[i;ife^:^i^iv*k '^ r AN OUTLINE THE EAELY JEWISH CHUECH. AN OUTLINE OJ^ THE EAELY JEWISH CHUKCH, FROM A CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW. BY / THE REV. S. C. MALAN, M.A., VICAR OF BROADWINDSOR. IN TWO BOOKS. BOOK T. THE PATRTARCHS-BOOK II. THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. LONDON : SAUNDERS, OTLEY, AND CO., 66, BEOOK STEEET, W. 1867. \^Ali Bights reserved.'] PRINTED BY J. E. TAYLOR AND CO., XITTIE QUEEN STREET, LINCOLN'S INN FIELDS. PEE FACE. The following pages are intended only for general readers, and among them for those alone who still be- lieve the Bible, and who, therefore, require neither tradition, research, nor wisdom of words to help their faith in the Scripture of Truth. The witness it bears of itself is to such Christians a sufficient proof of its own truthfulness and integrity ; they search it, therefore, not like others, in order to doubt as much as possible and to believe as little as they can, — but in order to live and grow thereby. As they have proved the utter emptiness and vanity of all that man's pretended wisdom will attempt to de- vise instead of it, so also from their own experience of '' the vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called," do they know and feel that God's Word alone is and can be "a lamp unto their path and a light unto their feet" in their earthly pilgrim- age ; their only companion and trusty guide " to the city which hath foundations, the builder and maker VI PREFACE. of which is God." And as everything else has failed to satisfy the cravings of their spirit after that which is and exists for ever, so is this Word also their food and provision by the way through this life to their eternal home. On it, therefore, do they rest their faith in " God's promises which in Christ are yea and in Him, Amen ;" and on it also do they rear a sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. With such men only can I have any fellow-feeling ; for them alone, therefore, were these pages written. S. C. Malax. Bboadwindsor, May Srd, 1867. CONTENTS. PARB INTRODUCTION 1 BOOK I. THE PATEIARCHS. CHAPTER I. THE CALL OF ABRAHAM . 27 CHAPTER II. ABEAHAM'S journey to CANAAN 44 CHAPTER III. ABRAHAM IN CANAAN 49 CHAPTER IV. ABRAHAM AT MAMRE.— MELCHIZEDEK 56 CHAPTER V. ABRAHAM'S RIGHTEOUSNESS, WHICH IS BY FAITH . 62 CHAPTER VI. GOD'S FIRST COVENANT WITH ABEAHAM .... 84 PACK VIU CONTENTS. CHAPTER YII. god's second covenant with ABRAHAM ... 90 CHAPTER VIII. the BIETH of ISAAC 96 CHAPTER IX. hagar is sent away 109 CHAPTER X. the sacrifice of ISAAC 112 CHAPTER XI. the death of SARAH 122 CHAPTER XII, ELIEZER FETCHES REBECCA 124 CHAPTER XIII. THE DEATH OF ABRAHAM. — ISAAC AND REBECCA . 131 CHAPTER XIV. JACOB GOES TO TAD AN- ARAM 13 CHAPTER XV. JACOB COMES TO BEERSHEBAH 149 CHAPTER XVI. JOSEPH 153 CHAPTER XVII. JOSEPH IN EGYPT 162 CHAPTER XVIII. JOSEPH IN PRISON 169 CONTENTS. IX CHAPTER XIX. PAGE JOSEPH IS BROUaHT OUT OF PRISON, AND IS EAISED TO GREAT HONOUR 178 CHAPTER XX. JOSEPH IS RULER OF EGYPT 185 CHAPTER XXI. JOSEPH'S BRETHREN COME TO EGYPT TO BUY CORN . 189 CHAPTER XXII. JOSEPH RECEIVES HIS BRETHREN A SECOND TIME, AND MAKES HIMSELF KNOWN TO THEM . . . . 194 CHAPTER XXIII. JACOB COMES DOWN INTO EGYPT , .• ^ •.263.:i -\v.. _ .,^. /-< ■r^ rv C\'^^ BOOK II. "^'h^ gjjj THE CHURCH IN THE WILDERNESS. CHAPTER I. ISRAEL IN EGYPT 218 CHAPTER II. MOSES 230 CHAPTER III. MOSES AND AARON BEFORE PHARAOH 243 CHAPTER IV. THE TEN PLAGUES OF EGYPT 250 6 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER V. PAGE THE EXODUS ..... 281 CHAPTEE VI. THE WILDERNESS ; THE BREAD FROM HEAVEN, AND THE WATER FROM THE ROCK 306 CHAPTER VII. MOUNT SINAI AND THE LAW 313 CHAPTER VIII. THE FIRST TABERNACLE : LAWS, RITES, AND ORDI- NANCES 327 CHAPTER IX. THE MOLTEN CALF, AND THE CONSEQUENCES THERE- OF 335 CHAPTER X. THE NEW COVENANT 348 CHAPTER XI. THE TABERNACLE, AND THE SERVICE THEREOF UNDER THE NEW COVENANT WITH ISRAEL . . . 358 CHAPTER XII. DEPARTURE FROM SINAI INTO THE WILDERNESS OF PARAN 380 CHAPTER XIII. TWELVE MEN ARE SENT TO SPY THE LAND; MUR- MURINaS OF THE PEOPLE 39 CHAPTER XIV. IN THE WILDERNESS BY THE WAY OF THE RED SEA . 405 CONTENTS. XI CHAPTER XV. FASB RETURN TO KADESH ; DEATH OF MIRIAM AND OF ' AARON ; THE BRAZEN SERPENT 422 CHAPTEE XYI. BALAK, THE KING OF MOAB, SENDS FOR BALAAM JOSHUA IS APPOINTED TO SUCCEED MOSES ; DE- FEAT OF THE MIDIANITES 433 CHAPTER XVII. THE PARTING WORDS OF MOSES TO THE PEOPLE . 451 CHAPTER XVIII. THE DEATH OF MOSES 472 CHAPTER XIX. THE ENTRANCE OF ISRAEL INTO THE PROMISED LAND 483 CHAPTER XX. ISRAEL IN CANAAN 489 EERATA. Page 74, 1. 14:, for cannot be good and bear them, read cannot be good and not bear tbem. „ 89, 1. Q,for we above, read we saw above. „ 135, 1. S,for of that Church, read of the Church. „ 137, 1. '^,for Bethuel, thy mother's brother, read Betluxel, thy mother's father. „ 276, 1. \,for fiiith and life, read faith and hope. „ 432, \. %,for Hai'im, read Abarim. „ 434, 1. 2^, for was all Chemosh, read it was all Chemosh. OUTLINE OF THE JEAVISH CHURCH, FROM A CHRISTIAN POINT OF VIEW. INTEODIICTION. I. 'No sooner had Adam sinnedj than God, in pity and in love for His creature thus estranged from Him, devised means to restore him to his former state of innocence and of life in God ; yet not at once. Adam had sinned, and as he had won for himself the wages of sin, these wages were then told him in full : Of death thou shalt die.^ Thus doomed and fallen, Adam was driven from Paradise, where he now could no longer remain, only to hide himself among the trees of the garden from 1 Gen. ii. 17. This sentence, as told in the original, although a simple idiom of the language (Gen. xx. 7), may yet, in this place, point at once to the death of the body — dust to dust — and to that of the soul, whereby is here understood, generally, the part of man that is not material, whose death is — alienation from God. " Quamvis humana anima," says S. Aug. (DeCiv. D. lib. xiii. c. 2), "veraciter immortalis perhibeatur, habet tamen quandam etiam ipsa mortem suam. Mors igitur animse fit, cum eam deserit Dens ; sicut, corporis, cum id deserit anima. Ergo utriusque rei, id est, totius hominis mors est, cum anima B 2 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. the presence of his Maker, whose voice he erst loved, but now dreaded, to hear. He then left ; he left on the early morn of his existence that abode of peace and happiness; the cool shade of groves planted by the hand of God, that rang with the tangled melodies of birds attired in the brilliant plumage of that one spring- tide ; he left the fresh and fi-agrant flowers that waved at his presence among the green meadows watered by the rivers of God ; and more than this, he left his inti- mate fellowship with his Creator, — a fellowship that needed neither faith nor hope, but existence only, to enjoy it ; he left all that to go forth and wander among the thorns and the thistles, that now sprang from the ground accursed for his sake, there to toil in the sweat of his brow, and with a heavy heart to till that same gromid, and by it be reminded day after day that as he was taken thence, so also thither must he return.^ What a fall, for a creature made after the image and similitude of God ! From Eden to the wilderness, from an unbroken intercourse with Him who is the fountain of Light and of Life, to remorse, degradation, and shame ; to the lot, not of a son and heir, but of a guilty serf of the soil ! Degraded ? yea, and of his own choice,^ fallen low, too, " come short of the glory a Deo deserta deserit corpus." Unless, indeed, the expression "of death, or dying, thou shalt die," refer to the first and to the second death — the first of body and soul on earth, the second eternal. " What death," says S. Augustine, " did God threaten to inflict on the trans- gression of His commandment ? Utrum animse, an corporis, an totius hominis, an illam qufe appellatur secunda ? Respondendum est, Omnes. Prima enim ex duabus constat ; secunda ex omnibus tota." (lb. c. 12.) 1 Gen. iii. 17-19. 2 "The good Creator," says S. Cyril of Jerusalem (Catech. ii.) " created man unto good works, to 8( KTiadev i^ olKelas npoaipearfoys fls INTRODUCTION. O of God,"^ yet not destroyed, his conscience bearing liim witness both of his former glory and of his pre- sent degraded state, " while his thoughts accuse and excuse one another ; "^ punished, " alienated from the life of God,"^ since of his own freewill he chose to die " in his trespasses and sins,"^ yet not forsaken ;^ driven away from Paradise for his disobedience, yet neither denied nor forgotten f so then also, toiling, afflicted, estranged, yet not in despau' — no ; for there was hope.' Eternal Justice had hardly uttered the sentence of death against Adam for his sin, when Mercy, that " rejoiceth against judgment," made him an offer of peace and of reconciliation^ through Him who was one day to be born of a woman, " perfect God and perfect man, "9 sent from heaven to this earth to make peace and reconciliation, and once more to raise fallen man from the earth in which he now was a stranger, to the Paradise of God whence he had come. Dim, indeed, at first, was Adam's view of the promise, TTiKpiav eTpaTTT], but the creature of his own choice was turned to bitterness. Eccles. vii. 29." ' Rom. ii. 23. ^ j^om. ii. 15. » Eph. iv. 18. ^ Eph. ii. 1. ^ See Gen. ii. 17 and iii. 6. ^ Is. Ixiii. 9. ' Aeivov fiev ovv kukou tj afiapria, aXX' ovk ddfpaTrfVTOV. " Sin IS indeed a terrible evil, but not incurable." (S, Cyril of Jerusalem, ib.) '^ " Nee ignorabat Deus homiiiem peccaturum, sed providebat etiara gratia, sua populutn piorura in adoptionem vocandum, remissisque peccatis justificatum Spiritu Saiicto Sanctis angelis in aeterna pace sociandura, novissima inimica morte destructa." (S. Aug. De Civ. D. lib. xii. 0. 22.) ^ Gen. iii. 15. " He who died for us was neither small nor insignifi- ficant ; He was not a lamb of the flock, nor yet an angel. He was God made man. Ov roaavrq tJp twp dfiapTO>X(ov f] avofiia, oai] rav VTrepairodvrj- (TKovTos f) 8iKaioavvr], and the iniquity of those who sinned was not so great as the righteousness of Him who died for them." (S. Cyril, Catech. xiii.) S 2 4 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. yet sure was liis hope in tlie coming of the Prince of Peace, towards Whom he now turned his eyes, as to the one bright beam of heavenly light that rent asunder the gloom in which he lay. But when would He come ? Faith answered : He is faithful that promised : Wait. Enough then, for man, who believed the pro- mise, to know that it would be fulfilled. On that he relied ; and thu.s borne by the hope of again seeing Him face to face Whom he had known in Paradise, Adam entered upon his life of toil, of trouble, and of sorrow, made more sorrowful still by the recollection of the rest and peace he once enjoyed in his Maker's presence, from which, now banished, he was anon to reap the fii'stfruits of enmity between faith and un- belief, and be made to understand the terrible sentence uttered against himself, when he saw his son, the right- eous Abel, dead, and Abel's own brother, who had slain him, a fugitive and vagabond in the earth. ^ Ever since, the struggle then begun, the war then waged has never ceased between sin and righteousness, — between those who through faith looked forward to the coming of the promised Saviour, in Whom alone they could obtain remission of sins, and those who, at the bid of His foe, the ruler of this world, fain would have hindered tliat coining if they could. Even then, in the dawn of that time, the inward witness of those who lived by faith was to them the substance of a sal- vation they hoped for ; and, since their faith in the promise of an Atonement found for them, released them at once from the curse of God on sin, and gave them hope of acceptance with Him, their faith was thus also to them the evidence of a Saviour not seen. " Thej^ ^ Gun. iv. TI^TRODUCTIOX. 0 died iu faith, not having received the promises, but having seen them afar oif, and were persuaded of them, and embraced them, and confessed they were strangers and pilgrims in the earth."^ It was faith in the sacri- fice of the Lamb, prepared before the foundation of the workl, that made "Abel offer a more excellent sacrifice than Cain, by which he obtained witness that he was righteous, God testifying of his gifts. By faith, also, was Enoch translated that he should not see death, and was not found because God had translated him ; for before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. But, without faith, it is impossible to please Him ; for he that conieth to God, must be- lieve that He is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him."^ So true it is that faith, which bears witness of itself, "is a gift of God,"^ and " overcometh the world.""* And it was also "by faith," that after men began to multiply, and the earth was corrupt and filled witli violence, "Noah being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house ; by the which he condemned the world and became heii' of the righteousness which is by faith." ^ He believed God, and for his faith, he with his family was saved by the same waters that destroyed the ungodly ; when, at God's bidding, the ark rose on the surging fiood, and floated iu peace on the bosom of the great deep, amid storms and tem- pests that shook the world ; until, at last, the waters assuaged, the ark rested, and the bow di-a^oi on the clouds retreating before the brilliant sun of a new ' Heb. xi. 13. ^ n, ^, ^.^ 3 ^pjj [i g_ ■» 1 John V. 4. s llel). xi. 7. 6 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. world, became a pledge on God's part that never again should the waters of the flood destroy the earth. A beautiful figure to the world that then was, and to the world that now is, of the Ark that saves us by- water, ^ of the Church of the living God, in which alone we can brave the storms of life, and escape the destruc- tion of all things,^ until at last we land safe in her on the everlasting hills of another and better land. 1 1 Pet. iii. 20-21 ; 2 Pet. ii. 5. Just. Mart. Dial. c. Trypli. p. 367, alludes to this, saying: " Know ye not, 0 men, that God said to Jerusa- lem, through Isaiah, 'EttI tov KaraKXva-fiov tov N«e eaaaa ae. Tovto 8e iiTTiv o eXfyev 6 Q(6s, otl to fivarrjpiov rav aco^ofievcov avOpaTrcov em tov KaTaK\v(TiJ.ov yeyoveu. I saved thee in the flood of Noah. This said God, because the mystery of the salvation of men was wrought out at the Flood." The quotation as given by J. M. however, exists nowhere. He probably quoted from memory Is. liv. 9. " IlpaTov ^dnTiap.a t6 TOV KUTaKKvapov els eKKonrju apapTias, the first baptism was that of the Flood, to cut off sin." (S. Athan. Diet, et Interpr. S. S,, 0pp. ii. p. 426.) In the opinion of S. Clement of Alex. (Strom, v. p. 550), even Plato's idea of a flood (De-Legib. iii. par. 1, 2, ed. L.) was that of a periodical cleansing of the earth. While S. Cyprian (Epist. Ixix.), speaking of 1 Pet. ii. 4, says, " Probat et contestat (d. Apost.) unam arcam Noe typum fuisse unius Ecclesiae ;" and in Epist. Ixxv., "ostendens quoniam quomodo qui cum Noe in area non fuerunt, non tantum pur- gati per aquam non sunt, sed statim diluvio illo perierunt ; sic et nunc quicunque in Ecclesia cum Christo non sunt foris peribunt,nisi ad unicum et salutare Ecclesise lavacrum per pcenitentiam convertantur." — " In ilia mirandaj capacitatis area, universi generis animalium quantum repara- tionis aderat receptrice, ccngregatura ad se omne hominum genus' Bcclesia figuratur, dum per lignum et aquam redemptio crucis Christi et ablutio regenerationis aperitur," (S. Ambros. De Voc. Gent. lib. ii.) " Area procul dubio figura est peregrinantis in hoc sseculo civitatis Dei, hoc est Ecclesiae." (S. Aug. Civ. D. lib. xv. c. 4.) ^ %v pev irporiprjcrov, el SoKet, tov cra^opevov Ncoe to VTro(3pv)(iov 7r\rj0os' epo\ Se crvyxo}pri(Toi' Tjj Tovi okiyovs e^^ovcr^ KijSwTa irpocrbpapelv. " Prefer if thou wilt," says S. Athanasius, in his letter to those who judge of God's truth by men's opinion (vol. ii. p. 294), " to cast thy lot with the multitude that was drowned by Noah's flood; only let me take re- fuge in the ark, in which few only were saved." INTRODUCTION. 7 II. It may be well, therefore, at the outset, to ask, What is the Church ? The term Church^ properly means the Lord's house, or the Lord's building. It comes to us from the Fathers and fr'om other ecclesiastical writers of the first centuries ; but it is neither so accurate nor so com- prehensive as Ecclesia^ the term chosen by the Holy Ghost from among all others, in order to make us understand the spiritual constitution of the Christian * The word Church comes most likely from KvpiaKov (pcofia) or from KvpiaKTj (oIklo) — terms repeatedly found in the Greek Fathers and eccle- siastical writers, and rendered in Latin, as by S. Jerome, Dominlcum, and by S. Cyprian (Ep. Ixxxi.) Ecclesia Dominica. In addition to what Suicer (Thesaiir. Eccles. vol. ii. p. 191) says on the subject, we may notice the 7-tth Canon of the sixth fficumenic Council, which is the same in words as the 28th of the Council of Laodicea, namely, on ov 8e2 iv rais KvpiaKois, fj iv rals eKK\r](j-iais, ras Xeyofjievas dydnas rroielv, etc. ; whereupon Zonaras, as quoted by Suicer, says that here the fj is not disjunctive, or, but explanatory, for ^Vot, that is. Zonaras, however, overlooked the second article ; and Agapius is a better Greek scholar, when he says (UrjB. rrjs fj-ids aylas koO. 'EkkKtjo: p. 163), npenei pa npocrripiiaxTaipev, on 6 BaXaapmv, KvpiaKci peu deXei va ivvofi iha> 6 Kavoov Kade tottov n(pupcopevov tS Kvpico, Kal tov NdpdrjKa 8rj\. koX Trpovaov. ^'EKKkrjcriav be, tov KaG" avro Naov. "06ev Kai to t), popiov, 8eu de^erai vd rji/ai e(j)eppT]vevTiKov, a>s Xeyet 6 Zcovapds, dXXd bia^evKTiKov, wcrre OTToO KUT avTOV, o)(i povov jLifVa eis Tas eKKXrjcrias, dXX ov8e eis tovs TSidpdrjKas Ta>v 'EKKXTjaicov 8ev Trpenei vd Tpayovv rives. " It is well, how- ever, to remark that Balsamon is of opinion that here the canon under- stands by KvpiaKd every place consecrated to the Lord, as the sacristy or the porch ; and by eKKXrjaia, the temple adjoining-. Whence the particle 7 cannot be explanatory, as Zonaras says, but it must be dis- junctive, so that according to him this canon forbids any one to eat in the sacristy or in the porch belonging to the chm'ch itself." S. Cyril of Jerusalem also makes a distinction between KvpiaKov and eKKXrja-ta, when he says (Catech. xviii. p. 222, ed. Par.), Kav nore embrjpfjs iv TToXeai, p^ OTrXws e^eTa^e ttoC to KvpiaKov ecrri* Koi yap al Xomal Tciyv dcrelSav alpecrfis, KVpiaKa to eavTav arrTjXaia KoXelv eTn)(eLpovai' pT)8e irov i7Eph. iv. 1. 12 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. sure not only their calling, but also tlieii* election, that is, their being chosen, first, when called, and last, when finally set apart, as good wheat from the tares ; and thus "to work out their salvation with fear and trembling," that is; " so to walk according to the vo- cation wherewith they are called" as that they may, at last, reach the end of their faith, the salvation of their souls, — in other words, obtain their eternal safety in the kingdom of God. No salvation without safety ; no safety while there is danger, and danger lasts as long as we live. As to the rule and government of the Ecclesia of Christ, we need not discuss it at present, but only notice that the ideas of selection, combination, order, rule, fellowship, union, and of a definite outline or form, present themselves under a different but more endear- ing aspect in the second term by which the Church is called, namely, the ^^ House of God^''^ the Church of the Living God,^ the members of which are "fellow-citi- zens with the saints and of the household of God, "^ and " of the household of faith,"* over which there is " one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in them all"^ that are made "the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus, "^ " Who gave power to become the sons of God to them that believe on His name,"^ "and who, if children, are then heirs, heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ,"^ through " Whom they re- 1 Also called the " City of God," and mystically spoken of as Zion, Jerusalem, etc. 'EKKk-qaia noXis. (S. Athan. Interpr. Parab. Quoest. i.) " ^ AiTo\i6pKT]Tos dTVfjnvvrjTos TToXty eVi yrjs. The Chuvcli," says S. Clera. of Alex. (Strom, iv.) " is a city that can neither be taken nor ruled by tyrants." ' 2 Tim. iii. 15. ^ gph. ii. 19. ^ Gal. vi. 10. -^Eph. iv. (5. « Gal. iii. 26. 7 g, joi,n i. 13. 8 Rom. viii. 17. INTRODUCTION. 13 ceive tlic Spirit of adoption, whereby they cry, Abba, Father,"^ "Whose family in heaven and earth is named. "^ Yet those ideas of love, with the additional feature of One and the same Spirit and Life, are set forth in a still closer and more touching manner in the Chiu'ch considered, thirdly, as — The Body of Christ, of which He is the Head, and of which His redeemed are the members that live through His Spirit in them. For He was given of God the Father, says S. Paul, "to be the head over all things to the Church, which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all," " Who loved the Church and gave Himself for it, that He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, that He might present it to Himself a glorious Church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing : but that it should be holy and without blemish."'^ This, however, clearly points to a time to come ; for the mystical Body of Chi-ist, " the blessed company of all faithful people," is not yet complete in Him, and will only be completed when all the members thereof shall have been brought together, and not one is wanting, — that is, when He shall have gathered His saints unto Himself in His heavenly kingdom. Yet, inasmuch as He embraces in His love the whole of His Church, whether past, present, or to come. He looks upon the spirits of just men already made perfect in heaven, and upon those of men on earth struggling to be perfected, as one, through the One and same Spirit and Life that animates all the members of that one Body, with faith and hope while they are on earth and absent from the 1 Rom. viii. 15. ' ^ gph. iii. 15. 3 Eph. i. 22-23; v. 25, s^^. 14 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. Lord; but with fulness of joy when satisfied with His likeness and in His presence in heaven. Hence we gather (1) that the Church or Body of Christ is not a shapeless mass of particles or frag- ments adhering together according to the laws of matter, but (2) that it consists in a definite outline and number of members, known of Him who is the Head, "from which all the body by joints and bands having nourishment ministered, and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God;"^ according to certain set and fixed laws of spiritual life. And we further see from this (3) that, since the Sj^irit and Life of the Head flows from it into the Body, and animates every member of it alike, being for the whole Body the one bond of the closest union and fellowship, no member that is not joined to the Body can share in the life thereof, and no member joined to it can possibly say it has a share in the Spirit and Life of the Head unless it shows it by its own individual life and actions ; the Spirit of Life bearing its own witness in every living member of the Body. Whence it follows (4) that in order to receive the Life that flows into the Body fi'om the Head, one must be made member of the Body, out- wardly and in the spirit ; for out of that Body there is neither spirit, life, nor salvation. We see, then, that the leading idea of Imvful consti- tution implied in an ecclesia, and that of rule and govern- ment, conveyed by a Church, or House of God, are both more fully developed, together with the idea of inti- mate love, union, and oneness of sj)irit and life in the Body of Christ, which He purchased unto Himself, at the price of His precious blood, of which He is the ' Col. ii. 19. INTRODUCTION. 15 Headj and therefore the Life, the one object of the faith, love, and hope of every member of that Body.^ And since that Body, properly so called, will be whole only when completed in heaven, it is natural to suppose that, to the portion of that Church on earth, and not yet perfected, should be given, a figure, type, or re- presentation of what that Church is hereafter to be in heaven, whether as the lawful assembly of all the qualified citizens of that kingdom, or as the family or the Body with one Head that governs the whole. And so it is. The first coming of Chi-ist, " the Desire of all nations," Who is the head of that Chui-ch or family, " which in heaven and earth is named, "^ was so brilliant an event that He is called by the prophet, "the Sun of Eighteousness with healing in His wings," and that the day of His appearing is said to be " the great and terrible day of the Lord."^ That day, although far less brilliant and far less glorious than is to be the day of His second coming, of which it was a pledge, did yet turn the whole period of time that preceded His appearing, from what was the gloom of the darkest night for the world at large, into a long twilight and dawn for the country over which He rose, and whose inhabitants, while moving among the dim shadows cast by the glimmer of that distant sum-ise, were, nevertheless, to be reminded constantly by these very shadows of the coming Light, which already cast them. In other words, God, in order to set forth ' Tot? Tracri yap TrdvTa, p-ivcov avros Kara (j)vaiv oirep icrri. "He IS all things to every member of His Body, in His nature and attributes. In His unchangeable dignity of Son of God, He becomes our best and most pitiful physician, accommodating Himself to our infirmities, whether as our Mediator or as oui' High Priest." (S. Cyril, Catech. x.) 2 Eph. iii. 15. ^ Mai. iv. 16 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. visibly before men a figure of what the Church, of which He is Father, will be both in Him and in His Son, " whom He gave to be the head over all things in that Church," chose out of all the nations of the earth one people which he constituted and called '' His Church," "His people," or "His House," and Him- self the King, the Lord, or the Father thereof, to which He gave His laws, and made known His will, and Avhich He led, ruled, and governed like a visible king, Lord, or Father, either immediately by the timely in- terference of His Almighty power, and by the voice of the oracle at the mercy-scat which He appointed for the purpose of making known His will, or medi- ately, through the servants or ministers He ordained, taught, and sent to declare His counsels to the people. This visible form of God's government of His people was called Theocracy by Josephus,^ one of that jDcople, who says : " There are dijfferent forms of government, such as aristocracy, oligarchy, and the like ; but our lawgiver, Moses, choosing none of these, instituted what we may call the Theocracy " — that is, God's visible rule and government of His people, of which He styled Himself not only the King and the Father, but also "the Lord and Commander-in-Chief of the hosts of Israel," Who led them forth to battle, which His generals fought, under Him. This nation was constituted God's own and peculiar people,^ not only by their being the childi-en of Abraham, to whom the promises were made, but also by the mystical rite of baptism, and by the civil one of circumcision, without which no strangers could be admitted members of the commonwealth of Israel. And since God combined in ' Contr. Ap. lib. ii. c. IC. 2 Y)%^^\. iv. 20; xiv. 2. INTRODUCTION. 1 7 Himself the twofold character of spiritual and of tem- poral king, the laws, the statutes, and precepts which He gave them were of necessity manifold in kind. They were (1) laws and statutes adapted to the pe- culiar character of the people as a nation, which God gave it as civil king and ruler ; (2) laws and statutes that were the expression of His will, holy, just, and good, as King of Heaven and Earth ; and (3) they were figui'es, outlines, or shadows of better things to come in the person of His Son, whom He gave to be the Head of His Church, and to whom the whole Church looked in those days before His first coming, as she now looks not only to that first coming, but also in steadfast faith and hope to His second appear- ing in glory. III. It is therefore natural to expect (1) that God, thus governing His people chiefly as a civil king present among them, should lead the mass of the nation mostly by promises of temporal and visible blessings ; and (2) that His servants, sent to teach His people during such a state of things, should be taught of Him the secrets of His will, chiefly concerning things to come. That is also what we find to be the case. We find, for instance, (1) that the resurrection of the dead, eternal life, the redemption by Christ, and like truths, were but seldom told in plain terms under the law ; because the people's obedience to God was by Him required to Himself, chiefly as to a visible king who rewarded them ostensibly by victories over their enemies, by powerful interposition in their favour, by peace, plenty, and by other temporal blessings. And (2) we 18 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. find that truths, which relate to the Church in her perfected and glorified state, were taught of God only to some few favoured individuals, set up from time to time as harbingers or prophets of a future state of things, and sent fi'om God in order to direct the eyes of the most earnest among the people to the coming of Christ, and to the better and more enduring inheritance of heaven, of which their own land was a faint image. Speaking of these figures or types, the holy Apostle tells "US distinctly that they were only " shadows of good things to come, and not the very image of those things ;"^ thereby giving us clearly to understand that all we may expect to discover in them of the objects they foreshadowed is — a broad outline only, and no details." Obvious as this is in the case of a natural shadow, it has often been overlooked in the investigation of types in the Old Testament. The civil or national fea- tures of the people of Israel, upon which " the sha- dows of good things to come" fell, have often been mis- 1 Heb. X. 1. 2 If we look at llie shadow of any object, we see that the outline of it is more or less distinct, according to tlie more or less uneven sur- face of the ground upon which it falls. Thus, the shadow of a tree falling on a plane surface gives a distinct outline of the principal masses of that tree, while the same outline can hardly be traced either against a hedgebank, or on a rocky or stony ground. Moreover, we also notice that however much the outline of the shadow be modified by the surface upon which it falls, the several objects lying on that surface form no part Avhatever of the sliadow, which has only two properties — an outline more or less distinct, and a greater or less dimness of body, but of course no details. Thus, in the case of the shadow that falls on, say, stones, grass, or leaves, these stones, this grass, and those leaves have no other connection with the shadow that falls on them than to be in the shade thereof, and to render the outline of it more difficidt to trace. INTRODUCTION. 19 taken for parts or details of those sliadoAvs ; aud because, ill some cases, a distinct outline of the shadow might be traced, therefore were all other objects lying in the shade of that shadow made by some writers j)arts or details thereof, albeit they have no connection at all with it. And thus have types been multiplied, and been modelled out of incidents either in the his- tory or in the civil constitution of Israel, that never were intended as types ; and that should not be spiritualized. Enough, indeed, if we can always trace accui'atcly the mere outline of the shadows in the law ; and better, assuredly, to confess we cannot, than to find analogies that do not exist, and thus to explain away the real intention of Scripture. Caution, also, in this case, is assuredly safer than presumption. So truly were the rites, the ceremonies, and the service of the Levitical priesthood mere shadows of better things, that the sacrifices intended as shadows of the sacrifice of Christ were to be repeated daily and continually, thus reminding those who ofi'ered them (1) that there was in them no substance or real efii- cacy, — that the blood of bulls and of calves could not take away sins, otherwise they would not be offered so repeatedly ; and (2) that they should look tlii'ough those sacrifices and offerings to the one great sacrifice such offerings were intended to represent, and thus be brought by the law of commandments, of rites, and of ceremonies, as by a schoolmaster, to Christ. In other Avords, the people of Israel moved among shadows, in which it was unconsciously taking part, — shadows, too, that not only told of the bright light that cast them, but that also reflected, as all shadows do more or less, that light to such a degree as to ap- c 2 20 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHUECH. jDear comparatively luminous in tlie surrounding gloom of heathenism. And since light and shadows are in- se^^arably connected, and each forms, as it were, a part of the other, the people that lived in the shadows cast by the light of the Gospel which we enjoy, could not, as S. Paul says, be perfect without us ; neither could we be perfect without them ; but they and we form part of the whole, complete in Him who is the Light.^ As regards, then, those types or shadows under the law, — those at least that are so plain as not to be mis- taken, " and are thus of no private interpretation," — we can at best expect to find in them (1) only an outline more or less well defined, according to the time and circumstances under which those shadows fell, but (2) dimly portrayed; and, (3) owing to their being interwoven with the civil statutes and features of the Israelitish nation, we find that the outline of many can hardly be traced. Hence it happens (4) that, the outline being thus often broken off or inter- rupted, we can obtain as we do, a distinct form of only sundry s^Dccial features, shadows, or types, while we fail in our attempt to di'aw from those shadows the tracing of a whole figure perfect in all its parts. Lastly, we notice that the special or circumstantial types and shadows become fewer as the j^eriod of Theocracy draws nearer to a close. Thus they abound under the Mosaic dispensation and under Joshua; they begin to grow less under the Judges and the first kingdom, fewer still during the second, while under the later prophets these tyj)es are yet more scarce; until, after that time there remained nothing but the Levitical priesthood to point to the dawn of the Sun of 1 S. John i. 9. INTRODUCTION. 21 Eighteousness, that was soon to rise with healing in His wings. Then ceased, properly speaking, the Theocra- tic government of God the Father ; His personal rnle over His Church^ — the Chnrch of God, by comparison with the Church of Chiist the Son, that began when He, the Shiloh, came,^ and the sceptre departed from Judah. Then did the visible government of the Eather as King over His people come to an end, when He made over that government to the Son, " whom He gave to be Head over all things to the Chnrch." Then did the shadows of the law disappear in the brightness of His appearing, and then was a dominion given Him to which there is to be no end. Looking, then, at the whole Church from her begin- ning, we see^ "that as God created one man to be both parent and a better pattern of the human race than many men created at once could have beeUj" so also did He, when definitely establishing His Church in the earth, do so, fii-st in the person of one man, Abra- ' The period during wliicli the Theocracy kstcd has been variously reckoned from Moses to Samuel ; from ]\Ioses to the Captivity ; or from Abraham to the coming of Christ. This seems the most correct reck- oning ; inasmuch as the kiiigs of Israel were styled " the Lord's anointed," as viceroys under Him ; and at no time during the kingdom of Israel, or of Judah, did God's oracle on the mercy-seat altogether cease to make known the will of Him, the king of the land and of the people. For a full account of the Theocracy, see Spencer, De Legg. Hebr. pp. 300-348 ; Waterland, Div. Leg. of Moses, vol. ii. pp. 236-364 ; J. D. Michaelis, Mos. Kecht, vol. i. pp. 180-188 ; Carpzov, Opper. Critic, pp. 7, 27, etc. ^"Eas eaveXdi], a dnoKeiTai, (S. Cyril Jer. Catll. xii.) (rrjp.ilov ovve8a>Ke TTJs "KpKTToii Trapovaias, to naixraadai rrjv dp^rjv rcov lovOaicov, el pr] pvv vTvo 'Papaiovs daiv ovnat rjXdev 6 Xptcrro?. " He gave as a sign of the coming of Christ, the end of the kingdom or government of the Jews ; if they are not now under the Eonians, then Christ has not come." 3 S. Aug. De Civ. lib. xii. c. 21. 22 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. ham, whom He called in a very remarkable manner, and with whom He made the only covenant possible between Him and His creatnre under such circum- stances,— namely, a covenant that rested on that creature's faith in Grod's call, and in obedience to it. As a reward, God promised Abraham that his posterity should be His peculiar people, and should inherit His promises, and that out of that posterity the Saviour should be born. Accordingly, no sooner had Abra- ham's descendants become a nation, than they were made God's Church and people, itself only a figiu-e of another and better state of that Church that is to last until the restitution of all things, when the whole Church shall enter triumphant in His kingdom above, and there reign with Him for ever. Thus may we compare the whole Church from her earliest beginnings to her final entrance into heaven, to a tree. The roots will then represent the patriarchs both before and after the Flood, niutil Abraham, who may then be compared to the part of the tree imme- diately above ground, and that supports the stem, which will thus represent the Theocracy or the people of Israel before the coming of Christ. The branches of this tree will be the several divisions of Christ's Holy Apostolic Church in various parts of the world ; and the fruit found on those branches will be the spirits of just men made perfect, the fruits of the Church gathered unto everlasting life. As the sap is one and the same throughout the tree, though under different aspects, whether it be drawn by the roots, or conveyed by the stem and the branches until it be wrought out into leaves, blossom, and delicious fruit — so also is the Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost and Giver of Life, who is INTRODUCTION. 23 inseparable from true faith, one and tlie same, whetlier in the primitive faith of Abel, in Enoch's walk with God, in the life of Abraham, in the Psalms of Da^dd, in the prophecies of Isaiah, in the Gospels, at the Pentecost, in the Epistles, in the death of martyrs slain for the faith of Christ, or among the saints around the Throne of God. Or, to make use of another comparison, we see therein the time of "bondage under the elements of the world," when the Church was "under tutors and governors, and the son differed nothing fi'om a ser- vant," of which S. Paul speaks ;^ a state of growth and of development, as of the bud into the perfect blos- som and fruit, as of the child into the perfect man ; but not of changes as of the truth into a lie, of faith into doubt, or of God's Holy Spirit into the waverings of the human mind, as certain writers of the day fain would make us think. For as the light, whether it be refracted in a shadow, or reflected by objects in that shade, or whether it shine wpon earth or within the boundless space of its own realms, is one and the same, — so is also " the faith once delivered to the saints." It is one, whether in Abel or in S. Paul, though in a dif- ferent degree ; it is, as S. Cyril of Alexandria says very truly, " the right faith he taught us, which is always new."~ " For there is one Body, and one Spirit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling ; — one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all. But unto every member of that Body is given grace according to the measure of the gift of Christ ; till we all come to the unity of the Faith, and of ' Gal. iv. 1-7. ~ Epist. in Zoega, Codd. Saliid. p. 278. 24 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ," in heaven.^ So then, from the pattern of the Church set us by God Himself, whether in the early patriarchs, in the person of Abraham, in his children, or in the present state of Gospel dispensation, we very plainly see two things : first, as regards the inward and spiritual life of the Church, that she walks by faith in promises made by God, that were and that are truths placed by Him before her eyes, as objects she held, she holds still, and will continue to hold until her faith in them is exchanged for sight, and her hope for everlasting joy. The Church can and could no more exist with- out these objective truths, than Abel could have of- fered a better sacrifice than Cain, without faith in that promise of a Saviour, or than Abraham could or would have left his native land in search of a strange country unknown to him, if he had not, fii'st of all, believed the promise God made him of it ; thus setthig before himself that country and God's promises as the objects of his faith, and of the hope in which he lived ever since he left Ur and Haran for the hills of Canaan. Abraham's faith and his obedience to God were the foundation upon which God rested all His subsequent coA^enants with him ; that of circumcision was but the seal of his righteousness by faith, and the covenant by the rite of baptism in the Eed Sea, whereby Abra- ham's children were constituted God's " Church in the Wilderness," was by virtue of the previous covenant of circumcision that warranted the Israelites to be the children of the Father of the Faitliful, who first be- ' Eph. iv. 1-13. INTRODUCTION. 25 lieved in God and then obeyed Him, and only after- wards inherited the promise. As with Abraham, then, so with his chihlren, and so with us also, if we wish to be blessed with him. God's coYcnant with every one of us individually, if it be to last until we inherit the promise of His eternal kingdom, must rest on our own individual '' righteousness, which is by faith." With it that covenant stands ; without it it falls. And secondly — from the outward form and constitu- tion of the Church given us of God, we see that His Church is a national Church. According to His pur- pose and to His will, the Church is to form an integral part of the commonwealth, and be upheld and supported by it. A voluntary system of Church, one under which all creeds and all sects have equal right, and are equally supported by the State, is only the offspring of later ungodly times ; but it never formed part of God's plan of His Church on earth. In proportion, therefore, as His Church is upheld and supported by the State, does His blessing rest on that State ; not else. For those who attempt to prove a different state of things from the beginnings of the Apostolic Church, assembled even in private houses, overlook the fact that those were the first beginnings among heathen nations, with which those Churches were at variance, and could have no- thing in common. But this does not, of course, hold good in a Christian country, which is, in fact, an outward Church on a large scale. Not, indeed, that the State should be governed by ecclesiastical laws, as in the case of the Eoman power, thereby doomed to an effete decrepitude ; but that the civil power and the Church should be joined together for the support and comfort of each other ; a 26 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. union that must result in greatness, as in the case of England. For a Christian State, therefore, to wed itself to no Church, but to profess to uphold all forms and all sects alike, is simply to abjure the faith ; it is exactly as if Israel had tlu^own up all allegiance to the service of God's temple, and had pretended still to call itself the people of God; or, as if the Church of Antioch, or that of Corinth, had professed utter indifference for its faith and doctrine ; when they would each have ceased to be a Church. But as to Israel, we know what came of the nation when the lowest of the peo];)le were made priests, when a molten calf was set up at Bethel, another at Dan, and the shrine of Baal was reared on the heights around Je- rusalem. God withdrew His blessing, and the nation was ruined. 27 BOOK I. « CHAPTEU I. THE CALL OP ABRAHAM. A father's blessing rested on Sliem, and God abode with him. His children, therefore, had not, like those of his two brothers, to wander far from their homestead, bnt they quietly spread, increased, and settled at the foot of the mountains on which their father was saved, to which they then clung, and even noAV do look as to the home of their birth. ^ Yea, even when by right of conquest at God's bidding, they overcame the children of Ham, and these had, in ^ The expression the " mountains of Ararat," Gen. viii. 4, upon which the ark rested, does not in any way refer to Mount Ararat or IMount Masis, not far from Estchmiadzin, upon which, Armenian tradition says, some timber of the ark was for a long time to be found. The words of the Hebrew original simply mean the " mountains of Armenia," Ararat being the name of a northern province of Armenia, which was afterwards applied to the whole country. But it seems more probable that, according to the Chaldean tradition preserved in the Tai'gums and elsewhere, the ark rested on the mountains of Kardu, /. e. one of the Kurdish hills, that rise to the north-east of the plains of Assyria, 28 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. fulfilment of the doom uttered against them, to choose between death, flight from their land, or, in it, bon- dage to their elder brothers, the children of Shem, — these only took possession of a country jDromised them, and which, by its position, must have been their own. Yet, although singled out by a sjDecial blessing from among other families of mankind, the children of Shem were also, with the rest, enveloped in the night that soon overspread the earth, when the last gleam of the light of truth, that set on the plains of Shinar, for awhile lingered, and, at last, died on the hills that stand around the cradle of manldnd. But a people already chosen, even in those days, — a genera- tion that was to be among the nations of the earth, what " the children of the light," the chosen genera- tion, the royal priesthood, is in the world at j)resent, ere it alone reigns above, — could not continue in the gloom of ignorance and of estrangement from God, in which the earth was plunged. The chikben of Shem might indeed even then have, so to speak, " light in their dwellings," in the midst of surrounding dark- ness ; they had kept up their father's tongue among the family of Heber, whence, afterwards, Abram and his race were called Hebrews ; they might themselves, even then, live by faith and hope in the promises handed down among them from father to son; but such a glimmer of light could not suffice. They were, in the counsels of Him who chose them from the first. wlience Noah and his family descended into the lea of INIesopotamia, spread before them, after the waters had retreated. But as these hills are counted to Armenia, to the higli table-land that rises between Assyria and the southern slopes of the Caucasus, the words of the original Hebrew are applicable to them, and there, accordingly, do we place the cradle of the human race after the Flood. CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABEAHAM. 29 to be a light, a witness, and a warning, not only to themselves, but to the whole earth; they were not only to reap a blessing for themselves, but they were also, one clay, to bestow blessing, grace, and glory on all nations around. God, therefore, gave them first His oracles ; He lighted first among them the lamp of the knowledge of Him, to guide them aright during the long twilight that was to last unto the rising of the Sun of Eighteousness. And He set to them and to His whole Church a pattern, and taught them all how to walk on earth by faith, so as to please Him, and how to hope, so as to inherit His promises, when He called Shem's own descendant Abram, and said unto him, " Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee."^ Thus did God call Abram, in ratification of His promise to Shem, yet of His own free will ; and Abram answered the call, believed God, and obeyed Him. The ray of light, the breath of the Spirit ; the call, whether it was in the new, strange, yet irresisti- ble promptings of the heart, or in a voice that seemed to sound in Abram' s ears, and that wrought in him such a wonderful change, — the call could only come from heaven ; and from heaven it came. Abram never could have dreamt of God's voice, had it never spoken ; but when it once spake, there could then be no doubt about it. It kindled in Abram feelings altogether new ; it gave him a faith he had not before ; it opened his heart to a hope he had never indulged ; it widened, it stretched his view from the horizon of his own plains to a land beyond, and to another and a yet bet- 1 Gen. xii. 1. 30 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. ter one still fmther off, and heavenly. God's voice, in short, bare witness of itself ; it convinced Abram of its truth, and gave him no rest but in obedience to its commands. But for this call, but for this revelation of God to Abram, Abram would have continued in the plains of Padan-Aram, and never would have reached Caanan ; he never could have invented the thought of the pro- mised land, neither could nor would he, of his own ac- cord, have torn himself from all his earthly posses- sions, to lead a wandering life in search of a land, he knew not where. Never. The choice, the call, the promise, the faith in that promise, and the obedience to that call, were all given of Him who willed it, and who called and promised in accordance to His will. Even the Alexandrian philosopher reminds us, " not that Abram saw God, but that God appeared, or re- vealed Himself unto him; for it was impossible," saj^s he, '' that a man should of himself comprehend that which really is, namely God ; unless that truth had shone in his presence, and God had shown Himself to him."^ Impossible. For it matters not whether Abram shared in the traditions of his kindred, or whether he, like the rest of the citizens of Ur, worshipped Cainan or Tarhato. Until called by God, Abram was like those around him, like his own children, who despised the covenant of God, like those of us who do the same, and ere the grace of God reach us. Abram, in short, was a ''natural man," of whom, S. Paul says, that "the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him ; nei- 1 Philo, De Abr. p. 3GI. CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 31 ther can lie know them, because tliey are spmtually discerned."^ Men may attempt to deny such an inconvenient text ; but they can neither refute nor disprove it ; for even if it were not revealed, it is philosophically true. It is true, according to Christian philosophy, and to the real state of the case, that, as S. Paul intimates,^ man consists of " spii'it, soul, and body." These stand one to another in a relation which, for the sake of illustration, we may compare to three circles inter- secting one another at the centre ; and a man is called either spiritual, natural, or carnal, according to whether the spirit, the soul, or the body, is upper- most in that figure, and holds sway over the other two. This mutual relationship and the nature of the spirit in man, as distinct from his intellect, was never understood by the Greek and Latin philosophers of old. "Alienated," as they were, "from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them,"^ they either altogether ignored the spuit as a distinct attri- bute in man, or they confounded it with the breath, ascribing some of the leadings of that spirit whose instincts are God-wards to the better part of the intel- lect ; which intellect, together with feeling, affections, and desire or lust, made up the soul of man according to their ideas."^ 1 1 Cor. ii. 14. 2 1 Tliess. v. 23. ^ Epl,. iv. IS. ^ '•^vxiKos 8t avdpcoTTos ov 8€x^'''(^^ T*^ ToC TTvevfjLaTos Tov Qeou, on irvev^a- tlkS>s avaKpiverai. The Greek and Latin pliilosopliers, anterior to the coming of Christ, liad little or no idea of S. Panl's definition of man into spirit, soul, and body. Catching at the idea of active invisible agency connected with a " spirit," they either identified rh nvfvua with the breath, or, finding in themselves inklings of an attribute better than the bare intellect, the instincts of which were towards God, they 32 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. But the Gospel that brought life and immortality to light teaches us better things. It tells us of "Him who is Spirit,"^ who created man " after His own image and similitude," making him, of course, most like Himself in his spirit, which He gave liim as means or channel of direct intercourse with Himself; for "His true worsliij)pers worship Him in spirit and in truth ;" and such alone He seeketh for Himself. This reveals to us man's real life, the life he had in God, ere he fell from that blissful state ; and it tells us also of the life to which he is to be restored by God's will and mercy. And, further, it brings us to recognize this spiritual and diviiie element in man, as endowed with attributes, and used for purposes totally distinct from those of the soul, properly so called. For man under the influence of his soul alone may be most intel- lectual and affectionate, but is sensual withal, and still " dead in trespasses and sins;" inasmuch as his styled that best part of their intellect " the guiding intellect " God- wards, voiJs Kv^epvijTi)s. That is what the Apostle and Scripture in ge- neral call " the spirit " in man, that cau be quickened into real life con- genial to itself, only by the direct influence of the Spirit of God, and by intercourse with. Him; but this cannot take place until God, as it were, looks down upon man ; and this again is only when man looks up in faith to God, as to bis Father reconciled through Christ. But the soul of man (yl^vxr)), which, according to the same philoso- phers, is made up of intellect and feeling with divers affections and lusts, makes the man \|/'u;(tKoy, or " natural," tiiat is, intellectual, afi'ectiouate, feeling, but also sensual, and still alienated from the life of the Spirit which is in God, and altogether outside Him. Such is the yj^vxtKos avdpcoTTos, or " natural man," as understood by the Apostle, and by the philosophers of his time ; it is man endowed with the attributes and functions of the soul only, without the life of God. Tpia S' eo-Tiv ev rfj "^vxjj, TO. Kvpia Trpd^eas Ka\ a\T)6elas, aiaOr^dLs, vovs, ope^is, k.t.X. (Eth. Nicom. vi. 2, 1, seq.) 1 S. John iv. 23, 24. CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 33 intellect, which is, we see, distinct from his spirit, was given him. as vice-regent of his Creator, over irrational animals that are only gifted with instinct, chiefly for his nse during his life on earth, wherein his intellect works wonders, as being at home therein, and made for it. So that, however vast or brilliant a man's intellect be, it can alone no more make him spiritual, than in- stinct can make an irrational animal into a rational man. Whence it is as clear as day, that for man to attempt spiritual truths and to look for spii^itual influ- ences through the intellect, which is another attribute of his natiu'e, and has other functions, — for man's • reason, in short, to attempt to understand God, "Who is past finding out," not only betrays ignorance of the first principles of philosoj^hy, but is also proved, by daily experience, to be as far from man in the days of Atlantic cables as in those of Egyptian pj-ramids. Thus, do we read in Scripture (1) of the spiritual man, of him who is ruled and governed by God's Holy Spirit in intercourse with his own, and who acts under His influence; (2) of the natural man, who is led by his soul, and is more or less intellectual, affectionate, mo- ral, and sensual ; and (3) of the carnal man, who is given to the gross appetites of his body, and is ruled by them alone. Therefore, also, do we hear (1) that " the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him ; nei- ther can he know them, because they are spiritually — not intellectually — discerned ;" and (2) that " the carnal mind is death." Such was Abram when God called him, and thereby kindled within him a life to which he, Abram, had D 34 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. hitherto been a stranger, — the life of the spirit, in in- tercourse with God. His spirit thus quickened with new but kindred life, with fresh energies and heavenly aspirations, strove to resume its sway over Abram's soul and body, and to silence the objections these two made to God's order to him ; and it succeeded. Abram heard the call, believed, trusted, and obeyed. The whole thing was for him a reality. God, indeed, called him by virtue of the right to the calling Abram had in God's own foreknowledge, and in behalf of the blessing that rested on Shem. But when God called Abram, He also made him a sj)ecial jDromise, which Abram believed, and towards which he walked. That promise was the object set before him, that made him leave Ur of the Chaldees, and Avliich he kept ever 2)resent to his eyes during his journey ings across the wilderness ; and the words in which the promise was told were the truth for Abram, — words, the truth, and a jDromise, which he neither invented nor discovered within himself, but all of which were given him of God, and which he therefore held fast as coming from Him. Likewise, also, as regards God's Church. She holds the truths not only of God's promises, but of God's teaching, as objects before her, towards which she walks in foitli, and for which she struggles with pa- tience, endures, and at last overcomes. She holds and keep's those objective truths revealed to her in God's word, and cherishes the words in which they are told ; but she does not make them. Did Abram make the promise ? ISo ; it was given him of God. Did he invent or discover ''the day of Christ," and that " in him all nations of the earth should be CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 35 blessed"? 'No, those truths were revealed to Abram, and he made them his own only by receiying them with implicit faith. So then, also, with us Christians ; if we be worthy the name, and know the hope of our calling, we, too, walk by faith towards God's promise of an everlasting inheritance, to which He calls us out of the world by virtue of rights He gave us to this calling in His choice and forelvuowledge. He does so of His own free will, and not for anything we either possessed or had done to deserve it of Him, since of our nature Ave are " children of wrath," and as much alienated from the life that is in Him, as were the worshippers of Cainan at Ur of the Chaldees. But the call, the promise, the inheritance, are all of Him ; ay, the faith, as well as the strength of pm-jDOse to work in accord- ance to that faith, are from Him also. We then walk towards God's promises, holding them before us as objective truths. For, since " in us dwelleth no good thing," and our natural " heart is de- ceitful above all things, and desperately wicked," we, as rational beings, di-aw hence the natural inference that in us there can be neither good nor truth but what God puts there ; and that, therefore, the only kind of truth that can at all be called subjective — that is, in us and of us — is the consciousness, "through God's Spirit bearing witness with our spirit," that we make His promises our own, as Abram did, by faith and hope in them, and by oiu* obedience to Him. For, as to our natural conscience, what is it but, as it were, the echo of the voice once heard in Eden ? And as to our reason, ask Socrates, ask Plato, Manu, Zerdhust, or Gautama, — ask whom you will, — its great D2 36 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHUECH. [bOOK I. est efforts are at best faint guesses at the truth which exists only in God, "Whose thoughts are not as our thoughts, and Whose ways are not as our ways," and Whom, therefore, reason alone and of itself can no more discover or find out, than Abram could have done it ere God appeared unto him, or than the wisest men of old ever did. No. " The things which eye hath not seen nor ear heard, and that have not entered into the heart of man, which God hath prepared for them that love Him," must of necessity be revealed to man by Him. This Spirit and those things are of Him ; not of the intellect, intellectual ; but of the Spirit, spiritual, and spiritually discerned and enjoyed. If not, and if so be reason or intellect may take the place of faith, and assume the functions of the Spirit, how comes it that it has never yet done so, much as it has tried ? And how is it that the holy Apostle, speaking of the wisdom of this world, calls it " fool- ishness with God," if so be man's intellect discerns things spiritual ? And v/hy are the wisest of those who had no other light than that of their own rea- son, said -by the same Apostle to have "become fools, while professing themselves to be wise"? The answer is — It is not in man ; it is of God. God's call, says Holy Scripture, came to Abram at Ur of the Chaldees, where he dwelt with his father, Terah, and with the rest of his kindred. There, at the foot of the hills that gently slope down from the high table-land on the east of the Euphrates into the plains of Padan-Aram, skirted towards the sun-rising by the blue mountains of Ararat, and towards the south by heaven alone, lived that greatest of the sons of the East. There wasAbram's home, the city — "el-beled" CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 37 of to-day, — at first, perliajjs, a cluster of shepherds' tents, as Tyre was once of fishers' huts, — built, Ethi- opic annals tell us, by Ur, son of Chesed, around the clear wellmg spring sacred to Tarhato, and embosomed in such luxuriant verdure as to have won for herself in after time the brilliant name of Edessa, " the green myrtle" of the East.^ There lived Abram, with his father and brothers, in the primitive splendour of j)a- triarchal life, rich in very much cattle, with few wants and few cares beyond the necessaries of life, which an exuberant soil yields without stint or toil ; living unto ^ " Hadassah," or " Adassa," according to local pronunciation, is the same as "Esther," which in Persian means "green myrtle," a name given to fair women (Esth. ii. 7) as well as to fair cities. Eour or five cities are said to be " Ur of the Chaldees ;" a few more will probably soon be discovered. (1.) Mugheir, on the western bank of the Euphrates, in Babylonia ; its claim rests on the name Camarina, that might also do for a town and a slough in Sicily : on the name Ibra, whence Hebrew (?) : that would apply infinitely better to the Iberians of Georgia, and quite as well to those of Spain. (2.) Werka, on the eastern bank of the Euphrates ; but Abraham would have had to cross the river twice on his way to Haran ; and whether hence or from Mugheir, he would have to travel the whole length of Mesopotamia northwards, on his way to Canaan southwards. Somewhere hereabouts, however, his tomb is shown by Mahomedans; as they do that of Abel in Anti-Lebanon, that of Noah in Lebanon, of Eve in Arabia, etc. (3.) Ur, mentioned by Amm. Marcellinus, not far from Nisibis, in eastern Mesopotamia. (4.) The present Oorfa, ycleped Edessa, Roha, Callirrhoe, Chaldseopolis (?), Antioch, Erech, Justinopolis, Orhoe, the position of which suits best as regards Haran, distant from it about twenty miles. It was from the first noted for the beauty of its situation, and afterwards for its history, both civil and ecclesiastical. It has long been a place of pilgrimage, being fixedby tradition as the birthplace of Abram. The spot where his cradle lay is shown in a cave in the rock, enclosed within hallowed pi'ecincts, and over- shadowed by magnificent plane-trees. Another cave, however, is also said by Arabic writers to exist on Mount Casius, near Damascus, where Abram saw the light. The probability, however, is in favour of 38 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. the day, careless of the morrow, aud moving in a workl that stretched very little beyond the limits which his eyes could reach. " Hadlia ardhi — this is the earth for me," said once a wealthy son of the desert, as he brought me out at the door of his tent, in which he had just fed me with the milk of his flock, and while he spread his hands towards the plain around his camp ; " Hadha ardhi, this is my world." His ideas, his thoughts, went not beyond ; outside that ]Aam, on which his herds wan- dered at leisure and fed in peace, all was to him a wilderness ; the desert alone was his inheritance ; his tent of black hair, his home ; his camp, his city ; and the teeming flocks of sheep and goats, on which his eyes rested with pride, were his wealth, the yield of his toil, and the substance of his household. Such a one was Terah ; such a one also was his son Abram, whom God called, and whom He commanded to leave his home, his kindred, and his flocks — his all, in short, and to go far beyond his land, and the hazy line of the plain spread around him ; that was all he Ooi'fa, as the site of the Ur of the Chaldees, whence Abram started for Haraii south, and thence went still further south to Canaan. There are also two nations, the Chaldi, of Pontus, and the Chuldeei, of Assyria, that are called Chaldcecois, or Chaldees; in Hebrew and in Chaldee, Chasdlin, but in Syriac Cluddoye. Whence is this diii'er- ence, and to which of these two did Abrara's native city belong? AVe do not know. Yet a modern discoverer tells us that Chaldees is Khaal-des, or the country of " Khaal," a name of Shiva; that the " Do-ab" is only the Persian for " Mesopotamia," where we find Terah-pur, the city of Terah; Mheysh-Ur, " Ur of the Chaldees," in which was born Abram, ycleped Eber-Ram : all this either between the Ncrbudda and the Taptee, or between the Nerbudda and the Indus ! What next, and where ? See ' The Rivers of Paradise,' by Major AV. Stirling, p. 5, seq. CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 39 knew, and all lie cared to know of the world ; to go, he wist not where ; albeit, he so far knew whither, as it was towards a country God had said He wonld show him when he once came to it. Abram believed God, and Abram left his home.^ He did not first consult with flesh and blood. His eyes did not pity the herds and flocks he would have to leave behind, nor the fertile plains on which he was wont to feed them. But the voice that called him sounded in his very heart ; it carried with itself the wit- ness of its o^vn truth and reality, and of the truthful- ness and faithfulness of Him that spake. And albeit, in the eyes of all around him, Abram did, no doubt, appear beside himself, when leaving his wealth and possessions for the distant prospect of a land he had never seen, and in which he would only be a stranger, yet, to him, the view by faith of that promised land was brighter than the sight of his own plains, and the promise made him of it was of more value than all he left behind, because it was God that promised. And Abram counted Him faithful. Therefore did he trust Him, and therefore did he get himself ready to go. Terah, may be, shared in part, at least, his son's faith in God's promise ; or, per- haps, grieving at the loss of Haran, whom he had just laid in one of the sepulchres at Ur that still faintly whisper his name, did he purpose to go with Abram as far as Haran, which he saw from Ur every day of his life at a short day's journey to the south, on the way to Canaan, and where he may have had either ^ Uiaros yovv 6 'A/3p«a/M, otl tm \akovvTL nf7Ti(TT€VKe Oem. Tlierefove was he called faithful, says S. Athanasius (Contra Ar. or. ii.), because he believed God speaking to him. 40 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. kindi'ed or possessions ; or, again, Abram may have prevailed upon liim to follow him. Be this as it may, certain it is that Terali, being the head of the family, must be mentioned as making the move from TJr ; and, accordingly, we are told that " lie took Abram, his son, and Sarah, his daughter-in-law, his son Abram' s wife, and they went forth with him from Ur of the Chal- dees to go into the land of Canaan ; and they came to Haran, and dwelt there. "^ This plain statement of the fact, that God first called Abram out of Ur, and not out of Haran, and that Abram left " Ur of the Chaldees to go to Canaan," proves, it would seem, that Ur must have been to the north of Ilaran, otherwise Abram would have had to go several hundred miles north, and then as many south, besides crossing the river twice, — a very round-about way in- deed for him to take in obedience to God's order. Such an assumption refutes itself, and leaves bare the witness of Scrij)ture, which is confirmed by several other passages of Holy Writ. God Himself said to Abram, in the land of Canaan, " I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it."^ There was no doubt of it among Abram's posterity, for at the solemn feast held at Jerusalem after the captivity, the Levites began their public prayer by saying, "Thou art the Lord God, who didst choose Abram, and broughtest him forth out of Ur of the Chaldees."^ Can we suppose this would be thus stated, at such a time, and by such men, if it were not true ? So also S. Stephen, in his last confession before the High Priest, in council as- sembled, bade him and his assessors hearken to these 1 Gen. xi. 31. 2 Gen. xv. 7. ^ n^Ij^ j^. 7, CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 41 words: — ''The God of Glory appeared unto our fa- ther Abraham when he was in Mesopotamia, before he dwelt in Charran, and he said unto him, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and come into the land which I shall show thee ;" ^ words which the holy Confessor and Martyr would assuredly not have spoken, had they not been true, and known of all to be true. For (1) whichever of the three or four cities that have the best claim to be called Ur of the Chaldees we may choose, matters not ; they were all three in the Aram-lS'aharaini of old, the IN'aharan of Egyptian monu- ments, the Mesopotamia of Greek and of Latin wri- .ters;^ so that (2) S. Stephen spoke accurately, not only according to facts, but also according to the common geographical ideas of his time. And lastly, to these inspired witnesses, we may add also the testimony of other men, such as the author of the Book of Judith,^ Avho quotes Achior, captain of the hosts of Ammon, that said to Holofernes, when he asked him who the Jews were : " This people arc descended from the Chaldseans, and they sojourned heretofore in Mesopotamia, — and sojourned there many days. Then their God com- manded them to depart fi*om the place where they so- 1 Acts vii. 2, 3. - Those who, for the sake of novelty, find Haran at Harran-el- Awamid, near Damascus, and thns place Mesopatamia between the two comparatively insignificant streams, Baroda and el-Awaj, unwit- tingly renew the pretended discovery of Harduin in the seventeenth centuiy, that was then exploded by Cellarius. But they must also place Ur of the Chaldees there ; and moreover, also bear in mind that there are two or three more Harans to be examined, on the assumption on their part that the Charrse where Crassus was defeated is dift'erent from the Charran mentioned in Acts vii. 3 Chap. v. 5. 42 OUTLINE OP THE JEWISH CHUECH. [eOOK I. journed, and to go into the land of Chanaan." To which we may also add another historian of nearly the same date, Josej)hns, who agrees with Achior, S. Stephen, the Levites in the Temple, and Moses himself, in say- ing that Abram left Ur of the Chaldees, by the will of God, Who ordered him to do so.^ The fact then abides that Abram — whether or not he were, as Eastern traditions have it, a worshijDper of idols, or had, being a Shemite, a lingering knowledge of the true God — left Ur of the Chaldees at God's behest to go to Canaan, and that on his way thither he tarried awhile at Haran, where his father Terali died. For it was only after his death that " Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot, his brother's son, and all their substance that they had gathered, and the souls that they had gotten in Haran ; and they went forth to go into the laud of Canaan, and into the land of Ca- naan they came." 2 This was his last farewell to his father's house, and to the land of his birth ; to the woodlands of Ur, which he might see fi'om the mound of Haran, and to the range of Ararat, that bound him by the spell of his younger days to their long-loved and familiar outline. He now bid farewell to all these things which linked the threescore and fifteen years of his past existence with the soil of Aram, and he now turned his back upon all those fond objects of his childhood, youth, and manhood, and his face towards a new and untried country — a country far off and unknown. We may picture to ourselves Abram leaving Haran ; his camels laden with his chattels ; liis flocks and herds gathered together for the last time, as if to bid them ' Antiq. Jud. lib. vii. 1. - Gen. xii. 5. CH. I.] THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 43 farewell, in trust to the herdsmen of Nalior, and a few sheep and goats only under the charge of his own shepherds for his food on the journey — all assembled together around the well of JN^ahor at sunset ; the sheep and goats bleating, the camels kneeling by the water- troughs, which the men are busy filling from the well, for the last time before the final start at dawn, — all strangers to Abram's feelings at this trying- hour. This, we may say, was the human side of that memorable farewell. All the rest was divine : the mo- tive, the means, the departure were of God. Abram alone knew it, and felt it ; he had counted the cost ; it was to deny himself and to believe God ; and then to ■obey Him. And he did obey Him.^ Grave, then, of the gravity of faith that falters not, and solemn in the deep, unshaken purpose of his de- termined choice to risk all that he then saw and held dear, his land and his possessions in it, for a promise afar off, indeed, but made by God, — did Abram move among his household, to give orders to his servants to make ready ; did he watch for the last time the linger- ing rays of the setting sun on the distant mountains of Ararat ; the dim shadows of evening spread over the plain, and the stars twinkle one by one in the clear sky above, as witnesses of his faith in God, and of the pro- mise God had made him. Truly did one of Abram's childi'cn, who had received the promise made to his father, say, "This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith. "^ ' " Magnus plane vir, et multarum virtutum clarus insignibus, quera votis suis pliilosophia non potuerit sequare. Denique minus est qnod ilia finxit quara quod iste gessit, inajorque ambitioso eloquentiae mendacio simplex veritatis fides." True, beautiful words of S. Am- brose, De Abrah. Patr. lib. i. c. 2. ^1 S. John v. 4. 44 CHAPTER II. ABRAHAM'S JOUENEY TO CANAAN. They left at dawn, and from that moment there was, and there could be, no delay. '' None," says S. Am- brose, ^ " but Abram went on until he came to Sichem." ''He hastened to follow God," says Philo,^ " and to obey His commands, counting as such not only what things were made known to him by word and deed, but also what his own innate 23ercej)tion gave him to understand in a much clearer manner than what he received by hearing." In the words of Scripture, " they went forth to go into the land of Canaan, and into the land of Canaan they came."^ Onwards, then, to the southward, by slow marches to suit the pace of the flocks, of the women, and of the little ones, day by day across the boundless plain of Aram-Naharaim, until they came to the mighty stream ^ " Paruit itaque mandato Abraham, nee ulla legitur mora inter- venisse." (S. Ambr. De Abrah. Patr. lib. i. c. 1.) ^ 'EinrovBaa-ev fireadm 0ew Kai KaTaTTfidfjs eivai rots TrpoaTaTTOfievoii, K. T. X. (Philo, De Abrah. p. 358.) Gen. xii. 5. CH. II.] Abraham's journey to canaan. 45 of the Eupkrates, that seemed to bar the way of all fur- ther progress. Every other man, says Philo, would have been daunted, and would have either retraced his steps or lingered on the banks of the great river rather than venture across. But not Abram. I^o danger could daunt him ; no obstacle could hinder his march. What ! go back, and thus forfeit the promise, lose the sight of that pleasant land, and, above all, doubt God's word and deny Him ? IN'ot Abram. He then, as afterwards, " staggered not through unbelief, but was strong in the faith," giving glory to God. At a glance he scanned the deep and wide river that rolled at his feet ; he saw the risk ; he faced the danger, but quailed not ; and no sooner had he wetted the sole of his feet in the stream in obedience to the call that urged him onwards, than — the stream did not retreat as at another entrance into the promised land, for Abram was to brave the danger and to cross the river, but — he heard the same voice that had called him out of Ur, say to him, " Eear not, for I have redeemed thee; I have called thee by thy name ; thou art mine. When thou passest through the Avaters, I will be with thee ; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee."^ And Abram crossed in safety ;^ the Lord was with him. And on he went, with his small band, across the ' Is. xiii. 2. 2 Abram crossed the Euphrates most probably at the fords near ancient Thapsacus (Strabo, lib. xvi. c. 5, 23), in as straight a line as possible from Haran to Canaan. In those days the new Haran near Damascus had not yet been discovered ; nor was any of the two or three other Harans built. 46 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. desert of Tadmor. Every step lie took on the way to Canaan was a triumph of his faith, and an act of obe- dience that made his faith perfect. His faith in God, then, gave him strength nnto his day, and God's care of him. His faithful and obedient servant, was to that servant a shield from danger, and his safety from all harm. Abram, with all his flocks and all the souls he had gotten in Haran, after crossing the river, "passed through the land unto the place of Sicliem, unto the plain of Moreh. And the Canaanite was then in the land."i This is all we know about it. And there is some- thing so grand, so earnest, so true, and so solemn in Abram' s march onwards, through rivers and across deserts, regardless of difficulties, but always in the di- rection in which God pointed, and in no other, until he came to the land God had shown him, that it reads like a joke, very much out of place it must be owned, to be told by men not acquainted with Scripture, that Abram went to Canaan by a round-about way, amusing himself the while in conquering countries from Aleppo to Mecca. That stories about him should be rife in the East is but natural, and that Arabic, Latin, and Greek writers should indulge in such fancies, is not to be wondered at ; but it is wonderful that Christians should, as it shows that they are utter strangers to Abram's faith, and to the single motive of his obedience, wrought in him by the faith that urged him onwards. "Straight ahead," says Philo, " counting his readiness to obey on a par with his arrival in the promised land." But such assumptions also betray great ignorance of ' Geo. xii. 6. CH. II.] Abraham's journey to canaan. 47 even the letter of Holy Writ. For therein we read that (1) " Abram was seventy -five years old when he departed out ofHaran;"i(2)that he was fourscore and six years old, when Hagar bare Ismael to him ;"^ that is, eleven years after he had left Haran, and one year after Sarai had given liim Hagar. Now we find (3) that " Sarai, Abram's wife, took Hagar her maid the Egyptian, after Abram had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan, and gave her to her husband Abram to be his wife,"^ Avhence it results clearly, that since out of those eleven years, ten years were spent in Canaan, Abram must have left Haran and come to Canaan, or he must even have passed thi'ough Canaan and come to Egypt within one twelvemonth. For it is most probable that Sarai brought Hagar with her from her visit at Pharaoh's court, even if the tradition be not true, that she received her at his hands. But if we understand the words " had dwelt" to refer to his per- manent stay in Canaan, that began after his return from Egypt, then his visit at the court of Pharaoh must have been even shorter than we are wont to think, — not much time assuredly, for his teaching as- trology to the priests of On, as certain wi'iters of the day do not scruple to toll us. No delay then, but that of the least time and of the shortest distance, intervened between Abram's depar- ture from Haran and his arrival in Canaan ; and no other conquest marked his progress, we may be sure, than the greatest conquest of all — that of self, in obe- dience to God through faith. This did make Abram "really great," says S. Ambrose, "and adorned with many brilliant virtues which the fondest dreams of 1 Gen. xii. 4. 2 ch. xvi. 16. ^ q,\^_ ^vi. 3. 48 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. philosopliy never equalled ; for, less by far, is what pliilosopliers planned than what Abraham alone wi'ousrht." * "We are not only told," says S. Chrysostom,^ that " Abram departed," but that "he departed as the Lord had sjDoken unto him." He did fully everything commanded him. God told him to leave all he had, his kindred and his house, and he left them. God told him to go to a land he did not know, and he went ; God j)romised to bless him and to make him a great nation, and Abram believed that this also should be. So then, as the Lord God had sjDoken unto him, so did he depart, that is, — he neither wavered nor doubted, but, with his mind made up, and his rea- sons for and against silenced and settled within him, he left Haran ; neither his age, nor any other of the many things that might have induced him to remain at home, did detain him ; for his love for God and his desire to obey Him overcame them all ; — so that, al- though stricken in years, he, like a man in the prime of life, tore asunder all the bonds that tied him to his native land, and would brook neither delay nor hin- drance in his yearnings to work out the order God had given him. Wherefore, also, did he receive great favour from the Lord." 1 See above, p. 43, note. ^ In Gen. xii. Ilomil. xxxi. 49 CHAPTER III. ABRAHAM IN CANAAN. 1^0 sooner had Abram set foot in Canaan proper, than the Lord, Whom he had so faithfully obeyed, appeared unto him, and made His former general promise more definite. "When called fi-om Ur of the Chaldees, Abram then left in obedience, and walked by faith towards the land God would show him ; he was now in that land, and God, Who had called and led him thither, tlii'ough deserts and across wide rivers, did not leave him an instant in doubt, but at once appeared unto him and said : This is the land I promised thee. "Unto thy seed will I give this land." Why not unto Abram himself? It could not be, surely, to disappoint him ; for He Who called Abram " His friend," Who told him that all nations should be blessed in him, must have had some good and suffi- cient reason for thus apparently keeping His servant waiting a yet longer time for the possession of the land in which he was told he should only be a stranger. E 60 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. The reason was this : Abram was to be a pattern of believers ; his whole life was to be the working out of his faith ; he, therefore, was to sojourn in the land promised him, but in which he had not where to set his foot, and must even buy a field in which to bury his dead. Had the land been given him at once, and had he thus received the actual return for the dangers and fatigue of his journey at the end of it, and had the land become his, even Abram might have been cum- bered with the cares of it, and his faith might have grown weaker instead of stronger, when he seemed to have reached and received the object that had made him leave his native country. So God did not give him the land to which He had brought him ; He only promised to give it to His posterity ; but He abundantly rewarded Abram, His servant, in that land that was not his own, and in which he was to live and to die a stranger, or at best a sojourner. God aj)peared to him at sundry times, making Himself known more and more intimately, and with greater and more evident proofs of His love and of His care for Abram, as Abram continued to walk with Him by faith, and in hope that rested on that faith. In that same land, where he owned nothing, was he yet the richest man, and though surrounded with wild and law- less tribes, he was yet more powerful than they. The Lord was his shield and his exceeding great reward. Surely this was enough. Thus protected, Abram had nothing to fear ; and thus rewarded, he owned heaven and earth. He had Him for his friend Who made and Who rules both. And as the Lord appeared unto Abram at his first coming into Canaan, so also did Abram build there his CH. III.] ABRAHAM IN CANAAN. 51 first altar unto Him — to renew his covenant with Him by sacrifice. What sacrifice ? and who had taught him to offer it ? He Avho had taught Abel ? or was it in him the force of instinct, with power of an endless life ; or, may be, the simple rite of a wide, all-embracing wor- ship that took in the Lord Who had called him from Ur of the Chaldees, and Cainan or Belshamen, he had seen worshipped around him there ? Abram saw — but how ? " Faith is the evidence of tilings not seen." -Abram then ''saw the day of Christ and rejoiced;" he saw Him afar off, indeed, like the Morning Star in that early da^\^i, — yet he saw The Sacrifice offered of which the lamb he slew upon the altar his hands had raised, was but a faint image. This was Abram's sacrifice ; it was an offering of thanksgivings, an act of faith, a pledge of love and of obedience on his part, whose whole life since his call from Ur, was " a living sacrifice," which he accounted to be his " reasonable service" unto God, Who had thus loved and chosen and called, and led and guided and saved him — ay, and made him His friend, — in Him and through Him alone, " Whose day Abram saw, and rejoiced." Abram Avas now in Canaan, a sojourner among war- like and accursed tribes, with which he could have nothing in common beyond the bare courtesies of mutual intercoui'se. But of reciprocal feeling there could be none ; for he was the friend and servant of the living God, Whom those tribes had forsaken and entirely forgotten, Abram, however, moved among them securely ; the Lord was his shield and defender, and led him first, after his halt at the oak of Moreh, to the rocky heights and narrow glens that lie between Bethel on the west and Hai on the east ; and there E 2 52 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. Abram again built an altar unto the Lord.^ He could not tarry anywhere ''in the land of his sojournings" without raising an altar on which to renew the cove- nant for which alone he lived, and that severed him and his household from the Amorites around. But there was a famine in the land at the time, and, as a famine also drove Abram' s children in after years from Canaan to Egypt for food, it seems as if he, too, should now repair thither for the same purj^ose. Both he and they, being examples of the Church of Christ, were to be called out of Egypt back to Canaan, which to both was also the promised land, — first, promised, believed in, hoped for, and then given. We do not know who the Pharaoh^ was to whose court Abram came, nor where that coui't was held; whether it was Avaris or Tanis, or at On ; and whether that Pharaoh was of Egyptian or of Amalekite descent ; whether he was Pepj, or Apophis, or some other of the so-called Shepherd Xings. And as it is vain to speculate on a date which has been difl'erently fixed ' " Ubi Bethel, id est domus Dei, ibi et ara. Ubi ara, ibi et in- vucatio Dei nostri." (S. Ambr. De Abiab. lib. i. c. 2.) 2 Pharaoli, or more correctly PJmraa or Paraa, meant " the King," as alone entitled to wear in his crown the badge of royalty, a golden figure of the ara, or araa, the urceus, or royal serpent, called basilisk, which, being thought immortal, was thus venerated as an emblem of immortality, and was thus worn by kings, not only in token of their right, thought to be divine, but also in proof of their power of life and death over their subjects. Pharaoh has been said by some to come from Phra, " the Sun ;" but albeit the kings of Egypt were often addressed thus by their subjects, who also styled them rulers of the nine regions of all nations, and of the whole world, etc., yet Phra cannot be made into Phraa, or Pharao, consistently with Egyptian and with Hebrew gramnun-. There is also another etymology offered, viz. Per-aa, "great house," but this is far-fetched and improbable. CH. III.] ABEAHAM IN CANAAN. 53 by almost every one who has attempted to do so, we have only the statement contained in Scripture, which gives us no clue whatever either to the Egyptian sove- reign whom Abram visited, or to the royal city where that sovereign lived, — although we may believe this to have been Avaris, also called Tsau or Tanis, the re- sidence of the Sasu or Ai'ab kings called Shepherds. The surmise that Abram visited Egypt at this period has by some been thought probable, from the similarity of manners at the cornet of this Pharaoh^ and at that of Abimelech, king of Gerar;^ but there is nothing characteristic of Arab, Egyptian, or Amalekite cus- toms in that ; such things were and are still done at other courts also, though perhaps not in the same way. Man's heart left to itself, and unrestrained by the fear of God, is the same now as when Abram had, in self- defence, to practise the "craft" of telling his wife to pass in Egypt for his sister,^ as she really was accord- ing to the custom of a country where every elderly man is either " father" or " uncle," every aged woman a "mother," and every younger man or woman is "brother" and " sister" or "daughter." Abram's de- vice succeeded as far as himself was concerned ; and as to Sarai, God protected her fi'om harm at the court of Pharaoh, who, tradition says, gave her Hagar as maid-servant, and sent her and Abram away, back to Canaan. There they dwelt in the south with Lot and all he had, and thence they removed to their former halting-place, between Hai and Bethel, " unto the place of the altar which Abram had made at the first ; and there he called upon the name of the Lord." Here also took place the separation between Abram ^ Gen. xii. 11, seq. ~ Ch. xx. 3, seq. ^ Gen. xx. 12. 64 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. and Lot.^ The land, it is said, was not able to bear them that they should dwell together, " by reason of their flocks, and of the strife that occasionally took place among their shepherds." Abram, therefore, as the greater of the two, and as heii'-jDresumptive to the whole country, gave the choice of the land to his nephew, who was not so much blessed, as Abram, and rather, perhaps, for Abram's sake than for his own; and they parted. Lot chose the " plain of Jordan, that was w^ell watered everywhere before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the Lord ;" and Abram, at God's bidding, walked through the length and through the breadth of the land as the future lord of it in his posterity, — hardly, as S. Epliraem says, to mark it even then mtli the figure of the Cross, but in order to take possession of it in the name of Him who promised it. As long as Abram and Lot were only wandering from place to place in Canaan, they continued together; but now that Abram had returned to dwell therein, he was alone " to walk before God," since to him and to his seed were the promises made. The father of Isaac and of Jacob, and of the families of Israel, the chosen people, could no longer live in close fellowship with the father of Moab and Ammon ; and so they parted. Lot to dwell iimong the -palm, groves and fertile mea- dows of the same -plvdn that was anon to be destroyed by fire from heaven ; but Abram, to enter upon the chequered life of a sojourner among the stony downs ^ Those who like to see everything in the letter of Scripture spiritualized, after the manner of Origen, and with tlie most pious and devoted feeling, may find this part of Abraham's history thus treated by S. Ambrose. (l)e Abr. Pair. lib. ii. c. G.) CII. III.] ABRAHAM IN CANAAN. 65 of Canaan, wherein, however, he shoukl walk with God. Lot chose this workl, and was saved as by fire from the general overtlirow ; while Abram chose the world to come, and made the Lord alone his exceeding great reward. As the Father of God's Church Mili- tant here in earth, he had to move among hostile and heathen tribes ; but his ways pleased the Lord, and the Lord made his enemies to be at peace with him. This is the real cause of the apparent amity between him and his hosts ; not, in sooth, a common worship or a fellow-feeling ; even though confederate with them for mutual safety.^ There is no concord between Christ and Belial ; how then could it exist between Abram, who rejoiced to see the day of Christ, and the Hittite worshippers of Sutech, or those of Moloch or Baal ? 'No such union can be, except as a feint, — it cannot be real and hearty on the part of those who fain would lower the Chiu'ch to the earth, level her fences, and make one world of this and of the next. But Baal is to fall with his host ; they camiot enter into fellowship with Christ. " The Lord alone shall be exalted in that day, and the idols he shall utterly abolish." ' Ch. xiv. 13. 66 CHAPTEE lY. ABRAHAM AT MAMEE.— MELCHIZEDEK, Alone, then, in faith, in hope, in worship, Abram " removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and bnilt there an altar unto the Lord." The two friends could not part ; where Abram pitched his tent and spread his camp around it, there the Lord had His altar, to bless, to keep and save the household, and to give Abram victory oA^er kings. For while he dwelt at Mamre, one that was escaped from the slaughter in the j)lain of Sodom, came and told him how Chedorlaomer and his confederate kings had fought with the kings of Sodom and of the country round, and had taken Lot and his family captive, and carried them away. "And when Abram heard that his brother was taken captive, he armed his trained servants, born in his own house, three hundred and eighteen, and pursued and smote the kings unto Dan and unto Hobah, which is on the left-hand of Damascus, and he brought back all the goods, and also brought again his brother CH. IV.] ABRAHAM AT MAMRE. MELCHIZEDEK. 57 Lot, and his goods, and the women also, and the people." A true picture this of desert life among Arab ehicftains of the present day, who, on a sudden alarm, ]aj down the shepherd's staiF, grasp the spear, and on horseback or on foot pursue their rivals, and fight out their quarrel until one or the other yield. Abram, who could arm three hundred and eighteen of his trained servants, born in his house, besides those he must have left behind to watch his own camp, where Sarai stayed, must have been a great man among these lords of the desert. God had prospered him abundantly, because Abram served Him faithfully ; . and, like Job, he was rich in very much cattle, and in a numerous household. In fact, the best representa- tive we can have of the patriarch Abram is an Arab sheikh, now moving in his camp among his under- lings, in intercourse with the principal men of his tribe, counting his sheep, his goats, and his cattle, or even following them into the open coimtry ; and then, per- haps, at the head of his men, sallying forth for a raid on a neighbouring clan. The appearance, the dress, the customs, the language, are all very little altered since Abram' s time in a land where time alters nothing. The only difference is, that whereas Abram was the servant and friend of God, these wandering Arabs acknowledge and serve no one but themselves. "We cannot, however, picture to ourselves, " the friend of God, Ibrahim el-Khalil," his address, his manner, his hospitality, the shape, measure, and coloiu' of his tent, anywhere but in a camp of Beda- ween of the true breed, on the eastern side of Jordan, on Mount Gilead, and also further east, at Haran, 58 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. and in the desert itself. There we see the very words of Scripture true to the letter ; there we are brought into the patriarch's tent, and converse with him while fed in the lordly dish with bread and milk, and butter of his flock. There we see him " sit- ting in the tent door in the heat of the day," an awning that shelters him from the desert sun, and that serves as reception-room for his guests ; there we may see him " hastening unto the tent to Sarah " into the portion of the tent allotted to his wife, and parted from the open awning only by a curtain of the same coarse cloth as the rest of the tent ; and we may hear him say to Sarah, "Make ready quickly tlu-ee measm^es of fine meal, knead it, and make cakes upon the hearth ;" and there also may we be greeted by the chieftain himself, who, with a graceful bow and wave of the hand, bids us welcome to his tent : " Mar- haba, " Welcome ! " Salam 'aleik," peace be on thee ; " Tfaddhal," deign to come in to thy servant, — touches of life found everywhere in Abram's land, that tell us, even at this day, that there he must have lived, and that the word written there was then, as it now is, still true. Abram, the chieftain, then, sallied forth from his camp at Mamre, at the head of his men, — a figure of the Church Militant here in earth, — jDiu'sued the kings, defeated them, and rescued from them Lot and his family, and was met on his retimi by the king of Sodom "at the valley of Shaveh, which is the King's dale ;" where also " Melchizedek, king of Salem, brought forth bread and wine. He was the priest of the Most High God, and he blessed Abram, and said. Blessed be Abram of the Most High God, possessor OH. IV.] ABRAHAM AT MAMRE. MELCHIZEDEK. 59 of heayen and earth." And Abram gave him tithes of all.i " Consider, then, how great this man was, unto whom even the patriarch Abram gave the tenth of the spoils." Great, indeed, — " king of Salem, priest of the Most High God," — mysterious ; " without father, without mother, without descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end of life," — and mystical ; " fii'st being by interpretation king of righteousness, and after that also Idng of Salem, which is king of peace ;" " made like unto the Son of God, who abideth a priest for ever." So great was he that of him '''• the Lord said unto my Lord, Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek."- Like the Son of God, and the Son of God like unto him ! It seems as if we, dim-sighted beings, longed to lift up the veil that shrouds this interview, — not of natural with revealed religion, — but of the Eternal High Priest, of the Prince of Peace to Whose dominion there will be no end, thus greeting and blessing His Chm^ch militant and triumphant over His enemies and her own. And where does He meet her ? In Shaveh, in ''a lowland" nigh unto His own City, Jerusalem, the city of the great King, the city on earth which is eternal in the heavens. It is there that He offers her bread and wine, to strencrthen and refresh her in her conflict, as He also did afterwards in the same place, when He taught her what that bread and wine were meant to rej)resent and to be for her, shortly before His Body was broken and His Blood was shed for her sake there, nigh the King's 1 Gen. xiv. 17, 18, 19. 2 Ps. ex. 1-4 ; Heb. V. 6 ; vi. 20 : vii. 17-21. 60 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. dale, in the lowest abasement, and in the deepest hu- mility of Him the King of kings, when He, who is her High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek, gave Himself up as a ransom for her; and thi-oiigh that one sacrifice of Himself once ofi'ered gave her then "the power of an endless life."^ And she in return gives Him the tenth of her income as an ac- knowledgment, as a due, as a small offering of worship, of love, and of thanksgivings. This shadow, the body of which is of Chiist, is plain enough. Neither will she for the sake of gain make an agreement with the world. She blesses, she gives, she does not sell ; what she does is for her Mas- ter's sake. The king of Sodom said unto Abram : " Give me the persons and take the goods for thy- self." And Abram said to the king of Sodom, I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth, that I will not take from thee a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, 1 have made Abram rich." But of "the King's dale," in which this touching and mysterious interview took place, we know no- thing certain. It is mentioned only once more, in 2 Sam. xviii. 18, where we read that Absalom reared for himself a pillar, or monument, in "the King's dale." If, as some say, Absalom's tomb, as it is called, in the valley of Jehoshaphat, by the brook Kedron, be the monument alluded to, the site of " the King's dale " would thus be fixed in accordance with the universal opinion of the Chm-ch, whether Jewish or Christian, that Jerusalem is meant by the > S. Aug. De Civ. Dei, lib. xvi. c. 22. CH. IV.] ABRAHAM AT MAMRE. MELCHIZEDEK. (> I Salem of which Melchizedek was both king and high- priest. Such a city, the figure of the heavenly Jeru- salem, that was to become " the joy of the whole earth," as being the scene of the redemption of the Church by the Son of God appearing in the flesh, could never have been first built accidentally, and then desecrated by heathenish rites, ere it was chosen by God to put His Name there. But, rather, it seems more consistent with His whole design to suppose that He chose it from the fii'st, and caused it to be built for Himself; and when we fm-ther consider the appearance of Melchizedek, the sacrifice of Isaac, the temple, the City of David and Zion, we are led to •think it very possible that Melchizedek, who was both king and priest, reared the first stones thereof, and then called it Salem, the City of Peace. ^ ^ The tradition mentioned by Eupolemus, that Melchizedek was priest of an altar on Mount Gerizim, is of a very late date, and the in- ference drawn thence, that Mount Gerizim was from the first a kind of national altar, unto which all Canaan gathered, and at which Melchi- zedek ministered, is, I need hardly say, without any foundation what- ever. Mount Tabor, owing both to its shape, to its height, and to its isolated position, might, with greater probability, have been a conunon "tryst" for solemn festivals; and accordingly, S. Athanasius mentions the tradition that Melchizedek lived there and not on Mount Gerizim. Since, however, Melchizedek is not even alluded to in the ' Samaritan Chronicle,' that professes to describe the doings of Joshua, and in which Mount Gerizim is extolled above all other mountains, we need not tarry by these later inventions. So that we have nothing whatever but the words of Scripture, whereon to rest our faith respecting this mysterious high-priest ; as we have no reason for saying that Salem, yclept Jerusalem, was not the seat of his kingdom. 02 GHAPTEE V. ABRAHAM'S RIGHTEOUSNESS, WHICH IS BY FAITH. Abeam thence returned to Mamre ; and after these things the word of the Lord came unto him in a vision, saying: " Fear not, Abram ; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward."^ As Abram walked longer with God, did God's intercourse with him become more and more intimate, and His promises brighter, richer, and more exj)licit ; and the Lord now promised to Abram that He would be his shield and his exceeding great reward. As to the Lord's defence and protection, Abram had already felt and seen it, whether across the wilderness and among lawless tribes at enmity one with another; through rivers, in war even, the Lord had warded off danger from him, and had protected him. But Abram had not yet seen the promised reward. He therefore asked, not doubting or complaining, — he was inca- ^ Gen. XV. 1. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. Go pable of either, — but he asked honestly : " Lord God, what wilt Thou give me, seeing I go childless ? Be- hold, to me Thou hast given no seed, and one born in my house is mine heir."^ How, indeed, could the promise be thus ratified ? Neither a servant, nor yet one born of the bond-woman, could be heir of the promise and become the seal thereof; none but the son of the free woman could inherit and continue the blessing entailed on Abram's posterity. The Lord, therefore, said to Abram : " This shall not be thine heir ;" thine own son shall be thine heir. Come forth and " look now towards heaven, and tell the stars, if thou canst number them ; so shall thy seed be." Not a doubt on Abram's part; not a word, not a question, though the j^romise seemed impossible ; yet not impossible to Him that promised. And as He is both almighty and faithful, Abram "believed in the Lord, and He counted it to him for righteous- ness."^ This was such a trial of Abram's faith that his faith alone in what God said was counted to him for righteousness. Hitherto Abram had believed God, but not against hope. He was told to leave Ur and to go towards another country ; but the country was there, and every day brought Abram nearer to it, until he at last reached it, and his faith was then exchanged for sight. Every step he took on his way to Canaan was not only a proof of his faith in God's promise, but it also helped to keep that faith alive, 1 Ac. Kover, following the Armenian version, made from the LXX., calls Eliezer " the sou of Masek, who was one of Abraham's house- born servants." (Desiitiiin Badm. Asdw. vol. i. p. 48.) 2 Ver. 5, G. 64 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. through the hope that he was daily getting nearer its fulfihnent. But in this case Abrani had no human reason to think the promise of a posterity possible. The possibility thereof rested entirely on God's power and faithfulness. In other words, Abram, as S. Paul says, " against hope believed in hope,"^ " being not weak in foith, he considered not his own body now dead, when he was about an hundred years old, nor yet the deadness of Sarah's womb. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what He had promised He was able also to perform ; and therefore it was imputed to Him for righteousness." II. How was it imputed, " coimted or reckoned unto him for righteousness," — an expression we find in connection with no other act of Abram's faith? "Abraham," we read, "believed the Lord, who counted it to him for righteousness and," adds S. James, "he was called the friend of God;"^ while S. Paul tells us that " Abraham's faith — not his belief — was reckoned to him for righteousness."^ What difference, then, is there between "belief" and " faith "? In common use, "I believe" implies only assent of the intellect; and from habit it is also made to mean "I doubt," or "I think." But originally "to believe," if it come from the Anglo-Saxon gehjfan^ means " to allow," or " to suiTender " oneself, one's own will, or opinion ; and if gehjfan come, as it most probably does, from the Gothic ga-laubjan^ " to ^ Eom. iv. 3, 19, seq. ~ S. James ii. 23. ^ Rom. iv. 9. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. Ho trust," as from Imihjan^ — itself possibly allied to lu- hjan, " to love," — we see that wlien Abram "believed God " he surrendered his ideas, his opiniou, and his will, his whole self in short, with trust and love ; all of which make up "faith," fiducia simplex, and fides; a term adopted to express the turning of the heart towards God with trust, and therefore with belief in Him and with love for Him ; both inseparable from trust. "Faith," then, is by comparison and as conse- crated by use, " to believe with the heart," ^ and " in the heart," whereas " belief" implies only assent of the intellect. " My belief is " and " my faith is " are two very different expressions in the present state of the language. Here, however, we will take the words Abram " believed God " in their literal sense. Abram, then, was by God accounted right, righteous, or just, for believing His word or promise, and for no- thing else. As he believed against all human reason- ing and all human hope that in him all nations should be blessed, he, by that one act of faith, silenced all objections of the flesh, denied himself entirely, and acknowledged as Truth not his own ideas as to the possibility of his having a son, but only the word and promise of God. Abram, in short, set himself entirely aside, and all other human considerations besides. He neither yet saw nor understood how what God promised should come to pass ; but he rested his hope of a familj^^, however improbable or impossible it might appear to his o^tl mind, and the world-wide blessing that was attached to it — on God's power, on His promise, and on His faithfulness. " Abram's faith," says S. Ambrose, " was counted to him for 1 Rom. X. 9, 10. 66 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHUECH. [bOOK I. righteousness, because lie asked no reason, but at once yielded implicit foitli. And it is well that faith should come first, that the reason for the order given be heard, not from man, but from God."^ III. Abram's faith, then, was a whole, uiu'eserved sur- render of self, spiiit, soul, and body to God ; and since without this it is impossible to please Him, Abram in so doing was accounted just or righteous before God. He was,' in short, justified, — that is, considered by God to come up to the just or exact standard required of Him in order that He might hold intercourse with Abram and establish His co- venant with him. And this was by that simple act of implicit and "true faith, w^hich alone," says S. Am- brose, made him worthy of God ;"^ because by thus believing wholly what God told him relatively to the promised atonement by Christ, however dimly por- trayed, Abram received from God and tlu'ough faith Christ's righteousness, which was thus imputed or reckoned to him for his believing against his reason and only for God's sake. In that faith alone lay Abram's one plea to his being thus held righteous before God, and ere he could have "WTought any other work whatever in proof of it, but the act of faith itself. So that the faith that was counted luito Abram for righteousness bore, in God's estimation, witness of its own truth. But inasmuch as there coidd be neither merit nor efficacy in the mere act of the belief which Abram granted to 1 De Patr. Abr. lib. i. c. 8. - Ad Koin. ii. " Fide, perqiiaiu digniis Deo extitit Abraliaui." CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. G7 God's word/ his righteousness must have come from something else of which he became possessed, en- dowed, or ck)thed upon by means of that act of faith, and this was the righteousness or "justness" of the Saviour implied in the promise. For He alone is " the Lord oiu* righteousness :" there is none else. Abram's merit could lie, and lay, in nothing else. It was assuredly not in any power of his own, since he said to God, that as He had given him no child he had given up all hope of an heii\ Xeither could Abram claim any merit for raising up his eyes unto heaven, when God bade him look up at the firmament spangled with more brilliant stars than twinkle anywhere else, as muster of his future family ; for this was more likely to stagger than to convince Abram's reason. There was, then, no time for any other act on Abram's part than that of simple belief and trust — that is, of faith — in God's promise of a thing humanly impossible, but possible with Him, and that implied the redemption of the world by Christ. Abram's righteousness, then, at that moment lay in his honest belief in what God said, and in his implicit trust in Him ; and in nothing else. IV. We see, then, clearly, that Abram's justification by faith came fii'st, and before God's covenant with him. Such a covenant could neither be made by God nor 1 " M. Non ergo inter iiujus justitise causas fidem principem locum te.nere dicis, ut ejus merito nos ex nobis jusli coram Deo liabeamur ? — A. Nequaquam ; id enira esset fidem in Christi locum substituere. Verum hujus justitiae fons est Dei raisericordia, quae in nos per Christum derivatur, per Evangelium vero nobis offertur, et a nobis fide, quasi uianu, prehenditur." (A. Nowelli Catech. p. 114, ed. Oxf.) F 2 G8 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CIIUECII. [bOOK I. roeeiycd by Abram unless tlicy two wore together on terms of union and of friendly intercoiu'se ; and this could only be through faith on Abrani's part in the atonement and reconciliation yrrought for him by Clii"ist, " Wliose day he saw, and rejoiced," and through Whom and for "Whose sake alone God made the covenant with Abram, whom He called His friend, and with whom He held sweet intercourse. All that never could have been while God and Abram were strangers to each other ; but it all imme- diately followed upon faith. Abram's belief and trust in God's promise created at once in his heart a new state of things, and brought about consequences as inevitable and as intimately coiniected with that sincere belief and trust in God's word of love and of reconciliation, as heat and light are in the sunbeam. The moment Abram turned towards God in simple faith, '' and had an eye unto Him, he was lightened, and his face was not ashamed;"^ for God answered Him in a ray of His Spii'it. And then began a new intercourse, an unbroken communion between God and Abram. God's Spii'it was " shed abroad " in Abram's heart, and thus quickened, his sj^irif^ into a new life, which it now drcAv in a ceaseless flow dii'ectly from God Himself. For the Holy Sjiirit is given only to them that believe, as "a seal of their faith ;"^ "it is," says S. Ambrose,* "a sign or token of justification by faith; 1 Ps. xxxiv. " "The true Cliristian," says S. Atlianasius (Qiuncst. ad Aiit. 2), " learns not i'rom what others say, but From the experience and quicken- ing of liis own heart, and from the joy of his soiii, that he has indeed received the Holy Spirit at baptism." 3 Eph. i. 23. ^ Ap. Eom. c. 8. CH. v.] ajbraham's eighteous>"es8. 6y and the fact tliat the Spirit of God dwells in the heart of a man, is itself a proof that such a one is already justified and a child of God." And this spirit of adoption and of love thus shed abroad, teaches the heart to covet the act of whole and unreserved sur- render of " self'* to God, made by faith, as a pleasure that becomes greater and greater as the intercourse between God's Spirit and man's spirit increases, and becomes more constant and intimate ; thus creating obedience, which is submission in love to God's will. Thus does it happen that the Spirit which is shed abroad in the heart as seal of that hearty faith, helps and keeps up the life of that faith ; so truly is " faith a fruit of the Spirit," that leads us " from faith to faith'' by ''guiding us into all truth." And from henceforth the two remain interwoven, the Spirit as warp, and faith as woof, in the web of love that binds the heart to God, and that makes for it the beginning of eternal life. Abram's faith and his self-denial then, did not, like a flash of lightning, last an instant and then dis- appear, leaving him in greater gloom than he was before ; but the fire thus kindled in him from heaven went on burning bright. He continued more and more readily to silence his own objections and feelings^ to bring them into subjection to the will of God, and to deny himself; and, as he believed the promise made by God for God's sake only, so also did he trust in it, hope for it, even against all human hope, for God's sake also ; and for God's sake also waited pa- tiently for the promise, until God should fulfil it in His own good time. So, then, Abram's faith gi-owing firmer, brought about in him the iacN-itable and ne- 70 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. cessary results of self-denial, that made liim renoimce his own ideas, his foregone oj)inions, and his own righteousness — then of hope, of love, of obedience, and thus of patience also. These followed upon Abram's faith, as fruits of the spirit given him, work- ing them all out in him, as fruits are by the sap of the tree. "Well, then, and beautifully does St. Paul sum uj) the first part of his reasoning on Abram's faith, by saying, ''Therefore, being justified by faith, wo have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by Whom also, we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience, and patience, experience, and exj)erience, hope, and hope maketli not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts, by the Holy Ghost which is given us."^ But, inasmuch as these acts of hope, of love, of obedience, and of patience were only the consequence of the first act of faith, which alone conferred right- eousness upon Abram, and without which, they never could have been ^^Tought, — it is evident that these works had, and could have no merit whatever of their own. What merit, indeed, could they possibly have, '' since it is God," says S. Paul, " Who giveth us both to will and to do" them ;~ " so that our sufficiency is of God alone " ?^ These works in Abram, as in ourselves, could have had, and have no more merit in themselves than the fruit of a tree, which is a proof, not of its ^ Eom. V. 1-5. 2 phii_ ii. i3_ 3 2 Cor. iii. 5. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. 71 own merit, but only of the goodness of the tree that bears it. As we conkl have no fruit without a tree or without sap in that tree, therefore, says our Saviour, " Either make the tree good, and his fruit good ; or else make the tree corrupt, and his fruit corrupt : for the tree is known by his fruit." ^ So also can we do no works acceptable to God, except they be wi'ought in us by His Spirit, given us as seal of our faith, "without which ftiith, it is impossible to please Him." " We are thus given to understand," says S. Ambrose, " that faith is the one thing that first com- mends us to God. When we have faith, then let us give diligence to make our works perfect.^ For good faith shines in the ornaments of good works. "^ " Our doctrine then is," adds Hooker,^ "that a man doth receive that eternal life and high reward, not for his owTi works, but for his faith's sake, by which he worketh ; whereas, in truth, our doctrine is no other than that which we have learned at the feet of Christ, namely, that God doth justify the believing man, yet not for the worthiness of his belief, but for His worthiness which is believed. God rewardeth abun- dantly every one which worketh, yet not for any me- ritorious dignity which is or can be in the work, but through His mere mercy, by Whose commandment he worketh." Truly, for he has neither yet denied him- self, nor yet believed with humility, who thinks his best works can possibly have any other merit than that of being a tribute of gratitude, an offering of love, or acts of praise and thanksgiAdngs for mercies received and enjoyed through faith. 1 S. Matt. xii. 33. ^ < pg q^[^^ gt AbeL' lib. ii. c, 2. 3 Ibid. De Fide, lib. ii. Prolog. •* Serm. ii. 23. 72 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. VI. We see then clearly, (1) how righteousness cometli by faith only, and (2) how inseparable faith is from works, which being the fruits of the Spirit, "make faith perfect." Truly, then, " faith without works is dead, being alone," if it do not bring forth the fruit of good works, through which only it shows itself to be living, and " working by love " in the heart. " Is it then enough," asks S. Chrysostom, " only to believe on the Son in order to have life ? By no means. Yea, hearken to Christ himself saying, ' Kot every one that saith unto me Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven.' For even if we believe rightly in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, yet do not lead an upright life, it will not profit us unto salvation."' " But rather begin at once," says S. Cyril of Jerusalem,^ " to do good works, continuing in the faith, lest, like the foolish virgins in need of oil for their lamps, thou be left outside. Eest not in the thought alone that thou boldest the lamp, but keeiD it burning ; and let the light of thy good works shine before men." " For faith," says S. Ambrose,^ " is a lamp, as it is written : Thj^ word is a lam23 unto my feet." The word of God, then, is what we are to believe ; that word is light, and faith is the lamp. Now a lamj) cannot burn except it receive light from somewhere else." "True faith," says S. Paul, "is not of ourselves, it is the gift of God."^ So then, if on the one hand faith alone makes oiu* works acceptable unto God, works, on the other hand, ' S. Clirys. Horn. xxxi. in Johau. ^ Catech. xv. ^ Coiuiu. lib. viii. ; S. Lucae c. 11. "* Epli. ii. 8. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. 73 that origiuate iu nothing bnt " self," in human natiu-e alone in its natural, uuconTerted state, being the yield of the natural heart, are no better than the sour fruit of the crab-tree ; and the so-called '' good works " found on such a stock, and which alone make up the plea of " self -righteousness " in man, are no better than artificial fruits tied on to the tree. They look good, but only at a distance, but in themselves they are worthless matter and naught ; because, not only are they "no fruit " in themselves, but there is also no union between them and the tree, no flow of life into them from within. In like manner then, as a tree is good ere it yield good fruit as plain proof of its goodness, and not in order to become good, so also was Abram accounted good or righteous before God, by his simple act of implicit faith in Him, ere he had time to do any other act whatever than to believe and to trust Him. But inasmuch, also, as good fruit proves that the tree is good, and, as it were, justifies it in the eyes of the gardener, and saves it from being cut down and cast into the fii'e, good fruit being so necessary a result of the goodness of the tree, that albeit the tree must be good in itself ere it can yield good fruit, yet it is not good except it do yield it, — so also with true faith, "faith in the heart unto salvation," as distin- guished from mere head belief, the faith of the devils, "who believe in God, and tremble."^ It cannot pos- sibly exist in the heart without causing it to yield the good fi'uits or good works of the Spirit, fi-om which true faith, first only in point of time, is inse- parable, since the Holy Spirit is given only to them 1 S. Jam. ii. 19. 74 OUTLINE Oi!' THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. that believe, and after they have believed; and yet faith is one " of the fruits of the Spiiit." The two, then, go, as we have seen, together ; a true, sincere, uni-eserved faith, and the Spirit or grace of God, "working effectually, " and showing itself through good works, "in them that believe." The two cannot exist apart in the heart, because, while these fruits of the Spirit, these good works, are the visible and outward proof that the heart that yields them must already be justified by faith, and thus righteous, they so far make it perfect, and justify it, that is, openly show it to be righteous ; and they also contribute to the good of that heart, in so far, but no further, as the heart cannot be good and bear them, and is, therefore, not good except it bear them. So, then, since faith in the heart not only justifies us before God, but causes His Spirit to come down and to teach man to do God's will and to please Him, thus walking in the way of salvation all the days of oiu* life, until we be saved, that is, safe in the kingdom of God,— the holy Apostle expressly says, that they who thus believe, " believe to the saving of the soul."^ VII. Could, then, mere belief, the mere assent of the understanding, yield such results ? ISTever. These results are fruits of the Spii'it of God in us, in inter- course with our spirit ; they are spiritual, altogether of a difi'erent nature from the intellect which, as we have seen, belongs to the soul of the natiu-al man, and is therefore natural, and alienated from the life of God. The intellect occupies in man, as reasonable 1 Heb. X. 39. CH. v.] abeaham's righteousness. 75 being, the place of instiuct in animals, as iiTational creatures. 'No amount of instinct can make an animal into a man, despite the infidel absurdities of certain "philosophers" of the present day, who being, it seems, too clever to have common sense, not only gainsay the statement of Scripture, that God created man after His own image and similitude, but also ignore the fii'st principles of true mental philosophy, and either deny to man his spirit as a divine feature in him, or make it "an expansion" of his intellect, and thus are not ashamed to tell us, that he is the distant off'spring of either monkeys or fishes. So also, no amount of intellect will make a man spiritual, and work in him the fruits of the Spirit. IN'ever. The unclean spirits cast out by our Saviour were assiu'edly not wanting in intellect, whereby they confessed He was the Son of God ; yet neither their intellect, their belief, nor the confession they made of Him, saved them from being sent into the deep. Belief only formed the fii'st element of Abram's faith ; it was the foimdation, the groundwork thereof, on which he built his trust and his confidence ; these begat love, and love, obedience, and obedience, pa- tience. His intellect readily acknowledged that the voice he heard was neither human nor intellectual; but it tried to dissuade Abram from listening to it. Abram's faith, however, overcame these counter-efi'orts of his reason, so that "he did not stagger through unbelief" by hearkening to them, "but was strong in the faith, giving glory to God." Belief or persuasion, Avhich is the intellectual part of faith, trust and con- fidence being spii'itual, lay at the bottom of Abram's faith; yet, alone, it could neither justify nor save 76 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHUKCH. [bOOK I. Abram. Mere belief, the mere assent of the intel- lect, is of no use to saye man, it only adds to his condemnation ; for, if he believe in God, why then does he not love Him as his Father reconciled through Christ ? The devils believe ; yet while believing, they hate God and dread Him. VIII. What, then, kindles the feeling of love for God in the heart, " that believes to the saving of the soul," and why is that love inseparable from such a genuine faith ? — Our love for God can only flow from the belief that we are reconciled to Him, tlu'ough the sacrifice of propitiation ofi'ered to Him for us, by the Son of His love, and from the feeling and trust that we are thus "accej^ted in Him, the Beloved." !N^ow, if we do not believe this testimony which God gives of his Son, not only "do we make God a liar," but we as efi'ectually shut out ourselves from the feeling of love for Him, which of necessity follows, or rather accompanies true faith, as Abram would have done, had he neither hearkened to the voice of God, nor believed Him ; and we thus continue utter strangers to the " Spirit of adoption that would be shed abroad in our hearts, and whereby we might cry Abba, Father." That same Spirit, then, does not bear witness with our spirit that we are children of God, because we do not believe in the reconciliation wrought and offered. For, '' he that bclieveth on the Son," on His sacrifice and atonement for himself individually, " hath the witness in himself ; but he that believeth not God, hath made him a liar, because he believeth not the record that God gave of His Son." (1 John v. 10, 11.) cii. v.] Abraham's righteocsxess. 77 So then, " faith in the reconciliation made for us by Him, who alone is the propitiation for onr sins," begets love and gratitude for such a benefit, and this love and gratitude rest not until they show them- selves to be real and sincere, by outward tokens of their existence in the heart ; in other words, they bring forth the works of a godly life, as fruits of faith, as tribute of praise, and as acts of thanksgiving, that show the life of the spii'it within, and keep up the covenant of love made between God and the man that lives by faith in the reconciliation wrought for him by Christ. Without this, no agreement, no covenant can exist between God and man ; but the ■ moment the heart embraces, by faith, the sacrifice of Christ and the atonement made by Him, an active reconciliation begins, and with it, a covenant of mutual love and peace between the Father and the child now reconciled to Him. Truly are we all, as the holy Apostle says, "the children of God by faith in Clu-ist Jesus. "^ That was Abram's faith; thus was he re- conciled, and thus also did he at once enter into a covenant with God. For, "he saw my day and re- joiced," said the Son of God Himself.- Abram saw, by faith, the sacrifice of the Lamb without spot and without blemish ofi'ered for himself, and saw himself thus reconciled. And however more dim such a view may have been than the sight of it we have, we who look back upon the sacrifice as actually offered, and 1 Gal. iii. 26. ~ '-'Et credidit Abraham Deo. Quid credidit ? Christum sibi per susceptionem corporis hseredem futurura. Ut scias quod hoc credidit, Dominus ait : Abraham diem raeum vidit, et gavisus est. Ideo repu- tatiim est illi ad justitiam, quia rationem non qufesivit, sed promptis- sima fide credidit." (S. Ambrose, de Patr. Abr. lib. i. c. 3.) 78 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. upon the satisfaction as actually wrought and accom- plished, yet we see that we too are " blessed with the faithful Abraham," of the same blessing, through the same faith, in the same sacrifice, by means of the same j)ropitiation and reconciliation. So that, while "the gospel was preached before unto Abraham, "^ we of the gospel look forward to our meeting him above, and hoj)e to sit with him at the marriage supper of the Lamb in heaven. For there is only " one Body and one Sj)irit, even as we are called in one hope of our calling ; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in us all."^ Well then, and rightly does the holy Apostle Paul end his reasoning on Abraham's faith, by showing that the righteousness imputed to him was Christ's own, in these words : "Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him, but for us also to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on Him that raised up Jesus oiu* Lord from the dead. Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification ;"^ raised again, in token that He was just, not only of His own righteousness, but also of the righteousness which is of the law ; which He, Just, had won for us, unjust, by fulfilling for us, while in our flesh, the law of God we had broken. He then rose again. He, as it were, came out of prison, thus proclaiming to heaven and earth that He had done all ; that our debt was paid, our sins atoned for, and our guilt forgiven. IX. Since then, we "receive the Sjoirit, not by the 1 Gill. iii. 8. 2 Eph. iv. 4-6 s Rom. iv. 23. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness. 79 works of the law, but by the heariiig of faith. "^ Whence comes faith, Avithout which we cannot receive the Spii'it, without which, therefore, "it is impossible for us to please God," so that whatsoever is not of faith, is sin?"' "Faith," says the holy Apostle, " Cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. "3 Thus did it come to Abram. Abram heard God's voice and believed it. It was the word of God sj)oken to him ; it is the word of God WTitten for us. " The word is nigh thee," says God, "in thy mouth and in thy heart:" "That is," says S. Paul, "the word of faith, which we preach." " For this cause, also, thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe."* " Could the Apostle speak j)lainer," says S. Ambrose;^ "could he demonstrate more fully that faith in believers is a gift of God, than by saying that they received the word preached and taught them, not with doubt as if it were the word of man, but with faith as being the word of God?" IS'othing, indeed, can be clearer, more simple, or more positive. It is the way little children receive what they hear ; and our Saviour tells us, that except we "be converted and become as little children, we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."^ Truly. For if om* faith do not rest on the word of God, "as prime principle of faitli,"^ says Archbishop 1 Gal. iii. 2. 2 Kom. xiv. 23. ^ ibij. x. 8, 17. ^ 1 Thess. ii. 13. 5 De Yoc. Gent. lib. i. c. S. ^ S. Matt, xviii. 3. ^ Relations of a Conference, etc., pp. 27, 28, ed. 1(573. I am, of course, 80 OUTLINE or THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK T. Laud, — a word as mucli revealed to us in the Bible as it was to Abraham at TJr, — whereon shall we stay it ? well aware of the objections to tliis, which either sneer, cavil, or igno- rance wiU make ; bnt it would lead me beyond the scope of this Out- line to I'eply to tbem, inasmuch as I have already stated what iny views are, in ' Fhilosophi/ or Truth,'' pp. 321-372, where I dwell on the fact lost sij^lit of by most writers on the subject — that the message to us contained in Holy Scripture is not addressed to our intellect so much as to our moral and spiritual being; as a proof of which it is not de- pendent on any particular construction or mechanism of language. So that it is to be expected that it should contain many things at variance with our mere notions or with the development of mere intellect. Here I will only answer such objections in the words of my betters ; and, first, in those of S. Chrysostom, who says of "All Scripture is given by inspiration of God," " It is, indeed, inspired ; doubt it not;" and, secondly, in the words of Archbishop Laud, " Now all propositions of Canonical Scripture are alike firm, because they all alike proceed from Divine Eevelation ; but they are not alike fundamental in the Faith. For the belief of Scripture to be the word of God and infallible, is an equal, or rather a preceding prime prin- ciple of faith, with or to the whole body of the creed." (Abp. Laud, ibid.) " For the charter of foundation," says Dr. Waterland, " is un- doubtedly an essential of the covenant ; and therefore, of course, the admittance of the sacred oracles which are the charter itself (or at least, the only authentic instrument of conveyance) is essential to the cove- nants ; consequently, to reject or disbelieve the Divine authority of Sacred Writ is to err fundamentally." (' Discourse of Fundamentals,' vol. viii. p. 97.) I, therefore, autl for my part, search the Scriptures, not in order to doubt, but in order to know and to love them,- — persuaded, as I am, from long and varied experience, of the truth of what S. Ambrose says : " Major est arabitioso eloquentise mendacio simplex veritatis fides," that simple faith in the truth " rises high above the lies of ambitious eloquence." (De Abrah. Patr. lib. i. c. 2.) 'Ettei kuX tj rrjs inikoTrjTos 7ri(TTis ^eXr^'tuI' eort rrjs f/c TrepLepyaaias mdavoXoyias. " For ' the faith of simplicity' (fiducia simplex), says S. Athanasius (Contra Arian. Orat. iv.), is better than the plausible talk of meddlesome inquiry." It is the only attitude that becomes a child ; and is thus better than the pretensions and empty talk of those who, " desiring to be doctors of the law, understand neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm." CH, v.] Abraham's EiGHTEoxrsNEsy. 81 On the flights, more or less measiu'ed, of a limited in- tellect, that cannot soar unto Him Who is Spiiit, and Who dwells far beyond the highest thoughts of man ? If intellect can find Him, why has it never yet done so ? why then did Socrates quail at the hour of death ? and why did Plato, who went beyond his master, even unto the very borders of the world of spirits, there yearn for a Divine word on which to cross the ocean of life, and to reach in safety the heavenly land he fain would see, and the God he could not find out, but which he felt and knew did exist ? Or shall we rest oiu' faith on the day»di'eams of doughty philosophers, who tell us to look for "subjective truth," as they •call it, within ourselves — ''wherein dwellethno good thing" — and inside oiu- heart, "which is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked ;" or " in our mind, which we are told and feel -'is enmity against God" ? Poor blind men, who mistake the phospho^ rescence of a diseased retina for the light which is to guide them in life. It is but charity to warn them that there is a ditch, and a deep one too, ahead of them on their way. So, then, since it is not in man. it must be " given him fi'om heaven,"- as it was not in Abram until Jie heard the voice of God and gave faith to it. And that voice is revealed to us in His word, on which alone our faith can rest. Therefore, says 8. Cyril, " Hold the faith in the doctrine and in the promise which the Chm'ch delivers to thee, and which is fraught with the whole Scriptiu'e,"? •' Wherefore, also," coutinues the game holy man, is " not even the least of the mysteries of the faith to be taught find delivered without thg > S.John lit 37, ^ Catecb. v, Q 82 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHUECH. [bOOK I. [authority of the] Holy Scriptures ; neither is it to be simply alleged by plausible language and ornaments of style. Believe not such a one speaking to thee, unless at the same time thou canst find proof of what he says out of Holy Scripture. For the safety of our faith depends not on the wisdom of words, but on proofs di'aAvn from the Holy Scriptures."^ " For faith in the Apostles and prophets," says S. Ambrose," is a good foundation ; it rises and is built on the two Testaments, to both of which equal faith is due ; since our Lord Himself says : Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me : for he wrote of Me. But if ye believed not his writings, how shall ye believe My words ?"^ 1^0 wonder, then, if the Alexandi-ian philosopher, who only believed in Moses, and had no inkling of the power of faith to justify a man, should yet, in advance of many Christians, say: "Faith, which is trust in God, is the only good that disappoints not, but is solid ; it is the comfort of life ; the filling up of our best hoj)es ; it wards off evils and secures blessings to us ; it keeps evil spirits at a distance, and makes us know what piety means ; it gives us happiness for our inhe- ritance, and it enables us to make the best of every- thing,— stayed, as it is, on the Cause and Author of all things. Who is able to do all things, yet only wills what is good."^ But to the Christian knight faith is yet more ; it is the shield against which the shafts of despair or of doubt rebound ; and thus " it overcometh the world," bey oi:d which it is "the substance of ^ Catech. iv. ^ Comm. in S. Luc. c. 13. 3 S. John V. 40, 47. '^ Pliilo, De Abrah. p. 137. CH. v.] Abraham's righteousness, 83 things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen." Fui'ther it cannot go. In vain, then, will men worry themselves " to find out many inventions," and to make another way than the one made, which, is — to believe God and to obey Him. In vain do they, for the sake of establish.ing their own righteousness, which the propbet tells them is, after all, "but filthy rags," instead of accepting that which is by faith, and alone real before God, do they labour to darken the counsel of this " word of faith," "by their own words without knowledge," — it shines, it burns, and it will continue to shine and to bm'u, until heaven and earth have passed away, and it yet "abidethfor ever." But, of course, sore eyes hate the light as craven hearts do the Truth. Never- theless the Light and the Truth subsist ; the one for the joy, the other for the comfort and peace of those that love them. c 2 84 CHAPTEE YI. GOD'S FIRST COVENANT WITH ABEAHAM. No sooner had Abram believed God, and hoped against hope, solely on God's word, than God made a covenant with him by sacrifice. Yet still only a covenant of faith, with him as the heir of the world, and not yet with him as father of a pecnliar race. " For the j)romise that ho should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham or to his seed, throngh the law, bnt tkrongh the righteonsness of faith." " There- fore it is of faith, that it might be by grace ; to the end the promise might be sure to all the seed ; not to that only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of Abraham : who is the father of us all."^ God then said to Abram, " I am the Lord that brought thee out of Ur of the Chaldees, to give thee this land to inherit it." And Abram said, " Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it ?" Then the Lord commanded him to take an heifer, a goat and a ram, all tliree years old, a turtle dove and a young 1 Horn. iv. 13, 17. CH. VI.] god's first covenant with ABRAHAM. 85 pigeon, to divide them in tlie midst, and to lay each piece against the other ; but the birds he divided not. And he put no fire under, but waited until the sacri- fice— like that of Gideon, of Elijah, and others — were accepted, and fire from heaven consumed it. And while thus waiting, Abram drove away the birds of prey that alighted on the carcases, and the like of which, to this day, may be seen at the same work, domesticated as they are in every Arab encampment. "And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram, and lo ! an horror of great darkness fell upon him, and God said imto him : Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in the land that is not theirs, and shall serve them four hundred years. But in the fourth generation they shall come hither again : for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full." " And when the sun went down the fire from heaven consumed the sacrifice, and the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying : Unto thy seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates." Such was God's answer to Abram's asking Him by what sign he should be certified that he would inherit the land. The victims appointed by God were divided, and the parts set against each other, to show the two parties in the covenant — God and Abram ; and they were thus chosen, not according to Levitical rites, as if this statement were an afterthought or an invention of some later writer, as some men presume to say, — but these, the heifer, the goat, the ram, the turtle-dove, and the young pigeon, were thus specified by God, either, says A. Ezra, as being the animals from among which were chosen victims for sacrifices 86 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. under the law ; or, as 8. Ambrose thinks, the animals represented the Mosaic, and the birds the spiritual dispensations. Or, again, we may perhaps understand this offering of so many animals at once, connecting, as we cannot help doing, this first mention of a turtle- dove and a young pigeon with the last in S. Luke ii. 24 ; the heifer to represent Egypt, where it was sacred to Isis, and was an emblem of the land of Egypt, in which the Israelites were to be in bondage ; the goat being used for sin-offerings under the law, to be meant for the whole time of the Jewish Common- wealth, properly so called; and the ram for theii' estate under the Seleucidse, as part of the Macedonian empire, until the coming of Him at Whose presenta- tion in the temple a pair of tiu-tle-doves or two young pigeons were offered. Thus embracing at once the whole Theocracy, from the first covenant made with the father of the people of God, to the fulfilment of the promise made to him and to his posterity. The ^'horror of great darkness" that fell upon Abram, ere his sacrifice was accepted, possibly meant the period of darkness and of suffering in bondage in Egypt, during which his children would even forget the name of the Lord among their heathen oppressors, a period of afiliction God said should be four hun- dred years, and which, as we shall see hereafter, lasted no longer. Then God foretold the judgments He would bring ujjon the nation, Egypt, which afflicted Abram' s children, while the Amorite inhabitants of Canaan brought their abominations and wickedness to such a pitch as to make their expulsion and the divi- sion of their land among the children of Israel an act of justice on the part of Him to whom the whole earth H. VI.] god's first covenant with ABRAHAM. 8< belongs. Lastly, — God tells Abram that He had already given in His own will and foreknowledge the land of those Canaanitish tribes to his ^Dosterity ; draw- ing the limits thereof from the Eiver of Eg}"]^)t, — that is, not the Nile, but the torrent of Egypt at El-Ai'ish, the southernmost boundaries of Judah^ — to the Eu- phrates ; unto which extended the borders of the king- dom of Israel in its palmy days under Solomon. For we cannot for a moment admit that God should say to Abram, " Unto thy seed have I given this land from the river of Egypt," and not fulfil his promise, for, if by " the river of Egypt" is meant the " Nile," against the opinion of the best Jewish commentators, then God's promise to Abram is yet to come. This first covenant of God with Abram then was still only of faith, — a covenant of generalities, of pro- mises only, without as yet one tangible proof of the fulfilment of the promises made, since, while Abram was told that in him all nations should be blessed, he had and could have no son, and when, further, a son was promised, no time for his birth was yet determined ; and with this, the very land in which he sojourned, and that should belong to his posterity, was not his own. So that, not only did God gradually reveal Himself and His counsels to Abram, as Abram con- ^ Eelaml. Palaest. vol. i. p. 286 ; V. Kaumer, Palaest. p. 47 and note : A. Ezra ad Gen. xv. 18 ; Abarbanel, Comna. in Pent. fol. 50; Sama- ritan Vers, in De Sacy, Mem. de Litterature, p. 149; Geo. Syncell. Chron. p. 86; Epiphau. Haeres. lib. ii. vol. ii. p. 703. The passages from Herodotus, Poraponius Mela, and others, which Heidman, Palsest. p. 4, brings forward, stating that Judaea extended " usque ad JEgjip- tum," prove nothing, inasmuch as Egypt always reached to the Red Sea ; even owned the peninsula of Sinai under her earlier kings ; and at all times extended beyond the easternmost branch of the Nile. 88 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH, [bOOK 1, tinned to make his faith perfect by his consistent walk among the corrupt inhabitants of Canaan,— but, by comparison with the closer covenant that followed in the immediate promise and gift of a son, we might perhaps say that Abraham, was being led "from faith to faith." While yet in this state, Ishmael was born to him of Hagar, of whom S. Paul tells us distinctly that "he that was born of the bondwoman was after the flesh, "^ as, indeed, he must have been ; for we can neither admit nor understand the birth of Ishmael, together with that of Isaac, unless both happened by the Divine will, and for a special pui'pose. This being the case, and taking all things into consideration,^ — the state of society in those days, " a state of ignorance at which God did wink," and the two dispensations or covenants of the law and bondage, and of the Jeru- salem, which is from above, of the Jews and of free- dom in Christ, that were to be figured by these two sons," one of Abram with the bondwoman, the other of Abraham with the free woman, — ^we may overlook many details in the whole occurrence, which, under other circumstances, would appear to us inexplicable ; as, for instance, the part Sarai acted in the matter ; and her harsh treatment of Hagar, who had, in fact, only done what she was commanded to do. But by God's will Hagar was to go into the wilder- ness, and there meet the Angel of the Lord, who was also to tell her the name her son should have, and warn her that " he would be a wild man — that his hand would be against every man, and every man's hand against him ; and that he should dwell in the presence of liis brethren"^ — a prophecy which is ful- i Gal. iv. 22, seq. " Gal, iv. 25, 26. 3 Gen. xvi. 12, CH. VI.] god's first covenant with ABRAHAM. 89 filled at this day. The sons of Ishmael are the wild- est of the wild sons of the desert, untamed and mi- tameable, like the wild asses of their wildernesses ; conquered, in part, perhaps, but never subdued; dreaded by their neighbours, and at war with them- Belves; here, there, and everywhere, they yet "dwell in the presence of their brethren," whom, however, they neither acknowledge nor treat as such. Incidentally, also, this birth of Ishmael proves, as we above, and against all gainsayers, that Abram left Haran, came to Canaan, went down to Egypt, and re- turned to dwell in Canaan within one year ; that leaves no time for his stay at Alej^po, and for his reign at Damascus, on his way from Haran to Canaan. For Sarai gave him Hagar ''after he had dwelt ten years in the land of Canaan ;"^ and since he was eighty-six years old when Ishmael was born, a year later, he must have been seventy-five years old when he settled in Canaan after his return from Egypt. But " Abram Was also seventy and five years old when he departed out of Haran" ^ — that same year. ' Gen. xvi. 3 ; v. 16. ^ Gen. xii. 4. 90 CHAPTEE VII. GOD'S SECOND COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM. Thirteen years after the birth of Ishmael, "when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord ap- peared unto him and said unto him : I am the Al- mighty God ; walk before me and be thou perfect"^ — upright or sincere. Closer and closer did God's intercourse grow with His chosen and faithful servant ; and as the time was come when he should at last receive the promise in which he hoped against hope, and embrace the son who was to be at the same time both the pledge and the heii' of that promise, God appeared again unto Abram, as the Almighty God. " Walk before Me, said he to Abram, " and be thou upright;" honest as My servant in the midst of the crooked generation around thee, and sincere in My service ; "I am thine exceed- ing great reward ;" thou canst have none greater. " And Abram fell on his face : and God talked with ' Gen. xvii. 1. CH. VII.] god's second covenant with ABRAHAM. 91 him, and said, As for Me, behold. My covenant is with thee ; neither shall thy name any more be called Abram, but thy name shall be Abraham ; for a father of many nations have I made thee." No one but the Almighty could so speak to a man who as yet had no son. But He, with Whom "one day is as a thousand years and thousand years as one day," and Who saw at a glance the whole existence of His Church from her birth until her entrance into glory, said, as He alone might, " I have made thee a father of many nations." All things serve Me, since I have made them all ; "I Avill work, and who shall let it ?" Therefore did God fii'st alter Abram's name into Abraham, as father of many nations,^ that is, "of us all"2 — ^YiQ are blessed with the faithful Abraham, " who also walk in the steps of that faith which he had yet being uncii'cumcised." It was not, therefore, until after God Almighty had thus, by His will and power, established Abraham as " father of all them that believe,"^ that is, of His whole Chm-ch universal, that He gave them the seal of His covenant, restricted to the race that was for a period of time to be His Church in the earth, ^ set apart from all other nations, ^ The nearest etymology for Abraliam is Ah-raliam, " father of a great multitude." It is not, strictly speaking, Hebrew, but Arabic ; anyhow, it is Shemitic, and may be referred to the time when the several Shemitic dialects were not so distinct as they have been since. This etymology, however, is not quite satisfactory. 2 Eom. iv. 16, 12. Gal. iii. 9. " This is not true," says S. Cyril of Jerusalem, " if we take it literally ; for Abraham is not the father of us all, according to the flesh ; aXX' 6 tvtvos ttJs iKelvov Tria-reas, TTavras fjfias vioiis TroteT tov 'A^padfx, but the figure or type of his faith makes us all children of Abraham." (Catech. v.) ^ Rom. iv. 11. 'Yfxiu ovv judz/ois (^lovBaioLs) di/ayKaia f]v fj nepLTOfif] avrrj' Iva 6 Xaos ov 92 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. and governed by Himself ; and it was not until then that Abraham received the sign of the circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised ; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised ; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also."^ Clearly, then, the Jewish Church, or people, was, in the counsel and design of God, a visible Chiu'ch within an invisible one, — as time is described to be a circle within eternity ; both Churches, the Jewish then visible and then present, and the futiu^e and at that time still invisible Church, having one life in common — ^I'ighteousness which is by faith in Him, " Whose day Abraham saw, and rejoiced," and of Whom " ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thou- sands around the thi-one of God in heaven sing : Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and glory, and honoui*, and blessing."^ As Abram's name was changed by God to Abraham, so was Sarai's into Sarah, "the Princess," the wife of him who received the greatest honour a man ever did win, that of being called the intimate Friend of God \aos fj, Kai TO edpos ovk edvos, says Jiistiii Martyr (Dial. c. Tryph. p 236, ieq.), who points out in proof thereof that Abel, Enoch, Noali Melchizedek, etc., were acceptable to God, though they were not cir cumcised ; for that Abraham was the first to receive and to introduce circumcision. The fact that this rite was practised among the Egyp- tians and otlier nations has been brought forward to prove that the Israelites might have borrowed it from Egypt. But this, like other such statements, is set aside by facts. The Egyptian monument on which the rite of circumcision is represented is of the time of Eamses II. ; more than four hundred years after Abraham's visit to the coui't of Pharaoh. 1 v. 11. 2 jiev. V. 13. CH. VII.] god's second COYENAJ^T with ABRAHAM. 93 greater than the greatest of kings ; whose praises have rimg wide in the earth from under the oaks of Mami-e to the far East and to the yet farther West. And now the son and heir of the promise was given. " My co- venant," said God, " will I establish with Isaac, which Sarah shall bear nnto thee at this set time in the next year."' And Abraham laughed — langhed with joy at the news. He had believed ; he had hoped against hope ; he had looked for the promised child he knew neither how nor when ; and at last the time was come. " Could it be possible ?" said Abraham, with a smile of thanksgiving. Who would have thought that " a child should be born unto him that is an hundi'cd years old" ? Yet " is there anything too hard for the Lord ?" said the Lord Himself, — one of the three mysterious visitors who came to Abraham " in the plains of Mami-e, as he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day." " At the time appointed I will retm*n unto thee, according to the time of life, and Sarah shall have a son." And Sarah laughed, not with joy so much as from doubt ; for when the Lord asked: "Wherefore did Sarah laugh?" she denied, saying: "I laughed not;" for she was afraid. And He said, "Nay, but thou didst laugh." " And the men" — the men ! Oh that our eyes could have beheld these leaders of the heavenly hosts, the Angel of the Presence, the Lord Himself, and His two companions, — may be Gabriel, Michael, or Eaphael, marshals of His legions of angelic spirits, — come down to visit the earth ! That we had seen them come to lodge with theii- servant, and to share with him his bread made upon the hearth and his butter and milk, while on 1 Gen. xvii. 21. 2 y. 17. 94 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. their faithful errand of love and peace to Him, and ere they sni'veyed from the hills east of Mamre the doomed cities of the plain, — the Lord to give orders, and the archangels to obey them, and for Abraham's sake to save Lot and his family fi'om the overthrow ! That we had been in the tent, and seen those three — the sacred number — partaking of their humble fare, and heard their voice, and seen their familiar intercoiu'se with their host ! Angels they were, and he lodged them. Was it unawares ? He must have known them and their errand ere they parted, for he addi'cssed one as the Lord, and worshipped Him with the most pro- found reverence, while earnestly pleading for his kin- di'ed, — pleading until he was heard, and Lot was saved. Was it then that Abraham " saw the day of Chiist, and rejoiced," and that the countenance and the address of his Heavenly Guest gave him an inkling of Him in Whom he abeady believed, and of what awaited him in His kingdom above, thus embracing at a glance " His whole family which in heaven and on earth is named," and of which he, Abraham, had been made the father, though as yet without an heii* ? We shall know more of this one day, when — if we be worthy — ^we meet Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven. What a meeting ! We shall then hear Abraham himself relate how he heard God's call, and how he obeyed it ; how he believed and trusted Him against all human thought and hope ; and how he received his reward ; and then we shall compare his faith with our own, — and blush. We shall hear him sj)eak of this very interview, of his feelings when he beheld the Lord Himself, with His two companions, coming to him; how he welcomed them; how they CH. VII.] god's second covenant with ABRAHAM. 95 knew each other; how they bid him farewell until they should again meet in the realms of light, whence they had come, and whither they would soon retui'n. We may then compare our hope of meeting Abraham and those same angels above, whither faith bids us look, with the only j)rospect which the utmost efforts of Socrates' intellect afforded him at the hour of death. " If what we hear be true," said the wise Athenian, grasping the cup of hemlock broth, "what boon will it be to me to meet Palamedes, Ajax, and Telamon in Hades, and there, to be with Ehadamanthus, for ever free from uni'ighteous judges !" His intellect could go no further, and " he had no hope.'' ^ Not so Abraham ; not so those who are to be blessed with him. If, at last, through faith and hope, we meet him above, then, haply, shall we bear in mind many a time at which the Lord also came to our door and knocked, but we did not open to Him, neither came He to sup with us, and to make His abode with us. And yet we are more favoured than was even Abraham ; he saw the day of Chiist by faith, we see it by sight ; he hoped in His coming, but we look back upon it, and look forward to His second appear- ing in glory as to the fulfilment of His first coming in great humility. We have it told us plainer than even God's revelation to Abraham ; we may read it, and we do read it ; but what is our faith in it ? Such as to be imputed unto us for righteousness ? Such as to make us friends of God, and the hosts of angels ? It seems as if the greater the knowledge and the brighter the light, the weaker was the faith; but, also, the lower the righteousness, and the poorer the blessing. 1 Eph. ii. 13. 96 CHAPTER VIII, THE BIBTH OF ISAAC. '' And tlie Lord visited Sarah as He had said, and the Lord did unto Sarah as He had spoken ; for Sarah conceived and bare Abraham a son in his old age at the set time of which God had sj)oken to him. And Abraham called the name of his son that was born unto him, whom Sarah bare him, Isaac." ^ Here, then, was the promise granted. Abraham had believed against hope that he should be the fa- ther of many nations, — conceive, then, his inward satisfaction, " the answer of his good conscience," that said: Was I not right in believing Him and counting Him faithful that promised ? I trusted Him and found Him my shield ; I obeyed Him, and He has been to me my exceeding great reward ; I could have no son ; but here he is — promised, and then given. ^' And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac, being ' Gen. xxi. I, ?, CH. VIII.] THE BIRTH OF ISAAC. 97 eight days old, as God had commanded him."^ He was not — he could not be — slack in thus sealing his son with the seal of God's visible covenant with him, as one of a race set apart in God's counsel and by His will to be for the time being His Church in the world ; an earnest of what should follow, a figiu-e of what awaits His people when gathered unto Him in His kingdom above. Faith in God's promise, then, and the consequent righteousness which is by faith, preceded in Abraham the gift of the cii'cumcision, as outward and visible sign or '' seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncii'cumcised."^ Had Abraham not been called, had he not believed God and had he not thus been reckoned righteous for so doing — that is, justi- fied by faith while he made his faith perfect by his works — he never would have received some time later the seal of that righteousness in the outward token or sign of God's covenant with him, and thi'ough him, with his race, as reward, or by vii'tue of that righteousness which was by faith. Never. Abraham was already in covenant with God, in a covenant of righteousness imputed to him for his faith and works, when he received the circumcision, not in order to make him righteous, but as a proof that he was so already ; not as a gift of righteousness, but as a seal thereof. As such, then, circumcision as outward and visible sign of God's covenant with Abraham was only a visible ratification of the covenant of faith and obe- dience previously made with him ; and it therefore implied that former covenant of faith. It implied that, as it was only the sign of Abraham's righteous- J V. 4. - Rom. iv. 11. H 98 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. ness by faith and a seal thereto, it would alone as a sign, be worthless without the covenant to which it was affixed as seal ; and that, therefore, circum- cision as a sign of God's visible covenant with Abra- ham would be of no avail to his children unless they like him received it also as a seal of their righteous- ness which is by faith. This righteousness by faith, of which circumcision was only the seal, made the great difference between those who, "though of Israel were not all Israel," and of whom it is said that neither because they are the seed of Abraham are they all childi-en : but in Isaac shall thy seed be called."^ " For he is not a Jew which is one outwardly ; neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh ; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly ; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter ; whose praise is not of men, but of God."" Abraham, who first received the sign of cii'cum- cision as seal of his righteousness, received it late in life, because he was called, and he believed and obeyed, late in life also ; and he must have thus qualified himself by faith and obedience ere he could be received into covenant with God, and be sealed by Him. But inasmuch as the promise was made to him and to his childi'cn after him, and the covenant was specially renewed with Isaac in proof thereof,^ all Abraham's children had a right to that promise by vii'tue of their birth which took place within the covenant and not without it, in token of which they were sealed on the eighth day with the seal of the covenant that gave them a claim to the promise to which they had a previous right as childi'en of 1 Rom. ix. 6,7. ~ Rom. ii. 28. ^ Gen. xvii. 21. CH. VIII.] THE BIRTH OF ISAAC. 99 Abraham. That seal of circumcisiou implied, as a matter of course, the righteousness by faith on account of which Abraham had received, and by which he had inherited the promise. Yet since circumcision did not give that righteousness by faith in the promise, but only gave a share and benefit in that promise, that could be enjoyed and hoped for solely through faith in it, — it is evident that circumcision alone did not profit, except as the outward badge of a certain com- monwealth which, being governed by a Spiritual King, was outward in form only, but living tlu'ough faith in His spii'itual promises without which no subject of that commonwealth could really be a living member thereof. Well, then, did the Baptist say to some of these same children of Abraham : " Think not to say within yourselves, We have Abraham to our father ; for I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise children unto Abraham,"^ What childi-en? — "Know ye not," says S. Paul, ''that they which are of faith, the same are the children of Abraham ?"^ Therefore did the Baptist preach "the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins "^ as preamble to the GosjdcI of Grace; a "baptism," says Justin Martyr,"* that was above the law, since it offered forgiveness tlirough repentance and faith in Clmst to such as were con- demned by the law." For "the law being weak through the flesh, "^ the flesh could not fulfil it, and therefore the law made circumcision of no avail to save man ; since " if thou break the law," says S. Paul, "thy circumcision is made uncircumcision."^ 1 S. Matt. iii. 9. 2 Qai_ jij. 7. 33. Mark i. 4. ^ Quae st. XXXV ii. ^ Rom. viii. 3. " Rom. ii. 25. H 2 100 OUTLINE OF THE JEWISH CHURCH. [bOOK I. Clearly, then, since "faith was reckoned to Abra- ham for righteousness " while he was yet uncii'cum- cised, righteousness which is by faith was the only clause really binding in God's covenant with liini, of which coTcnant circumcision was only the warrant or seal. " For in Jesus Christ neither circumcision availeth anything nor uncircumcision, but faith which worketh by love . . . and a new creature,"^ — "the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created him : where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free, but Chiist is all, and in all."^ "As many, then, as walk according to this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God."^ We see, therefore, that circumcision was merely the outward sign of Abraham's coTcnant with God that rested on his righteousness which is by faith ; it was the badge or mark of God's visible Chui-ch, both before and after the law ; while the inward and spiritual life of that Church Vaj in the righteousness which is by faith in the promise of a Savioiu", made to Abraham and to his posterity. So, also, as regards baptism in the Church of Chi'ist. It is " an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace " whereby under the Gospel we are made members of the visible Chiux-h of Chi'ist, of that part of the Father's family "which in earth is named. "^ Baptism, then, does not save us, — that is, it does not sccui-e heaven for us so that, happen what will, we may not come short of our inheritance. !N^o ; no more than circumcision alone secured for the Jew a ^ Gal. V. 6; vii. 15. 2 Col.iii. 10. » Gal. iii. 10. * Epli. ii.15. Cir. VIII.] THE BIRTH OF ISAAC. 101 place in Abraham's bosom ; but, like the Jewish rite, baptism places us in a state of grace and of covenant with the Head of the Church, by bringing within our reach certain promises of an eternal inheritance, to which it also gives us the birthright of a new birth unto righteousness. Baptism, then, puts us in a state of salvation — in a state in which if we continue unto the end by a living faith in the promises made at our baptism, we shall be saved at the last ; that is, we shall arrive safe at home in Oiu' Father's House. " It procures for us," says S. Cyril, " both remission of sins and the adoption of sons;"^ and we may add also a claim to our being forgiven when we repent, as children of the family on earth, imited by the One Spirit to the rest of that same family in heaven. Yet how many things may happen on our journey thither to make us come short of our heavenly home, so that we never join the throng of spirits of just men made perfect around the Thi'one of God ! " The gifts and calling of God are, indeed, without repent- ance " on His part ; for we cannot imagine that He would even call us to His kingdom if He did not mean us to inherit it. But how often do we turn back and think scorn of that good land ? — For with us rests — either to make our calling and our election sitre, by a firm and consistent walk with God, in the Spirit of adoption shed on us by Jesus Chi'ist as a seal of our faith in Him, or else to fiill or "fail from the grace of God"-^ given us, and thus not only to make that calling and election vain, but also to add the 1 'Qs d