Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

Now when this is said, it is sometimes asked, "If all this be so, if the Jewish Law is dead, how could it ever have been alive? If the Law ever had power, it must have been a power from God, and if from God it must abide. Either it is not from God, or it could not come to an end. Either it never lived, or it never died. How can the appointments of the Law be what St. Paul calls them in the text, 'weak and beggarly elements,' or 'rudiments of the world,' or 'dead ordinances,' if they were divine? and that they were divine the New Testament as well as the Old assures us."

This is a question which I shall now attempt to answer.

The case then seems to be as follows:-Almighty God, in what He has graciously done for man from the beginning, has not acted against the appointments of this world, but through them. He has made those things, which in themselves were weak and unprofitable, good by His blessing; but when He withdrew His blessing, they were weak again. The Jewish polity was an element of earth, made divine by His presence, and while His presence lasted; when He withdrew it, it was again earthly, as it had been at first. Let me explain myself.

I mean this: When God would raise up a people to be a witness of His name, He did not send on earth a race of Angels, He did not frame a polity such as man had never seen, but He took a polity of earth, and breathed His Spirit into it, that it became a living soul. Of course the Jewish government and nation were in many respects peculiar and unlike the nations around them; but they were peculiar much more

[S. D.]

H

in the object aimed at, viz. the worship of the true God, than in the means of promoting it. Unbelievers have been very eager before now to make out that many parts, if not the whole, of the law and customs of Moses are to be found in other nations. Thus, for instance, the rite of circumcision, which God gave to Abraham, is found to have existed among the Egyptians and elsewhere. And this holds good of a great number of the Jewish rites and usages. Accordingly, unbelievers have said with scorn, "This, then, after all, is your singular people; this is what their claim to a divine origin ends in! No part of Judaism is original; it is taken from the Egyptians and their other neighbours: it is not divine." And they have gone on to consider the Jews and to place their history in a mere secular light, and with a good deal of success. They have shown that the nation had its rise and fall like other nations, that the same political principles were in operation, the same events occurred. They have treated of the rise of the monarchy as a natural result of existing causes; and of the revolt of the tribes under Jeroboam, as a natural and justifiable revolution. They have spoken of the wealth of the Jews, and of their trade, and of their wars, and of their agriculture, all in the same worldly way, philosophically, as they have called it, and with no little disdain and superciliousness.

But in all this they have missed what was the real peculiarity of Judaism. Certainly it was, for the most part, moulded on the model to which other Eastern nations were conformed; but it differed from them in this, that, however much it was the same outwardly, there was a different principle within it. An invisible

Divine Agency was at work there, giving it an object distinct from all other polities, and drawing it up towards God. It had an external aspect, and an inward. To men of the world it looked like a polity of this world; but to the pure in heart, and to them whose eyes were opened, it would seem to be, what it really was, a minister of God. To men like Saul and Ahab it was but an earthly kingdom. Probably they saw no kind of difference, they were not sensible of any difference, between the Temple at Jerusalem, and the heathen temple at Gaza or Ascalon, or the house of Rimmon, or of Ashtaroth, the goddess of the Sidonians, except that the latter might please their taste better; as the altar at Damascus approved itself to King Ahaz. They were not aware of any thing in the Holy Land which was not in Syria or Philistia. Miracles were not so common as we are apt to suppose. They looked at Jerusalem, and its priests, and its temple, and its ceremonies, very much as worldly men regard the Church Catholic in this day, as a mere establishment.

Further, such being God's pleasure, the Jewish polity being, like other polities, and in itself, and apart from His presence, but an element of the world, would have a beginning and an end, a rise and a fall. All powers have come to an end, and so did the Jewish; I mean, from the natural progress of events. This is a circumstance which especially deceives the unbeliever. He thinks he sees in its mutability and mortality a mark that the Jewish nation was but like other nations, and that God did not reveal Himself in and through the Jews. He sees that natural causes did work a beginning

and an end to the nation; and having what he calls accounted for its history, he thinks he need do no more: whereas, in truth, laws of operation mark the presence, not the absence, of the Divine Hand, and though the outward form of Judaism was earthly, God had secretly inspired it and used it for His purposes.

The case is the same with Christianity also. Unbelievers have been busy in assigning human causes for its rise, such as the discipline of the Church, or the doctrine of a future life; and some of its defenders have been as eager to show that these cannot be assigned. It seems, however, to matter little whether we determine the question this way or that; or, rather, it is more likely beforehand that human causes did effect, as we familiarly use the word "effect," what is imputed to them. Unbelievers of this day, who profess to be philosophical, speak of Christianity as a wonderful fact indeed in the history of the world, but still as being human. Now we need not deny that in one sense it is human; that is, as far as it is viewed externally. It is a divine treasure, but in earthly vessels. Its history is that of a certain principle of universal empire, repressed and thwarted by circumstances; its conquests, indeed, were achieved by moral instruments, "weapons not carnal," as St. Paul speaks, but still they were conquests; and it may be compared to empires of this world, to the conquests of Nebuchadnezzar, or of the Romans, made with the sword; or, again, it may be spoken of as a philosophy, and compared to the philosophies of men. But if it be an empire, if it be a philosophy, as it had its rise, it will have its fall. This is what unbelievers prophesy. They look out

calmly and confidently for the fall of Christianity at length, because it rose. Since they read of its beginning, they look for its end; since the world preceded it, they think the world will outlive it. Well, and were not Scripture pledged that it should continue to the end, when Christ shall come, I see nothing to startle us, though it were to fall, and other religions to succeed it. God works by human means. As He employs individual men, and inspires them, and yet they die; so, doubtless, He might employ a body or society of men, which at length, after its course of two thousand years, might come to an end. It might be withdrawn, as other gifts of God are withdrawn, when abused. Doubtless Christianity might be such; it might be destined to expire, just as an individual man expires. Nay, it may actually be destined so to expire; it may be destined to age, to decay, and at length to die ;-but we know that when it dies, at least the world will die with it. The world's duration is measured by it. If the Church dies, the world's time is run. The world shall never exult over the Church. If the Church falls sick, the world shall utter a wail for its own sake; for, like Samson, the Church will bury all with it. But still, so it may be in very truth, that the Christian Church may come to an end, may well come to an end, as the Jewish Church did; that is, so far as it is mortal, so far as its members. are mortal.

This peculiarity of God's Providence which has now been noticed, is almost seen in the creation of man himself. Man was made rational, after he was made corporeal.

"The Lord God formed man of the dust of the

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »