There is a striking old legend, preserved by the somewhat mendacious
historian of the Jewish people, that, before Jerusalem fell, the
anxious watchers heard from within the sanctuary a great voice
saying, 'Let us depart hence!' and through the night were conscious
of the winnowing of the mighty wings of the withdrawing cherubim.
And soon a Roman soldier tossed a brand into the most Holy Place,
and the 'beautiful house where their fathers praised was burned with
fire.' The legend is pathetic and significant. But that 'departing'
had taken place forty years before; and at the moment when Jesus
'gave up the ghost,' purged eyes might have seen the long trail of
brightness as the winged servitors of the Most High withdrew from
the desecrated shrine. The veil rent declared that the sacred soil
within it was now common as any foot of earth in Galilee; and its
rending, so to speak, made way for a departing God.
That conception, that the death of Christ Jesus was the
_de-consecration_--if I may coin a word--of the Temple, and the end
of all its special sanctity, and that thenceforward the Presence had
departed from it, is distinctly enough taught us by Himself in words
which move in the same circle of ideas as that in which the symbol
resides.... You remember, no doubt, that, if we accept the testimony
of John's Gospel, at the very beginning of our Lord's ministry He
vindicated His authority to cleanse the sanctuary against the cavils
of the sticklers for propriety by the enigmatical words, 'Destroy
this Temple, and in three days I will build it up,' to which the
Evangelist appends the comment, 'He spake of the Temple of His
body,' that body in which 'all the fulness of the Godhead' dwelt,
and which was, and is to-day, all that the Temple shadowed and
foretold, the dwelling-place of God in humanity, the place of
sacrifice, the meeting-place between God and man. But just because
our Lord in these dark words predicted His death and His
resurrection, He also hinted the destruction of the literal stone
and lime building, and its rearing again in nobler and more
spiritual form. When He said, 'Destroy this Temple,' He implied,
secondarily, the destruction of the house in which He stood, and
laid that destruction, whensoever it should come to pass, at their
doors. And, inasmuch as the saying in its deepest depth meant His
death by their violence and craft, therefore, in that early saying
of His, was wrapped up the very same truth which was symbolised by
the rent veil, and was bitterly fulfilled at last. When they slew
Christ they killed the system under which they lived, and for which
they would have been glad to die, in a zeal without knowledge; and
destroyed the very Temple on the distorted charge of being the
destroyer of which, they handed Him over to the Roman power.
The death of Christ is, then, the desecration and the destruction of
that Temple. Of course it is; because when a nation that had had
millenniums of education, of forbearance, of revelation, turned at
last upon the very climax and brightest central light of all the
Revelation, standing there amongst them in a bodily form, there was
nothing more to be done. God had shot His last arrow; His quiver was
empty. 'Last of all He sent unto them His Son, saying,' with a
wistful kind of half-confidence, 'They will reverence My Son,' and
the divine expectation was disappointed, and exhaustless Love was
empty-handed, and all was over. He could turn to themselves and say,
'Judge between Me and My vineyard. What more could have been done
that I have not done to it?' Therefore, there was nothing left but
to let the angels of destruction loose, and to call for the Roman
eagles with their broad-spread wings, and their bloody beaks, and
their strong talons, to gather together round the carcase. When He
gave up the Ghost, 'the veil of the Temple was rent in twain from
the top to the bottom.'
A time of repentance was given. It was possible for the most guilty
participator in that judicial murder to have his gory hands washed
and made white in the very blood that he had shed; but, failing
repentance, that death was the death of Israel, and the destruction
of Israel's Temple. Let us take the lesson, dear brethren. If we
turn away from that Saviour, and refuse the offered gifts of His
love, there is no other appeal left in the power of Heaven; and
there is nothing for it after that except judgment and destruction.
We can 'crucify the Son of God afresh and put Him to an open shame.'
And the hearts that are insensitive, as are some of our hearts, to
that great love and grace, are capable of nothing except to be
pulverised by means of a judgment. Repentance is possible for us
all, but, failing that, the continuance of rejection of Christ is
the pulling down, on our own heads, of the ruins of the Temple, like
the Israelitish hero in his blindness and despair.
II. Now, secondly, the rent veil means, in another way of looking at
the incident, light streaming in on the mystery of God.
Let me recall to your imaginations what lay behind that heavy veil.
In the Temple, in our Lord's time, there was no presence of the
Shekinah, the light that symbolised the divine presence. There was
the mercy-seat, with the outstretched wings of the cherubim; there
were the dimly pictured forms on the tapestry hangings; there was
silence deep as death; there was darkness absolute and utter, whilst
the Syrian sun was blazing down outside. Surely that is the symbol
of the imperfect knowledge or illumination as to the divine nature
which is over all the world. 'The veil is spread over all nations,
and the covering over all people.' And surely that sudden, sharp
tearing asunder of the obscuring medium, and letting the bright
sunlight stream into every corner of the dark chamber, is for us a
symbol of the great fact that in the life, and especially in the
death, of Jesus Christ our Lord, we have light thrown in to the
depths of God.
What does that Cross tell us about God that the world did not know?
And how does it tell us? and why does it tell us? It tells us of
absolute righteousness, of that in the divine nature which cannot
tolerate sin; of the stern law of retribution which must be wrought
out, and by which the wages of every sin is death. It tells us not
only of a divine righteousness which sees guilt and administers
punishment, but it tells us of a divine love, perfect, infinite,
utter, perennial, which shrinks from no sacrifice, which stoops to
the lowest conditions, which itself takes upon it all the miseries
of humanity, and which dies because it loves and will save men from
death. And as we look upon that dying Man hanging on the cross, the
very embodiment and consummation of weakness and of shame, we have
to say, 'Lo! this is our God! We have waited for Him'--through all
the weary centuries--'and He will save us.' How does it tell us all
this? Not by eloquent and gracious thoughts, not by sweet and
musical words, but by a deed. The only way by which we can know men
is by what they do. The only way by which we know God is by what He
does. And so we point to that Cross and say, 'There! not in words,
not in thoughts, not in speculations, not in hopes and fears and
peradventures and dim intuitions, but in a solid fact; there is the
Revelation which lays bare the heart of God, and shows us its very
throbbing of love to every human soul.' 'The veil was rent in twain
from the top to the bottom.'
The Cross will reveal God to you only if you believe that Jesus
Christ was the Incarnate Word. Brethren, if that death was but the
death of even the very holiest, noblest, sweetest, perfectest soul
that ever lived on earth and breathed human breath, there is no
revelation of God in it for us. It tells us what Jesus was, and by a
very roundabout inference may suggest something of what the divine
nature is, but unless you can say, as the New Testament says, 'In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word
was God.... And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we
beheld His glory, the glory as of the only Begotten of the Father,
full of grace and truth,' I fail to see how the death of Christ can
be a revelation of the love of God.
I need not occupy time in dilating upon the contrast between this
solid certitude, and all that the world, apart from Jesus Christ,
has to lay hold of about God. We want something else than mist on
which to build, and on which to lay hold. And there is a
substantial, warm, flesh-and-blood hand, if I may so say, put out to
us through the mist when we believe in Christ the Son of God, who
died on the cross for us all. Then, amidst whirling mists and
tossing seas, there is a fixed point to which we can moor; then our
confidence is built, not on peradventures or speculations or wishes
or dreams or hopes, but on a historical fact, and grasping that firm
we may stand unmoved.
Dear friends, I may be very old-fashioned and very narrow--I suppose
I am; but I am bound to declare my conviction, which I think every
day's experience of the tendency of thought only makes more certain,
that, practically for this generation, the choice lies between
accepting the life and death of Jesus Christ as the historical
Revelation of God, or having no knowledge of Him--_knowledge_,
I say,--of Him at all; you must choose between the barred sanctuary,
within which lies couched a hidden Something--with a capital S--or
perhaps a hidden Someone whom you never can know and never will; or
the rent veil, rent by Christ's death, through which you can pass,
and behold the mercy-seat and, above the outstretched wings of the
adoring cherubim, the Father whose name is Love.
III. Lastly, the rent veil permits any and every man to draw near to
God.
You remember what I have already said as to the jealous guarding of
the privacy of that inner shrine, and how not only the common herd
of the laity, but the whole of the priesthood, with the solitary
exception of its titular head, were shut out from ever entering it.
In the old times of Israel there was only one man alive at once who
had ever been beyond the veil. And now that it is rent, what does
that show but this, that by the death of Jesus Christ any one, every
one, is welcome to pass in to the very innermost sanctuary, and to
dwell, nestling as close as he will, to the very heart of the
throned God? There is a double veil, if I may so say, between man
and God: the side turned outward is woven by our own sins; and the
other turned inwards is made out of the necessary antagonism of the
divine nature to man's sin. There hangs the veil, and when the
Psalmist asked, 'Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord; or who
shall stand in His holy place?' he was putting a question which
echoes despairingly in the very heart of all religions. And he
answered it as conscience ever answers it when it gets fair play:
'He that hath clean hands and a pure heart, who hath not lifted up
his soul unto vanity.' And where or who is he? Nowhere; nobody.
Access is barred, because it is impossible that a holy and righteous
God should communicate the selectest gifts of His love, even the
sense of His favour, and of harmony and fellowship with Him, to
sinful men, and barred, because it is impossible that men, with the
consciousness of evil and the burden of guilt sometimes chafing
their shoulders, and always bowing down their backs, should desire
to possess, or be capable of possessing, that fellowship and union
with God. A black, frowning wall, if I may change the metaphor of my
text, rises between us and God. But One comes with the sacrificial
vessel in His hand, and pours His blood on the barrier, and that
melts the black blocks that rise between us and God, and the path is
patent and permeable for every foot. 'The veil of the Temple was
rent in twain' when Christ died. That death, because it is a
sacrifice, makes it possible that the whole fulness of the divine
love should be poured upon man. That death moves our hearts, takes
away our sense of guilt, draws us nearer to Him; and so both by its
operation--not on the love of God--but on the government of God, and
by its operation on the consciousness of men, throws open the path
into His very presence.
If I might use abstract words, I would say that Christ's death
potentially opens the path for every man, which being put into plain
English--which is better--is just that by the death of Christ every
man can, if he will, go to God, and live beside Him. And our faith
is our personal laying hold of that great sacrifice and treading on
that path. It turns the 'potentiality' into an actuality, the
possibility into a fact. If we believe on Him who died on the cross
for us all, then by that way we come to God, than which there is
none other given under heaven among men.
So all believers are priests, or none of them are. The absolute
right of direct access to God, without the intervention of any man
who has an officially greater nearness to Him than others, and
through whom as through a channel the grace of sacrament comes, is
contained in the great symbol of my text. And it is a truth that
this day needs. On the one hand there is agnostic unbelief, which
needs to see in the rent veil the illumination streaming through it
on to the depths of God; and on the other hand there is the
complementary error--and the two always breed each other--the
superstition which drags back by an anachronism the old Jewish
notions of priesthood into the Christian Church. It needs to see in
the rent veil the charter of universal priesthood for all believers,
and to hearken to the words which declare, 'Ye are a chosen
generation, a spiritual house, a royal priesthood, that ye should
offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable unto God by Jesus Christ.'
That is the lesson that this day wants. 'Having, therefore,
brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest of all, by the blood of
Jesus, by a new and living way, which He has consecrated for us
through the veil, that is His flesh, let us draw near with true
hearts in full assurance of faith.'