Part 17

With emphasis, not less earnest than that of Paul, does the Apostle John repudiate the notion of any _claim_ on the Divine admission by law or righteousness; and insist on humble and unqualified acceptance of God's free grace and remission for the past, as the sole avenue of entrance to the kingdom. This avenue was open, however, to all "who confessed that Jesus the Messiah had come in the flesh"; in other words, that, during his mortal life, Jesus had been indicated as this future Prince; and that his ministry was the Messiah's preliminary visit to that earth on which shortly he would reappear to reign. The great object of that visit was to prepare the world for his real coming; for as yet it was very unfit for so great a crisis; and especially to open, by his death, a way of admission for the Gentiles, and frame, on their behalf, an act of oblivion for the past. "If," says the Apostle to them, "we walk in the light, _as he is in the light_" (of love and heaven), "we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin": the Israelite will embrace the Gentiles in fraternal relations, knowing that the cross has removed their past unholiness. Nor let the Hebrew rely on anything now but the Divine forbearance; to appeal to rights will serve no longer: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Nor let any one despair of a reception, or even a restoration, because he has been an idolater and sinner: "Jesus Christ the righteous" is "an advocate with the Father" for admitting all who are willing to be his; "and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only (not merely for our small portion of Gentiles, already converted); but also for the _whole_ world," if they will but accept him. He died to become universal; to make all his own; to spread an oblivion, wide as the earth, over all that had embarrassed the relations to the Messiah, and made men aliens, instead of Sons of God. Yet did no spontaneous movement of their good affections solicit this change. It was "not that we (Gentiles) loved God; but that he loved us, and sent his Son, the propitiation for our sins"; "he sent his only-begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him." That this Epistle was addressed to Gentiles, and is therefore occupied with the same leading idea respecting the cross which pervades the writings of Paul, is rendered probable by its concluding words, which could hardly be appropriate to Jews: "Keep yourselves from idols." How little the Apostle associated any vicarious idea even with a form of phrase most constantly employed by modern theology to express it, is evident from the parallel which he draws, in the following words, between the death of our Lord and that of the Christian martyrs: "Hereby perceive we love, because _Christ_ laid down his life _for us_; and we ought to lay down our lives _for the brethren_."

Are, then, the _Gentiles alone_ beneficially affected by the death of Christ? and is no wider efficacy _ever_ assigned to it in Scripture? The great number of passages to which I have already applied this single interpretation will show that I consider it as comprising _the great leading idea_ of the Apostolic theology on this subject; nor do I think that there is (out of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which I shall soon notice) a single doctrinal allusion to the cross, from which this conception is wholly absent. At the same time, I am not prepared to maintain, that this is the _only_ view of the crucifixion and resurrection ever present to the mind of the Apostles. Jews themselves, they naturally inquired, how _Israel_, in particular, stood affected by the unanticipated death of its Messiah; in what way its relations were changed, when the offered Prince became the executed victim; and how far matters would have been different, if, as had been expected, the Anointed had assumed his rights and taken his power at once; and, instead of making his first advent a mere preliminary and warning visit "in the flesh," had set up the kingdom forthwith, and gathered with him his few followers to "reign on the earth." Had this--instead of submission to death, removal, and delay--been his adopted course, what would have become of his own nation, who had rejected him,--who must have been tried by that law which was their boast, and under which he came,--who had long been notorious offenders against its conditions, and now brought down its final curse by despising the claims of the accredited Messiah? They must have been utterly "cut off," and cast out among the "aliens from the commonwealth of Israel," "without Messiah," "without hope," "without God"; for while "circumcision profiteth, _if thou keep the law_; yet if thou be a _breaker of the law_, thy circumcision is made uncircumcision." Had he come _then_ "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe,"--had he then been "revealed with his mighty angels" (whom he might have summoned by "legions"),--it must have been "in flaming fire, taking vengeance on them that knew not God, nor obeyed the glad tidings of the Lord Jesus Christ"; to "punish with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of his power." The sins and prospects of Israel being thus terrible, and its rejection imminent (for Messiah was already in the midst of them), he withheld his hand; refused to precipitate their just fate; and said, "Let us give them time, and wait; I will go apart into the heavens, and peradventure they will repent; only they must receive me then spiritually, and by hearty faith, not by carnal right, admitting thus the willing Gentile with themselves." And so he prepared to die and retire; he did not permit them to be cut off, but was cut off himself instead; he restrained the curse of their own law from falling on them, and rather perished himself by a foul and accursed lot, which that same law pronounces to be the vilest and most polluted of deaths. Thus says St. Paul to the Jews: "He hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us; for it is written, 'Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.'"[18] In this way, but for the death of the Messiah, Israel too must have been lost; and by that event they received time for repentance, and a way for remission of sins; found a means of reconciliation still; saw their providence, which had been lowering for judgment, opening over them in propitiation once more; the just had died for the unjust, to bring them to God. What was this delay,--this suspension of judgment,--this opportunity of return and faith,--but an instance of "the long-suffering of God," with which "he endures the vessels of wrath (Jews) fitted to destruction, and makes known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory"? If Christ had not withdrawn awhile, if his power had been taken up at once, and wielded in stern and legal justice, a deluge of judgment must have overwhelmed the earth, and swept away both Jew and Gentile, leaving but a remnant safe. But in mercy was the mortal life of Jesus turned into a preluding message of notice and warning, like the tidings which Noah received of the flood; and as the growing frame of the ark gave signal to the world of the coming calamity, afforded an interval for repentance, and made the patriarch, as he built, a constant "preacher of righteousness"; so the increasing body of the Church, since the warning retreat of Christ to heaven, proclaims the approaching "day of the Lord," admonishes that "all should come to repentance," and fly betimes to that faith and baptism which Messiah's death and resurrection have left as an ark of safety. "Once, in the days of Noah, the long-suffering of God waited while the ark was preparing, wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water: a representation, this, of the way in which baptism (not, of course, carnal washing, but the engagement of a good conscience with God) saves us now, _by the resurrection of Jesus Christ_; who is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of God; angels, and authorities, and powers, being made subject to him." Yet "the time is short," and must be "redeemed"; "it is the last hour"; "the Lord," "the coming of the Lord," "the end of all things," are "at hand."

I have described _one_ aspect, which the death of the Messiah presented to _the Jews_; and, in this, we have found another primary conception, explanatory of the Scriptural language respecting the cross. Of the two relations in which this event appeared (the Gentile and the Israelitish), I believe the former to be by far the most familiar to the New Testament authors, and to furnish the true interpretation of almost all their phraseology on the subject. But, as my readers may have noticed, many passages receive illustration by reference to either notion; and some may have a meaning compounded of both. I must not pause to make any minute adjustment of these claims, on the part of the two interpreting ideas: it is enough that, either separately or in union, they have now been taken round the whole circle of apostolic language respecting the cross, and detected in every difficult passage the presence of sense and truth, and the absence of all hint of vicarious atonement.

It was on the _unbelieving_ portion of the Jewish people that the death of their Messiah conferred the national blessings and opportunities to which I have adverted. But to _the converts_ who had been received by him during his mortal life, and who would have been heirs of his glory, had he assumed it at once, it was less easy to point out any personal benefits from the cross. That the Christ had retired from this world was but a disappointing postponement of their hopes; that he had perished as a felon was shocking to their pride, and turned their ancient boast into a present scorn; that he had become spiritual and immortal made him no longer theirs "as concerning the flesh," and, by admitting Gentiles with themselves, set aside their favorite law. So offensive to them was this unexpected slight on the institutions of Moses, immemorially reverenced as the ordinances of God, that it became important to give some turn to the death of Jesus, by which that event might be harmonized with the national system, and be shown to _effect the abrogation of the law, on principles strictly legal_. This was the object of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews; who thus gives us a third idea of the relations of the cross,--bearing, indeed, an essential resemblance to St. Paul's Gentile view, but illustrated in a manner altogether different. No trace is to be observed here of Paul's noble glorying in the cross: so studiously is every allusion to the crucifixion avoided, till all the argumentative part of the Epistle has been completed, that a reader finds the conclusion already in sight, without having gained any notion of _the mode_ of the Lord's death, whether even it was natural or violent,--a literal human sacrifice, or a voluntary self-immolation. Its ignominy and its agonies are wholly unmentioned; and his mortal infirmities and sufferings are explained, not as the spontaneous adoptions of previous compassion in him, but as God's fitting discipline for rendering him "a merciful and faithful high-priest." They are referred to in the tone of apology, not of pride; as needing rather to be reconciled with his office, than to be boldly expounded as its grand essential. The object of the author clearly is, to find a place for the death of Jesus among the Messianic functions; and he persuades the Hebrew Christians that it is (not a satisfaction for moral guilt, but) a commutation for the Mosaic Law. In order to understand his argument, we must advert for a moment to the prejudices which it was designed to conciliate and correct.

It is not easy for us to realize the feelings with which the Israelite, in the yet palmy days of the Levitical worship, would hear of an abrogation of the Law;--the anger and contempt with which the mere bigot would repudiate the suggestion;--the terror with which the new convert would make trial of his freedom;--the blank and infidel feeling with which he would look round, and find himself drifted away from his anchorage of ceremony;--the sinking heart with which he would hear the reproaches of his countrymen against his apostasy. Every authoritative ritual draws towards itself an attachment too strong for reason and the sense of right; and transfers the feeling of obligation from realities to symbols. Among the Hebrews this effect was the more marked and the more pernicious, because their ceremonies were in many instances only remotely connected with any important truth or excellent end; they were separated by several removes from any spiritual utility. Rites were enacted to sustain other rites; institution lay beneath institution, through so many successive steps, that the crowning principle at the summit easily passed out of sight. To keep alive the grand truth of the Divine Unity, there was a gorgeous temple worship; to perform this worship there was a priesthood; to support the priesthood there were (among other sources of income) dues paid in the form of sacrifice; to provide against the non-payment of dues there were penalties; to prevent an injurious pressure of these penalties, there were exemptions, as in cases of sickness; and to put a check on trivial claims of exemption, it must be purchased by submission to a fee, under name of an atonement. Wherever such a system is received as divine, and based on the same authority with the great law of duty, it will always, by its definiteness and precision, attract attention from graver moral obligations. Its materiality renders it calculable: its account with the conscience can be exactly ascertained: as it has little obvious utility to men, it appears the more directly paid to God: it is regarded as the special means of pleasing him, of placating his anger, and purchasing his promises. Hence it may often happen, that the more the offences against the spirit of duty, the more are rites multiplied in propitiation; and the harvest of ceremonies and that of crimes ripen together.

At a state not far from this had the Jews arrived when Christianity was preached. Their moral sentiments were so far perverted, that they valued nothing in themselves, in comparison with their legal exactitude, and hated all beyond themselves for their want of this. They were eagerly expecting the Deliverer's kingdom, nursing up their ambition for his triumphs; curling the lip, as the lash of oppression fell upon them, in suppressed anticipation of vengeance; satiating a temper, at once fierce and servile, with dreams of Messiah's coming judgment, when the blood of the patriarchs should be the title of the world's nobles, and the everlasting reign should begin in Jerusalem. Why was the hour delayed? they impatiently asked themselves. Was it that they had offended Jehovah, and secretly sinned against some requirement of his law? And then they set themselves to a renewed precision, a more slavish punctiliousness than before. Ascribing their continued depression to their imperfect legal obedience, they strained their ceremonialism tighter than ever; and hoped to be soon justified from their past sins, and ready for the mighty prince and the latter days.

What, then, must have been the feeling of the Hebrew, when told that all his punctualities had been thrown away,--that, at the advent, faith in Jesus, not obedience to the law, was to be the title to admission,--and that the redeemed at that day would be, not the scrupulous Pharisee, whose dead works would be of no avail, but all who, with the heart, have worthily confessed the name of the Lord Jesus? What doctrine could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite? it dashed his pride of ancestry to the ground. It brought to the same level with himself the polluted Gentile,--whose presence would alone render all unclean in the Messiah's kingdom. It proved his past ritual anxieties to have been all wasted. It cast aside for the future the venerated law; left it in neglect to die; and made all the apparatus of Providence for its maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Was then the Messiah to supersede, and not to vindicate, the law? How different this from the picture which prophets had drawn of his golden age, when Jerusalem was to be the pride of the earth, and her temple the praise of nations, sought by the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with the splendor of their gifts! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a life without law? How think himself safe in a profession, which was without temple, without priest, without altar, without victim?

Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with reluctance two of the leading features of Christianity; the death of the Messiah, and the freedom from the law. The Epistle addressed to them was designed to soothe their uneasiness, and to show that, if the Mosaic institutions were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies contained within themselves. With great address, the writer links the two difficulties together, and makes the one explain the other. He finds a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to every Hebrew; for by representing the death of Jesus as a commutation for legal observances, he is only ascribing to it an operation acknowledged to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering at the altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition, on the part of the Levitical code, of a principle of _equivalents_ for its ordinances; a proof that, under certain conditions, they might yield: nothing more, therefore, was necessary, than to show that the death of Christ established those conditions. And such a method of argument was attended by this advantage, that, while the _practical end_ would be obtained of terminating all ceremonial observance, the law was yet treated as _in theory_ perpetual; not as ignominiously abrogated, but as legitimately commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his offering at the altar to compensate for ritual omissions, recognized thereby the claims of the law, while he obtained impunity for its neglect; so, if Providence could be shown to have provided a legal substitute for the system, its authority was acknowledged at the moment that its abolition was secured.

Let us advert, then, to the functions of the Mosaic sin-offerings, to which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They were of the nature of a _mulct or acknowledgment rendered for unconscious or inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities, and contraction of ceremonial uncleanness_. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various causes; and, while unremoved by the appointed methods of purification, disqualified from attendance at the sanctuary, and "cut off" "the guilty" "from among the congregation." To touch a dead body, to enter a tent where a corpse lay, rendered a person "unclean for seven days"; to come in contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave, to be next to any one struck with sudden death, to be afflicted with certain kinds of bodily disease and infirmity, unwittingly to lay a finger on a person unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an atonement. Independently of these offences, enforced upon the Israelite by the accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most cautious worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty debts which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If his offering had an invisible blemish; if he omitted a tithe, because "he wist it not"; or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day, with respect to a known liability; if absent from disease, he was compelled to let his ritual account accumulate; "though it be hidden from him," he must "be guilty, and bear his iniquity," and bring his victim. On the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a prescribed period, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her sin-offering, and "the priest made atonement for her." The poor leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his tedious quarantine brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence, clear from neglected obligations to his law. It was impossible, however, to provide by specific enactment for every case of ritual transgression and impurity, arising from inadvertence or necessity. Scarcely could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves would escape defilement, from imperfections in the offerings, or unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual "day of atonement" was appointed; the people thronged the avenues and approaches of the tabernacle; in their presence a kid was slain for their own transgressions, and for the high-priest the more dignified expiation of a heifer; charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first and holy chamber into the Holy of Holies (never entered else), he touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the Mercy-seat) and foreground of the Ark. At that moment, while he yet lingers behind the veil, the purification is complete; on no worshipper of Israel does any legal unholiness rest; and were it possible for the high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still protracting the expiatory act, so long would this national purity continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must return; the sanctifying rite must end; the people be dismissed; the priests resume the daily ministrations; the law open its stern account afresh; and in the mixture of national exactitude and neglects, defilements multiply again till the recurring anniversary lifts off the burden once more. Every year, then, the necessity comes round of "making atonement for the holy sanctuary," "for the tabernacle," "for the altar," "for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation." Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it went, had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny; for ceremonial sins, unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement was limited[19]), it was accepted as an indemnity; and put it beyond doubt that Mosaic obedience was commutable.