(Lincoln’s Inn, 3rd Sunday after Easter, May 7, 1854.)
‘Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot: who verily was fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you.’—1 St. Peter i. 18-20.
It is not my intention to dwell at present upon the first of these verses, though I should be very sorry if you did not remember how closely it is connected with the two last. How the death of Christ is the redemption of men, in the strictest and fullest sense of that word, I hope to consider in a future discourse. It is of Him as fore-ordained before the foundation of the world, that I desire, in all fear and reverence, to speak now. I believe the subject rises naturally and necessarily out of that on which I addressed you last Sunday.
The Scriptures of the Old Testament have led us, step by step, into a deeper apprehension of sacrifice. The humiliation of David, which showed him that he had nothing of his own to offer; that he must come empty-handed, broken-hearted, to receive of God that which ‘He alone could give, a right and true spirit’—this humiliation, while it seemed to undermine the legal doctrine of sacrifice, actually vindicated it, and placed it on its proper ground. The corrupt and heathenish notion of sacrifice, against which the law had been protesting, was uprooted by the principle to which David gave utterance in the fifty-first Psalm. Sacrifice was brought out in its fullest and most radical sense, as the giving up, not of something belonging to the man, but of the man himself. Till he made that oblation, he was in a wrong state. When it was made, he was in a restored state,—in the state in which God had intended him to be, a dependent creature, a trusting creature, capable of receiving his Maker’s image.
Although this experience was so personal in the case of David, although it must be personal in the case of every one who goes through it, I maintained that it was, for that very reason, human experience. David is taught that he is not better than other men; he is taught that his very sin has consisted in separating himself from other men, in claiming for himself the privilege of doing them an injury; he is taught that he must be on a level with them all before he can be what he ought to be himself. This is one of the paradoxes of life, one which we must all be made in some way to understand. No man has attained the true elevation of humanity till he feels that he is not above any human creature; no one can be really an individual till he has confessed that he is only one of a kind. But with this two-edged paradox, another still harder to take in was involved. If there could be one who never did lift up himself above his brethren, who never claimed to be anything but the member of a kind, must he not be the perfectly righteous man, and yet must he not be in sympathy and fellowship with all sinful men as no other ever was? Must he not have a feeling and experience of their sins which they have not themselves? Is it not involved in the very idea of such a being that he sacrifices himself?
David could not stop here; he had learnt that the sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; he had learnt that God does not only accept this sacrifice, but prepares it. The law had taught him, his shame and humiliation had taught him, that God is the Author of every true sacrifice; that it originates in His will, and therefore fulfils His will. Could it be otherwise in this, the highest case of all? If there ever were such a righteous man, if he ever did offer himself as a sacrifice, must not that sacrifice, in the strictest and most eminent sense, be the sacrifice of God? Must He not, in some wonderful way, prepare it, originate it, offer it?
We sound a great depth here; but it is a depth into which men were led not by speculation, but by misery and anguish, by the sense of sin which was in themselves, by the sense of a death which they shared with all their race. It was not in the schools, from any illuminated or initiated teachers, it was in their closets when they had to confess that all their illuminations and high conceits had failed, when they felt as if they had no standing-ground at all, when they were on the brink of despair, that these truths appeared to them as solid and eternal resting-places for themselves and for all. I say for all, because this was the very discovery that gave them comfort, and the only one which could. They were not only taught— If there is ‘such a righteous man, then he must and will offer such ’a sacrifice as this, and that sacrifice must be a sacrifice ’of God.’ But their hearts said also, God leading them to the conclusion, ‘Such an One there is, and such ’an One will be manifested. His existence is implied in ’all we are thinking, feeling, doing. Some day he will ’make it clear by a transcendent act, an act pregnant ’with the mightiest consequences to the world, that ’He is.’
Here, then, is the point at which the Old Testament teaching meets and falls into that of the New. The Church has always recognised it. The fortieth Psalm is quoted in the Epistle to the Hebrews as anticipating and expounding the New Testament idea of sacrifice; it has been incorporated into our Good Friday service for that reason. Although, therefore, I might trace the unfolding of the doctrine of sacrifice through the prophets, and show how diligently they were employed in protesting against the heathen abuse of the idea, in warning their countrymen against the appearances of that abuse amongst themselves, in pointing out the only counteraction of it; yet, as I have travelled over this ground before in sermons addressed to you, I shall assume that the hints which we have derived from so many parts of the Hebrew Scriptures fairly set forth the principle as it is revealed in them, and shall go on at once to consider how far the lessons of the apostles are in accordance with it.
No one can doubt that this passage of St. Peter is a capital and classical one upon the subject. It is continually referred to as a leading authority; the words, ‘Lamb without blemish and spot,’ point at once to the Passover, and to the memorable sentence of John the Baptist when he saw Jesus walk and spoke of Him to his two disciples. Even if the expression, ‘precious blood,’ was not introduced into the passage, the association with the Passover would at once prove that St. Peter was directing our thoughts to a sacrifice. The rest of the passage assures us that it is a sacrifice of God to which the apostle refers; he speaks of the Lamb being ‘verily fore-ordained before the foundation of the world.’
I must remind you that ‘fore-ordained’ is not the literal rendering of St. Peter’s phrase. Our translators, no doubt, supposed fore-known and fore-ordained to be equivalent expressions; they understood the logic of the predestinarian controversy; for that very reason they were less attentive to a philological distinction which we cannot afford to neglect; since conclusions have been founded on the one word, for which the other offers not the least justification. The text has been supposed to mean that, before Adam fell, a remedy was provided in the counsels of God for the consequences of that fall. It was fore-ordained that Christ, the Lamb of God, should yield Himself a sacrifice, that those who believed in Him might be delivered from the penalty of the original transgression.
You will all remember how beautifully this divine arrangement is expounded in the third book of Paradise Lost. I refer to that passage, not merely because you must be more familiar with it than with any more formal theological statement, but because, by so doing, I am exhibiting the popular theory to the greatest possible advantage. Milton represents the Father as full of love to His creatures, but as determined to assert the claims of justice and righteousness. Sin, once committed, must draw death and ruin after it. What doctrine more entirely commends itself to our conscience? What doctrine is written in clearer sunbeams on the pages of Scripture? And how much of that which follows is equally in accordance with the testimony that God has borne in His word and in the heart of man:
‘And now without redemption all mankind
Must have been lost, adjudged to death and hell
By doom severe, had not the Son of God,
In whom the fulness dwells of love divine,
His dearest mediation thus renew’d.
* * * *
Behold me then, mee for him, life for life
I offer; on me let thine anger fall;
Account me man; I for his sake will leave
Thy bosom, and this glory next to thee
Freely put off, and for him lastly die.
Well pleased on me let Death wreck all his rage.
Under his gloomy power I shall not long
Lie vanquish’d. Thou hast given me to possess
Life in myself for ever. By thee I live.
Though now to Death I yield, and am his due,
All that of me can die; yet that debt paid,
Thou wilt not leave me in the loathsome grave
His prey, nor suffer my unspotted soule
For ever with corruption there to dwell;
But I shall rise victorious, and subdue
My vanquisher, spoil’d of his vanted spoil.
* * * *
Then with the multitude of my Redeem’d
Shall enter Heaven long absent, and return,
Father, to see thy face, wherein no cloud
Of anger shall remain, but peace assured,
And reconcilement; wrath shall be no more
Thenceforth, but in Thy presence joy entire.’
This voluntary oblation made by the only-begotten Son, because ‘in Him the fulness dwells of love divine’ — and attracting the infinite complacency of Him whose image He was—what can so entirely correspond to that idea of sacrifice which we have traced in the older records? Must not this be the very root of all sacrifices, the consummation of all? Why, then, have the most ardent and affectionate admirers of Milton’s character and genius mourned over those parts of his poem which contain these colloquies of the Father with the Son? Why did he himself slide into Arianism, in his scientific divinity, though his poetry expressed such a feeling of the perfect unity of the Son with the Father? I apprehend that our dislike of those artificial arrangements which mingle so discordantly with the music of his song, grows in proportion to the awe and reverence with which we accept its inward meaning. I apprehend Arianism is inevitably involved in these arrangements, because they confound time with eternity, and because while we dwell on them we cannot feel, however much we may desire it, that the Mind which demands justice and denounces evil, is one with the Mind in which lives all mercy and forgiveness.
Is this theory, then, found in the words of St. Peter? I know that some neologians of our day will say instantly, ‘Of course it is. He was a mere vulgar Jew. ’If you ask whether it is in St. John, or in the Gospel ’which passed by his name, the answer might be dif- ’ferent.’ Such language is very peremptory. But surely it is not enough to make assertions without examining the documents upon which they profess to be founded. Look into this passage. See whether the theory of an arrangement made before the Fall, with reference to it and its consequences, is there, or whether we have put it there. See whether what is there does not correspond most exactly with what we find in the disciple who was St. Peter’s companion before and after the Resurrection; whether the correspondence does not add one link to the chain of evidence, which shows that he who has given the most simple and childlike record of our Lord’s acts and words was not a dry systematic theologian of the second century, who basely and blasphemously forged the name of the beloved disciple to endorse a lie.
There was one, St. Peter says, who was verily foreknown before the foundation of the world. What would such words seem to denote, but that there was one whom the Father of all knew, and who, in the fullest and most intimate sense, knew Him, before the earth or the lowest part of the dust of the world was formed? What is this but that which the Book of Proverbs had said already, when it spoke of Wisdom as one brought up with Him; His inmost counsellor? What is it but what was afterward gathered up in the wonderful sentence, The Word was with God and the Word was God. Without Him was not anything made that was made. The Book of Proverbs goes on to say, that His delights were with the sons of Men. St. John had said, In Him was Life and the Life was the Light of Men. It must then be all important that men should know Him, from whom their light comes, in whom their life dwells. But how could they know Him? How could they look into the Eternal secret? What apprehension could they have of that life which He had with the Father, that life which does not belong to time and its accidents, that life which can only be spoken of as eternal? St. Peter assumes that we could know nothing of it, that all our guesses about it must be wild guesses mere dreams derived from our own earthly associations and discoveries, if this life had not been manifested.
But the veil, he says, has been withdrawn which hid His divine nature, His relation to the Eternal Father, from us. And how has it been withdrawn? He has appeared in our world, in our nature; He has sacrificed Himself. In that sacrifice we see what He is—what He always has been. His acts here, plain and palpable, done among men, done for men, have shown forth that perfect filial obedience to the Creator of all things, that entire filial union with the Eternal Father, which is the ground of the universe and the ground of our humanity.
I think if we had no other words to guide us than those in the text, we should be forced to put this construction upon them. And then this fore-knowledge of which he speaks, instead of being a provision that is contingent upon human events and human will instead of being an anticipation, which every devout man shrinks from attributing to him to whom all things are naked and open, to whom past, present, and future are one—becomes the communion of will and purpose in the persons of the Godhead, our belief in which saves us from the necessity and the horror of ascribing self-will to the Author of all; and enables us to see how a perfectly loving will can only be uttered and shown forth by one who enters into it, and yields himself to it.
That this obedience should be the means of rectifying the disorders of the universe, of bringing back the state of things which self-will has broken and disturbed, of re-establishing the kingdom and righteousness of God, of renewing and subduing the hearts of human beings, this is what we should with wonder and trembling expect; this is what corresponds so blessedly, so perfectly, to the deepest prophecies in the spirit of mankind; this is the very Gospel which has brought light into the midst of our darkness, life into the midst of our death. But we must not change and invert God’s order to make it square with our condition; if we do, it will not meet the necessities of that condition. We must not start from the assumption of discord and derangement, however natural to creatures that are conscious of discord and derangement such a course may be; we must begin with harmony and peace, and so understand why they have been broken, how they have prevailed and shall prevail.
It is for this reason, I conceive, that the apostles, when they dwell so continually upon the effects of the divine and human sacrifice in taking away sin and utterly removing all the effects of it, yet lead us back to a ground of sacrifice in the divine nature; in that submission of the Son to the Father, that perfect unity of Purpose, Will, Substance, between them, whence the obedience and fellowship of all unfallen beings, the obedience and fellowship of all restored beings, must be derived, and by which they are sustained. Believing such a mystery of a Will commanding and a Will obeying, and of a Spirit uniting both, to lie beneath all the order of nature, all the actions of men; there comes forth from both the same testimony to the Creator and the Father.
The poet has boldly spoken of Duty as the lawgiver to which all nature bows, and from which all her grace and beauty proceeds:
‘Flowers laugh before thee in their beds,
And Fragrance in thy footing treads;
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong,
And the most ancient Heavens through thee are fresh and strong.’
And, doubtless, the more we studied the secrets of nature, and entered into her most intricate relations, the more we should be impressed with the sense of government and obedience—of a law which all things confess, and to which all yield unresisting homage. We should see that life and productiveness are the effects of even and regular submission; that tempests and whirlwinds, and whatever tumults break the monotony of the world, are themselves proofs that it is not under the sway of a dead law, but of a living one; of a Lawgiver who guides and controls its energies, and makes them serve still higher purposes of His will. And so we are led from the wonderful machinery and mysterious powers of the physical universe—the wheels within wheels which a living spirit guides, where there is such intricacy and such simplicity—to that moral world, all the elements of which appear to be continually clashing with each other, where disobedience and self-will have tried to make themselves the law. It is through this confusion that the light breaks in which illuminates the other world, and shows us the secret of its loveliness. Men are taught that the death which has come into the world is a sign and pledge that all their life is from God; they come with the dead animal to make that confession and yield themselves to Him. Men, seeing the punishment of a violent and disobedient world, confess by sacrifice that the earth can exist only by submission to a living and gracious Ruler. Heads of families find that sacrifice is the only bond which can keep fathers and children, husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, at one. God calls nations out of a chaos of turbulent, warring elements. They find that sacrifice must keep them from relapsing into endless war. Individuals discover that all right-doing has its ground in sacrifice, and they find, when they have offended, it is because they have chosen to break loose from the law of sacrifice. So it is proved that obedience and sacrifice are the very conditions of truth and righteousness, that they belong to man who is made in God’s likeness, because they are involved in the very character and being of God Himself.
This wonderful truth, so utterly contradictory to all the notions which men had formed to themselves of their Creator, when they had supposed Him to be a mere power, who might exercise capricious vengeance upon them, and whom they were to conciliate by their sacrifices;—and yet which was implied in those very sacrifices, and in every act of real obedience and devotion, by parent, friend, warrior, sage—in every act which had been acknowledged as truly acceptable to the gods—in every dream of gods who themselves deigned to be deliverers of men; this truth, I say, had been unfolding itself gradually to the seers and sufferers among the chosen people. The Bible is a history of the discovery. But surely St. Peter’s words are true to the letter. The manifestation of this perfect Son of God,—of this Lamb, in whom dwelt the very law of sacrifice, whose whole mind and heart were fashioned into conformity with it, who never swerved, or broke loose, from it—this manifestation was reserved for the latter days. Though men have stumbled, and do stumble, at the records of the life of Jesus of Nazareth; though they can find innumerable reasons for not accepting these records, and though the inconsistent unbelief of Christians has often justified their suspicion; yet there has been a witness, in the hearts of successive generations of poor, and sorrowing, and sinful people: ‘This is the history of a sacrifice—of a man who is ’making a sacrifice,—of a sacrifice of God.’ They may have been utterly unable to arrange these thoughts in their minds, to explain them according to a theory; and, therefore, they have been ready to accept any theory which has been made for them. But the moral conviction: ‘This is the Lamb of God; this is He in ’whom we see the very mind, and will, and purpose of ’Him who created us; this is the Lamb of God, in “whom we see the perfect surrender of a man to that ’will and mind of God’—this conviction, unable to put itself into words, has breathed itself out in the prayers and agonies of tens of thousands of men and women, on sick beds which no priest has visited, in lonely dungeons which no philanthropist has heard of. The heart and reason have affirmed in opposition to all the cavillings of unbelief, ‘He who perfectly sympathised ’with us in our evil, must be the man who is free ’from all evil; He who has entirely given up Himself “to death, must be the mighty God.’