personal life and ministry was that of the Prophet, not of the Priest;
tending directly to the disparagement of whatever priesthood existed in
his country, without visibly preparing the substitution of anything at
all analogous to it. The sacerdotal order felt it so; and with the
infallible instinct of self-preservation, they watched, they hated, they
seized, they murdered him. The priest in every age has a natural
antipathy to the prophet, dreads him as kings dread revolution, and is
the first to detect his existence. The solemn moment and the gracious
words, of Christ’s first preaching in Nazareth, struck with fate the
temple in Jerusalem. To the old men of the village, to the neighbours
who knew his childhood, and companions who had shared its rambles and
its sports, he said, with the quiet flush of inspiration; “The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to
the poor: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach
deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind; to
set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of
the Lord.”[615] The Spirit of the Lord in Galilee! speaking with the
peasantry, dwelling in villages, and wandering loose and where it
listeth among the hills! This would never do, thought the white-robed
Levites of the Holy City; it would be as a train of wild-fire in the
Temple. And were they not right? When it was revealed that sanctity is
no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven,
from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof
that shelters a human head; that amid the crowd and crush of life, each
soul is in personal solitude with God, and by speech or silence (be they
but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace; that a
divine allegiance might _cost nothing_, but the strife of a dutiful will
and the patience of a filial heart; how could any priesthood hope to
stand? See how Jesus himself, when the Temple was close at hand, and the
sunshine dressed it in its splendour, yet withdrew his prayers to the
midnight of Mount Olivet, He entered those courts to teach, rather than
to worship; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to
give it; to bring with him the living spirit of God, and spread it
throughout all the place. When evening closes his teachings, and he
returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was
more of God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him,
and the sad love within him, than in the place called “Holy” which he
had left? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and
become his guest; when, after the labours of the day, he unburthened his
spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to
the sisters listening at his feet; did they not feel, as they retired at
length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no
sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In
childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his
parents’ home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its
truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and
constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration.
True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within its
enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain, and would not have
the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise: because in this
there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell
apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood; and while the
temple stands, it must be a temple true.
Our Lord’s whole ministry then (to which we may add that of his
apostles) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of
priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form,
without rites; with teaching free, occasional and various, with
sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by
invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;—all these
characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the
Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the
_word_ “PRIEST” (ἱερεὺς) never occurs in either the historical or
epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the
Hebrews. And _there_ its application is not a little remarkable. It is
applied to Christ alone: it is declared to belong to him, only after his
ascension: it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could
be, a priest: and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven,
this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some
sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no
priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world
above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below; and
banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow
more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of
the gospel and superintendents of churches—as Deacon, Elder or
Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop, are _Lay-terms_, belonging previously,
not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no
analogy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal
relations.[616] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which
our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first
representatives; “Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven;
and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;”[617] and
shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their successors
an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the
unseen world. I reply briefly:
1st, That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of
the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language,
the allotment of _church-membership_. The previous verse proves this,
furnishing as it does a particular case of the general authority here
assigned. It directs the apostles under what circumstances they are to
remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an
unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican. Having given them
their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them: and being
about to retire ere long, from personal intervention in the affairs of
his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions shall be his, and that
he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon
earth. He simply “consigns to his apostles discretionary power to direct
the affairs of his church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad
tidings: they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of
admission to their community, as their judgment may determine; employing
or rejecting applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from
their assemblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or
dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according to
their estimate of his qualifications and motives.”
2ndly, It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one
being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately
addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant
age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to
the mind of Jesus: and a title of perpetual office, an instrument
creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted,
to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been
successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove.
The alleged RITUAL of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of
Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction
from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as simply
an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and limited
therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration: neither
therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.
For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is
admitted to have existed before the Christian æra; and to have been
employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion.
It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic
dispensation; and though prevalent before the period of the New
Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognised in the writings of the Old.
It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which
Christians acknowledged to be supernatural: and must be considered as of
natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority
than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two
modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect
of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the
appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a
spectator. The former was an image of the Heathen convert’s purification
from a foul idolatry; and his transition to a stainless condition under
a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he
vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its
sight; and when he re-appeared, as emerging or born again to a better
state; the “old man” was “buried in baptism,” and when he “rose again,”
he had altogether “become new.”[618] The ceremony then was appropriately
used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of
existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect
religion to one true and heavenly.
But it will be said, whatever the origin of Baptism, it was employed and
sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his apostles to go and baptize
all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a
practice already extant,—of a practice which was as much the mere
institutional dress of the apostles’ nation, as the sandals whose dust
they were to shake off against the faithless, were the customary
clothing of the apostles’ feet,—and the authoritative appointment of a
Sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they
not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act?
Familiar association recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and
the absence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be
thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up
must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent
of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the
admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known
practice of the apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but
those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to
become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with
children can be adduced from Scripture: and the only argument by which
such employment of it is ever justified is this; that a _household_ is
said to have been baptized, and _all nations_ were to receive the offer
of it; and that the household _may_, the nations _must_, have contained
children. It is evident that such reasoning could never have been
propounded, unless the practice had existed first, and the defence had
been found afterwards.
With the system of infant baptism, vanish almost all the ideas which the
prevalent theology has put into the rite; and it becomes as intelligible
and expressive to one who believes in the good capacities of human
nature, as to those who esteem it originally depraved. ‘How unmeaning,’
say our orthodox opponents, ‘is this ceremony in Unitarian hands;
denying, as they do, the doctrines which it represents! of what
regeneration can they possibly suppose it the symbol, if not of the
washing away of that _hereditary sin_, which they refuse to acknowledge?
for when the infant is brought to the font, he can as yet have no other
guilt than this.’ I reply; the objection has no force except against the
use of _infant_ baptism in our churches,—which I am not anxious to
defend: but of course those Unitarians who employ it, conceive it to be
the token, not of any sentiments which they reject, but of truths and
feelings which they hold dear. For myself, I believe, with our
opponents, that the _doctrine_ of original sin and the _practice_ of
infant baptism _do_ belong to each other, and must stand or fall
together: and therefore deem it a fact very significant of the apostles’
theology, that no infant can be shown ever to have been “brought to the
font” by these first true missionaries of Christianity. And as to the
_new-birth_ which baptism (i.e. recent and genuine discipleship to
Jesus) may give to the _maturely-convinced_ Christian, he must have a
great deal to learn, not only of the Hebrew conceptions and language in
relation to the Messiah, but of the spirituality of the gospel, and of
the fresh creations of character which it calls up, who can be much
puzzled about its meaning.
In Christian baptism, then, we have no sacrament with mystic power; but
an initiatory form, possibly of consuetudinary obligation only; but if
enjoined, applicable exclusively to proselytes, and misemployed in the
case of infants; a sign of conversion, not a means of salvation;
confided to no sacerdotal order, but open to every man fitted to give it
an appropriate use.
I turn to the Lord’s Supper; with design to show, what it is not, and
what it is. It is not a mystery, or a sacrament, any more than it is an
expiatory sacrifice. To persuade us that it has a ritual character, we
are first assured that it is clearly the successor in the Gospel to the
Passover under the Law. Well,—even if it were so, it would still be
simply commemorative, and without any other efficacy than a festival,
filled with great remembrances, and inspired with religious joy. Such
was the Paschal Feast in Jerusalem;—the annual gathering of families and
kindred, a sacred carnival under the spring sky and in sight of unreaped
fields, when the memory was recalled of national deliverance, and the
tale was told of traditional glories, and the thoughts brought back of
bondage reversed, of the desert pilgrimage ended, of the promised land
possessed. The Jewish festival was no more than this; unless, with
Archbishop Magee and others, we erroneously conceive it to be a proper
sacrifice.[619] So that those who would interpret the Lord’s Supper by
the Passover have their choice between two views: that it is a simple
commemoration; or that it is an expiatory sacrifice: in the former case,
they quit the Church of England; in the latter, they fall into the
Church of Rome.
But, in truth, there is no propriety in applying the name ‘Christian
passover’ to the Communion. The notion rests entirely on this
circumstance; that the first three Evangelists describe the last Supper
as the Paschal Supper. But the _institutional_ part of that meal was
over before the cup was distributed, and the repetition of the act
enjoined. Nor is there the slightest trace, either in the subsequent
scriptures, or in the earliest history of the Church, that the Communion
was thought to bear relation to the passover. The time, the frequency,
the mode, of the two were altogether different. Indeed, when we observe
that not one of these particulars is prescribed and determined by our
Lord at all, when we notice the slight and transient manner in which he
drops his wish that they would “do this in remembrance of” him, when we
compare these features of the account with the elaborate precision of
Moses respecting hours, and materials, and dates, and places, and modes
in the establishment of the Hebrew festivals, it is scarcely possible to
avoid the impression, that we are reading narrative, not law; an
utterance of personal affection, rather than the legislative enactment
of an everlasting institution.[620] However this may be, no importance
can be attached to the reported coincidence in the time of that meal
with the day of passover: for the apostle John, who gives by far the
fullest account of what happened at that table (yet never mentions the
institution of the supper), states that this was not the paschal meal at
all, which did not occur, he says, till the following day of
crucifixion.[621]
‘But,’ it will be said, ‘the gospels are not the only parts of
Scripture, whence the nature of the eucharist may be learned. Language
is employed by St. Paul in reference to it, which cannot be understood
of a mere memorial, and implies that awful consequences hung on the
worthy or unworthy participation in the rite. Does he not even say, that
a man may “eat and drink damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord’s
body?”’
The passage whence these words are cited certainly throws great light on
the institution of which we treat: but there must be a total disregard
to the whole context and the general course of the apostle’s reasoning
before it can be made to yield any argument for the mystical character
of the rite.[622] It would appear that the Corinthian church was in the
habit of celebrating the Lord’s Supper in a way which, even if it had
never been disgraced by any indecorum, must have struck a modern
Christian with wonder at its singularity. The members met together in
one room or church, each bringing his own supper, of such quantity and
quality as his opulence or poverty might allow. To this the apostle does
not object, but apparently considers it a part of the established
arrangement. But these Christians were divided into factions, and had
not learned the true uniting spirit of their faith: nor do they seem to
have acquired that sobriety of habit and sanctity of mind, which their
profession ought to have induced. When they entered the place of
meeting, they broke up into groups and parties, class apart from class,
and rich deserting poor: each set began its separate meal, some
indulging in luxury and excess, others with scarce the means of keeping
the commemoration at all; and, infamous to tell, the blessed supper of
the Lord was sunk into a tavern meal. So gross and habitual had the
abuse become, that the excesses had affected the health and life of
these guilty and unworthy partakers. They had made no distinction
between the Communion and an ordinary repast, had lost all perception of
the memorial significance of their meeting, had not discriminated or
“discerned the Lord’s body:” and so they had eaten and drunk judgment
(improperly rendered “_damnation_” in the English Version) to
themselves; and many were weak and sickly among them, and many even
slept. Well would it be, if they would look on this as a chastening of
the Lord: in which case they might take warning, and escape being cast
out of the church, and driven to take their chance with the unbelieving
and heathen world. “When we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord,
that we should not be condemned with the world.”
In order to remedy all this corruption, St. Paul reminds them, that to
eat and drink under the same roof, in the church, does not constitute
proper Communion: that, to this end, they must not break up into
sections, and retain their property in the food, but all participate
seriously together. He directs that an absolute separation shall be made
between the occasions for satisfying hunger and thirst, and those for
observing this commemorative rite, discriminating carefully the memorial
of the Lord’s body from every thing else. He refers them all to the
original model of the institution, the parting meal of Christ, before
his betrayal; and by this example, as a criterion, he would have every
man examine himself, and after that pattern eat of the bread and drink
of the cup. Hence it appears,
That the unworthy partaker was the riotous Corinthian, who made no
distinction between the sacred Communion and a vulgar meal:
That the judgment or damnation which such brought on themselves, was
sickliness, weakness, and premature but natural death:
That the self-examination which the apostle recommends to the
communicant is, a comparison of his mode of keeping the rite, with the
original model of the Last Supper:
That in the Corinthian Church there was no Priest, or officiating
dispenser of the elements: and that St. Paul did not contemplate or
recommend the appointment of any such person.
The Lord’s Supper, then, I conclude, was and is a simple commemoration.
Am I asked, ‘_of what?_ Why, according to Unitarian views, the death on
the cross merits the memorial, more than the remaining features of our
Lord’s history,—more even than the death of many a noble martyr, who has
sealed his testimony to truth by like self-sacrifice?’ The answer will
be found at length in the Lecture on the Atonement, where the Scriptural
conceptions of Christ’s death are expounded in detail. Meanwhile, it is
sufficient to recal an idea, which has more than once been thrown out
during this course: that if Jesus had taken up his Messianic power
without death, he would have remained a Hebrew, and been limited to the
people amid whom he was born. He quitted his mortal personality, he left
this fleshly tabernacle of existence, and became immortal, that his
nationality might be destroyed, and all men drawn in as subjects of his
reign. It was the cross that opened to the nations the blessed ways of
life, and put us all in relations not of law, but of love, to him and
God. Hence the memorial of his death celebrates the universality and
spirituality of the gospel; declares the brotherhood of men, the
fatherhood of providence, the personal affinity of every soul with God.
That is no empty rite, which overflows with these conceptions.
Christianity, then, I maintain, is without Priest, and without Ritual.
It altogether coalesces with the prophetic idea of religion, and
repudiates the sacerdotal. Christ himself was transcendently THE
PROPHET. He brought down God to this our life, and left his spirit amid
its scenes. The Apostles were prophets; they carried that spirit abroad,
revealing everywhere to men the sanctity of their nature, and the
proximity of their heaven. Nor am I even unwilling to admit an Apostolic
succession, never yet extinct, and never more to be extinguished. But
then it is by no means a rectilinear regiment of incessant priests; but
a broken, scattered, yet glorious race of prophets; the genealogy of
great and Christian souls, through whom the primitive conceptions of
Jesus have propagated themselves from age to age; mind producing mind,
courage giving birth to courage, truth developing truth, and love ever
nurturing love, so long as one good and noble spirit shall act upon
another. Luther surely was the child of Paul: and what a noble offspring
has risen to manhood from Luther’s soul; whom to enumerate, were to tell
the best triumphs of the modern world. These are Christ’s true
ambassadors; and never did he mean any follower of his to be called a
priest. He has his genuine messenger, wherever, in the Church or in the
world, there toils any one of the real prophets of our race; any one who
can create the good and great in other souls, whether by truth of word
or deed, by the inspiration of genuine speech, or the better power of a
life merciful and holy.
* * * * *
And here, my friends, with my subject might my Lecture close; were it
not that we are assembled now to terminate this controversy: and that a
few remarks in reference to its whole course and spirit seem to be
required.
That the recent aggression upon the principles of Unitarian
Christianity, was prompted by no unworthy motive, individual or
political, but by a zeal, Christian so far as its spirit is
disinterested, and unchristian only so far as it is exclusive, has never
been doubted or denied by my brother ministers or myself. That much
personal consideration and courtesy have been evinced towards us during
the controversy, it is so grateful to us to acknowledge, that we must
only regret the theological obstructions in the way of that mutual
knowledge, which softens the prejudices, and corrects the errors of the
closet. From such errors, the lot of our fallible nature, we are deeply
aware that we cannot be exempt, and profoundly wish that, by others’ aid
or by our own, we could discover them. Meanwhile, we do not feel that
our opponents have been successful in the offer which they have made, of
help towards this end. They are too little acquainted with our history
and character, and have far too great a horror of us, to succeed in a
design, demanding rather the benevolence of sympathy and trust, than
that of antipathy and fear. Hence have arisen certain complaints and
charges against our system and its tendencies, which, having been
reiterated again and again in the Christ Church Lectures, and scarcely
noticed in our own, claim a concluding observation or two now.
1. We are said to be infidels in disguise, and our system to be drifting
fast towards utter unbelief. At all events, it is said we make great
advances that way.