HEBREWS II. 6—8.
But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is Man, that thou art mindful of him? or the Son of Man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.
The first words of this Epistle contain, as I have said already, the key to the whole of it. “God spake to our fathers;” this is the announcement of the principle upon which the history and life of the Jew rested. All that was earnest or brave in his acts or words came from the conviction: “We are the Lord’s servants; He has actually made himself known to us; He has actually chosen us to be his people. He is actually reigning over us.” Every thing that was cowardly, sensual, idolatrous, in him arose from a want—secret or acknowledged—of this conviction; from forgetfulness of the Covenant; from the feeling, “After all, the law did not come forth from any unseen Being; the human prophet did not utter the Word of the Lord.” Resort to what explanation of the Old Testament scriptures we will; imagine as many interpolations in them as we please, we cannot construct them upon any basis but this. The moment we attempt it, the records become a collection of incoherent fragments. It does not require learning and ingenuity to prove that they do not form a whole; they cannot form one; that which gave them their unity and their relation to each other, is gone. The Jews were not a nation unless the Divine Covenant was a reality, and not a fiction; they have no history if the books which pretend to contain it are a record of certain limited speculations about God, not of that which He spoke to man.
God hath spoken to us by a Son. This is the announcement of the fact which the New Testament unfolds. Put any other fact in the place of this: say that the books of the New Testament are setting forth an idea, and not a fact; say that they are occupied about a great many subjects, and not with this one,—with others only as they bear upon this one—and it requires no great learning and argument to prove them a collection of incoherent fragments; they can be nothing else: you have taken away the bond which holds them together; of necessity they fall to pieces. Try to re-construct them upon some other ground, and you will soon discover what a hopeless, unintelligible mass of materials you have to deal with—materials which, by no possible processes of elimination or re-formation, you can bring into any reasonable order.
But the object of the writer of this Epistle is not only to set forth that which is assumed in the idea of a revelation, and that which was characteristic of the later revelation; he wishes to show that the later was implied in the earlier; that the prophetical speech was a riddle until it was explained by the speech in a Son; that only those who acknowledged such a speech as the one adequate Divine utterance, could understand their own oracles. That he may establish this point, he refers to a variety of passages from the Old Testament. To understand the use he makes of these passages is the only real difficulty in the interpretation of the Epistle: he who evades it must cast the whole aside as unintelligible; he who overcomes it will find, I think, clearness and brightness where he had found most obscurity.
There are some quotations in the first chapter of the Epistle—very important for the elucidation of the subject, and for the removal of a practical error—about which there is no perplexity. They refer to angels. These, the writer says, are always spoken of in the Jewish scriptures as mere servants, ministering spirits. No divinity is assigned to them; they are sent forth upon errands of mercy; they are represented as doing works for man, not as claiming to be his masters or to mediate between him and his Creator. That idea of mediation may indeed be traced through the Old Testament: not, however, in its allusions to angels, but in its language respecting one of whom it is written: “Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee.”
Here the difficulty, of which I spoke, begins; one which has greatly exercised simple readers of the book, and theological students still more. The passages which follow seem to be connected with certain events which were occurring at the times in which they were written, events in which the individual speaker, or the nation generally, was deeply interested. Are we to suppose they did not refer to those events? Or had they a double sense, like a heathen oracle? Or was a later writer permitted to put such a sense upon them, it not being originally in them? Every commentator has felt that he must meet these questions. The actual answers have been chiefly three.
Some assume that a New Testament writer could in virtue of his commission and inspiration, pronounce such and such a meaning to be the true one; we are bound to receive his interpretation, however much it may differ from the one we should naturally have given.
Another class of interpreters say: No doubt we ought to accept the dictum of an inspired writer. But ought we from one so gifted, merely to expect a certain exposition of a few specific passages; should not we rather receive him as a guide to the right principles of interpretation. May we not suppose that the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is putting his sanction upon the use of allegory; is stamping it as the true divine method of construing the Old Scriptures, and so is tacitly, and by anticipation, confirming the application of it by later doctors?
“Would it not be more correct to say, cry the teachers of an opposite and bolder school, that the writer of the Epistle had learned the allegorical system of the Alexandrian Jews; that partly because it accorded with his own feeling, partly as an argumentum ad hominem for those whom he was addressing, he adopted it readily; that by doing so he promoted the formation of a very perverse and perplexing system in the Church; that in spite of his authority, we must return to a fair and legitimate consideration of the original text—from which his translations sometimes depart widely—and must give it the most literal meaning we can.”
Perfectly agreeing with the first school, that the interpretations in this Epistle are those which we may adopt most safely in reading the Old Testament, I am equally disposed to think with the second, that it is not like a Divine instructor, not even like a great human instructor, merely to give us specimens of a method of unravelling that which is important and sacred, without initiating us, in some degree, into the method itself; and I am thoroughly at one with the last, in the conviction that reverence for Scripture should bind us to seek for an exact meaning of the passages quoted; which meaning can only be ascertained by considering the occasions which called them forth, and their historical contexts. But as I am at issue with the first in their opinion, that it is safe at any time to contemplate Scripture merely as a set of words; so am I with the other two in the belief which is common to them, that the writer of this Epistle has ever resorted to allegories, or has, in a single instance, overlooked the circumstances under which the words which he adopts were uttered, and the meaning they must have suggested to him who first heard or spoke them.
There is a certain ambiguity in our use of the adjective “literal.” We sometimes take it as a synonyme for “exact;” sometimes as the opposite of “spiritual” or “internal.” In the latter sense we describe by it that kind of result which is obtained by merely looking at words and syllables—a result of which we may pronounce at once that it is almost worthless; for no man who merely spells out a sentence, without considering who spoke it, to whom it was spoken, when and where it was spoken, will find what it means, scarcely that it means any thing. The most exact interpreter is one who takes most heed of every thing which illustrates the book or sentence he is considering; which raises it from a dead utterance to a living one. Exactness of this kind I hope to show presently may be predicated of all the references in this Epistle; the absence of every thing allegorical in it must be ascertained by another test. Let the reader calmly compare it with any of the books, Jewish or Christian, which are confessedly allegorical, and I shall be very much surprised if he is not struck with something more than a difference—with a direct opposition between them. I will give two instances, merely as hints; they might be multiplied indefinitely. The writer of the Epistle, in alluding to the Temple-worship, mentions the cherubim and the mercy-seat. Of these, he says, we cannot now speak particularly. Could any allegorist have resisted the temptation to speak most particularly on these subjects? Would not every circumstance of their form and position have furnished the text for endless analogies and spiritual applications? The writer of the Epistle spends a whole chapter upon the faith of the elders of the Jewish nation. That faith is illustrated by their common acts, their ordinary daily history. Abraham lives in tents, and waits for a son; is ready to offer him up. Moses is hid three months by his parents; refuses to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Could an allegorist have endured such vulgar events as these; would he not have dwelt on the significance of the names of the patriarchs; would not each act of their lives have been treated as remarkable because it was the type of something Divine or something future? And generally it may be affirmed that this writer, instead of seeking for shadows, is impatient of them—he is always desirous to translate them into something practical and substantial. While the allegorist avoids nothing so much as history, treats institutions as earthly secular things, the writer of the Epistle shows, as it seems to me, that the history and institutions of the land were the very instruments through which the Divine revelation was made to his countrymen, and by which their minds were awakened to receive it. The passages which he quotes were all connected with different portions of the Jewish constitution, all familiar to the Palestine Jews in that connection. So far from suppressing this fact, it is his great desire that they should take notice of it. His whole art, if art it may be called, seems devised for the purpose of impressing this conviction more deeply upon them. Sometimes he dwells on a significant word, sometimes he neglects words—not quoting or translating with strict accuracy—if, by a deviation from the letter which would be instantly recognized, he could bring the subject of it more vividly before them, and show them that not in the words themselves, so much as in the fact or institution of which they spoke, lay the principle which he is setting forth. By such means, I conceive, he most effectually counteracted what was mischievous in his countrymen’s reverence for institutions, while he justified it and placed it upon its right ground. For he showed how that which they were disposed to worship for its own sake had been a method of Divine education to bring out the great idea of a Son; the idea which was realized and fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The steps of this Divine education mark, it seems to me, the pauses and stages in the Epistle; if we trace them through it, we shall appreciate more fully its worth as an exposition of Scripture and of history.
I. I think it is evident that the passages quoted in the first chapter refer to the office of the Jewish King. With one exception, they are all taken from the Book of Psalms. But that exception is a very significant one. It is: “I will be to Him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son.” These words occur in the 7th chapter of the Second Book of Samuel. We are told there that David, after he had overcome his different enemies, designed to build a Temple to God. A prophet informs him that his purpose is approved, but that it shall not be accomplished in his reign: “When thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels. He shall build an house for my name, and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom for ever, I will be his Father, and he shall be my son.” Every Hebrew would at once turn to this passage as to the title-deed of the Jewish kingdom, the formal enunciation of the principle upon which it stood. The words affirmed directly that God had set it up; that the visible king held of the Invisible,—was a witness of His power and presence. They declared that the house of David, the family reigning from generation to generation, denoted the permanence of the Divine rule, and the permanence of the nation in Him. So much all would have confessed. The object of the writer is to show that more was contained in this document than the mere establishment of a human kingdom by an act of Divine will. When He who established it said, “I will be to him a Father,” he signified that there was an actual relation between Himself and the human monarch, yea between Himself and the nation and all its members. This was the mystery which had been felt by every true Jewish king to be the basis of his power; to be that which made it real power; to be that which separated it from arbitrary power: losing this faith, he became a self-willed tyrant. Yet it was a mystery, and one which it might require ages to unfold.
That a Greek should look up to one who as he believed dwelt on a high Thessalian hill, in the midst of a council of warriors, like his own chiefs, and should say, “Father of gods and men,” was nothing strange. That a Hebrew king should dare for a moment to use such language, to indulge such a thought, respecting the I Am: Him whom no man had seen or could see, Who dwelt in thick darkness, from Whom the Law had come forth amidst lightnings and thunderings, this was wonderful. Was it that the awe of Jehovah had grown less since the days of Moses? No; surely we can find no deeper expression of it than in the songs of the shepherd-king, in Solomon’s consecration prayer. As the sense of nearness to the Divine Majesty became more realized, it seemed that its awfulness was more realized also. How this could be, must be learnt from the experience of those who lived under this kingdom; and to them the Epistle next refers. The quotations from the Psalms seem purposely taken from different parts of the history, that we may see in what opposite circumstances, through what conflicts with foes, individual and national, the idea was developed in the minds of holy Israelites, of One to whom the words, “I will be his Father, and he shall be my Son,” might be strictly spoken, and in whom they must be spoken to the visible King.
The second Psalm speaks of a time when Jewish and Heathen foes were both rebelling against the anointed king. The holy man, whether he were the king himself or some other, is sure they will be confounded because there is a king seated not in the royal palace, but on the hill of Zion, where the Invisible Presence dwelt, to whom the Lord is saying, “Thou art my Son.” The writer of the 97th was probably surrounded, in Samaria, or in Phœnicia, by worshippers of heroes and demigods, who taunted him with atheism, and it may be awakened doubts in his own mind whether homage to an unseen being could be real. The thought, “The Lord reigneth,”—He is the true King,—comes to his relief; but it expands into another, without which it would be insufficient—the assurance that the King would raise up a true image of himself to put down all false images; that there was One to whom he was even then saying, “Worship him, all ye angels,” heroes, gods, whatever ye be. The singer of the 45th Psalm, living in some time of festivity, celebrating a royal bridal, has the vision of a higher king, one perfectly loving righteousness and hating iniquity, the true bridegroom of the nation and of humanity. The writer of the 102nd, “sitting like a pelican in the wilderness, like an owl in the desert,” “reviled by his enemies all the day,” is sustained by the belief of a king who would reign over his own people and over the heathen, because “the earth was His; He had of old laid the foundation of it, and the heavens were the work of His hand; they might perish, but He would endure.” Finally, the writer of the 110th Psalm who probably saw no external signs of royalty, but who lived when a priest was fulfilling the office of the civil ruler, perceives that the perfect King must unite the priestly and kingly functions, and that to such a one the Lord is saying, “Sit thou upon my right hand till I make thy foes thy footstool.”
These were, of course, passages upon which a Hebrew would delight to dwell, as indicating the glory of his nation, the special privileges which belonged to it and were in reserve for it. But was this all that they actually—all that the holy men of past times felt that they denoted? Surely not. David had asked, in those words which I have taken for my text, and which throw the clearest light upon all around them, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honor, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet.” He was led to feel not only the greatness of himself, or an Israelite, but the greatness of man through this revelation of a Divine King.
The elevation of the Jew could not be meant to degrade the human race to which he belonged; must be meant to raise it, to bear witness of the state for which God had created it. The first records of Jewish history had declared that all creatures were put under man, that he was made the king of the world, and in the image of God. As yet the words seemed to be but poorly realized: the ruler seemed to be the slave of the servant; the homage of the creatures to man was often exchanged for his homage to them; one death claimed dominion over them both. Still the feeling lay deep in all human hearts, that dominion over the earth, intercourse with heaven were intended for them; still they had wrestled with Death as if it were a strange intruder, an unlawful usurper. The vision then of one in whom not the Jewish nation only, but humanity, had its true head and representative, must be realized. And did not the Hebrew Christians believe there was one who had exercised kingship here on earth over all material things, had proved the great tyrant to be an intruder and had overcome him? Though they saw not yet all things put under man, did they not see Jesus, who for the suffering of death was made a little lower than the angels, crowned with glory and honor?
II. The Jewish king especially embodied the idea of dignity, glory and superiority. These qualities were, no doubt, often exhibited in deepest weakness; they involved condescension to the meanest; the history of David showed that the anointed ruler might be the fugitive and outlaw. Still these were not the first recollections which would present themselves to any one considering the office, nor did the writer of the Epistle desire they should. The tendency of those whom he addressed was to lower the dignity of man; to make him the servant of angels. This tendency they exhibited even when they spoke truly and nobly of Christ as the poor man; for they meant by those words that He was nothing else, that He had no royalty.
But there was an order of men who brought this character directly before the mind of the Jews. The prophet or holy man was indeed the reprover of kings; he interpreted the nature of the office; he showed how it must be fulfilled; but he was himself the suffering Israelite. To this part of the economy the next quotations in the Epistle evidently relate; they touch upon the person of the new prophet—upon his individual feelings, and the witness which he bore, by his life rather than by his words. They show how he whose inspiration most raised him above other men, became, in virtue of that inspiration, more completely their brother, even in the depth of their sorrow; how it obliged him to greater trust, to more entire dependence than other men; how, instead of lifting him above human relations, it turned those relations into means through which he himself apprehended, and enabled others to apprehend, the divine relation. There is a strange ambiguity in the words which the writer of the Epistle wishes us to take notice of. It could only be removed when it was clearly shown, how he that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one nation. As the idea of a king could only be realized in one who showed that he had dominion over nature and over man; so the idea of a prophet could only be realized in one who showed that he had entire fellowship with the lowest estate of men, in one who because the children were partakers of flesh and blood, himself took part of the same; who, because they were all their lives long subject to the fear of death, himself entered into and overcame it.
III. In each of these offices, that of the King and that of the Prophet, there had been evident signs of incompleteness—a witness of something mightier behind, which would be revealed: And each seemed obviously to require the other; the meaning of neither could be fulfilled till they were united. But was there this incompleteness in the character of Moses, their first legislator? Was not the practical authority of the Divine King marvellously united in him with that of the suffering Prophet? Had not the awful Name been spoken to him out of the bush? Had he not been forty days and nights in the Mount, in communion with the Lord God of Israel? Yet had he not also been the guide of the people through the desert, bearing their burdens and sins, feeling with them, interceding for them? There must have been a thought of this kind in the mind of every Jew; and these Christian Jews who were disposed to look upon their Master as the great reviver and restorer of the Jewish law and polity would be tempted to it as much as any. If the writer had followed a chronological order he would have met this difficulty first. But he could not have met it effectually if he had not shown beforehand what was implied in their later history, in the covenant with David, in the teaching of him and the holy men who followed him. He had gathered from them that a Son of God had been promised to the Jewish nation, and that its greatness could not be realized except in such a person. Now, admitting all the glory which was ascribed to Moses, it was certain that he had never claimed this honor—that he had expressly disclaimed it. He had proved himself a faithful servant—the servant in a great house or family which God was raising up. If there were such a Divine family, it must have a ruler as well as a servant. The acts and words and office of Moses, too, must have been a prophecy; a Son of God must have been implied in them, who should fully realize the idea of one admitted into the Divine converse, and sharing human griefs. The legislator must be a witness of things to be spoken hereafter. Did not the journeyings of the Israelites through the wilderness, as they were felt then, and interpreted afterwards, betoken an imperfection? Their state was one of progress and transition. They were on their way to a place of rest—a rest to which Moses was not allowed to bring them. All the way this promise was set before them; they were to trust that it would be fulfilled,—their distrust was the cause that they, and even that their leader, died without seeing the land.
IV. Into that land, however, Joshua led them. Was not this then the accomplishment of the promise? This question leads the writer of the Epistle to notice another Jewish institution one which had been pronounced holy by Moses, but in such language as showed it to have been possessed from an earlier time,—one which had mightily affected the life of every Jew, and which he still preserved with almost idolatrous reverence. The sabbath day had been expressly connected with the hope of a rest in Canaan. But the keeping of it had been enjoined in other and solemner words, which connected it with the Rest of God. The twofold idea of God resting in the beholding of that which he had made, and of man resting in the beholding of God, had been embodied in it. And all through the writings of holy men (one or two passages might serve as an index to hundreds), we trace the sense of a higher rest, not attained by the conquest of Canaan,—of a day implied in that sabbath-day,—of something in its meaning not yet accomplished, though the works had been finished from the foundation of the world. No Jew, the writer contends, could understand the Scriptures, could expect the fulfilment of the promise made to the Fathers, who was not looking for such a rest: he must be repeating the sin of his forefathers—the very sin for which they had fallen in the wilderness, the sin of resting in the present and the visible, of not confessing their relation to an unseen Lord, and looking to have all the darkness which hung over that relation removed. Nothing but the acknowledgment of One in whom God could rest and man could rest—in whom the fellowship between heaven and earth was fully realized—could satisfy the meaning of the sabbath-day, or those hopes it had awakened in the hearts which truly profited by it.
V. And such a one he goes on to say must be a priest, the High Priest of the Universe. This office was naturally more prominent in the eyes of a Hebrew Christian of this time than any other. It might be much degraded in its present possessors, but it was that which Aaron had fulfilled; they had the law which ordained it; they had all the intervening history of its preservation and restoration. This subject henceforth becomes the leading one of the Epistle. The course of the argument may be shortly traced. First, the writer considers what a Priest must be. He is appointed for man in things that pertain to God; he must therefore share the feelings and wants of men, and there must be clear evidence that he does not take the office himself, but is called to it by God. So much the Jew would at once concede, and he would say, “Our priest satisfies both conditions. He is one of our nation; he belongs to us and feels with us, yet he is one of a tribe openly designated by the words of the Law, to this express service.” True, says the writer of the Epistle, but does this legal designation of a Priest satisfy the idea of the High Priest which your holy men, brought up under the Law, themselves had? The 110th Psalm speaks of a Priest after the order of Melchizedek—speaks of such an order as the highest conceivable. What kind of order was this? Your early records tell you that Abraham, returning from the slaughter of the kings, found a priest already dwelling in that which was afterwards the holy city. His name denotes him to have been a king. Nothing is said of his father or mother, or of the nation to which he belonged; yet Abraham, the father of your nation, the ancestor of the Levitical tribe, recognizes his right to the office which he holds, and performs an act of homage to him. And the Psalmist thinks of this kind of priesthood, resting on no formal enactment, denoted by no tribe or national distinction, as the highest of all. He evidently supposes that a priest may be—that the highest Priest must be—called to his office in some more direct, absolute way than by an outward Law, however solemnly proclaimed. And does not the writer of the Psalm himself intimate what the designation of such a priest must be? The oath—“Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee;”—must lie at the root of such an appointment: only a filial priest can satisfy the idea of a priest. Only one who, like Melchizedek, is both king and priest,—only one who is manifested by some tokens to be a Son of God,—can really satisfy the first condition of a perfect Mediator. He goes on to say, that only such a person can satisfy the second condition—that the sinfulness of the priest was itself a hinderance, the great hinderance, to that entire fellowship and sympathy with a sinful creature, which is implied in the idea. Only One, holy, harmless, separate from sinners, could really be so touched with the feeling of their infirmities, as to be the needful Intercessor for them. Only One who has been on earth, and suffered death, and passed into the heavens; only One who is now at the right hand of God, could have that permanent priesthood, which the legal succession in the family of Aaron had indicated. Only One who had actually gone out of the visible world into the presence of the unseen God, could lead men into it.
VI. The idea of a constitution anterior to all formal enactments, grounded, as we might say, in the nature of things, or, as it is here expressed more devoutly and accurately, on the “oath of God,” has been distinctly brought before us in these remarks upon the priesthood and upon Melchizedek; it has evidently been assumed throughout the letter. Upon it the writer proceeds to ground another doctrine. Christ, he says, being ascended on high, has become the Mediator of a New Covenant. Now the Jew’s Covenant was of all things the most sacred in his eyes. He might reluctantly acknowledge that the coming of Christ had made it more comprehensive, that the Gentile had been admitted into some of the privileges of it. But it was made expressly to his fathers and to him; the highest gift he could claim was the fulfilment of it. No conviction could be sounder—his teacher would by all means strengthen him in it. But what fulfilment was he looking for? The priesthood was felt to require something deeper than a mere ordinance or appointment. The Covenant, too, must rest on something deeper. Their prophet Jeremiah had felt that it must. He had spoken of a New Covenant to be made in the latter days—of which this should be the tenor: “I will write my laws in their hearts, and in their minds will I write them.” The prophet had evidently seen that the Covenant, too, was based upon something older than the mere choice of a particular family or nation. It must be referred to that constitution in the Son of God, which exalted not a nation only, but mankind. It, too, could only be fulfilled, according to the prophet’s anticipation, by the ascension of a Man to the right hand of God; by the gift of the filial Spirit, who should indeed write the Law in the heart of the worshipper—who should change it from the law of a carnal commandment into the power of an endless life.
VII. Having established the twofold assertion, that Man was brought into the presence of God by the ascension of Christ, and that he was treated as a spiritual being, to be ruled and guided by God’s Spirit, he proceeds to consider the divine Worship. The ark which had gone along with the Jews through the desert, the temple which was raised on mount Zion, had testified to them from generation to generation, that the Lord was in the midst of them. Their disbelief of it had been their greatest sin, the ground of all other sins. And yet this Temple had itself borne witness that there was something hidden from the view of the worshipper. There had been a veil over the mercy-seat. They had been reminded by those very figures which they prized so much, that into the pure and perfect presence of Him whom they served they were not yet admitted. Yet surely every thing in their Covenant and their discipline had been teaching them to be satisfied with nothing less than this. Every thing had been meant to draw away their minds from the visible to the invisible, from the shadowy to the real. If they had entered into the temple-worship—if they had really sought the Unseen Presence—they could not be content until the figures were exchanged for the reality; until they had the power of entering into that reality—of holding actual and awful communion with the living God.
VIII. But what was the Veil? Those other services, the purifications, told them what it was. There was something overshadowing the heart of the worshipper, which separated it from Him to whom it would draw nigh. It was the inner man that aspired to that fellowship with the unseen God. It was within, in himself, that he found the obstruction. All the appointed ceremonies for the purification of the flesh, reminded him of the fact, but could not change it. The Covenant told him that there was something from which he must be separated, in order that he might be united to God. The blood which was sprinkled on the book of the Covenant, upon the worshippers, and upon all the vessels of the temple, seemed to connect purification in some way with death. All this was a wonderful education, doubtless, for the mind and spirit of the man; but, like every other part of the Jewish discipline, it was leading him to perceive a relation between the Creator and himself, which must subsist in a living person, not in a thing—an animal; leading him to expect that that Person would in some manner show what sacrifice meant, what death meant, how that which seemed to divide every creature from the other, and to be the witness of his separation from God, could be the instrument and bond of his reconciliation.
IX. That the psalmists and prophets of the Jews learnt to feel that all purification was insufficient which did not reach the conscience, their solemn confessions and prayers abundantly prove. The 51st Psalm is only a specimen—though it may be the most remarkable—of the tone which pervades them all. But the mystery of Sacrifice itself, though connected with the purifications and with every other Jewish service, yet stood out distinctly as if it involved something deeper than all the rest; and it had revealed itself to them through still more fearful struggles and doubts, sometimes reaching to despair. The writer of the Epistle refers to the 40th Psalm, as illustrating the whole subject. He whose feelings are described there, seemed to himself to be sticking in deep mire where no ground was. There was a fathomless abyss within him which no ordinances of God, no provisions of his grace that he knew or could imagine, were able to close up. But he waited patiently for the Lord, and by degrees he saw implied in that Institution, which of itself availed him nothing, One who could offer the real, acceptable sacrifice; One who could say, “Lo! I come: in the volume of the book it is written of me, to do thy will, O God…Yea, thy law is within my heart.” This entire consent of the will to the divine will, he saw must be the ground of all sacrifice. Resistance to that divine, loving will, he saw had been the curse and misery of man—that which divided every one from his fellows. He who delighted to do it, who had the law in the heart, must be the Man. He must fulfil the idea of Man; and yet He must be the Son of God, in whom the very Being and Character of God would shine forth. All other notions of sacrifice, he saw, were either leading to this or else were false: this only could take away the sin of the world, its disobedience and selfishness. He who could offer it must be the reconciler of God and man; the living complete atonement between heaven and earth; He who by the Eternal Spirit offered Himself to God, could alone purge the conscience from dead works to serve the living God; could alone give that Spirit by which all creatures united in Him might offer themselves as sacrifices well pleasing to the Father.
Thus far we have traced the evolution of that great truth which, according to the writer of the Epistle, lies at the root of the new Economy through the different portions of the old. I would beseech you not hastily to exchange this view of the Jewish Scriptures for a more modern one. Oftentimes learned men seem to satisfy themselves with a phrase of this kind, “a Theocratic Idea lies,” they say, “at the basis of the Jewish commonwealth.” Now I am far from affirming that such an expression means nothing to those who use it. They should ask themselves seriously what it means,—should determine that they will not be the victims,—as so many in all ages have been—of their own generalizations. Still it may convey the kind of apprehension which they have upon this subject more correctly and honestly than a form of language which would seem to me more real and living. But I would earnestly remind you, that we do not by such paraphrases attain to any nearer conception of this writer’s meaning; that, on the contrary, we destroy it altogether. He thought that the living God had actually made Himself known to the Jewish people; that He was their King and Teacher; that their institutions were His institutions; that through them, and through every event of their history, He was educating them to the knowledge of Himself. This education he affirms was bearing towards one object. He would speak to men in the latter days by a Son; by One who had always been a Son; who was the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person; in whom He made the worlds. By what methods He unveiled this Son to the hearts and spirits of His servants, showing them that He was implied in every part of their polity; that their life, personal and social, was intelligible only in Him; that they could only attain their true stature as Israelites and as men, when they were permitted fully to behold themselves and to behold God in Him, we learn from those passages which I have here been considering. It seems to me that we cannot gain much by reducing these passages under the general formula, “They merely set forth the theocratic idea of a Jew;” but that by patiently considering them, we may know, a little better than we are wont to do, what that theocratic idea was. We may find that it was no notion of a Being sometimes interfering by strange acts in the administration of this world’s affairs; or of a sovereign determining of his mere pleasure that a certain nation should be better than all others; or of a lawgiver laying down arbitrary rules to be observed under certain terrible penalties, and the promise of certain rewards. These notions might arise very frequently in the minds of Jews; they had such a relation to the truths which they counterfeited, that it was easy to justify them by particular words and acts viewed apart from the whole sense and object of the revelation. But they were, under one form or other, precisely the notions which the prophets of old had rebuked; in opposition to which they had proclaimed the Lord God of righteousness, who, by a divine order, devised, directed by Himself, was leading His creatures away from the idols of sense which divided and brutalized them, into the knowledge of Him, the unseen and living Lord, the God of all the families of the earth, and thus into the free exercise of the capacities which that knowledge alone could satisfy, and of every other capacity which He had bestowed upon them for their good and His glory.