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Entered according to Act of Parliament of Canada, In the year one thousand eight hundred and seventy-nine, by Robbrt J. Laidlaw, in the Office of tlie Minister of Agriculture. md the PREFACE. PREFACE. HILE pursuing a course of study in the com- parative history of religions, several years ago, my attention was called to the wide difference observable between certain heathen religions as prac- tised, and the doctrines of the sacred books on which those religions are based. This led to the inquiry, Is the same thing true of our religion— meaning by Our Religion, the religion based upon the Bible ? The more carefully this inquiry was pondered, the stronger became the conviction that the question was one deserving serious consideration ; and from that time to the present, the relation between Our Reli- PREFACE. gion as practised, and as revealed in Scripture, has been made the subject of special study, the con- densed results of which are contained in the follow- ing chapters. In the course of this study, the chief reliance for information — apart from Scripture — has been upon what is known as Evangelical literature, yet the ivrit- ings of those who are avowedly out of sympathy with orthodox views of the Bible and its teachings have not been overlooked ; and the help derived from the v\ = in the Koran ; Pai*seeism, that taught in the Zend-Avesta ; certain other Religions are based on certain other books : Our Religiori is that of the Bible. The Bible is not our only book which treats of religion ; thousands of religious books, as well as books of other kinds, have grown up around it. Those added books are not of equal authority with ^ v^ 20 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. it ohe Bible; they are not all in harmony with its teaching; yet they exert so considerable an influ ence upon the moulding of religious opinion as to suggest the inquiry : — Is our religion of to-day the religion of the Bible, or of the literature thjit has grown up around the Bible ? Everywhere, and in every age, there has been a tendency to drift away from the teaching of a sacred book. Unto the Jews were committed the oracles of God, and for these oracles they cherished the deepest reverence ; they kept them in the most sacred place ; they gave them into the keeping of their most learned men ; they transcribed them with the most rigid accuracy — counting every word, syl- lable and letter ; they had them expounded by their wisest theologians, the doctors of the law ; any vio- lation, or supposed violation, of their piecepts, was met with the severest punishment. Yet, at the very time the Jews thought they were worshipping God according to the strict letter of His word, Jesus declared that they were worshipping in vain, " teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.'*^ Something similar has . befallen certain heathen religions. Take Hinduism, for example. That re- AS (JUli liKLIGION THAT OF THE BIBLtJr 21 li^aon is a vast system of error ; it enjoins the wor- sliip of idols ; it teaches the doctrine of transmigra- tion of souls ; it demands the burning of widows with the dead bodies of their husbands ; it lends all the weight of its authority to the caste sys- tem of India. The Hindoos have a sacred book upon which their religion is based, and from which they profess to draw their religious life ; and for this ancient bible of theirs they have the pro- foundeat reverence. They always cpiote it as of Divine authority, and claim to be worshipping in ac- cordance with both its letter and spirit. Yet not one of these erroneous rites and dogmas, for which they contend so earnestly, is taught in that book. The original sacred book of the Hindoos — the Rig- Veda — is a pure book. It is not to be compared with our Bible, yet it is on the side of virtue and opposed to vice. It teaches that " God has established the eternal laws of right and wrong, that He punishes sin and rewards virtue, that He is just yet merciful and willing to forgive, u judge and yet a father." ^ The Rig- Veda, says Max-Miiller," knows of no idols." " There is no authority in the hymns of the Veda for the complicated system of caste ; " "no trace of HP^P^"W 22 OUn nEimiON ylN ir WAt^ AND AS IT IS. ill I metempsychosis, or that transmigration of souls from human to animal bodies, which is generally supposed to be a distinguishing feature of Indian re- ligion ; " " no law to sanction the blasphemous pre- tensions of a priesthood to divine honours, or the degradation of any human being to a state below the animal. There is no text to countenance laws which allow the marriage of children and prohibit the re-marriage of child-widows ; and the unhal- lowed rite of burning the widow with the corpse of her husband, is against both the spirit and the letter of the Veda."i This want of agreement between the Hinduism of the present day and the teaching of the book upon which that religion is based, is to be accounted for by the fact that the Hindoos have other religious books — almost countless — in some of which these doctrines are taught ; and without calling all these added books sacred in the same sense with the original Veda, they are drawing their religious life more from them than from that which they regard as their supremely authoritative sacred book. " The age of the poets who wrote the Vedic hymns was followed by an age of collectors and imitators ; iili is OUH liELIGlON THAT OF THE BIBLE f 23 that age was succeeded by an ago of theological prose writers, and this last by an age of writers of scientific manuals ; "^ and it is from all these later writings the Hindu religion has derived its most objectionable features. During the course of cen- turies, error after error crept in so gradually, and one obnoxious feature after another was added so silently, that even the most learned devotees of the system failed to notice the change. It is true, the Hindoos have not had free access to the Vedic hymns in written or printed form. Their acquaintance with them has been for the most part traditionary, and on this account errors could the more easily find their way into their re- ligious system. " At the present day there are but few Brahmins who can read and understand the Veda." 2 They learn by heart certain portions of it which are muttered at sacrifices, and which every priest must know. But the language and grammar of the Veda being somewhat different from the com- mon Sanskrit, the young priests have as much diffi- culty in understanding those hymns, as we have in translating old English. Yet the jealousy with which the Hindoos have cherished the idea of the f ^1 r-A^ i! 24 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. divine inspiration of the Vedic hymns, should be set over against this, as having a tendency to prevent the introduction of error. According to the ortho- dox views of Indian theologians, not a single line of the Veda v;as the work of human authors. The whole is in some way or other the work of the Deity. And, besides, the Hindoos have guarded the text of the Veda as carefully as the Jews ever guarded the text of the Old Testament. As early as about 600 B. C, in the theological schools of India, every verse, every word, every syllable of the ten books of the Veda had been carefully co^'^^ted. Yet, with all this reverence and care, in the course of centuries, through the influence of the teaching and writings of collectors, imitators, theologians and students of science, the character of the Hindu re- ligion has been materially altered, and that fcr the worse ; and the Veda is now quoted in support of the most pernicious alterations. Of course, the passages quoted are either unintentionally distorted, or deliberately tampered with, to make them agree with the new doctrine in support of which they are cited. Take only one example. It has been discovered i': ", IS OUR RELIGION THAT OF THE BIBLE ? 25 within recent years by the leading philologists of the age, that, in the verse quoted by the Hindoos in support of the burning of widows, the Sanskrit word agneh, fire, has been substituted for agre, altar, ard the verse has thus been made to teach, not that certain women shall draw near and pour a libaHon upon the altar, but that certain other women must draw near and consign themselves to the fire. The Hindu reading of the verse^ as translated by Cole- brooke, is as follows : — " Let these women, not to be widowed, good wives, adorned with collyrium, hold- ing clarified butter, consign themselves to the fire ! Immortal, not childless, not husbandless, well adorned with gems, let them pass into the fire, whose original element is water." ^ And the verse thus read is made to refer to the widow of the hus- band whose body lies on the altar. But a better acquaintance with the Sanskrit language has disclosed the fact that, when properly understood, the verse refers, not to the widow of the deceased, but to other women who are present ; and the true reading is : — " May these women, who are not widows, but have good husbands, draw near with oil and butter. Those that are mothers may i! i 26 OtIR UELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS, go up first to the altar, without tearr^ without sor- row, but decked with fine jewels." And the verse is followed with this address to the widow : — " Rise, woman, come to the world of life ; thou sleepest nigh unto him whose life is gone. Come to us. Thou hast fulfilled the duties of a wife to the husband who once took thy hand and made thee a mother." ^ But this discovery will not be sufllicient to set aside the cruel custom. When a religious rite, in- troduced in the remote past, has been observed for centuries as of divine appointment, it is more in harmony with human ideas of sacredness, for the people concerned to believe that the observance of that rite must be taught somewhere in their Sacred Book, though perhaps not in the most explicit terms, than to acknowledge that it should be set aside, because the passage which has all along been relied on in its support has been shown to have been misquoted and misapplied. And if the observ- ance of the rite in question be found frequently enjoined in later religious books which are profes- sedly in harmony with the first, then the testimony of those books will be appealed to and accepted ; 'm T tS. TS OtJR RELIGION THAT OF THE BIBLE f 27 out SOl- be vei-se -" Rise, sleepest ! to us. to the } thee a to set 'ite, in- ^ed for lore in for the mce of Sacred xplicit be set ^ been ► have 3serv- ently rofes- nony )ted : ■^ and thus the original Bible is superseded, and later books — not accounted sacred in an equal sense — are made to take its place, and become the real sacred books of the people concerned. All this has been true of Hinduism. Is it true of our religion ? Since the close of the Book of Reve- lation, '-ghteen hundred years ago, have there been those — whether collectors, imitators, theologians, or students of science — who have dared either to *' add unto " or " take away from the words of the book of this prophecy " V- Has the Bible, from any cause, ceased to be in the proper sense our Sacred Book ? And have other books in some way taken the place which rightfully belongs to it alone ? Filling a book with that which represents the highest kind of truth will not of itself make the book, in the proper sense, sacred to a man or an age. Neither will filling a book with that which represents a very inferior kind of thought prevent the book from becoming in an important sense sa- cred. The ^ook which is most sacred to a man is not tlie book which is laid away on the shelf as having come from God ; but the volume which the man reads, and whose contents exert the most pow- t! ■ 28 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. 11 i I erful influence in forming his most important jiiheai-t of God toward himself ; or ev en of working a change in his heart toward God, — except in so far as it may have been designed to cherish and intensify the confidence and love, and other holy affections he already enter- tained. Instead of his sacrifice being designed to make his heart right toward God, it was the evidence that his heart was right. — " By ivhich he ohtaiiied witnesH that he was righteous, the Lord testifying of his gifts ; and by it he being dead yet speaketh ; " '^ and what he says to us is, that whoever would wor-* *Rev. Alfred Cave, in his work on " The Scriptural ductriue of Sacrifice," page 41. -4f- 66 OUli RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. ship God acceptably, must come to Him in loving confidence as to the Friend of sinners, and with the earnest trust that He will prove a Re warder of them that diligently seek Him. The recognising of sa- ciifice as a definite symbol of atonement, belongs to a later stage of Scripture history. If we who live in the midst of the light of New Testament times, can not only confide in God as did the saints of the eailiest days, but can also explain minutely the ground of our confidence, we should be didy thankful for this clearer latter-day light ; yet we are not at liberty to forget, that the essen- tial thing is not the, explanation of the ground of confidence, but confidence itself, that same loving confidence which made Abel's worship ac- ceptable of old. Cain's worship was of a very difterent kind. He also brought an ottering unto the Lord ; but his of- fering was not accepted. Why ? Because it was not a lamb or a kid ? Cain had neither lambs nor kids ; he did not keep sheep ; he was a tiller of the ground; the proper gift for him to bring therefore was fruit. Had Cain's heart been right, no excep- tion would have been taken to his ottering. " For BEGINNING OF FORMAL trORSHtP. 67 if there be first a willing mind, it is accepted accord- ding to that a man hath, and not according to that he hath not." i The fundamental defect in Cain's offering is to be found in the fact, that it was not the genuine utter- ance of a trusting heart ; it was all outward ; a mere form. We have many ways of learning this ; and first, Cain's bringing an ottering at all seems to have been a sort of imitatino- of what he had seen his brother Abel do. This does not appear in our ver- sion of the narrative, but in the original Hebi'ew the passage reads, — " 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 had brought of the firstlings of his ilock, and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering, but unto Cain and to his ottering He had not respect." - The narrative implies, — that Abel's ott'erino* was first brou'dit and ac- cepted, and that Cain's ottering was In-ought moi'e tardily and i-ejected ; — and that Cod had respect imto Abel's ottering because He had respect unto Abel himself, and that He rejected Cain's ottering because He rejected Cain himself p i— »■ G8 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. l\ .« We have further evidence of tlie cold, formal spirit in which Cain worshipped, in his bringing, not the best he had as Abel had done, — not the first- fruits, but simply "of the fruit of the ground." Moreover, he was a wicked man, one who re- garded iniquity in his heart. We learn tais from his subsequent conduct which showed plainly what manner of spirit he was of; and this judgment of him is confirmed by the New Testament statement, that he " was of that wicked one."^ Cain's heart was impious, and however correct as to time and place and form his act of worship may have been, it \A'^as worthless in the sight of Goil, because not performed in spirit and in truth. It was the mere husk and semblance of devotion, and was worse than valueless, for in that it professed to express heart homage where there was none, it was an hypo- critical pretence. But why such a difierence between two brothers who liad the same parents, and had also, it may be presumed, the same early training ? If having been born so near the gates of Paradise, and so soon after the days of his parents' innocency, and having heard from them the story of God's mercy and grace, were BEGIIStNING OF FORMAL WORSHIP. m the natural reason for Abel's willing confidence in God, — should not Cain have been still more ready to trust his Heavenly Father, seeing he was the first-born ? We might attribute this difference di- rectly and solely to the inscrutable sovereignty of Divine grace, as in the case of Jacob and Esau^ ; but God usually works in accordance with natural laws, and the difference between the characters of Cain and Abel may perhaps be accounted for in a perfectly natural way. Before the birth of Cain, his mother had met with Satan ; had her heart cor- ru})ted with his wiles ; had passed through all the dreadful experiences connected with the Fall ; had heard her husband throw upon her the whole blame of their guilt ; and had listened to the fearful curses pronounced upon the Serpent, the earth, her hus])and and herself in consequence ; — Little wonder that her firp-t-born son was " of that wicked one," a man of cruel heart and bloody hand. In a way quite as na- tural might we perhaps account for the meeker and more docile disposition of Abel, who was born of a chastened spiiit and ])eneath more hopeful skies. Beginning life with different natural temperaments, from whatever cause, the two sons would be differ- ip^ 70 OVB RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. ently affected by the same course of training. The human mind, like a magnet, draws fi'om tlie heap of tilings the metals for which it has affinity. If its affinities are with things that are lovely and of good report, it will choose these things from among the mass ; if its affinities are more strongly with things that are base, it will as certainlv draw to itself these. Thus the good man becomes his own in- structor in virtue, while the bad man schools himself into deeper mysteries of vice. " For whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have abundance ; but whosoevei* hath not, from him shall oe taken away, even that he hath."i From the story told him by his pa- rents, concerning their innocency and fall, and the mingled displeasure and kindness of God, the heart of Abel would draw such thoughts as would tend to cherish and increase his filial trust in God ; while the mind of Cain would draw only that which woidd foster and intcTisify his feeling of aversion ; he would o -ell chiefly upon tlie curse. So that at length, when Abel brought an offering to the Lord, he came in faith and under the promptings of love ; wl^ile Cain came in fear, out of a cold sense of duty, BEGINNING OF FORMAL WORSHIP. 71 or still worse, because he believed God was not his Friend, and felt that he must do something to ap- pease His anger and merit His good -will. And so, thus early in the history of humanity, do we find the doctrine of faith and the doctrine of works set over against each other, and both are manifested in the same way, namely, through forms of worship. And thus also are we taught from the first, that we may expect to find hypocrisy and disguised wicked- ness, as certainly as truth and righteousness, in connexion with the professed worship of God. Wherever acts of devotion are not the spontaneous expression of reverence and love, really existing in the heart, there is likely to be, not simply error lurking among them, but also a germ of wicked- ness, concealed it may be from the worshipper him- self, yet ready to spring up and curse the world. It has been from among acts of worship thus per- formed, that there has sprung the bitterest enmity, the deadliest hatred, the most cruel persecution in the name of religion. In this, Cain has had a large following. He has built a city and called it by a pious name, but its inhabitants have been Cainites. Abel's religion was a life of friendship with God, p 72 OUB RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. friendship which was not unconscious of sinfulness and the deepest unworthiness, but which sought ways of expressing humble confidence in God, and of maintaining intimate fellowship with Him as the sin-forgiving Father. The feeling in Abel's heart has been reproduced in the prophetic utterance : — ■ " O Lord, I will praise thee : though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me. Behold, God is my salva- tion; I will trust and not be afraid: for the Lord JjEHOVAH is my strength and my song ; he also is become my salvation." ^ Cain's religion consisted in a sjniit of fear and distrust, which found expression in the observance of certain forms, prompted in part by a spiiit of imitation, and in part by the feeling that something must be done, and which, in so far as they had any spiritual significance, betrayed a sinful want of con- fidence in the Being to whom they were oft'ered. Abel's was that delightful kind of heart worship to which our race must vet return ; Cain's was a sin-begotten innovation, and was the original type after which much of the worshi}), which has been in thfe world from that day to this, has been modelled, CHAPTER IV. ORIGIN AND USE OF "SACRED THINGS," AND "PLACES OF WORSHIP." t ' i t ' ; : i. ' CHAPTER IV. ORIGIN AND USE OF "SACKED THINGS," AND " PLACES OF WORSHIP." ^i ]^ Y the term " sacred tilings " is commonly meant s could be gathered in any part of that stony country ; and it might be erected anywhere, in the plain of Mamre, or on the top of Mount Moriah, or wherever the ' worshipper chanced to be. Those were the days when men " walked with God " and worshipped Him beneath the open sky, believing that He was to be found everywhere, and everywhere alike. Like some of a later day, they saw God's smile in the sun- light, they heard His voice in the thunder, the lightnings that lightened the world were His light- nings, the great rivers were rivers of God, the mighty cedars were trees of the Lord's planting, the cattle upon a thousand hills were His, and the heaven, even the heavens were the Lord's. Religion was to men as their meat and their drink. It was inwoven with their daily life ; their worship could be restric- ted to no particular places or forms, their plouhging was holy as their prayers. In the Book of Genesis, therefore, we read of no particularly sacred place or sacred thing, no ark of the covenant, no tabernacle no temple, no church. And even for a time after rt ! It ('^ 7«' OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. the close of the history eontaiiietl in the Book of Gen- esis, there appears no trace of any disposition on the part of God's people, to associate the thou<;ht of His presence and favour exclusively with any humanly fashiontMl symbol. It was otherwise witli the na- tions Ivinjj: around Palestine, and even with some of the tribes inhabiting the Holy Land. The germs of idolatry which are to be found lurking in the motive that had prompted the building of the tower of Babel, took root in many soils and brought forth abundant fruit. The gods which Rachel stole from her father's house in Padan Aram, and brought with her to Canaan, were part of that fruit; but it appears to have perished when brought to the Land of Promise ; it did not bloom in Jacob's family. And long after Jacob's death, and in another land, there was still one at least, who could commune with God beneath the open sky as his fathers from of oKl had done. The rock-ribbed hills of the de- sert of Madian were the walls of the temple in which the shepherd Moses worshipped ; the blue canopy of heaven was its dome, and the burning bush was the book from whose flaming leaves God spake to him. And when Moses was chosen of God SACRED PLACES AND THINGS. 79 to load His people fortli tVoin their bonda*,^', the only sacred symbol he was eoininissioned to take with him, to the accomplishment of his task, was the staff on which he had leaneeneral mrjining of the Temple, call to mind the ardent attaeliment of devout Jews to the worsliip of the true God during tlie long years of their captiv- ity. Listen while they sing, " By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept when we i'em(;mbered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in tlie midst thereof. For tliere they that carried us away captive required of us a song ; and they that wasted us requiredof us mirth, saying, sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange hind ? If 1 forget thee Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer nut Jerusalem above my chief joy." ^ Or join with the Jews as they go up to the great yearly festival after their return from exile, singing : — " I was glad when they .said unto me: let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." •' Their attachment to their saci'ed places, things, and times, had thus, by Divine appointment, been the means of keeping them from wandering from God while surrounded by heathen influences. ^A SACJiED FLACKS AND THINGS. !>l We have tlniH far seen tliat the syiiihols em- ployed hy the Jews in tlie worsliip of (lod were not in use from the hei^innin^'. (Jod's people had wor- shipped Ilim aceeptahly for many centuries without tiiose synihols. We have ol)sei"ved that "sacred thin1 <%■ v^' .'^■' o / Photographic Sciences Corporation iV S V ip " the first twenty-throe centuries of the world's history, we find no mention of the gathering of people together to listen to preaching, or to engage in prayer and praise and similar devotional exer- cises, as people gather now. Noah was commissioned to warn men of the coming of the flood, and in this capacity he is called a "Preacher of righteousness;" ^ and it is possible that Noah erected a pulpit, and that people gathered about him in great numbers to hear his message of warning, and that he argued long and earnestly from week to week in support of his message, deducing illustrations from the fearful corruption of the age, and the judgments that were even then overtaking many >-^ ill !"' m ' ■! 1 ' I ill m f : ;i! ill <,!i 96 OUM RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. on account of their iniquities. It is more probable, however, that Noah's cry of warning was uttei-ed as at a later day Jonah's was — the preacher going up and down the streets and crying, Yet so many days and the flood shall come. But however this may be, the preaching of Noah was entirely exceptional ; it was an extraordinary necessity, arising out of the abuse of the family relation. " And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair ; and they took them wives of all which they chose. And the Lord said. My Spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh, yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years."^ Had the family relation been maintained in its purity, the preaching of Noah would never have been called for. But though there was no regular public preach- ing in those early times, there was a regularly ordered way of imparting religious instruction. Owing to the frele and all-pervading nature of reli- gion, no distinction was made between religious instruction and useful information of any kind. ! 'i-i THE EOUSEHOLI) AND THE CHURCH. 9? Instruction pertaining to all departments of human conouct was given as occasion required, in connec- tion with the ordinary duties of lifs. Directions concerning the tenure of property, and the offering of sacrifice, and the tilling of the fields, and the observance of the rite of circumcision, were inter- blended and woven together as being alike import- ant in the serving of the Lord. And there was provision made for having wise instruction regard- ing all these things properly transmitted as the years rolled by. The home was the school ; the father was the teacher. The household was also the church, and the father was the minister. It was through home training a nation was to become great ; it was through household religion that all families of the earth were to be blessed. The sum of what the Bible of the first two thousand years teaches upon this subject is contained in the words, " Abraham shall surely become a great and mighty nation, and all the nations of the earth shall be blessed in him ; For I know him that he will command his children and his household after him, and the}^ shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment ; that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which F i] '■ ii 08 OUB HELiaiON AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. He liath spoken of him."^ In harmony with this idea we find it recorded in the next to the last chap- ter of Genesis, that the dying Jacob gathered his sons around his bedside, and addressed them one by one in the language and spirit of prophecy, and gave them his parting blessing. And in the follow- ing chapter we read that " Joseph dwelt in Eg^^pt, he and his father's house. And Joseph lived an hundred and ten years. And Joseph saw Ephraim's children of the third generation ; the children also of Machir the son of Manasseh were brought up upon Joseph's knees." ^ What then was the origin of what is now termed the Congregation ? The origin of the Church in this collective and personal sense, is to be found where we have already found the origin o" the Church in the individual and local sense, namely, in the bondage in Egypt. During the sojourn of the children of Israel in Egypt, the rights of parents were so sadly interfered with that the family ceased to be the centre of religious influence. Through con- tact with the heathen, and through the degradati of slavery, the parents themselves lost the true idei* of religion, and needed to be re-instructed before / ■.( t ! ( 1 1 mmmm mmmm¥>^ TJfJ^J HOV8EH0LD AND THE CHURCH. 99 they could become the teachers of their houseliolds. Hence the need of the institution of the Church in '' e sense of the congregation. It whs necessary that men such as Moses and Aaron, Nahab and Abihu, Caleb and Joshua, and the priests and elders in general, should be raised up hy God to be public teachers. As teachers were few it was n€!cessary that the people should often be gathered in great numbers to listen to the teaching of one man. But it was not the intention that this should be the sole method of imparting religious instruction, or even the chief method. It was rather an expedient, designed to restore the original influence of the household. While the public teacher imparted knowledge in its varying forms, he was careful to add the exhortation : — " Thou shalt teach these things diligently unto thy children." ^ 1 he house- hold, and not the Church — the family circle, and not the public assemblage — was still to be the chief scene and centre of religious training and instruction. But together with the household and the Church — binding them both in one, and rendering the instruction imparted by both more practical, there ]\'i ^a 1 ,1 100 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. \ was another divinely appointed means of cultivat- ing religious life and knowledge — religious conver- sation. The nature of true religious conversation depends upon the nature of true religion. And true religion is not a mere system of doctrines, nor a bundle of impulses and emotions ; nor does it consist in the sum of all the religious services a man attends, and all the prayers he offers, and all the hymns he sings, and all the chapters of the Bible he reads, — though all these are important adjuncts of religion. Religion is a life. It consists in the giving of the heart's best love to God, and then living unto God every day and hour under the secret promptings of this love. Not that a man is to carry about with him any emotions which are unnatural, or any manner of speech or of general deportment which savours of the affected and the unreal ; but that he is to be a good and true man, having a sincere regard to the presence and honour of God, as the foundation of his whole life ; and having an inw^ard consciousness of being re- stored to terms of such intimate fellowship with God as to lead him, without effort, and even with- out premeditation, to delight in the thought of God IS. THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE VHURCH. 101 and of his relationship to Him. Such a manner of living, producing appropiiate results both in the moulding of the inner character, and the shaping of the outward conduct, is what we understand by a religious life. Such a life will have its set times for observing what are known as strictly- religious duties. It will have its hours for prayer and song, and the reading of the Word of God ; and it will attend upon these exercises diligently and with delight. But these are only its meal times' and its pastimes. The staple of such a life is to he found elsewhere, — ami-1 the cares of the household, the workshop or the street, — where prayer will still be offered, but offered for the most part in the se- crecy of the heart j where songs may still be sung, but sung chiefly with the silent melody of the soul ; where God's word and will can still be read, not from the pages of His written revelation, but from the pages of the Old Testament of nature, and the New Testament of His daily providence ; and where other forms of worship may be delightfully ob- served — every relation of life becoming suggestive of some higher truth, — every object which the eye can look upon or the hand can handle, becoming a •1| 'I , It;) ii m- " ill ■ "»" " " •' ,'? ' ;." •*«! ! 11 102 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. symbol of worship containing for the truly religious heart some precious thought of God. If this is religion, what is religious conversation, and where is it to be found ? It is not to be found in the services of the Church. As a rule the wor- shippers do not converse together in those services. Of necessity such services must be orderly and formal. The idea of freedom and familiarity and the absence of constraint, is a prominent feature of conversation in the common acceptation of the term. We shall best understand where and how religious conversation may be engaged in, by considering its character and general scope. There is a kind of religious conversation which cannot be commended. It is hypocritical, and unnatural, and unsavoury to common sense. But because certain ways of speak- ing familiarly about religious concerns are false, it is not to be argued that therefore all ways are false. On the contrary, the false proves the existence of the true. True religious conversation will have a great breadth of range. It will not be confined exclu- sively to the gospel, nor to the respective merits of conflicting doctrines, nor to the subject of missions. THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE CHUIWH. 103 nor to church work in geneml, nor even to the all- important question of the eternal destiny of the iuiniortal spirit, and the importance of every man attending without delay to the matter of the safet}^ of his own soul. All these are questions of the utmost moment, yet they j)ertain chiefly to only one side of religious life. For religion has two sides, a heavenward side and an earthward side; a side which deals chiefly with spiritual things, and a side which deals mainly with natural things. As to its earthward side, it is a life that is lived in accordance with the divine injunction, " Whether therefore ye eat or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." ^ And by doing things to the glory of God is not to be understood doing them with some mystic accompaniment of thought and emotion. It is doing them in accordance with the Divine intent ; — abusing nothing, but using all things and all relations in conformity with the Divine law and wull, and form a devout regard to that will — not through feai but in loving con- fldence — so that all that is done shall tend to manifest forth the Divine perfections. If we would know the full scope of religious ■I ■ ^i '\ 104 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. conversation, we have only to turn to the moral law, and measure its breadth as we find it indi- cated in the words : " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God vdth all thy heart, and with all th}^ soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind, and thy neighbour as thyself." ^ If we examine the Ten Comr^.andments to know what is included within this great field which has the Life of God for its boundarv on one side, and the life of man for its boundary on the opposite side, and the two-fold lines of love as the connecting boundaries betw^een we find that these commandments relate to every- thing which can come within the sphere of man's life, both here and hereafter ; to our allegiance to God ; to our methods of worshipping ; to proprieties of speech ; to the Sabbath in all its breadth ; to every feature of man's relation to his fellowman, — including business, pleasure, political life, — every- thing. Li this great field we find the proper topics for religious conversation. This is no mere con- jecture. We have it on the direct authority of God. Immediately after delivering the law He added the command : — " And these words which ■i^aausmma^: THE HOUSEHOLD AI^D THE CHURCH. 105 I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart ; And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, a,nd when thou risest up." ^ To obey this command means, to have genuine religious conversation form an important part of all our conversation ; or rather, it is to con- verse about all matters in the spirit of true religion. It is difficult for us in these late days, and in this western world to see how this can be done. Yet it can be done, otherwise no such command would have been given in connection with that law which is universally binding. God's people seem to have found little difficulty in regulating their conversa- tion in accordance with this command in early Scripture times. In the thirty -first chapter of Gene- sis we hear Laban and Jacob talking together over business matters. Laban is displeased, but the thought of God's presence tempers his anger, and he says to Jacob : " It is in the power of my hand to do you hurt, but the God of your father spake unto me yesternight, saying, Take thou heed that thou speak not to Jacob either good or bad," ^ Jacob 1 ; ; i m 106 (yUE RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. replies sharply, even bitterly, closing his reply with the words : " Except the God of my father, the God of Abraham, and the fear of Isaac had been with me, surely thou hadst sent me away empty. God hath seen mine affliction and the labour of my hands, and rebuked thee yesternight."^ It may perhaps seem as though the men were only quarrelling in the name of the Lord, as men sometimes do still. Yet it was not so. The sense of the relation they sustained to (me another in God's sight tamed their wayward hearts, and brought them to most tender reconciliation. "Laban answered and said unto Jacob, These daughters are my daughters, and these children are my children, and these cattle are my cattle, and all that thou seest is mine : And what can I do this day unto these my daughters, or unto their children which they have born ? Now therefore come thou, let us make a covenant, I and thou."- So Jacob took a stone and set it up for a pillar, and they gathered stones and made an heap. "And Laban said to Jacob, Behold this heap, and behold this pillar, which I have cast betwixt me and thee. This heap be witness and this pillar be witness, that I will not THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE CHURCH. 107 pass over this heap to thee, and that thou shalt not pass over this heap and this pillar unto me for harm. The God of Abraham, and the God of Nahor, the God of their father judge betwixt us. And Jacob sware by the fear of his father Isaac." ^ Or if we turn to the Book of Ruth which is full of the conversation of men and women of a later time, we cannot fail to observe how naturally and pleasantly the thought of the presence of God is interwoven with all that is said and done. If Naomi speaks to her daughters-in-law, she says : " Go return each to her mother's house ; the Lord deal kindly with you as ye have dealt with the dead and with me. The Lord grant you that ye may find rest each of you in the house of her hus- band." 2 Or if Boaz comes out from Bethlehem to see his reapers, his salutation to them is: "The Lord be with you; "^ and their response is, " The Lord bless thee." * Or if Boaz commends Ruth for the kind and vdse course she has taken, it is in the words : " The Lord recompense thy work, and a full reward be given thee of the Lord God of Israel, under whose wings thou art come to truat." ^ It is not enough to say that this characteristic of oriental 108 OUR BELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. speech is owing simply to the highly poetic charac- ter of the oriental mind, and that little account need be taken of it, inasmuch as a similar style of speech is to be found even among some of the wandering Arabs to-day. It is manifest that this habit of thought and speech owed its existence originally to that constant sense of the overshadowing presence of God, which is so marked a feature of the earliest Scripture times. It is not claimed that the devout weaving of Divine titles and other sacred words into human speech, will have the eftect of making men what they should be. It is possible for a man to take oath in the name of God with seemingly the deep- est reverence, and at the same time act as basely as ever Jacob did in the days of his meanness and duplicity. But let the heart first be right, and right to such an extent that the spirit of worship is infused into the whole life, and the man whose life is thus pervaded by the truly religious spirit will be likely, in his ordinary speech, to make an honest, natural, manly reference to the Great God and Father whose world he is using, and to the will and word ^nd law of Hiui from whose constant kindness THE HOUSEHOLD AND THE CHURCH. 109 he receives all that he enjoys, — which is living in accordance with the Scripture rule. Is it said that the speech of such a man would savour of weakness ? In the speech of the good men whose conversation is recorded in scripture tnere is nothing weak. The men who in conversing upon the affairs of state, or of ordinary business, prefixed their utterances with a " Thus saith the Lord," were men of strong characters and wills of iron. We need them back again. There are good and true men in the world to-day, whose conduct and conversation is a marked approximation toward the Scriptural standard. But it seems likely to be long before any considerable proportion of mankind shall have attained to this Divine ideal of religion, and this Scriptural standard of conversation. The spirit of the age in every country is, as yet, worldly — iiot godly: Practically the thought of God's presence and oversight has been banished from the scenes of busy life. Work is work, and not in any proper sense worship. The precept which requires that all shall be done to the glory of God, is scarcely recognised even as a theory. The thought of God is utterly foreign to secular scenes. When intro- 'i\ ^^i\ 110 OUR RELIGION A,S IT H^'AS AND AS IT IS. P \« duced into ordinary conversation it seems out of place because out of its element, away from its proper surroundings — new cloth on an old garment. This is a state of things which the Church with its present appointments seems powerless to remedy. In fact, the idea commonly entertained of the ex- clusive sanctity of the Church and it.« services, is more likely to widen the breach between work and worship, than to heal it. And if the public services of the sanctuary are not faithfully supplemented by this third divinely appointed means of spiritual culture, religious conversation, this must inevitably be the result. In certain respects the instruction publicly imparted in the Church, is of value as the locture from the professor s chair is of value. But no student ever became skilled in his profession by simply listening to lectures. There must afterwards be the asking and answering of questions ; there must be the applying of abstract principles to actual cases, there must be the closest personal intercourse. If ever religion is to be so learned that it will become real religion — practical religion — they that fear the Lord must speak often one to another. It is of the first importance, therefore, that men learn MOM HMH THE HOUSEHOLD ANU THE CHURCH. Ill how to talk freely and naturally in the name of the Lord. God has provided a school in which at least the rudiments of this highest of all arts may be acquired. That school is the home — the original centre of religious life and influence. There, and there alone, can business and devotion be properly made to begin to blend. They can meet in the home from day to day as they can meet nowhere else. While the members of the family converse together upon the vp.rious scenes and incidents of life, the goodness of God can be freely and hap- pily acknowledged. His guidance can be sought, and His blessing asked upon all the business and all the pleasures in which the members of the house- hold have any part. The names of the Father, Son, and Spirit can become the sweetest of household words. And while God has provided this best of all schools, He has at the same time set apart for man one day in seven for the special culture of this true practical religion. The family and the sabbath are sister institutions ; they were born to- gether in Eden; they went hand in hand in the days of man's innocency. They were both given to .1 1 1 t i' 1! 51 112 OUB RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. man at the first to be of special benefit to him in the use he was commanded to make of this world, and they should be similarly helpful still. The Scrip- tures teach us that to this end the public services of the day must be faithfully and joyfully waited upon ; but at the same time the sabbath must be made the most delightful of iiome days. Its rest nmst be sweetened by the fragi*ance of home love and home joy : and at some hour during the day, the household should all assemble for the interested reading of the word, and for communion together upon the relation of the household and all its inter- ests to God ; not with an eye to business, which would be work ; but for the purpose of bringing the hearts and Jives of all into more intimate companion- ship with God, — which is the truest worship. And if only the spirit of fellowship with God be maintained, there is no department of man's work as God's steward in this world, which may not be made the topic of conversation during this most sweet and sacred" hour. And if the conversation be inter- spersed with prayer and song, deep and heartfelt, yet unconstrained and free as the speech of child- iiood, Eden and Heaven will not be far away. l a i naiimpi ii wM i * CHAPTER VI. DECLINE OF EARLY SCRIPTURAL RELIGION, WITH ATTEMPTS AT RESTORATION. Vi it] »■ If . i ^ a 'i* N TWilTWiit CHAPTER VI. DECLINE OF EARLY SCRIPTURAL RELIGION, WITH ATTEMPTS AT RESTORATION. HEN the children of Israel had their ideas of religion and worship corrupted in Egypt, and God became their Teacher, in the instruction given them three ends were kept in view : — the ban- ishing of error and wickedness from among them ; the begetting of confidence and love in their hearts toward God ; and the instituting of such observ- ances as would, if properly used, be the means of securing these ends, and be at the same time the means of keeping them from ever wandering from God again, whether through contact with sur- rounding nations or otherwise. The appointments of the Jewish ritual, so skilfully designed to accom- plish these ends, were of value only in as far as they did so. They .were of no value in themselves. They ■Ml 116 OUR RELIGION AS IT iVAS AND AS IT IS. ; 1 1 - !i i 1 ; «' Ki Si » were not instituted to be attended to as outward observances which might be regarded as well-pleas- ing to God. " I spake not unto your fathers nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the Land of Egypt, concerning burnt offer- ings or sacrifices."^ These were but pictures and shadows. " Obey my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people." That was the real thing all these appointments were designed to teach. But " thev hearkened not nor inclined their ear, but walked in the counsels and in the imagination of their evil heart, and went backward and not for- ward." 2 They wandered farther and farther from the primitive ideal of religion, and from the simpli- city of the worship of the earliest times ; and in their treatment of God and His methods of worship they acted the part of foolish children. Failing to under- stand that which was of chief value in the book God placed before them, they were for a while pleased with the pictures, — the types, the symbols and forms ; but soon they grew we« ry of even these and began to deface and destroy the book. They overlooked the printed matter, the commandments, DECLINE OF EARLY liELWION. 117 the statutes and judgments, and in course of time abused and degraded their whole ritual. The ways of abusing sacred things are mainly three : First, making use of them in such a way as to cause them to blot out of the mind the idea of the omnipresence of God. This was one of the ear- liest mistakes made by the Jews. They be- gan to associate the thought of God's presence and favour exclusively with their sacred places, symbols, and times. They came to think that God was near them when they worshipped Him in connection with the ark, and the tabernacle, and the holy day, and distant when they were not so em- ployed. Or, at a later time, they felt that because the Lord was in His holy Temple He was nowhere else. They must, therefore, be devoutly circumspect while engaged in His formal worship, but at other times they might live as they pleased. This was the germ out of which grew much of that inconsistency which characterized the most religious among the Jews in Old Testament times, as well as their succes- sors the Scribes and Pharisees of Our Lord's Day. It made them men who were most punctilious in their observance of the forms of worship, yet who could iiBBBBiHi 1 \ U U ■5? w J ,1 ■ ! •! 8 ' fl| '1 11 1 i ■■ H. I tri- lls OUR RELIGION AS IT IV AS AND AS IT IS. go direct from the altar and rob the widow and op- press the fatherless, and be guilty of all manner of dishonest practices. The second way of abusing sacred things is, — re- garding them as possessing some peculiar virtue or charm in themselves, by reason of which they may be relied upon for salvation by the man who makes any use of them whatever. The Jews had certain things which they fancied were so sacred in themselves, that their simple presence would be a safeguard against evil. Theysometimes were so bold as to put to a prac- tical test the virtue they believed resided in those sacred things, and the result was uniformly disas- trous. One of the most pointed instances of this is to be found recorded in the fourth chapter of the First Book of Samuel. The Israelites went out against the Philistines to battle, and were smitten, with the loss of about four thousand men. " And when the people were come into the camp, the elders of Israel said. Wherefore hath the Lord smitten us to-day before the Philistines ? Let us fetch the ark of the covenant of the Lord out of Shiloh unto us that when it cometh among us, it may save us out of the hand of our enemies. So the people sent to Fi i DECLINE OF EARLY RELIGION. 119 Shiloh, that they might bring from thence the ark of the covenant of the Lord of Hosts, which dwelleth between the Cherubims. And the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were there with the ark of the covenant of God. And when the ark of the covenant of the Lord came into the camp, all Israel shouted with a great shout, so that the earth rang atrain And the Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. And they said, Woe unto us ! for there hath not been such a thing heretofore Be strong and quit yourselves like men, ye Philistines, that ye be not servants unto the Hebrews, as they have been to you ; quit yourselves like men and fight. And the Philistines fought, and Israel was smitten, and they fled every man into his tent ; and there was a very great slaughter ; for there fell of Israel thidiy thousand footmen. And the ark of God was taken ; and the two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas were slain." ^ This was what came of their regarding one of their holiest things as possessed of saving virtue. But the Jews were slow to learn that God meant them to understand that the only place there could be any holiness, which could profit them, was in '. ^:* ilP's ?i! ■ si i ■ IS ■ ■} i ;'.'». m 120 OUB RELIGION AS IT IVAS AND AS IT 18. their own hearts, and in that which their sacred things represented. And failing to learn this, they went on with their religious folly which they digni- fied by the name of worship. They regarded sacri- fices as things of great value in themselves, and believed that the offering of them would be accept- able to God, whatever might be the character of the oflferer, or the disposition of heart in which they were presented ; and the more of them that were offered, the better pleased God would be. In like manner also they regarded prayers as possessed of a certain God-pleasing virtue, simply as performances, and the value of them might be measured by their number and their length. It is these vain imaginations God rebukes so severely in the first chapter of the Book of Isaiah : " To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me ? saith the Lord ; I am full of the burnt- offerings of rams, and the fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood of bullocks or of lambs, or of he-goats. When ye come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hand, to tread my courts ? Bring no more vain oblations ; incense is an abomination unto me ; the new moons and DECLINE OV EAHLY UELIGION. 121 sabbaths, the calling of assemblies, I cannot away with ; it is iniquity, even the solemn meeting. Your new moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth ; they are a trouble unto me ; I am weary to bear them. And when ye spread forth your hands^ I will hide mine eyes from you ; yea when ye make many prayers I will not hear ; your hands are full of blood. Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgement, relieve the oppressed ; judge the fatherless ; plead for the widow." ' God taught the Jews that forms of worship were not instituted in order to please Him, in such a way as to work some change within Him, by which He would become better disposed toward mankind ; but they were instituted to be helpful to man, both as a means by which he might express his homage to God, and as a means of cultivating in his heart right dispositions toward God, and of elevating man to a higher plane of moral and spiritual life ; and if, through man's folly and pride of heart, those forms were complacently observed, without any regard to their true end — as if it were God and not ^ > ' -i I. ;! §j;^)mtmm>!amimis ^m 122 QUE RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS mail that needed to be changed — they became abominable in the sight of God. The third way of abusing sacred things is, using them as stepping-stones to conduct the worshipper over to idolatry. Man, as an immortal being, has an inherent disposition to worship, which can be satisfied only with spiritual things. And if the attempt be made to satisfy this disposition by the use of sensuous things, it will demand more and more of such things, never crying enough. Leave out the truly spiritual element of worship, and bring in a gorgeous ritual, and soon the ritual must be made still more elaborate. In proportion as spirituality is low, forms must be high. It is with religion and worship as with matters of ordinary taste. In proportion as the taste is defective, the objects which appeal to it mu."t be loud and showy. High colours and the blare of the trumpet, for the untutored eye and ear ; but for the man of refined tastes and sensibilities, nothing can be too subdued and chaste. The heart in which the spirit of true religion dwells, needs no showy forms by means of which to worship ; but if the spirit of true m\ DECLINE OF EARLY RELIGION. 123 religion be awanting, no limit can be placed upon the use of forms ; — idolatry in one form or another becomes inevitable. And the Jews were no ex- ception to this rule. They first became so formal in the offering of their multiplied sacrifices, that they seem to have begun to wonder themselves what it all meant, or at least what use God could make of their offerings ; and in seeking an answer, they drifted into the heathen notion, that sacrifices were of some material value to the Being to whom they were offered, either as food or otherwise. This idea prevailed at a very early time among the Hindoos. In the Vedas we read : — " By sacrifices the gods are nourished." ^ The Hindoo worshipper " was thoroughly persuaded that the gods were capable of receiving benefit from his sacrifices ; that they were fed by the abun- dant products of his field or gai'den, were ex- hilarated by the juices of the holy soma-plant, were nerved by his impassioned prayers, were solaced by the music of his hymns, and that in re- compense for all such acts of piety the gods became propitious to him." '^ The Jews, in the formality and sensuousness of 124 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. jM their worship, fell into the same error, and in the fiftieth Psalm God thus rebukes their folly : " I will take no bullock out of thy house, nor he- goat out of thy folds. For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountain ; and the wild beasts of the field are mine. If I were hungry I would not tell thee ; for the world is mine, and the fulness thereof Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats ? Offer unto God thanksgiving ; and pay thy vows unto the most High." 1 But not content with associating heathen notions with the appointments of their ritual, they threw aside their ritual, and imported into their worship the idolatry of the nations that lay round about them. " They built the high places of Baal, which are in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Moloch." '^ " They also built them high places, and images and groves on every high hill and under every green tree." * It was by steps such as these, that the simple, heaven-born religion and worship of primitive times. DECLINE OF EARLY RELIGION. 126 gradually declined, until it was degraded to the level of abject heathenism. But during all those centuries of gradual decline, many efforts had been put forth toward having prim- itive religion restored. This was the great end of the life of Moses ; he led the people out of Egypt and back toward their own land, where it was hoped they would live in undisputed possession of the soil, free from contaminating heathen influences, and would walk with God in spirit and in truth and worship Him everywhere, as the holiest of the ear- lier time had done. It was with a view to the better securing of this end, that the people were caused to pass through the long discipline of law, and of faith, to which they were subjected in the wilderness. It was with the same end in view, that Joshua was bidden go up and possess the land, driv- ing the heaihen inhabitants out from before him. In like manner, the Judges were successively raised up to deliver the people from becoming again the slaves of their heathen neighbours, as they had been in Egypt. And even when, contrary to the Divine approval, the people demanded a king to reign over them that they might be like the nations around J. iii 11 (\ III 120 OUM MELIQWN AS IT ^^AS AND AS IT IS. I I I them, it was so ordered of God that there were among their kings some who had the true idea of religion and worship. David was found a man after God's own heart in this respect ; and the people were never so near to becoming the people God wished them to be, as in David's reign. Their ene- mies were all subdued round about them, and their king had the same idea of the free and all-pervading nature of religion and worship, which holy men of the early time had cherished. He had been brought up as a shepherd lad in the wilderness, and while fighting off the lion and the bear, had found God's presence near. And at a later time, banished far from the tabernacle and all its sacred appointments, yet cherishing in his heart a deep love for them all, and a still deeper love for Him whose constant presence and loving favour they symbolized, he was hunted among the rocks of the wild goats, and was compelled to call upon God amid the fastnesses of nature, with only the blue canopy abov^e him, teach- ing him to sing : " When I consider the heavens, the work of thy fingers ; the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained ; what is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou visitest DECLINE OF EARLY RELIGION. 127 him ?" ^ " The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth his handy work." - Many of the Psalms of the sweet singer of Israel are pervaded throughout with the idea which was the governing thought of the lives of the men who at an earlier time had " walked with God." It cannot be claimed that David never abused the Jewish ritual, yet his idea of religion was broader and purer than that of any other man since the days of Moses. He came short in many things, yet he was a true theocratic king. In his lofty statesmanship, coupled with his de- vout recognition of the hand of God in all things, he had at heart a deep sense of his own "last words," " The God of Israel said, the Rock of Israel spake to me, he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of God." ^ After the days of David, and after the building of the Temple, prophets were successively raised up to endeavour to stem the tide of formalism and wicked- ness, and call the people back to give heed to the voice of God, — but all to no purpose. At one time the prophet reminded them of all the way by which God in His kindness and faithfulness had led them, and of His grief 'of heart over their wanton apos- Ill 128 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. tacy. At another time he painted for them in the must vivid colours the ruin which would assuredly overtake them, if they refused to turn from their folly ; or he appealed again to every noble impulse which might yet be awakened within them, by tak- ing the pencil from the hand of God, and at His dic- tation portraying the glorious destiny that awaited them if they would forsake their own counsels, and turn from imitating the conduct of their foolish fellow-men, and be the true people of the Lord. But after all, God was compelled to cry against them : " Since the day that your fathers came forth out of the land of Egypt unto this day, I have even sent unto you all my servants the prophets, daily rising up early and sending them ; yet they hearkened not unto me, nor inclined their ear, but hardened their neck ; they did worse than their fathers."^ The people had sunk to a depth of wickedness on the one hand, and a would-be-pious formalism on the other, from which it was not in the power of man to raise them. In the midst of this gradual apostasy, and of the fruitless efforts put forth to check its down- ward course, God had given frequent intimations of the coming of One stronger than man. And at :i '«i| Ji' DECLINE OF EARLY RELIGION. 121) length, by the mouth of His servant Malachi, in the plainest terms and for the last time, He told the few who had remained faithful amid all the degeneracy of their time, of the speedy coming of that One who would in due time fully accomplish the work of re- storation which Moses and all the prophets had failed to effect — " Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me : and the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to His temple, even the messenger of the covenant whom ye delight in : behold he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts. But who may abide the day of his com- ing ? and who shall stand when he appeareth ? for he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap : And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver ; and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may oflfer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the Lord, as in tits d'li/s of old, :1i IT ^ > a CHAPTER VII. JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. '- 1 ii Ii 5, CHAPTER VII. JESUS THE TRUE REST(3RER. vv^/^HEN the fulness of the time was come,* Jesus appeared on the earth to undertake the work which the law and the prophets had failed to accomplish. But the work Jesus found to be done was far greater than that which the pro- phets had attempted. Centuries had passed away since the prophets had uttered their last notes of warning, and in the meantime the nation had found other reformers, chief among whom were the Scribes an^ Pharisees; and they were in earnest in the matter of reform. It is a common mistake to suppose that the Scribes and Pharisees were all hypocrites in the sense of being insincere. Many of them were hypocrites unwittingly. The man who professes to be wiiat he is not is a hypociite. Many a man honestly professes to be a Christian — a fol- I I h> il iU 134 OUB RELIGION A^ IT WAS AND AS IT IS. lower of Christ — while a single glance at his conduct reveals the fact that he haseither no proper conception of what being a follower of Christ means, or else has no conception of the wide difference there is between his conduct and his creed. He is a keen man of the world, with Christ's name named upon him ; and though his heart be wholly given to covetous- ness, he moves along as gravely as if he were al- ready a saint ; and would be grossly offended were you to tell him he is a hypocrite. It was to this class of hypocrites most of the Scribes and Pharisees belonged. They meant well ; they wished to be truly religious, and thought they were so ; and they sincerely intended to reform their nation's religion. But they mistook the reform that was needed. They saw that something was wrong, but in their en- deavour to set it right they led the people farther and farther into error. They imagined that the fault was, that the people were not religious enough in the outward sense ; that what was needed was a more rigid attention to all the forms of worship. They accordingly taught the people to give new attention to tithes and offerings. And not content with the ritual of their fathers, they made il JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER, 135 extensive additions to it. The old law was not suf- ficiently minute. In their added traditions they attended to the minutiae of religion. They defined the precise lent^th of a Sabbath day's journey ; they determined the very half-second at which the Sab- bath itself must be regarded as beginning and end- ing ; they instituted countless minute regulations and foolish customs, all looking in the one direction of compelling men to live and worship, not in ac- cordance with an inward principle, but an external law. Under their regime a man's righteousness might be computed by the rules of common arith- metic, and so did not attain to the level of ordiuT ary virtue or morality. But those reformers found favour with the people, and were regarded as being holier than other men ; and they themselves believed they were holier thar^ other men. To say a word against such zealous men was to speak against God's most devoted serr vants — men who were better than the priests themr selves, for they were the reformers of the priests, teaching them to attend to the washing of their id to the washiner eatmg, pots 11 cups and vessels, and to many other suoh like cere- •'< ,5, ihIl 136 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. '1^ ' f i ; I % monies. And the priests did their bidding; for neither the priests, nor the Scribes — even though they were the Bible-students and diligent theolo- gians of that day- — nor the Pharisees, with all their zeal, nor the people themselves, seem to have observed that the real seat of the nation's disease had never been touched, and that the whole body was becoming more and more unspiritual and corrupt. It may be thought strange that no such discovery was made. It may be supposed that for a man to give the Lord tithes of the smallest products, such as mint, anise and cummin, with one hand, and with the other to oppress the poor and rob the widow and the father- less, were a religious absurdity which the man him- self could not fail to take note of. Yet such is human nature. It cheats itself by the simple use of words. It calls paying tithes ^vorship, and making a sharp bargain business, and rests satisfied that all is right. The Scribes and Pharisees believed that the change they had wrought upon their nation's religion was the very change that had been needed. They ac- cordingly went on giving the most scrupulous atten- tion to the forms of worship, Jaut overlooking the inconsistencies in their own lives. And though they It / JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER, 137 thus laid themselves open to the charge of being only whited sepulchres, their inability to see them- selves in their true character, made it natural and easy for them to conduct themselves with that air of dignified self-assurance, which belongs to those who feel confident that they are right, and all the world besides wrong. So perfectly satisfied were they that their course was the only right course, and that their religious views were the only reli- gious views which should be enteitained, that they were utterly intolerant of any one who would ven- ture to suggest a change or propose a new idea. They were ready to regard such an one as the enemy of their holy religion, and could believe him to be animated by no other spirit than tliat of the wicked one. To them had been committed the oracles of God; they had guarded those oracles most sacredly; they had handled them most carefully, counting every word, syllable and letter ; and in expounding their meaning they had availed themselves of all the traditions of the fathers ; and would any man dare to say that they had not found the truth ! It was this state of things Jesus came to reform, ft was with men of this zealous stamp Jesus had to 138 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. mm Ji, ■ ■ :>• ir.i ifif .li^ ! Si \ i il to deal. It was to a nation deluded by deluded teachers Jesus had to preach. It was a people twice dead Jesus was commissioned to revive. To con- vince a people thus spiritually dead, — yet who thought they had already received new life — that they were more dead than ever, was labour in- deed. To show the earnest reformers of that people's religion, that notwithstanding all their good inten- tions and their punctilious reverence for their forms of worship, they were still hypocrites of the worst kind, was a task which called for the most consummate wisdom and skill on the part of him who had courage enough to undertake it. But Jesus brought to this task just such wisdom and skill as were needed. What manner of man was Jesus ? He is repre- sented in Scripture as possessing two opposite fea- tures of character. He is " The Lamb of God,"^ and " The Lion of the tribe of Judah,"- — infinitely gentle, yet infinitely bold ; ready to deal most tenderly, yet ready to deal most heroically ; womanlike in His sympathy, yet virile in His rugged fearlessness ; — - possessing in the highest degree all that can be pro- perly included under the dual term Gentle Man^ JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. 130 The severe aspect of Christ's character is often overlooked. Wu are apt to think of the loving Sa- viour as a kind of Sleeping Beauty, — a passive self- sacrificing Redeemer, who came into the world to be caressed by those who loved Him, and abused by those who hated Him ; — an indulgent man, all pa- tience, and " sweet reasonableness," and patronizing blandishments, who came to tell mankind that they were doing very well as far as they had gone, but need- ed a little more of the savour of love and the balm of peace, and that He was come to give them these. In painting the portrait of Jesus from Scripture we colour it with our own wishes. We make the Bible describe Him as we would like to see Him rather than as He really is. Human nature is weak and childish. It loves to be petted and indulged. Its ideal Saviour is One who will handle it delicately and treat it to sweetmeats and dainties. In reading the gospels men pass hastily over Christ's severe. utterances and dwell upon His tender words. Their Saviour is the Saviour who says, " Come unto me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,"^ and not the Re- deemer who says, " Think not that I am come tQ i 140 OVH RELiaWN AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. i^i send peace on the earth ; I came not to send peace but a sword. For [ am come to set a man at vari- ance against his father, and the daughter? gainst her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother- in-law. And a man's foes shall be they of his own household."^ " I am come to send, fire on the earth." 2 This is the language of an unsparing revo- lutionist ; — not one who is in favour of present peace upon any terms, but one who is willing to create the most painful disturbance in the meantime, if only the basis of real and lasting peace may be secured. Jesus was infinitely gentle, but His gentleness was not of that indulgent sentimental type so often attributed to Him. He was tender where tender- ness was needed, cautious where caution was de- manded ; but He was at the same time the boldest and most severe of men. For plainness of speech He had no equal. For faithful handling of the naked sword of truth, thrusting it home to the heart of error, regardless of its effect either upon men's feelings or His own rei)utation, — He was matchless. He laid the axe to the root of the tree. His fan was in His hand and the chaff of error must be win- nowed from the pure grain of truth at whatever cost. JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. 141 this IS the character in wliich Jesus is represented from the beginning to the end of Scripture. In the very first intimation we have of His coming, He is set forth as One who is strong to save because also strong to smite. " And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." ^ Do the Psalmists sing of Him ? Then loudest among the strains we hear the notes, " Kiss ye the Son lest he be angry and ye perish from the way when his wrath is kindled but a little."^ "Gird thy sword upon thy thigh most mighty, with thy glory and thy majesty, and in thy majesty ride prosperously because of truth and meei^ness and righteousness ; and thy right hand shall teach thee terrible things. Thine arrows are sharp in the heart of the king's enemies ; whereby the people fall under thee."^ Do the Prophets speak of Hir: coming ? Then above their tender utterances we hear the words, "But who may abide the day of His coming ? And who shall stand when he appeareth ? " ^ And in the opening of the New Testament Scriptures we hear His forerunner crying, " Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand "^: as if to say, " Forsake your In ■ i ^^Hj 1 i: ^^H ' P M ^^H 1 i :i! ^1 1 111 / . 1 i|i ■ H 1; ^^^H' 1 '' ' •t ^ 1 ) ■ ^^■' \ 1 ' ,|ra, y 1 wi «, m 1 i* r :J 1 i 'ii iHlPii^ ■ 1 '■i • I'l II 1 1 ii ^^^B ^^^^B m\ ' , Hi \ 1 1 WW 1 1 lij , B.» 1 Iji ' T K ( 1 'i i i '1 1 ^' 1 ; 1 '1 ■■ 11 ', 1 i ' ; i' 1 ' i' |, 1; , ! !! ', i ' ! '! ft 1 1 '' f- 1 '' • * 1 i ^ 1 1 1 1 ! 1 1 ' ' B' i fi ^: """1; '!' 1 !■ il i M -ili- ' i j ,'-|ii ' i 1 ill ' i fl' I i i' 142 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. follies and your sins, for there is one at hand wha will search you thoroughly and will not spare you." It is the opinion of some that John the Baptist and Jesus were directly opposite in disposition; — that John was a severe man, out upon all forms of ini- quity, while Jesus was a mild man ready to tolerate evils which John would have rebuked. But this is a mistake. Jesus was a more searching and thor- ough Reformer than John. Hear John's own testi- mony, — ** I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance ; but he that cometh after me is might- ier than I, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear ; he shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire. Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor and gather his wheat into the gar- ner, but he will burn up the chaff with unquench- able fire." ^ This is the Restorer who had courag . to say to the religious teachers and leaders of His day, "Woe unto you. Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! " * " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ? " ^ What could be more terribly sublime than the description given us of this same Jesus in the latter part of the Book of Revelation : " And I saw heaven opened, and behold JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. 143 a white horse ; and he that sat upon liiin was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and jnake war. His eyes were as a Hanie of fire, and on his head were many crowns ; and he had a name written that no man knew but he him- self. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood; and his name is called the Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations , and he shall rule them with a rod of iron ; and he treadeth the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And He hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords." ^ This is he to whom was com- mitted the great work of ridding early scriptural religion of all the formalism and wickedness with which man had wrapped it about, and of restoring it to its pristine purity and all-pervading spirituality. But bold and fearless and intolerant of wrong though Jesus was, He did not begin by making an onslaught upon the religious leaders of His day. He was too wise to defeat his end by adopting any such ■:i i rrj > i ill! 1 'ill 1 1 f 1 iii 1'' 1 ; 1 1 « ! ! 1 ! I. :- lli:' :■! !■■ ) M ii!;: I ! I I i i- ■ K Hi 144 OUH JlELTGlnN AS IT WAS AND AS IT fS. course. He began by seeking in the best and pur- est way to win the contidenee and good-will of all. And first, He left nothing undone which it was law- ful and right for Hii do, to assure the Jewish people that He was botli at heart and by birth one of themselves, and most loyal to every Jewish insti- tution. By the observance of the rite of circumci- sion, by giving attention in His boyhood to the teaching of the doctors of the law ; by conforming to all proper Jewish customs ; by identifying Him- self with the people, both in their religious assem- blies and their daily p 3ations ; by mingling freely with them in their vc -ous social gatherings; He proved Himself to be most thoroughly one of them. And Jesus did all this, not as a matter of form, but with His whole heart. Christ was not a man of forms. It was His intense love for the Jews and their ancient social and religious customs, that led Him to conduct Himself as He did. Then Jesus, in His love for the peo})le, sought to gain the ear of all classes by adapting His mode of address to thei^- varying circumstances ; and He succeeded in this. Taking for His themes the most interesting and practical scenes and objects, as the JESUS THE TRITE RESTORER. 14 j) lily, the sower, the .shepherd, the vine-dresser, the king, the householder, the judge, the traveller, the prodigal, He discoursed with such wisdom, and in strains so fascinating, as to captivate every heart. His very enemies exclaimed : " The world is gone after him,"^ and those who were sent to silence Him returned saying: "Never man spake like this man. But Jesus did more than all this to prepare the hearts of the people for receiving His message. He showed the people that He was their Friend, and gave them evidence of His kindness and His heart- felt sympathy with all classes, in deeds such as had ne^'er been witnessed among them. He endeared Himself to the multitudes that thronged about Him, by feeding them with bread from His own hand. In the hours of their sorest bodily distress He was present to heal them. When grief stricken friends stood sorrowing in the cliamber of death, or around the bier, or by the closed grave, there did Jesus prove Himself the " Friend in need." Whether it was the high-born or the humble that called in His -'d. He was always ready to perform the kind office, 'ilie ruler's daughter and the widow's son will stand 1 1 J4t 1^1 y 'I'y il * 19 » pi h I If " i 1 : -1. 1 In i 146 OUR RELTGTON AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. up together at the last to bear testimony to His im- partial kindness. It is true Jesus often found it necessary to speak severely, but He n" /er spoke unkindly. All the Lion-like strength of His character was rooted and grounded in love, so that every word he uttered in exposing falseness and bearing witness to the truth, was uttered in faithfulness, and from the midst of a life that was spent in going about doing good. But Jesus claimed the attention of the people most powerfully by giving them abundant evidence that He was no mere man, but was in truth the Son of God. Whether He touched the fevered hand, or rebuked the midnight winds, or cried through His tears, " Lazarus, come forth,"^ or turned and looked upon Peter, or said upon the cross, " Father for- give them, for they know not what they do,'"^ He commended Himself to the world as the loveliest of human characters possessed of all the purity and strength of Deity. Whether we consider His loyalty as a Jew — the Son of David and the Son of Abra- ham — or His generous and unseltish nature as a kind and loving brother ; or the wisdom which marked all His utterances ; or the evidences He gave JESUS THE TRUE RESTOIEH. 147 of His intimate rela-tion to the Father ; or in what- ever aspect we view Him, we can see no excuse for the opposition He met with from the religious lea- ders of His day. They should have seen that He was a wise Teacher, and that all His utterances were entitled to the most profound respect. And wherein He differed from them and rebuked them, they should have been ready to entertain a doubt concerning the correctness of their view of religion, and should have been willing to suspect that, after all their reverence for their forms and ceremonies, they were wrong and Jesus was right. But they were guilty of that peculiar form of self-righteousness which regards the unpardonable sin as consisting in the loss of confidence in one's own religious belief, and in the various human appointments connected therewith. Jesus taught the religionists of His day that with all their professed zeal for the law, they were ignor- ant of what was meant by keeping the law ; they kept the law in the outward, formal sense mei'ely, overlooking the fact that no moral law can be pro- perly observed as a matter of form. He taught that it is the spirit of the law that must be kept, and T li II I* ■I ( ■' 1 ■ u J Bi :' |t;' ii !; *: il ': IliS 148 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. kept with the spirit ; for law is a spiritual thing, the letter is only its visible reflection. And He showed the Scribes and Pharisees that by paying rigid attention to religious forms, wliile overlook- ing the fact that God is appropriately worship- ped only when He is worshipped with the heart, they had succeeded in making both themselves and their followers accomplished hypocrites, who imag- ined they were keeping every commandment in the decalogue, while they were in reality breaking every commandment. They knew that the Fourth Com- mandment said, " Remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy,"^ and they accordingly measured with careful precision the duration of the day, and speci- fied minutely just how far a man might walk on that day, and what kind of work he might perform, and they were shocked that Jesus should heal on the Sabbath day, or allow his disciples to pluck the ears of corn, and to eat, rubbing them in their hands ; but Jesus taught them that no man could keep the Sabbath by merely regulating his conduct according to an outward rule ; that it is with the heart and nut by mechanical contrivances the day must be kept holy unto the Lord. 1 i I i i ! -1 JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. 149 They know that the Fifth Commandment said> " Honour thy father and thy raother/'^ and the Jews — of all people — placed stronf]f emphasis upon this command ; but Jesus called their attention to certain usages among them, by which they relieved them- selves of the responsibility of providing an adequate support for their aged parents, showing that however they might satisfy themselves as to the outward form, with their heart they did not keep the com- mandment. They knew that the Sixth Commandment said, " Thou shalt not kill,"^ and they accordingly did not commit murder ; but Jesus showed them that they broke the commandment as often as any one among them was angry with his brother without cause. They knew that from of old, feasts had been ap- pointed to be kept at Jerusalem, and they accord- ingly imagined that by going up to Jerusalem at the appointed times, and performing thei'o the appointed ceremonies, they were really worshii)ping God ; but Jesus said, " God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth." ^ Jesus taught the zealous religionists of His day that a complete revolution must take place ii^ J;, 1- t Iv ' Si' « ! '1 N. ■ '!' ii: I'-'i K'i if n" .;; is ' ! I ■r ■■ m I if 150 OVR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. their ideas of religion and worship ; that the things they regarded as essential were comparatively unim- portant, while the very things they overlooked were the only things that were absolutely essential. Iti the li<'ht of Christ's teachinoj we see that times and places and forms may change with changing seasons and centuries, but that there is one thing connected with true worship which can never change, the spirit in which it is offered. If the heart be per- vaded by the spirit of truth and of devout allegiance to God, Adam may worship in the garden without any set form, or Abel without the gate may give utterance to the spirit of his mind by presenting, in some equally becoming way, one of the firstlings of his flock as an ofiering to the Lord ; or Abraham may worship by offering a ram upon an altar ; or ail the patriarchs before the days of Moses may wor- ship without a church ; or from Moses to Solomon they may worship in connexion with the Tabernacle ; or from Solomon to John they may worship in cout nexion with the Temple ; even as since the days of the apostles men n^ay worship acceptably in the house, or by the way, or in the place set apart" for *' the public worship of Uod." JUS us THE TRUE RESTORER 151 That which stands out most prominently in tho teaching of Jesus, is, that while the whole attention of the people had been turned to the importance of keeping laws and observing rules, Jesus brought the whole weight of His teaching to bear upon the im- portance of having the heart right, and living under the control of indwelling principles. Humility, peni- tence, meekness, purity, peaceableness, a forgiving temper, aspiration heavenward, love to God and man, these must be the spring and source of all out- ward {'cts. Men must learn to be so perfectly in sympathy with truth and righteousness, that they will need no external rule to keep them in the path of duty. They must become so much superior to forms and outward regulations, that where the human regulation would ask them to go only a mile, they are already prepared to go twain. The heart must be so in accord with all that is right, as to be always ready to make twice as great a sacrifice in the interests of peace and truth, as any human standard would ever think of demanding. Truth in its fulnesf., truth in its perfection, truth in the inward part, and not the mere representa- tion of truth without, was constantly set forth as I i "i ii^ 152 OUE RELTOION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. ^■'^ III Tl ''fi ■' ■\ jl j km lit 1 '»« 1 M : 1i i 1 i i 11^ 1 ill III I h ^lliii IHmii '•iP (t^ the ideal to which fallen mankind must seek to return. Jesus found it necessary to warn men against be- ing misled by forms and appearances of every kind. The distinction between Jew and Gentile in matters of religion must be blotted out. It was by their real character and their fruits, and not by their names or lineage, men were to be judged. To those who thought they were entitled to special consider- ation owing to their being of Jewish stock, Jesus said : " Think not to say within yourselves, we have Abraham to our father, for verily I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now also the axe is laid unto the root of the trees, therefore every tree which bringeth not forth good fruit, is hewn down and cast into the fire." ^ This was an important part of Christ's restoring work. He aimed at having mankind made one family again, as they liad been at the beginning. To this end He showed Himself the Brother of all. When He met the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, He preached the Gospel to her. When a woman of Syro-Phenicia came pleading with Him on behalf JESUS THE TRUE RESTOliEIi. 153 of hei* daughter, He granted her re(|uest as truly as if she had belonged to His own nation. When a Roman Centurion came asking Him to heal his servant, Jesus most gladly complied with his re- quest. And when certain Greeks approached one of His disciples, saying, " Sir, we would see Jesus," Jesus exclaimed, " And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me." ^ But the religious teachers of Christ's day — "blind leaders of the blind " ^ — could not see that He was presenting the truth. Their minds were darkened by their forms and observances being hung between them and the light. Thej^ looked upon Jesus as a fanatical rival who took delight in saying things that exasperated them ; and this ignoring of the distinction between Jew and Gentile was most ex- asperating of all. It was even blasphemous in their eyes. It was to disregard the whole teaching of their sacred Scriptures. It was to allow things, which were evermore to be kept holy unto the Lord, and to the use of His chosen i)eople, to be profaned by the heathen. They could not grasp the doctrine, soon afterwards preached by one of Christ's disci[)les, that " God is no respecter of persons : but in every ', rl I; ' '^. ii 'l ''V' •;:. iii i 1 1 154 QUE RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. nation he that feareth him and worketh righteous- ness, is accepted with him," ^ a doctrine which one of their own most learned men, a little later was gladly constrained to emphasize in the words : — " And hav3 put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him ; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circum- cision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free ; but Christ is all and in all." ^ But while Jesus taught that the distinction be- tween Jew and Gentile should be ignored in matters of religion. He did not aim at overthrowing the Jewish nation, or even the ancient religion of the Jews. The nation had already lost its independence, and was tributary to the Roman Empire. But had it still been independent, Jesus would have been far from wishing its downfall. And as for the idea of His making war upon the Jewish religion — as well might it be said that Martin Luther came to make war against the Christian religion. No man could love the religion of Jesus Christ more sincerely than Luther did. It was his love for this religion and his zeal for its honour that led him to engage so eagerly in the work of making havoc of those false JESUS THE TRUE RESTORER. 155 institutions, which — built up around it and called by its name — professed to be part and parcel of its life. No man could love the Jewish religion and the Jewish nation so ardently as Jesus did. It was His love for His brethren of mankind at large, and his immediate love for His brethren the Jews, and for all that was Divine in their ancient religion, that made Him the unsparing Reformer He was. For it must never be forgotten that Jesus as a man, was not only a Jew, but was one who could trace His liieage back to the very founder of the nation; and He always spoke of His ancestors and their religion in terms of the truest respect and affection. It is true He made havoc of many things which had the name of the religion of Moses and the Prophets stamped upon them, and in doing this He was mis- understood and regarded as seeking to destroy that religion itself. He found it necessary to endeavour to assure the people to the contrary : " Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil."^ Or, when He healed a leper, He said to him, " Go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer for thy cleans^ ing those things which Moses coiiimandod," ^ ll i i i: IH'I ^^1 m m \\ :i [ i i I 156 OUn UKLmiON AH IT WAS AND AS IT IS. There wore some who declared that He ridiculed the Teiiii)le, but they were false witnesses. No Jew ever loved Jerusalem and the Temple as Jesus did. It was no mere att'eetation of zeal that led Him to drive from the Temple with a scourge of small cords those who polluted its sacrei courts. It was genuine love such as could swell no other heart. Did the Jews in the time of their captivity hang their harps upon the willows and weep when they remembered Zion — each one plaintively singing : " If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth ; if I prefer not Jeru- salem above my chief joy ?"^ Even more tenderly did Jesus exclaim, " Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often would I have gathered thy children together as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not.' ^ " And when he was come near he beheld the city and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace ! but now they arc hid from thine eyes. For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies JESUS THE TRUE RESTORE H. 1B7 sliall cast a trench about thee and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side. And shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within tliee; because thou knewest not the time of thy visita tion."^ Yet much as Jesus loved the Jewish nation, He did not advocate throwing off the Roman yoke, or refusing allegiance to the Romans in any way. He Himself paid tribute to the Roman government. Jesus was not a political revolutionist, and for the best of reasons ; He came to bear witness not to forms, but to the truth. The spirit of His vhole teaching w^as, — the letter, the form, the outward appearance, is only secondary ; the heai't, the spirit, tlie essence, the soul, that which will endure eternally, is the thing of infinite importance. Let all the citizens be right at heart, and in all the essentials of true character, and the country may be an independent commonwealth, or limited monarchy may be the form of government, or the people may be ruled over by an autocrat ; and their ecclesiastical arrangements may shape themselves accordingly ; — for we judge the spirit of Christ's teaching in this re.ipect to be, that if men's hearts be right toward \ii\ ;r=»»^ 158 OUJi RELIGION AS IT H'AS AND AS IT IS. v^ 11 God, the order in winch they inay be grouped to- getlier for religious ])iirposeH, may vary with vary- ing eircunistances. It is sometimes hazardous, even in our enlightened age, for a man to advocate the broad principles of religious life laid down by Jesus. He is in danger of being put out of the synagogue. Is it any wonder that Jesus was put to death ? Men who have been in advance of their age have always been misunder- stood, and have suffered in consequence. Jesus was as far in advance of His day as God is in advance of man. It was not altogether unnatural therefore that the zealous but blinded religionists whom He sought to enlighten, should have called Him a blasphemer ; and when they could account for His wondrous power in no other way, should have said that He was possessed of the Devil. It nmst have been surprising to them, however, that, — wicked, sacrile- gious man as they took Him to be — they could never entangle Him in Hi and Him guilty of any breach of ev( a i . But failing in this, they fell back pon t general impression they had of Him, and said thuo, in any case, He must be put out of the way. And according! by means of JESUS Tills TRUK liESTOliKli. 150 bribery, and false witnesHe.s, ami a mock tiial, tliey " by vvioktHl hands " condenniod Him to death, flattering themselves all the while, that the end they had in view — ridding the country of a dangerous man — would fully justify any irregularity in the means by which that end might be attained. But Jesus swerved not from His purpose. He came to bear witness unto the truth, and He sealed His testimony with His blood, conscious however, that the little leaven of saving truth He had brought to the world, would yet leaven the whole lump ; — ■ that the corn of wheat which seemed to drop into the earth only to die, VH)uld yet bring forth much fruit, which would wave in glory on the mountain tops ; and He would see of the travail of His soul and be satisfied. The great work, then, which Jesus came to S. \7'^ in whiclj it stood forth before the work of inis- representation began. And through tlie misguided zeal of those who should have been tlie true friends of Christ, and the wise custodians of His trutli, the life and doctrines of Jesus, which were originally as clear as the sunlight, have become so b«tiin\med that the Christian world finds itself dixidci up amongst jarring sectaries, who are utterly unable to agree upon what the Gospel is, or upon the nature and meaning of the person and work ot its (jJreat Author. Christ's kingdom, though for this world, was not of this world. It was neither an external organiza- tion, nor a philosophical system. It was the king- dom of the truth — truth in the heart, and consecjuent uprightness and purity in the life. Instead of being antagonistic to man's proper use of the present world, it was specially designed to enable man to cause all God's works to praise Him. But the peo- ple who first embraced Christ's I'eligion, turned it aside from its true purpose in every one of these re- spects. They changed it into an external oi'ganiza- tion, similar to that the falseness of which it had come to expose. They made use of its doctrines as ■■^ iiiil Hi ';]:• 'r SI''; ■ ifilil:: lllfl I fill' 174 OUJi RELIGION AS IT W'AS AND AS IT IS. a cloak to covei' them in the habitual juactice of sin. By weaving those doctrines and their own false philosophies together, they converted the Gos- pel into a system of metaphysics, which professed to be able to api)ly the principles of orreached in Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, to a multitude gathered fi-om all countries, yet more or less ac- quainted with the facts concerning Christ's life, death, and resurrection, he presented the truth that Jesus had come to fulfil the Old Testament prophe- Ii •MirM 1 I ! } lit %l fill p m 170 OUK BELJGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. cies, and be the Saviour of the woiOd, — adding the pointed exhortation, which was not without its re- ference to the Scribes and Pliarisees, who were pro- bably standing by : — " Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar otf, even as many as the Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward generation." ^ If Paul preached to Jews at Antioch, »?• Iconium, or elsciwhere, he invariably reasoned with them out of the Old Testament Scriptures, which they pro- fessed to believe. But if he preached to the heathen at Lystra, or Athens, or elsewhere, he as uniformly reasoned with them out of tlie ofreat book of nature, which was the only sacred book they and he had in common. So, also, if Paul wrote to peopi Mvihg at Rome or Ephesus, where philosojihising tendencies were to be met and satisfied, he presented the doc- trine of the purpose of God in sending His Son Jesus Christ into the world, as not only the loftiest of all themes, but as fai transcending all man's CHRISTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS. ir powers of understanding. But if he wrote to the Churches at Corinth or Thessalonica, where there was less of philosophical speculation, but an abound- ing of wrong-doing and wickedness, then he brought all the weight of tlie truth as it was in Jesus to bear upon practical life. And even in those Epistles in which the more philosophical a&pects of Christ's mission are discussed, the philosophy of the Gospel is introduced for the purpose of preparing the w,?y for presenting the practical truths, which Jesus Himself so constantly inculcated. The religion of those early teachers themselves was of the free and all-pervading type. It was the religion of the tent maker and the traveller. It was the religion of the ^rst day of the week and of the seventh. Its Gospel could be preached in a Jewish synagogue at Thessalonica, or in Herod's temple at Jerusalem, or in the midst of heathen Mars' Hill at Athens. Its representatives were nevei" at a loss for a place of worship. They could go out of the city by a river-side, where prayer was wont to be made, and sit down and speak to the women that resorted thither ; ^ or they could kneel down on the shore and pray ; or, at midnight in prison, with their feet fast J m 178 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. i lit I M:i in the stocks, they could pray and sing praises to God, so that the prisoners heard them. ^ For two or three centuries after the deatli of the last of the Apostles, the religion of many who had received the gospel at their hands, was of the same broad, pure, practical type ; and amid the fiercest persecution, and untold hardships, they adhered firmly to the principles of truth which had been laid down both by the Apostles and by the Master Himself. But in the fourth century the people of the great Roman Empire took Christianity under their care, and embraced it as their religion. In- stead, however, of accepting the religion of Jesus in its simplicity, and making its broad and pure prin- ciples thebasisof the nation's life, they brought about an amalgamation of certain outward features of Christianity, with their own Pagan rites and super- stitions, so that the simple Christian religion of the previous centuries, was gradually " transmuted into one more fashionable and debased." " It was incor- porated with the old Greek mythology. Olympus was restored, but the divinities pcissed under other names. The more powerful provinces insisted on the adoption of their time-honoured conceptions Views I CHRISTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS. l7l) of the Trinity, in accoidance with Egyptian tradi- tions, were established Not only was the adoration of Isis under a new name restored, but even her image, standing on the crescent moon, re-appeared. The well known e^^y of that goddess with the infant Horus in her arms, has descended to our days in the beautiful artistic creations of the Madonna and Child." 1 Thus "heathen rites w ere adopted ; a pompous and splendid ritual, gorgeous robes, mitres, tiaras, wax-tapers, processional services, lustrations, gold and silver vases, were introduced. The Roman lituus, the chief ensign of the Augurs, became the crozier. Churches were built on the tombs of mar- tyrs, and ( < )nsecrated with rites borrowed from the laws of the Roman pontiffs. Festivals and commem- orations of martyrs multiplied with the numberless fictitious discoveries of their remains. Fasting be- came the grand means of re|»elling the Devil and appeasing God ; celibacy the greatest of the virtues. Pilgrimages were made to Palestine and the tombs of the martyrs. Quantities of dust and earth were brought from the Holy Land and sold at enormous prices, as antidotes against devils. The virtues of consecrated water were upheld. Images and relics 180 ova kELiaioN as it was and as it is. I if ■■:'» i 'i 1 'i ;S.( were introduced into the churches, and worshipped after the fashion of the heathen gods. It was given out that prodigies and miracles were to be seen in certain places, as in heathen times. The happy souls of departed Christians were invoked ; it was believed that they were wandering about the world, or haunt- ing their graves. There was a multiplication of temples, altars and penitential garments. The fes- tival of the purification of the Virgin was invented to remove the uneasiness of heathen converts on ac- count of the loss of their Lupercalia, or feasts of Pan. The worship of images, of fragments of the cross, or bones, nails and other relics, a true fetich wor- ship, was cultivated. Two arguments were relied on for the authenticity of these objects — the au- thority of the Church and the working of mira- cles. Even the worn-out clothing of the saints, and the earth of their graves, were venerated. From Palestine were brought what were affirmed to be the skeletons of St. Mark and St. James, and other ancient worthies. The apotheosis of the old Roman times was replaced by canonization ; tute- lary saints succeeded to local mythological divini- ties. Then came the mystery of transubstant iation, I i' CHRISTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS. 181 or the conversion of bread and wine by the priest into the flesh and blood of Christ. As centuries passed, the Paganization became more and more complete. Festivals sacred to the memoiy of the i.ince with which the Saviour's side was i)ierced, thie nails that fastened Him to the cross, and the crown of thorns, were instituted. Though there were sev- eral abbeys tiiat possessed this last peerless relic, no one dared to say that it was inipossible they could all be authentic." ^ While the people of the Roman Empire thus blended the semblance of Chiistianity with their Paganism, they remained the same workers of iniquity as before, and even found something in Christianity to encourage them in a life of sin. One favourite dogma which, by a process of dexter- ous philoso})hizing, they made the Christian religion teach, was — in the words of Cajetau to Luther : — " Thou must believe that one single drop of Christ's blood is sutticient to redeem the whole human race, and the remaining quantity v/hich was shed in the garden and on the cross, was left as a legacy to the pope, from which indulgences were to be drawn." In this way, Christianity was made use of by its \T< m I ' } t I 1 ! 'h i 1 ii 182 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. avowed friends, as a cloak beneath which the most abominable iniquities were perpetrated. The heart sickens at the thoiiixht of the vices that were revel- led ill under the system of papal indulgences, and the crimes that were committed in the name of our religion, through its being changed into a great external organization, bolstered by the most subtle forms of false human philosophy. One who has any proper conception of the true nature of Christ's work, as represented by Himself and His apostles, needs no sadder reading, than the history of what is termed the theology of the middle ages, — a history largely of speculations, discussions, disputes, and even bloodshed, over secret things which belong unto the Lord our God, while the things which were clearly revealed for the salvation of the people of that age, and for their children, were either entirely ignored or rudely trampled under foot. But the unfortunate feature of Christianity, that is attracting chief attention at the present day, is, that in some cases, it appears to be the enemy of science, opposed to the advance of secular progress, and tlierefore, an unfit religion for man as placed in this world to use it and develop its resources, CHRISTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS. 183 that I is, of fess, n in i-ces, 'There are critics who are not slow to cull attention *j this state of things, — and for this we should bo duly thankful. "The wise and truly religious thing to do is not to get angry at such criticisms, and give them bad names, but to be candid, and listen to those who tell us of our short-comings, — try to see what justice there may be in them, and to turn whatever truth they may contain to good account." ^ It has been pointed out by Dr. Draper,- that though it is common to hear men glorying in the wondrous secular achievements of the present age, as an evidence of what Christianity has done for the world, in point of fact, it is not to Christianity that the world is indebted for all this progress ; — that the true origin of modern science is not to be found in Christian times, but in the establish- ment of the mathematical and practical schools of Alexandria by the Ptolemies, before the dawn of the Christian era. And not only did the sciences, which form so essential an element of our present civilization, originate then, but exact learning also had made very considerable advances before the birth of Christ. Some of the most intricate problems in Astronomy had been solved. Eclipses had beer^ Wu i 184 OUJi RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. calcuiiitfcd extending over a period of hundreds of years. Tlie length of a tropical year had been fixed within twenty-five seconds of the truth. Euclid liad given to the world his great work which has challenged contradiction from the whole human race ever since. Archimedes had also given to the world a work on mathematics which remained for more than two thousand years unsurpassed. The Alexandrian museum had been founded, — for the i)urpose, 1st, of perpetuating such knowledge as was then in existance, 2nd, for its increase, and 3rd, for its diffusion. In the library of that museum there were gathered 400,000 volumes, or, with the 300,000 in the Serapion, in all seven hundred thousand. In that museum Ctesibius invented the first fire-engine. There also the first steam-engine was invented, by Hero the mathematician, nearly two thousand years before James Watt was born. The introduction of the world's form of Chiisti- anity placed a check upon all this progress. When the Roman empire embraced Christianity and formed itself into a great hierarchy, claiming the Gos- pel of Christ as its underlying principle, a/nd the teaching of Jesus, and the writings and sayings of m fi li^' CHIilSTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS, 185 Prophets, Apostles and Fathers, as its standards of truth, it made the fatal mistake of sii])posing that infallibility resided, not in the truth itself, but in the organization which had the truth in its kee})ing. It made the additional mistake of imagining that its standards of truth contained all that men should know upon any subject whatsoever. It committed the further fatal error of framing an interpretation of its standards, which all were bound to accept as the only correct interpretation — from wliieh there should be neither dissent nor appeal. Thus those zealous custodians of the Christian faith, instead of encouraging advancement in know- ledge, interdicted the spread of intelligence, de- prived men of liberty of speech, of liberty nf thought, and even of liberty of conscience. If a man was sus- pected of holding opinions differing fram those of the Church, he was subjected to the tortures of the In- quisition, and made to confess. Had that Church had its way, this American continent might never have been discovered. It was one of its favourite dogmas that, according to the teaching of Scripture and of the Fathers, this earth is a ])lain superficies with heaven above and hell beneath, and sun, moon ,4< ^Ti *:'* „'v. .O.;,. \^^ 'b^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) //. '^ SP MP ^ ,#. ^^ '« f^, W V fA rA 1.0 'i5 111^ i||||2J^ "^ IIIIIM ' ^ '" 1136 12.2 I.I 1 1.25 i 1.4 — 1 2.0 1.6 # /. e o^^ %^^ c^^ ^^^, r p> ■ri / \ k -^^ i-.~ "^ ^ ^^l4 ^ % 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y 14580 (716) 872-4503 f\P 18"«." VVt read also of the Faculty of Theology in Fa '^ exclaiming,. " What will become of religion if the study of Greek and Hebrew be permitted ? " Yet in the face of all this, and much more, the Pope in our own times has had the boldness to say, in the hearing of the world : — " Let the German people understand that no other Chui'ch but that of Rome, is the church of freedom and progress," And among the canons of the late " Oecumenical Council " we find the following : — " Let him be anathema, who sliall say that it may at any time come to pass, in the progress of science, that the doctrines set forth by the Church nmst be taken in another sense than that in wluch the Church has ever received, and yet receives tliem." Truly, if the Jews of old were 188 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. blind, crtain religionists of the present day are un- able to see. It is an indisputable fact that the Cluneh which was for over ten centuries the main custodian and cxjionent t)f the Christian religion, ha.4 always been the opponent of secular progress. How is it with Protestantism ? No one who is not blinded by pre- judice, can fail to rejoice over the efforts made by Luther, Calvin, Knox and their fellow-Reformers, toward having the religion of Jesus Christ restored to its biiginal simplicity and purity. But while we abate nothing from the glory of tha great religious Reformation, which gave birth to Protestantism, and put the word of God in the hands of the people, and bade them read it for themselves, and have full liberty of conscience to live in accordance with its teaching, — we cannot forget" that the Protestant Church has not yet attained, neither is already perfect. It has many of the things that are behind still to forget, and has the great prize of the high calling of God yet before it. The Protestant Church is the founder of the Common School, and the friend of learning, yet it has all along been more or less jealous of certain branches of knowlclge, and GtlRISTIANITY AND TTS Fill EN W. ]8n especially of man's disposition to pry into the secrets of nature. Those reviewers who live on the border-land of religions, between us and our outside neighbours, do not ftiil to remind us from time to time, that when the Royal Society of London was founded, it was attacked by the clergy as a dangerous instituti(m ; that when the discovery of inoculation was l)roufrht to En<,dand from Constan- tinople, in the early pai-t of the eighteenth century, it was so strongly opposed by the clergy, that only its adoption by the Royal family brouglit it into general use ; that a like opposition was ofi'ered when Jenner introduced his great implement, vaccina- tion ; that fire and life insurance, and certain other features of our civilization, were long resisted also. We cordially recognise the fact that the Protestant Church has kept a watchful eye upon the researches of inventors, students of science, and secular scholars in general. But this is to be accounted for by the fact that secular students are in some instances the avowed enemies of the religion of Christ ; by the fact also that they make ma!iy mistakes in their re- searches, and are in danger of prejudicing men against the truth of God, by representing His works UH) OUR liELiaiON AS IT WAS AND AS IT tS. as boin«^ at varijince witli His word. It is to be ac- counted for in ))art also, i)y the fact that the Protes- tniit Cliurch lias not yet gotten wholly rid of the pre- judices in wliicli she was schooled, before she abandoned the home beneath whose roof she spent so many centuries. Would tliat this watchfulness over the researches of students of science, were the greatest sin of which the Protestant (lunch is guilty, and the chief fault to be found with the Christi- anity of our day ! Let men tell us that the Christian religion is in any sense standing in the way of the proper develo[)ment and use of this world, and we must ask what they mean by the Christian religion ; for unfortunately the religion of Jesus Christ is one thing, and what is called the Christian religion, is in many cases a very ditierent thing. Christ's religion has suffered much at the hand^ of its friends. No man has ever had as bitter experience as Jesus has had, of the meaning of the words, — " A man's foes shall be they of his own household." ^ His gospel has been so often em- braced by men adopting its letter but not its spirit, — its fair name has been so often written on the out- side while within there was nothing but supersti- (^HIUSTIANITY ANL ITS FRIENDS. 11)1 tion and inijnirity, — that the Clnirch itsejf has al- most forjrotten what the religion of Jesus is. Let men tell us there has always been a conflict between the religion of ('hrist and true science, and our reply must be, that there has been no such conflict in the past and can be none in the future. The thing is impossible. The religion of Christ is the religion of Hii)i who made the earth, and who in placing man upon it said, — " Replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion." ^ It is the reliirion of Him whose word is, " Son go work to-day in my vine- yard ; " - " Whatsoever thine hand findeth to do, do it with thy might ; " ^ " Go to the ant thou sluggard, consider her ways and be wise ; " * " Consider tlie lilies of the field ; " ^ " Consider the fowls of the air. ^ It is the religion of Him whose advent to this world was signalized by the coming of wise w.en from the east to Jerusalem, and was intimately asso- ciated with the world's best researches in the sub- limest of the natural sciences. It is the religion of Him who came to lift the curse from the whole earth, so that now the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain, waiting for the ado[)tion. Scrip- ■ J L -Wi-i 192 OUR RELIGION AS IT JVA8 AND AS IT IS. I ture reveals to us that through Christ, every gift which God has stored up in nature, is calling upon man to draw it foi'th that it may speak out to the Creator's praise, and hlend its testimony with that of Him who is God's greatest gift, the First-horn of every creature. It is impossil)le to review carefully the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as set forth in Scripture, without finding evidence of the fact, that He was the most progressive Teacher the world has ever known. Not only did He never, either by word or act, discover the slightest disposition to oppose the advance of secu- lar knowledge, but on the contrary, both by direct precept and by drawing so many of His parables and illustrations from the arts of daily life, and from the recondite jirocesses of nature, He encouraged men to pursue the search after truth in all manner of fields. And He did all this at the time when He knew, and taught, that seculai- progress in itself is oiily an out- ward covering, the mere husk and shell of life ; and that if a man gain it without possessing himself of the kernel of truth that lies within, it will profit him nothinu'. If, therefore, those who eml)race the Gos- pel, stand in the way of secular progress, or if the CHRISTIANITY AND ITS FRIENDS. 193 X friends of secular progress ""band in the way of the Gospel, they do Jesus wrong, and themselves wiong, and the world wrong, hy opposing both the better and the spirit of the teaching of the world's best Friend. That there arc still some who do th's, can- not be denied ; yet there are many in whose hearts better counsels prevail — who see the present rjitagon- ism, and know that all is not right as yet on either side, but who take for their motto the sentiment " Believe in God, and bid all knowledge speed. Sooner or later the full harmony will reveal itself, the discords and contradictions disappear'." ^ CJIAl'TEli IX. II I IS THE BIBLE ADAPTED TO ALL TIMES? CHAPTER IX. ^ IS THE BTBTiK ADAPTED TO ALL riMKS ? §MONG the thousands of 'books whicli have been published within the past century alone, few, if any, are quite abreast of the piogress of the ajje. At the i>resent time a new work is needed to embody the results of the latest research. And among V)ooks which have been published recently, we make choice of the latest editions ; earlier editions are al- ready out of date. Have our sacred Scriptures irrown similarly eld ? Do we need, not a revised translation merely, but a new and enlai'ged edition ? Or, as the historian Froude suggests, " Does human- ity re(|uire a new revelation ( " The Bible consists of three separate volumes, The first volume is the book of Genesis, the second is all that part of the Old Testament extending from the ]<>8 OUli IlKLUUoN AH IT WAH AND AS IT IS. beginning of Exodus to tlie end of Mnlaclii, and the third is the New Testament. The first vohnne con- tains the liistory of over twenty-three humh'ed years, the second contains the history of less than lialt* that time, and the tliird contains tlie liistory of less than a century. The history contained in the first volume is separated from that containetl in the second by a gap of about a hundred years, the liis- tory contained in the second is sepanited from that contained in the third by a gap of over four hundred years, and from tlie close of the third volume down to the present time is nearly eighteen hundred years. The fii'st volume covers the period extending from the creation to the death of Joseph, the second comprises the history which begins with Moses arid ends with Malachi, and the third covers the period extending from about the bii'th of Christ to the death of the Apostle John. The history contained in any one of these volumes is different in character from that contained in either of the other two. The first volume contains a succession of pictures of the most primitive condi- tions of human society, pictures of pastoral and no- madic life, of separate tril)al relations, of delightful IS THE niBLE ADAPTED TO ALL TIMES f lOJ) famil}^ scenes, and of interesting^ neigbourliood asso- ciations. In the second volume we have a succes- sion of pictures of national life, illustrating all var- ieties of national existance, from the gradual form- ing of the nation, the gathering of its constituent parts under the most adverse circumstances, the mi- gration of the colonists to their new home, the draft- ing of their first code of laws, tho institution of their forms of worship ; up through the various stages of government ; first a species of republic, struggling with the aborigines for the complete possession and proper occupancy of the soil ; next a monarchy with a king upon the throne, reigning in triumph, with all his enemies subdued round about him ; a prosperous kingdom building temples and palaces, and construct- ing other great public works ; then a kingdom troubled by internal dissension, resulting in national division with perpetual hostility existing between the two parts ; next a kingdom harassed by foreign invasion, with all those phases of national life which are developed by the allying of neighbouring powers against a nation wdiich they nuitually dislike; then th^ decline and overthrow of the nation, its ca))ti- vity, and at last the return of its shattered renmant 20() CUR RELIGHtN AS IT W AH AND /l»S' IT IS. If ■I to re-inliabit the country from which it ])a.irim> '.'i:«3H«(&'£l^;' 202 OUR HE Lid I ON AS IT WAS AND AS IT 18. nature we have sun, moon and stars ; the eartli and the air ; the land and the sea; a wondrous variety of beasts, birds and fishes ; trees, plants and Howers ; rooks, metals and soils : chemical elements and me- chanical combinations ; and to the casual observer all these may seem to be scattered about in glori; ous confusion. Yet they all form one system, and all the parts of that system have reference to the well-being of this world's chief occupant. We ob- serve in the Bible a similar diversity, atid a similar adaptation to human wants. The Bible is a growth, but it is a growth from a divine germ — a germ which contained within it eternal possil)ilities. If an ordinary book may be com])ared to a ti'ee, the Bible may be compared to a forest. In it are trees of all kinds, and the leaves of every one of them are for the healing of the nations. In it are all kinds of fragrant flowers, so that the smell thereof is as Lebanon. In it also are rocky steeps and even waste and solitary places which have their use. Certain familar features of the diversity connected with the Bible are often referred to, and may l)e r -^tioned here for the fuller illustration of the IS THE IllHLE ADAl'TEl) To ALL TIMES? 2();i 1.i ' comprehensive naturalness of the Book. Take for example the circumstances under which the Bible was written ; — not by one man, nor by ten, nor by any number of joint authors ayieeing to write the Book in such a way that it would contain one fjen- eral thoufjht and theme ; but bv at least forty dif- erent wiiters, not living in the same country and age, but widely scattered over the east, and cover- ing a period of more than fifteen hundred years. One in the world's gieat capital, with powerful em- pires built up round about him, another on the sands of Aral)ia, back at the time when empires were only beginning to be founded ; one in a palace at Baby- lon, another on the banks of the C'hebar, another in a prison at Rome ; — men not speaking the same language, nor resembling each othei- in natural dis- jtosition, nor occupying the same sphere in life ; but one a king, another a shepheid ; one a warri<:)r, another a man of peace ; one writing in Hebrew, another in Greek. Nor did they write upon the same subject, or with the same object in view ; but one wrote history to transmit the doings of men to posterity, another wrote songs to comfort his own heart in a time of trouble ; one framed laws, anothei' 204 01) H RELIGION AH IT WAS AND AS IT IS. uttered proverbs, a third wrote biograpliy ; one gave an account of the incidents of travel, another wi-ote familiar letters to his friends, a third related the visions of his head upon his bed. Another thine: to be noted in connection with this comprehensive naturalness of the Bible, is, the unit}' which pervades it from first to last. If there is unity amid all the diversity in external nature, there is similar unity amid all the diversity of the Book of Revelation. If there is one all-eud>racing law of gravity in the material world, thei'e is also an all- eud)racinjj: law of ii'ravitv in the world of Scriuture. God is the centre, and all the truth the Scriptures contain tends uniforndy toward Him, drawing man- kind with it, as with a })Ower wluch emanates from God alorie. And if there are typical forms in crea- tion, indicating that all creatures, from the lowest plant to the highest animal, have been fashioned ac- cording to one governing idea, which has found its highest realizfition in man ; so also is there a suc- cession of typical forms in Revelation, indicating that the Book has been constructed ujion one ruling plan, in accordance with which everything, from the first faint promi.se to the last clear voice, has pointed for- 18 THE BIHLK ADAPTED TO ALL TIMES t 205 r o ward, until it has found its complete realization in the person of the God-nian. There is even a correspondence in this respect be- tween the three kingdoms of nature, the mineral, the vegetable and the animal, and the three vol- umes of Scripture. But there is nothing pertaining to the general form and structure of the Bible that shows more strikingly, both its comprehensive natu- ralness and its marked completeness, than the gradu- ally ascending progress of doctrine in each of its three parts, and in the Book as a whole. In the early portion of each of these three parts of Scrip- ture, there is contained a law which is to be the rule of life for the age to which it belongs, and the essence of which is to be carried forward to form the basis of the law of each succeeding part. In the middle portion of each volume there is the ap- plication of this law to human life in its various re- lations, and at tlie close of each there is a prophetic preparation for the immediate future. In the early part of Genesis, for example, we find the law laid down in such words as — " Be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth and subdue it, and have dominion ; "^ " Therefore shall a man leave his father ll i I 20G OUR UELIGIO^ AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. and his motlier, and shall cleave unto Ids wife; and thuy shall be one Hesh ; "^ " Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat : But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it ; for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die;"- " In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground ; for out of it wast thou taken ; for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return; "^ " But flesh with the life thereof, which is the blood thereof, shall ye not eat. And surely your blood of your lives will I rei[uire ; at the hand of every beast will I re- (juire it, and at the hand of man ; at the hand of every man's brother will I re(|uire the life of man, Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed, for in the image of God made he man ; " ^ " And I, behokl I establish my covenant with you, and with your seed after you ; "^ "I do set my bow in the cloud, and it shall be for a token of a cove- nant between me and the earth." ^ Then in the middle portion of Genesis, in the lives of the patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and their households, we have an illustration of the weaving of this law into the life both of the individual and I IS THE BUiLE AD A IT ED TO ALL TIMES i 207 I tlio family. And in the closing portion oi. the Book we have an account of Jacob's i;atherinnt hereafter. As external nature reached, in man, a culmination beyond which it is impossible for nature to pass; so in the closing book of the Bible, Revelation reached its perfect close. The [)ro2)hecy which closed the first volume had reference to earthly scenes ; tlie prophecies which closed the second volume had still reference mainly to things to be done on earth ; but the prophecies which close the third and last volume mount above the earth and speak of things pertain- ing to the Great Hereafter, — thus indicating that nothing can be added until the present order of things shall have passed away, and all things shall have become new. The comprehensive naturalness of the Bible is further observable in the perfect adjustment of Di- vine Revelation to human conditions. The book which is to suit all ages, must [lossess this character- istic, that while it furnishes to the earliest and most illiterate ages the truth they need, it must furnish IS THE lilBLE ADAPT Eh To ALL TIMKHl 200 that truth to tliem in sucli laiiijua^v as will convov to thoiM only as nincli tiutli as th«>v ar(> capalile of (I at th( til •li 1? receiving, will admit of a constantly ex|»an 212 OUI{ RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. Moses in wlioni tiiey trusted cxnild not he always with tlieni, and was liable t) l)e removed at any time, the promise came, through the lips of the very man in whom they confided most, uttei'ing the woi'ds : " A pi'ophet shall the Lord your (Jod raise up unto 3'ou of your brethren, like unto me." ^ To the Jewish people at a later time, when they saw that their condition as a nation was becoming worse and worse from year to year, and that the true Davidic stock was almost clean perished tVom among them, so that there was no prospect of the coming of their deliverer, the })romise was sent in the words : " There shall come forth a rod out of the stem ot Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots." - And to the pious Jews of a still later time, who saw that notwithstanding all the faithful aduionitions of the pro[)hets, the nation had gone wholly over to idolatry, and without the direct in- terposition of God, all must be lost, — the form of the promise was: "Behold, I will send My Mes- senger." We may wish that these promises had been more clear — so clear that they would have preached the Gospel in eai'ly times in such a way that men would J^ THE BinLE ADAl'TEU To ALL TIMESf '213 es- hre no lid have uns with them that weep. It has a message alike for hus- band and wife, for parent and child, for master and serv ant, for the captive in the dungeon and for the freeman in the exercise of the privileges of his citi- zenship. In whatever direction we turn, we see new /« rilK IMIJI.E AUAI'TED To ALL TI.ME^: -If, 'vi-gi..,„.nts risin,,. up to co>,Hr,„ „„r belief, that tl.e B.ble is humanity's one great Book, not to he ap- proached by any other, never to be superceded nor '" anywise set asi.le. A Book as nioelv adapted to man's social and spiritual wants, as the provisions of external nature are adapte.l to his natural and materia! wants. Truly the san.e Infinite Mind who planne,l ,„an's being, and planne,! at the same time the whole system of nature aroun.l bin,, must have presided over the writing of our Sacred Scriptures, with all man's higher wants in view, saying as He' looked on, " Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proeeedeth out of the mouth of God."» \ CHAPTER X. MUST SCRIPTURE TRUTH BE SYSTEM- ATIZED. -^i CHAPTER X. MUST SCRIPTURE TRUTH BK SYSTEMATIZED ? ^^E come now to enc,uiro how the Bible must ^ bo used. Shall we use it as we find it in all the glory of its diversity ? Or shall we reduce its truth, as far as we understand it, to a system, and feed mainly upon that ? Or shall we adopt and com- bine both methods ? The Christian world has reduced the teachino- of the Bible to a threefold system. It has made "the Scriptures furnish the church of modern times with a liturgy, a polity and a theology; or rather, with liturgies, polities and theologies, for the forms of worship deduced from Scripture are numerous, the forms of government are equally so, and the systems of doctrine are not less vaiied. Mud Scripture truth be systematized ? We nowhere find it laid down in Scripture tliat 220 OUIl URLKilON AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. w<' are even to afctenipt to reduce the word of revel- ation to a logical system. Certain portions of the Bible itself are elaborately fornuilized, for j)urposes both of public worship and ecclesiastical government; the Jewish ritual, for example. Other porticms con- sist of extend(!d argument, so skilfully wrought as to furnish, in the opinion of some at least, an elab- orate system of doctrine, as in Paul's (!})istle to the Romans, hut it would})e unsafe toariiuethat becau.se the writers of the Sacred Scriptures did such things, therefore we are to do the same. What men under the special guidance of Divine inspiration may do in preparing a complete Bible for humanity, is one thing; but what ordinary men must do with that revelation after they have received it, may be a very different thing. Paul in writing even to Timothy said, "Hold fast the form of sound words which thou hast heard of me."^ The principle just indicated has been recognised by the framers of the leading Scrip- tural Creeds and Confessions. T.:ke the Westmin- ster Standards for example. It is not once claimed that the framing of the system of doctrine contained in the Westminster Confession and Catechisms, has been demanded by the Word of God. It is claimed MUST SGRIFTUHE TRUTH BE SYSTKMIZKD f 221 has ii'ip- niii- iiied ined has lined that every article of those Standards is founded upon the Woid of God, and a<^a-eeable thereto, hut the franiiny both Houses 222 OUR RELIGION AS IT IV AS AND AS IT IS. of Parliainoiit sliall be appointed." And in case of any difference of o|)ini()n arising" among the mem- bers of the Assembly touching any of tlie matters proposed for their consideration, the appeal was to the Parliament. The Assembly was not allowed to divulge the results of its deliberations, either " by printing, writing or otherwise witliout the consent of both or either Houses of Parliament." And the Confesi^ion and Catechisms were finally issued by the supreme authority of the State. To us who believe we live in an age of peculiar civil and religious pro- gress, it should perhaps be somewhat humiliating to find that one of the Acts of the Parliament which met at Edinburgh in the year l(j¥d, is entitled " An Act anent the Catechisms, Confession of Faith, and ratification thereof," providing as follows : — " The Estates of Parliament, now presently convened in this second session of the second triennial Parlia- ment, by virtue of an Act of the Committee of Estates, who had power and authority from the last Parlia- ment for convening the Parliament, having seriously considered the Catechisms, viz. the Larger and Shorter ones, with the Confession of Faith, with three Acts of Approbation thereof by the Commis- of MUST SORIFTUEE TRUTH BE SYSTEMIZEI) 'i 22.'] sioiiers of the General Assembly, presented untcj them by the Commissioners of the said (Jeneral Assembly; do ratify and ajiprove the said Cate- chisms, Confession of Faith, and Acts of Ap|)roba- tion of the same, ])rodiicedas it is ; and ordain them to be recorded, published and practised." These Standards therefore were originally a sta^^e docu- ment, or, to speak more definitely, a Church and State document. A fact, however, which does nijt in any way affect their intrinsic worth. The sen- tence, " Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to en- joy Him for ever," is equally true, whether given to the world by authority of the State, or by authority of the Church, or with the authority of both, or witliout the authority of either. Its lustre is of it- self too bright to be at all intensified by the author- ity of any earthly organization whatsoever, but contrariwise, the fact that it was first given to the world, in its present form, under State authority, reflects great honour upon. the Commonwealth from beneath whose throne it issued. But what is chiefly before us now, is, that the framing of these venei-ablc Standards has been a matter of human, and not of Divine enactment : and that neithei- these Standards M • '"^ ^^ i 224 OUJi HELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. nor the' Sacred Scriptures tliem.sclveis, do anywhere teach, that Sci'iptnre truth must of necessity l)e sys- tematized. So tlioroiighly does tlic Westminster Confession of Faith reco^niise that wlieii even the wisest Assemblies of Divines undertake to systema- tize the teaching of Scripture, tlioy do so upon their own responsibility, and at no small risk of both going astray themselves and misleading others, that it specially provides, that wliile Synods and Councils have their place and value, their decrees and deter- minations are to be brought to the test of Scripture, and received with the utmost caution ; and are never to be regarded as of equal authority with Scrip- ture itself. "All synods or councils since the Apostles' times," says the Westminster Confession, chapter xxxi, section iv, " whether general or parti- cular, may err, and many have erred ; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in both." But is there not something in the nature of Scrip- ture truth, or in its adaptation to human need, which demands that it be formulized in order to accomplish its true end ? In other words. Can the Word of God not exert a saving influence upon man's heart and 1),:WM»u-» r 41 N! MUK'iT SCIiirTUllE TRUTH HE SYSTEMIZEh ( 225 life, 'intil it is received into tlie iiiiiid in the form of a pliilosophical system ? On one occasion Jesus said in His teachinir, — " So is the Kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground ; and shoukl sleep and rise night and day, iind the seed should spi'ing and grow up he knovveth not how. For the earth bringeth forth fruit of herself ; first the bhide, then the ear, after tliat the full corn in the ear."^ The good seed of the Kingdom is so fine as to be impalpable. It can neither be seen by the naked eye, nor made visible by the strongest magnifier, — nor analysed by the subtlest processes of the intellect. It is not in the power of human reason to detect the method of its growth. No man has ever been able to compre- hend the relation between the receiving of a truth into the mind, and the effect which that truth pro- duces upon the character, — even as no one has ever understood the mystery of the growth of a plant from an invisible germ. Nor would understanding the matter make any change upon the result in either case. It is neither understanding the analy- sis of the seed and its manner of growth, nor is it casting it into the ground according to the latest a^)- N i •226 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. proved method, that secr.Tcs fruitage ; it is the condi- tion of the earth into which the seed is dropped ; let the soil be right and whether the seed be sown in the field of the woll-skilled botanist, or the most illiterate peasant, it will gi'ow. " The earth bringeth forth fruit of herself." Tt is not with the head, but '' with the heart manbelieveth unto righteousness/' ^ " Those root-truths on which the foundations of be- ing rest are apprehended not logically at all, but mystically." ^ " When once awakened, the spiritual faculty far outgoes all systems, scientific, philosophic, or theological, and apprehends and lives by truths which these cannot reduce to system." ^ It is by " something that may dwell upon the heart though it be not named upon the tongue," that human life is often most powerfully influenced. It is through Christ alone that man can be saved ; yet " it is not the critic's eye, but the child's heart, that most truly discerns the countenance that looks out from the pages of the gospels." * " Again and again," said Neander, — quoting from Niebuhr, " have I said that I know net what to do with a metaphysical God; and that 1 will have no other but the God of the Bible, who is heart to heart." MUST SCRTPTVRE TRUTH RE SYSTEMIZED? 227 The experiences of every day should be sufficient to teach us that it is not so much through the purely intellectual, as through the emotionul parts of our nature, that our characters are chiefly moulded. The most ])otent influences are those which can be em- bodied in no set form. Take home love for example, — that mysterious b(md which knits the mend)ers of the family together and makes the home a type of heaven. Who can analyse and understand that influence ? Who can define it in such terms as will make it a thing to be learned by rote and acquired at will by the intellect ? Or who has not had his heart touched and thrilled by the strains of sweet music, — music which uttei-ed no word, but came in upon the soul and spread its mellow voice over the whole being like a balm of peace, producing an im- pression upon the heart and Lfe, such as no sharply defined thought could have produced ? Or on the morning of a peaceful Sabbath, who, on entering the house of God, has not had his heart lifted heaven- ward by the devout appearance of tlie worshippers and the solemn air of the sanctuaiy. even before a word was uttered? And when the service was opened with prayer and the singing of a spiritual i 228 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. song, and the Word was devoutly read, — it was not alone the sweet meaning of the Word of God that was so comforting and sanctifying ; it was the breath of Divinity which it breathed. The Bible is not limited to any particular method of appeal to the human heart. It is wondi-ously varied as to its con- tents, to suit varying human circumstances; and the methods by which tiie Spirit applies its truths are equally varied. "There are diversities of oper- ations." ^ At one time the truth is stated in a philo- sophical form which makes the strongest demands upon the intellect, as if man were challenged to a reasoning contest with the Almighty, in which if the Kingdom would be taken at all it must be taken by force. At another time the truth is seemingly obscured by being wrapped about with the mists of distant ages, or is but faintly discernible amid the flames of the prophet's fiery chariot ; or again it seeks to lure man God-ward, as with quaint simpli- city it leads him back to the beginning of things and invites him to meditate upon a plain and truth- ful narrative of events pertaining to a dispensation that has passed away, or upon bold predictions that reach far on into the future. And not the least MUST SCRIPTURE TRUTH BE SYSTEMIZED ? 220 powerful of the features of Sacred Scripture, is the beautiful dress in which its ti'uth is clothed, — whether the highly poetic and richly figurative speech of the Ancient Hebrew, or the more philoso- phical language of the Greek, or the simple, heart- touching, homelike Saxon of our English Bible. The various figures under which saving truth is represented in Scripture, also indicate that a scien- tific acquaintance with that truth, is not essential in ordev to our being savingly influenced by it. Divine truth is called bread. Is a scientific acquaintance with the properties of wheat and flour, or even a knowledge of the art of bread-making essential in order to our being nourished by bread ^. Divine truth is called water. Is it necessary that we under- stand the chemical analysis of water before it will quench our thirst ? Divine truth is called light. Must we know all the properties and laws of light before it will bless us with its beams ? " Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak ; and hear, earth the words of my mouth. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the on human life. The reader who passes by these portions, misses the full benefit the Scriptures are designed to convey. The man who confines his study to particular parts of the Bible, or to a few doctrines which he regards as the essence of what the whole book contains, will become narrow in his religious views, and will be in danger of starv- ing his soul for lack of a sufficient quantity of spiritual food. For in spiritual as in natural sus- tenance, the quantity must be taken into account as well as the quality In the food that is eaten at every meal, the purely nutritious part might be con- densed into very little bulk, yet the substance that 238 OUR RELIGION JN IT WAS \Nl> AS IT IS. is not directly nutritious, must be taken along witli the nutriment, if tlie man wouM enjoy viooror - health. And if a man would receive the full benel. to be deiived from the essential elements of truth which the Bible contains, he must take these ele- ments, not ahme, but together with the whole mass of matter with which by Divine a})i)ointment they have been so skilfully commingled. The bread of heaven relishes best when partaken of together with the apples of Sodom. The rose of Sharon is never so attractive as when seen growing on its ( thorny tree, and amid the foliage which naturally belongs to it. " Jesus Christ and Him crucified," the Saviour and the Cross — these are the truths which must mysteriously operate upon the heart to bless it ; but they do not stand alone. There are Roman soldiers, and a jeering nmltitude, and weeping wo- men, and timid disciples standing around, and dark- ness coveis the whole land, so that we can but dindy see the cross and Him who hangs upon it ; but it is only by taking all the circumstances together, that the scene will properly influence the heart with its savmg power. " All Scripture is given by inspira- tion of Qodr I 1l CHAPTER XI. SECTS, SYSTEMS, \.ND THE CHURCH. -T^i-'^wSftt.. "^i '^■1: I CHAPTER XI. SECTS, SYSTEMS, AND THE CHUliCH. 7^ HE RE are inquiring natures in the world, who i^). see mysteries everywhere, yet cannot endure to dwell in the midst of mystery. They must know and understand things. They dislike the darkness, and must grope their way through it in search of light. And if they fail ^,o find light by searching, they must invent it, or something they will regard as a substitute. Like Peter on the mouiit,^ they wish to have the mysterious feature of even the most sacred sone dissipated, and the scene itself utilized, by being brought down to the level of every day life, or at least to the level of their own comprehension. This disposition is shared more or less by everyone, and serves many important ends. In early times it led to the study of Astrology an'atheri!i(r of the truth for mankind, it is quite as mani- festly requisite in order to the successful gather- ing of mankind to the truth. Paul can reach a class whom Apollos cannot reach, and Apollos can reach a class whom Paul cannot reach. And what is true of men is equally true of methods. It is unwise then to rail afjainst the existence of sects and systems. " For the body is not one member, but many." 1 "And if they were all one member, where were the body ? "-^ Let the spirit of brotherly kindness prevail ; let systems be regarded not as an end, but simply as means to be used in seeking the one great end, and while men hold firmly to their personal convictions, let them cease to regard their 254 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. peculiar convictions as so divinely inspired, that they cannot be kept in abeyance while they work together with others for the attainment of this com- mon end, — and diversity will be found an help, not a hindrance. Let a different course be pursued ; let every man say of the system of every other — "I have no need of thee ; " let each individual thus set to work to build a tabernacle for his own opinion, as if it were the only opinion that had the inspiration of the Almighty within it ; and even then, let men have more regard for the structure of the tabernacle than for either the comfort of its occupant, or for any other purpose it is designed to serve, — and it vnll be long before the Church will be able to re- produce to the world, that delightful kind of primi- tive religion, which four d men walking with God and worshipping Him everywhere, without the aid of any tabernacle. It is most gratifying to observe tliat we have come upon an era in the world's history, in which sectarian jealousies are beginning to disappear. As the Church IS awaking to a sense of her true nussion, and is going out over the whole earth in search of perish- ing men, she is beginning to forget herself— her per- I SECTS, SYSTEMS, A ND THE CHURCH. 255 sontil appearance, her carria^i^e, her dress — and is com- ing to tliink mainly about how best to do her work. Representatives of all Chnrches who hold Christ as the Head, take connsel together concei'ning the translating and interpreting of Scriptnre, and the building up of the Kingdom of their common Master; and from Sabbath to Sabbath their children study the Word of God in concert. Chiistian Churches of every name have begun to strive together in prayer to God for the conversion of the world. Eccle- siastical bodies are beginning to look narrowly into the history and creeds of other ecclesiastical bodies, not for the purpose of detecting heresy, nor for tlie sake of ascei-taining more accurately the nature and magnitude of existing differences, with a view to a more i-igid adjustment of boundary lines ; but in the hope of discovering now features of resemblance, and new traces of hereditaiy affiiuity, by which they shall be able to declare that they all belong to one family ; and in some instances the circle has grown so large under this process of investigation, that when the family reunion takes place, it must be held m one of the world's gi-eat centres, every nation under heaven being re})resente.l in the hapi)y gathering. ^ c \ 25(1 OVE. RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. i / And thiougout the Mission Held and at home, in the great city and the little viUage, different denomina- tions are ben-inninoj to consider, not how eaeh com- munity shall have every sect represented in it, but how they shall so divide the territory as to economize both men and means, and still have Christ and His cause faithfully represented. Do we not liear in this the sound of a going in the tops of the mul- berry trees, which shall soon prove itself the harbin- ger of a still better and brighter day ? And now what place should sects and systems occnpy in our esteem ? A very high place. Umler existing circumstances they are a necessity ; and if only less importance shall be attached to the ont- ward form of ecclesiastical organizations, and more to the rearing of the iinier s[)iritual temple of which they are but the scaflblding, those organizations will prove in future a still greater })lessing to the world than in the past. When Peter and his companions were concern- ing themselves about the building of tabernacles, there came a cloud and overshadowed tliem, liid- ing out of view the glorified ones before tlicm— Moses, the representative of the law ; Elias, the 1 SECTS, SYSTJ£MS, AND THE CHURCH. 257 representative of true piety and heart devotion ; and Jesus, the representative of salvation. If men are now cfivinc: undue attention to the out- ward organization, we may expect that the cloud is already over them, and that in the midst of it they are losing sight of the importance of keeping the moral law, losing sight of the importance of having genuine piety in the heart, and losing sight of Jesus through whom alone they can be saved. From the midst of the cloud a voice was heard saying, " This is my beloved Son, hear him." And when the cloud had passed they saw no man save Jesus only. Mosos, the representative of the com- plicated ritual was gone ; Elias, who had been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts, because the children of Israel had thrown down the altars, and had slain the prophets with the sword, and he alone was left,— even he, with all his righteous zeal for altars and ministries, was gone, and Jesus alone re- mained. So will it yet be with the world. " I'lie hour Cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father."^ Men will yet cease contending with unwise zeal for their respective ecclesiastical Mystems, and will 258 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. worsliip in spirit and in truth. They will cease to attach undue importance to their own opin- ions and utterances and will listen to Christ alone. Meanwhile it is the privilege of every man to love his church with true devotion. " Bless ye God in the conureuations ; even the Lord from the fountain of Israel. There is little Benjamin with their ruler, the Princes of Judah and their coun- cil, the Princes of Zebulun, and the Princes of Naphtali."! And in all the tribes from little Ben- jamin to mighty Judah, chere are princes, and praying Haimahs, and devout Simeons, and seven thousand saints of humble name, who delight to walk with (lod, and who reverently bow before Him in His temple, so that every tribe is dear to Him. No man may account his Church as having an exclusive claim upon the presence of the Lord. It is not the palace of the King. It is only a little lodge in the wilderness, to be superseded by some- thing grander and more enduring. Yet it is justly dear to the man who calls it his. His ftithers built it as they could, and sheltering them and sheltering him, it is his spiritual home. Dearer to him than SECTS, SYSTEMS, AND THE CHURCH. 259 all because Jesns has often made it His home. It has not been the tabernacle on the mountain top, visited by Him only on great occasions, it has been the cottage by the wayside, into which He has come at all hours of the day, and even in the darkness of the night. Men will yet pray that God may come down, and by His presence and power fill all chur- ches of every name, and make them true homes ; homes full of peace and brotherly love; homes plant- ed together in true neighbourly kindness; homes con- stituting one city, the city of God, the New Jeni- salem let down from God out of heaven. And they shall change the language of prophecy to that of present history, and cry, "Behold! the tabernacle of God is with men, and He dwellcth with them, and they are His people, and God Himself is with them and is their God." When that day shall come, however many folds there may be, there will be but one tiock, even as now^ there is but one Shepherd. j#^ ^' / CHAPTER XII. RELIGION AND THE STATE, CHAPTER XII. EELIGION AND THE STATE. ■( t *HE relation between Religion and the State is an old subject. It occupies about one-half of the Bible, the half extending from Exodus to Malachi, with the exception of the poetical books, and even in them and throughout the New Testa- ment the question is not overlooked. In every cen- tury of modern times, certain phases of the subject have been earnestly discussed, and in no country has the relation which should exist between religion and the civil government been so accurately defined as to put the question for ever at rest. As genera' intelligence becomes more widely diffused however, the question is discussed on broader grounds, and in a less dogmatic and sectarian spirit. The conten- tion has for the most pai-t ceased to be, whether f m 2(14 OUn RELIGION AS IT W^AS AND AS IT IS. shall the State control the Church, or the (*lmvch control the State ? It is ceasing to be which sect shall the State recognise, and which religious de- nominations shall it ignore ? The question is com- ing to be one as to the State's relation, not to any particulai' form of worship, but to the Bible, the common storehouse from which our religion, in all its varying forms, professes to draw its life. And in this we discover a great advance ; we see evidence of the prospect of a retu n to the Scriptural idea of the relation between relitrion and the State. By referring to those early Scripture times from which we receive the fundamental elements of all good government, we find that, in the ideal State, religion must be inwoven with the whole texture of national life. From the all-pervading nature of primitive religion, it was impossible to keep it sepa- rate from the State. The thought of man's rela- tionship to God had a reality about it in those early times, which it has not in our day. In the house or by the way, in society or in solitude, sleeping or waking, working or worshipping, in war or in peace, the thought of accountability to God, and of being under his care, was always at hand. If nien RELIGION ANT) THE STATE. 265 dreamed, their dreams were devout ; if they went out to battle against their enemies, tliey t'ouglit in the name of the Lord. With this impression of relationsliip to God, it would have been impossible, in organizing a nation, to leave out the idea of God and appointments whereby He might be publicly acknowledged. Accordingly, when the Hel)rew com- monwealth was founded, it was a Church and State in one ; and tliroughout the whole history of the Jewish people as an independent nation, even thouirh, throuirh contact with heathen nations, they lost the true idea of religion and worship, this blending of civil and religious life continued ; and it ceased when the religion of Christ was introduced, not because of any Divine enactment requiring it to cease, but from the force of circumstances. The religion of Christ was rejected by the nation to whom it was offered. Had the Jews accepted the risen Christ as their King, not in the vain sense in which they expected the Messiah to reign over them, but in the spiritual sense, religion and civil government might still have been harmoniously blended. But since the religion of Jesus Christ was rejected by the only naticm that could be expectp.d, 2(50 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. from its previous training, to receive it, it was com- pelled to begin with individuals gathered from dif- ferent nations. It was not in the power of those early Christians to found a separate nationality ; and even had they been permitted to do so, the world was not tlien prepared for the successful blending of religion and religious observances with civil government. Nor would it have been in ac- cordance with the Divine plan, as revealed in Scrip- ture, to have attempted the founding of a separate nation to be known as God's nation. Jesus came to reveal the truth that God loves the world ; that his regards are not limited to a favoured few, but that " He will have all men to be saved and to come unto the knowledge of the truth." ^ The Redeemer of mankind did not seek to 1»e king of only one nation. He does not ask to be proclaimed the head of only one nation even now. He does not teach us to accoimt him the head of only one visible organiza- tion of any kind. He has never called Himself the head of only one branch of His Church on the earth. The Church of which (Jhrist is the Head is a body whose members are gathered fi'om among all nations, and kindreds, and peoples, and tongues. RELIGION AND THE STATE. 2(>7 There are indications in Scripture thjit Jesus will not come to reign in any country, even in the sense of the successful blending of religious observances with civil enactments, until his gospel has been preached among all nations. When He who under- took tl^e redemption of the world shall take to Himself His great power, and shall reign by having His will fully done on earth, and His name stamped upon Jill departments of civil government. He will bo satisfied with nothing less than the whole human family for His subjects. " His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth." ^ When that day shall dawn, religion and civil government will be harmoniously blended. Toward this univei-sal sway the religion of Jesus has looked from the beginning, and all the direct- ions given with reference to the spreading of the gospel, have had this end constantly in view. Jesus sent forth His truth to act as leaven among men, and taught His disciples that in whatever station in life they might be called u[)on to serve, they must carry the spirit of His religion with them; and that thia must iro on until the whole shall be leavened. When the whole mass of society in any country shall have ^Bi 2G8 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. thus been leavened, all the appointments of civil gov- ernment will naturally be ordered in harmony with the spirit of Christ's religion, because ordered by those in whose hearts the spirit of Christ is. Toward this ideal it is the duty of every nation to be tending. By what means shall the nation as a nation be made to move onward toward the realization of this ideal? And what shall be the present relation between religion and the state 1 There are some who contend that whatever pro- QTess the state makes in a relij^ious direction, must be I he result of influences which are brought to bear upon the citizens through the channels of the house- hold and the church, and b^^ no effort whatever on the part of the civil power. Within recent years a book has been pub)ishee needful and useful in this life, if there were no God and no future for the human soul." How utterly at variance all this is, with the idea we have found running throughout the whole of Scrip- ture, that religion was at the first— and must be again — all-pervading ! The author of the work now under review has made one fundamental mistake, which has betrayed him into all manner of false conclusions— the simple mistake of failing to observe that the word religion has two meanings, a broad Bible meaning, and a narrow ecclesiastical sense. In the narrow sense, religion consists in creeds, confessions, forms of worship, ecclesiastical appointments in general ; and against associating this kind of religion \sith the State, very weighty arguments can be adduced. RELIGION AND THE STATE- 271 p 1. o In tlie brond .scripturerioas have been periods in which religion has flourished, and that a declension of religion always entailed the decline of a nation. It is as though the su[)ply of vital power were cut otf from the forms of earthly life, when the dew of heaven and the warmth and lioht of the sun are withdraw^n from them with religion. We have the most instructive example of this fact in the Israelitish nation and its history in the Old Testament. . . . And the histoiy of German V also furnishes the most indubitable proof of this piinciple." ^ Shall a nation, in our enlightened times, with all the history of the i)ust as its teachei', utterly neglect and ignore that which is the very essence of its life ? For the maintenance and furthering of its reli- mous well-beino— its best well-being— every nation, 272 QUE RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. havino; its laws based upon the Divine code, rrust give its authoritative sanction to the ordinance of marriage, to the sacredness of the family relation, to the observance of the Sabbath, to public and pri- vate worship, and to the public and private reading of the Scriptures ; and nuist give the fullest liberty to its citizens to avail themselves of one and all of these privileges, and shall i^rotect them in the exer- cise of the same, so long as their mode of observing them is not such as to do violence to any of the laws of the realm. P]very State thus constituted should prohibit idolatry, profanity, Sabbath desecration, disobedience to parents, murder, adultery, thef t> false witness, and other open sins which come under the Divine code, and are injurious to the best welfare of the nation. The State should also require, under certain circumstances, the reading of the Book upon whose broad principles all the laws of the State are based. The State should surely ask its citizens to read the Book by which it intends to ask them to swear. The Bible should have a place in the com- mon school before it finds a phice in the court of justice. But it is objected tliat the reading of the Bibie RELIGION AND THE STATE. 273 under sanction of the State is virtually to establish an unsafe connection between Church and State, and thus pave the way for religious intolerance and sectarian jealousies. To entertain such an opinion, is to mistake the character of the Bible. The Bible i« not a religious book in the sectarian sense. It is not an ecclesiastical book. It lays down no system of Church government, departure from which shall be accounted heresy. It contains no elaborately formulated creed to which it asks the world to sub- scribe. Nor is the Bible a book of speculative philosophies concerning a future life. It is the most practical and catholic of all books without excep- tion. In the main its contents refer to iuatters of every day importance, and of universal interest. It has been given as a guide to a future life, it is true, but it has been given also as a guide through the present life; and as it regards man's future destiny as determined here, it speaks far more of the here than the hereafter. It says, Take care of the pre- sent and the future will take care of itself. " Be- hold now is the accepted time 1 Behold now is the w country, the former of these versions has the right of pf>ssession, and if there are those who wish to have it set aside, and the Do nay version take its place, they must make it aj)pear that the Douay version is a better version, and so much better as to warrant the change. If they wish to have it introduced on the ground of its being tlie Bible of a particular Church, tlieii- claim must at once be dismissed. Ill the light of the whole teaching, both of Scrip- tui'e and of the histoiy of modein times, we judge it to be in harmony with the spiiit of Scriptui'al reli- gion, and with the genius of the goveinnieiits of Christian countries, that these govermuents should sanction the reading of the Bible in public schools, so long as they do no violence to the conscientious convictions of those thus asked to rea0 WE NEED ANOTHER REFORMATION? 299 a religion whicli tlirows open all its gates, and bids friend and foe alike come in and search every nook and corner, and examine the very foundation on which its being rests ; a religion Avhich says : "Search theScriptures;"iaveligionwhichgivesfullpei'mission to burn the cliatt'and keep only the wheat ; to con- sume the wood, hay, stubble, and everything besides that will not shine all the more brightly because of the tlanies; a religion which bids the investigator throw aside earth and sand and never cease liis undermin- ing work until lie comes upon a solid rock which all his powers of exploration shall be unable to disturb ; a religion which boldly says, "Prove all things; hold fast that which is good ; " - a religion whose voice to all who profess to embrace it, is—" Examine your- selves whether ye be in the faith ; prove youi- own selves." 3 If our religion is the religion of Jesus Christ, we may go forward fearlessly in the work of inspect- ing and assaying it, assured that the lire with which we try it may fail, but not one tittle of Christ's law shall fail. " The truth of the Lord endureth for- ever." * How shall we successfully engage in this work to wliich we are challenged :* The best we (;an do, * i ?00 OUR liELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. is ^0 exaiiiiuo ourselves and our religion as faiths fully as we may, in the light of the history of the past, and especially in the light of the teaching of Jesus in His treatment of the religionists of His day. At the very outset we Come upon a fundamental need for reformation. We hnd the same stumbling- block before us, over which the Scribes and Pharisees fell and were broken— self-righteousness. We can- not entertain the thought of questioning -the correct- ness of our religious l)eliefs, or the validity of any of those opinions we have all our lives held dear. The religious views and opinions ive have entertained are of course unquestionable. To speak of examin- ino- our relifrious convictions, were to betray doubt concerning a matter which is so sacred, that it must evermore be lifted above the reach of doubt ; for doubt is scepticism ! and scepticism is heresy ! and heresy is heinous sin ! So long as a man is thus solennily prohibited from enquiring into the correctness of his religious views, how is he ever to examine himself as to whether he is in the faith ! If he is a Hindoo, he must remain a Hindoo, for fear of losing his soul l»y doubting any of the articles of what he has been taught is the / < . BO WE NEED ANOTHER REFORMATIONS 301 true Religion. If he is a Jew, he must remain a Jew, for fear of committing the unpaidonaljle sin by calling in question any of the religious beliefs in which he has been trained. If he belongs to one or anothei- of the branches of the Christian Chuich, he must 1)0 true to his Creed, and on no account pre- sume to examine his "Confession," or allow anything to shake his faith in a single rite in his "rubric," or a single doctrine taught in his "formulary." Every other man should carefully examine his religion ; but it would be most dangerous for us to think of examining to see whether our faith is the true faith. — ^^If this is not self-righteousness, by what name should it be called ? It is the same old Pharisaic spirit which rejected Christ, when He came asking the men of His day to turn their backs u})on certain beliefs they had long held sacred. We are taught in Scripture, that one of the hrst conditions necessary to the acquiring of wisdom is, that the mind be kept open to conviction ; that the moment a man begins to profess that he of all men is wise, that moment he begins to be in tlie worst sense a fool ; that it is the man of humble child-like spirit, the man that is always ready to accuse him- fl ^. 0 WE NEED ANOTHER UEFOUMATWX? r,05 These are the relio-ious ideas Mri the midst of which men are still dreaming their troubled religious dream Nor ay treat Its samts ufter they are gone, it treats them cruelly enough while here. " Which of the prophets have / I DO WE NEED ANOTHER REFOHMATION ? 313 not your fathers persecuted ?"i " He that departeth from evil iiiaketh himself a prey."^ To lift up the voice against wrongs that are done in the name of the Lord, is to forfeit the love of the nearest of kin, and encountei- the hatred of all men. Shall we ask another man to come and undertake to reform the world, but succeed in only adding to the number of opposing sects — crying the while : " Alas for me ! Would God my mother had died or ever I was born to bear all the burthens of the world, and right its wrongs ? " We cannot even ask Jesus back to earth as yet, much as we would love to hear His voice, and see His face, and grasp His hand, and kneel to clasp and kiss His feet. And shall we call for a Restorer who is only man ? " Thus saith the Lord ; cursed be the man who trusteth in man, and makcth flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord."^ We hope " the coming man " will never come. Our next Reformer nnist be one wliom Ave cannot stone, nor saw asunder, nor nail to any cross ; One whom we can worship, but worsliip only with the heart, "in spirit and in truth." Hark ' It is the Saviour's voice ! "It is expedient for you that I go away ; for if I fro not away, the Comforter will not come unto \ 314 OUR RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. you ; but if I depart, I will send Him unto you." i And as Jesus speaks, all the voices that have been slumbering for ages among- the hoary Old Testament hills, awake and proclaim anew the coming of the ivorld's complete Restorer, the Holy Ghost, the Sjnrit of the Father and the Son. And with Him there come men ! and connnunities ! and nations " born in a day!" Another Man ? Another Reformer ? An- other Prophet? "Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His spiiit upon them !" 2 When He, the Spirit of Truth, is come. He will guide men into all truth, and will shew them things to come. He will take of the things of Christ, and shew them unto the world. He will reprove the world concerning the commis- sion of sin, concerning the neglect of righteousness, and concerning the want of common sense. How long have we to wait ? ! tell us that these are "the last days," for ''it shall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams: And on my servants and on my handmaidens will I pour out -'1 I DO WE NEED ANOTHER REFORMATION? 315 in those clays of my Spirit, and they shall prophesy." ^ Would that that day were now ; that the hearts of all mankind were filled with the Spirit of the Lord —that all had the mind of Christ, to think His thoiiohts, and do His works, and walk in sweet com- panionship with Cod, thinking of Him as Father in Heaven bending over the chiklren of men in forgiv- ing love ; thinkincr of this earth as His, with man His son and stewanl, using it for Him ; looking to Him as He appears in Jesus, " who was delivered for our ofl'ences, and was raised again for our justifi- cation," and is man's living Brother still— bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, having an heart that is touched with the feeling of our infinnities-stiU calling down to man, " Come unto me." Let the seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed the knee to Baal, reply : " Gome Thou to us. ! Spirit of Christ, eomc down to enlighten our minds and renew our wills, and persuade and enable all to embrace Thine own religion ! " Let the great listen- ing world take up the cry. " 0, Spirit of Jesus, come!" For already His answer is written " Surely I come Huiekly;" When the Spirit ..id the Bride do thus say " Come." and he that heareth 31G OXJP RELIGION AS IT WAS AND AS IT IS. shall echo " Come ! "—then will the Spirit of the Lord come down, to apply the purchased blessings, and to close the Redemptive work. " Amen. Even so come Lord Jesus. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." ^ L INDEX TO QUOTATIONS. INDKX TO QUOTATIONS. PAOE. 20 1 Matthew XV. 0. 21. I Max Mllller, Clupx from a Oer- ninn Workshiip^ vol. I. p ;{.s. 22. 1 ChipH. Vols. 1. 37, 44; 11. 305, :J()7. 23. 1 Chips, \. 16. " •-' " 11. 300. 25. 1 " 11. 34. 20. 1 " II. 3.'). 27 I HcvelatioM xxii., 18, 19. 32. 1 Carlyle, Heroes and Hero Wor- sliip, Chapman and Hall's edi- tion, p. 150; Sartor JiesartKn, 174. 37. 1 Max MUller, Origin and Growth of Jielijjion, p. -'O. " 2 Wkhstkk. " 3 worckstkr. 30 1 Matthew xxii. 40. 42 1 Genesis ii. 17. 43 1 " iii. 4. " - " i. 28. 29. 44 1 " ii. 15. 40 1 Ilevelation ii. 7. _ ^ XXI. 7. 47 1 Matthew vii. 9-13. 4^ 1 Fir.st Corinthians x. 31. 00 1 Genesis iv. 3, 4. 54 1 John iv. 24. 66 1 " XV. 1. " a " xii. 24. " 3 " vi. 48. ._ * First Corinthians, xi. 26. 67 1 Genesis iii. 15. 6S 1 " i. 28. 60 1 " iv. 4. '' - Hebrews, xi. 4. 61 1 «« ' .• • Vi " jx, 22. 62 1 Acts iv. 12. II 2 First Timothy, ii. 6. y Romans i. 20. PAOK. 03 1 First Corintiiians ii. h " 2 Galatians v. 0. 04 I Hfhrews xi (!. 05. I Kev. Alfred Cave, The Seriptural Doctrine of Sacriftee, p. 41. " - HehrewH xi. 4. C7 ; 1 Sei'ond Corintiiians viii. 12. " - Genesis iv. .S, 4. 08 I First John iii. 12. 69 1 Romans ix. 13. 70 1 Matthew xiii. 12. 72 1 Isaiah xii. 2, 3. 70 1 Zeehariah xiv. 20, 21. 79. 1 James C. Moffatt, D.D., A Coin- pa ratioc lliHtory of ReliaionK, vol. 2, p. 69. 80. 1 " " " 68. 84. 1 DeimSUiulayJIistorif of the Jew- ixh Church, vol. 1. p. 100. 85. 1 Mc'C\)sh, Typical Forms in Crea- tion, ]^. 3;U. 80 1 Psalm, xc. 1. 87 1 First Kings, viii. 13, 27. 89 1 " " 44-49,53. " ••; " " 57,61. 90 1 Psalm cxxxvii. 1-0. " 2 " cxxii. 1-2. 95 1 Second Peter ii. 5. 90 1 Genesis vi. 1-4. 98 1 " xviii. 18, 19. " 2 " 1.22,23. 99 1 Deuteronomy vi. 7. 103 1 First Corinthians x. 31. 104 1 Luke X. 27. 105 1 Deuteronomy vi. 6, 7. " 2 Gene3i8 xxxi. 29. 100 I " "42 " 2 " .< 43" 44. 107 1 " «• 51-53. " 2 Ruth i. 8. " a •' ii. 4. " . . . . 4 " " i INhEX TO QUOTATIONS. 319 '■ I'AOK. 107 r, Ruth ii. 12. 11« Meremiah vii. 22. 11» I First Siiimiel iv. 3-11. 121 I Isiiiah i. 11 17. 123. 1 yhhim I'urana, 44. *' - llardwick, Chrid and other Man- tern, p. 220. 124 1 I'snlin 1. 9-14. " 'J: Joruniiah xx.\ii. 35. " ;i First Kinf,'8 xiv. 23. 127 1 Psalm viii. ;{, 4. " 2 " xix. 1. " ;! Second Sainiiol xxiii. 3. 129 1 Maladii iii. 1-4. 133 1 (ialatiaiis iv. 4. 138 I First John i. 29. " 'i Ilovelatiou v. 5. 139 1 Matthew xi. 28. 140 1 Mattliew x. 34-30. , 140 -' Lulie xii. 49. 141 ' Genesis iii. 15. " •-' Psalm ii. 12. " 3 " xlv. 3-5. " 4 Malaehi iii. 2. " T) Matthew iii. 2. 142 1 " iii. 11,12. " y " xxiii. 13. " o " " 33. 143 1 Revelation xix. 11 10. 145 I John xii. 19. •' •-' " vii. 40. 140 1 " xi. 43. " J Lul. 297. 298, 299 1 309. 1310. 313. 314. 315. l316. , . . 1 Genesis ii. 2-3 ; Exodus XX. 8. (NOTK. —Only an intelli- Ijrent beinsf can be inherently and personally -in other words ,>mbjectii)ely—ho\y. A day can no more be holy in this sense, than a house, or a bool<, or any other purely material thin^r. God blessed the Sabiiath day and sanctified it, not by nial<- \ng any chani^e upon its atmos- phere "or its sunlisjht, but by ordaining that man's use of the day should be peculiarly holy.) ... I llomans vii. 6. , . . . 1 Second Corinthians lii. 6. 1 Acts vii. 52. " Isaiah lix. 15. . . .. "> Jeremiah xvii. 5. 1 John xvi. 7. 2 Numbers xi. 29. 1 Acts ii. 17. .... 1 Revelation xxii. 20, 21. THE END. >,D t Exodus intelli- erently r words lay can i sense, , or any thinjr. th day ly niak- atnios- but by tc o/ the. y holy.) iii. C. 21.