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 THE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ONE TRUE GOD 
 
 CONTRASTED. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. SAMUEL HINDS, M.A. 
 
 OF QUEEN'S COLLEGE, AND VICE-PRINCIPAL 'OF ST. ALBAN'S HALL, 
 
 OXFORD. 
 
 OXFORD, 
 
 PRINTED BY W. BAXTER, 
 
 FOR B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET, LONDON 
 
 AND J. PARKER, OXFORD. 
 
 1830.
 
 ATHENAEUM 
 
 GASQELLSO 
 
 LIBRARY
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following contrast of the Three 
 Temples comprises, together with much 
 additional matter, the substance of two 
 Sermons preached before the University 
 of Oxford, on the morning and afternoon 
 of Whitsunday, 1829. To this has been 
 appended the substance of another Ser- 
 mon, in consequence of its connection 
 with a portion of the former, which will be 
 noticed in its proper place. 
 
 It has occurred to me, that the title 
 of the work may appear strange and 
 quaint to some even of those who are 
 not likely to dissent from the view which 
 it contains. Whether any objection lies 
 against it on the score of incongruity, 
 must, of course, be determined by a pe- 
 rusal of the book itself. But I may be
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 permitted to remark, that the analogy I 
 have been pursuing has been denoted in 
 the title, in Scriptural terms ; and these 
 terms have been purposely introduced 
 with a view to recall a Scriptural view, 
 which the more needs to be prominently 
 set forth, in proportion as it has been 
 overlooked, or insufficiently attended to. 
 And that this is the case with many per- 
 sons that the view to which I allude is 
 less familiar to their minds than it ought to 
 be may be inferred from the very cir- 
 cumstance, that the Scriptural expression 
 of it, sounds to them strange and inap- 
 propriate.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 ALL Revelation progressive, but especially Revelation 
 of the Divine nature The three stages in this Revela- 
 tion Why called Temples, p. 1 7. 
 
 The present comparative survey to embrace, I. The 
 marks which characterize them as Temples. II. The 
 resemblances and differences between the Temples 
 themselves, p. 7, 8. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 I. Signs accompanying the dedication of the Temple 
 of stone. II. The correspondence between this and the 
 sign given at the baptism of Jesus, the bodily Temple 
 confirmed by the account of the Transfiguration. 
 III. The Church, or the Temple of the Holy Ghost, 
 dedicated and marked by the same sign on the day of 
 Pentecost, p. 9 15. 
 
 The Christian Body, and not any place of worship, 
 properly our Temple The importance of this view 
 being made habitual, and the impediments to its in- 
 fluence, p. 1622.
 
 vi Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MATERIALS OF THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 The first Temple typical of the latter Statement of 
 the points of contrast to be considered in the following 
 survey the difference between the Materials, p. 23 26. 
 
 I. Temple of stone suited to the weakness and pre- 
 judices of the Israelites the present Church to an im- 
 proved spiritual, moral, and intellectual state and the 
 presence of the Immanuel, to the period of transition. 
 p. 2630. 
 
 II. The Temple of stone calculated for a partial dis- 
 pensation, the present Church, for one that is universal, 
 and the Immanuel's abode on earth, for the change from 
 the one to the other. The present dispensation incon- 
 sistent with the existence of a Temple of stone with the 
 return and abode of Christ in the flesh amongst us and 
 especially with the claims of the papal throne, p. 30 36. 
 
 III. The Temple of stone adapted to a gradation of 
 spiritual privileges the present Church, to an equal 
 participation. The residence of the Immanuel on earth 
 under the present dispensation, likewise inconsistent with 
 this view. p. 36 41. 
 
 Proper notion of God's abode and presence to be de- 
 rived from the foregoing view. p. 41 43. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MODE OF DIVINP: RESIDENCE/ 
 
 Two distinct objects suggested by the question re- 
 specting the mode of Divine residence in the three 
 Temples, p. 45 48.
 
 Contents. vii 
 
 I. First question, that, viz. respecting the communion 
 or intercourse between God and his chosen abode, not to 
 be pursued far cautions requisite in such an inquiry. 
 p. 4850. 
 
 II. The other question, that, viz. respecting the mode 
 of divine communication through the Temples, a more 
 proper subject of investigation Oracle appended to the 
 Temple of stone Christ's instructions the oracle of the 
 second Temple The Bible the oracle of the present 
 Church Fitness of these several modes of communi- 
 cation to their respective periods and stages in the 
 Divine dispensation. View of inspiration requisite for 
 attaching this authority to the Scriptures, p. 50 62. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 DURATION AND STABILITY OF THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 Inquiry into the ways of Providence, how far to be 
 pursued Application of the principle to the question, 
 why the several Temples have so differed in duration 
 and stability ? p. 6368. 
 
 I. Duration and stability of the Temple of stone such 
 as was alone consistent with its design, as introductory to 
 Christianity explanation of the sense in which it was 
 introductory, p. 68 72. 
 
 II. Christ's abode on earth, why necessarily brief 
 long enough for his part in the Christian scheme and 
 also for making us personally acquainted with Him. 
 p. 7275. 
 
 III. The Church to last as long as the world 
 meaning of the promise, " the gates of hell shall not
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 prevail against it" the time of its duration unknown 
 the practical view which belongs to the question about 
 the time. p. 75 79. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TEMPLE SERVICES. 
 
 Religious service defined I. Service of the first 
 Temple a service of action expediency of this, owing 
 to its prophetic character combined with the moral and 
 intellectual degradation of the Israelites Hence, a literal 
 and minute observance required This system adapted 
 only to a partial dispensation, p. 8189- 
 
 II. The service of the Christian Temple not only 
 different from, but contrasted with, that of the first 
 A service of words including moral conduct No 
 precise rules given for either evidence to the truth of 
 Christianity arising from this Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper exceptions, and why. p. 89 99. 
 
 III. To the second Temple no peculiar service at- 
 tached, but only the training for one The Lord's 
 Prayer not an exception to this view. p. 99 104. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERSONS OFFICIATING IN THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 I. The Levitical priesthood typical, and its object 
 fulfilled in Christ's coming, p. 105107.
 
 Contents. ix 
 
 II. The priesthood of Christ consequently characterized 
 by several points of contrast with the former viz. 
 being employed about a real atonement all centering 
 in Him alone He exempt from sin appointed for a 
 single sacrifice, p. 108 111. 
 
 Twofold office of the Levitical priest, sacrifice and 
 intercession the former, fulfilled and abolished by 
 Christ; the latter, fulfilled but not abolished, p. Ill, 112. 
 
 III. Scriptural language respecting a priesthood 
 attached to the Church, considered, first, as to the office 
 of sacrifice ; secondly, as to the office of intercession, 
 p. 113120. 
 
 What place the Church collectively and the various 
 orders of the Church occupy in the comparative survey, 
 p. 120126. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE CONNECTION OF THE THREE TEMPLES WITH THE 
 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 The view of God as three persons the natural im- 
 pression arising from the differences between the three 
 Temples The historical facts of Revelation the first 
 foundation of the doctrine of a Trinity Consequent 
 need of especial provisions accompanying each change 
 of Temple for preserving the doctrine of the Divine 
 Unity, p. 127131. 
 
 I. Provisions attached to thejirst Temple prospective 
 Express declarations prohibition against more than 
 one Temple, p. 131183.
 
 x Contents. 
 
 II. Provisions of the second Temple N Recurrence of 
 the " glory of the Lord" Miracles identifying the 
 Immanuel's divine nature with Jehovah Occasional 
 violation of the Sabbath by Christ Hints and asser- 
 tions by which He confirmed the impression so made 
 Evidence that such was actually the impression left on 
 the minds of the apostles, p. 133 138. 
 
 III. Provisions belonging to the third Temple Allu- 
 sions contained in the New-Testament-Epistles to the 
 instruction of Christ on this point Indiscriminate trans- 
 fer of the Divine agency and attributes from one Person 
 to the other, by the New-Testament-writers The form 
 of baptism, the main provision, peculiar to the third 
 Temple, p. 139143. 
 
 CHRIST A PATTERN OF CHRISTIAN 
 HUMILITY. 
 
 The apparent principle of selection and omission 
 adopted in the biography of Christ, in reference to our 
 imitation of his example Why an example was espe- 
 cially needed for forgiveness of injury, and humility 
 Remarkable passage in the Epistle to the Philippians, 
 comprising all the views of Christ as an example of 
 humility, p. 146 151. 
 
 I. His being made in the likeness of men In what 
 manner the Incarnation is applicable as an example to 
 us Christians, p. 151 155. 
 
 II. His taking on Him the form of a servant the 
 mode of imitating this part of our Lord's character,
 
 Contents. xi 
 
 essentially distinct from the former view particular 
 need of this feature in the pattern of humility how it 
 applies to us now. p. 155 159. 
 
 III. His dying on the cross the trial of humility 
 implied in this, and the trials corresponding to it in 
 the different ages and conditions of the Christian world 
 In what respect young persons are especially liable to 
 this kind of trial, p. 159163. 
 
 Qualities sometimes mistaken for Christian humility 
 Submission to human authority or power this often 
 incompatible with the true Christian virtue Morbid 
 temperament of the ascetic, whether in body or in mind, 
 and the spiritual pride combined with it Mischievous 
 effect of such cases in repressing the endeavours of the 
 sober-minded after real humility, p. 163 170.
 
 THE 
 
 THREE TEMPLES 
 
 OF 
 
 THE ONE TRUE GOD 
 
 CONTRASTED. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 IN no view of Revelation is the wisdom of God 
 more conspicuous than in the slow and gradual 
 development of truth the admission of more and 
 more light, according as mankind have been able 
 to endure it, and have been capable of walking by 
 it. Contrast, for instance, the obscure hint given 
 to our first parents, that the seed of the woman 
 should bruise the serpent's head, with the Chris- 
 tian doctrine of fallen man's redemption through 
 Christ; and observe how progressively the ori- 
 ginal outline has been filled up and finished. 
 The first intimation of a Redeemer, compared 
 with our present knowledge of that great truth,
 
 2 Introduction. 
 
 was like the confused mass of colouring which 
 the painter's canvass at first exhibits, and in 
 which no eye but his own can discover a future 
 form or meaning. Slowly it received touch 
 after touch, and line upon line, until at length 
 the understanding of a child may comprehend its 
 import, and the heart of a child be touched and 
 awakened by it. So again, with respect to our 
 knowledge of a future state. From a few pas- 
 sages in the writings of Moses, it may be elicited 
 and inferred; in the long interval between Moses 
 and Christ, a series of inspired messengers 
 suggest it with increasing clearness ; at length, 
 the Finisher of our faith the Author as well as 
 Finisher brings life and immortality to light by 
 his Gospel. 
 
 Remarkable as this progressive system has 
 been in the disclosure of all revealed truth, it 
 has been more especially so in God's revelation 
 of Himself. His immediate presence, his un- 
 delegated intercourse with man, has gradually 
 assumed a character more and more unlike our 
 gross conceptions of any earthly or created ob- 
 ject, until we of these latter days are found ac- 
 knowledging the reality of the Divine presence
 
 Introduction. 3 
 
 and communion, without any sensible manifest- 
 ation at all. To his first chosen people, God 
 was made known as the God of Abraham, Isaac, 
 and Jacob ; and his presence was associated with 
 a pillar of fire, or a cloud, a tabernacle or a 
 temple. The Israelites were taught to address 
 Him as especially present in a building made by 
 men's hands, as their forefathers are alleged by the 
 woman of Samaria to have associated his wor- 
 ship with mount Gerizim ft . Their prophets, at 
 length, hinted at a new idea of God's presence, 
 in which the analogy to an earthly abode and a 
 local existence was to be more distant and 
 shadowy. " The Lord himself," said Isaiah, 
 " shall give you a sign ; Behold, a virgin shall 
 conceive, and bear a son, and shall call his name 
 Immanuel," i. e. as the Evangelist explains it, 
 " God with us b ." Accordingly the Immanuel 
 came ; and his coming taught the worshippers 
 of God so far to divest their minds of an asso- 
 ciation between his holy presence and a local 
 habitation, as to contemplate the Divine nature 
 in its connection with the immaterial qualities of 
 
 * John iv. 20. 
 
 b Isaiah vii. 14. compared with Matt. i. 23. 
 B 2
 
 4 Introduction. 
 
 a human mind. " The Word was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory c ." 
 But there was yet a further stage of revelation, 
 to which the Immanuel himself directed the views 
 of his Church. Not only that worship of God 
 was to be done away with, which connected his 
 presence with a mountain or a building with 
 Jerusalem or Gerizim it was expedient that 
 Christ, the fleshly manifestation, should go away. 
 He foretold a day, in which the true worshippers 
 were no longer to say, <c Lo, He is here," or 
 " Lo, He is there ;" for the kingdom of God was 
 to be " within them." They were to worship 
 him as present by his Spirit present in no one 
 place in no one man but in his new body the 
 Church, " the fulness of Him that filleth all in 
 all 1 '." 
 
 It is my purpose, to compare together these 
 three successive stages, in which God has re- 
 vealed Himself as the Ruler of his elect : in other 
 words, to contrast the three Temples of the one 
 true God. I call these three channels of divine 
 
 e John i. 14. 
 
 11 Compare Ephesians i. 22, 23. Luke xvii. 20, 21. Matt. 
 xxiv. 23 27. John iv. 21 24.
 
 Introduction. 5 
 
 intercourse, temples, because inspired wisdom has 
 thought proper so to represent them, in reference 
 to certain important points of analogy. Our 
 Lord, for instance, spoke thus of himself; 
 " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will 
 raise it up c ." His apostles hold a similar 
 language, saying, that " in Him dwelleth all the 
 fulness of the Godhead f ;" and, that the Word 
 was made flesh, and dwelt or tabernacled amongst 
 us *. Again, with respect to the Church, St. 
 Paul frequently reminds his Christian brethren, 
 that they are " the temple of the Holy Ghost," 
 and " the temple of God." In his first Epistle 
 to the Corinthians he writes, " Know ye not that 
 ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of 
 God dwelleth in you? if any man defile the 
 temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the 
 
 e John ii. 19. 
 
 f Coloss. ii. 9. 
 
 g 'EffcyMwiy Ix iifui. John i. 14. The expression seems to 
 be an allusion to the tabernacle, to which the Divine presence 
 was attached, during the period that was preparatory to the 
 establishment of Israel in the promised land and the building 
 of a temple. The correspondence between this period and 
 our Lord's ministry, considered as preparatory to the final 
 establishment of his Church, is obvious.
 
 6 Introduction. 
 
 temple of God is holy, which temple ye are 1 ':" 
 and in his second Epistle to the same Church, 
 " What agreement hath the temple of God with 
 idols ? for ye are the temple of the living God ; 
 as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk 
 in them 1 ." To the Ephesians also he writes, 
 " Ye are built upon the foundation of the apo- 
 stles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the 
 chief corner stone ; in whom all the building, fitly 
 framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in 
 the Lord : in whom ye also are builded together 
 for an habitation of God through the Spirit k ." 
 To the same source must be assigned the repeated 
 use of the metaphorical expression " edification" 
 or " building up ;" and this, not by St. Paul 
 alone ; it was no fanciful train of allusion which 
 his peculiar habits of thinking suggested ; but an 
 image derived from the very essentials of that 
 Gospel, which all the apostles alike preached. 
 St. Jude as well as St. Paul speaks of Christians 
 " building up" themselves on their most holy 
 faith 1 ; and in St. Peter's Epistles, as in St. Paul's, 
 the exhortation to come unto Christ as ' ' unto a 
 
 " 1 Cor. iii. 16, 17. ' 2 Cor. vi. 16. " Ephes. 
 
 ii. 20, 21, 22. ' Jude 20.
 
 Introduction. 7 
 
 living stone, disallowed indeed of men, but 
 chosen of God, and precious," is followed up 
 with the declaration, " ye also, as lively stones, 
 are built up a spiritual house m ." 
 
 This comparative survey, which I propose to 
 take, will require, in the first place, a statement 
 of those marks which God set on his three 
 Temples, for the purpose of connecting them, and 
 of calling attention to the analogy : and secondly, 
 a consideration of the resemblances, and of the 
 differences between the three Temples, and of the 
 ends which appear to have been contemplated by 
 these points of resemblance or difference. It is 
 an inquiry, which, with the full blaze of Gospel 
 light to guide us, will remind us at every step of 
 our weakness and blindness. It is the lifting up 
 of the eye to Him who gives it sight ; it is the 
 exercise of our understanding on Him, in whom 
 "we live, and move, and have our being ;" and 
 every Christian should approach the discussion, 
 with the reverence and humility that is due to so 
 high and solemn a theme : but he should do so 
 with the full conviction likewise, that whatever 
 it has pleased God to reveal to us of Himself, is 
 
 m 1 Peter ii. 4, 5.
 
 8 Introduction. 
 
 like the burning bush on Mount Horeb, it is our 
 duty to turn aside, and draw near, and examine 
 it ; only remembering, that the ground whereon 
 we tread is holy.
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 DEDICATION OF THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 THE Dedication of the three Temples is the 
 first feature to be considered in the comparison. 
 There was a solemn consecration of each ; and a 
 miraculous sign declared each, in succession, to 
 be the abode of God the appointed channel of 
 his communications in other words, his Temple. 
 
 I. To begin with the Temple of stone at 
 Jerusalem. The mark by which God signified 
 its holy character was given on the com- 
 pletion of the building, and preparatory to its 
 use. It was formally and solemnly dedicated ; 
 and at its dedication, it was miraculously filled 
 with a " glory," or mysterious light*. With the 
 meaning of this light, as the established sign 
 of God's immediate presence and undelegated 
 communications, the Israelites, it will be ob- 
 served, were, at that time, fully acquainted. 
 They knew it by the Shechinah which had signi- 
 fied Jehovah's abode in the tabernacle, by the 
 
 1 Kings viii. 10, 11. 2 Chron. v. 13, 14. and vii. 2.
 
 10 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 pillar of fire which had conducted their fathers 
 through the wilderness, and by the lightnings that 
 played about the summit of Mount Sinai on the 
 delivery of the Law. They knew it also by the re- 
 cord of the burning bush, out of which God called to 
 Moses to appoint him their lawgiver and leader b ; 
 and, to add no more instances, they knew it 
 by that more awful record of man's exclusion 
 from paradise, which was accompanied with the 
 display of " cherubims and a flaming sword c ." 
 
 In manifesting this light then, at the dedi- 
 cation of Solomon's temple, God declared, by 
 a well-known symbol, that it was the appointed 
 place where men ought to worship Him that 
 there He was to be found when called on that 
 thither, as to the abode of the first Paraclete d , 
 the court of their heavenly Sovereign, both 
 king and people, priesthood and laity, were to 
 
 b Exodus iii. 2. c Genesis ii. 24. 
 
 * The etymological meaning of the term 7rg'*AT{ is 
 one called in ; and in reference to this may be explained all 
 the significations which are claimed for it. God, as presiding 
 over his Church, is called in by the afflicted to comfort them, 
 by the ignorant to instruct them, by the weak to strengthen 
 them.
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 1 1 
 
 resort. Though, in the words of Solomon on that 
 occasion, "God dwelleth not in a temple made 
 by hands," yet the circumstances of his presence 
 here were analogous to the local residence of 
 a human governor, and it was therefore called 
 " the house of the Lord." 
 
 II. Christ's human nature was the next Temple 
 to which God's presence and intercourse with 
 man was attached. Considered in this point of 
 view, his baptism corresponded to the dedication 
 of the temple of stone. It was the period from 
 which his holy service commenced. And ac- 
 cordingly the baptism of Jesus appears to have 
 exhibited a scene answering to the dedication of 
 the temple at Jerusalem. There is every reason 
 to understand the sacred writers, in their narra- 
 tion of that event, to be recording the descent of 
 the well-known symbol the Shechinah. The 
 Spirit of God is said indeed to have descended 
 on Him, in bodily shape, like a dove ; but this 
 must allude either to the easy motion with 
 which the holy flame descended, or to the figure 
 which it assumed ; for it is plain, that no other 
 semblance of a dove would have impressed the 
 spectators with the idea of the Divine presence.
 
 ] 2 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 The Shechinah was the only recognised and 
 established symbol of this ; and it was doubtless 
 the rekindled Shechinah which so descended e . 
 With this, as well as with the fuller display on 
 the Mount of Transfiguration, was joined a voice 
 from heaven, saying, " This is my beloved 
 Son." 
 
 The repetition of these words, and their use 
 at the Transfiguration more especially, deserves 
 particular notice, in reference to the view which 
 we are now taking of our Lord, as the new 
 Temple. On two favoured servants of God in 
 old times this mark of his presence was known 
 
 * The author of " The Gospel of the Nazarenes" mentions 
 the appearance of " a great light" at our Saviour's baptism. 
 The independent authority of such a document is, of course, 
 nothing; but it may nevertheless be allowed to strengthen 
 a probability already resting on grounds certainly Scriptural. 
 The passage, to which I allude, will be found in Jones's 
 Canon of the New Testament, part ii. c. 25. . 11. See also 
 the remarks of Paley on the allusions made to this tradition 
 by Epiphanius and Justin Martyr. Evidences, part i. chap. 9. 
 . 1. A similar notice, mixed up with a great deal that is 
 mystical, occurs in the Sabean books, where John the Baptist's 
 part in this scene is recorded. See Fragments to Calmet, 
 DCXXII.
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 13 
 
 to have rested, and on two only on Moses after 
 he came down from Mount Sinai, and his face so 
 shone that he wore a veil ; on Elias or Elijah, 
 when he was caught up into the heavens, seated 
 on a cloud so irradiated f . By these very marks, 
 no doubt, the disciples recognised Moses and 
 Elias, whom they had never seen, but with whom, 
 so characterised, their Scriptures had made them 
 acquainted. They on that occasion saw them 
 both " in glory ;" to these servants of God, 
 even as to Jesus, the Shechinah was attached. 
 Were they then Immanuels too ? Were they 
 (their hearts might have suggested) to be con- 
 sidered as Beings of the same order as their 
 Master? Were they, like Jesus, temples of the 
 living God? The suggestion was natural, and 
 seems to have been anticipated by the voice that 
 told them, " This is my beloved Son." Twice to 
 our Lord this " glory" had been attached, and 
 on each occasion, that same voice accompanied 
 it, to guard against the possibility of our suppos- 
 ing, that in his case, it denoted no more than 
 in the case of Elias or Moses. This was probably 
 indeed the main purport of the Transfiguration. 
 
 f Called a chariot of fire, 2 Kings ii. 11.
 
 14 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 It declared Jesus to be, not like Elias, nor like 
 Moses, an inspired man but the Immanuel the 
 Christ the Son of God the Temple of his 
 presence and communication. 
 
 III. We come now to the last great and glorious 
 scene that scene, for which the preceding stages 
 in God's revelation of himself were preparatory. 
 Christ had spoken of yet another Paraclete, for 
 whose coming it was expedient that He should go 
 away. He had told his disciples that He would 
 come again ; but warned them against supposing 
 that his new body, the future Temple of God, 
 was to be even so local, as when God was mani- 
 fested in Him. " And then, if any man shall say 
 unto you, Lo, here is Christ; or, Lo, He is there; 
 believe him not s ." " The kingdom of God com- 
 eth not with observation, neither shall they say, 
 Lo, here; or Lo, there; for, behold, the kingdom 
 of God is within you h ." But this was not all; 
 his last and most important declaration, was 
 prophetic of that scene, which, like his own bap- 
 tism, was to be the dedication of the last Temple; 
 the correspondence between the two events being 
 most pointedly marked by his manner of express- 
 
 Matt. xxiv. 23. h Luke xvii. 20.
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 1 5 
 
 ing himself. Not long before his ascension, He 
 commanded the apostles, " that they should not 
 depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the promise 
 of the Father, which," saith He, "ye have heard 
 from me. For John truly baptized with water, 
 (alluding probably to his own baptism by John,) 
 but ye shall be baptized with the Holy Ghost not 
 many days hence 1 ." Accordingly, on the day 
 of Pentecost, the mysterious emblem of God's 
 abiding presence and covenanted intercourse was 
 once more displayed. On the assembled Church 
 the Shechinah was poured out and dispersed. 
 The metaphor of " pouring out k " is used as if to 
 denote that it was the Church's spiritual anoint- 
 ing. It was, in the language of St. John 1 , the 
 unction from the Holy One. The Church became 
 the Lord's anointed. It was the Church's bap- 
 tism ; it was the dedication of the last Temple of 
 the one true God. 
 
 ' Acts i. 4, 5. 
 
 k 'Ex,ta. Acts ii. 17. 
 
 1 1 John ii. 20. See also ver. 27. where he speaks of this 
 anointing " as abiding in" Christians, and as " teaching all 
 things," expressions used by our Lord in his promise of the 
 Comforter.
 
 16 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 It is this view of the Christian fraternity through- 
 out the world, and of each separate Church, and its 
 several congregations, that entitles it to be called 
 the Temple. No building made by hands corre- 
 sponds to that which was honoured, of old, by the 
 abiding presence of Jehovah. We, the wor- 
 shippers of God, are now his Temple. Buildings 
 of stone we have, indeed, which are dedicated to 
 God's service ; but if any analogy must be sought 
 for these from an earlier dispensation, it will be 
 found rather in the Jewish proseuchse or syna- 
 gogues. Our churches do not, at least, correspond 
 to the Temple at Jerusalem. Of no literal edifice 
 in the Christian world has it been written, that 
 the Holy Ghost dwells in it, and has filled it with 
 his presence ; but only of that figurative struc- 
 ture, in which we are " as lively stones." 
 Whatever reverence, therefore, may be due to 
 places set apart for divine service ; that reverence 
 ought neither to supersede, nor yet to be con- 
 founded with, the sense of God's presence which 
 we are required to attach to the congregation. 
 They, and not the walls that occasionally enclose 
 them, are the dedicated Temple. 
 
 And yet, it is melancholy to reflect on the
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 1 7 
 
 cold-hearted indifference, with which this the true 
 sanctuary is regarded, even by numbers who 
 value the good- tidings of the Gospel. Has 
 Christ indeed gone and left us comfortless, that 
 we must look back for the source of our holy 
 love and zeal to days of miracle and manifesta- 
 tion ; and, like Peter, stand gazing with misplaced 
 enthusiam on the goodly stones of an earlier 
 Temple, unmindful of that to which the She- 
 chinah has been transferred? How poor, after 
 all, is that use of Christian privileges, which 
 awakens no habitual sense that God is present, 
 and Himself dispensing their secret virtue ! It 
 savours of the dulness with which numbers came 
 to the Immanuel to be healed or to be fed, and 
 yet failed to recognise " the Lord that healeth" 1 ," 
 and Him who provided their fathers with manna 
 in the desert. 
 
 Is this apathy increased, or is it diminished, 
 by the further view which that same truth 
 carries along with it that we are individually 
 portions of this sacred edifice " lively stones," 
 as St. Peter expresses it? I fear it is increased. 
 We could be content to visit, at stated periods, a 
 
 m Exod. xv. 26. 
 c
 
 18 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 shrine or a holy person ; once or twice in our 
 lives, to make a toilsome pilgrimage to Jerusalem 
 or Mecca, and for the occasion to put any re- 
 straint on our conduct, and to wind up our hearts 
 to any pitch of devotion and holy fear : but to 
 feel that we have not to go to God, but that 
 God has come to us that He is mysteriously 
 with us, within us, and ever mingling the opera- 
 tions of his Spirit with our own government of 
 our will and affections that, do what we may r 
 whether good or evil, we are doing it with Him, 
 and either going along with Him or resisting 
 Him that in every act, and word, and thought, 
 we are either led by the Spirit, or else are 
 grieving the Spirit to live under the habitual 
 sense of this, what is it, but to struggle through 
 the narrow path, which he only treads, who is 
 " crucified unto this world," and has " tasted 
 the powers of the world to come?" On the 
 other hand, to entertain such a feeling occa- 
 sionally, but fills us with an undefined horror, 
 which forces us to dismiss it, and to emancipate 
 ourselves, if possible, from its harrowing in- 
 fluence. 
 
 Still it does return ; and then, how does the
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 1 9 
 
 Christian behave ? Does he feel that it is indeed 
 the Lord God from whose presence he has been 
 vainly hiding himself? Does he recognise the 
 still, small voice that asks,| Where art thou ? 
 Let him then come forth trembling, ashamed, and 
 resolved thenceforward to walk humbly with his 
 God. He is yet in time ; for the Lord has called 
 him, and him who cometh He will in no wise 
 cast out. But does he still reply, "Depart from 
 me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord." Alas ! for 
 him a little while and indeed the Lord will be 
 no more with him ; and where his Saviour is, he 
 cannot then come. Or, does he plead with con- 
 science, and allege that it is impossible habitually 
 to recognise the Divine presence, because he is 
 not sensibly reminded of it ? O ! let him beware 
 of this worst delusion. It is not now for the first 
 time, that God has come to his own, and his own 
 have received Him not. It has occurred quite as 
 remarkably with those who have had sensible 
 manifestations and ocular proof, as it does now 
 with Christians, who complain of the absence of 
 such evidence. This is never the real cause. 
 We all know, if we have duly inquired, that God 
 is with us ; and if He has chosen to assure us of 
 
 c2
 
 20 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 this by any one sufficient method, let us not say r 
 that we neglect the behaviour due to his pre- 
 sence, because it ought to have been made known 
 to us in some other way. Let us think on those 
 who, amidst a series of miracles wrought, and 
 prophecies fulfilled, yet said to the Immanuel, 
 " We would see a sign from thee n ." 
 
 True we are not assured of the co-operation of 
 the Holy Spirit by the same means as we are of 
 the operation of our understanding on our affec- 
 tions or passions. We are not conscious of it. 
 But what then? Our condition in this respect 
 may be after all very like the condition of the 
 first followers of our blessed Lord, which we 
 would fain represent to ourselves to be so much 
 more favourable than our own. They believed in 
 Him, they obeyed Him, they loved Him, before 
 they knew that it was God in Christ, who was 
 the object of their regard and veneration. The 
 proof, the sensible manifestation of this, was the 
 reward of a faith exercised in partial blindness. 
 May it not be even so with us ? In another life, 
 although no other connection should be esta- 
 blished between God and his Church than now 
 
 n St. Matt. xii. 38.
 
 Dedication of the three Temples. 2 1 
 
 exists ; if we should be so far changed as to be 
 made conscious of this connection, what a new 
 and exalted state of being might be the result ! 
 The difference between the first and the last stages 
 of apostolic faith and knowledge, would be surely 
 but a faint type of this. Nor is the expectation 
 unreasonable. That such a change at least may 
 take place, is conceivable, although the precise 
 character of the change be not. One, for instance, 
 who should be born blind, and acquire the use of 
 his eyes after his other senses and faculties had 
 been matured and exercised, would perceive not 
 only objects imperceptible by any senses which 
 he had before employed ; but would discover in 
 the objects around him, and most familiar to him, 
 relations which had been hidden from him, and 
 qualities hitherto incomprehensible 8 . In another 
 life the controlling influence of the Divine pre- 
 sence on our hearts and conduct may be only in 
 itself the same as now ; and our security from 
 sin, as well as our chief happiness, be made to 
 consist in the exercise of a new or latent faculty 
 
 I have here availed myself of an illustration, furnished by 
 one, to whose valuable suggestions in the course of the in- 
 quiry I have been often indebted. See Scripture Revelations 
 concerning a Future State, by a Country Pastor, Lect. ix.
 
 22 Dedication of the three Temples. 
 
 by which we shall be conscious of it. God may 
 not be more intimately present, more with us, 
 than He now is ; and yet, as often as we address 
 Him, our hearts may be assured of his presence, 
 and our devotions kindled, by a ray of glory 
 which eye hath not yet seen, only because the 
 eye is not yet framed to perceive it. When 
 exercising that more perfect control on our de- 
 sires and affections, for which our present life is 
 training us, what if that benignant countenance 
 that same look of affectionate remonstrance at 
 which the apostle wept and repented shall be 
 turned on us, to check impulses that now lead to 
 sin, even before an evil thought should be con- 
 ceived, or actual temptation have commenced ? 
 The present Temple may remain unchanged ; 
 save only, that by the rending of another veil, 
 we shall see God face to face, and " shall know 
 even as we also are known."
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 MATERIALS OF THE THREE TEMPLES. 
 
 THE expressions " true" and " truth" are used 
 by the writers of the New Testament not only in 
 their ordinary sense, as opposed to what is false 
 and untrue; but to signify reality, or substance, as 
 opposed to types, emblems, similitudes. Accordingly 
 these terms are often applied to Christianity, or 
 to some feature of the Christian scheme, for the 
 purpose of contrasting it with the Jewish dis- 
 pensation ; that being considered as the shadow, 
 and the Christian as the body, or " the truth." 
 All the rites and ordinances of the Mosaic Law 
 are, by the last Revelation, declared to have been 
 patterns, or images, or symbols, of events and 
 appointments in the Christian covenant ; for 
 which, exclusively, this character of truth or 
 reality is claimed. Even the personages of 
 Jewish history are represented as forming a part 
 of this preparatory and promissory system ; and 
 to have held office and ministry, the real effi- 
 cacy of which belonged to the analogous office
 
 24 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 and ministry of Christ, the true King, the true 
 Priest, and the true Prophet A . 
 
 It is, for instance, in opposition to the pre- 
 judices of the unbelieving Jews, who contended 
 for the eternal obligation and permanent cha- 
 racter of the Mosaic Law, as such, that our 
 Saviour tells them, "The truth shall make you 
 free b " alluding to the release which Christianity 
 offered from the burthensome rites of the Law. 
 Such too was the meaning of St. Paul, when he 
 drew the allegorical parallel between the child of 
 the free-woman, and the child of the bond- 
 woman c and of St. John, when he wrote, " The 
 Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
 came by Jesus Christ d ." 
 
 Again, particular portions of the two dispensa- 
 tions are set in contrast by our Saviour ; as when 
 he tells the Jews, " Moses gave you not the bread 
 from heaven, but my Father is giving you the true 
 bread from heaven e " in allusion to the manna, 
 with which God fed the Israelites in the wilder- 
 ness, and which he thus intimates to have been a 
 
 a See e. g. 1 Cor. x. Hebrews viii. ix. x. Rev. xiii. 8. 
 b John viii. 32. Galat. iv. 22. d John i. 17. 
 
 1 John vi. 32.
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 25 
 
 type of the spiritual food he was to become to the 
 Church. So also, when he says, " my flesh is 
 meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed f " 
 the word which is rendered indeed in our transla- 
 tion being in both places (x>)0aj) " in truth." 
 
 It is in this sense, that the words " true" and 
 " truth" are used in his remarkable words to the 
 woman of Samaria, " the hour cometh, and now 
 is, when the true worshippers shall worship the 
 Father in spirit and in truth g ." The true wor- 
 shippers were so designated in opposition to the 
 typical Church under the old dispensation the 
 true worship, of which the Temple service had 
 been the prelude and preparation, was that, in 
 which God's attested presence should be attached 
 neither to a holy mountain, nor to a holy city 
 neither to Mount Gerizim, nor yet to Jerusalem 
 in which the Church should be at once the Tem- 
 ple and the worshippers. 
 
 By what successive stages God has, as it were, 
 educated the Church for this last and most ab- 
 stract Revelation of Himself what are the resem- 
 blances and the differences between these three 
 Temples, which we recognise as such by one 
 
 f John vi. 55. e John iv. 23.
 
 26 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 common symbol being annexed to their dedica- 
 tion, and a common language applied to them 
 by inspiration in what respects the gradual 
 change thus made in God's Revelation of Him- 
 self has been accommodated to the slowly-open- 
 ing capacity of his Church to the prejudices, 
 the corruptions, and the weakness of his wor- 
 shippers these will be now the objects of in- 
 quiry. 
 
 The subject will be arranged under the follow- 
 ing heads. I. The materials of the three Tem- 
 ples. II. The mode of divine residence in them. 
 III. Their duration and stability. IV. The 
 Temple services. V. The persons officiating. 
 VI. The connection of the three Temples with 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. The remainder of 
 the present chapter will be occupied with the first 
 of these topics. 
 
 I. That the Temple of stone was appointed 
 in condescension to the weakness and prejudices 
 of God's first worshippers, will be evident, if we 
 consider what was the character and condition of 
 the Israelites, and the time of its building. They 
 were even then so imperfectly cured of the 
 idolatrous habits of the heathen around them,
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 27 
 
 as to be continually incurring divine chastise- 
 ments for worshipping strange gods. Obstinacy 
 so blind as this is unaccountable, except on the 
 supposition, that their notion of the distinct 
 nature of God was still very faint and confused ; 
 and such as must have perpetually yielded to the 
 influence of example and habitual hereditary 
 corruption. 
 
 All the nations around were worshipping, each 
 its own deities, attached to a people, a district, a 
 mountain, or a grove. There were gods of the 
 hills, and gods of the valleys k . The Egyptians 
 had theirs, the Canaanites had theirs ; every 
 region, and every city, and almost every family 
 of the heathen world, had its own god. Could 
 the Israelites have been exempt from the in- 
 fluence of this view? We know that they were 
 not. The Israelite in Egypt had been a bonds- 
 man in morals and mind as well as in body, 
 and he continued to wear the chain that fettered 
 his heart and intellect, long after he had shaken 
 off external servitude. It was doubtless in ten- 
 
 k See 1 Kings xx. 23, and 28. So Eteocles in the Phoe- 
 nissae is made to address Polynices, Mvxu'iwf, ft 'i6a%' W*<*A< 
 6ivf. Phoeniss. 67.
 
 28 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 derness to this weakness, that God's first Reve- 
 lation of Himself to them was as a tutelary 
 deity as their God, the God of their fathers, 
 the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. 
 Nor was it until a sufficient interval had elapsed, 
 that he formally and explicitly declared Himself 
 to be the God of all the earth likewise J . 
 
 It is true, that before the building of Solomon's 
 Temple, many must have been more enlightened 
 than to be included in this description ; still, 
 the ready relapse of monarch and people, priest- 
 hood and laity, into gross idolatry and this 
 in periods long subsequent shews how unfit 
 they were generally for any Revelation of God's 
 presence and communication, but such as should 
 be attached to a place. Possibly any other view 
 would, as yet, have been incomprehensible. The 
 Temple of stone was an accommodation to 
 this spiritual infancy of the mind. Because 
 the king dwelt in an house of cedar, it seemed 
 unfitting that the ark of God, which had been 
 honoured with the sign of his presence, should 
 dwell within curtains m . All the circumstances 
 
 1 Compere Exodus vi. 7. with xix. 5. 
 m 2 Sam. vii. 2.
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 29 
 
 of an earthly and local theocracy were demanded ; 
 and in compassion to their weakness they were 
 granted. 
 
 Let us for a moment contrast the frame of 
 mind which all this supposes in the Israelites, 
 with the exercise of faith, necessary to embrace 
 the doctrine of God's presence and intercourse 
 by his Spirit his present indwelling in the hearts 
 of the faithful and it is impossible not to admit 
 that this last revelation would have been amazing 
 and inconceivable to the worshippers in the first 
 Temple. Scarcely could they be brought, by a 
 series of severe national judgments up to the 
 period of the Babylonish captivity, to adhere 
 even to the earliest improvement on their original 
 corrupt views ; and to worship without any sensi- 
 ble image to represent the object of worship. To 
 have attempted, in the first instance, to impress 
 them with the idea of a Divine residence amongst 
 them, in which there should be no local object at 
 all no fixed habitation to mark the Divine pre- 
 sence and communication this would have been 
 surely unavailing. It was only, when they had 
 entirely cast off their hereditary habits of idol- 
 atry, and had been thoroughly cured of image-
 
 30 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 worship, that they were fit for being taught to 
 worship Jehovah, " neither in mount Gerizim, 
 nor yet at Jerusalem, but in spirit and in truth." 
 
 And yet, so abrupt would have been the tran- 
 sition of thought, from the contemplation of 
 God's presence, as it was manifested in the Tem- 
 ple of stone, to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit 
 within our hearts ; that some intermediate stage 
 was requisite, for the mind to pause and rest on 
 in the immense transfer of its conception. That 
 stage was the Immanuel God dwelling, not in a 
 house or tabernacle, but in the mysterious abode 
 of a man's human nature united with the hu- 
 man heart and mind, as well as with the human 
 body. There was just so much of locality about 
 the material part of Christ's human nature, as to 
 convey men's views, by an easy transition, to 
 that last mode of residence, which was to be 
 divested of all local associations that kingdom, 
 in which we are appointed to walk by faith, and 
 not by sight that Temple, in which the wor- 
 shippers now worship in spirit and in truth. 
 
 II. There is another aspect under which the 
 difference of materials in the three Temples may 
 be surveyed one associated not so much with
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 3 1 
 
 the weakness of man, as with the wisdom of God 
 with the progressive scheme of salvation, which, 
 even in our imperfect view of it, has been plainly 
 best accomplished in its several stages, by pre- 
 cisely -such a kind of divine manifestation as was 
 attached to each. The comparison which has 
 been hitherto made relates to a difference in the 
 degree of revelation ; that which is now proposed 
 regards certain differences in kind between the 
 revelations. 
 
 In order to estimate the importance of these 
 differences, we must bear in mind, that the 
 Mosaic dispensation was partial, the Christian, 
 universal. The old Church of God was, not 
 accidentally, but designedly and by positive in- 
 stitution, limited to one elected people and one 
 place. Its first institution was on a principle of 
 preference, election, and separation ; and its par- 
 tial extent and exclusive character was further 
 preserved, by a strict command to celebrate the 
 appointed means of grace in the Temple only ; 
 and so frequently, as to render it impossible for 
 distant strangers to be in habitual and full com- 
 munion". Into the object of this limitation 
 
 " See Exod. xxxiv. 23. Deut. xii.
 
 32 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 I am not now inquiring ; but such was the 
 case. 
 
 The Christian dispensation, on the contrary, 
 began with the avowed design of embracing all 
 mankind. The commission of the Apostles was 
 " to baptize and make disciples of all nations ." 
 The commandment was that all men every where 
 should repent p ." 
 
 It is obvious then, how fit, how essential it 
 was, that there should be a Temple of stone for 
 the partial dispensation ; the presence of God 
 in Christ for the transition state, when it was yet 
 partial, but preparing to be extended ; and for 
 this last dispensation, which was to embrace all 
 the world, what Temple would have been suf- 
 ficient, but a Temple co- extensive and identical 
 with the worshippers themselves ? As in the true 
 atonement, there was no victim worthy of the 
 priest, no priest worthy of the victim, but He 
 who combined both in his own person ; so in 
 the true worship, there could have been no 
 adequate Temple, unless the worshippers and the 
 Temple had been the same. 
 
 Matt, xxviii. 19. Mark xvi. 15. P Acts xvii. 
 
 30.
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 33 
 
 Let us, for a moment, imagine it otherwise. 
 Suppose, that, in order to enjoy the benefits 
 which we now derive from God's spiritual presence 
 amongst us as a Church, the Christian world 
 were obliged to resort, once even in a year, to 
 some appointed place where God had fixed his 
 name. Suppose it Jerusalem suppose it Rome 
 suppose it where you will, and you create an in- 
 surmountable obstacle to the universality of the 
 Christian religion. As soon as the work of 
 conversion extended beyond the limits of the 
 country where the Shechinah rested, the impossi- 
 bility of a general conformity must have been 
 felt. But when a distance of half the globe in- 
 tervened-, a few occasional pilgrimages could have 
 been the only mode of compliance with the bond 
 of the covenant ; and even these would have 
 been limited to the robust and the wealthy 9 . If 
 again the possibility of removing all these im- 
 pediments were granted, the very removal of them 
 would at once create a stronger case of impracti- 
 cability. A Temple must have been provided, 
 
 q Mahomet felt this difficulty when he ordered his disciples 
 to repair to Mecca once in their lives. 
 
 D
 
 34 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 whose courts should be so spacious as to contain 
 all the families of the Christian world. 
 
 In a less degree, but only in a less degree, the 
 residence of the Saviour in the flesh amongst us 
 would have been inconsistent with the enlarge- 
 ment of his train of disciples into a fraternity 
 which comprehends some of all the portions of 
 civilized mankind. He must have continued to 
 be the source of all ecclesiastical authority at 
 least all reference and appeal on religious ques- 
 tions must have been finally made to Him and 
 how could all this have been done, in the case of 
 Churches, established in distant quarters of the 
 world, and varying in circumstances as much as 
 in distance ? I say nothing of the disturbance of 
 society arising out of the casual journeys to the 
 seat of spiritual empire ; or of the throng which 
 must have been for ever pressing on him, not, as 
 heretofore, from the small district of Palestine, 
 but from all the kingdoms of the world. 
 
 All this, and much more, that renders our 
 Saviour's fleshly residence amongst us inconsistent 
 with our present established state of probation, is 
 overlooked in those wild schemes of the fulfil- 
 ment of prophecy, which would realize this very
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 35 
 
 scene as the promised Millennium. From the 
 Anabaptists of the Reformation to the more in- 
 nocent speculators of the present day, no pro- 
 spect has been more attractive to the imagination 
 than this ; and yet it implies a change of con- 
 dition in the Christian world, which is at variance, 
 it would seem, with the very essentials of the 
 final dispensation. As soon as the Church of 
 Christ began to increase and spread, it became 
 expedient that He should go away. For a train 
 of disciples, which was to reach from one end of 
 the earth to the other, and to occupy a range 
 of countries and communities differing in all 
 ways, in their political institutions and domestic 
 habits, there could be no visible Head on earth 
 supposing of course Christianity to be otherwise 
 uncorrupted and unchanged. It was expedient 
 for the universal establishment of God's Church 
 throughout the world that the Temple of stone 
 should be destroyed it was expedient that the 
 Immanuel even should go away : and those who 
 would turn our contemplations and hopes to a 
 renewal of God's distinction of his once holy 
 city, or to the reign of Christ in the flesh amongst 
 his Church militant here on earth, these do seem 
 
 D 2
 
 36 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 to bring us back, if not to " the beggarly elements'' 
 of the Law r , certainly, to a stage in God's pro- 
 gressive dispensations, which we have long since 
 passed. 
 
 And if this be so, what is the judgment we 
 are called on to pronounce on the claims of a 
 mere human Being to that earthly throne, which 
 it was expedient for us that even Christ should 
 leave vacant. If it be a fond enthusiasm to 
 mourn for the Immanuel's departure, or to ex- 
 pect his return to govern us in our period of 
 warfare and probation, it is a weakness, which 
 may be pardoned it is a weakness, which saints, 
 which apostles, for a time, felt. But for man 
 to rebuild the throne which God has pronounced 
 inexpedient to take his seat thereon and to 
 exercise that universal spiritual dominion, which 
 could have been attached only to the Immanuel's 
 throne this is indeed " to oppose and exalt him- 
 self above all that is called God, or that is wor- 
 shipped ; so that he as God sitteth in the Temple 
 of God, shewing himself that he is God '." 
 
 III. There is yet another point of view, in 
 which, as in the preceding, we discover the fit- 
 r Gal. iv. 9. " 2 Thess. ii. 4.
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 37 
 
 ness of the materials of the three Temples for the 
 several stages of Revelation to which they re- 
 spectively belong. In this again, both the vision- 
 ary speculations respecting the Millennium, and 
 the claims of the Romish Church, and the Rom- 
 ish Bishop, will be found to be inconsistent with 
 the very essentials of the last dispensation of 
 God the dispensation of the Holy Spirit. In 
 other words, they both imply a relapse into a 
 stage in the "progressive dispensations, which has 
 been long past and superseded. 
 
 Under the Mosaic covenant, the Church was 
 not only confined and partial ; but conveyed its 
 privileges to the members in very unequal de- 
 grees. The mere believer in the one true God 
 was considered as possessing a claim, superior 
 indeed to the idolater, but much inferior to the 
 proselyte to Judaism. There was a distinction 
 between the parts of the Temple to which these 
 two kinds of strangers were admitted : and from 
 their respective places there, the one was called 
 the proselyte of the gate, while the other was 
 named the proselyte of righteousness. Again, 
 the lineal descendant of Abraham the Hebrew 
 of Hebrews considered himself heir to promises,
 
 38 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 which set him higher than the most perfect pro- 
 selyte. Nor did the system of gradations end 
 here. From the first institution of the Mosaic 
 Church, the principle of inequality was laid down in 
 the division of the Israelites into the class which 
 the Levites composed, and those who were not, 
 like them, to exercise certain sacred functions. 
 The very Levites again were marked by a strong 
 line of separation ; and the family of Aaron re- 
 served for the priesthood and its attendant pri- 
 vileges. 
 
 In God's new dispensation, on the contrary, 
 there were to be no corresponding distinctions 
 there were to be no degrees of Christianity. 
 Once a Christian, whether previously, a Jew, a 
 proselyte, or an idolater, the churchman was to 
 claim and to enjoy the highest privileges of the 
 covenant. In the new Temple there was to be 
 no family like Aaron's ; no tribe like Levi's ; no 
 nation like the Israelites. Christ " our peace 
 made Jew and Gentile one, having broken down 
 the middle wall of partition between them*." 
 
 It is this that is emphatically called by St. 
 Paul, " unity of the Spirit"," (!v<mjj TOU 
 
 1 Ephes. ii. 14. u Ephes. iv. 3.
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 39 
 
 that is, the unity, singleness, or oneness of faith 
 and 1 of privileges, which, in opposition to the 
 gradations of the former dispensation, charac- 
 terizes that Church in which God's Holy Spirit 
 presides and rules. 
 
 But how could this characteristic have been 
 preserved, had either of the former divine mani- 
 festations either of the former Temples been 
 made the permanent one? In the case of the 
 Temple of stone, the impediments are as obvious 
 as those which made it inconsistent with the 
 universality of the Christian dispensation. That 
 all men every where should equally enjoy the pri- 
 vileges of the Christian covenant, it was expedient 
 that God should be worshipped, neither on mount 
 Gerizim, nor yet at Jerusalem, but in spirit and 
 in truth. And equally inconsistent and inexpe- 
 dient would have been the abiding presence of 
 Christ in the flesh. Those removed by distance 
 from his personal intercourse, could not have been 
 considered as having the privileges of communion 
 in an equal degree with his immediate followers. 
 There would not have been equally for all " One 
 Lord," however there might have been " one faith 
 and one baptism."
 
 40 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 It appears then that our present trust in thfe 
 Divine presence, communion, and assistance, 
 (marked as that presence is by no sign, and at- 
 tached to no place,) is a frame of mind, for which 
 the Church of God had been in gradual training, 
 from the delivery of the Law on Mount Sinai, to 
 the effusion of the Holy Ghost on the day of Pen- 
 tecost. First was removed the prejudice which 
 connected the one true object of worship with a 
 sensible representation. And this was done, not 
 by addressing to the mind an idea altogether 
 spiritual, but by permanently establishing that 
 symbol, which, beyond all others that could have 
 been devised, was farthest removed from solid 
 substance and distinct form >a holy Light. 
 Still for a time it was necessary to attach this 
 evanescent and unsubstantial emblem to a Temple 
 of stone ; until the Church was prepared for a 
 purer and more spiritual view to be exhibited in 
 the Incarnation. The display of that mysterious 
 union of the Divine nature, not merely with the 
 body but with the heart and intellect of a man, 
 was itself the prelude and preparation for a view 
 of the Divine presence and intercourse, in which 
 we cannot point to any one place, or to any one
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 41 
 
 human being, as the residence of the Godhead. 
 The sacred language is, not " ye are the Tem- 
 ples," but " ye are the Temple of the Holy 
 Ghost" the Temple, collectively, and lively 
 stones individually. We at last worship God in 
 spirit and in truth. 
 
 Worthy notions indeed of his presence, we 
 cannot presume that we have even yet acquired. 
 We are now doubtless only in training for that 
 further stage of divine communion, which is de- 
 scribed in Scripture as seeing God " face to 
 face," and knowing Him even as we are known 
 by Him x . Nay, do we always take care to 
 render our present views of Him habitually even 
 as pure and spiritual as we are able ? We have 
 learnt that He is omnipresent we should bear 
 in mind therefore, that the diffusion of the She- 
 chinah through the Temple of stone, its descent 
 on the Immanuel, and lastly on the Church, were 
 only symbols, to attest God's presence and inter- 
 course ; and that He could not have been more 
 present then, than he was before, or has been 
 since. Or rather in acknowledging his omni- 
 
 * 1 Cor. xiii. 12.
 
 42 Materials of the three Temples. 
 
 presence, we must be careful not to allow our 
 mind to dwell on the idea, as if God's presence 
 were the same in kind, and only different in 
 degree, from what we mean by the presence of 
 any created object. God's omnipresence means, 
 not, strictly speaking, that He is present to all 
 things and all men ; but, that all things and all 
 men are present to Him. As far as regards his 
 being present to us, He is, correctly speaking, no 
 where. His existence cannot reverently be sup- 
 posed to require the accident of locality. We 
 say indeed, conformably with Scriptural language, 
 that He dwells in heaven. But where and what 
 is heaven ? Not surely a place not an abode 
 which can be described by the lines of the 
 astronomer or the geographer. It is a figurative 
 expression, involving a negation of all the cir- 
 cumstances of an earthly residence, and especially 
 of the limitation of space. It is still the infirmity 
 and want of capacity in man, as he now is, that 
 is consulted by the all-merciful Revealer of Him- 
 self; and even in this last stage of his Revela- 
 tion, we must adopt the spirit of the humble con- 
 fession which Solomon made when he dedicated
 
 Materials of the three Temples. 43 
 
 the Temple of stone, " The heaven and heaven of 
 heavens cannot contain thee ; how much less this 
 house that I have builded y ." 
 
 y 1 Kings viii. 27.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 MODE OF DIVINE RESIDENCE. 
 
 have now traced the erection of the three 
 successive Temples ; and have recognised them 
 as such by one common symbol being annexed 
 to their dedication, and a common language 
 applied to them by inspiration. Beyond this, 
 the proposed inquiry into the resemblances and 
 the differences between these three Temples has 
 been pursued as far as relates to the materials of 
 which they were composed the structure of stone 
 the human nature of Christ and the Christian 
 congregation or Church. From this comparison 
 it has appeared, that the gradual change so made 
 in God's Revelation of Himself, has been accom- 
 modated to the slowly-opening capacity of his 
 worshippers ; and to the progressive scheme of 
 salvation, which, even in our imperfect com- 
 prehension of it, has been plainly best accom- 
 plished in its several stages, by precisely such a 
 kind of divine manifestation as was allotted to 
 each. 
 
 The next feature of contrast which I propose
 
 46 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 to examine, is, the mode of Divine residence exhi- 
 bited in these three Temples ; which, no less 
 than the materials, will be found most wisely and 
 mercifully adapted to the several stages in the 
 divine economy of grace. 
 
 The question respecting the mode of Divine 
 residence, Divine presence, Divine connexion, 
 or by whatever name we choose to designate the 
 mystery, may be answered in two ways ; and on 
 the difference between these two modes of view- 
 ing the question a great deal of practical conse- 
 quence depends. When we venture to suggest 
 to our minds any inquiry respecting the presence 
 of God in Christ, or the presence of God in 
 the Church, that inquiry, it is plain, may turn 
 either on the effect produced by the Divine pre- 
 sence on the human nature of Christ on the 
 one hand, and the Church on the other : or 
 again, the view taken of this mysterious pre- 
 sence, union, or connection, may be to consider 
 the Immanuel, or the Church, as the channel 
 of the divine oracles the medium of divine com- 
 munication. The object of the one, in short, 
 may be expressed by calling it divine communion,
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 47 
 
 that of the other, by calling it divine com- 
 munication. Now these two views are not 
 only wholly distinct, but by no means equally 
 open to investigation ; and questions, which in 
 the one may be safely and certainly answered, 
 are, in the other, often beyond our faculties, cer- 
 tainly beyond our knowledge. In the comparison 
 which has been now pursued, of the three stages 
 of God's Revelation of Himself, it is only as the 
 channels of divine communication that the three 
 Temples have been contrasted ; and, indeed, it is 
 only in this point of view that they can be 
 considered under the common aspect of Temples. 
 To the Temple of stone the Temple at Jeru- 
 salem no other view of the Divine presence, 
 of course, belongs, than that of communication. 
 It was no otherwise connected with God than 
 as the channel of his messages to man, and of 
 man's service and addresses to Him. The same 
 is therefore the only view, which should be 
 pursued in contemplating either the Immanuel 
 or the Church, in an aspect analogous to that of 
 the first Temple. 
 
 Still, as the two others do admit of a different 
 view ; and as the inquirer is often tempted to stray
 
 48 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 from one path of research into another closely 
 connected with it, although eventually leading to 
 a different point ; I am perhaps called on to place 
 the following cautions at the entrance of a course 
 of inquiry into which I may possibly be leading 
 some. 
 
 First then, in Christians, as in Christ Himself, 
 there is an union of the Godhead with man ; 
 but we must beware of supposing, that in the 
 two cases, it is the same. Scripture declares 
 that it is different ; but does not further explain 
 the difference, than by intimating that He was 
 individually, we, only collectively, the Temple of 
 God. We are told that God gave " the Spirit 
 to Him not by measure ;" and that in Him dwelt 
 all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. He was 
 perfect God as well as perfect man ; and this, 
 we know, is not our state of being. But, in 
 what way his human nature was conscious of the 
 Divine presence and union ; in what way the 
 man Christ Jesus was preserved from sin was 
 supported under suffering enjoyed perfect com- 
 munion with God and yet remained in all other 
 things like unto us ; these are matters not re- 
 vealed ; and the suggestion of them is only
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 49 
 
 caused by the incidental contact into which these 
 questions are brought with the practical and 
 intelligible doctrines of the Incarnation and of 
 the Holy Spirit's assistance. 
 
 At the same time, a caution of an opposite 
 tendency may be necessary too ; namely, not to 
 suppose that the two cases of Divine union are 
 so wholly dissimilar, as to destroy the efficacy 
 of Christ's example. He could be to us no 
 pattern, if we were not, like Him, supported 
 by the Divine presence, guided by it, and com- 
 forted by it. The record of his life his tempt- 
 ations and his sufferings would then be a 
 picture which we might admire indeed, but 
 hardly presume to copy. It is true, that 
 to us the Holy Spirit is given by measure ; still 
 that measure is a measure of grace sufficient 
 for us. It is true, that it is given in a way, 
 which does not render the Christian, as his Lord 
 is, both God and man : but still, the moulding 
 of our nature into the highest perfection of which 
 it is capable, is one promised result of that 
 union ; and to this we may hope to attain, if 
 " that mind be in us" which was also in Christ 
 
 * Philipp. ii. 5. 
 E
 
 50 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 Jesus," who " suffered for us, leaving us an 
 example, that we should follow his steps b ." 
 
 These questions related, as I before observed, 
 to the communion or intercourse between God 
 and his chosen abode. The other view which 
 may be taken of the Divine presence in, or the 
 union or connection of God with, his Temples, 
 relates to the form of communication attached 
 to the Temple the appointed means by which 
 He issued his commands and made known his 
 will. 
 
 In the Temple at Jerusalem this was effected 
 by means of a voice, it is supposed, which pro- 
 ceeded from between the cherubims . During 
 
 b 1 Peter ii. 21. This part of the subject is more fully 
 discussed in the view of Christ, as a pattern of Christian 
 humility, which has, on this account, been appended to the 
 present inquiry. 
 
 e See Exod. xxv. 22. Numbers vii. 89. Psalm Ixxx. 1. 
 2 Kings xix. 15. Isaiah xxxvii. 16. The traditionary account 
 of a revelation by the Urim and Thummim on the breastplate 
 of the High Priest is very doubtful. It probably had its 
 origin in the circumstance of his being bound to wear this 
 ornament when consulting the oracle, the twelve precious 
 stones on it designating the twelve tribes whose representative 
 he then was. See Graves on the Pentateuch, note to part ii.
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 5 1 
 
 the continuance of the Temple of stone, however, 
 God frequently varied this expression of his 
 will, by raising up prophets especially commis- 
 sioned ; and as the period approached when the 
 Shechinah d was to be wholly withdrawn, we find 
 the number and importance of the Revelations 
 of those human oracles proportionably great. 
 By this means, from the period of the establish- 
 ment of the Temple Oracle, to the close of 
 prophecy, there was a gradual departure from 
 the system of communication first annexed to the 
 Temple ; as if to smooth the way for the second 
 method, for which that had been preparatory . 
 
 lect. v. which contains reference to the opinions of Lowman, 
 Spencer, and Witsius. 
 
 d This holy manifestation appears to have ceased with the 
 destruction of Solomon's Temple, which took place A. C. 588. 
 See Prideaux's Connection, part i. book iii. Lightfoot on the 
 Temple, ch. xv. sect. 4. and Calmet's Dictionary, Shechinah. 
 By the absence of this then from the subsequent building, 
 Haggai's prophecy, that " the glory of the latter house should 
 be greater than of the former," is fixed in its application 
 to the appearance of Christ as " God manifest in the flesh." 
 See Haggai ii. 9. 
 
 e The Jewish account of the Bath Kol, (daughter of the 
 Voice,') by which it is pretended that occasional revelations 
 
 E 2
 
 52 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 That mode of communication was, the oral 
 instruction of the Immanuel. His words became 
 equivalent to the mysterious intimation from the 
 cherubim ; to the voice or vision which instructed 
 the prophets ; and to that more awful Voice 
 which dictated the Law from Mount Sinai, when 
 as yet there was neither Temple nor Tabernacle, 
 but heaven was the throne, and earth the foot- 
 stool, in the glorious scene of manifestation and 
 revelation. 
 
 Lastly, to the Voice or Word of God in the 
 Jewish dispensation, and to the words of Christ 
 in the second Temple, corresponds the Christian 
 record in the Temple of the Holy Ghost. It is 
 true, that during the apostolic age the age of 
 inspiration the analogy was not between the 
 Bible and the former modes of communication ; 
 but between those modes, and the gifts and en- 
 dowments of the Spirit. But nevertheless, it is 
 the Christian Record, and not the many forms 
 
 were made, subsequent to the cessation of prophecy, is alto- 
 gether unworthy of credit. See Lightfoot's Harmony of the 
 Evangelists, Matt. iii. 17. Prideaux supposes it to have been 
 a mode of divination like the Sortes Virgiliance. See Connec- 
 tion, &c. part ii. book 5.
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 53 
 
 of Inspiration, that constitutes the proper oracular 
 appendage of the last Temple. The apostolic 
 period embraced only the erection of the holy 
 edifice ; and, as the apostles were removed one 
 by one, the Temple rose, was completed, and 
 was left to its present provisions. The apostolic 
 age may be compared to the giving of the old 
 Law from Mount Sinai. That preceded the 
 building of the Tabernacle or Temple, the ap- 
 pointment of the mystic holy of holies, and the 
 supplementary inspiration of the prophets ; that 
 too was a scene more splendid and awful than the 
 permanent state to which it led. Even so the 
 apostolic delivery of the Christian Law exhibited a 
 more dazzling spectacle of glory than do the pro- 
 visions for its permanency ; but it was a display of 
 glory which was to be done away. God was not 
 to continue to speak in the same manner, and 
 with the same circumstances, as in the first 
 promulgation of the Gospel Law. Appropriated 
 to his third Temple preserved within his sanc- 
 tuary the Church there was to be an abiding 
 oracle. The Bible was appointed the permanent 
 channel of divine communication. It rests its 
 claims to be so considered, on the same strong
 
 54 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 grounds which supported the authority of those 
 oracles of God which it has succeeded ; and de- 
 mands from us the same implicit obedience and 
 belief. Like them, the mode of delivery has been 
 made miraculous ; nor is any difference of au- 
 thority implied in the difference that exists be- 
 tween them in this respect that the earlier 
 oracles, namely, were intermittent, and renewed, 
 as occasion called for them ; whilst ours were 
 given once for all, are perpetual, and so consti- 
 tuted as to serve all occasions. 
 
 The fitness of this very peculiarity about the 
 Christian Record, no less than of those points 
 which characterize respectively the Jewish oracle, 
 and the teaching of Christ, will be very apparent 
 from the following obvious considerations. 
 
 In the first place, the whole system of God's 
 dealings with his elder Church, was accom- 
 modated (as I have already had occasion to point 
 out) to a far less advanced condition of spiritual, 
 moral, and intellectual being than ours. He ad- 
 dressed them and governed them, in comparison 
 with us, as children. He taught them by specific 
 rules ; to us He merely holds out motives, and, 
 for our guidance, provides general principles. In
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 55 
 
 accordance with this view, He gave them oracles 
 to answer specifically on every point of difficulty 
 which should dictate to the Church almost its 
 daily duty, with that tender allowance for its 
 weak capacity, and inaptitude to higher views 
 and a larger responsibility, which is shewn by the 
 parent or teacher, to the child. Trained by this 
 gradual progressive system of salvation, the 
 Church has been at length released from its 
 schoolmaster the Law its education is com- 
 pleted ; and it is sent forth to act on the prin- 
 ciples of the Gospel, enforced by motives more 
 high and heavenly. These principles and these 
 persuasives are the substance of the Christian 
 Scriptures f . Not requiring to be continually 
 
 f It may perhaps be necessary to point out, that I am not, 
 by this expression, excluding the Old Testament from the 
 Christian rule of faith. By the Gospel-fulfilment of the Law 
 and Prophets, the Old Testament volume becomes part of the 
 Christian Scriptures. What was shadowy and elementary 
 knowledge to the Israelites, has been converted by that event 
 into solid and perfect knowledge for the Christian. The 
 whole character of the book has been changed. To us its 
 prophecies assume the form of miraculous history, and to us 
 its historical records discover the purport of God's mysterious 
 dealings with his people, and the end to which the series of
 
 56 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 given, like the specific commands to the Jews, 
 they have been there permanently fixed ; and 
 being permanently fixed, it was only necessary 
 once for all to declare their authority by miracles. 
 A recurrence of Revelation requires a renewal 
 of miracles ; but the volume of the book once 
 closed, the object of miracles ceases. 
 
 Whilst the conformity of the oracular vehicle 
 to the character of the first and last Temples 
 respectively is thus beautifully exact, it is no 
 less interesting to reflect on the place occupied 
 by the teaching of the Immanuel the Oracle ap- 
 pended to the second Temple and the very ap- 
 propriate form of communication which was so 
 provided for the period of transition from the 
 first to the third. 
 
 Our Lord, whilst He was accomplishing the 
 
 events led ; whereas to their eye all this was dark and per- 
 plexed. Its moral and religious precepts, again, have under- 
 gone a change, which may be compared to that of compound 
 substances submitted to some powerful test, which separates 
 the various ingredients the fixed, from the volatile and 
 exhibits the more valuable in their unmixed purity. The 
 Gospel has analysed, as it were, the Law, and enables us to 
 separate from the dross of peculiar temporary and local ordi- 
 nances and precepts, the eternal commands of God.
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 57 
 
 scheme of man's redemption, was also training 
 his followers for the knowledge of what He 
 was doing. His lessons, however, contrasted 
 with those of divine inspiration, (as it appears on 
 the pages of the apostolic writings,) were not 
 properly explanations of the scheme, but state- 
 ments accompanying the things done, which 
 statements were left by him to be afterwards 
 explained. They were, in this respect, like the 
 heads of a lecture, which a professor first puts 
 into the hands of his pupils, and afterwards fills 
 up by word of mouth. Without the after com- 
 ment and explanation, the lecturer's synopsis 
 would be imperfect, and in many parts unintel- 
 ligible ; although the synopsis is highly useful 
 in preparing the class for his lectures, and after- 
 wards in recalling to their memory the train of 
 instruction hinged on it. Like this class-paper 
 then, our Lord's teaching contained hints and 
 expressions, which, little comprehended at the 
 time, it was the office of the Holy Spirit to re- 
 cal to the minds of the inspired, and to point 
 out all to which these hints were intended to lead 
 " to guide them into all truth g ." In conning 
 
 * John xvi. 13.
 
 58 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 over the scheme of Christianity, as presented to 
 them in the parables and discourses of Christ, 
 one disciple would probably anticipate with more 
 readiness than another the filling up of the many 
 heads which his instruction embraced ; but to all, 
 until the day of Pentecost, that instruction was 
 only an outline ; and if the whole of Christianity 
 was stated, and enunciated, no part was fully 
 developed. 
 
 The advantage of such a transition-stage be- 
 tween the very different modes of instruction in 
 God's will, which the Christian and the Jewish ora- 
 cles exhibit, is obvious. But how could that have 
 been so well effected as by attaching the oracle of 
 enunciation (if I may be permitted so to describe 
 our- Lord's teaching) to the person of an Im- 
 manuel ; one whose character and life should 
 awaken such a lively interest in each brief an- 
 nouncement that was made, as to fix the lesson 
 indelibly on the mind, and to keep it there ready 
 for the enlightening of God's Spirit. His lessons 
 were not addressed to the understanding alone, 
 but to the heart, with all its human sympathies 
 and moral associations awake ; they were en- 
 grafted on passing occurrences and present scenes
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 59 
 
 of lively, intense, and often painful interest ; and 
 the minute impression produced thereby was 
 precisely such as the character of his teaching re- 
 quired. To take an instance connected with the 
 present view. When standing in the Temple, he 
 told the Jews mysteriously and solemnly, " De- 
 stroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise 
 it up h ." The declaration so made was of course 
 imprinted to the letter on the disciples' minds. 
 It was from God, (they might have argued,) for no 
 man could do those things that He did unless 
 God were with him. But, added to the awful 
 sanctity of a divine message, there was an 
 awakening of personal feelings towards him as a 
 man as their friend, their Master, their future 
 King. The remark took root, and entwined itself 
 in their minds, amidst many clinging associations, 
 which had connected the Messiah's glory with the 
 glory of that edifice, whose ruin his words mys- 
 teriously implied. All this served the needful pur- 
 pose of fixing the unexplained lesson on their 
 memory, until the Comforter, who was to teach 
 them all things, should explain it. 
 h John ii. 19.
 
 60 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 Another, and not the least important, aspect, 
 in which we may contemplate the several changes 
 in the appointed mode of divine communication, 
 is that which is connected with the extent of the 
 people for whose use the oracles were respectively 
 intended. A voice speaking from between the 
 cherubim, was the most convenient for being 
 consulted in the guidance of a single church and 
 people; the words of Jesus sufficed, and were best, 
 for his immediate followers ; whilst for that dis- 
 pensation, in which the Church was to acknow- 
 ledge no limits but the boundaries of earth, no 
 period but the end of time, there was need of a 
 voice which should go forth and be equally heard 
 in all lands, and its sounds unto the end of the 
 earth. The Bible is the only form of divine 
 oracle, which could have been unvarying, and 
 universally accessible. 
 
 The view which has been now claimed for the 
 Scriptures, supposes, of course, a certain estimate 
 of their inspiration it is indeed the reasonable 
 criterion of that estimate. The Bible is the pre- 
 sent vehicle of God's oracles. On the one hand, 
 therefore, to claim inspiration for its every word,
 
 Mode of Divine residence. 6 1 
 
 or even for that portion of its matter which 
 involves no divine appointment, revelation, or 
 command, is as unreasonable, as if the disciples 
 of Jesus had contended for every word which fell 
 from his lips, on whatever subject, being part of 
 the instruction from God to man, and had 
 applied it accordingly. As in Himself, (if such 
 an illustration may be used,) its divine character 
 is mixed with much that is purely human ; and to 
 confound and level the two is unwise, unwarranted, 
 and irreverent. 
 
 On the other hand, whatever portions of the 
 sacred record, whether prophecy, precept, or 
 history, exhibit an appointment of God, a 
 revelation, or a divine command, in all these, we 
 know that the Lord is instructing us. The ora- 
 cular vehicle may indeed be employed (as must 
 sometimes have been the case with the discourse 
 of Jesus) on subjects not the material of divine 
 communication ; but, whenever the relations be- 
 tween God and man, the dealings of God with 
 man, or the will of God respecting man, are the 
 subject, then, as if the Immanuel were still 
 speaking, whatever it declares, records, or com-
 
 62 Mode of Divine residence. 
 
 mands, it is " as the voice of the Almighty God 
 when He speaketh l ." 
 
 1 Ezekiel x. 5. In the Appendix to my " History of the 
 Rise and Early Progress of Christianity," vol. ii. p. 334. I have 
 stated the several limitations of scriptural inspiration, which 
 may be recognized without infringing on the sufficiency and 
 supremacy of the Bible as the rule of faith. It is perhaps 
 necessary for me to add one caution in reference to the view 
 there briefly given that in cases where we might otherwise 
 have been left free to suppose the absence of Divine interpo- 
 sition, the assertion of this by the writer excludes all right to 
 do so.
 
 CHAFFER IV. 
 
 DURATION AND STABILITY OF THE THREE 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 CONTRASTED with the knowledge which was 
 granted to former ages, the Christian's view of 
 the scheme of Providence is indeed glorious. 
 He sees what prophets and patriarchs vainly 
 wished to see the connection of a series of 
 appointments from Adam unto Moses, from 
 Moses unto Christ, from Christ still further on to 
 the completion of all by his Spirit. In this 
 respect, the Scriptural representation of the 
 Gospel as of a " new creation" is beautifully 
 appropriate a . Antecedently to this, the mate- 
 rials of man's salvation wore the aspect of a 
 chaos dark and formless ; and the change was 
 truly as if Christ had said, " Let there be light, 
 and there was light." 
 
 This very enlargement of spiritual view, how- 
 ever, is the occasion of certain new and peculiar 
 doubts and difficulties. It sounds strange, but it. 
 
 *2 Corinthians v. 17. Galat. vi. 15. and compare Reve-. 
 lations xxi. 5.
 
 64 Duration and stability 
 
 is unquestionably true, that the more fully the 
 Almighty has vouchsafed to allow us to compre- 
 hend his counsels the more freely He has walked 
 and talked with man the stronger has been 
 man's propensity to pry into secret things which 
 belong unto the Lord. He has placed the 
 Christian his new probationary creature in a 
 spiritual Eden. He has supplied him with the 
 true bread from heaven and the living water of his 
 Spirit. He has opened for him a free access unto 
 Himself; nay, He has come and taken up his 
 abode with him, and calls him no more servant, 
 but friend. And yet, it is out of this very 
 condition of things, that a tree of forbidden 
 knowledge springs up before our eyes ; and we 
 can scarcely persuade ourselves, that its fruits are 
 not as lawful to taste, as they are goodly to look 
 at. 
 
 Why did not God at once place mankind 
 under the present dispensation? Why did not 
 the atonement and the assistance of the Holy 
 Spirit immediately succeed to that sad event 
 which manifested the need of both ? Why, indeed, 
 should man have been permitted to fall; seeing 
 that God had in store provision, which can
 
 of the three Temples. 65 
 
 enable him to stand, even when enfeebled by 
 defeat and misery and sin ? Such are the specu- 
 lative questions which are suggested by our very 
 advancement in the knowledge of God's wisdom 
 and mercy; and which, whatever other reply 
 may be given, ought always to be first answered 
 by this It was the will of God. No reply which 
 is furnished, even by the additional light that He 
 has now granted to his Church, is adequate fully 
 to explain these and the like questions : and 
 explanations and arguments such as are offered, 
 always suppose the existence of some difficulty, 
 for the solution of which we must be content in 
 humble faith to wait. 
 
 At the same time it is no unimportant step 
 to have fixed on that which is the improper 
 subject of further inquiry the point to which 
 the character of inexplicable belongs. Having 
 ascertained this, we may then proceed with con- 
 fidence to examine and account for such diffi- 
 culties as may attach to other points, which, 
 however connected with these, are not in this 
 respect similarly circumstanced. 
 
 In the present instance we have no possible 
 clue to guide us in the inquiry why man was not 
 
 F
 
 66 Duration and stability 
 
 prevented from falling, rather than assisted in 
 rising again we are equally in the dark perhaps 
 about the withholding of the Atonement and the 
 other glories of the Gospel from Adam and his 
 immediate posterity. But if we take up the 
 question from the period when Scripture helps 
 us, and thereby encourages and invites inquiry, 
 we thenceforward trace a reasonable and a wise 
 administration of grace. From the earliest times 
 of which we have any record to the Gospel era, 
 human nature appears so grossly debased by the 
 corruption of evil so weak and unfit for the 
 fullest scriptural blessings that the delay of 
 those blessings is no matter of surprise. They 
 would have been lavished in vain on mankind. 
 What sort of influence can we conceive the 
 Gospel scheme likely to have had on the patri- 
 archal tribes ? What on the gross and degraded 
 minds of the Israelitish bondsmen ? Nay, in the 
 days of Israel's brightest national glory, would 
 it not have been a pearl cast to the swine ? Did 
 it not actually prove so with far the majority, 
 even when at length their Messiah came, in 
 accordance with long-cherished expectation, and 
 in fulfilment of a law, unto which they had
 
 of the three Temples. 67 
 
 been laboriously trained for 1500 years? And 
 this too, after exile and Gentile oppression had 
 long cured them of their worst disqualification 
 the passion for idolatry ; while intercourse with 
 various nations had at the same time given them 
 the opportunity at least of strengthening their 
 understanding, and applying the intellectual powers 
 so derived to the comprehension of evangelical 
 wisdom. They were, it is true, prejudiced deeply 
 prejudiced ; and at that time, their prejudices 
 were the chief impediment to the reception of 
 Christianity. But the dulness of the apostles 
 themselves, of those who did bow their hearts to 
 humble faith, exhibits the remnant of an inapti- 
 tude to comprehend, and to adapt the whole man 
 to, the Christian system, which in an earlier age 
 must have amounted to absolute incompetency. 
 
 All this is obvious, and matter of historical 
 fact ; and with this before us, a scheme of salvation 
 in all respects gradually progressive, is obviously 
 that alone which was suited to the accomplish- 
 ment of God's merciful purpose. " When the 
 fulness of the time was corne, God sent forth 
 his Son l} ;" and we can so far account for the 
 
 b Gal. iv. 4. 
 F2
 
 68 Duration and stability 
 
 delay of that period, as to see that mankind were 
 blessed with it as soon as ever they were pre- 
 pared for it. We must leave to the secret and 
 reserved counsels of the Most High the cause why 
 man was permitted to fall ; but in the condition 
 of man fallen we see all the circumstances so 
 clearly demanding a preparatory training until 
 Christ, that we may appeal to the progressive 
 system, as proof of the wisdom and merciful care 
 of God ; and dwell with gratitude and edification 
 on every particular measure and appointment so 
 characterised. 
 
 I. Not the least striking instance of this ap- 
 pears in the difference of duration and stability 
 allotted to the three successive Temples, and to 
 the dispensations which they respectively intro- 
 duced. The Temple of stone was continued as 
 the abode of God, and the centre of his govern- 
 ment and spiritual influence, for more than one 
 thousand years, and was soon after destroyed 
 utterly and for ever. The second Temple the 
 Immanuel was only for a few years exhibited to 
 the world. And this too was destroyed ; but 
 not like the Temple of stone, utterly or for 
 ever it was only partially destroyed ; and soon
 
 of the three Temples. 69 
 
 raised again, and reserved for a future mani- 
 festation. The last Temple the Temple of the 
 Holy Ghost in contrast to both these, was so 
 established, that, according to the express declara- 
 tion of God, no decay or destruction awaits it 
 " the gates of hell shall not prevail against it V 
 
 Was this striking diversity in God's successive 
 appointments accidental? Impossible. Let us 
 for a moment reflect how completely the object 
 of either dispensation would have been defeated, 
 if this very diversity had not been established. 
 The Temple of stone with its appended service 
 was needed just for so long a period as the first 
 Church of God required preparatory training ; 
 and longer than this, it might have proved, 
 like the brazen serpent of the Israelites, a snare 
 and a source of error ''. The duration of the first 
 Temple, if limited to the same brief period as 
 was the Immanuel's, would have given no time 
 for the Law to do its work of education ; but, 
 on the other hand, to have preserved the con- 
 secrated building the nucleus of the Mosaic 
 service after Christianity had been established, 
 would have been to sanction a commixture of 
 
 e Matt. xvi. 18. d 2 Kings xviii. 4.
 
 70 Duration and stability 
 
 the Mosaic and Christian dispensations wholly 
 at variance with the true relation which they bear 
 the one to the other. Judaism was introductory 
 to Christianity the Temple of stone to the 
 Church but it is highly important to under- 
 stand in what sense it was introductory. It 
 was not in the same manner as the Law from 
 Mount Sinai was introductory to the revela- 
 tions and instructions of the prophets ; nor 
 again was it in the same manner as the dis- 
 pensation of Christ was introductory to that of 
 his Holy Spirit ; for in both these cases, the 
 earlier was not necessarily done away with by 
 the coming of the latter. Whereas St. Paul 
 speaks of the Gospel as " a disannulling of the 
 commandment going before 6 ," " a new covenant, 
 that hath made the first old;" adding, "now 
 that which decayeth and waxeth old, is ready 
 to vanish away f ." Judaism was introductory 
 to Christianity in another sense ; it was intro- 
 ductory, in the sense of representing it. The 
 word represent combines in its two meanings 
 the office which the Mosaic dispensation fulfilled 
 in reference to the Christian it was the type 
 
 e Hebrews vii. 18. f Hebrews viii. 13.
 
 of the three Temples. 71 
 
 or picture of that which was to be recognised 
 when it came, and in this sense its representative. 
 It stood also in the place of it, and exercised 
 a sort of delegated virtue which it derived from 
 the Gospel, and which therefore the very coming 
 of the Gospel destroyed. The Mosaic Temple 
 being the seat of a typical religion, it was 
 essential, in order to fulfil its object, that it 
 should not be merely superseded, but that it 
 should be utterly and finally destroyed. This 
 doubtless, and not the divine vengeance on the 
 guilty generation which rejected the Messiah, 
 was the main purpose of the eternal decree that 
 it should never be rebuilded. Had the Jews 
 unanimously received their Saviour, we can 
 hardly doubt that that same destiny would have 
 awaited his former residence, differing only in 
 the circumstances of national suffering which 
 their rejection brought upon them. Had the 
 Jews become merged in the Christian Church, 
 the destruction of the Temple might have been 
 even a work of holy zeal, like the breaking of 
 the brazen serpent by Hezekiah ; lest haply it 
 should divide their heart, and either allure them 
 back to " the beggarly elements of the Law," or
 
 72 Duration and stability 
 
 mislead them into a confusion between the sub- 
 stance and the shadow of God's appointments. 
 
 II. Both the Law of demolition, to which the 
 Temple of God manifest in the flesh was subject, 
 and the period allotted to its duration, are no less 
 in unison with the great scheme of Providence. 
 With respect to its duration, it was exceedingly 
 brief. If we measure it by the whole space of 
 the life of Jesus, it was only 33 years ; if we 
 confine it, as more properly we should, to the 
 period of the manifestation of his glory, con- 
 siderably less. This which would have been 
 wholly inadequate for the purposes of the first and 
 the third Temples, was not only sufficient for the 
 object of the second, but adapted to it far better 
 than a longer period. In the first place, it is 
 plain He could not have continued with the 
 Church after he had laid its first foundation, 
 without assuming a character widely different 
 from that of Founder he must have become its 
 Governor. This is in other words to say, that 
 having provided a society to be governed by the 
 insensible operations of the Spirit, and the law 
 of an unvarying Record, He would, just so long as 
 He remained, have violated the principles He was
 
 of the three Temples. 73 
 
 establishing, or rather have suspended the law 
 He had appointed. It was, in his own words, " ex- 
 pedient that He should go away," for had He not 
 gone away, the Comforter could not have come ? . 
 Come indeed, God's Holy Spirit might, and had, 
 in all ages ; but He could not have come (as 
 our Lord evidently means) as the guide and 
 Governor of the Church. For the Church to 
 walk by faith and not by sight, the visible guide 
 must be withdrawn. He had remained long 
 enough to lay the foundation of it, on principles 
 which excluded his further manifestation in the 
 flesh ; and all longer abode with us thus would 
 have been to retard the operation of the system. 
 
 He had remained also with us long enough 
 to accomplish what likewise appears to have been 
 one benevolent purpose of his coming. The 
 main peculiarity of the second Temple is not 
 that it was destroyed but that, after temporary 
 destruction, it was raised again, withdrawn, and 
 reserved for a future manifestation. Christ came 
 to found his kingdom on earth, and then left 
 the world, on a similar but more glorious errand, 
 viz. to prepare a kingdom for the same Church in 
 
 8 John xvi. 7.
 
 74 Duration and stability 
 
 heaven. He went from his own, to meet his own 
 again. His presence, though only "for alittle while," 
 was enough to introduce Him as it were to us to 
 establish an acquaintance and friendship with man- 
 kind that in the final abode of heaven, where in 
 our turn we go to Him, we may go to a friend 
 already known and loved. Can we doubt that 
 such an object was intended ? Let us only ask 
 the question, what is the first natural impression 
 made by a perusal of the Gospels ? Is it not 
 sympathy, acquaintance, and friendship with the 
 Saviour of the world ? Is not that perusal the 
 best comment on the fervid expression of the 
 apostle, " God is love h ." I see no reason that 
 so forcibly suggests itself as this for the fact, 
 that the register of Gospel truth is a biographical 
 memoir. It might have contained, equally per- 
 haps for all other purposes, a statement of objects 
 accomplished an enumeration of an atonement 
 a resurrection an ascension of miracles and 
 lessons. It might have been, at least, historical; 
 merging the individual in the great results of his 
 ministry. But it is strictly biographical. With- 
 out pretending to give an entire history of the 
 
 h 1 John iv. 8.
 
 of the three Temples. 75 
 
 Lord Jesus, it throws a biographical character 
 over all the monuments of. Christianity which 
 were to be preserved ; and when we close the 
 book, we feel that something besides instruction 
 has been given something besides salvation 
 proffered ; we feel, in short, as if to us were ad- 
 dressed the very language he used to his apostles, 
 " I call you not servants, but friends 1 ." 
 
 III. Of the duration and stability of the last 
 Temple, we have the sure word of prophecy 
 the express declaration of our Lord. He has 
 promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail 
 against it ; an expression which will be set in a 
 clearer light by bringing in contrast with it his 
 declaration concerning the Temple of his body, 
 that it was to be destroyed, and raised again. 
 By coupling the intimation conveyed in his words 
 to the Jews, " Destroy this Temple, and in three 
 days I will raise it up k ," with those remarkable 
 words to Peter, " Thou art Peter, and upon this 
 rock I will build my Church, and the gates of 
 hell shall not prevail against it 1 ," we arrive at 
 the right interpretation and full spirit of both. 
 When speaking of his own body as analogous to 
 
 1 John xv. 15. " John ii. 19. ' Matt. xvi. 18.
 
 76 Duration and stability 
 
 the Temple of stone, he said that it was to be 
 destroyed, as well as raised again ; and the very 
 fulfilment of this saying in his death and descent 
 into the grave, must have thrown light enough on 
 his meaning ; but when speaking of his Church, 
 his congregational Temple, he provides a hint of 
 contrast in the remarkable words, " the gates of 
 hell (or the grave) shall not prevail against it m ." 
 The third Temple was not to be destroyed not to 
 go down into the grave the doors of no sepul- 
 chre (wuXa aSou) were to be closed on it, as in the 
 
 m The expression, " I will build my Church," tix 
 fcev rtii lxic>w<riai, natural and easy as it sounds to our ears, 
 partly from our being familiar with Scripture, and partly, per- 
 haps, from the twofold meaning of the word church, an edifice, 
 and a body of Christians must have been, at the time, very 
 strange and striking. 'ExjtAW* then meant only an assembly 
 or congregation ; and to give any of the original force to a 
 translation of the Greek words, they should be rendered, " I 
 will build my assembly on this rock." The declaration im- 
 plied, that the Temple to be built under the new covenant, 
 was to be an assembly of men. It implied this very obscurely, 
 no doubt ; but our Lord's other declaration respecting his own 
 body as the Temple the residence of God was surely suffi- 
 cient to throw light on his expression, eMco20pjV0 -rw &cK^n'et 
 fitv, *. r. X. when the Holy Spirit brought both assertions to 
 the minds of the apostles.
 
 of the three Temples. 77 
 
 case of the Temple of his body. It is only to end 
 with the end of all things in this world ; and in 
 token of its unchanging condition during the inter- 
 val, (so far, I mean, as regards its divine provi- 
 sions,) the whole of that period has been entitled 
 " the last days," "the end," and the like. Indeed, 
 its splendid character, as comprising the fulfilment 
 of all the preparatory types and promises, and the 
 completion of Christ's ministry, more certainly 
 declare this, than even such implied declarations. 
 If the third Temple, like the former two, has 
 been accommodated to the circumstances of the 
 worshippers, and is adapted to the object of its 
 appointment, we must suppose that still as here- 
 tofore no renewal of inspiration will suspend the 
 sole supremacy of the sacred Record no new 
 display of miracles will alter the established 
 grounds of our faith n . Ages may yet be requisite 
 for the completion of that object on which the 
 present Temple's duration depends ; but it cannot 
 continue the same dispensation, (as we believe it 
 will,) if changes so destructive of its essential 
 character were to take place. 
 
 " See History of the Rise and Early Progress of Chris- 
 tianity, vol. ii. p. 70.
 
 78 Duration and stability 
 
 Do we presume to look farther onwards, and 
 to inquire what that object is which is to be 
 accomplished by the Lord's tarrying ? Of this we 
 know no more than of the day and the hour of 
 his coming. We must wait to discover and ad- 
 mire the expediency of this, for that period when 
 we shall be looking back on the finished history 
 of the three Temples of the living God, with a far 
 clearer eye than we now contemplate the two. 
 We shall then know why the fulness of the time 
 is not yet come. 
 
 There is however a definite and satisfactory 
 reply which every man may give and ought to 
 give to his heart, when it has been beguiled into 
 speculations about the probable duration of the 
 Church in this world. To him it is bounded by 
 the period of his own life. For the guidance of 
 the individual's conduct it can make no difference 
 whether the world and he expire in the same 
 moment ; or the change from the kingdom on 
 earth to that in heaven be yet postponed for 
 ages. His duties, his hopes, and his fears, must 
 be in either case the same ; and would be no less 
 the same, if a view of the future were allowed him. 
 We are told that God " hath appointed a day in the
 
 of the three Temples. 79 
 
 which He will judge the world in righteousness ." 
 Prophecy could have added no stronger motive to 
 holiness, no clearer assurance of responsibility, 
 though it should have disclosed to us that day 
 and that hour. 
 
 Acts xvii. 31.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE TEMPLE SERVICES. 
 
 ALL conformity to the will of God is, properly 
 speaking, religious service, whether the obligation 
 be made known to us by a law of our nature, or 
 by an extraordinary revelation ; for, the obliga- 
 tion rests ultimately, in both cases alike, on the 
 supreme authority of our Almighty Lord. But 
 by religious service, we ordinarily understand, 
 not those duties which natural conscience enjoins, 
 but those which have been prescribed by a 
 miraculous revelation ; and not only so, but 
 prescribed for us as attached to the Temple 
 of God as members of his Church or his 
 Kingdom. 
 
 This service has varied most strikingly in 
 accordance with the other variations in the three 
 successive Temples ; and the points of difference 
 constitute indeed one of the most important and 
 interesting features in the comparison. To begin 
 with the Jewish. 
 
 6
 
 82 The Temple services. 
 
 I. This consisted of numerous ceremonies, 
 many of them apparently trifling, but all en- 
 joined with extreme, and, if one may say so, 
 fastidious minuteness of detail. It was more- 
 over strictly and altogether a histrionic service 
 a service consisting not of words, but of action. 
 For, although prayer by word of mouth was 
 probably always practised individually among the 
 Israelites, and unquestionably for the greater 
 part of their existence as God's people ; yet it 
 appears to have made no part of the Levitical 
 ordinance to have been no portion of the regular 
 Temple-service. The exceptions which are re- 
 corded, such as Solomon's prayer at the dedication 
 of the Temple, rather strengthen the conclusion 
 to which we are unavoidably led, by the omission 
 of all command to pray, in a code of directions 
 so minute as the Levitical. 
 
 Several circumstances about the Israelites 
 combined to call for this particular kind of 
 service ; which, in itself, and without a due con- 
 sideration of these circumstances, cannot fail to 
 impress the mind with a mean and unworthy 
 idea of God's appointments for his chosen people. 
 So contemplated, however, the Jewish ritual not
 
 The Temple services. 83 
 
 merely exhibits marks of extraordinary wisdom 
 and far-looking design ; but its convenience, 
 its expressiveness, its wisdom in short, arising 
 from its connection with events then buried deep 
 in futurity, could not have been the invention 
 of the Jewish legislator, however wise and 
 learned. 
 
 The pervading principle of the first Temple- 
 service was, that it was not only typical, but 
 prophetic. Its sacrifices, its purifications, its 
 offerings, all its solemnities, constituted a per- 
 petual volume of prophecy expressed by sign ; 
 in which the atonement of Christ, the sanctifi- 
 cation of his Spirit, and all the leading features 
 of the Gospel, were prefigured. To the Jews 
 themselves it no more conveyed this meaning 
 indeed, than did their more obscure prophetic 
 Scriptures. Their service was to them, in this 
 respect, like a task which a child has learnt 
 by rote, without being required or being able 
 to comprehend its import. The Law was their 
 schoolmaster; and it was their duty and their 
 service to trust for an application of the lesson, 
 to Him who set it them. 
 
 But was this lesson, this service, reasonable?
 
 84 The Temple services. 
 
 Was it necessary that prophecy should be so 
 embodied, and imposed in so cumbrous and 
 burthensome a form, in order to be handed down 
 from age to age, by persons too who could not, 
 generally at least, have derived from it any of 
 the appropriate hopes any satisfaction beyond 
 the sense of doing blindly, although humbly and 
 confidently, the will of God? The object was 
 of the last importance. " The Law was their 
 schoolmaster to bring them unto Christ*." No- 
 thing less than this toilsome training of genera- 
 tion after generation can be conceived adequate 
 to have given that bent to the national mind 
 those habits of religious view which should 
 prepare the appointed future generation for re- 
 cognising their Messiah, and embracing the 
 Christian doctrines thus made beforehand fami- 
 liar and congenial. Scarcely indeed, with all 
 this preparatory discipline, were any found, at 
 the allotted season, ready for the fulfilment of 
 the types. Without any such provision, what re- 
 ception was the Gospel likely to have met with ? 
 It may be said indeed, that the Gospel was, 
 after no great interval, proclaimed to the Gentiles 
 
 Galatians iii. 24, 25.
 
 The Temple services. 85 
 
 also ; and that the obstacles to its reception 
 among them were not much, if at all, greater 
 than those which barred its access to the Jews. 
 If it was foolishness to the Gentiles, who had not 
 gone through this training of generation after 
 generation, it became also a stumblingblock to 
 the Jews. We should recollect, however, that 
 the dispersion of the Jews through the Gentile 
 world was the very means by which Christianity 
 was first introduced to the heathen. The apostle 
 Paul appears invariably to have preached in the 
 first instance in the synagogues 15 . Through the 
 
 6 See the account of Paul and Barnabas's ministry in 
 Cyprus, (Acts xiii. 4); at Antioch in Pisidia, v. 14; and, 
 more especially, the latter part of the chapter from v. 42. At 
 Iconium, the next stage of their journey, the synagogue is still 
 the place where they preach, notwithstanding their late 
 ill-usage, and Paul's bold declaration. Acts xiv. 1. 
 
 So again in Paul's second journey, we find him at Philippi 
 preaching " on the Sabbath at the river side, where prayer 
 was wont to be made ;" (xvi. 13.) and at Thessalonica, we are 
 expressly told that " there was a synagogue of the Jews, and 
 Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three 
 Sabbath days reasoned with them out of the Scriptures." xvii. 
 1, 2. The like notices occur of his ministry at Athens, at Co- 
 rinth, and at Ephesus.
 
 86 The Temple services. 
 
 conversion of the Jews, partial though it wasy 
 the spiritual conquest of their Gentile brethren 
 was effected. The important point to be con- 
 sidered, however, is not the actual result which 
 the training of the Levitical service produced on 
 the Jews ; but the result which it was calculated 
 to produce. It is by this, and not by the abuse 
 or the neglect of the system, that the system 
 must be estimated. It was a provision to pre- 
 pare the Jews for the Messiah and his revelation; 
 and was no less a wise provision, because the 
 Jews did not generally and completely avail 
 themselves of it. 
 
 To understand fully, however, the fitness of the 
 Temple-service the grounds which rendered 
 such a typical and prophetic monument needful, 
 and especially for the Israelites we must bear 
 in mind the rude, the slavish condition of that 
 people, both in a moral and in an intellectual 
 point of view, at the time this service was com- 
 posed for them. Of all periods in the history 
 of mankind, the present age is perhaps the least 
 suitable for duly estimating the necessity of 
 a histrionic service, which this poverty of mind
 
 The Temple services, 87 
 
 occasioned. The great mass of such a people 
 were, possibly, incapable of having their atten- 
 tion excited, or their hearts elevated to God v 
 by the abstract thinking which the use of lan- 
 guage on such a theme supposes. Men so 
 circumstanced must have their outward senses 
 first strongly stimulated, in order to call forth the 
 exercise of the understanding . 
 
 It scarcely needs to be further pointed out, 
 that if a typical service, comprising obscure 
 prophecies, were necessary, it must have been 
 likewise necessary, to have this service described 
 with the most minute exactness that the ob- 
 servance of every tittle should be enforced and 
 
 c There is much probability in the view which assigns 
 to some of the Mosaic rites another instructive purpose, by 
 supposing them framed in opposition to the idolatrous prac- 
 tices and false creeds of the heathen. Certainly no method 
 could have been devised more likely to prevent all religious 
 communion between the worshippers of Jehovah and the rest 
 of the world, than to appoint for the former a service which 
 should exhibit to the latter a scene of impiety that was 
 revolting to their most sacred prejudices. " Lo shall we 
 sacrifice the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, 
 and will they not stone us ?" was doubtless a feeling which 
 was designed to be strongly impressed on the Israelites.
 
 88 The Temple services. 
 
 no discretion allowed to deviate from the for- 
 mula to add or diminish or alter. The per- 
 formance of such a service was like taking a 
 copy of a book in an unknown tongue we dare 
 not alter word or letter or dot ; because we may be 
 destroying the sense in some material point. The 
 service of the Jewish Temple was a holy Record, 
 the language and characters of which, few of those 
 who were perpetuating it understood ; and none 
 perfectly enough to make it safe to give them 
 liberty to alter one tittle. It was therefore the 
 command of God to observe a literal fulfilment 
 of his service. 
 
 At the same time, this very restriction would 
 have been impracticable, but for a feature in God's 
 first Church, which has been already the subject 
 of discussion its narrow limits. Precise rules 
 about so intricate a ceremonial would have ren- 
 dered conformity impossible, in all climates, and 
 under all governments, as the Christian Church 
 exists now. The colder regions of the north 
 would have presented an insuperable obstacle to 
 the many ablutions ; whilst differences in the 
 government, laws, and national customs of the 
 different states of the world, would, in many
 
 The Temple services. 89 
 
 instances, have occasioned impediments no less 
 insurmountable. No discretion was left all 
 exercise of it expressly forbidden; because the 
 limitation of God's kingdom was an essential 
 principle of his dispensation. The more we 
 compare together the several parts of each dis- 
 pensation, as well as the dispensations them- 
 selves, the more clearly we thus perceive a con- 
 sistency and harmony pervading the whole scheme 
 of salvation. No analogy, perhaps, is worthy of 
 this vast and complex moral system so exhibited, 
 but the system of the universe ; and how much (we 
 may add) that is sublime and astonishing in both, 
 escapes the observation of the careless beholder, 
 from the very circumstance that the attention is 
 not startled by any jarring and disturbance. In 
 both, the various parts have been adjusted with 
 so delicate a mechanism the movements are all 
 so easy and imperceptible that we are apt to 
 forget the mysterious impulse by which the 
 course of the moral no less than of the natural 
 world glides on from time to eternity, accom- 
 plishing for us, silently though certainly, the vast 
 designs of Almighty wisdom. 
 
 II. The Law being a shadow of good things to
 
 90 The Temple services. 
 
 come, there is, as might be expected, not only 
 a difference, but a contrast between the service 
 of the first and third Temples. The Jewish 
 ritual was prophecy, which was now fulfilled ; 
 a pledge, which was now redeemed ; and the ser- 
 vice of the new and last Temple was accordingly 
 framed in reference to a real scene that had been 
 exhibited, instead of the representation of that 
 scene when only existing in promise. Hence it 
 not only differs from, but is, in several respects, 
 (as I have said,) expressly opposed to, the Levitical 
 service. 
 
 As to the form of this service the vehicle of 
 expression the clumsy and cumbrous method 
 by symbol was no more requisite. Higher in- 
 tellectual endowments were contemplated in the 
 new Israel. The Temple- service was now made 
 verbal ; and thereby was established one of 
 the most important channels of its influence. 
 A Christian habituated to address God altogether 
 in the same way as he communicates with his 
 fellow-creatures, must needs have his prayers influ- 
 enced by his use of language or other subjects ; 
 and his conversation, and indeed all that he utters, 
 influenced by his addresses to God. This, at
 
 The Temple services. 91 
 
 least, is the obvious and natural result which 
 must take place, unless there be some powerful 
 impediment to the process of association such, 
 for instance, as prayers with the lips and not with 
 the heart and understanding ; or, if the converse 
 be supposable, the habit of conversing and using 
 language on every other topic without regarding 
 the meaning of what we say, and attending only 
 to one's prayers. Some cultivation of mind too, 
 more at all events than the Israelites originally 
 had, is necessary for the benefit accruing from 
 this to take place that is, for the ordinary inter- 
 course of men to give increased facility to the 
 communication of their thoughts in prayer to 
 God ; and for their conversation with one another 
 to catch, not indeed the terms of their addresses 
 to God, but the frame of mind under which they 
 are uttered that consciousness of the Divine 
 presence, which shall habitually render all inter- 
 course among Christians, as the intercourse of 
 beings to whom the ear of God is open, not for 
 prayer alone, but for every word, evil or good, 
 idle or seasonable. 
 
 It is not, however, merely for the purpose of 
 enforcing a change from the Temple-service of
 
 92 The Temple services. 
 
 the Jews to our own, that the New Testament 
 contains such earnest injunctions to pray, and 
 such solemn assurances of the efficacy of prayer, 
 notwithstanding that our "Heavenly Father knows 
 beforehand what we have need of." The found- 
 ation of Christianity was laid for a superstructure 
 which did not immediately and at once rise on it. 
 After a time, the wise of this world mingled with 
 the simple and unlearned in seeking for ad- 
 mission into the Church. This new class of con- 
 verts were persons trained to doubt, to inquire, 
 and to speculate ; and this habit of mind, which 
 their philosophy and their learning produced, was 
 not to be confined to their age or particular pursuits 
 and circumstances. In all times it was sure to 
 appear among the vigorous weeds of man's culti- 
 vated intellect ; and it has been accordingly pro- 
 vided against in the instructions of the Gospel, 
 and in none more than in the importance assigned 
 to prayer. No point was so likely to be ques- 
 tioned (by men of a speculative turn) as the rea- 
 sonableness and utility of prayer had prayer been 
 left to our choice, or enforced with less earnest- 
 ness. That God must know what we need, before 
 we ask, was a truth which would be likely to make
 
 The Temple services. 93 
 
 it seem frivolous and vain to ask. Hence, the 
 assertion of this very view of Providence is made 
 prominent, as well as the importance of prayer ; as 
 if to indicate that it had been distinctly recognized, 
 and was nevertheless considered as not at all 
 interfering with the duty to which our presump- 
 tuous reasonings might have opposed it d . 
 
 The assertion, that the Christian service is a 
 service of words, will not, of course, be under- 
 stood to imply that all our Temple-service is com- 
 prehended in prayer. As was before observed, 
 moral conformity, no less than obedience to ritual 
 precepts, must, in an accurate estimate, be re- 
 garded as religious service. Whatever, in short, 
 conscience dictates, is the natural service of man- 
 kind, performed by an obligation, which the 
 Author of our being thus declares and com- 
 mands 6 . The revelation therefore of any ad- 
 
 (1 See Matt. vi. 8, 9. 
 
 e That a recognition of this service, and of the obligation 
 to perform it, survived in the heathen world the knowledge 
 of Him who is the object of it, is plain from the occasional 
 avowal of a sentiment so forcibly expressed by Persius. 
 
 Quin damus id superis, de magna quod dare lance 
 Non possit magni Messaloe lippa propago, 
 Compositum jus, fasque animi, sanctosque recessus
 
 94 The Temple services. 
 
 ditional service, supposes this, as the original 
 stock to which all other is only an addition. 
 In the case of the Jewish ritual, the addition 
 was, for the special reasons assigned, immense, 
 and of a distinct character. But even during 
 the Jewish dispensation, the prophets, as occa- 
 sional messengers of God, were commissioned 
 to remind the people, that this service was not 
 a substitute for, but a temporary appendage to, 
 that which had been enjoined from the creation, 
 by a law, no less than the law of God the dictate 
 of natural conscience f . When however the ob- 
 ject of all the extraneous ceremonial of Judaism 
 was accomplished ; the erection of the new Tem- 
 ple involved no need of additions foreign to the 
 natural service of a holy life. Contrasted with 
 the former indeed, the Christian Qr)<rxsia was 
 to use the words of the apostle " to visit the 
 fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to 
 keep themselves unspotted from the world ? ." 
 
 Mentis, et incoctum generoso pectus honesto ? 
 Haec cedo ut admoveam Templis, et farre litabo. 
 
 Satyr, ii. v. 71. 
 
 f See e. g. Isaiah i. 14, 15, 16, 17. 
 
 s James i. 27. The word S^mia is improperly rendered in 
 our translation " religion" it should have been " service."
 
 The Temple services. 95 
 
 The service of the last Temple has been regulated 
 solely by reference to relations between Man 
 created, redeemed, and sanctified, and his Cre- 
 ator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. The only novel- 
 ties, in short, are those which have arisen out 
 of the revelation of so much of these relations 
 as were new, or before unknown. 
 
 Again, as these points were not, like the 
 subjects comprised in the Levitical service, ob- 
 scure and veiled in futurity ; but views so clear, 
 that those who ran might read ; the old system 
 of minute, unvarying rules, was no longer re- 
 quisite or suitable. The Christian was fully 
 instructed in the object of the service required 
 of him ; and provided with principles to which 
 he was to conform at discretion, according to 
 the diversities of age, climate, or country, to 
 which he might be subject. 
 
 In noticing this feature of contrast, I cannot 
 omit to observe, that the very opposite system 
 to that which was made an argument for the 
 divine legation of Moses, becomes an argument 
 now for the divine legation of the apostles and 
 their inspired coadjutors. That the Israelites 
 should have been bound to the observance of a
 
 96 The Temple services. 
 
 most minute and circumstantial ceremonial, with- 
 out any discretionary power to deviate from the 
 least tittle, was a system that must be referred to 
 divine, and not human, wisdom ; because the only 
 intelligible account of such a ceremonial is, that it 
 involved obscure prophecy, which would have been 
 exposed to corruption, by permitting the least al- 
 teration ; that the founders of the Church should 
 omit to dictate any service at all, can only be ex- 
 plained, by supposing their own natural suggestions 
 to have been restrained by divine control. It 
 would indeed have been the natural course for men 
 under any circumstances, who were establishing a 
 religious society, and enjoining a religious service, 
 to dictate, more or less precisely, that service ; but 
 with Jews, who had been educated in conformity to 
 the minute and literal directions of their Law, there 
 was the force of peculiar habit aiding the common 
 tendency of human nature. And yet no Chris- 
 tian liturgy appears on the pages of the New 
 Testament no directions about forming one. 
 Was this man's doing, or God's ? 
 
 The absence, then, first of typical institu- 
 tions, and next of minute and unchangeable 
 rules, appears to constitute the main peculiarity
 
 The Temple services. 97 
 
 of the Christian service, as contrasted with the 
 Jewish. It will be recollected however, that 
 there are two exceptions to this general state- 
 ment. Two typical ceremonies have been ad- 
 mitted into the service of the Christian Temple 
 Baptism, and the Supper of the Lord. Their dis- 
 similarity, in this respect, from the rest of the 
 Christian service, deserves an attentive consi- 
 deration. It plainly indicates, that there is in 
 the events typified by them some distinguish- 
 ing feature, which has rendered this form of 
 expression suitable or needful for those events 
 especially. Now one difference between such a 
 mode of expression and that by words, is, that it 
 is invariable and universal. It addresses itself 
 alike to the apprehension of all ages, and of all 
 people. Record an incident, or register a pre- 
 cept, in terms ever so definite, still the change of 
 language necessary for conveying it from one 
 people to another, nay the change which time 
 produces even in the original language in which 
 it is deposited, (supposing no corruption of the 
 document to take place,) renders such a record 
 more or less liable to misrepresentation ; although 
 it doubtless possesses, in other points of view, 
 
 H
 
 98 The Temple services. 
 
 great advantages over a symbolical representation. 
 To uncultivated minds morever, a symbolical rite 
 is more impressive and attractive, and often 
 more intelligible ; and it should be recollected, 
 that although the Gospel is adapted and addressed 
 to a more enlightened state of society than was 
 the Law, it recognises, and has provided for, 
 those portions of an enlightened society, which 
 fall short in most, if not in all, Christian 
 countries, of the preparatory capacity for the 
 whole sum of Gospel-truth. Whilst therefore to 
 the Christian volume was committed the whole 
 of Gospel-Revelation, it was doubtless a wise 
 and merciful provision, to select the two 
 most important features for the record of type 
 and symbol, as well as of language. The 
 doctrines of Regeneration by the Holy Spirit, and 
 of Atonement by the death of Christ, followed by 
 his spiritual indwelling in us these form the 
 epitome of Christianity. Extracted from the full 
 record of Revelation, translated, as it were, into 
 symbol and type, and so, engrafted on the Chris- 
 tian service, their eminent importance was thereby 
 signified, and a preservative furnished against our 
 overlooking either the meaning or the importance
 
 The Temple services, 99 
 
 designed to be attached to the corresponding 
 passages of the sacred volume. 
 
 Still, even in the instance of these, we may 
 perceive a deviation from the method of pre- 
 scribing the symbolical service under the Law. 
 Those portions of our Christian rites have been 
 made the subject of an unvarying command, 
 which are the main and essential features, and 
 the exact observance of which no differences of 
 age or civilized society can affect f ; whilst all the 
 service requisite to be appended for the com- 
 pletion of each, has been left to the discretion of 
 the Church, limited only by the principle of 
 adding nothing that is either incongruous to the 
 rite itself, or otherwise inconsistent with the re- 
 ligion of which it forms a part. 
 
 III. In the foregoing remarks, the service of 
 the third Temple has been considered immediately 
 after that of the first ; and a comparison instituted" 
 between them, which contains no reference to 
 the intermediate Temple the Immanuel. For 
 the reason of this, the inquirer must be reminded 
 of a distinction already pointed out between the 
 
 f It has been remarked, that bread and wine are articles in 
 common use among all the civilized world. 
 
 H 2
 
 100 The Temple services. 
 
 ministry of Christ and the instruction of the Law, 
 as both of them introductory, though in a different 
 sense, to the Christian scheme *. Agreeably to that 
 distinction, the first Temple and its appendages 
 were, from their very nature, utterly destroyed 
 by the establishment of the Christian Church ; 
 whereas the Immanuel was eternally connected 
 with it, and formed its foundation and its corner 
 stone. To the Temple of God " manifest in the 
 flesh" there was accordingly, in the strictest sense, 
 no peculiar service attached. All that related to 
 a service, was that preparatory training for one, 
 which his followers received ; and it is in re- 
 ference to this that He must have drawn the 
 analogy between their attendance on Him, and 
 that of the Levitical priests on the Temple of 
 stone h . Hence the very striking reply which He 
 made to one who consulted Him about the best 
 method of fulfilling the old service, " This is the 
 work of God, that ye believe in Him whom He 
 hath sent 1 ;" which was as much as to say, 
 
 Chap. iv. p. 70. 
 
 h Matth. xii. 5. The text is a very remarkable one. See 
 some observations on it in the note appended to Dr. Whately's 
 Essay " On the Abolition of the Law." 
 
 1 John vi. 29.
 
 The Temple services. 101 
 
 " Why ask me about the best method of fulfilling 
 a service, which God is even now abolishing. The 
 only present service is to believe in me to trust 
 to me, and wait humbly for that which I am 
 preparing my disciples to receive." Faith in 
 Christ is still, as it was then, the very essence 
 and vital principle of the Christian service ; but 
 it was then the only service ; inasmuch as that to 
 which it led, and with which it is now connected, 
 was not yet given. The period of the inter- 
 mediate Temple was an interval of anticipation, 
 surmise, and preparatory training. Like Israel 
 waiting at the foot of mount Sinai, the elect of 
 Christ, without as yet discarding the obsolete 
 observances of their fathers, kept their eye 
 anxiously fixed on a mingled scene of light and 
 darkness, from which a new law and a new service 
 were about to be developed. 
 
 To this view the teaching of the Lord's Prayer 
 is no exception. Our Lord, as well as his fol- 
 lowers, recognized and performed no public service 
 but that of the old Temple. This prayer did not, 
 during his abode with them, correspond to its sub- 
 sequent use, and make a part of any form of 
 worship analogous to our Church Liturgies, but
 
 102 The Temple services. 
 
 answered rather to domestic and family prayer. 
 The leader of every sect was then considered in 
 the light of father or head of a family, whose 
 members were quite as intimately connected with 
 him and with one another, as a natural house- 
 hold ; and they accordingly joined as such in 
 certain common devotional exercises. " Lord, 
 teach us to pray, as John also taught his disciples 1 ," 
 was the request, in compliance with which the 
 Lord's Prayer was given ; and it was, on the 
 same principle, contrasted with the long prayers 
 made by the disciples of the Pharisaic doctors*. 
 Its transfer to the public service of the Christian 
 Church was reasonable, and in no respect incon- 
 sistent with its original use ; but could only 
 take place when a public Christian service was 
 established. 
 
 It is pleasing to trace in this, and in other 
 instances, a manifest desire on the part of the 
 first Christians, to perpetuate, as far as was pos- 
 sible, the domestic character of that little circle 
 of familiar friends, out of which the Church arose. 
 The feeling was natural in the apostles and other 
 
 ' Luke xi. 1. " Compare Luke v. 33. with Matth. 
 
 xxiii. 14. and Luke xx. 46.
 
 The Temple services. 103 
 
 immediate followers of Jesus ; but to do this was 
 plainly a fulfilment also of his will. For this 
 very purpose he seems to have accustomed them 
 to consider one another as brethren, and to ad- 
 dress one another by that title. For the same 
 reason, apparently, they were taught to evince 
 their union with Him, by love to one another, and to 
 all who should bear his name : " a new command- 
 ment 1 give unto you, that ye love one another ; 
 as I have loved you, that ye also love one 
 another. By this shall all men know that ye are 
 my disciples, if ye have love one to another 1 ." 
 
 I cannot but think, that our present use of the 
 Lord's Prayer, so considered, is more impressive, 
 and connected with more delightful associations, 
 than if we view it as originally framed in reference 
 to the condition of the Christian world at large. 
 It seems thus, every time we utter it, to carry us 
 back to those holy moments, when a beloved 
 few sat at the feet of Jesus, or joined Him in 
 prayer to the Father j and reminds us that we 
 are now " the Disciples." Its use becomes, not 
 indeed as in the case of the Sacrament, the ful- 
 filment of an express command, " Do this, as 
 1 John xiii. 34, 35.
 
 104 The Temple services. 
 
 oft as ye do it, in remembrance of me," but is a 
 dictate to the same effect, suggested by personal 
 attachment, and by those hopes of re-union with 
 the Lord in the flesh, which it was his own af- 
 fectionate wish to see preserved in his Church 
 until his second coming. 
 
 Nevertheless, when the Son of man cometh, 
 shall he find this feeling on the earth ? Are our 
 homes prepared for his reception, our hearts for 
 his sympathy, our lives for his scrutiny? Are we, 
 in short, so living, that we should, above all 
 things, like the Son of man to come and live 
 with us? Or do our hearts say, what our lips 
 dare not, " Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
 man, O Lord ?"
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE PERSONS OFFICIATING IN THE THREE 
 TEMPLES. 
 
 ALTHOUGH the second Temple is excluded in 
 the comparison between the several services, 
 it assumes an important place in the inquiry 
 to which that comparison directly leads that, 
 namely, which regards the officiating class in 
 the three stages of communion between God 
 and man. To this point I now proceed ; and 
 intend to consider it so far as it is "connected 
 with those differences and resemblances, which 
 have been developed in the preceding chapter. 
 
 I. The character of the Jewish priesthood 
 was intimately connected with the prophetic 
 object of their service. They were the principal 
 actors in the figurative representation of the Law 
 it was the same sacrifices, which they offered 
 oftentimes a . They were, as a Body, and the 
 high priest individually, the type of the true 
 
 Heb. x. 11.
 
 106 Persons officiating. 
 
 Priest ; and in Christ, accordingly, the type was 
 fulfilled, and rendered useless for the future b . 
 It is impossible to state this in any form which 
 shall be more explicit than the original declara- 
 tions of Scripture. Of the typical character of 
 the old priesthood, St. Paul, for example, writes 
 thus ; " We have such an High Priest, who 
 is "set on the right hand of the throne of the 
 Majesty in the heavens ; a minister of the sanc- 
 tuary, and of the true tabernacle, which the 
 Lord pitched, and not manV "There are 
 priests that offer gifts according to the Law ; 
 who serve unto the example and shadow of hea- 
 venly things' 1 ." " Now when these things were 
 thus ordained, the priests went always into the 
 first tabernacle, accomplishing the service of 
 God. But into the second went the high priest 
 alone, once every year, not without blood, which 
 he offered for himself, and for the errors of the 
 people ; the Holy Ghost this signifying that 
 the way into the holiest of all was not yet made 
 
 b The reader will find this view clearly and ably stated 
 in the fifth of Dr. Whately's " Sermons on Several Occa- 
 sions." 
 
 Heb. viii. 1, 2. * Heb. viii.-5.
 
 Persons officiating. 107 
 
 manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet 
 standing. Which was a figure, for the time then 
 present, in which were offered both gifts and 
 sacrifices, that could not make him that did the 
 service, perfect, as pertaining to the conscience 
 which stood only in meats and drinks, and divers 
 washings, and carnal ordinances, imposed on 
 them until the time of reformation. But Christ 
 being come an High Priest of good things to 
 come, by a greater and more perfect tabernacle, 
 not made with hands, that is to say, not of 
 this building ; neither by the blood of goats 
 and calves, but by his own blood he entered 
 in once into the holy place, having obtained 
 eternal redemption for us e ." Again, respecting 
 the nullity of the typical appointment, as the 
 necessary consequence of its fulfilment, the same 
 apostle in the same place writes, " In that He 
 saith a new covenant, He hath made the first 
 old. Now that which decayeth, and waxeth 
 old, is ready to vanish away f ." " He taketh 
 away the first, that He may establish the se- 
 cond?." 
 
 Hebrews ix. 6 12. f Hebrews viii. 13. 
 
 e Hebrews x. 9.
 
 108 Persons officiating. 
 
 II. In the second Temple, then, Christ was 
 the Priest the Priest, as well as the Temple and 
 the Sacrifice. His sacerdotal office, however, 
 differed from the corresponding office in the 
 Jewish Temple, inasmuch as it was employed 
 about a real and efficacious atonement and 
 sanctification, and He was the real character 
 which the former priesthood had personated. 
 His priesthood differed also from the Levitical, 
 in that all centered in Him alone; whereas the 
 priests under the Law were many, and a suc- 
 cession : their service was, to transmit from one 
 generation to another the personification of a 
 character, which was properly his alone ; He, in 
 that character, " trod the wine-press alone h ." 
 " They truly" (in the apostle's words) " were 
 many priests, because they were not suffered to 
 continue, by reason of death. But this man, be- 
 cause He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable 
 priesthood 1 ." 
 
 Another very important feature of contrast is, 
 that they were not exempt from sin ; and this 
 circumstance, although it did not disqualify them 
 for representing the character of the Mediator 
 
 h Isaiah Ixiii. 3. ' Heb. vii. 23, 24.
 
 Persons officiating. 109 
 
 between God and man, yet did disqualify them 
 for being themselves truly priests and mediators. 
 Such, at least, is the light, in which Scripture 
 exhibits this feature of contrast. " Such an 
 High Priest," writes St. Paul, " became us, who is 
 holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, 
 and made higher than the heavens. Who 
 needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer 
 up sacrifice, first, for his own sins, and then for 
 the people's, for this He did once, when He 
 offered up Himself. For the Law maketh men 
 high priests which have infirmity ; but the word 
 of the oath, which was since the Law, maketh 
 the Son, who is consecrated for evermore 11 /' 
 " If He were on earth, He should not be a 
 priest, seeing that there are priests that offer 
 gifts according to the Law ; who serve unto the 
 example 1 and shadow of heavenly things" 1 ." 
 
 The priesthood of Christ was further dissimilar 
 from its type, in being employed about a single 
 
 k Heb. vii. 26, 27, 28. 
 
 i Rather, exemplar or pattern. The original word is 
 
 m Heb. viii. 4, 5.
 
 110 Persons officiating. 
 
 sacrifice made once for all. To recur, as before, 
 to the very words of Scripture. " Every priest 
 standeth daily ministering and offering often- 
 times the same sacrifices, which can never take 
 away sins ; but this man, after He had offered 
 one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the 
 right hand of God;" "for by one offering He 
 hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified' 11 ." 
 " Nor yet that He should offer Himself often, as 
 the high priest entereth into the holy place, every 
 year, with the blood of others ; (for then must 
 He often have suffered since the foundation of the 
 world ;) but now, once, in the end of the world, 
 hath He appeared, to put away sin by the sacri- 
 fice of Himself"." The need of continual sacri- 
 fice by the Levitical priesthood, would seem 
 thus to have arisen from the typical nature of 
 their office ; and this need no longer therefore 
 existed after Christ had come. To the same prin- 
 ciple indeed we may trace all the several differ- 
 ences between the two priesthoods, which have 
 been now briefly enumerated. It was hence that 
 the new priesthood not only superseded the old ; 
 but rendered such an office as that of a sacrificing 
 m Heb. x. 11, 12, 14. n Heb. ix. 25, 26.
 
 Persons officiating. Ill 
 
 priest impossible. " Where remission of sins 
 and iniquities is, there is no more offering for 
 sin ." 
 
 The priesthood of Christ, however, and of the 
 Levitical type which he fulfilled, comprised more 
 than sacrifice it was made up of this and of 
 intercession. It was the priest's office, first to 
 prepare, and then to present, the offerings to 
 convey, as Mediator, the addresses of the wor- 
 shippers to God. In this respect also, the only 
 efficacy attached to the Jewish priesthood arose 
 from its being the temporary representation and 
 type of Christ ; "for there is one God, and one 
 Mediator between God and man, the man Christ 
 Jesus p ." The mediatorship of Christ therefore, 
 the only real intercessor, fulfilled and annulled the 
 type, as in the case of sacrifice. There was 
 " verily a disannulling of the commandment going 
 before, for the weakness and unprofitableness 
 thereof. For the Law made nothing perfect, but 
 the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which 
 we draw nigh unto God 1." But there is this 
 important difference between the two cases. The 
 intercession was appointed to be perpetual: not 
 
 Heb. x. 18. p I Tim. ii. 5. > Heb. vji. 18, 19.
 
 112 Persons officiating. 
 
 so the sacrifice. Christ's fulfilment of the priestly 
 office of intercession, did not, as in the other case, 
 abrogate the office itself. It is not written, as in 
 respect of sacrifice, that after He had once made 
 intercession, He for ever sat down at the right 
 hand of God, but " He ever liveth to make 
 intercession'." 
 
 This distinction as to the modes whereby the 
 two parts of the typical priesthood under the Law 
 has been fulfilled, requires to be attended .to, 
 because it furnishes the main principle which we 
 shall have to apply in estimating the character of 
 the officiating class in our present Temple. In 
 proceeding now to the consideration of this, I 
 would first observe, that in the exercise of our 
 Lord's priestly office as Mediator, consists the 
 principal connection which at present subsists 
 between Him and his Church. It is He, to whom 
 unseen we are still directed as " ever living to 
 make intercession" for us. It is of Him in that 
 character, that St. John writes, " if any man sin, 
 we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus 
 Christ the righteous, and He is the propitiation 
 for our sins 8 ." 
 
 r Heb. vii. 25. 1 John ii. 1 .
 
 Persons officiating. 113 
 
 III. On turning to contemplate the condition 
 of the Christian Church now, as regards its 
 officiating class, we are immediately presented 
 with the fact that of the two offices comprised 
 in the priesthood of Christ, one can be no longer 
 exercised, because there is no more sacrificing for 
 sin, and the other continues indeed to be exer- 
 cised, but it is by Him the invisible Priest. And 
 yet, the language of Scripture would seem occa- 
 sionally to indicate the continuance of an earthly 
 priesthood, both for sacrifice and for intercession. 
 Are we to understand these expressions then as 
 mere metaphors, derived from the obsolete duties 
 of the priesthood, and employed only for the 
 purpose of illustration ? Or are we to suppose, 
 that the Church is really admitted, in some way, 
 to a participation of that high and heavenly 
 character which properly belongs to Christ, and 
 which Aaron and his descendants only person- 
 ated ? Let us, as the easiest method of arriving 
 at the true meaning of Scripture, examine sepa- 
 rately first, those passages which seem to imply 
 that the duty of sacrifice is perpetuated and 
 attached to the Church and next, those, from 
 which we are led to infer some admission of the
 
 114 Persons officiating. 
 
 Church to privileges which belong to the media- 
 torial and intercessorial office of our sole High 
 Priest. 
 
 " I beseech you," writes St. Paul to the 
 Romans 1 , " that ye present your bodies a living 
 sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God ; which is 
 your reasonable service;" to the Philippians", 
 " I am full, having received of Epaphroditus the 
 things which were sent from you, an odour of a 
 sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing 
 to God;" and again to the Hebrews x , " By Him 
 (Jesus) therefore let us offer the sacrifice of praise 
 to God continually, that is, the fruit of our lips, 
 giving thanks to his name. But to do good, and 
 to communicate, forget not : for with such sacri- 
 fices God is well-pleased." St. Peter again, in 
 his first Epistle y , addresses Christians, not only 
 as "lively stones," " a spiritual house;" but as 
 " an holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices, 
 acceptable to God through Jesus Christ." In 
 these passages, and in others which may be 
 added, one point is plain namely, that the sacri- 
 fice alluded to is not the atoning sacrifice, which 
 
 t Rom. xii. 1. Philipp. iv. 18. 
 
 * Hebrews xiii. 15. y 1 Peter ii, 5.
 
 Persons officiating. 115 
 
 was limited to Christ alone, and of which the 
 expiatory sacrifices under the Law were mere 
 types. The sacrifice spoken of is the expression 
 of praise, thanksgiving, and other devotional feel- 
 ings ; and it is called a sacrifice or offering, be- 
 cause this symbolical form of expressing such 
 feelings had been in use during the Jewish dis- 
 pensation, and for ages antecedent to it. From 
 Abel's offering until the last legal service of the 
 Temple, this had been a regular method of per- 
 forming to God part of the natural service of 
 man. Considered in this point of view, the 
 Jewish sacrifices were not types of Christ's great 
 sacrifice ; and He therefore neither fulfilled them, 
 nor abolished the duty performed by means of 
 these. The change which took place in the 
 Christian Temple, was only a part of the general 
 change from expression by symbol, to expression 
 by words from the act of offering, to the voice 
 of praise, thanksgiving, devotion. The Old-Tes- 
 tament-Scriptures bear testimony to this view; 
 for in them, as in the New, we find the meta- 
 phor applied to verbal prayer. Hosea, for exam- 
 ple, speaks of the " calves of our lips 2 ." The 
 
 1 Hosea xiv. 2. 
 
 i2
 
 116 Persons officiating. 
 
 % 
 
 old Scriptures too, as well as the New Testa- 
 ment, dwell on the nullity of such sacrifice of 
 mere outward expression unless the heart goes 
 along with it ; as, for example, in these words of 
 the Psalmist, " The sacrifices of God are a broken 
 spirit n ." It is plain, therefore, that the language 
 which the Gospel-writers hold respecting a sacrifice 
 of praise and prayer, is not peculiar to the Gos- 
 pel-dispensation ; and that the duty which it 
 expresses is no further contrasted with any 
 service under the Law, than that formerly praise 
 and prayer were expressed partly by symbol, and 
 that now they are not. In both cases, sincerity 
 and a corresponding frame of mind are requisite 
 to give efficacy to the address to God ; and this 
 service of the heart and moral conduct is accord- 
 ingly considered as the essence of the sacrifice, 
 and even called the sacrifice. It is only the form 
 of devotional expression that has been done away 
 with by Christ's coming ; and hence, (the duty 
 remaining the same,) the form substituted, has 
 sometimes been called the sacrifice. This was 
 the more natural, because all such service to 
 God, still requires to be presented through the 
 
 * Psalm li. 17.
 
 Persons officiating. 117 
 
 f 
 
 High Priest, as Intercessor and Mediator between 
 God and man. 
 
 We come therefore to the second class of 
 Scripture expressions, those namely which indi- 
 cate, that the privileges of this mediatorial and 
 intercessorial office, which is Christ's, are, in 
 some sense and in some degree, imparted to 
 Christians. I allude to such intimations as the 
 following, which our Lord gave to his disciples 
 while yet with them. " In that day, ye shall ask 
 in my name, and I say not unto you, that / will 
 pray the Father for you. For the Father himself 
 loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have 
 believed that I came out from God b ;" or this 
 declaration of St. Paul, " We know not what we 
 should pray for as we ought ; but the Spirit itself 
 maketh intercession for us with groanings which 
 cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the 
 hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, 
 because He maketh intercession for the saints 
 according to the will of God ." That the apo- 
 stle was here representing the fulfilment of the 
 Lord's promise above quoted, seems the more 
 probable from a subsequent verse of the same 
 
 >> John xvi. 26, 27. c Romans viii. 26, 27.
 
 118 Persons officiating. 
 
 chapter, which is evidently connected with the 
 foregoing. " Who is He that condemneth ? Is 
 it Christ, that died, yea rather, that is risen again, 
 who is even at the right hand of God, who also 
 maketh intercession for us d ?" It certainly looks 
 as if by the intercession which St. Paul had be- 
 fore represented as the joint operation of our 
 hearts, and of that Holy Spirit by which Christ 
 dwells in us, he meant this very intercession 
 which is the continued office of our High Priest 
 the very point which forms the perpetual exercise 
 of his mediatorial office. 
 
 Let it not be supposed that these suggestions 
 tend to mere speculation on matters, which are 
 too high for us to examine. It is not at least 
 in this point of view that I desire to represent 
 them. The arrangement of the scheme of Reve- 
 lation doubtless requires from us not presump- 
 tuous scrutiny, but humble gratitude and con- 
 fident conformity. But with respect to this 
 point, the language of Scripture furnishes its 
 
 d Verse 34. I have adopted what I conceive to be the 
 right punctuation of this passage. The purpose for which 
 I have quoted it would not however be affected by retaining 
 that of our received version, " It is Christ that died," &c.
 
 Persons officiating, 1 1 9 
 
 own explanation ; and exhibits a plain practical 
 truth, which the inquirer has already perhaps 
 anticipated. Our Lord spoke mysteriously and 
 obscurely to his disciples, in telling them of a 
 day when they should indeed ask the Father 
 in his name ; but that He did not mean by that, 
 that He was to pray for them. But St. Paul is 
 explanatory enough; when he introduces the 
 same topic. He there couples the declaration 
 with that which alone renders it intelligible. 
 It is the Spirit, who, by " quickening our mortal 
 bodies," and " dwelling in us," " beareth witness 
 with our spirit," " helpeth our infirmities," and 
 makes our prayers as it were his own. " We 
 know not what we should pray for as we ought : 
 but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us 
 with groanings which cannot be uttered." The 
 intercession is really his, who, residing by the 
 Spirit in his new Body the Church, so far raises 
 that Body to a participation of his priestly pri- 
 vileges. " Because we are sons, God hath sent 
 forth the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 
 Abba, Father 6 ." It is to the Church considered 
 in its union with the Spirit of Christ that the 
 
 c Gal. iv. 6.
 
 120 Persons officiating. 
 
 privilege of the Intercessor the immediate access 
 and address is granted ; and to this view of the 
 Church, perhaps, applies the language of St. John 
 in the Revelations, " Unto Him that loved us, 
 and washed us from our sins in his own blood, 
 and hath made us kings and priests unto God 
 and his Father f ." 
 
 But the. Church, it should be borne in mind, 
 inherits its priestly privileges collectively. It is 
 no individual man, who is privileged to mediate 
 and intercede for other men ; it is no earthly 
 mediator ; but the Spirit of Christ in the Temple 
 of " his new Body the Church, which is the 
 fulness of Him that filleth it," and who is so 
 connected with us now. 
 
 It is necessary to keep this steadily in view, 
 in order to distinguish the official character of 
 the Church collectively of the new body of the 
 Mediator which alone corresponds to the priest- 
 hood under the Law, from the ministerial offices 
 of a certain class of Christians set apart from the 
 rest for especial divine service. 
 
 Whatever question may be made about the 
 f Rev. i. 5, 6.
 
 Persons officiating. 121 
 
 precise orders requisite for a Church, there can 
 be no question, as to two points first, that the 
 inspired founders designed a separate class to 
 be set apart for religious services ; and secondly, 
 that there should be gradation and difference of 
 ministry between them. Such was the method 
 pursued during the exercise of extraordinary 
 gifts ; and such the system, which, in the con- 
 tinuance of the Church's ordinary powers, we 
 have received from the apostles. Christians 
 may differ about the obligation on all ages to 
 adopt the exact gradation of Bishops, Priests, 
 Deacons, and subordinate servants, which was 
 found in the Church at the cessation of miracles 
 and miraculous interposition ; but the historical 
 evidence for the existence of those different 
 orders in that period, is too strong to be resisted 
 by any candid inquirer. 
 
 These offices of the Church, both in the days 
 of miracle, and now, are of two different kinds. 
 Each separate Church is a distinct Society ; and 
 one class of offices therefore has for its object the 
 government and regulation of the Society. The 
 Church collectively (that is, the Church universal) 
 is also the Temple ; and another "class of offices
 
 122 Persons officiating. 
 
 attached to it is that of performing service to 
 God. The former involves duties that are 
 ecclesiastical, the latter those that are spiritual 
 to the former belongs rule, to the latter ministry. 
 In the episcopal order of the Church of England, 
 both are united. Our Bishops are at once govern- 
 ors of the Christian society, and ministers of the 
 service performed in it to God. 
 
 If therefore we seek in the Jewish Church for 
 an analogy, which shall illustrate the place in th e 
 perpetual scheme of Providence now occupied 
 by the orders of the Christian Church, it will 
 appear, that the governing or ecclesiastical offices 
 correspond properly to the civil authorities of 
 the Jews, the Jewish civil rulers being at the 
 same time the ecclesiastical. It is in this point 
 of view probably that the apostle calls the 
 Church " a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, 
 an holy nation, a peculiar people *." To the 
 priesthood of the Jews again, the spiritual officers 
 of the Church correspond in part, and in part 
 not. They correspond, inasmuch as they officiate 
 in the Temple-service performed to God ; but 
 they differ, inasmuch as that service no longer 
 * 1 Peter ii. 9.
 
 Persons officiating. 123 
 
 includes sacrifice, (the most prominent business 
 of the priest under the Law,) and only comprises 
 intercession as the work of this divine Mediator, 
 who mysteriously resides within the Church as 
 his new body. 
 
 But the essential feature of distinction is this. 
 The Jewish priesthood officiated in their Temple- 
 service to the exclusion of the rest of the Church ; 
 the Christian Order are indeed distinguished in 
 the part they take from the great body of the 
 Church, but perform that service in common with 
 them' 1 . Our ministerial order exercise indeed 
 priestly duties ; but they alone do not. All 
 Christians are desired to take a share in the 
 service of their Temple. " All have access by 
 one Spirit unto the Father 1 ." We are all made 
 priests unto God k . 
 
 This remarkable difference between the offici- 
 ating class in the earlier and in the last Temple 
 is an important fact to us. It carries on it (as 
 was observed of the Jewish service) marks of 
 
 h The members of our own Church should never forget the 
 expressive title of our service-book, " The Book of Common 
 Prayer." 
 
 ' Ephesians ii. 18. " Rev. v. 10.
 
 124 Persons officiating. 
 
 Divine counsel, not of human device. A change 
 like this, made by persons who were accustomed 
 to an exclusive priesthood in an age when no 
 other kind of priesthood was known cannot fail 
 to strike a reflecting mind as highly unnatural. 
 It was contrary to the one religious prejudice in 
 which Jew and Gentile agreed. But the unnatural 
 character of the measure appears in a stronger 
 light, if we go one step further in the inquiry, 
 and ask ourselves, why Gentile agreed with Jew 
 in this prejudice ? Our own hearts will tell us, it 
 was because it is congenial to human nature. 
 Men naturally crave after a religion by proxy. 
 Even now. with the Gospel word unveiled and 
 before us ; and in the midst of institutions that 
 are framed expressly to counteract this propensity; 
 how prevalent even now is the feeling, that the 
 clergy are to do the service of the Temple, not 
 with us, but for us ; nay, that they alone, and not 
 all in communion with them, are the Church. 
 What but this has been the source of that cor- 
 ruption of the Church of Rome, which has 
 gradually assimilated the Christian ministry there 
 to the exclusive priesthood of the Jewish Temple ? 
 What but this has led to the conversion of the
 
 Persons officiating. 125 
 
 communion into a Mass, and the restoration of 
 the Temple's mystic veil which Christ rent at the 
 moment of his death the closing again of that 
 " way into the holiest of all, which was not yet 
 made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was 
 yet standing '." 
 
 No wonder; for this universal access, great and 
 glorious a privilege as it is, is an increase of re- 
 sponsibility, which to carnal, low, and grovelling 
 minds more than outweighs the sense of dignity 
 to which it elevates them. The trust reposed in 
 these, can only be burthensome to them. They 
 cannot but feel as if talents committed to them 
 for improvement though it be a single one is a 
 hardship imposed by a hard master; and indolently 
 neglect the service, expecting that it will not surely 
 be exacted of them. 
 
 But if such persons endanger their souls, under 
 a delusion perhaps that the humble estimate they 
 make of their fitness for God's service will excuse 
 them at the last account ; if the slothful servant be 
 
 ' Heb. ix. 8. Dr. Whately's Sermon, already referred to, 
 has furnished me with this very important view. The pas- 
 sage to which I allude occurs at the close of the Sermon, 
 p 167.
 
 126 Persons officiating. 
 
 threatened with his Lord's eternal displeasure ; 
 where shall the bold profaner of his Temple 
 appear ? he who, anointed by an unction from the 
 Holy One, officially consecrated as a member of 
 the kingdom of priests to the service of God, has 
 become the servant of sin? Surely "him will 
 God destroy m ." To the Church, and not to a 
 selected portion alone, are now affixed the mitre 
 and the plate engraven, " Holiness to the Lord." 
 All have access in the Christian Temple, even to 
 its holiest of holies ; all have a portion of the 
 priestly duties to fulfil ; and all alike must there- 
 fore ever keep themselves pure, un defiled, and 
 unspotted from the world. 
 
 m I Cor. iii. 17.
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 CONNECTION OF THE THREE TEMPLES WITH THE 
 DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 WHAT then shall we say is the natural im- 
 pression which this threefold dispensation leaves 
 respecting its divine Author? Temple has suc- 
 ceeded Temple, bearing, all, equally strong marks 
 of the Divine presence ; but differing from each 
 other in the circumstances of divine Revelation, 
 as much as if three distinct Beings had in turn 
 presided over the changing kingdom of heaven. 
 In the first, we are presented with an object 
 of worship, made known indeed by symbol, but 
 expressly warning his people against supposing 
 that any symbol was a manifestation of Him. 
 In the second % " the image of the unseen God ;" 
 
 * Coloss. i. 15. * rtv &tv rev ttcirov, 
 Kriffiug. The Apostle's language contains an evident allusion 
 to the Mosaic record, that " God created man in his own 
 image." Christianity is represented elsewhere as a new 
 creation, and Christ as a second Adam. (See e. g. Isaiah 
 Ixv. 17. i Cor. xv. 4547. 2 Cor. v. 17. Ephes. iv. 24.)
 
 128 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 a sensible manifestation is exhibited ; and ren- 
 dered more mysterious by the instrument of 
 manifestation being the human nature, " in all 
 things like unto ours, sin only excepted." In 
 contrast with both, the last Temple is dedicated 
 and possessed by an object of worship, of whose 
 permanent residence and presence no sensible 
 sign is established ; no symbol and varying 
 miracle as in the first Temple ; no manifestation 
 of an inferior intelligent nature conjoined, as in 
 the Immanuel. 
 
 The differences between the respective modes 
 of Divine government, the extent and cha- 
 racter of the worshippers the service required, 
 
 Might not the original declaration tlien, that man was God's 
 image, have had a prophetic reference to the mystery of the 
 Incarnation? The same may be suggested of the wording of 
 the second Commandment of the Decalogue, Thou shall not 
 make to thyself any graven image, &c. which seems to 
 convey a hint of the one lawful " image of God," which He, 
 and not man, was to fashion, and before which, in the ful- 
 ness of time, " every knee was to bow, of things in heaven, 
 and things in earth, and things under the earth." Philip, 
 ii. 10. 
 
 Compare with the passages already referred to, 2 Cor. iv. 4. 
 Heb. i. 3. also Romans viii. 29. xii. 2.
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 129 
 
 and the motives to obedience, all present fea- 
 tures of contrast, and often, at a casual glance, 
 contrariety of views, no less striking than is 
 exhibited in the Revelations themselves. The 
 very Temples differ more widely than any which 
 can be brought into contrast from among all the 
 heathen Temples of all ages, fc '/(/', 
 
 What then could have been the impression 
 designed to be left on us who are allowed to look 
 back on this past progress of the diversified 
 divine economy? It surely must have been de- 
 signed to suggest to our minds, and to habituate 
 our minds to contemplate, God as Three. 
 Three different divine Persons appear the agents 
 and rulers, in a threefold dispensation : so dif- 
 ferent, indeed, that, if left to form our conjectures 
 of the Divine nature from the facts of this pro- 
 gressive economy, all view of one God must have 
 been discarded. The facts of Revelation repre- 
 sent God as a Trinity ; and it is only by express 
 and perpetual qualifications of a view so sug- 
 gested, that we are assured of his Unity. It was 
 important and absolutely necessary, that as each 
 Temple arose, and exhibited a distinct divine 
 Person as its possessor, fresh declarations should 
 
 K
 
 1 30 Connection of the three Temples, 
 
 be issued, and new signs appended to the mark 
 of distinction, to shew that it was still one and the 
 same God in all. The doctrine of the Trinity, 
 in short, rests primarily on historical facts ; the 
 doctrine of the Unity, on a series of declarations 
 and other provisions made in reference to those 
 facts. If we suppose the Bible stript of all those 
 provisions which it contains for qualifying its 
 historical representations of the Divine nature, it 
 would exhibit three distinct Gods ; with those 
 provisions, that representation becomes a Trinity 
 in Unity. 
 
 Having in the preceding chapters, then, ex- 
 amined the Three Temples in reference to the 
 points of difference and contrast, which most 
 strongly denote the agency of three divine 
 Persons, I shall close the inquiry by pointing 
 out the principal method adopted to prevent the 
 error of supposing that these three are different 
 Gods. 
 
 But first, let me not be misunderstood when I 
 assert, that the doctrine of the Trinity rests on 
 historical facts. That God has assumed a three- 
 fold character in his threefold dispensation ; and 
 that distinct views of the Divine nature attach to
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 131 
 
 Him accordingly, is the very result of the progres- 
 sive system of change, and is itself therefore matter 
 of historical fact. But that there are further 
 distinctions unrevealed, or unintelligible to us ; 
 and that the distinctions which are revealed, and 
 understood, have reference to these all this, of 
 course, is not matter of historical fact ; and can 
 only be derived, by inference, from God's apparent 
 design in creating a threefold impression of Him- 
 self, combined with the language of his Scrip- 
 tures. 
 
 I. When the Jewish Church was established, 
 the prevalence of heathen polytheism made it 
 expedient that the Unity of the true God should 
 be set forth as the most prominent feature of be- 
 lief. But it is only in accordance with the view 
 which we take of the rest of that early dispensa- 
 tion, to suppose that the declaration of God's being 
 one, was also prospective was a provision, in 
 short, to keep up an habitual impression of the 
 divine Unity, preparatory to the change, in which 
 a new divine Person was to appear. Even as the 
 ceremonial of the Law was probably for the time 
 an antagonist system to certain religious rites of 
 
 K2
 
 132 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 the neighbouring idolaters ; but contained never- 
 theless, as its most important object, the pro- 
 phetic picture of the Gospel scene ; so, the en- 
 forcement of the divine Unity, although it served 
 the temporary purpose of a preservative against 
 the worship of false Gods, became, and was 
 designed to become, in the fulness of time, a 
 corrective of a false view of the Trinity. The 
 best preparatory course for this doctrine was 
 an habitual contemplation of God as one. Hence 
 not only was belief in the Unity made the subject 
 of commandment and reiterated assertion, under 
 the first dispensation ; but the Temple was, by 
 the most solemn injunctions, appointed to be 
 but one. Whithersoever the Jews were carried 
 captive, into whatever distant parts of the world 
 they were dispersed by prosperous commerce or 
 disastrous exile ; to the Temple at Jerusalem 
 they were bound to repair, or else to forego the 
 service of Jehovah. No where else must a Temple 
 be built or sacrifice offered; although thousands 
 should yearly, by reason of distance or other 
 impediments, be debarred from all communion. 
 It seemed safer and better that the service of
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 13& 
 
 God should be suspended, than that the Unity 
 of the Temple should be violated. It is in ac- 
 cordance with this principle, that the existence 
 of the Temple of stone was made incompatible 
 with Christianity ; and, in this respect too, it 
 was expedient for us, that Christ should go away 
 before the Comforter came that c ' the Temple of 
 his body" should be withdrawn, before his new 
 body the Church was dedicated and that in the 
 last, as in the earliest, dispensation there should 
 be but one Temple of God on earth, in memorial 
 that there is only one God, and that He is to 
 be worshipped as one. 
 
 II. The Unity of the Divine nature was main- 
 tained during the second Temple in various ways. 
 It was intimated by the recurrence of the Glory 
 that filled Jehovah's first Temple, and which 
 now announced the human nature of Christ as 
 the abode of the same God. It was also in- 
 timated by Christ's performing those particular 
 miraculous acts, which God had heretofore taught 
 his people to associate with his peculiar agency. 
 For example, the cure of the leprosy was, by 
 the most express and minute directions of the 
 Law, placed in the light of a miracle, which God
 
 1 34 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 did not delegate to his servants, but exercised 
 Himself. The priest pronounced the leper clean, 
 to indicate the miraculous character of the cure, 
 but he was not allowed to be an agent in the 
 cure : obviously to create the impression of the 
 immediate agency of Jehovah. When Jesus 
 therefore healed lepers, and sent them to the 
 priests, he was placing himself precisely in the 
 same situation that the Father had occupied. 
 It was in doing so, that the God of the old 
 dispensation* had been recognized ; and the re- 
 newal of this, reminded the attentive disciple, 
 that the God of the new Temple was the same. 
 To take another instance. The God of Israel, 
 on leading his people from Egypt to the promised 
 land, delegated to Moses the general adminis- 
 tration of their law, their government, their pro- 
 visions, and the requisite measures for their 
 journeys. In one or two instances, however, 
 an exception is made, and God 'Himself, not 
 Moses his servant, was the agent. It was not, 
 for example, Moses by delegated power, but God 
 Himself, who fed them with bread from heaven. 
 When therefore Christ, in the wilderness, so 
 performed the like miracle, as to make its cor-
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 135 
 
 respondence exact in some of its minutest par- 
 ticulars a , what could have been the inference 
 designed, but that it was God, the same God 
 of their fathers, who was reminding his people 
 of his identity, by repeating his own appropriated 
 miracle ? 
 
 The miracles of walking on the sea, and stilling 
 its waves, can hardly be considered in a different 
 light, when we remember the many passages of 
 Scripture, of the Psalms especially, that described 
 Jehovah's power under this image, and recollect, 
 that it was to fishermen to persons on whom 
 such passages were likely to have made the 
 liveliest impression that these miracles were 
 exhibited. 
 
 But perhaps the most striking act of this de- 
 scription was his violation of the Sabbath. It 
 was of all the Jewish observances that, in the 
 enforcement of which Jehovah was considered as 
 most immediately concerned. Those who neg- 
 lected attendance on the Temple, and were 
 seduced into other habits of alienation from their 
 Law, yet revered this institution, and retained 
 
 * These points of coincidence are enumerated in " The 
 Catechist's Manual," p. 84.
 
 136 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 among their last scruples, that of violating its 
 sanctity. It was that portion of time which God 
 had sanctified, detached from profane service, and 
 set apart as his own. It bore the same analogy 
 to the other days of the week, that the Temple 
 did to the land of Israel ; the tribe of Levi to the 
 rest of his people ; and all Israel to the world. 
 It was holy to the Lord, and God spake of it as 
 " His Sabbath." This observance Christ more 
 than once publicly violated, and gave as a reason 
 for doing so, that the Sabbath had been appointed 
 by God, not for Himself to observe, but for man. 
 The way in which the declaration was made 
 provides most expressly for the idea of identity 
 between Christ and that Lord, whose institution 
 was the Sabbath. "The Sabbath," said He on 
 one occasion, "was made for man, and not man for 
 the Sabbath ; wherefore the Son of man is Lord 
 also of the Sabbath b ;" that is, " the institution 
 of the Sabbath is not like the immutable prin- 
 ciples of morality and virtue, with a view to 
 which man was formed, and which is an attribute 
 of God ; but is a positive institution, made for 
 man. Therefore the Son of man, as God, is 
 b Mark ii. 27, 28.
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 137 
 
 Lord of the Sabbath, and free from its obliga- 
 tions." On another occasion of his expressing 
 the same, the Jews understood Him, and at- 
 tempted to stone Him. " My Father," said He, 
 " worketh hitherto, and I work c ;" meaning that 
 He who gave Him the injunction to rest on the 
 Sabbath day, did not Himself conform to it, but 
 continued his work in keeping up the course of 
 nature ; and that He, Jesus, was to be considered 
 as that same divine Being. 
 
 All these indications were combined with re- 
 peated hints and express assertions, which con- 
 firmed the impression they were of themselves 
 calculated to make. When, for example, Philip 
 said to him, " Shew us the Father;" his reply 
 was, " Have I been so long time with you, and 
 yet hast thou not known me, Philip ? he that has 
 seen me has seen the Father, and how sayest 
 thou then, Shew us the Father (l ?" an answer 
 which, sufficiently explicit itself, yet refers to a 
 long train of intimations which had been pre- 
 viously lost on Philip " Have I been so long 
 time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, 
 Philip ?" Again, He employed such language as 
 
 c John v. 17. ' John xiv. 9.
 
 138 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 this to his apostles, " I am in the Father, and 
 the Father in me e ." " If a man love me, he 
 will keep my words, and my Father will love 
 him, and we will come unto him, and make our 
 abode with him f ." 
 
 The actual result of all this, appears on the 
 pages of the apostolic writings, where we find 
 attributed to Christ that agency, which the earlier 
 people of God were assured was the agency of 
 the Father; as in this passage of St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Colossians, " by Him were all 
 things created, that are in heaven, and that are 
 in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be 
 thrones, or dominions, or principalities, or powers : 
 all things were created by Him, and for Him : 
 and He is before all things, and by Him all things 
 consist 8 ." Or again, it is expressly said of Him 
 that He is " God h ," "the true God 1 ," "the 
 great God k ," " the Lord of Glory l ," " the King 
 of Kings and Lord of Lords m ;" all titles which 
 were recognised as descriptive of the Father. 
 
 ' John xiv. 11. f John xiv. 23. * Coloss. i. 16, 17. 
 
 h Rom. ix. 5. ' 1 John v. 20. k Titus ii. 13. 
 
 1 James ii. 1. m Rev. xix. 16.
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 136 
 
 III. Together with the manifestation of a third 
 divine Person as presiding in a third Temple, 
 there was need of fresh provisions for declaring the 
 divine Unity. The need, however, was less in 
 this than in either of the preceding Revelations. 
 In the first place, the worshippers in the Third 
 Temple had now the full benefit of all the decla- 
 rations respecting the Unity, which had guarded 
 their predecessors from misapprehension. Of 
 these, the Old Testament Scriptures contained 
 many that had long familiarized those acquainted 
 with them with the idea of identity between God 
 and his Spirit. With the impression of these 
 Scriptures therefore, the coming of a Divine 
 Ruler, claiming to be that Holy Spirit, was in 
 itself less likely to create the notion of a different 
 Being, than the appearance and circumstances of 
 the Imrnanuel which was to be, as the prophet 
 intimated, " a new thing"." From Christ's own 
 teaching again, which contained on this as on other 
 points of Christianity, preparatory instruction, 
 much had been learnt ; or rather much had been 
 treasured up which was now explained by inspi- 
 ration. He, for instance, had promised them the 
 
 Isaiah xliii. 19.
 
 140 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 coming of another Comforter, describing Him at 
 one time as the Holy Ghost , at another as 
 Himself p , and then again as the Father q . He 
 describes Him as his own Spirit 1 , as the Father's 
 Spirit *, and the Spirit of truth * ; or (agreeably 
 to the phraseology of the New Testament) the 
 presiding Spirit of the true or real dispensation. 
 
 III. Accordingly, the especial provisions made on 
 the coming of the third Person of the Trinity, for 
 preserving still the doctrine of the divine Unity, 
 are in some instances only allusions to Christ's 
 previous instructions now better understood and 
 applied. Thus St. John's words in his first Epi- 
 stle", " he that keepeth his (Christ's) command- 
 ments dwelleth in Him, and He in him. And 
 hereby we know that He abideth in us, by the 
 Spirit which He hath given us," are plainly a 
 reference to those passages above noticed, in 
 which our Lord identified his coming and the 
 Holy Spirit's ; and prepared his disciples to recog- 
 nise the abode of the Spirit with them as his own 
 residence in St. John's own language, to " know 
 
 John xiv. 26. John xiv. 18. 1 John xiv. 23. 
 r John xvi. 14, 15. s John xv. 26. l John xv. 26. 
 xvi. 13. "1 John iii. 24.
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 141 
 
 that He abideth in us, by the Spirit which He hath 
 given us." 
 
 As in respect of the Imrnanuel's divine nature, 
 that of the third Person too was identified with 
 the one God, by attributing to Him a sphere of 
 agency which had been before appropriated to 
 the Father, or to Father and Son identified. 
 Thus the Spirit is represented as " searching all 
 things, even the deep things of God x ," and even 
 as having raised Christ from the dead y . Some- 
 times too that which is recorded of the Father in 
 the Old Testament, is quoted or referred to as 
 if it had been the agency of the Holy Ghost ; as 
 in Acts xxviii. 25, 26. where the apostle Paul 
 ascribes to the Holy Spirit words which Isaiah 
 declares to have been the words of the Lord z . 
 
 But the one great provision for the doctrine 
 of .the divine Unity, which is peculiar to the last 
 Temple and as belonging to the final Revela- 
 tion, teaches that Unity at once with respect to 
 all the Persons is the form of words appended to 
 the rite of baptism. It is plain that Christians 
 
 1 Cor. ii. 10. illustrated by Deut. xxvii. 15. " The 
 secret things belong to the Lord our God." 
 
 y 1 Peter iii. 18. x Isaiah vi. 8, 9, 10.
 
 142 Connection of the three Temples 
 
 are properly baptized unto Christ ; they are a 
 continuation of his disciples, and in that title, as 
 well as in the title of Christians, is implied that 
 it is so. The natural form of baptism therefore 
 would have been unto Christ. But it was espe- 
 cially enjoined, that it should be unto Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost ; so as to indicate that in 
 being baptized unto Christ, we are baptized unto 
 that God who has been worshipped as Father, as 
 Son, and as Holy Ghost \ 
 
 At the time, this encouraged and obliged the 
 Christian convert to claim connection with the 
 Father, lest ignorance, or error, or prejudice, should 
 disjoin the God of the old dispensation from that 
 of the new. But it was no temporary provision. 
 It was a sacramental seal affixed to the great truth, 
 that God, manifested to Christians only in his Son 
 and by his Spirit, is still the same God of the 
 creation, the same God of Abraham, of Isaac, of 
 Jacob, and of Moses. The baptismal form con- 
 nects the earlier with the latter dispensations 
 the dispensation of the Law, with that of the 
 
 a The Scriptural expression is properly " into the name," 
 not " in the name" according to our version. The mistrans- 
 lation probably arose from the " in nomine" of the Vulgate.
 
 with the doctrine of the Trinity. 143 
 
 Gospel, as provided by the Son, and taught and 
 perfected by the Spirit. It stamps the baptized 
 with the character of the true Israel the true 
 children of Abraham, and heirs of the promise 
 made unto the patriarchs and to Adam. It 
 teaches us that in Christianity are comprehended, 
 continued, and completed, all the covenants from 
 the fall unto the redemption and sanctification of 
 man, in whatever divers ways communicated and 
 ordained. It is a memorial to us, that although 
 " God in divers manners spake in times past 
 unto the Fathers' 1 ," and unto us in his Son, and 
 by his Spirit, no variableness or shadow of turning 
 in Him is implied by these differences of manifest- 
 ation, and changes of dispensation. He is still 
 Alpha and Omega ; the beginning and the 
 ending, which is, and which was, and which is to 
 come c ." 
 
 b Heb. i. 1. e Rev. i. 8.
 
 CHRIST A PATTERN OF CHRISTIAN 
 HUMILITY. 
 
 IF Scripture did not expressly teach us, that 
 one object of Christ's appearance on earth was 
 to furnish an example for our imitation, it would 
 still be impossible to doubt that such was the 
 design of Providence. The Son of God could not 
 have lived with men on. earth, instructed them, 
 died for them, and established a connection and 
 intercourse with them for ever, without being 
 regarded as a model of behaviour by his followers. 
 Imitation must naturally and certainly have taken 
 place, in proportion as the disciple believed and 
 loved Him. All that would seem requisite for 
 the inspired guides of the Church to do on this 
 score, would be, to regulate this strong impulse 
 to prevent it, if possible, from being directed to 
 any portions of his life and character, in which 
 imitation might be frivolous or wrong ; or again 
 to point specifically to those features of Chris- 
 tian perfection, in the attainment of which his 
 example might be most needful. 
 
 L
 
 1 46 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 Both these objects have been admirably ac- 
 complished in the Scriptures of the New Testa- 
 ment. There is no one characteristic of those 
 writings, which is more remarkable, or more 
 strikingly evinces the agency of Divine inspira- 
 tion, than the manner in which the believer and 
 follower of Christ has been secured, by the very 
 record of his life, from misdirecting the strong 
 desire which that record naturally excites, to copy 
 his manners and his actions. Although the 
 Evangelists were all contemporary historians, and 
 two of them his daily companions and familiar 
 friends, we may observe how scrupulously they 
 have abstained from the slightest mention of so 
 many circumstances about Him, which, as unin- 
 spired biographers, they most assuredly would 
 have related, and would have descanted on with 
 peculiar interest. Nothing short of inspired pro- 
 hibition can account for the fact, that, connected 
 as they were with the subject of their biography, 
 they were the authors of such meagre and scanty 
 narratives as the four Gospels that they should 
 have sparingly selected, and drily stated, a very 
 limited number of facts, instead of recording all 
 that they knew of so wonderful a person, and
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 147 
 
 expatiating on every particular point. In the 
 narratives of St. Matthew and St. John especially, 
 it is impossible, that, without Divine intervention, 
 there should have been no notice of Christ's person, 
 for instance his dress his domestic habits 
 in short, of all that train of private and familiar 
 anecdote, which every writer similarly circum- 
 stanced is irresistibly prompted to give, and every 
 reader, to demand of him. Surely the hand of 
 God was here, forbidding a display of matters 
 which formed not the proper object of Christian 
 imitation ; and which, at the same time, would 
 have been the most likely to attract the regard 
 of the unwise and superstitious in preference to, 
 and in lieu of, those features in our great Example, 
 which it becomes us to study and to transfer to our 
 own lives. If the mere traditionary tales of the 
 handkerchief which bore the impress of his fea- 
 tures ; of the sepulchre in which his body was laid ; 
 of the wood of the cross to which he was nailed ; 
 and of the blood which issued from his side if 
 the idle traditions concerning these and the like 
 matters have proved the means of diverting 
 thousands during so many generations from a 
 genuine devotion to Christ, to a superstitious re- 
 
 L2
 
 148 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 verence for circumstances unessential to his 
 character; what might the result have been, 
 had all these topics formed part of the authentic 
 Gospels? And yet so natural, so strong, must 
 have been the tendency to indulge the curiosity 
 of mankind on these points, that we can scarcely 
 refuse to recognise the prohibitory influence of 
 the Holy Spirit in the total suppression of all 
 such information by the Evangelists and other 
 inspired teachers. 
 
 The propriety and wisdom of the scheme of 
 Scripture inspiration, in making prominent, on the 
 other hand, those features of our Lord's conduct 
 and character, which it was most essential to 
 propose as a pattern for imitation, is likewise 
 very obvious. In the code of morality, which 
 the Gospel was designed to purify and perfect, 
 the virtues, which most needed Divine sanction 
 and express precept, were forgiveness of injuries, 
 and humility. Other points of morality re- 
 quired indeed to be enforced by stronger and 
 nobler motives than heretofore, and to be im- 
 proved and perfected in the Gospel description 
 of them; but, to be "meek and lowly," and 
 "unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek,
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 149 
 
 to offer also the other" were maxims of duty 
 not recognized at all by the wisest and best 
 authorities of old time. Condescension and 
 placability were praised indeed by heathen mo- 
 ralists as tokens of a generous and magnanimous 
 spirit a ; but not humility, not free forgiveness 
 of injuries. The "masters in Israel" too they 
 had converted into a maxim of morals, the law 
 which said, " an eye for an eye, a tooth for a 
 tooth ;" and taught their nation to look down 
 with contempt on the rest of mankind even on 
 the lords of the universe on the ground, that 
 the children of Abraham were alone the elect 
 of God, and that it was part of their religious 
 character to foster the proud consciousness of 
 so high a distinction. Here then was the pro- 
 
 * Nee vero audiendi, graviter qui inimicis irascendura puta- 
 bunt, idque magnanimi et fortis viri esse censebtmt. Nihil 
 enim laudabilius, nihil magno et praeclaro viro dignius placa- 
 bilitate atque dementia. In liberis vero populis, et in juris 
 aequabilitate, exercenda etiam est facilitas, et altitudo animi 
 qu(B dicitur. Cicero de Officiis, lib. i. 25. The meaning 
 which the expression " altitudo animi" thus appears to have 
 acquired, is very remarkable. Aristotle, in like manner, cha- 
 racterises his [tsyc6ho-3/v%6s as owfe (Avqa-Ueixos. Ethic, lib. iv.
 
 150 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 vince, in which the influence of the Saviour's 
 example was most requisite ; and it is accord- 
 ingly his conformity to these new principles of 
 morality which the sacred writers more especially 
 recommend to our imitation. How far this has 
 been done with respect to humility, is the point 
 which I purpose to examine. 
 
 Numerous passages of the New Testament will 
 readily occur, as forming part of the apostolical 
 exhortations, or of our Lord's discourses, in which 
 we are directed to learn of Him, in respect of his 
 heing meek and lowly. But there is one in par- 
 ticular, which I would select as the basis of the 
 present inquiry, because it comprises all the dif- 
 ferent aspects under which Christ is elsewhere 
 separately proposed as a pattern of humility. 
 The passage to which I allude is contained in the 
 second chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Phi- 
 lippians 1 '. " Let this mind," writes the apostle, 
 "be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: 
 who, being in the form of God, thought it not 
 robbery to be equal with God ; but made Himself 
 of no reputation, and took upon Him the form of 
 a servant, and was made in the likeness of men : 
 
 " Ver. 5, 6, 7, 8.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 151 
 
 and being found in fashion as a man, He humbled 
 himself, and became obedient unto death, even 
 the death of the cross." This passage, I have 
 observed, combines all the several points of view, 
 in which Christ is elsewhere represented as an 
 example of humility for the Christian to follow. 
 These are three. I. In the first He is presented 
 to our contemplation as being originally " in the 
 form of God." and " thinking it not robbery to 
 be equal with God," and yet condescending to 
 assume the nature and condition of a human 
 being. II. The next display of humility alluded 
 to is, that, instead of choosing that sphere of 
 human life which was noblest and most powerful 
 kingly rank, wealth, and power He " took 
 upon Him the form of a servant." " He came," 
 as He told his disciples, " not to be ministered 
 unto, but to minister ." III. The last point 
 introduced into the picture of humility is his 
 death on the cross. " He humbled Himself, and 
 became obedient unto death, even the death of 
 the cross." What the character and obligation 
 of the whole example so described is, will best 
 appear by considering these several circum- 
 c Matt. xx. 28.
 
 1 52 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 stances in the history of our Lord, and seeing in 
 what way we are able and bound to imitate Him 
 in each. 
 
 I. The first is, his being made in the likeness of 
 men. In applying this view there is a caution to 
 be observed, very obvious when stated, but still 
 perhaps requiring to be stated. The mystery of 
 the Incarnation can only be contemplated as a 
 part of the example of humility, by considering 
 Christ as to his divine nature alone as Him who 
 in the beginning " was with God," and " was 
 God," and yet condescended to be " made flesh," 
 and to " dwell among us' 1 ." And yet, to the 
 divine nature, we can no more presume to attri- 
 bute the very qualities of humility and conde- 
 scension such as those qualities exist in a human 
 mind than we can the passions of men. Christ 
 in his human nature, or considered as to his 
 manhood united with and perfected by the God- 
 head Christ so considered, exhibits the very 
 qualities which man is to cultivate, and which 
 man may hope, in a greater or less degree, to 
 attain. But when we speak of imitating the 
 humility of Him who became man for us if we 
 11 John i.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 1 53 
 
 use the expression with due reverence we can 
 only mean the observance of that behaviour 
 which, in us, is the result of humility and meek- 
 ness. And it is important to observe, that the 
 same may be said in several other cases also. 
 For instance, our Lord bids us be " perfect even 
 as our Father which is in heaven is perfect 6 :" 
 intending, of course, that we should aim at the 
 perfection of our nature, without supposing, that 
 we are thereby identifying our nature with his. 
 It is more properly, in short, the works of God, 
 than the divine nature, which we copy ; even as we 
 recognise the Divine presence by its results, and 
 not as it were " face to face," not " knowing Him 
 as we are known of Him." To speak of God as 
 humble, is indeed an expression from which every 
 serious and pious mind revolts ; although humility 
 is among the most pleasing characteristics of 
 Christ, and of Christians. 
 
 The mystery of the Incarnation, therefore, if 
 made a part of the example of humility, must be 
 applied in a way somewhat different from that in 
 which Christ's humility is appealed to in taking 
 on Him the form of a servant, or in submitting to 
 e Matt. v. 48.
 
 154 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 the disgrace of the cross. Its application is not, 
 however, the less practical or the less important 
 on this account. It is clearly not requisite, either 
 for the excitement, or for the success of imitation f , 
 that the means or instruments employed by the 
 copyist, should be the same as those employed 
 by him whose work he is studying and copying. 
 All that is absolutely requisite is, that there should 
 be some means in his power capable of producing 
 similar results. We cannot indeed assume, we 
 cannot even comprehend, perhaps, those properties 
 of the Divine nature, whose exercise is developed 
 in the mystery of the Incarnation so far, I 
 mean, as that mystery looks to us like conde- 
 scension but we know that humility is requisite 
 in us, in order that we should do any thing 
 resembling it ; and we may be sure, therefore, 
 that we are called on by the example to be 
 humble, and to exercise humility. At the time 
 when St. Paul wrote to the Philippians, the con- 
 verted Jew must have understood, without any 
 such abstract reasoning, that the example pro- 
 
 f See Archbishop King's Discourse on Predestination, and 
 Dr. Whately's Preface.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 155 
 
 posed would be followed, by receiving the de- 
 spised and unclean Gentile, (whom education and 
 early habit had taught him to consider as essen- 
 tially belonging to a spiritual grade beneath him,) 
 on equal terms, and as a brother. The convert 
 from heathenism, too, must have felt, in like 
 manner, that he was conforming to the model, 
 by suppressing the contempt so generally felt for 
 that nation to which the apostles belonged, and 
 by condescending to learn wisdom of the simple, 
 and to be governed by the very outcasts of a 
 despised race. And both they and we can alike 
 understand its application to the perpetual con- 
 dition of men in all ages to the rich and great, 
 as warning them not to allow the consideration 
 of those worldly distinctions, which set them 
 above others, to enter into their spiritual view of 
 those same persons ; to the wise, as teaching 
 them a similar lesson with respect to their less 
 learned or less intelligent Christian brethren. 
 In common practice indeed, the very cau- 
 tion, which has been above suggested namely, 
 that it is the work of God, and not God Himself, 
 we imitate is found unnecessary, as far as 
 regards the imitation of Christ, and is chiefly
 
 156 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 needed to guard us against a false view, which 
 may perhaps accompany that imitation. 
 
 II. The next feature in the great picture of 
 humility is, that Christ took on Him the form of 
 a servant. I have distinguished this view from 
 the preceding, because the apostle has stated 
 them separately, and because they are really and 
 essentially distinct. The mystery of the Incar- 
 nation having been accomplished, it would have 
 been a lesson of condescension to us, in whatever 
 station of life the Anointed of God had been placed. 
 But, instead of riches, honours, and empire, he 
 chose a humble condition, and unambitious course 
 of life. The application of the example is, in 
 this case, it will be observed, materially different 
 from the former. It is not merely an act, which 
 it requires humility in us to copy ; but one itself 
 proceeding from the meekness and lowliness of 
 a human mind. In this case, it is not merely 
 a similar result which the imitation attains, or 
 strives to attain, but literally " the same mind 
 which was in Christ Jesus-." 
 
 The particular need of this feature in the ex- 
 ample of Christ's humility his refusal, namely, 
 to assume temporal royalty or any worldly dis-
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility, 157 
 
 tinctions, is apparent, when we recollect the 
 strong prejudices of the Jews at the advent in 
 favour of a temporal Messiah prejudices from 
 which the apostles themselves were not exempt, 
 until long after the crucifixion and the worldly- 
 mindedness connected with those prejudices. 
 But the more important and needful application 
 is perhaps to be assigned to a much later period 
 of the Church. Christ's death soon put an end 
 to the vague notions of his followers respecting 
 a kingdom of this world, to be governed by Him; 
 and their despised and destitute condition for a time 
 effectually checked the renewal of a similar ambi- 
 tion in the uninspired Church. Christians soon 
 ceased to feel it an humiliation, that the temporal 
 sceptre had for ever passed away from the true 
 Israel of God. The Lord's conduct in blessing 
 his enemies, and forgiving the injuries of his 
 persecutors the other feature of his example 
 made prominent by the sacred writers this was 
 then, it would seem, the most requisite. It was 
 when the Church ceas,ed to be an object of perse- 
 cution, and rose in favour, in wealth, and in 
 influence, that, like its meek and lowly Founder, 
 it was presented by the Tempter with an offer
 
 1 58 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 of the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of 
 them. It was then that the Church began to 
 have need to remember his example and his 
 words, "My kingdom is not of this world f ." 
 " Learn of me, for I am meek and lowly ? ." 
 
 It is our happy lot to have lived in an age, 
 in which we look back it should be with sorrow 
 and fear indeed, as well as with thankfulness 
 on the overwhelming success of that temptation, 
 and the ineffectual operation of the great example 
 which should have counteracted it. But although 
 we are not members of a Church, which has 
 yielded to that temptation, and has assumed 
 temporal dominion ; we must remember, it is 
 to the individual churchman, as well as to the 
 Church, that the example and the warning of 
 our Lord is addressed. Be our Church ever 
 so free from false ambition, its members indi- 
 vidually will not be guiltless, if to any one its 
 spiritual dignities shall become an occasion of 
 worldly-mindedness. It is not that wealth, 
 rank, empire, are, in themselves, unlawful 
 unchristian. It would be absurd to suppose this. 
 
 ' John xviii. 36. s Matt. xi. 29.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 159 
 
 It is essential to the well-being of society that 
 these should be made objects of pursuit ; and 
 the acquisition of them is a real blessing to him 
 who rightly employs them. But the pursuit 
 of these objects is condemned by Christ's ex- 
 ample, in that point of view in which Christ's 
 example applies whenever the Church, namely, 
 or the individual, claims these glories of this world 
 as a Christian right, and pursues them as a 
 Christian business. This cannot be " the same 
 mind that was in Christ Jesus." 
 
 III. The last instance that is mentioned, as 
 filling up the Christian pattern of humility, is 
 the death of Christ on the cross: "He humbled 
 Himself, and became obedient unto death, even 
 the death of the cross." It is not, of course, 
 Christ's mercy in making atonement for us, nor 
 his patience under suffering, and resignation to 
 the Father's will, that is considered ; but, his 
 humility, in submitting to the disgrace, the 
 ignominy, of being crucified. How strongly and 
 generally the infamy of such a death was then 
 felt, is apparent, as well from contemporary 
 history, as from the manner in which it is per- 
 petually alluded to by that apostle, who so
 
 160 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 eminently united Christian heroism with Chris- 
 tian humility ; and who so often glories in this 
 confessed reproach to his cause. Besides the 
 passage particularly under consideration, may be 
 instanced his words in the Epistle to the He- 
 brews, where the same view of Christ's example 
 in this respect is taken. " Let us run the race 
 that is set before us. looking unto Jesus, the 
 Author and Finisher of our faith ; who, for the 
 joy that was set before Him, endured the cross, 
 despising the shame h ." So too, in his Epistle to 
 the Galatians, he speaks of " the offence of the 
 cross l ;" and says of himself with reference to it, 
 " God forbid that I should glory, save in the 
 cross of our Lord Jesus Christ k ." 
 
 The Christian of the present day, however, 
 who should be subjected to a similar death, would 
 evidently find in it no trial of humility ; nor is it 
 now a subject of humiliation to belong to the 
 religion of a crucified Founder. His name has 
 long removed the idea of degradation, which once 
 attached to this kind of death, and has indeed 
 connected it with exalted and holy associations. 
 For the specific application of this part of the 
 h Heb. xii. 1, 2. 'Gal. v. 11. " Gal. vi. 14.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 161 
 
 great example, the Christian must, therefore, 
 consider to what portion of religious duty the 
 scandal or offence of shame now attaches what 
 now corresponds to it. It began with the cross, 
 which was " unto the Jews a stumblingblock, 
 (<rxavSxov,) and unto the Greeks foolishness 1 ;" 
 but, in the progress of eighteen centuries, and in 
 the numberless variations of condition which have 
 affected the different branches and subdivisions of 
 the Christian world, it has been continually a 
 shifting point. Scarcely one century had elapsed 
 before it was transferred from the cross ; and the 
 learned and accomplished converts from heathen- 
 ism who then tegan more freely to embrace 
 the Gospel felt greater humiliation in becoming 
 disciples of an unlettered Christian teacher, 
 and students of simple Gospel-truth, than ap- 
 peared in acknowledging a crucified Lord, or in 
 dying themselves on the cross. Onward still in the 
 course of Christian history, we see, the Roman 
 convert especially, struggling with the sense of a 
 different worldly shame, in admitting Christianity 
 as the religion of his country, and, thereby, 
 sweeping away those monuments of paganism, 
 
 1 1 Cor. i. 23. 
 
 M
 
 162 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 with which ancestral and national glory were so 
 intimately associated. The scandal of shame has 
 been different in different times and places, but 
 in no age, in no Church, has Christianity ever 
 been exempt from it. Let us not presume to 
 say, that even we are free from every form of it. 
 If its influence extend to none else, it is at least 
 felt I believe keenly felt by young persons 
 in their first free intercourse with the world. 
 It is especially the case, with those who at the 
 age of eighteen or twenty are sent forth from 
 their home, for purposes of education or busi- 
 ness, to make their first essay of independent life. 
 There is, at that period of life, a shyness, and 
 dread, of avowing the control and the comforts 
 of religion, which often drives those who have 
 been trained in habits of piety, even into an open 
 disavowal of its influence. How many so cir- 
 cumstanced have, like Peter, denied their Master ! 
 not all would God it were like him to gather 
 strength from failure, and to deny Him no 
 more. 
 
 How can this be remedied ? I would sug- 
 gest to one assailed by this temptation, (which I 
 am far from regarding as contemptible, and easy
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 163 
 
 of resistance,) to imagine an Apostle saying to 
 him in some of these moments of his weakness, 
 " I was present when my Saviour was crucified. 
 I saw his cross prepared, and one on either side 
 of it, for a criminal of the vilest class. I saw 
 Him conducted to it, in the midst of a rabble, 
 such as collect at public executions, assailing Him 
 with their savage yells and their inhuman ri- 
 baldry hooting at Him, spitting on Him, buffet- 
 ting Him, and even while He was nailed to the 
 accursed wood, striving to rouse Him, if possible, 
 from the agonies of the death He was dying, to 
 keep alive the bitter sense of its degradation and 
 infamy. His friends were dispersed, his enemies 
 triumphant ; mine own countrymen had been his 
 accusers ; the Romans his executioners. I heard 
 Him distinctly say, * My God, my God, why 
 hast thou forsaken me?' I saw Him expire, 
 while both enemies and friends around were dis- 
 posed to think, that the cause expired with Him 
 that the words, ' It is finished,' were justly ap- 
 plicable to his kingdom. This was my trial 
 the present scene is yours and to both alike 
 apply that solemn warning, ' Whosoever shall be 
 ashamed of me and my words, of him shall the
 
 164 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 Son of man be ashamed, when He shall come, 
 in his own glory, and in his Father's, and of the 
 holy angels m ." This is no mere assumed case. 
 It is the very appeal which the apostles still make 
 to us in their writings. And if we refuse to 
 listen to their writings, let us not suppose that 
 we " should be persuaded, though one of them 
 rose from the dead" to repeat it. 
 
 IV. One consideration remains. In " looking 
 unto Jesus," and in applying his precept to be 
 " meek and lowly," we must be on our guard 
 against the many counterfeit qualities, which 
 have been mistaken for the true Gospel humility. 
 It is almost as necessary to observe what Chris- 
 tian humility is not, as to observe what it is. 
 
 1 . And first, it is plain from the case which has 
 been just considered, that we are not to suppose 
 that we are practising Christian humility, because 
 we are humbling ourselves to our fellow-creatures. 
 Humility to God is not only widely different from 
 humility to man, but in some cases calls for a be- 
 haviour which is the very reverse. Pride, stub- 
 bornness , contumacy these are among the most fre- 
 quent charges which have been brought even against 
 
 m Luke ix. 26.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 165 
 
 Christ's meekest martyrs, and truest servants. 
 I do not say that the charge has been deserved ; but 
 it denotes a display of qualities only exaggerated 
 into their faulty excess. And surely Cranmer 
 was not the meeker Christian, when, in a mo- 
 ment of weakness, he submitted to the will of his 
 crafty adversaries ; than when his mild spirit re- 
 sumed its tone of firmness, and he in the same 
 breath set at nought man's authority, and bowed 
 himself heart- stricken before his Saviour. Luther 
 cast publicly into the flames the warrant of Papal 
 supremacy, renouncing his allegiance to the 
 Romish Church, when, as yet, there was no 
 Church of refuge for him to flee to ; and shame 
 on the Protestant, who should construe that noble 
 burst of heroism into a want of Christian humi- 
 lity. And what shall we say of those more 
 ancient worthies, who were even commanded by 
 their Master to confront kings and rulers for his 
 sake and for the Gospel's ? Nay, let us look at 
 the example of Christ himself; and recollect his 
 unbending demeanour before Pilate, when the 
 astonished Roman exclaimed, " Knowest thou 
 not, that I have power to crucify thee, and have
 
 166 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 power to release thee" 1 !" In these instances, it 
 is not Christian humility which is absent not 
 humility to God but submission to man. A 
 Christian may and ought to be too humble to 
 make up his mind hastily on momentous points ; 
 he may and ought to be too humble to satisfy 
 his conscience, without a severe self-examination, 
 as well as an examination of the opinions of 
 others : but there are some who are too humble 
 to acknowledge and to speak the truth. 
 
 2. Again, where this confusion of worldly and 
 spiritual humility has not taken place, how often 
 have unchristian, and, at best, frivolous, practices, 
 been palmed on the world for the genuine fruits 
 of " that mind which was in Christ Jesus !" 
 The self-abasement of the monk, the hermit, 
 and the whole class of ascetics, furnishes ob- 
 vious examples of this false humility perhaps 
 the most striking instances of it that have 
 ever been exhibited. To the Protestant of our 
 Church and of our times, however, it may be 
 more profitable to contemplate that form of 
 self-abasement, which mistaken piety assumes 
 
 m John xvi. 1 1 .
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 167 
 
 amongst us now. The hermit and the monk 
 have long since disappeared from amongst us 
 not so the morbid temperament, which gave 
 that shape to their devotion. Do we doubt it ? 
 Look at him, who broods over the picture of 
 man's fallen nature, to find there no trace of the 
 hand which created him, but only one foul, ab- 
 horrent mass of corruption. Look at him, who 
 reads in the divine decrees a mystery, not of 
 love as Scripture represents it but of harrow- 
 ing surmise and apprehension who sees in 
 election and predestination a stern economy, that 
 must render his holiest aspirations and best efforts 
 unavailing the thoughts of which has withered 
 within his heart the peace, the joy, the hope, of a 
 Christian ; and has left him only the faith of 
 those miserable unredeemed spirits, who " believe 
 and tremble." Look at such as these ; and then 
 pronounce whether there be not here an abase- 
 ment of mind, no less pitiable, mischievous, un- 
 christian, than any bodily self-torment, that 
 has ever saddened the cloister of the monk, or 
 the cell of the anchoret. See whether there be 
 not the same spiritual pride combined with this 
 abject humiliation the like contempt for all who
 
 168 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 are pursuing a different path of holiness. Observe, 
 in both cases, the same rapid transition from self- 
 condemnation and despair, to over-weening con- 
 fidence to-day the abandoned of heaven, to- 
 morrow the chosen vessel and the spiritual guide 
 of others. 
 
 And if the evil results of all this were confined 
 to the deluded individuals if they extended no 
 further than to those who admire, and approve, 
 and imitate the mischief would be doubtless 
 great, but it would at least be bounded by some 
 definite line. Unhappily, the sober-minded, as 
 well as the enthusiastic although in a different 
 way are ensnared through the prevalence of such 
 behaviour around them the enthusiastic, from a 
 natural propensity towards the same; the sober- 
 minded, from their very abhorrence of it. These 
 last are tempted to abstain altogether from la- 
 bouring after the attainment of Christian humility, 
 rather than incur the risque of being numbered 
 with those, who, on every side, are perverting and 
 bringing discredit on it, and rendering it odious by 
 the affectation of pride. Their 's is the temptation 
 of the slothful servant, who hid his Lord's talent 
 in a napkin, because the employment of it was
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 1 69 
 
 attended with hazard of failure. It may be re- 
 garded indeed as one of the standing trials ap- 
 pointed us by Providence, that, exposed as every 
 Christian commandment and institution is to 
 abuse, and abused as every Christian command- 
 ment and institution is in turn, we should never 
 shrink from the use of that which is good and 
 holy, because it is abused. The strong tendency 
 to an opposite line of conduct is a matter which 
 demands the most serious consideration of every 
 man. In respect to the outward and ceremonial 
 part of religion, the existence of such a tendency 
 is indeed confessed, and has often been provided 
 against. We all know how much obstinate re- 
 sistance. it has cost the Church of England, to 
 retain the surplice, the church music, and, I 
 may add, the venerable structures in which we 
 assemble for public worship, solely from a re- 
 action of feeling, caused by the abuse of these 
 and other innocent and seemly appendages of 
 devotion. In the case of these outward ordi- 
 nances, the tendency is obvious. But the ex- 
 posure and contempt of any flagrant perversion 
 of God's moral laws of inward Christianity 
 occasions a temptation more subtle, and there- 
 
 N
 
 170 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 
 
 fore more dangerous. For whilst the recoil 
 of the wrong impulse is the same as in the other 
 case, it is the heart and not the garment the 
 inward and not the outward man, about which 
 the feeling exists. 
 
 Let the sober-minded Christian then beware, 
 lest in the habit of suspicion, which he can 
 scarcely help acquiring from the detection of 
 false humility in its many forms of delusion 
 and imposture let him beware, lest he forget 
 that there is such a thing as true Christian hu- 
 mility. Let him remember too the place and 
 importance which it assumes in the Gospel 
 scheme. It appears there not only as an eminent 
 and distinguishing feature of Christian practice, 
 but as a previous and conditional requisite for 
 obtaining that divine grace, through which alone 
 we can practise Christianity at all. We are told, 
 to work out our salvation with fear and trembling ; 
 forasmuch as " it is God that worketh in us to 
 will and to do of his good pleasure";" to Him 
 therefore, as continually present, we must con- 
 tinually humble ourselves, in order that we may 
 be enabled to do his will I may add, in order 
 
 B Philip, ii. 13.
 
 Christ a pattern of Christian humility. 171 
 
 that we may be enabled to understand it. For it 
 is in the study of Gospel truth, and not only in 
 the practice of the Gospel precepts, that " God 
 resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the 
 humble ." 
 
 James iv. 6. 1 Peter v. 5. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 BAXTER, PHINTtll, OXFORD.
 
 By the same Author. 
 
 I. 
 
 THE CATECHIST'S MANUAL AND FAMILY LEC- 
 TURER; being an Arrangement and Explanation of St. 
 Mark's Gospel, for purposes of Missionary and Domestic 
 Instruction. 8vo. price 10s. 6d. 
 
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