his punctualities had been thrown away; that at the advent, faith in
Jesus, not obedience to the law, was to be the title to admission; and
that the redeemed at that day would be, not the scrupulous
Pharisee,—whose dead works would be of no avail; but all who, with the
heart, have worthily confessed the name of the Lord Jesus? What doctrine
could be more unwelcome to the haughty Israelite? it dashed his pride of
ancestry to the ground. It brought to the same level with himself the
polluted Gentile, whose presence would alone render all unclean in the
Messiah’s kingdom. It proved his past ritual anxieties to have been all
wasted. It cast aside for the future the venerated law; left it in
neglect to die; and made all the apparatus of Providence for its
maintenance end in absolutely nothing. Was then the Messiah to
supersede, and not to vindicate the law? How different this from the
picture which prophets had drawn of his golden age, when Jerusalem was
to be the pride of the earth, and her temple the praise of nations,
sought by the feet of countless pilgrims, and decked with the splendour
of their gifts! How could a true Hebrew be justified in a life without
law? How think himself safe in a profession, which was without temple,
without priest, without altar, without victim?
Not unnaturally, then, did the Hebrews regard with reluctance two of the
leading features of Christianity; the death of the Messiah, and the
freedom from the law. The epistle addressed to them was designed to
soothe their uneasiness, and to show, that if the Mosaic institutions
were superseded, it was in conformity with principles and analogies
contained within themselves. With great address, the writer links the
two difficulties together, and makes the one explain the other. He finds
a ready means of effecting this, in the sacrificial ideas familiar to
every Hebrew; for by representing the death of Jesus as commutation for
legal observances, he is only ascribing to it an operation, acknowledged
to have place in the death of every lamb slain as a sin-offering at the
altar. These offerings were a distinct recognition on the part of the
Levitical code, of a principle of _equivalents_ for its ordinances; a
proof that, under certain conditions, they might yield: nothing more,
therefore, was necessary, than to show that the death of Christ
established those conditions. And such a method of argument was attended
by this advantage, that while the _practical end_ would be obtained of
terminating all ceremonial observance, the Law was yet treated as _in
theory_ perpetual; not as ignominiously abrogated, but as legitimately
commuted. Just as the Israelite, in paying his offering at the altar to
compensate for ritual omissions, recognized thereby the claims of the
law, while he obtained impunity for its neglect; so, if Providence could
be shown to have provided a legal substitute for the system, its
authority was acknowledged, at the moment that its abolition was
secured.
Let us advert then to the functions of the Mosaic sin-offerings, to
which the writer has recourse to illustrate his main position. They were
of the nature of a _mulct or acknowledgment rendered, for unconscious or
inevitable disregard of ceremonial liabilities, and contraction of
ceremonial uncleanness_. Such uncleanness might be incurred from various
causes; and while unremoved by the appointed methods of purification,
disqualified from attendance at the sanctuary, and “cut off” “the
guilty” “from among the congregation.” To touch a dead body, to enter a
tent where a corpse lay, rendered a person “unclean for seven days;” to
come in contact with a forbidden animal, a bone, a grave; to be next to
any one struck with sudden death; to be afflicted with certain kinds of
bodily disease and infirmity; unwittingly to lay a finger on a person
unclean, occasioned defilement, and necessitated a purification or an
atonement.[370] Independently of these offences, enforced upon the
Israelite by the accidents of life, it was not easy for even the most
cautious worshipper to keep pace with the complicated series of petty
debts which the law of ordinances was always running up against him. If
his offering had an invisible blemish; if he omitted a tithe, because
“he wist it not;” or inadvertently fell into arrear, by a single day,
with respect to a known liability; if absent from disease, he was
compelled to let his ritual account accumulate; “though it be hidden
from him,” he must “be guilty, and bear his iniquity,” and bring his
victim.[371] On the birth of a child, the mother, after the lapse of a
prescribed period, made her pilgrimage to the temple, presented her
sin-offering, and “the priest made atonement for her.”[372] The poor
leper, long banished from the face of men, and unclean by the nature of
his disease, became a debtor to the sanctuary, and on return from his
tedious quarantine, brought his lamb of atonement, and departed thence,
clear from neglected obligations to his law.[373] It was impossible,
however, to provide by specific enactment for every case of ritual
transgression and impurity, arising from inadvertency or necessity.
Scarcely could it be expected that the courts of worship themselves
would escape defilement, from imperfections in the offerings, or
unconscious disqualification in people or in priest. To clear off the
whole invisible residue of such sins, an annual “day of atonement” was
appointed; the people thronged the avenues and approaches of the
tabernacle; in their presence a kid was slain for their own
transgressions, and for the high-priest the more dignified expiation of
a heifer: charged with the blood of each successively, he sprinkled not
only the exterior altar open to the sky, but, passing through the first
and Holy chamber into the Holy of Holies, (never entered else), he
touched, with finger dipped in blood, the sacred lid (the Mercy-seat)
and foreground of the Ark.[374] At that moment, while he yet lingers
behind the veil, the purification is complete; on no worshipper of
Israel does any legal unholiness rest; and were it possible for the
high-priest to remain in that interior retreat of Jehovah, still
protracting the expiatory act, so long would this national purity
continue, and the debt of ordinances be effaced as it arose. But he must
return; the sanctifying rite must end; the people be dismissed; the
priests resume the daily ministrations; the law open its stern account
afresh; and in the mixture of national exactitude and neglects,
defilements multiply again till the recurring anniversary lifts off the
burden once more. Every year, then, the necessity comes round of “making
atonement for the Holy sanctuary,” “for the tabernacle,” “for the
altar,” “for the priests, and for all the people of the congregation.”
Yet, though requiring periodical renewal, the rite, so far as it went,
had an efficacy which no Hebrew could deny; for ceremonial sins,
unconscious or inevitable (to which all atonement was limited[375]), it
was accepted as an indemnity; and put it beyond doubt that Mosaic
obedience was commutable.
Such was the system of ideas, by availing himself of which the author of
the Epistle to the Hebrews would persuade his correspondents to forsake
their legal observances. “You can look without uneasiness,” he suggests,
“on your ritual omissions, when the blood of some victim has been
presented instead, and the penetralia of your sanctuary have been
sprinkled with the offering: well, on no other terms would I soothe your
anxiety; precisely such equivalent sacrifice does Christianity exhibit,
only of so peculiar a nature, that for _all_ ceremonial neglects,
intentional no less than inadvertent, you may rely upon indemnity.” The
Jews entertained a belief respecting their temple, which enabled the
writer to give a singular force and precision to his analogy. They
conceived, that the tabernacle of their worship was but the copy of a
divine structure, devised by God himself, made by no created hand, and
preserved eternally in heaven: this was “the true tabernacle, which the
Lord pitched, and not man;” which no mortal had beheld, except Moses in
the mount that he might “make all things according to that
pattern;”[376] within whose Holy of Holies dwelt no emblem or emanation
of God’s presence, but his own immediate Spirit; and the celestial
furniture of which required, in proportion to its dignity, the
purification of a nobler sacrifice, and the ministrations of a diviner
priest, than befitted the “worldly sanctuary”[377] below. And who then
can mistake the meaning of Christ’s departure from this world, or doubt
what office he conducts above? He is called by his ascension to the
Pontificate of heaven; consecrated, “not after the law of any carnal
commandment, but after the power of an endless life;”[378] he drew aside
the veil of his mortality, and passed into the inmost court of God: and
as he must needs “have somewhat to offer,”[379] he takes the only blood
he had ever shed,—which was his own,—and like the high-priest before the
Mercy-seat, sanctifies therewith the people that stand without,
“redeeming the transgressions” which “the first covenant” of rites
entailed.[380] And he has not returned; still is he hid within that
holiest place; and still the multitude he serves turn thither a silent
and expectant gaze; he prolongs the purification still; and while he
appears not, no other rites can be resumed, nor any legal defilement be
contracted. Thus, meanwhile, ordinances cease their obligation, and the
sin against them has lost its power. How different this from the
offerings of Jerusalem, whose temple was but the “symbol and shadow” of
that sanctuary above.[381] In the Hebrew “sacrifices there was a
remembrance again made of sins every year;”[382] “the high-priest
annually entered the holy place;”[383] being but a mortal, he could not
go in with his own blood and _remain_ but must take that of other
creatures and _return_; and hence it became “not possible that the blood
of bulls and of goats should _take away_ sins,”[384] for instantly they
began to accumulate again. But to the very nature of Christ’s offering,
a perpetuity of efficacy belongs; bearing no other than _his own_
blood,” he was immortal when his ministration began, and “ever liveth to
make his intercession;[385] he could “not offer himself often, for then
must he often have suffered since the foundation of the world,”—and “it
is appointed unto men _only once_ to die:” so that “_once for all_ he
entered into the holy place, and obtained a redemption that is
_perpetual_;” “_once_ in the end of the world hath he appeared, and by
sacrificing himself hath absolutely _put away_ sin;” “this man, after he
had offered one sacrifice for sins, for ever sat down on the right hand
of God,” “for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are
sanctified,”[386] The ceremonial then, with its periodical
transgressions, and atonements, is suspended; the services of the outer
tabernacle cease, for the holiest of all is made manifest;[387] one who
is “priest for ever” dwells therein: one “consecrated for evermore,”
“holy, harmless, undefiled, in his celestial dwelling quite separate
from sinners;[388] who needeth not _daily_, as those high priests, to
offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the people’s;
for this he did _once for all_ when he offered up himself.”[389]
Nor is it in its perpetuity alone, that the efficacy of the Christian
sacrifice transcends the atonements of the law; it removes a higher
order of ritual transgressions. It cannot be supposed, indeed, that
Messiah’s life is no nobler offering than that of a creature from the
herd or flock, and will confer no more immunity. Accordingly, it goes
beyond those “_sins of ignorance_,” those ceremonial inadvertences, for
which alone there was remission in Israel; and reaches to _voluntary_
neglects of the sacerdotal ordinances; ensuring indemnity for legal
omissions, when incurred not simply by the accidents of the flesh, but
even by intention of the conscience. This is no greater boon than the
dignity of the sacrifice requires; and does but give to his people below
that living relation of soul to God, which he himself sustains above.
“If the blood of bulls and of goats ... sanctifieth to the purifying of
the flesh: how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the
eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purify (even) your
conscience from dead works (ritual observances) to serve the living
God!”[390] Let then the ordinances go, and the Lord “put his laws _into
the mind_ and write them _in the heart_;” and let all have “boldness to
enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by this new and living way
which he hath consecrated for us;” “provoking each other to love and to
good works.”[391]
See, then, in brief, the objection of the Hebrews to the gospel; and the
reply of their instructor. They said; “What a blank is this; you have no
temple, no priest, no ritual! How is it that, in his ancient covenant,
God is so strict about ceremonial service, and permits no neglect,
however incidental, without atonement; yet in this new economy, throws
the whole system away; letting us run up an everlasting debt to a law
confessedly unrepealed, without redemption of it, or atonement for it?”
“Not without redemption and atonement,” replies their evangelical
teacher; “temple, sacrifice, priest, remain to us also, only glorified
into proportions worthy of a heavenly dispensation; our temple, in the
skies; our sacrifice, Messiah’s mortal person; our priest, his
ever-living spirit. How poor the efficacy of your former offerings! year
after year, your ritual debt began again: for the blood dried and
vanished from the tabernacle which it purified; the priest returned from
the inner shrine; and when there, he stood, with the interceding blood,
before the emblem, not the reality of God. But Christ, not at the end of
a year, but at the end of the great world-era of the Lord, has come to
offer up himself,—no lamb so unblemished as he; his voluntary and
immortal spirit, than which was nothing ever more divinely consecrate,
becomes officiating priest, and strikes his own person with immolating
blow; it falls and bleeds on earth, as on the outer altar, standing on
the threshold of the sanctuary of heaven: thither he ascends with the
memorials of his death, vanishes into the Holy of Holies of the skies,
presents himself before the very living God, and sanctifies the temple
there and worshippers here: saying to us, ‘drop now for ever the legal
burdens that weigh you down; doubt not that you are free, as my
glorified spirit here, from the defilements you are wont to dread; I
stay behind this veil of visible things to clear you of all such taint,
and put away such sin eternally. Trust then in me, and take up the
freedom of your souls: burst the dead works, that cling round your
conscience like cerements of the grave; and rise to me, by the living
power of duty, and loving allegiance to God.’”
So far then, as the death of Christ is treated in scripture
dogmatically, rather than historically, its effects are viewed in
contrast with the different order of things which must have been
expected, had he, as Messiah, _not_ died. And thus regarded, it
presented itself to the minds of the Apostles in three relations;
First, to the Gentiles, whom it drew in to be subjects of the Messiah,
by breaking down the barriers of his Hebrew personality, and rendering
him spiritual as well as immortal.
Secondly, to the unbelieving Jews; whom his retirement from this world
delivered from the judgment due to them, on the principles of their own
law, both for their _general_ violation of the _conditions_ of their
covenant, and for their positive rejection of him. His absence re-opened
their opportunities; and to tender them this act of long-suffering, he
took on himself the death which had been incurred by them.
Thirdly, to the believing Jews; the terms of whose discipleship the
Messiah’s death had changed, destroying all the benefits of their
lineage, and substituting an act of the mind, the simpler claim of
faith. It was therefore a commutation for the Ritual Law, and gave them
impunity and atonement for all its violations.
With the last two of these relations, beyond their remarkable historical
interest, we have no personal concern. The first remains, and ever will
remain, worthy of the glorious joy, with which Paul regarded and
expounded it. God has committed the rule of this world to no exclusive
Prince, and no sacerdotal power, and no earthly majesty; but to one
whose spirit, too divine to be limited to place and time, broke through
clouds of sorrow into the clearest heaven; and thither has since been
drawing our human love, though for ages now he has been unseen and
immortal. An impartial God, a holy and spiritual Law, an infinite hope
for all men,—are given to us by that generous cross.
It is evident that all three of the relations which I have described,
belonged to the death of Jesus, _in his capacity of Messiah_; and could
have had no existence, if he had not borne this character, but had been
simply a private martyr to his convictions. The foregoing exposition
gives a direct answer to the inquiry, pressed without the slightest
pertinence upon the Unitarian, why the phraseology of the cross is never
found applied to Paul or Peter, or any other noble confessor, who died
in attestation of the truth; why “no record is given that we are
justified by the blood of Stephen; or that he bare our sins in his own
body, and made reconciliation for us.”[392] I know not why such a
question should be submitted to us; we have assuredly no concern with
it; having never dreamt that the Apostles could have written as they did
respecting the death on Calvary, if they had thought of it only as a
scene of martyrdom. We have passed under review the whole language of
the New Testament on this subject; and in the interpretation of it have
_not even once_ had recourse to this, which is said to be our only view
of the cross. We have seen the apostles justly announcing their Lord’s
death, as a _proper propitiation_; because it placed whole classes of
men, without any meritorious change in their character, in saving
relations: declaring it a _strict substitute_ for others’ punishment; on
the ground that there were those who must have perished, if he had not;
and that he died and retired, that they might remain and live:
describing it as a _sacrifice which put away sin_; because it did that
for ever, which the Levitical atonements achieved for a day: but we have
not found them ever appealing to it either as a satisfaction to the
justice of God, or an example of martyrdom to men. The Trinitarians have
one idea of this event themselves; and their fancy provides their
opponents with one idea of it; of the former not a trace exists, on any
page of Scripture; and of the latter, the Unitarian need not avail
himself at all, in explaining the language, whereof it is said to be his
solitary key.
Nowhere, then, in Scripture do we meet with anything corresponding with
the prevailing notions of vicarious redemption; everywhere, and most
emphatically in the personal instructions of our Lord, do we find a
doctrine of forgiveness, and an idea of salvation, utterly inconsistent
with it. He spake often of the unqualified clemency of God to his
returning children; never once of the satisfaction demanded by his
justice. He spake of the joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth;
but was silent on the sacrificial faith, without which penitence is said
to be unavailing. Nor did he, like his modern disciples, teach that
there are _two separate salvations_, which must follow each other in a
fixed order; first, redemption from the penalty, secondly from the
spirit, of sin; pardon for the past, before sanctification in the
present; a removal of the “hindrance in God,” previous to its
annihilation in ourselves. If indeed there were in Christianity two
deliverances, discriminating and successive, it would be more in
accordance with its spirit to invert this order;—to recal from
alienation first, and announce forgiveness afterwards; to restore from
guilt, before cancelling the penalty; and permit the _healing_ to
anticipate the _pardoning_ love. At least, there would seem, in such
arrangement, to be a greater jealousy for the holiness of the divine
law, a severer reservation of God’s complacency for those who have
broken from the service of sin, than in the system, which proclaims
impunity to the rebel will, ere yet its estrangement is renounced. If
the outward remission precedes the inward sanctification, then does God
admit to favour the yet unsanctified; guilt keeps us in no exile from
him: and though the holy Spirit is to follow afterwards, it becomes the
peculiar office of the cross to lift us as we are, with every stain upon
the soul and every vile habit unretraced, from the brink of perdition to
the assurance of glory: the divine lot is given to us, before the divine
love is awakened in us; and the heirs of heaven have yet to become the
children of holiness. With what consistency can the advocates of such an
economy accuse its opponents of dealing lightly with sin, of deluding
men into a false trust, and administering seductive flatteries to human
nature?[393] What! shall we, who plant in every soul of sin a Hell,
whence no foreign force, no external God, can pluck us, any more than
they can tear us from our identity;—we, who hide the fires of torment in
no viewless gulf, but make them ubiquitous as guilt;—we, who suffer no
outward agent from Eden, or the Abyss, or Calvary, to encroach upon the
solitude of man’s responsibility, and confuse the simplicity of
conscience;—we, who teach that God will not, and even cannot, spare the
froward, till they be froward no more, but must permit the burning lash
to fall, till they cry aloud for mercy, and throw themselves freely into
his embrace;—shall we be rebuked for a lax administration of peace, by
those who think that a moment may turn the alien into the elect? It is
no flattery of our nature, to reverence deeply its moral capacities: we
only discern in them the more solemn trust; and see in their abuse the
fouler shame. And it is not of what men _are_, but of what they _might
be_, that we encourage noble and cheerful thoughts. Doubtless, we think
exaggeration possible (which our opponents apparently do not) even in
the portraiture of their actual character: and perhaps we are not the
less likely to awaken true convictions of sin, that we strive to speak
of it with the voice of discriminative justice, instead of the
monotonous thunders of vengeance; and to draw its image in the natural
tints provided by the conscience, rather than in the præternatural
flame-colour mingled in the crucibles of Hell.