those who use them. But so it is, and in this way. There is no more possibility of any one, who has the knowledge of what Christianity has been from the beginning, being moved by such assertions to disbelieve the great doctrines of the priesthood, the altar, and the sacrifice, as belonging, and necessarily belonging, to the Church Universal, than there is of the words of the objectors moving mountains or drying up seas. We can no more unlearn the very first elements of the appointed mode of our applying to Christ for His intercession on high for us miserable sinners,—no more believe the Catholic truths which we have drunk in to be mere human figments and superstitious inventions,—than we could return to the system of Ptolemy, and believe the earth to be the centre round which the sun and the stars revolve. Nothing, therefore, can be gained in this direction by those who propound such views. But if it should be that any, who know what the Church Universal holds and has ever held on these points, should, by weakness or inadvertence, be shaken in their belief that the Church of England maintains these doctrines and preserves this sacerdotal order,—if any should come to think that perhaps after all she has not a priesthood, and an altar, and a sacrifice, then such would no doubt begin to fail in their allegiance to her, and be afraid longer to trust their souls to her teaching or her keeping. No well-instructed, patient, humble-minded member of the Church of England can, I think, be deceived by so sophistical an argument as that which we have been considering; but, of course, all are not well instructed, nor, perchance, are all patient or humble minded, and hence it may be, there _is_ a danger. But if there be this danger, or if any defections should follow upon such defamation of our Church, those who put forth the libel must have upon their conscience the weight of having aided the Church of Rome against their Mother Church of England.

But to return; take but two brief illustrations further of our subject. You will remember the contention between St. Paul and St. Barnabas concerning “Mark, sister’s son to Barnabas,” whom “Paul thought not good to take with them,” and how it “was so sharp between them that they parted asunder one from the other.” {17a} Again, you will recollect the occasion when at Antioch St. Paul (as he says), “withstood” St. Peter “to the face because he was to be blamed;” saying to him “before them all, If thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, and not as do the Jews, why compellest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews?” Consider that “the other Jews dissembled likewise with him, insomuch that Barnabas also was carried away with their dissimulation;” and to such a point did this reach, that St. Paul declares he “saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the Gospel;” {17b} put all this together and then say whether, upon the grounds of the objection urged, any one might not far more plausibly have denied to the Apostles themselves any just power or fitness to rule or teach authoritatively in the Church of God, than any man can deny the priesthood of the Church of England because its power is not more demonstratively shewn among us.

Or, for a second point, note this:—Does, or did ever, the admission to the Christian covenant, and the wondrous gift of God, the new birth of water and of the Spirit, by which, as the Apostle plainly teaches, Christians are made the temples of the Holy Ghost; does it, or did it ever, make such outward show of difference as will enable man to decide, immediately and infallibly, who are Christ’s, and who are forfeiting or have forfeited the gift bestowed? Then, if there be not this palpable manifestation as to the Christian life in each, why should there be a more manifest and outward demonstration of the treasure of the priesthood? If the grace of Baptism be not thus self-evident, and ever recognised by sight, why must the grace of Orders be so either? Oh! when shall we learn to believe instead of to cavil; to use the blessings God gives us, not to dispute about them; to judge, not according to appearance, but to judge righteous judgment; to believe there is a treasure, even the treasure which the Church has ever believed and declared to be in her ministry and stewardship, though it be contained in earthen vessels?

One word more, brethren, of most serious weight and import, as to such objections and I objectors. Carry your mind back to the time of Christ, to the labours of Apostles and Evangelists, and the infancy of the Church, and see of what Spirit they are. I am not speaking, remember, of all who may, from one cause or other, not be able to receive the doctrine of the Christian priesthood and altar, and who, we may well hope and believe, many of them receive the blessing of these gifts of Christ, though they know it not; but I speak of the particular objection with which I have all along been dealing,—that there cannot be a Priesthood, unless marked by striking outward differences visible by all. And I ask, what would have been the part taken, if the framers of such a test, being consistent in their objection, had lived in the days of Christ on earth? Surely we should have heard them saying, aye, in spite of His mighty works and great High Priesthood, “Is not this the carpenter’s Son? Is not His mother called Mary, and His brethren James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas? And His sisters, are they not all with us?” {19a} What is He different from another? Or what more likely than that expecting something different in show and demeanour in the great Apostle of the Gentiles, they would have joined in the reproach: “His bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible!” {19b} and have rejected Him?

If these things shew us the dangers of such a line of argument, let them keep us from any word said to countenance or support it. It is a solemn thought that we cannot, by even the most careless word of levity, express approval of such assaults upon the ancient faith, or sympathy with those who make them, without becoming sharers in their responsibility. For it is thus, by a few words here and a few there, that public opinion is formed or strengthened; and what can be more awful than to have helped to form it adversely to the truth of God, and in derogation of that “ministry of reconciliation,” and those means of grace, which He has appointed. Surely the sin of such must be, like that of the sons of Eli, “very great before the Lord,” when a prejudice is raised by which men, if they do not “abhor,” are at least taught to deny and despise, “the offering of the Lord.” At the same time, let us pray earnestly for them, for, we will hope and trust, “they know not what they do.” Let us not wish that they went out from us, but let us hope and pray that they may be turned to better things. Let us remember, too, as a ground of charity, that many fall into error here because too much, for many years, the teaching of the primitive Church and of Catholic antiquity has been overlooked as a guide to the due understanding of the Scriptures; and again, because the face of Christendom, alas, is not now so one and undivided as to present all truth in due form, and mode, and weight, to each man’s acceptance. The glory of our Reformation is, indeed, that it appeals to antiquity, and carries us back to the early Church; but these later days have too much overlooked this great principle of the Reformation. So it has happened, that what is, alas, the misfortune and the reproach of Christendom—I mean its divided state—may be, and we will hope is, some palliation before God for defect in those who wish to follow the truth, but are unable at the present moment to see or to accept it. So let us above all pray to the one great Lord of all, that in His good time the Church may again be one, not only in its essence, which it must be, (we believe in but “one holy Catholic and Apostolic Church,”) but also in its life, and in a re-established communion of the Saints; that being indeed, if it may be so, once more one, our Lord’s own prayer for it may be fulfilled, and His promise accomplished, and “the world believe that God hath sent Him.” {21a} And let us ourselves, brethren, ever remember that all we have in treasure is indeed in earthen vessels, and let us for ourselves be content to be reviled and threatened (yes, as the holy Apostle was, and his Lord and Master before him), for “the disciple is not above his Master, nor the servant above his Lord.” {21b} Neither, indeed, let us count it a strange thing, “as though some strange thing happened unto us,” {21c} if we have to “go forth bearing the reproach of Christ” {22a} and His Apostles; nay, rather, “being reviled, let us bless; being persecuted” (if so it be), “let us suffer it; being defamed, let us intreat;” yea, let us be willing to be “made as the filth of the world, and the off-scouring of all things,” {22b} so that we may but do our Master’s work, and preserve His truth in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and win souls to Christ, and, if it may be so indeed, “finish our course with joy, and the ministry, which we have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the Gospel of the grace of God.” {22c}

SERMON II. The Witness of the World, before Christ, to the Doctrine of Sacrifice.

JOB i. 5. “Thus did Job continually.”

THAT which such a man as Job “did continually,” we shall naturally conclude was well-pleasing in the sight of God. The Almighty’s own witness to his character is given in His Word addressed to Satan: “Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?” {23} And when we couple this with the circumstances to which the text relates, and the tone of the whole narrative, we shall find, I think, more than a _prima facie_ probability that the act so mentioned was not only right in itself, but that it bore a significant import, not merely to those who lived near Job’s own time or in his own country, but to the world at large.

What then is it to which the text alludes?

Job, we read, was a man of great substance as well as great integrity, living in a very early time in the land of Uz. Moreover, besides his great possessions, we are told that he had seven sons and three daughters. And we find that his sons were used, “to feast in their houses, every one his day;” and that on these occasions it was their custom to “send and call for their three sisters to eat and to drink with them;” a token, (as a well-known commentator has fairly enough conjectured,) both of their harmonious family affection and of the good order and conduct which prevailed in their feastings, or so holy a man as Job would not have permitted his daughters to join in their festivity. But, nevertheless, we read that Job in his anxious care was mindful to intercede for them, even in case they might have erred or sinned in the fulness of their rejoicing, or in the exuberance of their mirth. “And it was so, when the days of their feasting were gone about, that Job sent and sanctified them, and rose up early in the morning, and offered burnt-offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts. Thus did Job continually.” {24}

Here, then, we have no doubtful witness, not merely to the usage of sacrifice, but to its acceptableness also in the sight of God, as a part of worship and intercession. And this is all the more, not merely curious, but important, when we reflect upon the very early date almost universally assigned to the events related in the Book of Job. Whether the record itself may have been composed at a somewhat later period, as some have thought, yet all authorities are, I believe, agreed that the time of Job’s life was contemporaneous with even the earliest part of the life of Moses, and, therefore, that he did not derive his knowledge of God from the institutions of the Jews, or live under the Mosaic dispensation. The consenting witness, both of the Jews themselves and of the early Christian writers accepting their testimony, is that Job is the same as Jobab, mentioned in the first book of Chronicles, who is there named as the third in descent from Esau; so that he, as well as Moses, was the fifth in descent from Abraham,—the one in the line of Esau, and the other in the line of Jacob. Moreover, it would appear that this Job or Jobab was, if not absolutely what may be termed a king, yet a ruler and a prince in the land called Uz, or Ausitis, a country on the confines, probably, of Idumæa and Arabia. If this be so, he would seem, from the summary given in the first book of Chronicles, to have succeeded Balaam in the sovereignty or chiefdom of that country. “For,” (says that narrative,) “these are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before any king reigned over the children of Israel; Bela the son of Beor,” (undoubtedly the same as Balaam); “and the name of his city was Dinhabah. And when Bela was dead, Jobab the son of Zerah of Bozrah reigned in his stead.” {26a} Now we find in the book of Numbers, that Balaam the son of Beor was killed in battle, fighting on the side of Midian in the last year of the Israelites’ wandering in the wilderness, {26b} and supposing Job’s trial to have taken place (as some ancient writers assert) some few years after the Exodus, as he lived one hundred and forty years after those events, he may very well have succeeded to the chief place among the Idumæan or Uzzite people upon the death of Balaam. The importance of this to our present purpose lies in the fact, that he is thus a witness to the antiquity and the use of sacrifice and burnt-offering, quite independently of the institutions and commands of the Mosaic law. If Job were of man’s estate, and had sons and daughters of like estate also, (as the narrative unquestionably implies,) even before his sufferings, he must have been born not far in time from the birth of Moses, probably some little while before him; and what he “did continually” in his own country, and apart from Moses, is a witness to the practice and acceptableness of sacrifice, anterior to the enactments of the law from Sinai; and a witness, not merely, let us observe, to the use of sacrifice, but to sacrifice by burnt-offering, when the victim was killed and consumed upon the altar of God.

Now this leads us back to consider what is the probable origin of sacrifice, and sacrifice of this kind, altogether; for it is thus evident, that it was adopted into, and not originated by, the peculiar institutions of the Jewish nation and law.

Now, of course we see at once where we must turn for the first account of sacrifice. The primal exercise of this mode of approach to God, is that recorded in the fourth chapter of the book of Genesis, which shews at once the need which the Fall had brought upon man of drawing nigh to God, not without a propitiation; and at the same time exhibits, in sad prominence, the first-fruits of that corruption of nature entailed by it, which provoked the eldest-born of the world, in malignant envy of heart, to slay his next born brother.

Let us turn, then, to a brief consideration of those events, as illustrative of the origin and nature of sacrifice.

Look first to St. John’s and St. Paul’s account of the cause of Cain’s quarrel against his brother Abel. “And wherefore slew he him?” (says St. John), “Because his own works were evil, and his brother’s righteous.” {27a} And St. Paul tells us wherein Abel’s righteousness and superiority consisted: “By faith he offered unto God a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts.” {27b} The narrative in the Book of Genesis tells us the same thing as to the fact that Cain’s offering was rejected and Abel’s accepted; but without the Apostle’s comment we should not have precisely traced the cause of this rejection and acceptance: but we know now that it was _faith_ in the one and a _want of faith_ in the other, in which the distinction lay; and also that somehow this difference was exhibited in the gifts which they brought: “God” (of Abel) “testifying of his gifts.” By this, too, St. Paul tells us, “He being dead still speaketh;” a statement which brings the whole matter home to ourselves. The narrative then is this: “And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: but unto Cain and to his offering He had not respect.” {28}