THE REVELATION
OF
LAW
IN
SCRIPTURE
Considered with respect both to
its own nature, and to its relative
place in successive dispensations.
Patrick Fairbairn, D.D.
Report
any errors to Ted Hildebrandt: ted.hildebrandt@gordon.edu
T. & T. Clark's 1869
PREFACE
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THE subject handled in the following Lectures enters
so deeply into the whole scheme and objects of
Divine Revelation, that no apology can be required for
directing public attention to it; at any period, and in
any circumstances of the church, it may fitly enough be
chosen for particular inquiry and discussion. But no
one acquainted with the recent phases of theological
sentiment in this country, and with the prevailing
tendencies of the age, can fail to perceive its special
appropriateness as a theme for discussion at the present
time. If this, however, has naturally led to a somewhat
larger proportion of the controversial element than might
otherwise have been necessary, I have endeavoured to
give the discussion as little as possible of a polemical
aspect; and have throughout been more anxious to unfold
and establish what I conceive to be the true, than to go
into minute and laboured refutations of the false. On
this account, also, personal references have been omitted
to some of the more recent advocates of the views here
controverted, where it could be done without prejudice to
the course of discussion.
viii PREFACE.
The terms of the Trust-deed, in connection with
which the Lectures appear, only require that not fewer
than six be delivered in Edinburgh, but as to publica-
tion wisely leave it to the discretion and judgment of the
Lecturer, either to limit himself to that number, or to
supplement it with others according to the nature and
demands of his subject. I have found it necessary to
avail myself of this liberty, by the addition of half as
many more Lectures as those actually delivered; and one
of these (Lecture IV.), from the variety and importance
of the topics discussed in it, has unavoidably extended to
nearly twice the length of any of the others. However
unsuitable this would have been if addressed to an
audience, as a component part of a book there will be
found in it a sufficient number of breaks to relieve the
attention of the reader.
The Supplementary Dissertations, and the exposition
of the more important passages in St Paul’s writings in
reference to the law, which follow the Lectures, have
added considerably to the size of the volume; but it
became clear as I proceeded, that the discussion of the
subject in the Lectures would have been incomplete
without them. It is possible, indeed, that in this
respect some may be disposed to note a defect rather
than a superfluity, and to point to certain other topics or
passages which appear to them equally entitled to a place.
I have only to say, that as it was necessary to make a
selection, I have endeavoured to embrace in this portion
what seemed to be, for the present time, relatively the
most important, and, as regards the passages of Scripture,
PREFACE. ix
have, I believe, included all that are of essential moment
for the ends more immediately contemplated. But
several topics, I may be allowed to add, very closely
connected with the main theme of this volume, have
been already treated in my work on the ‘Typology of
Scripture;’ and though it has been found impracticable
to avoid coming here occasionally on the ground which
had been traversed there, it was manifestly proper that
this should not be done beyond what the present subject,
in its main features, imperatively required.
GLASGOW, October 1868.
CONTENTS.
LECTURE I.
PAGE
INTRODUCTORY-Prevailing Views in respect to the Ascendency of Law
(1) In the Natural; (2) In the Moral and Religious Sphere; and
the Relation in which they stand to the Revelations of Scripture on
the subject, . . . . . . . . . 1-33
LECTURE II.
The Relation of Man at Creation to Moral Law—How far or in what
respects the Law in its Principles was made known to him- The
grand Test of his Rectitude, and his Failure under it, . . . . 34-60
LECTURE III.
The Revelation of Law, strictly so called, viewed in respect to the Time
and Occasion of its Promulgation, . . . . . . 61-81
LECTURE IV.
The Law in its Form and Substance—Its more Essential Characteristics
—and the Relation of one Part of its Contents to another, . . .82-146
LECTURE V.
The Position and Calling of Israel as placed under the Covenant of Law,
what precisely involved in it—False Views on the subject Exposed
—The Moral Results of the Economy, according as the Law was
legitimately used or the reverse, . . . . . . 147-179
LECTURE VI.
The Economical Aspect of the Law—The Defects adhering to it as such
—The Relation of the Psalms and Prophets to it—Mistaken Views
of this Relation—The great Problem with which the Old Testament
closed, and the Views of different Parties respecting its Solution, . 180-213
CONTENTS.
PAGE
LECTURE VII.
The Relation of the Law to the Mission and Work of Christ—The
Symbolical and Ritual finding in Him its termination, and the Moral its
formal Appropriation and perfect Fulfilment, . . . 214-252
LECTURE VIII.
The Relation of the Law to the Constitution, the Privileges, and the
Calling of the Christian Church, . . . . . . 253-291
LECTURE IX.
The Re-introduction of Law into the Church of the New Testament, in
the sense in which Law was abolished by Christ and His Apostles, 292-323
SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
I. The Double Form of the Decalogue, and the Questions to which it
has given rise, . . . . . . . 325-334
II. The Historical Element in God’s Revelations of Truth and Duty,
considered with an especial respect to their Claim on Men’s
Responsibilities and Obligations, . . . . . 335-355
III. Whether a Spirit of Revenge is countenanced in the Writings of
the Old Testament, . . . . . . . 356-364
_________________
EXPOSITION OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PASSAGES
ON THE LAW IN ST PAUL’S EPISTLES.
PAGE PAGE
2 Cor. iii. 2-18, 366 Rom. v. 12-21, 415
Gal. ii. 14-21, 385 " vi. 14-18, 421
" iii. 19-26, 391 " vii., 425
" iv. 1-7, 400 " x. 4-9, 442
" v. 13-15, 403 " xiv. 1-7 448
Rom. ii. 13-15, 405 Eph. ii. 11-17, 453
" iii.19,20, 408 Col.ii.11-17, 462
" iii. 31, 412 1 Tim. i. 8-11, 474
THE REVELATION OF LAW IN SCRIPTURE.
LECTURE I.
INTRODUCTORY.
PREVAILING VIEWS IN RESPECT TO THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW
(1) IN THE NATURAL; (2) IN THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS
SPHERE; AND THE RELATION IN WHICH THEY STAND TO
THE REVELATIONS OF SCRIPTURE ON THE SUBJECT.
AMONG the more marked tendencies of our age,
especially as represented by its scientific and literary
classes, may justly be reckoned a prevailing tone of sen-
timent regarding the place and authority of law in the
Divine administration. The sentiment is a divided one;
for the tendency in question takes a twofold direction,
according as it respects the natural, or the moral and
religious sphere—in the one exalting, we may almost say
deifying law; in the other narrowing its domain, some-
times even ignoring its existence. An indissoluble chain
of sequences, the fixed and immutable law of cause and
effect, whether always discoverable or not, is contem-
plated as binding together the order of events in the
natural world; but as regards the spiritual, it is the
inherent right or sovereignty of the individual mind that
is chiefly made account of, subject only to the claims of
social order, the temporal interests of humanity, and the
general enlightenment of the times. And as there can
be no doubt that these divergent lines of thought have
found their occasion, and to some extent also their ground,
2 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the one in the marked advancement of natural science,
the other in the progress of the Divine dispensations, it
will form a fitting introduction to the inquiry that lies
before us to take a brief review of both, in their general
relation to the great truths and principles of Scripture.
I. We naturally look first, in such a survey, to the
physical territory, to the vast and complicated field of
nature. Here a twofold disturbance has arisen—the one
from men of science pressing, not so much ascertained
facts, as plausible inferences or speculations built on them,
to unfavourable conclusions against Scripture; the other
from theologians themselves overstepping in their inter-
pretations of Scripture, and finding in it revelations of
law, or supposed indications of order, in the natural
sphere, which it was never intended to give. As so inter-
preted by Patristic, Mediaeval, and even some compara-
tively late writers, the Bible has unquestionably had its
authority imperilled by being brought into collision with
indisputable scientific results. But the better it is under-
stood the more will it be found to have practised in this
respect a studious reserve, and to have as little invaded
the proper field of scientific inquiry and induction, as to
have assumed, in regard to it, the false position of the
nature-religions of heathenism. It is the moral and
religious sphere with which the Bible takes strictly to
do; and only in respect to the more fundamental things
belonging to the constitution of nature and its relation to
the Creator, can it be said to have committed itself to any
authoritative deliverance. Written, as every book must
be that is adapted to popular use, in the language of
common life, it describes the natural phenomena of which
it speaks according to the appearances, rather than the
realities, of things. This was inevitable and requires to
LECT. I.] INTRODUCTORY. 3
be made due account of by those who would deal justly
with its contents. But while freely and familiarly dis-
coursing about much pertaining to the creation and pro-
vidence of the world, the Bible does not, in respect to the
merely natural frame and order of things, pronounce upon
their latent powers or modes of operation, nor does it
isolate events from the proper instrumental agencies. It
undoubtedly presents the works and movements of nature
in close connection with the will and pervasive energy of
God; but then it speaks thus of them all alike—of the
little as well as the great—of the ordinary not less than
the extraordinary, or more striking and impressive.
According to the Bible, God thunders, indeed, in the
clouds; but the winds also, even the gentlest zephyrs,
blow at His command, and do His bidding. If it is He
who makes the sun to know his going forth, and pour
light and gladness over the face of nature, it is He also
who makes the rain to fall and the seeds of the earth to
spring, and clothes the lilies of the field with beauty.
Not even a sparrow falls to the ground without Him.
And as in the nearer and more familiar of these opera-
tions everything is seen to be accomplished through
means and ordinances bound up with nature’s constitu-
tion; so, it is reasonable to infer, must it be with the
grander and more remote. In short, while it is the
doctrine of the Bible that God is in all, and in a sense
does all, nothing is authoritatively defined as to the how
or by what they are done; and science is at perfect
liberty to prosecute its researches with the view of dis-
covering the individual properties of things, and how,
when brought into relation, they act and react on each
other, so as to produce the results which appear in the
daily march of providence.
Now, let this relation of the Bible, with its true
4 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
religion, to the pursuits of science, be placed alongside
that of the false religions of Greek and Roman poly-
theism which it supplanted, and let the effect be noted—
the legitimate and necessary effect—of the progress of
science in its clearest and best established conclusions on
the one as compared with the other. Resting on an
essentially pantheistic basis, those ancient religions ever
tended to associate the objects and operations of nature
with the immediate presence and direct agency of some
particular deity—to identify the one in a manner with
the other; and very specially to do this with the greater
and more remarkable phenomena of nature. Thus Helios,
or the Sun, was deified in Apollo, and was not poetically
represented merely, but religiously believed, to mount
his chariot, drawn by a team of fiery steeds, in the morn-
ing, to rise by a solid pathway to mid-heaven, and then
descend toward the western horizon, that his wearied
coursers might be refreshed before entering on the labours
of another day. Selené, or the Moon, in like manner,
though in humbler guise, was contemplated as pursuing
her nocturnal course. Sun, moon, and stars, it was
believed, bathed themselves every night in the waves of
ocean, and got their fires replenished by partaking of the
Neptunian element. Eclipses were prodigies—portentous
signs of wrath in heaven—which struck fear into men’s
bosoms, as on the eve of direful calamities, and sometimes
so paralysing them as to become itself the occasion of the
sorest disasters. Hence, the philosophy which applied
itself to explore the operation of physical properties and
laws in connection with natural events, was accounted
impious; since, as Plutarch remarks,1 it seemed ‘to
ascribe things to insensate causes, unintelligent powers,
and necessary changes, thereby jostling aside the divine.’
1 Life of Nicias.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 5
On this account Anaxagoras was thrown into prison by
the Athenians, and narrowly escaped with his life.
Socrates was less fortunate; he suffered the condemna-
tion and penalty of death, although he had not carried
his physical speculations nearly so far as Anaxagoras.
At his trial, however, he was charged with impiety, on
the ground of having said that the sun was a stone, and
the moon earth; he himself, however, protesting that
such was not his, but the doctrine of Anaxagoras; that he
held both sun and moon to be divine persons, as was
done by the rest of mankind. His real view seems to
have been, that the common and ordinary events of Pro-
vidence flowed from the operation of second causes, but
that those of greater magnitude and rarer occurrence
came directly from the interposition of a divine power.
Yet this modified philosophy was held to be utterly
inconsistent with the popular religion, and condemned as
an impiety. Of necessity, therefore, as science proceeded
in its investigations and discoveries, religion fell into the
background; as the belief in second causes advanced, the
gods, as no longer needed, vanished away. Physical
science and the polytheism of Greece and Rome were in
their very nature antagonistic, and every real advance of
the one brought along with it a shock to the other.
It is otherwise with the religion of the Bible, when
this is rightly understood, and nothing from without,
nothing foreign to its teaching, is imposed on it. For it
neither merges God in the works and operations of nature,
nor associates Him with one department more peculiarly
than another; while still it presents all—the works them-
selves, the changes they undergo, and every spring and
agency employed in accomplishing them—in dependence
on His arm and subordination to His will: He is in all,
through all, and over all. So that for those who have
6 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
imbibed the spirit of the Bible, there may appear the
most perfect regularity and continued sequence of opera-
tions, while God is seen and adored in connection with
every one of them. It is true, that the sensibilities of
religious feeling, or, as we should rather say, the fresh-
ness and power of its occasional outbursts, are less likely
to be experienced, and in reality are more rarely mani-
fested, when, in accordance with the revelations of science,
God’s agency is contemplated as working through material
forces under the direction of established law, than if,
without such an intervening medium, in specific acts of
providence, and by direct interference, He should make
His presence felt. The more that anything ceases to
appear strange to our view, abnormal—the more it comes
to be associated in our minds with the orderly domain of
law—the less startling and impressive does it naturally
become as an evidence of the nearness and power of God-
head: it no longer stands alone to our view, it is part of
a system, but still a system which, if viewed aright, has
been all planned by the wisdom, and is constantly sus-
tained and directed by the providence of God.
In this, as in so many other departments of human
interest and experience, there is a compensation in things.
What science may appear to take with one hand, it gives
—gives, one might almost say, more liberally with
another. If, for example, the revelation on scientific
grounds of the amazing regularity and finely-balanced
movements which prevail in the constitution and order of
the material universe, as connected with our planetary
system,—if this, in one aspect of it, should seem to have
placed God at a certain distance from the visible world,
in another it has but rendered His presiding agency and
vigilant oversight more palpably indispensable. For
such a vast, complicated, and wondrous mechanism, how
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 7
could it have originated? or, having originated, how
could it be sustained in action without the infinite skill
and ceaseless activity of an all-perfect Mind? There is
here what is incalculably more and better than some
occasional proofs of interference, or fitful displays of
power, however grand and imposing. There is clear-
sighted, far-reaching thought, nicely planned design,
mutual adaptations, infinitely varied, of part to part, the
action and reaction of countless forces, working with an
energy that baffles all conception, yet working with the
most minute mathematical precision, and with the effect
of producing both the most harmonious operation, and
the most diversified, gigantic, and beneficent results.
It is, too, the more marvellous, and the more certainly
indicative of the originating and controlling agency of
mind, that while all the planetary movements obey with
perfect regularity one great principle of order, they do so
by describing widely different orbits, and, in the case of
some, pursuing courses that move in opposite directions to
others. Whence should such things be? Not, assuredly,
from any property inherent in the material orbs them-
selves, which know nothing of the laws they exemplify,
or the interests that depend on the order they keep:
no, but solely from the will and power of the infinite and
eternal Being, whose workmanship they are, and whose
purposes they unconsciously fulfil. So wrote Newton
devoutly, as well as nobly, at the close of his incompar-
able work: ‘This beautiful system of sun, planets, and
comets, could have its origin in no other way than by the
counsel and sovereignty of an intelligent and powerful
Being. He governs all things—not as the soul of the
world, but as the Lord of the universe....We know
Him only through His qualities and attributes, and
through the most wise and excellent forms and final
8 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. 1.
causes, which belong to created things; and we admire
Him on account of His perfections; but for His sovereign
lordship, we worship and adore Him;’—thus in the
true spirit of the Psalmist, and as with a solemn halle-
lujah, winding up the mighty demonstration.l
We are informed, in a recent publication by a noble
author,2 that modern science is again returning to this
view of things; returning to it, I suppose, as becoming
conscious of the inadequacy of the maxim of an earlier
time, in respect to creation, ‘That the hypothesis of a
Deity is not needed.’ Speaking of the mystery which
hangs around the idea of force, even of the particular
force which has its seat in our own vitality, he says, ‘If,
then, we know nothing of that kind of force which is so
near to us, and with which our own intelligence is in
such close alliance, much less can we know the ultimate
nature of force in its other forms. It is important to
dwell on this, because both the aversion with which some
men regard the idea of the reign of law, and the triumph
1 On this point, Dr Whewell has some remarks in his ‘Philosophy of the
Inductive Sciences,’ which another great authority in natural science, Sir John
Herschel, has characterized admirable (‘Essays and Addresses,’ p. 239). ‘The
assertion appears to be quite unfounded, that as science advances from point to
point, final causes recede before it, and disappear one after the other. The
principle of design changes its mode of application indeed, but it loses none of
its force. We no longer consider particular facts as produced by special inter-
positions, but we consider design as exhibited in the establishment and adjust-
ment of the laws by which particular facts are produced. We do not look upon
each particular cloud as brought near us that it may drop fatness on our fields;
but the general adaptation of the laws of heat, and air, and moisture, to the
promotion of vegetation, does not become doubtful. We are rather, by the
discovery of the general laws of nature, led into a scene of wider design, of
deeper contrivance, of more comprehensive adjustments. Final causes, if they
appear driven farther from us by such an extension of our views, embrace us
only with a vaster and more majestic circuit; instead of a few threads connect-
ing some detached objects, they become a stupendous network which is wound
round and round the universal frame of things.—Vol. I. p. 635.
2 The Duke of Argyle, ‘Reign of Law,’ p. 122.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 9
with which some others hail it, are founded on a notion,
that when we have traced any given phenomena to what
are called natural forces, we have traced them farther
than we really have. We know nothing of the ultimate
nature, or of the ultimate seat of force [that is, know
nothing scientifically]. Science, in the modern doctrine of
the conservation of energy and the convertibility of forces,
is already getting something like a firm hold of the idea,
that all kinds of force are but forms or manifestations of
some central force issuing from some one Fountainhead of
power. Sir John Herschel has not hesitated to say, that
it is but reasonable to regard the force of gravitation as
the direct or indirect result of a consciousness or a will
existing somewhere. And even if we cannot certainly
identify force in all its forms with the direct energies of
one omnipresent and all-pervading will, it is, at least, in
the highest degree unphilosophical to assume the con-
trary; to speak or to think as if the forces of nature were
either independent of, or even separate from, the Creator’s
power.’ In short, natural science, in its investigations
into the forces and movements of the material universe,
finds a limit which it cannot overpass, and in that limit
a felt want of satisfaction, as conscious of the necessity of
a spontaneity, a will, a power to give impulse and direc-
tion to the whole, of which nature itself can give no
information, because lying outside of its province, and
which, if discovered to us at all, must be certified through
a supernatural revelation.
But this is still not the whole of the argument for the
pervading causal connection of God with the works of
nature, and His claim in this respect to our devout recog-
nition of His will as the source of its laws, and His power
as the originator and sustainer of its movements. For,
besides the admirable method and order, the simplicity in
10 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the midst of endless diversity, which are found to charac-
terize the system of material nature, there is also to be
taken into account the irrepressible impulse in the human
mind to search for these, and the capacity to discern and
appreciate them as marks of the highest intelligence. A
pre-established harmony here discovers itself between the
world of thought within, and the world of material order
and scientific adjustment without, bespeaking their mutual
co-ordination by the wise foresight and plastic energy of
one Supreme Mind. ‘Copernicus1 (it has been remarked),
in the dedication of his work to Pope Paul III., confesses
that he was brought to the discovery of the sun's central
position and of the diurnal motion of the earth, not by
observation or analysis, but by what he calls the feeling
of a want of symmetry in the Ptolemaic system. But
who had told him that there must be symmetry in all the
movements of the celestial bodies, or that complication
was not more sublime than simplicity? Symmetry and
simplicity, before they were discovered by the observer,
were postulated by the philosopher;’ and by him, we
may add, truly postulated, because first existing as ideas
in the Eternal Mind, whose image and reflex man’s is.
So also with Newton: the principle of gravitation, as an
all-embracing law of the planetary system, was postulated
in his mind before he ascertained it to be the law actually
in force throughout the whole, or even any considerable
part of the system—mind in man thus responding to mind
in God, and finding, in the things which appear, the evi-
dence at once of His eternal power and Godhead, and of the
similitude of its own understanding to that of Him by
whom the world has been contrived and ordained.
There is a class of minds which such considerations
cannot reach. They would take a position above them;
1 Max Müller, ‘Lectures on Language,’ p. 19.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 11
and adventuring upon what tends to perplex and con-
found, rather than satisfy, the reason, they raise such
questions respecting the Absolute and Infinite, as in a
manner exclude the just and natural conclusions deduced
from the works of creation concerning the Being and
Government of the Creator. But questions of that de-
scription, pressing as they do into a region which tran-
scends all human thought and known analogy, it is pre-
sumption in man to raise, folly to entertain; for ‘man is
born,’ as Goethe well remarked, ‘not to solve the
problems of the universe, but to find out where the
problem for himself begins, and then restrain himself
within the limits of the comprehensible.’ Considered
from this point of view, the reflections which have been
submitted as to the prevalence of natural law in the
general economy of the world of matter, in its relation
to God and its bearing on the religion of the Bible, are
perfectly legitimate; and they might easily be extended
by a diversified application of the principles involved in
them to the arrangements in the natural world, which
stand more closely related to men's individual interests
and responsibilities. But to sum up briefly what relates
to this branch of our subject, there are three leading
characteristics in the teaching of the Bible respecting the
relation of God to the merely natural world, and which,
though they can only in a qualified sense be termed a
revelation of law, yet form, so to speak, the landmarks
which the Bible itself sets up, and the measure of the
liberty it accords to the cultivators of science.
(1.) The first of these is the strict and proper person-
ality of God, as distinct from, and independent of, the
whole or any part of the visible creation. This to its
utmost limits is His workmanship—the theatre which
His hands have reared, and which they still maintain, for
12 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
the outgoing of His perfections and the manifestation of
His glory. As such, therefore, the things belonging to it
are not, and cannot possibly be, a part of His proper self.
However pervaded by His essential presence and divine
energy, they are not ‘the varied God,’ in the natural
sense of the expression. They came into being without
any diminution of His infinite greatness, and so they
may be freely handled, explored, modified, made to
undergo ever so many changes and transformations,
without in the slightest degree trenching on the nature
of Him, who is ‘without variableness or shadow of turn-
ing.’ Such is the doctrine of the Bible—differing from
mere nature-worship, and from polytheism in all its forms,
which, if it does not openly avow, tacitly assumes the
identification of Deity with the world. The Scripture
doctrine of the Creator and creation, of God and the
world, as diverse though closely related factors, leaves
to science its proper field of inquiry and observation, un-
trammelled by any hindrance arising from the view there
exhibited of the Divine nature.
(2.) A second distinguishing feature in the revelations
of the Bible is, that they rather pre-suppose what belongs
to the domain of natural science, than directly interfere
with it. With the exception of the very earliest part of
the sacred records, it is the supernatural—the supernatural
with respect more immediately to moral relations and
results—which may be designated their proper field; and
while in this the supernatural throughout bases itself on
the natural, the natural itself is little more than inci-
dentally referred to, or very briefly indicated. Even in
the account given of the formation of the world and the
natural constitution of things therewith connected, it is
obviously with the design of forming a suitable introduc-
tion to the place of man in the world, his moral relation
14 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
on scientific ground, stand, as a whole, in such striking
accord even now with the established results of science—
exhibiting, by means of a few graphic lines, not merely
the evolution from dark chaos of a world of light, and
order, and beauty, but the gradual ascent also of being
upon earth, from the lowest forms of vegetable and
animal life, up to him, who holds alike of earth and heaven
—at once creation’s head, and the rational image and
vicegerent of the Creator. Here, substantially at least,
we have the progression of modern science; but this com-
bined, in a manner altogether peculiar, with the peerless
dignity and worth of man, as of more account in God’s
sight than the entire world besides of animated being,
yea, than sun, and moon, and stars of light, because
incomparably nearer than them all to the heart of God,
and more closely associated with the moral aims, to which
everything in nature was designed to be subordinate.
Better than all science, it reveals alike man's general place
in nature and his singular relation to God.l
(3.) A third characteristic of Bible teaching in this
connection is the free play it allows to general laws and
natural agencies, or to the operation of cause and effect;
and this, not merely as bearing on simply natural results,
but also as connected with spiritual relations and duties.
Those laws and agencies are of God; as briefly expressed
by Augustine, ‘God’s will constitutes the nature of things’
(Dei voluntas rerum natura est); or more fully by Hooker,2
‘That law, the performance whereof we behold in things
natural, is as it were an authentic or original draft written
in the bosom of God himself, whose Spirit being to exe-
cute the same with every particular nature, every mere
natural agent is only as an instrument created at the
beginning, and ever since the beginning used, to work His
1 See Butler, ‘Analogy,’ P. I. c. 7. 2 ‘Eccl. Polity,’ B. I. c. 3, sec. 4.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 15
own will and pleasure withal. Nature, therefore, is nothing
else but God’s instrument.’ Whence the various powers
and faculties of nature, whether in things animate or inani-
mate, her regular course and modes of procedure, are not
supplanted by grace, but are recognised and acted upon
to the full extent that they can be made subservient to
higher purposes. Thus, when in respect to things above
nature, God reveals His mind to men, He does it through
men, and through men not as mere machines unconsciously
obeying a supernatural impulse, but acting in discharge
of their personal obligations and the free exercise of their
individual powers and susceptibilities. So also the
common subject of grace, the ordinary believer, obtains
no warrant as such to set at nought the settled laws and
ordinances of nature, no right to expect aught but mis-
chief if he should contravene their action, or fail to adapt
himself to their mode of operation; and at every step in
his course toward the final goal of his calling, reason,
knowledge, cultivation, wise discretion, and persevering
diligence have their parts to play in securing his safety
and progress, as well as the divine help and internal
agency of the Spirit. It is, therefore, within the boundary-
lines fixed by nature, and in accordance with the prin-
ciples of her constitution, alike in the mental and the
material world, that the work of grace proceeds, though
bringing along with it powers, and influences, and results
which are peculiarly its own. And even as regards the
things done for the believer in the outer field of provi-
dence, and in answer to humble prayer, there may be no
need (for aught we know to the contrary) for miraculous
interference, in the ordinary sense of the term, but only
for wise direction, for timely and fitting adjustment. It
may even be, as Isaac Taylor has said, ‘the great miracle
of providence, that no miracles are needed to accomplish
16 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
its purposes;’ that ‘the materials of the machinery of
providence are all of ordinary quality, while their com-
bination displays nothing less than infinite skill;’ and, at
all events, within this field alone of divine foresight and
gracious interventions through natural agencies, there is in
the hand of God ‘a hidden treasury of boons sufficient for
the incitement of prayer and the reward of humble faith.’l
The three principles or positions now laid down in
respect to God’s operations in nature and providence,
seem to comprise all that is needed for the maintenance
of friendly relations between the religion of the Bible and
the investigations of science; on the one side, ample scope
is left to these investigations, while, on the other, nothing
has been actually established by them which conflicts with
the statements of the Bible interpreted by the principles
we have stated. But undoubtedly there is in them what
cannot be reconciled with that deification of material forces,
which some would identify with strict science—as if every-
thing that took place were the result of the action only
of unconscious law—law working with such rigid, un-
broken continuity of natural order, as to admit of no
break or deviation whatever (such as is implied in miracles),
and no special adaptation to individual cases (as a parti-
cular providence would involve). Both miracles and a
particular providence, within certain limits, and as means
to the attainment of important ends, are postulated and
required in the revelations of the Bible. For if, as it
teaches, there be a personal God, an infinite and eternal
Spirit, distinct from the works of creation, and Himself
the author of the laws by which they are governed—if
also this God sustains the character of moral Governor
in regard to the intelligent part of His creation, and
subordinates everything in His administration to the
1 ‘Natural History of Enthusiasm,’ sec. vi.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 17
principles and interests therewith connected—then the
possibility, at least, of miracles and a particular providence
(to say nothing at present of their evidence), can admit of
no reasonable doubt. This does not imply, as the oppo-
nents of revelation not unfrequently assume, the produc-
tion in certain cases of an effect without a cause, or the
emerging of dissimilar consequents from the same ante-
cedents. For, on the supposition in question, the ante-
cedents are no longer the same; the cause which is of
nature has superadded to it a cause which is above nature,
in the material sense—the will and the power of a personal
Deity. We reason here, as in other things, from the human
to the divine. Mind in man is capable of originating a
force, which within definite limits can suspend the laws of
material nature, and control or modify them to its desired
ends. And why, then, should it be thought incredible or
strange, that the central Mind of the universe, by whom
all subsists, should at certain special moments, when the
purposes of His moral government require a new order of
things to be originated, authoritative indications of His
will to be given, or results accomplished unattainable in
the ordinary course of nature, bring into play a force
adequate to the end in view? It is merely supposing the
great primary cause interposing to do in a higher line of
things what finite beings are ever doing in a lower; and
the right, and the power, and the purpose to do it, resolve
themselves (as we have said) into the question, whether
there really be a God, exercising a moral government over
the world, capable for its higher ends of putting forth
acts of supernatural agency—a question which natural
science has no special mission to determine, or peculiar
resources to explicate.1
1 See M'Cosh, ‘Method of Divine Government,’ B. II. cap. i. sec. 7. And
for an admirable and conclusive exposure of the views of the chief opponents
18 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
The subject of a particular providence so far differs
from that of miraculous action, that, to a large extent,
its requirements may be met through the operation of
merely instrumental causes, fitly disposed and arranged
by Divine wisdom to suit the ever-varying conditions of
individual man. To have respect to the individual in
His method of government cannot be regarded as less
in the present day of all miraculous agency, even in creation and intelligent
design as connected with the works of nature—namely, the advocates of natural
selection and progressive development—see particularly ‘The Darwinian Theory
of Development examined by a Cambridge Graduate.’ It is there stated, as a
remarkable thing, that this theory, which professes to be based on scientific
grounds, yet expresses itself in the form of a creed: the words ‘We must
believe,’ ‘I have no difficulty in believing,’ etc., are perpetually recurring, and,
in fact, form the necessary links in the chain of so-called deductions. Hence,
while setting out with the object of avoiding the miraculous, the end is not
attained. ‘In the old method, the great physiologists take it for granted that
their researches can only reach a certain point, beyond which they cannot
penetrate; there they come to the inexplicable; and they believe that barrier
to be the Creator’s power, which they leave at a respectful distance. This,
according to the feelings of the ancients, was “the veil of nature which no
mortal hand had ever withdrawn,” and, as they approached it, they felt and
spoke of it with reverence. Now, the new method is to discard the belief in
a Creator, to reject the omniscience and omnipotence of a Maker of all things,
to charge us who believe in it with endeavouring to conceal our ignorance by
an imposing form of words; and to undertake to explain the origin of all
forms of life by another and a totally different hypothesis. What, then, is the
result? A long list of new and doubtful assertions, some of them of surpassing
novelty and wildness, and all of them unaccompanied by proof, but proposed
as points of belief. The marvellous in the old method is in one point only,
and that, for the most part, more implied than expressed—the belief in a para-
mount Intellect ordaining life and providing for its success. The marvellous
in the new way is a vast assemblage of prodigies, strange and unheard-of events
and circumstances that cannot be confirmed by any authentic evidence, and
which, indeed, are out of the reach of evidence—a throng of aëry dreams and
phantasies, evoked by the imagination, which we are called on to believe as
realities, as it is impossible to prove that they are so’ (p. 355). A distinguished
naturalist has said, ‘No one who has advanced so far in philosophy as to have
thought of one thing in relation to another, will ever be satisfied with laws
which had no author, works which had no maker, and co-ordinations which
had no designer’ (Phillips, ‘Life on Earth’). The development school vainly try
to satisfy themselves by making enormous drafts on their imagination and faith.
LECT. I.] THE ASCENDENCY OF LAW. 19
consistent with the nature of an all-wise and omnipotent
Being, than to restrain His working within the bounds of
general laws; and nature itself is a witness to the infinite
minuteness of the care and oversight of which even the
smallest forms in the animated creation are the object.
Besides, in a vast multitude of instances, probably in by
far the greater number of what constitute special acts of
providence for individuals, it is not the law of cause and
effect in material nature that is interfered with, but the
operations of mind that are controlled—the Eternal Spirit
directly, or by some appropriate ministry, touching the
springs of thought and feeling in different bosoms, so
as to bring the resolves and procedure of one to bear
upon the condition and circumstances of another, and
work out the results which need to be accomplished. In
the ordinary affairs of life, where secular ends alone are
concerned, we see what a complicated network of mutual
interconnection and specific influences is formed, by the
movements of mind transmitted from one person to
another, and the same we can readily conceive to exist
in relation to spiritual ends; in this case, indeed, even
more varied and far-reaching, as the ends to be secured
are of a higher kind, and there is the action of minds
from the heavenly places coming in aid of the move-
ments which originate upon earth. But without dilating
further, the principle of the whole matter in this, as well
as the previous aspect of it, is embodied in another grand
utterance of Newton’s, in which, after describing God as
a being or substance, ‘one, simple, indivisible, living,
and life-giving, everywhere and necessarily existing,’ etc.,
it is added, in these remarkable words, ‘perceiving and
governing all things by His essential presence, and con-
stantly co-operating with all things, according to fixed
laws as the foundation and cause of all nature, except
20 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
when it is good to act otherwise (nisi ubi aliter agere
bonum est):’ the Will of the great Sovereign of the
universe being thus placed above every impressed law
and instrumental cause of nature, and conceived free to
adopt other and more peculiar lines of action as the higher
ends of His government might require.
II. We turn now from the physical to the moral and
religious sphere, the one with which in the present dis-
cussion we have more especially to do; and in doing so
we pass into quite another region as regards the tendency
of thought in the current literature and philosophy of the
day. For here, undoubtedly, the disposition with many
is to fall as much short of the teaching of Scripture in
respect to the supremacy of law, as in the other depart-
ment to go beyond it. But opinions on the subject are
really so diverse, they differ so much both in respect to
the forms they assume and the grounds on which they
are based, that it is not quite easy in a brief space, and
impossible without some detail, to give a distinct repre-
sentation of them.
(1.) At the farthest remove from the Scriptural view
stand the advocates of materialism—those who would
merge mind and matter ultimately into one mass, who
would trace all mental phenomena to sensations, and
account for everything that takes place by means of the
affinities, combinations, and inherent properties of matter.
In such a philosophy there is room for law only in the
physical sense, and for such progress or civilization as may
arise from a more perfect acquaintance therewith, and a
more skilful use or adaptation of it to the employments
and purposes of life. The personality of God, as a living,
eternal Spirit, cannot be entertained; and, of course,
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 21
responsibility in the higher sense, as involving subjection
to moral government, and the establishment of a Divine
moral order, can have no place. For, mind is but a
species of cerebral development; thought or desire but
an action of the brain; man himself but the most perfectly
developed form of organic being, the highest type in the
scale of nature’s ascending series of productions, whose
part is fulfilled in doing what is fitted to secure a health-
ful organization, and provide for himself the best condi-
tions possible of social order and earthly wellbeing. But,
to say nothing of the scheme in other respects, looking at
it simply with reference to the religion and morality of
the Bible, it plainly ignores the foundation on which
these may be said to rest; namely, the moral elements in
man’s constitution, or the phenomena of conscience, which
are just as real as those belonging to the physical world,
and in their nature immensely more important. In so
doing, it gives the lie to our profoundest convictions, and
loses sight of the higher, the more ennobling qualities of
our nature, indeed would reduce man very much to the
condition of a child and creature of fate—capable, indeed,
of being influenced by sensual desires, prudential motives,
and utilitarian considerations, but not called to aim at
conformity to any absolute rule of right and wrong, or to
recognise as binding a common standard of duty. Such
an idea is strongly repudiated by writers of this school;
each man, it is contended, has a right or ‘just claim to
carry on his life in his own way,’ ‘his own mode of laying
out his existence is the best, not because it is the best in
itself, but because it is his own mode;’ hence, on the
other side, Calvinism, which appears to be taken as
another name for evangelical Christianity, is decried as
comprising all the good of which humanity is capable in
22 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
obedience, and prescribing a way of duty which shall be
essentially the same for all.l
(2.) Formally antagonistic to this sensational or mate-
rialistic school—occupying, one might say, the opposite
pole of thought in respect to moral law, yet not less
opposed to any objective revelation of law—is the view of
the idealists, or, as a portion of them at least are some-
times called, the ideal pantheists. With them, mind and
God are the two great ideas that are to rule all; God
first, indeed, whether as the personal or ideal centre of
the vital forces that work, and the fundamental principles
that should prevail throughout the moral universe; but
also mind in man as the exemplar of God, the exponent
of the Divine, and the medium through which it comes
into realization. Man, accordingly, by the very constitu-
tion of his being, is as a God to himself; or, in the lan-
guage of one who, more perhaps than any other, may be
regarded as the founder of the school, ‘Man, as surely
as he is a rational being, is the end of his own existence;
he does not exist to the end that something else may be,
but he exists absolutely for his own sake; his being is its
own ultimate object.’ Consequently, ‘all should proceed
from his own simple personality,’ and should be deter-
mined by what is within, not by a regard to what is
external to himself, though this latter element will
usually more or less prevail, and bring on a sort of con-
1 J. S. Mill ‘On Liberty,’ ch. iii. In referring to Mr Mill, we certainly take
one of the less extreme, as well as most respectable and able of the advocates of
a materialistic philosophy—one, too, who in his work on Utilitarianism has
laboured hard to make up, in a moral respect, for the inherent defects of his
system. But there still is, as Dr M’Cosh has shown ( ‘Examination of Mill’s
Philosophy,’ ch. xx.), the fundamental want of moral law, the impossibility of
giving any satisfactory account of the ideas of moral desert and personal obliga-
tion, and such loose, uncertain drawing of the boundary lines between moral
good and evil, as leaves each man, to a large extent, the framer of his own
moral standard.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 23
tradiction, empirically or as matter of fact, to his proper
self. But he should be determined by nothing foreign,
and ‘the fundamental principle of morality may be ex-
pressed in such a formula as this, “So act, that thou
mayest look upon the dictate of thy will as an eternal
law to thyself.”’l Thus the Divine becomes essentially
one with the human; the law for the universe is to be
got at through the insight and monitions of the indivi-
dual, especially of such individuals as have a higher range
of thought than their fellow-men; the heroes of humanity
are, in a qualified sense, its legislators. ‘What,’ asks
Carlyle,2 ‘is this law of the universe, or law made by
God? Men at one time read it in their Bible. In many
bibles, books, and authentic symbols and monitions of
nature, and the world (of fact), there are still some clear
indications towards it. Most important it is, that men
do, and in some way, get to see it a little. And if no
man could now see it by any bible, there is written in
the heart of every man an authentic copy of it, direct from
Heaven itself: there, if he have learnt to decipher
Heaven's writing, and can read the sacred oracles, every
born man may find some copy of it.’ An element of
truth, doubtless, is in such utterances—a most important
element, which Scripture also recognises—but inter-
mingled with what is entirely alien to the spirit and
teaching of Scripture. For, it proceeds on the supposition
of man being still in his normal state, and as such per-
fectly capable, by the insight of his own rational and
moral nature, to acquaint himself with all moral truth
and duty. The inner consciousness of man is entitled to
create for itself a morality, and a religion (if it should
deem such a thing worthy of creation) ; it is, in effect,
deified—though itself, as every one knows, to a large
1 Fichte, ‘Vocation of Man.’ 2 ‘Latter Day Pamphlets,’ No. II.
24 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
extent the creature of circumstances. And thus all takes
a pantheistic direction—the Divine is dragged down to a
level with the human, made to coalesce with it, instead
of the human (according to the Scriptural scheme) being
informed by and elevated to the Divine.l And the general
result, in so far as such idealism prevails, is obviously to
shut men up to ‘measureless content’ with themselves,
and dispose them to resist the dictation of any external
authority or revelation whatever. This result is beyond
doubt already reached with considerable numbers among
the educated classes, and is also pressing through manifold
channels of influence into the church! For it is of this
that the historian of rationalism speaks when he says,2
‘The tendency of religious thought in the present day is
all in one direction, towards the identification of the
Bible and conscience. Generation after generation the
power of the moral faculty becomes more absolute, the
doctrines that oppose it wane and vanish, and the various
elements of theology are absorbed and recast by its in-
fluence.’ The representation is plausibly made, and only
when taken in its connection is its full import seen; for
the meaning is, that the identification in question pro-
ceeds, not from the conscience finding its enlightenment
in the Bible, but from the Bible being made to speak in
accordance with the enlightenment of conscience. The
intellectual and moral idealism of the age, if still holding
by the Bible, reads this in its own light, and throws into
the background whatever it disrelishes or repudiates.
(3.) This species of idealism—allying itself with the
Bible, though sprung from philosophy, and in itself
naturally tending to pantheism—has its representatives
in the Christian church, especially among the class whose
1 See Morell, ‘Hist. of Modern Philosophy,’ Vol II. p. 611.
2 Lecky's ‘Hist. of Rationalism,’ Vol I. p. 384.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 25
tastes lie more in literature than in theology. Of culti-
vated minds and refined moral sentiments, such persons
readily acknowledge the ascendency of law in the govern-
ment of God, but, in accordance with their idealism, it is
law in a somewhat ethereal sense, having little to do with
definite rules or external revelations, recognised merely
in a kind of general obligation to exercise certain feelings,
emotions, or principles of action. Hence in the same
writers you will find law at once exalted and depreciated;
at one time it appears to be everything, at another nothing.
‘This universe,’ says a religious idealist of the class now
referred to,l ‘is governed by laws. At the bottom of
everything here there is law. Things are in this way and
not that; we call that a law or a condition. All depart-
ments have their own laws. By submission to them you
make them your own.’ And still more strongly in another
place, adopting the very style of the pantheistic idealists,2
‘I think a great deal of law. Law rules Deity, and its
awful majesty is above individual happiness. This is
what Kant calls the “categorical imperative;” that is, a
sense of duty which commands categorically or absolutely
—not saying, “It is better,” but “Thou shalt.” Why?
Because “Thou shalt”—that is all. It is not best to do
right, thou must do right; and the conscience that feels
that, and in that way, is the nearest to divine humanity.’
But in other passages language equally decided is used
in disparagement of anything in the moral or spiritual
sphere carrying the form of law. Nothing now must rest,
we are told, on enactment; if necessary, it is not on that
account, ‘not because it is commanded; but it is com-
manded because it is necessary’3—hence binding on the
1 Robertson of Brighton, ‘Sermons,’ 2d Series, p. 114.
2 ‘Life and Letters,’ Vol. I. p. 292.
3 ‘Life,’ in a Letter, October 24, 1849.
26 INTRODUCTORY [LECT. I.
conscience only so far as it is perceived to be necessary.
And again, professing to give the drift of St Paul’s
admonitions to the Galatians respecting observance, it is
said,l ‘All forms and modes of particularizing the Chris-
tian life he reckoned as bondage under the elements or
alphabet of the law;’ so that, though the Christian life
might, if it saw fit, find a suitable expression for itself
in any particular observance, this could be defended ‘on
the ground of wise and Christian expediency alone, and
could not be placed on the ground of a Divine statute or
command.’ Professor Jowett seems to carry the idealizing
a little further; he thinks that, under the Old Testament
itself, the period emphatically of law, there is evidence of
its adoption by the more thoughtful and intelligent of the
covenant people. The term ‘law,’ he says, is ambiguous
in Scripture;2 ‘it is so in the Old Testament itself. In
the prophecies and psalms, as well as in the writings of
St Paul, the law is in a great measure ideal. When the
Psalmist spoke of “meditating in the law of the Lord,” he
was not thinking of the five books of Moses. The law
which he delighted to contemplate was not written down
(as well might we imagine that the Platonic idea was a
treatise on philosophy); it was the will of God, the truth
of God, the justice and holiness of God. In later ages the
same feelings began to gather around the volume of the
law itself. The law was ideal still’—though he admits
that ‘with this idealism were combined the reference to
its words, and the literal enforcement of its precepts.’
A strange sort of idealism, surely, which could not sepa-
rate itself from the concrete or actual, and continued
looking to this for the material alike of its study and
its observance! But it is the view only we at pre-
sent notice, the form of thought itself respecting the law,
1 ‘Sermons,’ 2d Series, p. 184. 2 ‘Epistles of St Paul,’ II. p. 501.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 27
not its consistence either with itself or with the statements
of Scripture. It clearly enough indicates how idealism
has been influencing the minds of Christian writers in
this direction, and how, along with much that is sound,
pure, and sometimes elevating in the sentiments they
utter, there is also a certain laxity as to particular things,
an asserted superiority for the individual over law in
respect to everything like explicit rules and enactments.
(4.) There is, however, a class of Christian writers,
more properly theological and also of a somewhat realistic
character, who so far concur with the idealists, that they
maintain the freedom of the Christian from obligation to
the law distinctively so called—the law in that sense is
abolished by the Gospel of Christ, or, as sometimes put,
dead and buried in His grave; but only that a new and
higher law might come in its place, the law of Gospel life
and liberty. This view is what in theological language
bears the name of Neonomianism—that is, the doctrine
of a new law, in some respects differing from or opposed
to the old—a law of principles rather than of precepts,
especially the great principles of faith and love, which
it conceives to be carried now higher than before. The
view is by no means of recent origin; it was formally
propounded shortly after the Reformation, was adopted
by the Socinians as a distinguishing part of their system,
and with certain unimportant variations has often been
set forth afresh in later times.1 Dr Whately puts it thus:
The law as revealed in the Old Testament bears on the
face of it that the whole of its precepts, moral as well as
1 Zanchius, who belongs to the Reformation era, states expressly that we
have nothing to do with the moral precepts of Moses, except in so far as they
agree with the common law of nature, and are confirmed by Christ (Op. IV.
1. i c. 11). To the same effect, Musculus, ‘De Abrogatione Legis Mos.;’ and
more recently, Knapp, ‘Christian Theology,’ sec. 119, ‘Bialloblotzky, De
Abrog. L. Mos.,’ &c.
28 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
ceremonial, ‘were intended for the Israelites exclusively;’
therefore ‘they could not by their own authority be
binding on Christians,’ and are by the apostle in explicit
terms denied to be binding on them, hence as regards
them abolished.1 ‘But, on the other hand, the natural
principles of morality which (among other things) it
inculcates, are from their own character of universal
obligation; so that Christians are bound to the observance
of those commandments which are called moral—not,
however, because they are commandments of the Mosaic
law, ‘but because they are moral.’ The moral law, as
written upon man’s heart, remains still, as ever, authori-
tative and binding, and ‘is by the Gospel placed on higher
grounds. Instead of precise rules, it furnishes sublime
principles of conduct, leaving the Christian to apply these,
according to his own discretion, to each case that may
arise.’ In a somewhat modified form, the same view has
been presented after this manner: ‘Under the Christian
dispensation, the law in its outward and limited form—in
its form as given to Israel—has passed away; but the
substance, the principles, of the law remain. Would we
be free from that substance, these principles must be
written on our hearts. If they are not so written, we
ourselves reduce them to an outward and commanding
law, which, not being obeyed, brings bondage with it.’
The law, therefore, in one sense has passed away, in
another not; it is improper to speak of it as dead and
buried in the grave of Christ, for in its great principles it
never dies; but ‘the outward, the limited, the command-
ing form of it may be said to be dead;’ or, as otherwise
expressed, ‘that law in a particular and local form has
been taken up and widened out into a higher law, in Him
who not only exhibits it in its most perfect form, but gives
1 ‘Essay on the Abolition of the Law,’ secs. 1, 2.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 29
the strength in which alone we can obey.’l The differ-
ence between this and the other mode of representation is
evidently not material: in both alike the revelation of law
in the Old Testament is held to be not directly, and in
its letter, binding upon Christians; but its essential prin-
ciples, which constitute the basis of all morality, being
recognised and embraced in the Gospel, developed also to
nobler results and enforced by higher motives, these are
binding, and if not strictly law, at least in the stead of
law, and more effectively serving its interests.
( 5.) A still farther development in the same direction
is what is known under the name of Antinomianism—
antithesis to the law, in the sense of formal opposition to
it, as from its very nature destructive of what is good for
us in our present state—an occasion only and instrument
of death. It is the view of men, evangelical indeed, but
partial and extreme in their evangelism—who, in their
zeal to magnify the grace of the Gospel, lay stress only
upon a class of expressions which unfold its riches and its
triumphs, as contrasted with the law’s impotence in itself,
yea, with the terror and condemnation produced by it,
and silently overlook, or deprive of their proper force,
another class, which exhibit law in living fellowship with
grace—joint factors in the accomplishment of the same
blessed results. But it is right to add, the spirit and
design with which this is done differ widely in the hands
of different persons. Some so magnify grace in order to
get their consciences at ease respecting the claims of
holiness, and vindicate for themselves a liberty to sin
that grace may abound—or, which is even worse, deny
that anything they do can have the character of sin,
because they are through grace released from the demands
of law, and so cannot sin. These are Antinomians of the
1 Milligan on ‘The Decalogue and the Lord’s Day,’ pp. 96, 108, 111.
30 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
grosser kind, who have not particular texts merely of
the Bible, but its whole tenor and spirit against them.
Others, however, and these the only representatives of
the idea who in present times can be regarded as having
an outstanding existence, are advocates of holiness after
the example and teaching of Christ. They are ready to
say, ‘Conformity to the Divine will, and that as obedi-
ence to commandments, is alike the joy and the duty of
the renewed mind. Some are afraid of the word obedi-
ence, as if it would weaken love and the idea of a new
creation. Scripture is not. Obedience and keeping the
commandments of one we love is the proof of that love,
and the delight of the new creature. Did I do all right,
and not do it in obedience, I should do nothing right,
because my true relationship and heart-reference to God
would be left out. This is love, that we keep His com-
mandments.’l So far excellent; but then these com-
mandments are not found in the revelation of law,
distinctively so called. The law, it is held, had a specific
character and aim, from which it cannot be dissociated,
and which makes it for all time the minister of evil.
‘It is a principle of dealing with men which necessarily
destroys and condemns them. This is the way (the
writer continues) the Spirit of God uses law in contrast
with Christ, and never in Christian teaching puts men
under it. Nor does Scripture ever think of saying, You
are not under the law in one way, but you are in another;
you are not for justification, but you are for a rule of life.
It declares, You are not under law, but under grace; and
if you are under law, you are condemned and under a
curse. How is that obligatory which a man is not under
—from which he is delivered?’2 Antinomianism of this
description—distinguishing between the teaching or com-
1 Darby ‘On the Law,’ pp. 3, 4. 2 Ibid. p. 4.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 31
mandments of Christ and the commandments of the law,
holding the one to be binding on the conscience of Chris-
tians and the other not—is plainly but partial Antino-
mianism; it does not, indeed, essentially differ from
Neonomianism, since law only as connected with the
earlier dispensation is repudiated, while it is received as
embodying the principles of Christian morality, and asso-
ciated with the life and power of the Spirit of Christ.
(6.) Still it is clear, from this brief review, that there
is a very considerable diversity of opinion on the subject
of law, in a moral or spiritual respect, even among those
who are agreed in asserting our freedom from its re-
straints and obligations in the more imperative form;
and from not a little of the philosophic, and much of
the current secular literature of the age, a tendency is
continually flowing into the church, which is impatient
of anything in the name of moral or religious obligation,
beyond the general claims of rectitude and benevolence.
In respect to everything besides, the individual is held
to have an absolute right to judge for himself. It can-
not, therefore, appear otherwise than an important line
of inquiry, and one specially called for by the present
aspect of things, what place does law hold in the revela-
tions of Scripture? How far has it varied in amount of
requirement or form of obligation, at different periods of
the Divine administration? What was the nature of
the change effected in regard to it, or to our relation to
it, by the appearance and work of Christ? It is of the
more importance that such questions should receive a
a thoughtful and considerate examination, as the confes-
sional position of most churches, Reformed as well as
Catholic, is against the tendency now described, and on
the side of law, in the stricter sense of the term, having
still a commanding power on the consciences of men.
32 INTRODUCTORY. [LECT. I.
At the farthest extreme in this direction stands the
Roman Catholic church, which holds Christ to be a
legislator in the same sense as Moses was, and deems
itself entitled by Divine right to bind enactments of
moral and religious duty upon the consciences of its
members, similar in kind, and greatly more numerous
and exacting in the things required by them, than those
imposed by the legislation of Moses. There are sections
also of the Protestant church, and parties of considerable
extent and influence in particular churches, who have
ever endeavoured to find, either by direct imposition, or
by analogical reasonings and necessary implication, autho-
rity in Scripture for a large amount of positive law as
well as moral precept, to be received and acted on by
the Christian church. And from the opposite quarter,
we may say, of the theological heavens, there has recently
been given a representation of Christ, in which the
strongest emphasis is laid on His legislative character.
Speaking of the first formation of the Christian society,
the author of ‘Ecce Homo’ says,l ‘Those who gathered
round Christ did in the first place contract an obliga-
tion of personal loyalty to Him. On the ground of this
loyalty He proceeded to form a society, and to promulgate
an elaborate legislation, comprising and intimately con-
nected with certain declarations, authoritatively delivered,
concerning the nature of God, the relation of man to Him,
and the invisible world. In doing so He assumed the
part of a second Moses;’ and he goes on to indicate the
specific character of the legislation, and the sanctions
under which it was established, both materially differing
from the Mosaic. Yet this seems again virtually recalled
by other representations, in which the New Testament is
declared to be ‘not the Christian law;’2 not ‘the pre-
1 P. 80. 2 P. 202.
LECT. I.] CURRENT THEORIES ON LAW. 33
cepts of apostles,’ not even ‘the special commands of
Christ.’ ‘The enthusiasm of humanity in Christianity is
their only law;’ ‘what it dictates, and that alone, is law
for the Christian.’ But apart from this, which can only
be set down to prevailing arbitrariness and uncertainty
on the subject, the Protestant churches generally stand
committed to the belief of the moral law in the Old
Testament as in substance the same with that in the
New, and from its very nature limited to no age or
country, but of perpetual and universal obligation. They
have ever looked to the Decalogue as the grand summary
of moral obligation, under which all duty to God and man
may be comprised. Is this the true Scriptural position?
or in what manner, and to what extent, should it be
modified?
34 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
LECTURE II.
THE RELATION OF MAN AT CREATION TO MORAL LAW—HOW FAR
OR IN WHAT RESPECTS THE LAW IN ITS PRINCIPLES WAS MADE
KNOWN TO HIM—THE GRAND TEST OF HIS RECTITUDE, AND HIS
FAILURE UNDER IT.
WHEN opening the sacred volume for the purpose of
ascertaining its revelations of Divine law, it appears
at first sight somewhat strange that so little should be
found of this in the earlier parts of Scripture, and that
what is emphatically called THE LAW did not come into
formal existence till greatly more than half the world’s
history between Adam and Christ had run its course.
‘The law came by Moses.1 The generations of God’s
people that preceded this era are represented as living
under promise rather than under law, and the covenant of
promise—that, namely, made with Abraham—in the
order of the Divine dispensations took precedence of the
law by four hundred and thirty years.2 Yet it is clear
from what is elsewhere said, that though not under law
in one sense, those earlier generations were under it in
another; for they were throughout generations of sinful
men, subject to disease and death on account of sin, and
sin is but the transgression of law; ‘where no law is,
there is no transgression.’3 So that when the apostle
again speaks of certain portions of mankind not having
the law, of their sinning without law, and perishing
without law, 4 he can only mean that they were without
1 John i. 17. 2Gal. iii. 17.
3 Rom. v. 12, 13 ; iv. 15; vi. 2, 3. 4 Rom. ii 12, 14.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 35
the formal revelation of law, which had been given through
Moses to the covenant-people, while still, by the very
constitution of their beings, they stood under the bonds
of law, and by their relation to these would be justified
or condemned. But this plainly carries us up to the
very beginnings of the human family; for as our first
parents, though created altogether good, sinned against
God, and through sinning lost their proper heritage of
life and blessing, their original standing must have been
amid the obligations of law. And the question which
presses on us at the outset—the first in order in the line
of investigation that lies before us, and one on the right
determination of which not a little depends for the correct-
ness of future conclusions—is, what was the nature of the
law associated with man’s original state? and how far
or in what respects, did it possess the character of a
revelation?1
I. The answer to such questions must be sought,
primarily at least, in something else than what in the
primeval records carries the formal aspect of law—the
commands, namely, given to our first parents respecting
their place and conduct toward the earth generally, or
the select region they more peculiarly occupied; for it is
remarkable that these are in themselves of a merely
outward and positive nature—positive, I mean, as contra-
distinguished from moral; so that, in their bearing on
man’s original probation, they could only have been
intended to form the occasions and tests of moral obedi-
1 In discussing this subject, it will be understood that I take for granted the
truth of the history in Genesis i.-iii., and the fact of man’s creation in a state
of manhood, ripeness, and perfection. The impossibility of accounting for the
existence and propagation of the human race otherwise, has been often demon-
strated. See Dr Moore’s ‘First Man and his Place in Creation,’ and the autho-
rities there referred to.
36 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
ence, not its proper ground or principle. Underneath
those commands, and pre-supposed by them, there must
have been certain fundamental elements of moral obliga-
tion in the very make and constitution of man—in his
moral nature, to which such commands addressed them-
selves, and which must remain, indeed, for all time the
real basis of whatever can be justly exacted of man, or
is actually due by him in moral and religious duty. In
applying ourselves, therefore, to consider what in this
respect is written of man’s original state, we have to do
with what, in its more essential features, relates not to
the first merely, but to every stage of human history—
with what must be recognised by every law that is really
Divine, and to which it must stand in fitting adaptation.
The notice mainly to be considered we find in that part
of the history of creation, which tells us with marked
precision and emphasis of the Divine mould after which
his being was fashioned: ‘Let us make man,’ it was said
by God, after the inferior creatures had been formed each
after their kind, ‘in our image, after our likeness (or
similitude).’ And the purpose being accomplished, it is
added, ‘So God created man in His own image, in the
image of God created He him’—the rational offspring,
therefore, as well as the workmanship of Deity, a repre-
sentation in finite form and under creaturely limitations
of the invisible God. That the likeness had respect to
the soul, not to the body of man (except in so far as this is
the organ of the soul and its proper instrument of working)
cannot be doubted; for the God who is a Spirit could find
only in the spiritual part of man’s complex being a subject
capable of having imparted to it the characteristics of His
own image. Nor could the dominion with which man was
invested over the fulness of the world and its living
creaturehood, be regarded as more than the mere con-
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN'TO MORAL LAW. 37
sequence and sign of the Divine likeness after which man
was constituted, not the likeness itself; for this mani-
festly pointed to the distinction of his nature, not to
some prerogative merely, or incidental accompaniment of
his position. Holding, then, that the likeness or image
of God, in which man was made, is to be understood of
his intellectual and moral nature, what light, we have
now to ask, does it furnish in respect to the line of
inquiry with which we are engaged? What does it
import of the requirements of law, or the bonds of moral
obligation?
Undoubtedly, as the primary element in this idea must
be placed the intellect, or rational nature of the soul in
man; the power or capacity of mind, which enabled him
in discernment to rise above the impressions of sense, and
in action to follow the guidance of an intelligent aim or pur-
pose, instead of obeying the blind promptings of appetite
or instinct. Without such a faculty, there had been want-
ing the essential ground of moral obligation; man could
not have been the subject either of praise or of blame;
for he should have been incapable, as the inferior animals
universally are, of so distinguishing between the true
and the false, the right and the wrong, and so appreciat-
ing the reasons which ought to make the one rather than
the other the object of one’s desire and choice, as to
render him morally responsible for his conduct. In God,
we need scarcely say, this property exists in absolute
perfection; He has command over all the treasures of
wisdom and knowledge—ever seeing things as they really
are, and with unerring precision selecting, out of number-
less conceivable plans, that which is the best adapted to
accomplish His end. And made as man was, in this
respect, after the image of God, we cannot conceive of him
otherwise than as endowed with an understanding to
38 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
know everything, either in the world around him or his
own relation to it, which might be required to fit him
for accomplishing, without failure or imperfection, the
destination he had to fill, and secure the good which
he was capable of attaining. How far, as subservient to
this end, the discerning and reasoning faculty in un-
fallen man might actually reach, we want the materials
for enabling us to ascertain; but in the few notices given
of him we see the free exercise of that faculty in ways
perfectly natural to him, and indicative of its sufficiency
for his place and calling in creation. The Lord brought, it
is said, the inferior creatures around him—those, no doubt,
belonging to the paradisiacal region—‘to see what he
would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every
creature, that was the name of it.’1 The name, we are
to understand, according to the usual phraseology of
Scripture, was expressive of the nature or distinctive
properties of the subject; so that to represent Adam as
giving names to the different creatures was all one with
saying, that he had intelligently scanned their respective
natures, and knew how to discriminate, not merely
between them and himself, but also between one creature
and another. So, again, when a fitting partner had been
formed out of his person and placed before him, he was
able, by the same discerning faculty, to perceive her like-
ness and adaptation to himself, to recognise also the
kindredness of her nature to his own—as ‘bone of his
bones, and flesh of his flesh’—and to bestow on her a
name that should fitly express this oneness of nature and
closeness of relationship (isha, woman; from ish, man).
These, of course, are but specimens, yet enough to shew
the existence of the faculty, and the manner of its exer-
cise, as qualifying him—not, indeed, to search into all
1 Gen. ii. 19.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 39
mysteries, or bring him acquainted with the principles of
universal truth (of which nothing is hinted)—but to know
the relations and properties of things so far as he had
personally to do with them, or as was required to guide
him with wisdom and discretion amid the affairs of life.
To this extent the natural intelligence of Adam bore the
image of his Maker’s.l
The rational or intellectual part of man’s nature, how-
ever, though entitled to be placed first in the character-
istics that constitute the image of God (for without this
there could be no free, intelligent, or responsible action)
does not of itself bring us into the sphere of the morally
good, or involve the obligation to act according to the
principles of eternal rectitude. For this there must be a
will to choose, as well as a reason to understand—a will
1 This view of man's original state in an intellectual respect, while it is
utterly opposed to the so-called philosophic theory of the savage mode of life,
with all its ignorance and barbarity, having been the original one for mankind,
is at the same time free from the extravagance which has appeared in the de-
scription given by so-called divines of the intellectual attainments and scientific
insight of Adam—as if all knowledge, even of a natural kind, had been neces-
sary to his perfection, as the Image of God! Thomas Aquinas argues,* that if
he knew the natures of all animals, he must by parity of reason have had the
knowledge of all other things; and that, as the perfect precedes the imperfect,
and the first man being perfect must have had the ability to instruct his pos-
terity in all that they should know, so he must have himself known ‘whatever
things men in a natural way can know.’ Protestant writers have occasionally,
though certainly not as a class, carried the matter as far. And, as if such
innate apprehension of all natural knowledge, and proportionate skill in the
application of it to the arts and usages of life, were necessarily involved in the
Scriptural account of man’s original state, geologists, in the interest of their
own theories, have not failed to urge, that, with such ‘inspired knowledge,’† the
remains should be found of the finest works of art in the remotest ages, ‘lines
of buried railways, or electric telegraphs,’ &c. It is enough to say, that no
enlightened theologian would ever ascribe such a reach of knowledge to
primeval man, and that what he did possess soon became clouded and disturbed
by sin.
____________________________________________________________
* Summa, P. I. Quaest. 94, art. 3. † Sir G. Lyell, on ‘The Antiquity of Man,’ p. 378.
40 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
perfectly free in its movements, having the light of reason
to direct it to the good, but under no constraining force
to obey the direction; in other words, with the power to
choose aright conformably to the truth of things, the
power also of choosing amiss, in opposition to the truth.
This liberty of choice, necessary from the very nature of
things to constitute man a subject of moral government,
was distinctly recognised by God in the scope given to
Adam to exercise the gifts and use the privileges con-
ferred on him, limited only by what was due to his place
and calling in creation. It was more especially recognised
in the permission accorded to him to partake freely of
the productions of the garden, to partake even of the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, though with a stern
prohibition and threatening to deter him from such a
misuse of his freedom. But the will in its choice is just
the index of the nature; it is the expression of the pre-
vailing bent of the soul; and coupled as it was in Adam
with a spiritual nature untainted with evil, the reflex of
His who is the supremely wise and good, there could not
but be associated with it an instinctive desire to exercise
it aright,—a profound, innate conviction that what was
perceived to be good should carry it, as by the force of
an imperative law, over whatever else might solicit his
regard; resembling herein the Divine Author of his
existence, whose very being ‘is a kind of law to His
working, since the perfection which God is gives perfec-
tion to what He does.’l Yet, while thus bearing a
resemblance to God, there still was an essential differ-
ence. For in man’s case all was bounded by creaturely
limitations; and while God never can, from the infinite
perfection of His being, do otherwise than choose with
absolute and unerring rectitude, man with his finite
1 Hooker, ‘Eccl. Polity,’ B. I. c. 2.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 41
nature and his call to work amid circumstances and con-
ditions imposed on him from without, could have no
natural security for such unfailing rectitude of will; a
diversity might possibly arise between what should have
been, and what actually was, willed and done.
These, then, are the essential characteristics of the
image of God, in which man was made—first, the noble
faculty of reason as the lamp of the soul to search into
and know the truth of things; then the will ready at the
call of reason, with the liberty and the power to choose
according to the light thus furnished; and, finally, the
pure moral nature prompting and disposing the will so to
choose. Blessedness and immortality have by some been
also included in the idea. And undoubtedly they are
inseparable accompaniments of the Divine nature, but
rather as results flowing from the perpetual exercise of its
inherent powers and glorious perfections, than qualities
possessed apart—hence in man suspended on the rightful
employment of the gifts and prerogatives committed to
him. Blessed and immortal life was to be his portion if
he continued to realize the true idea of his being, and
proved himself to be the living image of his Maker; not
otherwise. But that the spiritual features we have ex-
hibited as the essential characteristics of this image are
those also which Scripture acknowledges to be such,
appears from this, that they are precisely the things
specified in connection with the restoration to the image
of God, in the case of those who partake in the new crea-
tion through the grace and Gospel of Christ. It is said
of suchl that they are created anew after God, or that
they put on the new man (new as contradistinguished
from the oldness of nature’s corruptions), which is renewed
after the image of Him that created him. And the
1Eph. Iv. 24; Col iii. 10
42 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
renewal is more especially described as consisting in
knowledge, righteousness, and true holiness—knowledge,
the product of the illuminated reason made cognizant of
the truth of God; righteousness, the rectitude of the
mind’s will and purpose in the use of that knowledge;
true holiness, the actual result of knowledge so applied
in the habitual exercise of virtuous affections and just
desires. These attributes, therefore, of moral perfection
must have constituted the main features of the Divine
image in which Adam was created, since they are what
the new creation in Christ purposely aims at restoring.
And in nature as well as in grace, they were of a deriva-
tive character; as component elements in the human con-
stitution they took their being from God, and received
their moral impress from the eternal type and pattern of
all that is right and good in Him. Man himself no more
made and constituted them after his own liking, or can
do so, than he did his capacity of thought or his bodily
organization; and the power of will which it was given him
to exercise in connection with the promptings of his moral
nature, had to do merely with the practical effect of its
decisions, not with the nature of the decisions themselves,
which necessarily drew their character from the conscience
that formed them. If, therefore, this conscience in man,
this governing power in his moral constitution, had in
one respect the rightful place of authority over the other
powers and faculties of his being, in another it stood
itself under authority, and in its clearest utterances con-
cerning right and wrong could only affirm that there was
a Divine must in the matter—the law of its being ren-
dered it impossible for it to think or judge otherwise.
In reasoning thus as to what man originally was, when
coming fresh and pure from the hands of his Creator, we
must, of course, proceed in a great degree on the ground
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 43
of what we still know him to be—sin, while it has sadly
vitiated his moral constitution, not having subverted its
nature or essentially changed its manner of working.
The argument, indeed, is plainly from the less to the
greater: if even in its ruin the actings of our moral
nature thus lead up to God, and compel us to feel our-
selves under a rule or an authority established by Him,
how much more man in the unsullied greatness and beauty
of his creation-state, with everything in his condition
fitted to draw his soul heavenwards, standing as it were
face to face with God! Even now, ‘the felt presence of
a judge within the breast powerfully and immediately
suggests the notion of a supreme judge and sovereign,
who placed it there. The mind does not stop at a mere
abstraction; but, passing at once from the abstract to the
concrete, from the law of the heart it makes the rapid in-
ference of a lawgiver.’l Or, as put more fully by a
German Christian philosopher,2 ‘There is something
above the merely human and creaturely in what man is
sensible of in the operation of conscience, whether he may
himself recognise and acknowledge it as such or not.
The workings of his conscience do not, indeed, give
themselves to be known as properly divine, and in reality
are nothing more than the movements of the human soul;
but they involve something which I, as soon as I reflect
upon it, cannot explain from the nature of spirit, if this
is contemplated merely as the ground in nature of my
individual personal1ife, which after a human manner has
been born in me. I stand before myself as before a riddle,
the key of which can be given, not by human self-con-
sciousness, but by the revelation of God in His word. By
this word we are made acquainted with the origination of
the human soul, as having sprung from God, and by God
1 Chalmers, ‘Nat. Theology,’ B. III. c. 2. 2 Harless, ‘Christ. Ethik.,’ sec. 8.
44 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
settled in its creation-state. This relationship as to origin
is an abiding one, because constituted by God, and, how-
ever much it may be obscured, incapable of being dissolved.
It is one also that precedes the development of men’s
self-consciousness; their soul does not place itself in
relation to God, but God stands in relation to their soul.
It is a bond co-extensive with life and being, by which,
through the fact of the creation of their spirit out of God,
it is for the whole course of its creaturely existence indis-
solubly joined to God; and a bond not destroyed by the
instrumentality of human propagation, but only trans-
mitted onwards. On this account, what is the spirit of
life in man is at the same time called the light (lamp) of
God (Prov. xx. 27).’1
On these grounds, derived partly from the testimony
of Scripture, partly from the reflection on the nature and
constitution of the human soul, we are fully warranted to
conclude, that in man’s creation-state there were implanted
the grounds of moral obligation—the elements of a law
1 In substance, the same representations are given in all our sounder writers
on Christian ethics—for example, Butler, M’Cosh, Mansel. ‘Why (asks the
last named writer) has one part of our constitution, merely as such, an impera-
tive authority over the remainder? What right has one part of the human
consciousness to represent itself as duty, and another merely as inclination?
There is but one answer possible. The moral reason, or will, or conscience of
man can have no authority, save as implanted in him by some higher spiritual
Being, as a Law emanating from a Lawgiver. Man can be a law unto himself,
only on the supposition that he reflects in himself the law of God. If he is
absolutely a law unto himself, his duty and his pleasure are undistinguishable
from each other; for he is subject to no one, and accountable to no one.
Duty in his case becomes only a higher kind of pleasure—a balance between
the present and the future, between the larger and the smaller gratification.
We are thus compelled by the consciousness of moral obligation to assume the
existence of a moral Deity, and to regard the absolute standard of right and
wrong as constituted by the nature of that Deity, (‘Bampton Lecture,’ p. 81,
Fifth Ed.). For some partial errors in respect to conscience in man before the
fall, as, compared with conscience subsequent to the fall, see Delitzsch, ' Bibl.
Psych.,’ iii. sec. 4.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 45
inwrought into the very framework of his being, which
called him perpetually to aim at conformity to the will
and character of God. For what was the law, when it
came, but the idea of the Divine image set forth after its
different sides, and placed in formal contrast to sin and
opposition to God?1 Strictly speaking, however, man
at first stood in law, rather than under law—being formed
to the spontaneous exercise of that pure and holy love,
which is the expression of the Divine image, and hence also
to the doing of what the law requires. Not uncommonly
his relation to law has had a more objective representation
given to it, as if the law itself in some sort of categorical
form had been directly communicated to our first parents.
Thus Tertullian, reasoning against the Jews, who sought
to magnify their nation, by claiming as their exclusive
property the revelation of law, says,2 that ‘at the begin-
ning of the world God gave a law to Adam and Eve’—
he refers specifically to the command not to eat of the
tree of the knowledge of good and evil; but he thus
expounds concerning it, ‘In this law given to Adam we
recognise all the precepts as already established which
afterwards budded forth as given by Moses. . . . . . For
the primordial law was given to Adam and Eve in para-
dise as the kind of prolific source (quasi matrix) of all
the precepts of God.’ In common with him Augustine
often identifies the unwritten or natural law given
originally to man, and in a measure retained generally,
though imperfectly, in men’s hearts, with the law after-
wards introduced by Moses and written on the tables of
stone (On Ps. cxviii., Sermo 25, § 4, 5; Liber de Spiritu
et Lit., § 29, 30 ; Opus Imp., Lib. vi. §15). In later times,
among the Protestant theologians, from the Loci Theol.
of Melancthon downwards, the moral law was generally
1 See Sartorius, ‘Heilige Liebe,’ p. 168. 2 Adv. Judæos, c. 2.
46 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
regarded as in substance one with the Decalogue, or the
two great precepts of love to God and love to man, and
this again identified with the law of nature, which was in
its fulness and perfection impressed upon the hearts of
our first parents, and still has a certain place in the hearts
of their posterity; hence such statements as these: ‘The
moral law was written in Adam’s heart,’ ‘The law was
Adam’s lease when God made him tenant of Eden’ (Light-
foot, Works, iv. 7, viii. 379); ‘The law of the ten com-
mandments, being the natural law, was written on Adam's
heart on his creation’ (Boston, ‘Notes to the Marrow,’
Introd.); or, as in the Westminster Confession, ‘God gave
to Adam a law, as a covenant of works, by which He bound
him to personal, entire, exact, and perpetual obedience;’
which law, after the fall, ‘continued to be a perfect ru1e
of righteousness, and, as such, was delivered by God upon
Mount Sinai in ten commandments, and written in two
tables’ (ch. xix.). We should, however, mistake such
language did we suppose it to mean, that there was either
any formal promulgation of a moral law to Adam, or that
the Decalogue, as embodying this law, was in precise
form internally communicated by some special revelation
to him. It was a brief and popular style of speech, inti-
mating that by the constitution of his spiritual nature,
taken in connection with the circumstances in which he
was placed, he was bound, and knew that he was bound,
to act according to the spirit and tenor of what was after-
wards formally set forth in the ten commands. And so
Lightfoot, for example, who is one of the most explicit
in this mode of representation, brings out his meaning,
‘The law writ in Adam’s heart was not particularly
every command of the two tables, written as they were
in two tables, line by line; but this law in general,
of piety and love towards God, and of justice and love
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 47
toward our neighbour. And in these lay couched a
law to all particulars that concerned either—to branch
forth as occasion for the practice of them should arise: as
in our natural corruption, brought in by sin, there is
couched every sin whatsoever too ready to bud forth,
when occasion is offered.’l In like manner, Delitzsch,
who among Continental writers adheres to the same
mode of expression, speaks of the conscience in man, pre-
eminently of course in unfallen man, by what it indi-
cates of moral duty, as ‘the knowing about a Divine law,
which every man carries in his heart,’ or ‘an actual con-
sciousness of a Divine law engraven in the heart;’ but
explains himself by saying, that ‘the powers of the
spirit and of the soul themselves are as the decalogue of
the Thora (Law) that was in creation imprinted upon us;’2
that is to say, those powers, when in their proper state,
work under a sense of subjection to the will of God, and
in conformity with the great lines of truth and duty un-
folded in the Decalogue.3
Understood after this manner, the language in question
1 Sermon on Exodus xx. 11, Works, IV. 379.
2 ‘Biblische Psychologie,’ pp. 138, 140.
3 Were it necessary, other explanations of a like kind might be given, espe-
cially from our older writers. Thus, in the ‘Marrow of Modern Divinity,’
where the language is frequently used of the law of the two tables being
written on man’s heart, and forming the matter of the covenant of works,* this
is again explained by the fact of man having been made in God’s image or
likeness, and more fully thus, ‘God had furnished his soul with an understand-
ing mind, whereby he might discern good from evil and right from wrong;
and not only so, but also in his will was most perfect uprightness (Eccl. vii.
29), and his instrumental parts (i.e., his executive faculties and powers) were in
an orderly way framed to obedience.’ Much to the same effect Turretine,
‘Inst. Loc. Undecimus, Quæst. II.,’ who represents the moral law as the same
with that which in nature was impressed upon the heart, as to its substance,
though not formally and expressly given as in the Decalogue, sec. III. 2. xvii.;
also Colquhoun, ‘Treatise on the Law and the Gospel,’ p. 7.
* P. I. c. 1.
48 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
is quite intelligible and proper, though certainly capable
of being misapplied (if too literally taken), and in form
slightly differing from the Scriptural representation;1 for
in the passage which most nearly resembles it, and on which
it evidently leans, the apostle does not say that the law
itself, but that the work of the law, was written on men’s
hearts, in so far as they shewed a practical acquaintance
with the things enjoined in it, and a disposition to do
them. Such in the completest sense was Adam, as made
in the Divine image, and replenished with light and
power from on high. It was his very nature to think
and act in accordance with the principles of the Divine
character and government, but, at the same time also, his
imperative obligation; for to know the good, and not to
choose and perform it, could not appear otherwise than
sin. Higher, therefore, than if surrounded on every side
by the objective demands of law, which as yet were not
needed—would, indeed, have been out of place—Adam
had the spirit of the law impregnating his moral being;
he had the mind of the Lawgiver Himself given to bear
rule within—hence, not so properly a revelation of law, in
the ordinary sense of the term, as an inspiration from the
Almighty, giving him understanding in regard to what,
as an intelligent and responsible being, it became him to
purpose and do in life. But this, however good as an
internal constitution—chief, doubtless, among the things
pronounced at first very good by the Creator—required,
both for its development and its probation, certain ordi-
nances of an outward kind, specific lines of action and
observance marked out for it by the hand of God, for the
purpose of providing a proper stimulus to the sense
right and wrong in the bosom, and bringing its relative
strength or weakness into the light of day. And we now
1 Rom. ii. 14, 15.
LECT II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 49
therefore turn, with the knowledge we have gained of
the fundamental elements of man’s moral condition, to
the formal calling and arrangements amid which he was
placed, to note their fitness for evolving the powers of his
moral nature and testing their character.
II. The first in order, and in its nature the most
general, was the original charge, the word of direction
and blessing, under which mankind, in the persons of the
newly-created pair, were sent on their course of develop-
ment—that, namely, which bade them be fruitful, mul-
tiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it, and have
dominion over its living creatures and its powers of pro-
duction. This word was afterwards brought into closer
adaptation to the circumstances of our first parents, in
the appointment given them to dress and keep the
blessed region, which was assigned them as their more
immediate charge and proper domain. Taken by itself,
it was a call to merely bodily exercise and industrious
employment. But considered as the expression of the
mind of God to those who were made in the Divine
image, and had received their place of dignity and lord-
ship upon earth, for the purpose of carrying out the
Divine plan, everything assumes a higher character; the
natural becomes inseparably linked to the moral. Realiz-
ing his proper calling and destiny, man could not look
upon the world and the interests belonging to it, as if he
occupied an independent position; he must bear himself
as the representative and steward of God, to mark the
operations of His hand, and fulfil His benevolent design.
In such a case how could he fail to see in the ordin-
ances of nature, God’s appointments? and in the laws of
life and production, God’s methods of working? Or if so
regarding them, how could he do otherwise than place him-
50 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
self in loving accord with them, and pliant ministration?
Not, therefore, presuming to deem aught evil which bore
on it the Divine impress of good; but, as a veritable
child of nature, content to watch and observe that he
might learn, to obey that he might govern; and thus,
with ever growing insight into nature’s capacities and
command over her resources, striving to multiply around
him the materials of well-being and enjoyment, and
render the world a continually expanding and brightening
mirror, in which to see reflected the manifold fulness and
glorious perfections of God.
Such, according to this primary charge, was to be
man’s function in the world of nature—his function as
made in God’s image—and as so made capable of under-
standing, of appropriating to himself, and acting out the
ideas which were embodied in the visible frame and order
of things. He was to trace, in the operations proceeding
around him, the workings of the Divine mind, and then
make them bear the impress of his own. Here, there-
fore, stands rebuked for all time the essential ungoli-
ness of an indolent and selfish repose, since only to man’s
habitual oversight and wakeful industry was the earth
to become what its Maker designed it, and paradise itself
to yield to him the attractive beauty and plenteousness
of a proper home. Here, too, stands yet more palpably
rebuked the monkish isolation and asceticism, which
would treat the common gifts of nature with disdain, and
turn with aversion from the ordinary employments and
relations of life: as if the plan of the Divine Architect
had in these missed the proper good for man, and a nobler
ideal were required to correct its faultiness, or supple-
ment its deficiencies! Here yet again was authority
given, the commission, we may say, issued, not merely for
the labour of the hand to help forward the processes of
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 51
nature, and render them productive of ever varying and
beneficent results, but for the labour also of the intellect
to explore the hidden springs and, principles of things, to
bring the scattered materials which the experience of
every day was presenting to his eye and placing at his
disposal under the dominion of order, that they might be
made duly subservient to the interests of intellectual life
and social progress; for in proportion as such results might
be won was man’s destined ascendency over the world
secured, and the mutual, far-reaching interconnections
between the several provinces of nature brought to light,
which so marvellously display the creative foresight and
infinite goodness of God.
We may even carry the matter a step farther. For, con-
stituted as man was, the intelligent head and responsible
possessor of the earth’s fulness, the calling also was his
to develop the powers and capacities belonging to it for
ornament and beauty, as well as for usefulness. With
elements of this description the Creator has richly im-
pregnated the works of His hand, there being not an
object in nature that is incapable of conveying ideas of
beauty;1 and this beyond doubt that each after its kind
might by man be appreciated, refined, and elevated.
‘Man possessed,’ so we may justly say with a recent
writer,2 ‘a sense of beauty as an essential ground of his
intelligence and fellowship with Heaven. He was there-
fore to cultivate the feeling of the beautiful by cultivating
the appropriate beauty inherent in everything that lives.
Nature ever holds out to the hand of man means by
which his reason, when rightly employed, may be enriched
with true gold from Heaven’s treasury. And eve.n now,
in proportion to the restoration to heavenly enlighten-
1 Ruskin’s ‘Modern Painters,’ Vol. II. p. 27.
2 Moore’s ‘First Man and his Place in Creation,’ p. 299.
52 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
ment, we perceive that every kind of beauty and power
is but an embodiment of truth, a form of love, revealing
the relation of the Divine creative mind to loveliness,
symmetry, and justness, as well as expressing tender
thought towards the susceptibilities of all His sentient
creatures, but especially for the instruction and happy
occupation of man himse1f.’ This too, then, is to be
reckoned among the things included in man’s destination
to intelligent and fruitful labour—an end to be prosecuted
in a measure for its own sake, though in great part realiz-
ing itself as the incidental result of what was otherwise
required at his hand.
But labour demands, as its proper complement, rest:
rest in God alternating with labour for God. And here
we come upon another part of man’s original calling;
since in this respect also it became him, as made in God’s
image, to fall in with the Divine order and make it his
own. ‘God rested,’l we are told, after having prosecuted,
through six successive days of work, the preparation of the
world for a fit habitation and field of employment for man.
‘He rested on the seventh day from all His work which
He had made; and He blessed the seventh day and
sanctified it, because that in it He had rested from all
His work which he created and made’—a procedure in
God that would have been inexplicable except as furnish-
ing the ground for a like procedure on the part of man,
as, in that case, the hallowing and benediction spoken of
must have wanted both a proper subject and a definite aim.
True, indeed, as we are often told, there was no formal
enactment binding the observance of the day on man;
there is merely an announcement of what God did, not a
setting forth to man of what man should do; it is not said,
that the Sabbath was expressly enjoined upon man. And
1Gen. ii. 2, 3.
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 53
neither, we reply, should it have been; for, since man was
made in the image of God, it was only, so long as this
image remained pure, the general landmarks of moral and
religious duty, which were required for his guidance, not
specific and stringent regulations: he had the light of
Heaven within him, and of his own accord should have
taken the course, which his own circumstances, viewed in
connection with the Divine procedure, indicated as dutiful
and becoming. The real question is, did not the things
recorded contain the elements of law? Was there not in
them such a revelation of the mind of God, as bespoke
an obligation to observe the day of weekly rest, for those
whose calling was to embrace the order and do the works
of God? Undoubtedly there was—if in the sacred record
we have, what it purports to give, a plain historical
narrative of things which actually occurred. In that case
—the only supposition we are warranted to make—the
primeval consecration of the seventh day has a moral, as
well as religious significance. It set up, at the threshold
of the world’s history, a memorial and a witness, that as
the Creator, when putting forth His active energies on
the visible theatre of the universe, did not allow Himself
to become absorbed in it, but withdrew again to the
enjoyment of His own infinite fulness and sufficiency; so
it behoved His rational creature man to take heed, lest,
when doing the work of God, he should lose himself amid
outward objects, and fail to carry out the higher ends
and purposes of his being with reference to God and
eternity. Is it I alone who say this? Hear a very able
and acute German moralist: ‘It is, indeed, a high
thought (says Wuttke1) that in Sacred Scripture this
creation-rest of God is taken as the original type and
ground of the Sabbath solemnity. It is thereby indi-
1 ‘Handbuch der Christlichen Sittenlehre,’ I. p. 469
54 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
cated, that precisely the innermost part of what constitutes
the likeness of God is that which demands this solemnity
—the truly reasonable religious-moral nature of man, and
not the natural necessity of test and enjoyment. What
with God are but two sides of the eternal life itself, no
temporal falling asunder into active working, and then re-
treating into one’s self, that with respect to the finite spirit
falls partially, at least, into separate portions—namely, into
work and Sabbath-rest. God blessed the seventh day:
—there rests upon the sacred observance of this day a
special and a higher blessing, an imparting of eternal,
heavenly benefits, as the blessing associated with work is
primarily but the imparting of temporal benefits. The
Sabbath has not a merely negative significance; it is not
a simple cessation from work; it has a most weighty, real
import, being the free action of the reasonable God-like
spirit rising above the merely individual and finite, the
reaching forth of the soul, which through work has been
drawn down to the transitory, toward the unchangeable
and Divine.’ Hence (as the same writer also remarks),
the ordinance of the Sabbath belongs to the moral sphere
considered by itself, not merely to the state of redemp-
tion struggling to escape from sin—though such a state
obviously furnishes fresh reasons for the line of duty con-
templated in the ordinance. But at no period could it
be meant to stand altogether alone. Neither before the
fall nor after it, could such calm elevation of the soul to
God and spiritual rest in Him be shut up to the day
specially devoted to it; each day, if rightly spent, must
also have its intervals of spiritual repose and blessing.
So far, then, all was good and blessed. Man, as thus
constituted, thus called to work and rest in harmony and
fellowship with God, was in a state of relative perfection
—of perfection after its kind, though not such as pertains
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 55
to the regeneration in Christ. Scripture itself marks the
difference, when it speaks of the natural or psychical
(yuxiko<n) coming first, then that which is spiritual (pneu-
matiko<n, 1 Cor. xv. 46). The first man was of the earth,
earthy—in the frame and mould of his being simply a part
of this mundane existence, though incomparably its noblest
part, and allied, through his spirit, with the Divine; but
the second man was the Lord from heaven. The creation
of the one was welcomed by the silent homage and regard
of the living creaturehood on earth; the advent of the
other was celebrated by angelic hosts in anthems of joy
from the heavenly places. In Adam there was an intelli-
gence that could discriminate wisely between irrational
natures and his own, as also between one kind of inferior
natures and another; in Christ there was a spirit that
knew what was in man himself, capable of penetrating
into his inmost secrets, yea, even of most perfectly know-
ing an revealing the Father. Finally, high as man’s
original calling was to preside over and subdue the earth,
to improve and multiply its resources, to render it in all
respects subservient to the ends for which it was made;
how mightily was this calling surpassed by the mission of
Him, who came to grapple with the great controversy
between sin and righteousness, to restore the fallen, to
sanctify the unclean, and bring in a world of incorruptible
glory and blessed life, with which God should be most
intimately associated, and over which He should per-
petually rejoice!
The superiority, however, of the things pertaining to
the person and the work of Christ does not prevent those
relating to man’s original state from being fitly viewed as
relatively perfect. But then there was no absolute guar-
antee for this being continued; there was a possibility of
all being lost, since it hung on the steadfastness of a
56 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
merely created head; and hence, as regarded man himself,
there was a need for something of a more special and
definite kind to test his adherence to the perfect order and
rectitude incumbent on him. There might, we can readily
conceive, have been defections from the right and good in
respect to his general calling and destination—failures
distinct enough, perhaps, in themselves, but perceptible
only to the eye of Him who can look on the desires and
intents of the heart. Here, however, it was indispensable
that the materials for judgment should be patent to all.
For, in Adam humanity itself was on its trial—the whole
race having been potentially created in him, and destined
to stand or fall, to be blessed or cursed, with him. The
question, therefore, as to its properly decisive issue, must
be made to turn on conformity to an ordinance, at once
reasonable in its nature and specific in its requirements—
an ordinance which the simplest could understand, and
respecting which no uncertainty could exist, whether it
had been kept or not. Such in the highest degree was
the appointment respecting the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil, forbidding it to be eaten on the pain of
death—an appointment positive in its character, in a
certain sense arbitrary, yet, withal, perfectly natural, as
relating to a particular tree singled out for the purpose
from many others around it, imposing no vexatious
burden, requiring only the exercise of a measure of
personal restraint in deference to the authority, and
acknowledgment of the supreme right, of Him of whom
all was held—in short, one of the easiest, most natural,
most unexceptionable of probationary enactments. It was
not exactly, as put by Tertullian, as if this command re-
specting the tree of knowledge formed the kind of quint-
essence or prolific source of all other moral commands;
for in itself, and apart from the Divine authority imposing
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. 57
it, there was nothing about it strictly moral: not on this
account therefore was it given, but as serving to erect a
standard, every way proper and becoming, around which,
the elements of good and evil might meet, and the
ascendency of the one or the other be made manifest.1
And so the Sovereign Disposer of events by the very
appointment undertook to order it. If the Divine image
should anyhow begin to lose the perfection of its parts,
if a spirit of disaffection should enter the bosoms of our
first parents, it could not be left to their own choice or to
merely adventitious circumstances, in what form or direc-
tion this should appear. It must assume an attitude of
contrariety to this Divine ordinance, and discover itself in
a disposition to eat of that tree of which God had said,
They should not eat of it, lest they died. There, pre-
cisely, and not elsewhere—thus and not otherwise was
it to be seen, if they could maintain their part in this
covenant of life; or, if not, then the obvious mastery of
the evil over the good in their natures.
III. We are not called here to enter into any formal
discussion of the temptation and the fall. Profound
mysteries hang around the subject; but the general
result, and the overt steps that led to it, are known to
all. Hearkening to the voice of the tempter, that they
should be as God, knowing good and evil, our first parents
did eat of the interdicted tree; and, in doing so, broke
through the law of their being, which bound them ever
1 So, indeed, Tertullian, when he explains himself, virtually regarded it:
‘Denique si dominum deum suum dilexissent’ (viz. Adam and Eve). ‘contra
præceptum ejus non fecissent; si proximum diligerent, id est semetipsos, per-
suasioni serpentis non credidissent,’ etc. And the general conclusion he draws
is, 'Denique, ante legem Moysi scriptam in tabulis lapideis, legem fuisse con-
tendo non scriptam, quæ naturaliter intelligebatur et a patribus custodiebatur.’
(Adv. Judæos, sec. 2).
58 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
to live and act in loving allegiance to the God who made
them, and of whom they held whatever they possessed.
Self now took the place of God; they would be their own
rule and their own end, and thereby gave way to the
spirit of apostacy; first entertaining doubts of God’s
goodness, as if the prohibition under which they had been
placed laid an undue restraint on their freedom, limited
too much their range of action and enjoyment; then
disbelieving God’s testimony as to the inevitable result
of disobedience; finally, making the gratification of their
own self-will and fleshly desire the paramount considera-
tion which was to determine their course. At every step
a violation of the principle of love—of love in both its
departments; first, indeed, and most conspicuously, in
reference to God, who was suspected, slighted, disobeyed;
but also in reference to one another, and their prospective
offspring, whose interests were sacrificed at the shrine of
selfishness. The high probation, therefore, issued in a
mournful failure; humanity, in its most favoured condi-
tions, proved unequal to the task of itself holding the
place and using the talents committed to it, in loving
subjection to the will of Heaven; and the penalty of sin,
not the guerdon of righteousness, became its deserved
portion. Shall not the penalty take effect? Can the
Righteous One do otherwise than shew Himself the enemy
and avenger of sin, by resigning to corruption and death
the nature which had allied itself to the evil? Where,
if He did, would have been the glory of His name?
Where the sanction and authority of His righteous
government? It was for the purpose, above all, of insti-
tuting such a government in the world, and unfolding by
means of it the essential attributes of His character, that
man had been brought on the stage of being as the proper
climax of creation; and if, for this end, it was necessary
LECT. II.] RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW 59
that righteousness should be rewarded, was it not equally
necessary that sin should be punished? So, death
entered, where life only should have reigned; it entered
as the stern yet sublime proof, that in the Divine govern-
ment of the world the moral must carry it over the
natural; that conformity to the principles of righteous-
ness is the indispensable condition of blessing; and that
even if grace should interpose to rectify the evil that had
emerged, and place the hopes of mankind on a better
footing than that of nature, this grace must reign
through righteousness, and overcome death by overcom-
ing the sin which caused it.
To have these great principles written so indelibly and
palpably on the foundations of the world’s history was of
incalculable moment for its future instruction and well-
being; for the solemn lessons and affecting memories of
the fall entered as essential elements of men’s view of
God, and formed the basis of all true religion for a sinful
world. They do so still. And, certainly, if it could be
proved by the cultivators of natural science, that man,
simply as such—man by the very constitution of his
being—is mortal, it would strike at the root of our reli-
gious beliefs; for it would imply, that death did not come
as a judgement from God, and was the result of physical
organization or inherent defectibility, not the wages of
sin. This, however, is a point that lies beyond the range
of natural science. It may be able to shew, that death
is not only now, but ever has been, the law of merely
sentient existence, and that individual forms of sentient
life, having no proper personality—if perpetuated at all,
must be perpetuated in the species. But man is on one
side only, and that the lower side, related to sentient
forms of being. In what constitute the more essential
characteristics of his nature—intelligence, reason, will,
60 RELATION OF MAN TO MORAL LAW. [LECT. II.
conscience—he stands in close affinity to God; he is
God’s image and representative, and not a liability to
death, but the possession of endless life, must be regarded
as his normal state of being. And to secure this for the
animal part of his frame, so long as spiritually he lived to
God, was, at least, one part of the design of the tree of
life (whatever higher purposes it might also have been
intended to serve as the pledge or symbol of life to his
soul): it was the specific antidote of death. A most in-
adequate provision, it may perhaps be alleged, for such
a purpose, suited only for a single pair, or for a compara-
tive handful of people, but by no means for a numerous
race. Let it be so: He who made the provision knew
well for how many, or how long, it might be required;
and, in point of fact, from no misarrangement or defect
in this respect, the evil it was ordained to guard against
found an entrance into the world. By man’s dis-
obedience, by that alone, came sin, and death by sin—
such is the teaching of Scripture alike in its earlier and
later revelations; and the theology which would elimi-
nate this doctrine from its fundamental beliefs must be
built on another foundation than the word of the living
God.
LECT. III.] THE REVELATION OF LAW. 61
LECTURE III.
THE REVELATION OF LAW, STRICTLY SO CALLED, VIEWED IN RE-
SPECT TO THE TIME AND OCCASION OF ITS PROMULGATION.
A PRINCIPLE of progression pervades the Divine
plan as unfolded in Scripture, which must be borne
in mind by those who would arrive at a correct under-
standing, either of the plan as a whole, or of the charac-
teristic features and specific arrangements which have
distinguished it at one period, as compared with another.
We can scarcely refer in proof of this to the original con-
stitution of things, since it so speedily broke up—though,
there can be no doubt, it also had interwoven with it a
principle of progression. The charge given to man at the
moment of creation, if it had been in any measure exe-
cuted, would necessarily have involved a continuous rise
in the outward theatre of his existence; and it may justly
be inferred, that as this proceeded, his mental and bodily
condition would have partaken of influences fitted in-
definitely to ennoble and bless it. But the fatal blow
given by the fall to that primeval state rendered the real
starting-point of human history an essentially different
one. The progression had now to proceed, not from a
less to a more complete form of excellence, but from
a state of sin and ruin to one of restored peace, life, and
purity, culminating in the possession of all blessing and
glory in the kingdom of the Father. And, in accordance
with this plan of God for the recovery and perfecting of
those who should be heirs of salvation, His revelation
62 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
spiritual and divine things assumes the form of a gradual
development and progressive history—beginning as a
small stream amid the wreck and desolation of the fall
just enough to cheer the heart of the fallen and brace it
for the conflict with evil, but receiving additions from
age to age, as the necessities of men and the purpose of
God required, until, in the incarnation and work of Christ
for the salvation of the world, it reached that fulness of
light and hope, which prompted an apostle to say, ‘The
darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.’
It may seem strange to our view—there is undoubtedly
in it something of the dark and mysterious—that the
plan of God for the enlightenment and regeneration of
the world should have been formed on such a principle
of progression, and that, in consequence, so many ages
should have elapsed before the realities on which light
and blessing mainly depended were brought distinctly
into view. Standing, as we ourselves do, on a point of
time, and even still knowing but in part the things of
God’s kingdom, we must be content, for the present, to
remain ignorant of the higher reasons which led to the
adoption of this principle as a pervading characteristic of
the Divine administration. But where we can do little
to explain, we are able to exemplify; for the ordinary
scheme of providence presents us here with a far-reaching
and varied analogy. On the same principle of progres-
sion is the life-plan of each individual constructed; so
that, on an average, a half, and in the case of multitudes
greatly more than a half, of their earthly life is spent
before the capacity for its proper employments has been
attained. In the history, also, of nations and com-
munities, of arts and sciences, we see the principle in
constant operation, and have no difficulty in connecting
with it much of the activity, enjoyment, and well-being
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 63
of mankind. It is this very principle of progression
which is the mainspring of life’s buoyancy and hopeful-
ness, and which links together, with a profound and
varied interest, one stage of life with another. Reasons
equally valid would doubtless be found in the higher line
of things which relates to the dispensations of God
toward men, could we search the depths of the Divine
counsels, and see the whole as it presents itself to the
eye of Him who perceives the end from the beginning.
It is the fact itself, however, which we here think it
of importance to note; for, assuming the principle in
question to have had a directive sway in the Divine
dispensations, it warrants us to expect measures of light
at one stage, and modes of administration, which shall
bear the marks of relative imperfection as compared with
others. This holds good of the revelation of law, which
we now approach, when placed beside the manifestation of
God in the Gospel; and even in regard to the law itself
the principle of progression was allowed to work; for it
might as well be said, that the law formed the proper
complement and issue of what preceded it, as that it
became the goundwork of future and grander revelations.
To this, as a matter of some importance, our attention
must first be given.
Considering the length of the period that elapsed from
the fall of man to the giving of the law, the little that
remains in the Divine records of explicit revelation as to
moral and religious duty, appears striking, and cannot be
regarded as free from difficulty when contemplated from
a modern point of view. It may be so, however, chiefly
from the scantiness of our materials, and our consequent
inability to realize the circumstances of the time, or to
take in all the elements of directive knowledge which
were actually at work in society. This deficiency is
64 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
certainly not to be supplied, after the fashion of Blunt,
by combining together the scattered notices in the early
history of the Bible, and looking upon them as so many
hints or fragmentary indications of a regularly constituted
patriarchal church, with its well furnished rubric as to
functions, places, times, and forms of worship.1 These are
not the points on which the comparatively isolated and
artless families of those early times might be expected to
have received special and unrecorded communications
from Heaven. It had been as much out of place for them
as for the early Christian communities, while worshipping
in upper chambers, hired school-rooms, and sequestered
retreats, to have had furnished to their hand a ritual of
service fit only for spacious cathedrals and a fully deve-
loped hierarchy. We are rather to assume, that brief as
the outline which Scripture gives of the transactions of
the period, it is still one that contains whatever is to be
deemed essential to the matter as a history of Divine
revelation; and that only by making proper account of
the things which are recorded, not by imagining such as
are not, can we frame to ourselves an adequate or well-
grounded idea of the state of those earlier generations of
mankind, as to the means of knowledge they possessed,
or the claims of service that lay upon them, in respect
to moral and religious duty. Let us endeavour to indi-
1 Some of these, as might be expected, are obtained in a very arbitrary
manner, and look almost like a caricature of the text of Scripture:–as when in
Esau’s ‘goodly raiment,’ furtively used by Jacob, is found the sacerdotal robes
of the first-born,* and something similar also in Joseph’s coat of many colours—
as if this mere boy were already invested with priestly attire, and not only so,
but in that attire went about the country, since he certainly wore it when he
visited his brethren at Dothan. Can any parallel to this be found even in the
complicated legislation of the Mosaic ritual? The priests who were ministering
at the tabernacle or temple had to wear robes of office, but not when engaged
in ordinary employments.
* ‘Scripture Coincidences,’ p. 12.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 65
cate some of the leading points suggested by Scripture on
the subject, without, however, dwelling upon them, and
for the purpose more especially of apprehending the rela-
tion in which they stood to the coming legislation of Sinai.
1. At the foundation of all we must place the fact of
man’s knowledge of God—of a living, personal, righteous
God—as the, Creator of all things, and of man himself as
His intelligent, responsible creature, made after His image,
and subject to His authority. Whatever effect the fall
might ultimately have on this knowledge, and on the
conscious relationship of man to his maker, his moral
and religious history started with it—a knowledge still
fresh and vivid when he was expelled from Eden, in
some aspects of it even widened and enlarged by the
circumstances that led to that expulsion. ‘Heaven lies
about us in our infancy:’—it did so pre-eminently, and
in another sense than now, when the infancy was that of
the human race itself; and not as by ‘trailing clouds of
glory’ merely, but by the deep instincts of their moral
being, and the facts of an experience not soon to be for-
gotten, its original heads knew that they came from
God as their home.’ Here, in a moral respect, lay their
special vantage-ground for the future; for not the authority
of conscience merely, but the relation of this to the higher
authority of God, must have been among their clearest
and most assured convictions. They knew that it had its
eternal source and prototype in the Divine nature, and
that in all its actings it stood under law to God. Good-
ness after the pattern of His goodness must have been
what they felt called by this internal monitor to aim at;
and in so far as they might fall beneath it, or deviate
from it, they knew—they could not but know—that it
was the voice of God they were virtually disobeying.
2. Then, as regards the manner in which this call
E
66 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
to imitate God’s goodness and be conformed to His will
was to be carried out, it would of course be understood
that, whatever was fairly involved in the original destina-
tion of man to replenish and cultivate the earth, so as to
make it productive of the good of which it was capable,
and subservient to the ends of a wise and paternal
government, this remained as much as ever his calling
and duty. Man’s proper vocation, as the rational head of
this lower world, was not abolished by the fall; it had
still to be wrought out, only under altered circumstances,
and amid discouragements which had been unknown, if
sin had not been allowed to enter into his condition. And
with this destination to work and rule for God on earth,
the correlative appointment embodied in God’s procedure
at creation, to be ever and anon entering into His rest,
must also be understood to have remained in force. As
the catastrophe of the fall had both enlarged the sphere
and aggravated the toil of work, so the calm return of
the soul to God, and the gathering up of its desires and
affections into the fulness of His life and blessing, especially
on the day peculiarly consecrated for the purpose, could
not but increasingly appear to the thoughtful mind an
act of homage to the Divine will, and an exercise of pious
feeling eminently proper and reasonable.
3. Turning now, thirdly, to the sphere of family and
domestic life, the foundation laid at the first, in the for-
mation of one man, and out of this man one woman to be
his bosom companion and wife, this also stood as before-
and carried the same deep import. The lesson originally
drawn from the creative act, whether immediately drawn
by Adam himself or not—‘therefore shall a man leave his
father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and
they shall be one flesh’1—was a lesson for all time. Our
1 Gen. ii. 24.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 67
Lord (who as the creative Word was the immediate agent
in the matter) when on earth set to His seal, at once to
the historical fact, and to the important practical deduction
flowing from it; and He added, for the purpose of still
further exhibiting its moral bearing, ‘So then they are
no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath
joined together, let not man put asunder.’1 Thus was im-
pressed on the very beginnings of human history the
stamp of God’s appointed order for families—the close
and endearing nature of the marriage-tie—the life-union
it was intended to form—the mutual sympathy and affec-
tion by which it should be sustained—and the common
interest it created, as well as the loving regard it naturally
tended to evoke, in behalf of the offspring that might
issue from it. All this, though not formally imposed by
definite rules and prescriptions, was yet by the moral
significance of that primeval fact laid upon the consciences
of men, and indicated the place which the family constitu-
tion and its relative duties were to hold in the organization
and progress of socIety.2
1 Mark x. 8, 9.
2 The objections that have been made to the sacred narrative respecting
the fact of Eve’s formation out of a rib of Adam, as that it was unworthy of God;
that his posterity are not deficient in that part of their bodily organization,
which they would have been if Adam had been actually deprived of a rib;
that we have therefore in the story not a fact but a myth, teaching the com-
panionship of the woman to man—are entitled to no serious consideration. It
is the very foundations of things we have here to do with, in a social and moral
respect, and for this, not shadowy myths (the inventions, always, of a cornpara-
tively late age) but great outstanding facts were necessary to furnish the requisite
instruction. Since important moral ends were in view for all coming time, why
could not God have taken a portion of Adam’s frame for the formation of his
partner in life, and afterwards repaired the loss? or, if the defect continued
in him as an individual, prevented its transmission to posterity? Somehow,
the formation of the first woman, as well as the first man, had to be brought
about by a direct operation of Deity; and why not thus rather than otherwise,
if thus only it could be made the symbol of a great truth, the embodiment of
an imperishable moral lesson? No reason can be shewn to the contrary.
68 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
4. Of devotion as consisting in specific acts of religious
worship, the record of man’s creation, it must be admitted,
is altogether silent, nor does anything appear in the form
of a command for ages to come. This cannot, however,
be fairly regarded as a proof, either that nothing in the
matter of worship was involved in the fundamental
grounds of moral obligation, or that the sense of duty in
that respect did not from the first find some fitting ex-
pression. The hallowing of a particular day of the week,
and connecting with its observance a peculiar blessing,
evidently implied the recognition of the religious senti-
ment in man’s bosom, and formed an ever-recurring call
to exercises of devotion. For what is devotion in its
proper nature, and stript of its mere accessories? It is
just the Sabbath idea realized, or, in the simple but
expressive language of Bishop Butler,l ‘Devotion is retire-
ment from the world God has made, to Him alone: it is
to withdraw from the avocations of sense, to employ our
attention wholly upon Him as upon an object actually
present, to yield ourselves up to the influence of the Divine
presence, and to give full scope to the affections of gratitude,
love, reverence, trust, and dependence, of which infinite
power, wisdom, and goodness is the natural and only
adequate object.’ The constitution of man’s nature, and
the circumstances in which he was originally placed, could
not but lead him to cherish and exercise the feelings of
such a spirit of devotion—though with what accompani-
ments of outward form we have no indication, nor is it
of any practical moment, since they can only be under-
stood to have been the natural and appropriate manifesta-
tions of what was felt within. With the fall, however,
matters in this respect underwent a material change; for
the worship which became a sinner could not be the same
1 Sermons, Ser. XIV.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 69
with that which flowed spontaneously from the heart of
one who was conscious only of good, nor could it be left
entirely to men’s own unaided conceptions; for if so left,
how could they be assured that it was accepted of their
Maker? how know it to be such as He would bless?
Somehow, therefore—apparently, indeed, in connection
with the clothing of the shame of our first parents by
means of the skins of slain victims—they were guided to
a worship by sacrifice as the one specially adapted to their
state as sinners, and one which probably from the very
first (by means of the supernatural agencies associated
with the entrance to Eden and its tree of life, viz., the
flaming sword and the cherubim), received upon it the
marks of Divine approval. At all events, in the history of
their earliest offspring, worship by the sacrifice of slain
victims becomes manifest as the regular and approved mode
of access to God in its more formal acts of homage. Here
then, again Without any positive command, far less any
formally prescribed ritual, there still were in the Divine
procedure, taken in connection with men’s moral convic-
tions and feelings, the grounds of moral obligation and
specific duty—not law, indeed, in the formal sense of the
term, but the elements of law, or such indications of the
Divine will as were sufficient to guide truly humble and
God-fearing men in the earlier ages of the world to give
expression to their faith and hope in God by a mode of
worship suited to their condition and acceptable to Heaven.
5. Another thing also ought to be borne in mind in
respect to those varied materials of moral and religious
duty, which is this—that while they belonged to the
origination of things on earth, to things of which the first
heads of the human family were either the only witnesses,
or the direct and immediate subjects, they had the advan-
tage of being associated with a living testimony, which
70 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
was capable of preserving it fresh and unimpaired for
many generations. The longevity of the first race of
patriarchs had doubtless many important ends to serve;
but we cannot be wrong in mentioning this among the
chief. He who had received his being direct and pure
from the hand of God, to whom had been revealed the
wonders of God’s work in creation, who had himself
walked with God in paradise, was present with his living
voice to tell of all he had seen and heard, and by his
example (as we can scarcely doubt) to confirm and com-
mend his testimony, down even to the times of Lamech,
the father of Noah. So that, if the materials of knowledge
respecting God’s will to men were comparatively few, and
were in many respects linked to the facts of a primeval past,
this continuous personal testimony served to render that
past a kind of perpetual present, and so to connect, as by
a living bond, the successive generations of men with the
original grounds of faith and hope for the world. There
were, also, as is clear from the case of Enoch and other
incidental notices, closer communings occasionally main-
tained by God with believing men, and for special seasons
more definite communications made of His will. Sparse,
therefore, as the memorials are, in a religious respect,
which belong to this period, as compared with its great
length, God still did not leave Himself without a wit-
ness; and men who were alive to the responsibilities of
their position, and disposed to follow the impulses of
their moral nature, could not complain of being without
any sure direction as to the great landmarks of truth
and duty.
6. Yet, it is impossible to carry the matter further;
and to speak of law in the moral and religious sphere—
law in some definite and imperative form, standing out-
side the conscience, and claiming authority to regulate
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 71
its decisions, as having a place in the earlier ages of man-
kind, is not warranted by any certain knowledge we
possess of the remoter periods of God’s dispensations.
That ‘all human laws are sustained by one that is
divine’ (a saying ascribed to Heraclitus), seems, as several
others of a like kind that might be quoted, to point to a
traditional belief in some primitive Divine legislation;
and in a well-known noble passage of Cicero, which it is
well to bring into remembrance in discussions of this
nature, there is placed above all merely local and con-
ventional enactments of men, a law essentially Divine, of
eternal existence and permanent universal obligation,1
Est quidem vera lex, etc. ‘There is indeed a true law,
right reason, conformable to nature, diffused among all,
unchanging, eternal, which, by commanding, urges to
duty; by prohibiting, deters from fraud; not in vain com-
manding or prohibiting the good, though by neither
moving the wicked. This law cannot be abrogated, nor
may anything be withdrawn from it; it is in the power
of no senate or people to set us free from it; nor is there
to be sought any extraneous teacher or interpreter of it.
It shall not be one law at Rome, another at Athens; one
now, another at some future time; but one law, alike
eternal and unchangeable, shall bind all nations and
through all time; and one shall be the common teacher,
as it were, and governor of all—God, who is Himself the
Author, the Administrator, and Enactor of this law.’
Elsewhere, he expresses it as the opinion of the wisest
men,2 that ‘this fundamental law and ultimate judgment
was the mind of Deity either ordering or forbidding all
things according to reason; whence that law which the
gods have given to mankind is justly praised. For it
fitly belongs to the reason and judgment of the wise to
1 De Republica, III. 22. 2 De Leg., II. 4.
72 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
enjoin one thing and prohibit another.’ And in thus
having its ground in right reason, which is the property
of man as contradistinguished from beasts, and is the
same in man as in God, he finds the reason of this law
being so unchanging, universal, and perpetually binding.
But the very description implies that no external legisla-
tion was meant coming somewhere into formal existence
among men; it is but another name for the findings of
that intelligent and moral nature, which is implanted in
all men, though in some is more finely balanced and
more faithfully exercised than in others. Under the
designation of the supremacy of conscience, it appears
again in the discourses of Bishop Butler, and is analysed
and described as ‘our natural guide, the guide assigned
us by the Author of our nature,’ that by virtue of which
‘man in his make, constitution, or nature, is, in the
strictest and most proper sense, a law to himself,’ whereby
‘he hath the rule of right within; what is wanting is
only that it be honestly attended to.’ But this has
already been taken into account, and placed at the
head of those moral elements in man’s condition which
belonged to him even as fallen, and which, though pos-
sessing little of the character of objective or formal law,
yet earned with them such directive light and just
authority as should have had the force of law to his
mind, and rendered inexcusable those who turned aside
to transgression.1
7. The result, however, proved that all was insuffi-
cient; a grievous defect lurked somewhere. The means
of knowledge possessed, and the motives to obedience
1 It is only in this sense, and as connected with the means of instruction
provided by the course of God’s providential dealings, that we can speak of the
light possessed by men as sufficient for moral and religious duty. The light of
conscience in fallen man by itself can never reach to the proper knowledge of
the things which concern his relation to God and immortality.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 73
with which they were accompanied, utterly failed with
the great majority of men to keep them in the path of
uprightness, or even to restrain the most shameful de-
generacy and corruption. The principle of evil which
wrought so vehemently, and so early reached an over-
mastering height in Cain, grew and spread through a
continually widening circle, till the earth was filled with
violence, and the danger became imminent, unless averted
by some forcible interposition, of all going to perdition.
Where lay the radical defect? It lay, beyond doubt, in
the weakness of the moral nature, or in that fatal rent
which had been made by the entrance of sin into man’s
spiritual being, dividing between his soul and God, divid-
ing even between the higher and the lower propensities
of his soul, so that the lower, instead of being regulated
and controlled by the higher, practically acquired the
ascendency. Conscience, indeed, still had, as by the
constitution of nature it must ever have, the right to
command the other faculties of the soul, and prescribe
the rule to be obeyed; but what was wanting was the
power to enforce this obedience, or, as Butler puts it, to
see that the rule be honestly attended to; and the want
is one which human nature is of itself incompetent to
rectify. For the bent of nature being now on the side of
evil, the will, which is but the expression of the nature,
is ever ready to give effect to those aims and desires
which have for their object some present gratification,
and correspondingly tend to blunt the sensibilities and
overbear the promptings of conscience in respect to things
of higher moment. In the language of the apostle, the
flesh lusts against the spirit, yea, and brings it into bon-
dage to the law of sin and death. And the evil, once
begun, is from its very nature a growing one, alike in the
individual and in the species. For when man, in either
74 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
respect, does violence to the better qualities of his nature,
when he defaces the Divine image in which he was made,
he instinctively turns away from any close examination
of his proper likeness—withdraws himself also more and
more from the thoughts and the companionships which
tend to rebuke his ungodliness, and delights in those
which foster his vanity and corruption. Hence, the
melancholy picture drawn near the commencement of the
epistle to the Romans, as an ever deepening and darken-
ing progression in evil, realizes itself wherever fallen
nature is allowed to operate unchecked. It did so in the
primitive, as well as the subsequent stages of human
history: First, men refused to employ the means of
knowledge they possessed respecting God’s nature and will,
would not glorify Him as God (gno<ntej to>n qeo>n ou]k e]do<casan);
then, having thus separated themselves from the true
light, they fell into the mazes of spiritual error and will-
worship, became frivolous, full of empty conceits, mis-
taking the false for the true, the shadowy for the real;
finally, not thinking it worth while to keep by the right
knowledge of God (ou]k e]doki<masan to>n qeo>n e@xein e]n e]pgnw<sej),
treating it as comparatively a thing of nought, they
were themselves made to appear worthless and vile—
given up by God to a reprobate mind (a]do<kimon nou?n)
whereby they lost sight of their true dignity, and became
the slaves of all manner of impure, hurtful, and pernicious
lusts, which drove them headlong into courses equally
offensive to God, and subversive of their own highest
good.
8. This process of degeneracy, though sure to have
taken place anyhow, had opportunities of development
and license during the earlier periods of the world’s
history, which materially helped to make it more rapid
and general. If there were not then such temptations to
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 75
flagrant evil as exist in more advanced states of society,
there were also greatly fewer and less powerful restraints.
Each man was to a larger extent than now the master of
his own movements: social and political organizations
were extremely imperfect; the censorship of the press,
the voice of an enlightened public opinion in any syste-
matic form, was wanting, and there was also wanting the
wholesome discipline and good order of regularly con-
stituted churches; so that ample scope was found for
those who were so inclined, to slight the monitions of
their moral sense, and renounce the habits and observ-
ances which are the proper auxiliaries of a weak virtue,
and necessary in the long run to the preservation of a
healthful and robust piety in communities. The fer-
mentation of evil, therefore, wrought on from one stage
to another, till it reached a consummation of appalling
breadth and magnitude. And yet not for many long ages
—not till the centuries of antediluvian times had passed
away, and centuries more after a new state of things
had commenced its course—did God see meet to manifest
Himself to the world in the formal character of Lawgiver,
and confront men’s waywardness and impiety with a code
of objective commands and prohibitions, in the peremptory
tone, Thou shalt do this, and Thou shalt not do that:—
A proof, manifestly, of God’s unwillingness to assume this
more severe aspect in respect to beings He had made in
His own image and press upon them, in the form of
specific enactments, His just claims on their homage and
obedience! He would rather—unspeakably rather—that
they should know Him in the riches of His fatherly good-
ness, and should be moved, not so much by fear, as by
forbearance and tenderness, to act toward Him a faithful
and becoming part! Hence He delayed as long as
possible the stringent and imperative revelation of law,
76 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
which by the time alone of its appearance is virtually
acknowledged to have been a kind of painful necessity,
and in its very form is a ‘reflection upon man’s incon-
stancy of homage and love.’1
God did not, however, during the long periods referred
to, leave Himself without witness, either as to His dis-
pleasure on account of men’s sin, or the holiness in heart
and conduct which He required at their hands. If His
course of administration displayed little of the formal
aspect of law, it still was throughout impregnated with
the principles of law; for it contained manifestations of
the character and purposes of God which were both fitted
and designed to draw the hearts of men toward Him in
confiding love, and inspire them with His own supreme
regard to the interests of righteousness. Of law, strictly
so called, we find nothing applicable to the condition of
mankind generally, from the period of the fall to the
redemption from Egypt, except the law of blood for blood,
introduced immediately after the Deluge, and the ordi-
nance of circumcision, to seal the covenant with Abraham,
and symbolize the moral purity which became those who
entered into it. But even these, though legal in their
form, partook in their import and bearing of the character
of grace; they came in as appendages to the fresh and
fuller revelations which had been given of God’s mercy
and loving-kindness—the one in connection with Noah’s
covenant of blessing, and as a safeguard thrown around
the sacredness of human life; the other in connec-
tion with the still richer and more specific covenant of
blessing established with Abraham. Indeed, during the
whole of what is usually called the patriarchal period,
the most prominent feature in the Divine administration
consisted in the unfoldings of promise, or in the materials
1 ‘Ecce Deus,’ p. 234.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 77
it furnished to sinful men for the exercise of faith and
hope. God again condescended to hold familiar inter-
course with them. He gave them, not only His word of
promise, but His oath confirming the word, that He might
win from them a more assured and implicit confidence;
and by very clear and impressive indications of His mind
in providence, He made it to be understood how ready
He was to welcome those who believed, and to enlarge,
as their faith and love increased, their interest in the
heritage of blessing. It is the story of grace in its
earlier movements—grace delighting to pardon, and by
much free and loving fellowship, by kind interpositions of
providence, and encouraging hopes, striving to bring the
subjects of it into proper sympathy and accord with the
purposes of Heaven.
Yet here also grace reigned through righteousness;
and the righteousness at times ripened into judgement.
There was the mighty catastrophe of the Deluge lying in
the background—emphatically God’s judgment on the
world of the ungodly, and the sure presage of what
might still be expected to befall the wicked. At a later
period, and within the region of God’s more peculiar
operations in grace, there was the overthrow of the cities
of the plain, which were made for their crying enor-
mities to suffer ‘the vengeance of eternal fire.’ So still
onwards, and in the circle itself of the chosen seed,
or the races most nearly related to them, there were
ever and anon occurring marks of Divine displeasure,
rebukes in providence, which were designed to temper
the exhibitions of mercy, and keep up salutary impres-
sions of the righteous character of God. And it may
justly be affirmed, that for those who were conversant
with the events which make up the sacred history of
the period, it was not left them to doubt that the face
78 THE REVELATION OF LAW [LECT. III.
of God was towards the righteous, and is set against
them that do wickedly.
9. Such, certainly, should have been the result; such
also it would have been, if they had wisely considered the
matter, and marked the character and tendency of the
Divine dispensations. But this, unfortunately, was too
little done; and so the desired result was most imper-
fectly reached. So much so, indeed, that at the close of
the patriarchal period all seemed verging again to utter
ruin. The heathen world, not excepting those portions
of it which came most in contact with the members of
God’s covenant, had with one consent surrendered them-
selves to the corruptions of idolatry; and the covenant
seed themselves, after all the gracious treatment they
had received, and the special moral training through
which they had passed, were gradually sinking into the
superstitious and degrading manners of Egypt—their
knowledge of Jehovah as the God of their fathers became
little better than a vague tradition, their faith in the
promise of His covenant ready to die, and all ambition
gone, except with the merest remnant, to care for more
than a kind of tolerable existence in the land of Goshen.l
A change, therefore, in the mode of the Divine admini-
stration was inevitable, if living piety and goodness were
really to be preserved among men, and the cause of
righteousness was not wholly to go down. This cause had
come to be quite peculiarly identified with the people of
Israel. God’s covenant of blessing was with them; they
were the custodiers of His word of salvation for the
world; and to fulfil their calling they must be rescued
from degradation, and placed in a position of freedom
and enlargement. But even this was not enough. The
history of the past had made it manifest that other
1 Exodus, ii. 14; v. 21; xvi. 4. Ezekiel, xxiii. 25, 39.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 79
securities against defection, more effectual guarantees
for righteousness than had yet been taken, would require
to be introduced. Somehow the bonds of moral obliga-
tion must be wound more closely around them, so as to
awaken and keep alive upon their conscience a more pro
found and steadfast regard to the interests of righteous-
ness. And when, looking forward to what actually took
place, we find the most characteristic feature in the new
era that emerged to be the revelation of law, we are
warranted to infer that such was its primary and leading
object. It could not have been intended—the very time
and occasion of its introduction prove that it could not
have been intended—to occupy an independent place; it
if was of necessity but the sequel or complement of the
covenant of promise, with which were bound up the hopes
of the world’s salvation, to help out in a more regular
and efficient manner the moral aims which were involved
in the covenant itself, and which were directly contem-
plated in the more special acts and dealings of God
toward His people. It formed a fresh stage, indeed, in
the history of the Divine dispensations; but one in which
the same great objects were still aimed at, and both the
ground of a sinner’s confidence towards God, and the
nature of the obligations growing out of it, remained
essentially as they were.
10. This becomes yet more clear and conclusively cer-
tain, when we look from the general connection which
the revelation of law had with preceding manifestations
of God, to the things which formed its more immediate
prelude and preparation. The great starting-point here
was the redemption from Egypt; and the direct object
of this was to establish the covenant which God had
made with the heads of the Israelitish people. Hence,
when appearing for the purpose of charging Moses to
80 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. III.
undertake the work of deliverance, the Lord revealed
Himself as at once the Jehovah, the one unchangeable
and eternal God, and the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and
of Jacob,l who was going at last to do for their posterity
what He had pledged His word to accomplish for them:
And as soon as the deliverance was achieved, and the
tribes of Israel lay at the foot of Sinai, ready to hear what
their redeeming God might have to say to them, the first
message that came to them was one that most strikingly
connected the past with the future, the redeeming grace
of a covenant God with the duty of service justly ex-
pected of a redeemed people: ‘Thus shalt thou say to
the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel;2 Ye
have seen what I did unto the Egyptians, and how I
bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself.
Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep
my covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto
me above all people: for all the earth is mine. And ye
shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy
nation. These are the words which thou shalt speak unto
the children of Israel.’ They were, indeed, words of
profound significance and pregnant import, comprising in
substance both the gospel and the law of the covenant.
Primarily, indeed, the gospel; for Jehovah announces
Himself at the outset as, in a quite peculiar sense, the
God of Israel, who had vindicated them to Himself by
singular displays of His power and glory—had raised
them to the position of a people, given them national
existence, for the very purpose of endowing them with
the richest tokens of His favour and loving-kindness. It
drew a broad distinction between Israel as a nation, and
all merely worldly kingdoms, which spring into existence
by dint of human powers and earthly advantages, and
1 Ex. iii. 6, 9, 13, 15-17. 2 Ex. xix. 3-7.
LECT. III.] TIMES OF PREPARATION. 81
can attain to nothing more than that kind of secondary
glory and evanescent greatness, which such inferior means
and resources may be able to secure. Israel, however,
stands related from the first to a higher sphere; it comes
into being under special acts of Divine providence, and
has both its place of peculiar honour assigned it, and the
high prerogatives and powers needful for fulfilling aright
its calling by reason of its living connection with Him
who is the eternal source of all that is great and good.
Considered, therefore, in its now ransomed and indepen-
dent position among the nations, Israel is the creation
of God’s omnipotent goodness—the child, in a manner,
which He has taken to His bosom, which He will
endow with His proper inheritance,l and whose future
safety and well-being must be secured by Divine faith-
fulness and power. But for this very reason that God
identified himself so closely with Israel, Israel in return
must identify itself with God. Brought into near rela-
tionship and free intercommunion with the Source of holi-
ness and truth, the people must be known as the holy
nation; they must even be as a kingdom of priests, receiv-
ing from His presence communications of His mind and
will, and again giving forth suitable impressions of what
they have received to the world around them. This,
henceforth, was to be their peculiar calling; and to in-
struct them how to fulfil it—to shew them distinctly
what it was (as matters then stood) to be a kingdom of
priests and an holy nation—the law came with its clear
announcements of duty and its stern prohibitions against
the ways of transgression. What, then, are the main
characteristics of this law? and how, in one part of its
enactments, does it stand related to another? This
naturally becomes our next branch of inquiry.
1 Lev. xxv. 23.
82 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
LECTURE IV.
THE LAW IN ITS FORM AND SUBSTANCE—ITS MORE ESSENTIAL
CHARACTERISTICS—AND THE RELATION OF ONE PART OF ITS
CONTENTS TO ANOTHER.
IN this particular part of our inquiry, there is much
that might be taken for granted as familiarly known
and generally admitted, were it not that much also is
often ignored, or grievously misrepresented; and that, for
a correct view of the whole, not a little depends on a
proper understanding of the spirit as well as formal con-
tents of the law, of its historical setting, and the right
adjustment of its several parts. If, in these respects, we
can here present little more than an outline, it must
still be such as shall embrace the more distinctive features
of the subject, and clear the ground for future statements
and discussions
I. We naturally look first to the DECALOGUE—the ten
Words, as they are usually termed in the Pentateuch,
which stand most prominently out in the Mosaic legisla-
tion, as being not only the first in order, and in them-
selves a regularly constructed whole, but the part which
is represented as having been spoken directly from
Heaven in the audience of all the people, amid the most
striking indications of the Divine presence and glory—
the part, moreover, which was engraven by God on
the mount, on two tablets of stone—the only part so
engraven—and, in this enduring form, the sole contents
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 83
of that sacred chest or ark which became the centre of
the whole of the religious institutions of Judaism—the
symbolical basis of God’s throne in Israel. Such varied
marks of distinction, there can be no reasonable doubt,
were intended to secure for this portion of the Sinaitic
revelation the place of pre-eminent importance, to render
it emphatically the law, to which subsequent enact-
ments stood in a dependent or auxiliary relation.
1. And in considering it, there is first to be noted the
aspect in which the great Lawgiver here presents Him-
self to His people: ‘I am Jehovah thy God, who have
brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of
bondage.’ The words are merely a resumption of what
had been shortly before, and somewhat more fully, de-
clared in the first message delivered from Sinai; they
give, in a compendious form, the Gospel of the covenant
of promise. Jehovah, the unchangeable and eternal, the
great I am; this alone, had it been all, was a lofty idea
for men who had been so long enveloped in the murky
atmosphere of idolatry; and if deeply impressed upon
their hearts, and made a pervading element in their reli-
gion and polity, would have nobly elevated the seed of
Israel above all the nations then existing on the earth.
But there is more a great deal than this in the personal
announcement which introduces the ten fundamental pre-
cepts; it is that same glorious and unchangeable Being
coming near to Israel in the character of their redeeming
God, and by the very title, with the incontestable fact
on which it rested, pledging His faithful love and
sufficiency for all future time, to protect them from
evil or bring them salvation.1 So that, in coming forth in
such a character to declare the law that was henceforth
to bind their consciences and regulate their procedure
1 Ex. xv. 26.
84 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
alike toward Himself and toward one another, there was
embodied the all-important and salutary principle, that
redemption carries in its bosom a conformity to the
Divine order, and that only when the soul responds to
the righteousness of Heaven is the work of deliverance
complete.
The view now given received important confirmation in
the course of the historical transactions which immediately
ensued. The people who had heard with solemn awe
the voice which spake to them from Sinai, and undertook
to observe and do what was commanded, soon shewed
how far they were from having imbibed the spirit of the
revelation made to them, how far especially from having
attained to right thoughts of God, by turning back in
their hearts to Egypt, and during the temporary absence
of Moses on the mount, prevailing upon Aaron to make a
golden calf as the object of their worship. The sensual
orgies of this false worship were suddenly arrested by the
re-appearance of Moses upon the scene; while Moses
himself, in the grief and indignation of the moment, cast
from him the two tables of the law, and broke them at
the foot of the mount1—an expressive emblem of that
moral breach which the sin of the people had made
between them and God. The breach, however, was
again healed, and the covenant re-estab1ished; but before
the fundamental words of the covenant were written
afresh on tables of stone, the Lord gave to Moses, and
through him to the people, a further revelation of His
name, that the broken relationship might be renewed
under clearer convictions of the gracious and loving
nature of Him whose yoke of service it called them to
bear. Even Moses betrayed his need of some additional
insight in this respect, by requesting that God would
1 Ex. xxxii. 19.
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 85
shew him His glory; though, as may seem from the
response made to it, he appears to have had too much in
his eye some external form of manifestation. Waiving,
however, what may have been partial or defective in the
request—at least, no farther meeting it than by present-
ing to the view of Moses what, perhaps, we may call a
glimpse of the incarnation in a cleft of the rock—the
Lord did reveal His more essential glory—revealed it by
such a proclamation of His name as disclosed all His
goodness.1 ‘The Lord,’ it is said, ‘passed by before
Moses, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah God, merciful
and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness
and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no
means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children, and upon the children’s chil-
dren, unto the third and to the fourth generation.’ This
emphatic proclamation of the Divine name, or description
of the character in which God wished to be known by
His people, is in principle the same with that which
heads the ten words; but it is of greater compass, and
remarkable chiefly for the copious and prominent exhibi-
tion it gives of the gracious, tender, and benignant
-character of God, as the Redeemer of Israel, that they
might know how thoroughly they could trust in His
goodness, and what ample encouragement they had to
serve Him. It intimates, indeed, that justice could not
forego its claims, that obstinate transgressors should meet
their desert, but gives this only the subordinate and
secondary place, while grace occupies the foreground.
Was this, we ask, to act like One, who was more anxious
to inspire terror, than win affection from men? Did it
seem as if He would have His revelation of law associated
1 Ex. xxxiii. 19; xxxiv. 6, 7.
86 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
in their minds with the demands of a rigid service, such
as only an imperious sense of duty, or a dread of conse-
quences, might constrain them to render? Assuredly
not; and we know that the words of the memorial-name
which He so closely linked with the restored tables of the
law, did take an abiding hold of the more earnest and
thoughtful spirits of the nation, and ever and anon, amid
the seasons of greatest darkness and despondency, came
up with a joyous and re-assuring effect into their hearts.1
So that, whatever of awful grandeur and majesty attended
the revelation of the law from Sinai, as uttered amid
thrilling sounds and sights that flashed amazement on
the eyes of the beholders, it still had its foundation in
love, and came from God expressly in the character of
their most gracious and faithful Redeemer, as well as
their righteous Lord.
2. Yet—and here is a second point to be noted—it
did not the less on that account assume—being a revela-
tion of law in form as well as substance, it could not
but assume—a predominantly stringent and imperative
character. The humane and loving spirit in which it
opens, is not, indeed, absent from the body of its enact-
ments, though, for the most part, formally disguised;
but even in form it reappears more than once—especially
in the assurance of mercy to the thousands who should
love God and keep His commandments, and the promise
of long continuance on the land of rest and blessing,
associated respectively with the second and the fifth
precepts of the law. But these are only, as it were, the
relieving clauses of the code—reminiscences of the grace
and loving-kindness which had been pledged by the
Lawgiver, and might be surely counted on by those who
were willing to yield themselves to His service: the law
1 Ps. lxxxvi. 5, 15; ciii. 8; cxlv. 8; Joel ii. 13; Jonah iv. 2; Neh. ix. 17.
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 87
itself, in every one of the obligations it imposes, takes
(as we have said) the imperative form—‘Thou shalt do
r this,’ ‘Thou shalt not do that;’ and this just because it is
law, and must leave no doubt that the course it pre-
scribes is the one that ought to be taken, and must be
taken, by every one who is in a sound moral condition.
This is the case equally whether the precepts run in the
positive or the negative form. For, as justly stated by
a moralist formerly quoted,1 ‘Since morality rests upon
freedom of choice, and this again consists in the fact, that
under several modes of action that are possible, a parti-
cular one is chosen through one’s own independent exer-
cise of will, every moral act is at the same time also
a refraining from a contrary mode of action that might
have been taken. The moral law is hence always double-
sided; it is at once command and prohibition; nor can
it make any essential difference, whether the law comes
forth in the one or the other form; and as the moral life
of man is a continuous one, he must every moment be
fulfilling a Divine law; a mere abstaining would be a
disowning of the moral.’ No peculiar learning or pro-
found reach of thought is required to understand this;
it must commend itself to every intelligent and serious
mind; for if, in respect to those precepts which take the
negative form of prohibitions, the mere omitting to do
the thing forbidden were all that is enjoined, there would
be nothing properly moral in the matter—the command
might be fulfilled by the simple absence of moral action,
by mere inactivity, which in the moral sphere is but
another name for death. Hence it has ever been the
maxim of all judicious and thoughtful commentators on
the law of the two tables, that when evil is forbidden,
the opposite good is to be understood as enjoined; just
1 Wuttke, ‘Handbuch der Christlichen Sittenlehre,’ I. p. 385.
88 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
as, on the other side, when a duty is commanded, every-
thing contrary to it is virtually forbidden. Thus Calvin,
after substantially affirming the principle now stated,
referring to the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill,’
repudiates the idea that it is to be regarded merely as
an injunction to abstain from all injury, or wish to inflict
it.1 ‘I hold (he says) that it means besides, that we are
to aid our neighbour’s life by every means in our power.’
And he proves it thus: ‘God forbids us to injure or hurt
a brother, because He would have his life to be dear and
precious to us; and therefore when He so forbids, He at
the same time demands all the offices of charity which
can contribute to his preservation.’ So also Luther, who,
under the same precept, considers all indeed forbidden
that might lead to murder, but holds this also to be
included, that ‘we must help our neighbour and assist
him in all his bodily troubles.’ Higher than both, our
Lord Himself brings out the principle strongly in His
exposition of that and of other precepts of the Decalogue
in His sermon on the mount; as again also in reference
to the prohibition regarding work on the Sabbath, when
taken as an excuse for refusing to administer help to a
brother’s necessities, by asking, ‘Is it lawful on the
sabbath-days to do good, or to do evil? to save life, or
to destroy it ?’2—which plainly involves the principle,
that mere negatives in matters of moral obligation have
the force of positives; that to reject virtue is to choose
vice; that not to do the good we can is to consent to
the evil we allow; to let a life we might have saved
perish, is to be guilty of another’s death.
On this ground, which has its justification in the very
nature of things, there can manifestly be no adequate
knowledge of this revelation of law, or proper exhibition
1 ‘Institutes,’ B. II. c. 8, sec. 9. 2 Luke vi. 9.
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 89
of its real nature and place in the Divine economy, with-
out perceiving its relation, as well in those who received
as in Him who gave it, to the great principle of love.
Apart from this, it had been a body without a soul, a call
to obedience without the slightest chance of a response;
for aiming, as the law did, at securing a conformity in
moral purpose and character between a redeeming God
and a redeemed people, not one of its precepts could
reach the desired fulfilment, unless the love which had
exhibited itself as the governing principle in the one
should find in the other a corresponding love, which
might be roused and guided into proper action. Hence,
as if to make this unmistakeably plain, no sooner had
Moses given a rehearsal of the Decalogue in the book of
Deuteronomy, than he proclaimed aloud the memorable
words: ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord;
and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine
heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might:’1
—which our Lord declared to be the first and great com-
mandment,2 and He added another, which He pronounced
the second and like to it, ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour
as thyself’—the same also which centuries before had
issued from the lips of Moses.3 ‘On these two command-
ments,’ He further declared, ‘hang all the law and the
prophets.’ The apostles also freely interchange the pre-
cept of love with the commands of the Decalogue, as
mutually explanatory of each other.4 And thus, in part
at least, may be explained the negative form of the ten
commandments. They assume throughout the known
existence of a positive; and that, primarily, in the moral
nature of man, as the image (though marred) of the
Divine—without which, latent but living in the bosom,
1 Deut. vi. 4, 5. 2 Matt. xxii. 40.
3 Lev. xix. 18. 4 Rom. xiii. 9, 10; Jas. ii. 8-11.
90 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
they had been incapable of awakening any response,
creating the slightest sense of obligation. Yet not
that alone does the law assume the existence of a posi-
tive, but also in the revealed character of God, as recog-
nised and exhibited in the law itself. There Israel, as
the redeemed of Jehovah, had ever before them the per-
fection of excellence, which they were bound to aim at,
and for the sake of which—lest they should lose sight of
it, or think little of the obligation—they had their path
fenced and guarded by those prohibitions of law, on the
right hand and the left. Still, the negative is doubtless in
itself the lower form of command; and when so largely
employed as it is in the Decalogue, it must be regarded
as contemplating and striving to meet the strong current
of evil that runs in the human heart. This may not im-
properly be deemed the main reason—only not the
exclusive one, since even in paradise a negative form was
given to the command which served as the peculiar test
of love.
3. Viewing the law thus, as essentially the law of love,
which it seeks to guard and protect, as well as to evoke
and direct, let us glance briefly at the details, that we
may see how entirely these accord, alike in their nature
and their orderly arrangement, with the general idea, and
provide for its proper exemplification. As love has un-
speakably its grandest object in God, so precedence is
justly given to what directly concerns Him—implying
also that religion is the basis of morality, that the right
adjustment of men’s relation to God tends to ensure the
proper maintenance of their relations one to another.
God, therefore, must hold the supreme place in their
regard, must receive the homage of their love and obedi-
ence:—and this in regard to His being, His worship, His
name, and His day. He is the one living God—therefore
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 91
no others must be set up in His presence; He alone must
have the place of Deity (the first). Spiritual in His own
nature, His worship also must be spiritual—therefore no
idol-forms are to appear in His service, for none such can
adequately represent Him; they would but degrade men’s
notions concerning Him, virtually change His truth into
a lie (second). His name is the expression of whatever is
pure, holy, and good—therefore it must be lifted up to
nothing that is vain, associated with nothing false, cor-
rupt, wicked, or profane, but only with words and deeds
which breathe its Spirit and reflect its glory (third).
The day, too, which He has specially consecrated for Him-
self, being the signature of His holiness on time and
labour—the check He lays upon human activity as natu-
rally tending to work only for self, His ever-recurring
call in providence on men to work so as to be again
perpetually entering into His rest—this day, therefore,
must be kept apart from servile labour, withdrawn from
the interests of the flesh, and hallowed to God (fourth).
The next command may also be taken in the same
connection—a step further in the same line, since earthly
parents are in a peculiar sense God’s representatives among
men, those whom He invests with a measure of His own
authority, as standing for a time in His stead to those
whom instrumentally they have brought into being, and
whom they should train for His service and glory—these,
therefore, must be honoured with all dutiful and ready
obedience, that the hearts of the fathers may in turn
become the hearts of the children. This, however, touches
on the second division of moral duty, that which concerns
men’s relation to each other; and according to the parti-
cular aspect in which it is contemplated, the fifth command
may be assigned to the first or to the second table of the
law. Scripture itself makes no formal division. Though
92 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
it speaks frequently enough of two tables, it nowhere
indicates where the one terminates and the other begins
—purposely, perhaps, to teach us that the distinction is
not to be very sharply drawn, and that the contents of
the one gradually approximate and at last pass over into
the other. Already, in the fourth commandment, distinct
reference is made to persons in the humbler ranks of life,
and a kind consideration is required to be had of them—
though still the primary aim and aspect of the command
bore upon interests in which all were alike concerned.
In like manner with the fifth: what it directly enjoins is
certainly such love and regard as is due from one human
being to another; and yet the relation involved is not
that exactly of neighbour to neighbour, but rather of
wards under persons bearing Heaven’s delegated trust
and authority; so that in the honouring of these God
Himself receives somewhat of the homage due to Him,
and they who render it, as the apostle says, ‘shew piety
at home.’l With the sixth command, however—the first
of the second five—we are brought to what most dis-
tinctly relates to the human sphere, and to the exercise
of that love, which may in the strictest sense be called
love to one’s neighbours. These the law enjoins us not
to injure, but to protect and cherish, in regard to their
life; then, to what next to life should be dearest to them,
the chastity and honour of wife or daughter, to their
property, to their character and position in life. In re-
spect to one and all of these, the imperative obligation
imposed is, that we do our neighbour no harm by the
false testimony of our tongues, or the violence of our
hands, or any course of procedure that is fitted to tell
injuriously upon what he has and loves. And, finally,
to shew that neither tongue, nor hands, nor any other
1 I. Tim. v. 4.
LECT. IV.] COMMANDS OF THE DECALOGUE. 93
member of our body, or any means and opportunities at
our command—that not these alone are laid under contri-
bution to this principle of love, but the seat also and
fountain of all desire, all purpose and action—the Deca-
logue closes with the precept which forbids us to lust
after or covet wife, house, possessions, anything whatever
that is our neighbour’s—a precept which reaches to the
inmost thoughts and intents of the heart, and requires
that all even there should be under the control of a love
which thinketh no evil, which abhors the very thought of
adding to one’s own heritage of good by wrongfully
infringing on what is another’s.
Viewed thus as enshrining the great principle of love,
and in a series of commands chalking out the courses of
righteous action it was to follow, of unrighteous action it
was to shun, the law of the two tables may justly be
pronounced unique—so compact in form, so orderly in
arrangement, so comprehensive in range, so free from
everything narrow and punctilious—altogether the fitting
reflex of the character of the Supremely Pure and Good
in His relation to the members of His earthly kingdom.
It is emphatically a revelation of God—of God generally,
indeed, as the moral Governor of the world, but more
peculiarly as the Redeemer of Israel; and to lower it to
the position of a kind of semi-political and religious code,
were to deprive it of all that is most distinctive in its
spirit and bearing, and render utterly inexplicable the
singular prominence assigned it, not alone in the legisla-
tion of the old covenant, but in the Scriptures generally
alike of the Old and the New.1
1 Those who will calmly reflect on the statements advanced in the preceding
pages will not, I think, be much moved by the extraordinary assertions in the
following passage: ‘What is termed the moral law is certainly in no way to be
peculiarly identified with the Decalogue, as some have strangely imagined
94 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
II. Subordinate to this grand revelation of moral law,
yet closely related to it, is what has usually been called
the judicial law of the Theocracy—though this is too
limited a term for what must be comprised under it. A
more fitting designation would be, Statutory directions and
enactments for the practical ordering of affairs amid the
complicated relations and often untoward events of life.
[some indeed!]. Though moral duties are specially enjoined in many places of
the Law, yet the Decalogue most assuredly does not contain all moral duties,
even by remote implication, and on the widest construction. It totally omits
many such, as, e.g., beneficence, truth, justice, temperance, control of temper,
and others; and some moral precepts omitted here are introduced in other
places. But many moral duties are hardly recognised, e.g., it is difficult to find
any positive prohibition of drunkenness in the Law. In one passage only an
indirect censure seems to be implied (Deut. xxix. 19).’* As if God’s grand
summary of moral law might be expected to run in the style of an act of Parlia-
ment, and go into endless specifications of the precise kinds and forms of
wickedness which would constitute breaches of its enactments! Such cumbrous
details would have been unsuited to its design, and marred rather than aided
its practical effect. What was needed was a brief but comprehensive series of
precepts, which for thoughtful and considerate minds would be found to
embrace the wide range of duty, and, if honestly complied with, would render
acts of ungodliness and crime practically unknown. And this is what the
Decalogue really contains. That anyone who sincerely opens his heart to the
reception of its great principles of truth and duty, and lives in the loving con-
nection it implies with God and his fellow-men, should deem himself otherwise
than bound to practise justice, temperance, beneficence, and truth, it is impos-
sible to conceive. And the same substantially may be said of another alleged
omission—the moral obligation of missions. For, how could anyone entering
into the spirit of the revelation of law, and believing the practical acknowledg-
ment of its great principles of truth and righteousness to be the essential
condition of all true peace and well-being, fail to recognise it as his duty to do
what he could to bring others acquainted with them? The very position and
calling of Israel partook of a missionary character: it had for its grand aim the
communication of the peculiar blessing of the covenant to all nations; and the
missionary spirit breathed in such passages as Ps. lxvii., lxxii., xcviii.; Isa. ii.,
xlix., lx., etc., is but an expression of the love, in its higher exercise, which, as
members alike of the covenant of law and the covenant of promise, the people
of God were bound, as they had opportunity, to manifest.—For some points of
a formal kind connected with the Decalogue, see Supplementary Dissertation,
No. I.
* Baden Powell’s ‘Christianity without Judaism,’ p. 104.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 95
The law, strictly so called, being the absolute expression
of the Divine will toward a people redeemed for the
Divine service and glory, was necessarily oblivious of
difficulties and defects; it peremptorily required confor-
mity with its own perfect ideal of rectitude, and made no
account of any deviation from this, except to warn against
and condemn it. But in the circumstances in which
mankind generally, and the Israelites in particular,
actually stood, such conformity could never be more than
partially realized; transactions, interests, would be sure
to come up, which might render it doubtful even to
sincere men how to apply, or how far to carry out, the
precepts of the Decalogue; and, what was likely to be of
much more frequent occurrence, wayward and selfish men
would take occasion to traverse the pure and comely
order, which it was the design of those precepts to estab-
lish among the covenant people. In the event of such
things arising, how was the external polity to be re-
gulated and maintained? What modes of procedure in
definite circumstances should be held in accordance with
its spirit? What, as between one member of the com-
munity and another, might be tolerated, though falling
somewhat below the Divine code of requirements? What,
again, calling for excision, as too flagrantly opposed to it
to consist with the very being of the commonwealth?
It was to provide some sort of answer to these ques-
tions that the statutory directions and enactments now
under consideration were introduced. They are called,
in the first mention that is made of them, the mishpatim,l
the statutes or judgments, because bearing that character
in relation to the ten commandments going immediately
before. A series of particular cases is supposed—by way
of example and illustration, of course, not as if exhausting
1 Ex. xxi. 1.
96 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
the entire category of possible occurrences—and, in con-
nection with them, instructions are given as to what may
or should be done, so as to preserve the spirit of the con-
stitution, and to restrain and regulate, without unduly
cramping, the liberty of the people. Indeed, the range
which is allowed through the whole class of provisions
now in question, for the exercise of individual liberty in
official and even social arrangements, is one of the most
noticeable points connected with them. In civil and
economical respects, the people were left in great measure
to shape their domestic institutions, and model their
administrative polity as they thought fit. There were to
be judges to determine in matters of dispute between
man and man, and to maintain the fundamental laws of
the kingdom; but how these judges were to be ap-
pointed, or what their relative places and spheres of juris-
diction, nothing is prescribed. A regular gradation of
officers was introduced by Moses shortly before the giving
of the law;l but this was done at the suggestion of
Jethro, as a merely prudential arrangement, and, for any-
thing that appears, was in that specific form confined to
the wilderness-sojourn. Neither the time, nor the mode
of its introduction, brings it properly within the circle of
legal appointments. Even when, at a later period, the
supposition is made of the general government assuming
a kingly form, it is spoken of as a thing to be left to the
people’s own choice, restricted only by such rules and
limitations regarding the mode of election, and the future
conduct of the king, as would render the appointment
compatible with the Theocratic constitution.2 And a
similar reserve was maintained in respect to whatever
did not come distinctly within the province of religion
and morals; the people stood, in regard to it, much on
1 Ex. xviii. 2 Deut. xvii. 14-20.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 97
the same platform as the other nations of the earth.
And these, we know, were still in a comparatively im-
perfect state of order and civilization: education and
learning in the modern sense were unknown, the arts and
conveniences of life in their infancy, the civil rights of
the different classes of society little understood, and
usages of various kinds prevailing which partook of the
rudeness of the times. It was in such a state of things
that the kingdom of God, with its formal revelation of
law, was set up in Israel; and while that revelation, in
so far as it met with due consideration and was honestly
applied, could not fail to operate with effect in elevating the
tone and habits of society even in the strictly temporal and
earthly sphere, yet, we must remember, it only indirectly
bore upon this, and had to make its way amid much that
was out of course, and that could only admit of a gradual
amelioration. Here, too, unless violence were to be done
to the natural course of development, and a mechanical
order made to supersede the free action of mind, the
principle of progression must have had scope given it to
work, and consequently, in the actual administration of
the affairs of the kingdom, not always what was abso-
lutely the best, but only the best practicable in the cir-
cumstances, was to be authoritatively enjoined. If only
contemplated thus from a right point of view, the things
sometimes excepted against in this part of the Mosaic
legislation would be seen to admit of a just defence or
reasonable explanation.
1. But to take the points connected with it in order.
A considerable portion of the statutes and judgments are,
as we have said, a simple application of the great prin-
ciples of the Decalogue to particular cases, intended at
once to explain and confirm them. That in its general
spirit and tenor the Decalogue is an embodiment of love
98 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
—in its second part of brotherly love, extending through
the entire circle of one’s thoughts, words, and deeds—
might be conceded. But must it be exercised in every
case? even toward one from whom injury has been
received? If we think he has acted to us unjustly, may
not we in turn take our revenge? No; the judicial reply
is—a neighbour, though an enemy, in trouble, as when
his ass or his ox strays, or his ass has fallen helplessly
under a burden, ought to receive our help.1 So that the
action of love enjoined in the command must not be
thought to depend on the mere accidents of one’s position;
and in the most untoward circumstances, in respect even
to an enemy, must shew itself in the positive as well as
the negative form. Revenge is strictly excluded, and
love to every brother or neighbour enforced;2 nor in
words merely, but also in giving to him in his time of
need without usury, and imitating toward him the Divine
beneficence.3 Other statutes in the same line cut off the
excuse, which some might be ready to offer, that the
injury sustained by their neighbour had been done by a
mere act of mad vertence or rashness on their part (as by
kindling a fire, which spread into another’s vineyard, or
by keeping open a pit into which his ox fell);4 done, per-
haps, in a sudden outburst of passion,5 or through the
vicious propensities of their cattle;6 for such things also
men were held responsible, because failing to do within
their proper domain the kind and considerate part of love
to those around them. But then it was possible some
might be disposed occasionally to press the matter too
far, and hold a man equally responsible for any violence
done by him to the life or property of another, whether
done from sheer carelessness, from heedless impetuosity,
1 Ex. xxiii. 4, 5. 2 Lev. xix. 18. 3 Ex. xxii. 25-27.
4 Ex. xxii. 5, xxi. 33. 5 Ex. xxi. 22-27. 6 Ex. xxi. 28-36.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 99
or from deliberate malice. Here, again, the statutory
enactments come in with their wise and discriminating
judgments—distinguishing, for example, between death
inflicted unwittingly, or in self-defence, or in the attempt
to arrest a burglary, and murder perpetrated in cool
blood.1 Thus there is delivered to us, for a principle of
interpretation and personal guidance, that the law under
any particular head is violated or fulfilled, not by the
bare act anyhow performed, but by the act taken in con-
nection with the circumstances, especially the feeling and
intent of the heart, under which it has been done. Once
more, the question might be stirred by some in a per-
verse, by others in a partial or prejudiced spirit, whether
the law should be understood as applying to all with
absolute equality? whether an exemption more or less
might not be allowed, at least to persons in what might
be called the extremes of social position? Here, also,
the decision is given with sufficient plainness, when it is
ordained that the poor man was neither to have his
judgment wrested, nor be unduly countenanced in his
cause, from respect to his poverty; that even the friend-
less stranger was to be treated with kindness and equity;
and that the rich and powerful were not to be allowed to
use their resources for the purpose of gaining an advan-
tage to which they were not entitled.2
2. It thus appears that the class of enactments referred
to have an abiding value, as they serve materially to
throw light on the import and bearing of the Decalogue,
confirming the views already given of its spiritual and
comprehensive character. Another class, which, like the
preceding, involve no difficulty of interpretation, also
reflect, in a somewhat different way, a measure of light
on the Decalogue, viz., by the judicial treatment they
1 Ex. xxi. 12-14, xxii. 2. 2 Ex. xxiii. 2, 3, 6, 9; Deut. i. 17, xix. 7-19.
100 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
award to the more flagrant violation of its precepts. The
deeds which were of this description had all the penalty of
death attached to them—shewing that the precepts they
violated were of a fundamental character, and entered as
essential principles into the constitution of the Theocracy.
Such was the doom suspended over the introduction of
false gods, in violation of the first command,1 to which
also belong all the statutes about witchcraft, divination,
and necromancing, which involved the paying of homage
to another object of worship than Jehovah; over the wor-
shipping of God by idols, in violation of the second com-
mand;2 over the profanation of God’s name, in violation
of the third;3 over the deliberate profanation of the
Sabbath, in violation of the fourth;4 over shameful dis-
honour and violence done to parents, in violation of the
fifth;5 over murder, adultery, bestiality, men-stealing,
and the more extreme cases of oppression, violence, and
false witness-bearing, in violation of the successive com-
mands of the second table.6 Why the breaches of these
great precepts of the Decalogue should have been met
so uniformly with the severity of capital punishment, is
to be accounted for by the nature of the kingdom set up
in Israel, which was a theocracy, having God for its
supreme Lawgiver and Head, and for its subjects a
people bearing His name and occupying His land. How
completely would the great end of such an institution
have been frustrated, if the holiness to which the people
were called had been outraged, and the sins which ran
counter to it openly practised? To act thus had been to
traverse the fundamental laws of the kingdom, nay, to
1 Ex. Xxii. 20; Deut. xiii. 9, 10. 2 Ex. xxxii.; Deut. iv. 25-28.
3 Ex. xx. 7; Lev. xiiv.16. 4 Ex. xxxi. 14, 15; Numb. xv. 35.
5 Ex. xxi. 15-17.
6 Ex. xxi. 12; Lev.xxiv. 17, xx. 10; Ex. Xxii. 19, 22-24; Deut. xix. 21.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 101
manifest an unmistakeable hatred to its Divine Head,
and could no more be tolerated there than overt treason
in an earthly government. The law, therefore, right-
eously laid the sin of deliberate transgression on the head
of the sinner as guilt, which could only be taken away
by the punishment of him who committed it.1 If this
should be deemed excessive severity, it can only be
because the right is virtually denied on the part of God
to establish a Theocracy among men in conformity with
His own revealed character, and for the manifestation of
His name. That right, however, is assumed as the
ground on which the whole legislation of Sinai proceeds;
and if the penal enactments of the Theocracy are to be
rightly interpreted, they must be placed in immediate
connection with the authority and honour of God. In
respect to all judicial action, when properly administered,
the judgment, though administered by man, was held to
be the Lord’s.2 To bring a matter up for judgment was
represented as bringing it to God (so the rendering
should be in Ex. xxii. 8, 9, not ‘the judges,’ as in the
English version); and persons standing before the priests
and the judges to have sentence pronounced upon them,
were said to stand before the Lord.3 If the judges and
the judged realized this to be their position, would there
have been any just ground to complain of undue severity?
Would there not rather have been diffused throughout
the community a deep sense of the Divine righteous-
ness, and an earnest striving to have its claims and
penalties enforced, as the indispensable pre-requisite of
peace and blessing?4 Besides, it was not they alone who
1 See Weber, ‘Von Zorne Gottes,’ p. 142. 2 Deut. i. 17. 3 Deut. xix. 17.
4 Human theories of jurisprudence often entirely repudiate the relation here
implied of sin or crime to punishment. The maxim of Seneca (nemo prudens
punit, quia peccatum est, sed ne peccetur; revocari enim praeterrita non possunt,
futura prohibentur), which abjures the thought of inflicting punishment, except
102 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
were to be considered; for in planting them in Canaan,
‘in the midst of the nations,’ and furnishing them with
such a polity, God’s design was to use them as a great
teaching institute—a light placed aloft on the moral
heights of the world amid surrounding darkness. What
incalculable blessings might have accrued to ancient
heathendom had that high calling been fulfilled! But
to this end the stern proscription of open ungodliness and
flagrant immoralities was indispensable.1
3. Another class of the statutes and judgments under
consideration is one which more directly bore on the im-
perfect state of order and civilization then everywhere
existing, and which has often been misunderstood and
objected to. The law of compensation—frequently,
though improperly, termed the law of retaliation—does
not strictly belong to the class, but may be included in it,
on account of the assaults to which it has been subjected.
It is, indeed, so far of the class in question, as it comes
first directly into view in connection with a very rude
and barbarous state of manners. The supposition is made
as a check or means of prevention against its future commission, has found not
a few defenders in recent times, though more in Germany than here. Yet
there also some of the profoundest thinkers have given it their decided oppo-
sition. Hegel, for instance, taught that ‘punishment is certainly to be regarded
as the necessary abolition of crime which would otherwise predominate, and as
the re-establishment of right.’ More fully and distinctly Stahl, ‘To man is
given, along with the power, the authority also of performing a deed, but this
he can only have with God, not against Him. If, therefore, he acts amiss, he
comes to have a glory in the world antagonistic to God. Not, however, to
undo the deed itself, and its consequence, can be demanded by the Divine
righteousness, but only to destroy this glory of the deed; and if this can be
destroyed, the antagonism is brought to an end.’—(See in Baumgarten’s Comm.
on Pent., II. pp. 29, 30.) But the relation of capital punishment to moral trans-
gressions of the first table, and to some extent also of the second, which was
proper to a Theocracy, cannot be justly transferred to an ordinary civil com-
monwealth; and, in this respect, Christian states have often grievously erred
in assimilating their penal statutes too closely to those of the Mosaic legislation.
1 See the remarks in my ‘Commentary on Ezekiel,’ pp. 68-70.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 103
of two men striving together, and a woman with child
(whether by chance or from well-meant interference on her
part) happening to receive some corporeal injury in the
fray; and it was ordained, that her husband was entitled
to claim compensation from the offender, according to the
extent of the injury; proceeding further, the statute pro-
vides generally for all like cases, that there should be
‘life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand,
foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound,
stripe for stripe.’l Stript of its concrete form, this is
simply a rule for the proper administration of justice
between man and man, requiring that when a particular
wrong was done to anyone, and through him to society,
an adequate compensation should be rendered. So far
from being peculiar to the Mosaic code, no legislation
that is not capricious and arbitrary can dispense with
such a rule, nor could society exist in peace and comfort
without its faithful application. ‘In fact,’ to use the
words of Kalisch in his commentary on the passage, ‘our
own Christian legislation could not dispense with similar
principles: life is punished with life, and intentional
injuries are visited with more than equivalent penalties.
Not even the most sentimental and romantic legislator
has ever had the fancy to pardon all criminals out of
Christian love. For, in reality, every simple law in our
criminal code is based on the jus talionis (the law of com-
pensation), with the limitation that bodily mutilation is
converted into an adequate pecuniary fine, or incarcera-
tion; but the same modification (he adds) has been
universally adopted by traditional Judaism.’ Such a
limitation was in perfect accordance with the general
spirit of the Mosaic code, and must have been from the
first intended. The literal application of the rule, as in
1 Ex. xxi. 22-25.
104 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
the case of burning for burning, or wound for wound,
would often have been impracticable, for who could have
undertaken to make a second that should always be pre-
cisely equivalent to the first? or unjust, for the severity
of a bodily infliction may, in particular circumstances, be
a widely different thing to one person from what it is to
another. To insist on the exact counterpart of such
corporeal injuries, even when it could have been secured,
in preference to a reasonable compensation, would plainly
have been to gratify a spirit of revenge; and this, as
already stated, was expressly disallowed. There was one
thing, and only one, in regard to which compensation was
formally interdicted: the life of a deliberate murderer
must be given for the life of the murdered, without
satisfaction, without pity;1 and the emphatic exclusion
of compensation here, was justly regarded by the Jewish
doctors as virtually sanctioning its admission in cases of a
lighter kind, where no such exclusion was mentioned.
The real bearing of this law, then, when rightly understood
and applied as it was meant, in judicial decisions, was in
perfect accordance with the principles of equity; it was
merely a practical embodiment of these; and the reference
made to it by our Lord in His sermon on the mount,
where it forms a kind of contrast to the injunction laid
on His followers not to resist evil, but when smitten on
the one cheek to turn the other also, and so on,2 can
imply no disparagement of the old rule in its proper
intention. In so far as it breathed a tone of censure, or
assumed a position of antagonism, it was only in regard
to those who, in their personal endeavours after the pure
and good, had not known to rise above the level of a
formal and rigid justice. Not questioning the claims of
justice in the public administration of affairs, our Lord
1 Numb. xxxv. 31; Deut. xix. 13. 2 Mat. v. 38.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 105
still made it to be known that He sought a people who
would be ready to forego these, whenever by doing so
they could promote the good of their fellow-men. But
the law of brotherly love, when requiring the suppression
of revenge, and the exercise of forbearance and kindness
even to an enemy, in reality did the same, as was per-
fectly understood by the better spirits of the old cove-
nant.1 So that nothing properly different, but only a
greater fulness and prominence in the exhibition or
enforcement of such love, can be claimed for the Gospel
dispensation.2
4. More distinctly than the statutes just noticed may
some of those connected with the punishment of murder
be ranked in the class now under consideration. In this
branch of the Mosaic legislation there is generally apparent
a spirit of humanity and moderation. First of all, murder
in the proper sense is carefully discriminated from death
brought about in some casual manner. In every case of
real murder it was necessary to prove preceding malice or
hatred, a lying in wait or taking deliberate measures to
compass the death of its victim, and an assault with
some violent weapon accomplishing the end in view.3
But if, on the other hand, while a man had proved
the cause of a neighbour’s death, the act inflicting it was
merely the throwing of a stone or other weight, which
incidentally lighted upon some one, and took away his
1 Ps. vii. 4 ; Prov. xxv. 21, 22; 1 Sam. xxiv., xxvi.
2 The same view is given of the Mosaic statute by the leading authorities;
for example, by Michaelis, Salvador ‘His. des Institutions de Moise’ (who
says, ‘The jus talionis is a principle rather than a law; as a law it cannot, nor
does it actually come in general to be executed’); Saalschtütz ‘Des Mosaische
Recht;’ Kalisch gives some specimens of the Rabbinical discussions on the sub-
ject, from Bab. Talmud; and Maimonides. For the compensations by which
the Arabs and Egyptians carry out the principle, see Kitto’s ‘Pictorial Bible,’
on Ex. xxi., and Lane’s ‘Modern Egyptians,’ ch. III.
3 Deut. xix. 2.
106 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
life—or if by some sort of sudden thrust in a freak or
fury, without aught of preconceived malice or deliberate
intent, a neighbour’s life was sacrificed, the instrument
of doing it could not be arraigned for murder; but neither
could he be deemed altogether innocent. There must
usually have been, in such cases, at least a culpable degree
of heedlessness, which would always call for careful inves-
tigation, and might justly subject the individual to a
limited amount of trouble, or even of punishment. It
does so still in the civilized communities of modern times,
with their regulated forms of judicial procedure and vigi-
lant police: the man-slayer, however unwittingly he may
have been the occasion of taking another’s life, must lay
his account to the solemn inquest, often also the personal
arrest, and it may be, ultimately, the severe reprimand,
pecuniary fine, or temporary imprisonment, which may be
thought due as a correction to his improper heedlessness
or haste. But at the period of Israel’s settlement in
Canaan there were not the opportunities for calm inquiry,
and patient, satisfactory adjustment of such cases as exist
now; and there were, besides, feelings deeply rooted in
Asiatic society, and usages growing out of them, which
tended very considerably to embarrass the matter, and yet
could not be arbitrarily set aside. These arose out of the
relation of Goel, according to which the nearest of kin had
the wrongs, in particular circumstances, as well as the
rights of the deceased, devolved upon him; especially the
obligation to avenge his blood in the event of its having
been unrighteously shed. On this account the term Goel
is very commonly reckoned synonymous with ‘avenger’
(Goel haddam, avenger of blood), and in the passages bear-
ing on this subject they are invariably so rendered in our
English Bible.l To the mere English reader, however,
1 Numb. xxxv. 12; Deut. xix. 6, 12; Jos. xx. 5,9, etc.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 107
in modern times, this is apt to convey a somewhat wrong
idea; for in its proper import Goel means not avenger,
but redeemer (as in Job xix. 25, ‘I know that my Re-
deemer liveth’), and Goel haddam is strictly ‘redeemer of
blood,’ one to whom belonged the right and duty of
recovering the blood of the murdered kinsman, of vindi-
cating in the only way practicable its wronged cause, and
obtaining for it justice. In him the blood of the dead, as
it were, rose to life again and claimed its due. In other
cases, it fell to the Goel to redeem the property of his
relative, which had become alienated and lost by debt;l
to redeem his person from bondage, if through poverty he
had been necessitated to go into servitude;2 even to
redeem his family, when by dying childless it was like to
become extinct in Israel, by marrying his widow and
raising up a seed to him.3 It thus appears that a humane
and brotherly feeling lay at the root of this Goel-relation-
ship; and in regard to the matter more immediately
before us, it did not necessarily involve anything revenge-
ful or capricious in its mode of operation. In ordinary
cases, all its demands might have been satisfied by the
Goel appearing before the judges as the prosecutor of the
man-slayer, and calling upon them to examine the case
and give judgment in behalf of the deceased. But there
can be no doubt that it might also quite readily run to
evil, that it might degenerate—if not very carefully
guarded and checked—into what, from time immemorial,
it has been among the Arab races—a kind of wild and
vengeful spirit of justice, which would take the law
into its own hands, and, in defiance alike of personal
danger and of the forms of legal procedure, would pursue
the shedder of blood till his blood in turn had been shed.
This was the vicious extreme of the system; yet one, it
1 Lev. xxv. 25. 2 Lev. xxv. 48-50. 3 Deut. xxv. 5-10.
108 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
ought to be remembered, which operated as a powerful
check—perhaps, in the circumstances of the place and
times, the only valid check that could be devised against
another and still more pernicious extreme, for which
peculiar facilities were afforded by the vast deserts of
Arabia and the regions lying around Palestine. How
easy might it have been for the daring and successful
murderer, by making his escape into these, to get beyond
the reach of the regular tribunals and officers of justice!
Only the dread of being tracked out and having his own
measure summarily meted back to him, by one on whom
the charge to avenge the wrong lay as a primary and
life-long obligation, might be sufficient to deter him from
trusting in such a refuge from evil. We have it on the
testimony of those who have been most thoroughly con-
versant with the regions in question, and the races,
inhabiting them, that nothing has contributed so much
as this institution (even in its most objectionable Arab
form) to prevent the warlike tribes of the East from
exterminating one another.1
In these circumstances, Moses, legislating for a people
already familiar with the Goel-relationship, and going to
occupy a region which presented to the more lawless
spirits of the community, tempting opportunities for
escaping from judicial treatment of a more orderly kind,
took the wise course of grounding his statutes in respect
to manslaughter and murder on the hereditary rights and
duties of the Goel. But he so restrained and regulated
them, that, if faithfully carried out, the checks he intro-
duced could scarcely fail to arrest the worst tendencies
of the system, and indeed reduce the position of the Goel
to that of the recognised and rightful prosecutor of the
1 See in Layard’s ‘Nineveh and Babylon,’ p. 305, for his own and Burck-
hardt’s testimony.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 109
shedder of blood. To prevent any sudden assault upon
the latter, and afford time for the due investigation of
his deed, a temporary asylum was provided for him in the
cities of refuge, which were appointed for this purpose at
convenient distances—three on the one side and three on
the other of the Jordan.l When actually appointed, the
cities were most wisely distributed, and belonged also to
the class of Levitical cities (Golan in Bashan, Ramoth in
Gilead, and Bezer on the east side; Kadesh in Galilee,
Shechem and Hebron on the west),2 and as such were sure
to contain persons skilled in the knowledge of the law and
capable of giving intelligent judgment. Arrived within
the gates of one of these cities, the man-slayer was safe
from the premature action of the Goel; but only that the
judges and elders of the place might take up the case and
pronounce impartial judgment upon it. If they found
reason to acquit him of actual murder, then he remained
under their protection, but was obliged to submit to a kind
of partial imprisonment, because not allowed to go beyond
the borders of the city till the death of the existing high-
priest—after which, if he still lived, he was at liberty to
return to his own possession. Were not these conditions,
however, somewhat arbitrary? If not really guilty of
blood in the proper sense, why should he not have been
placed at once under the protection of the law, and
restored, to his property and home? And why should the
period of his release have been made to hang on the
uncertain and variable moment of the high-priest’s death?
Perhaps there may have been grounds for these limitations
at the time they were imposed, which cannot now be
ascertained; but a little consideration is sufficient to shew
that they could not be deemed unreasonable. In the
great majority of cases, the death of the person slain must
1 Numb. xxxv. 2 Jos. xx. 7, 8.
110 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
have been owing to the want of due circumspection, fore-
thought, or restraint on the part of him who had occasioned
it; and it could not, to thoughtful minds, appear other-
wise than a salutary discipline, that he should be adjudged
to a temporary abridgment of his liberty. Arbitrarily to
break through this restraint after it had been judicially
imposed, would clearly have argued a self-willed, im-
petuous, and troublesome humour, which refused correc-
tion, and might readily enough repeat in the future the
rashness or misdeed of the past; so that it was but deal-
ing with him according to his folly to leave him in such a
case at the mercy of the Goel.1 Nor could the connection
of the period of the release with the death of the existing
high-priest carry much of a strange or capricious aspect
to the members of the Theocracy. For the high-priest
was, in everything pertaining to sin and forgiveness, the
most prominent person in the community; in such things,
he was the representative of the people, making perpetual
intercession for them before God; and though there was
nothing expiatory in his death, yet being the death of
one in whom the expiatory ritual of the old covenant had
so long found its centre and culmination, it was natural—
more than natural, it was every way proper and becom-
ming—that when he disappeared from among men, the
cause of the blood that had been incidentally shed in his
life-time, and from its nature could admit of no very
definite reckoning, should be held to have passed with
him into oblivion—its cry was to be no more heard.2
It was made very clear, however, by other statutes on
1 Lev. xxv. 26, 27.
2 This appears to me the natural explanation of the rule, and sufficient for
the purpose intended. The older evangelical divines (some also still, as Keil)
think that in the death of the high-priest there was a shadow of the death of
Christ; consequently something that might be regarded as having a sort of
atoning value for the sins of the people. This I cannot but consider arbitrary
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 111
this subject, that when actual murder had been com-
mitted, no advantage was to accrue to the perpetrator
from the cities of refuge; though he might have fled
thither, he was, on the proof of his guilt, to be delivered
up to the Goel for summary execution.1 Nor was the
altar of God—a still more sacred place than the cities of
refuge, and in ancient times almost universally regarded
as an asylum for criminals—to be permitted in such cases
to afford protection; from this also the murderer was to
be dragged to his deserved doom.2 In short, deliberate
murder was to admit of no compromise and no palliation:
the original law, ‘whoso sheddest man’s blood by man
shall his blood be shed,’3 must be rigorously enforced;
and, doubtless, mainly also on the original ground,
‘because in the image of God made He him.’ To dis-
regard the sanctity of human life, and tread it vilely in
the dust, was like aiming a thrust at God Himself, dis-
paraging His noblest work in creation, and the one that
stood in peculiar relationship to His own spiritual being.
Therefore, the violation of the sixth command by deli-
berate murder involved also a kind of secondary violation
of the first; and to suffer the blood of the innocent to lie
unavenged, was, in the highest sense, to pollute the
land;4 it was to render it unworthy of the name of God’s
inheritance. So great was the horror entertained of this
unnatural crime, and so anxious was the Lawgiver to
impress men with the feeling of its contrariety to the whole
spirit and object of the law, that, even in the case of an
in interpretation, and involving a dangerous element in respect to the work of
atonement. For if the death of a sinful man, because he was anointed with
oil, the symbol of the Spirit’s grace, had such a value then, why should not the
death of martyrs and other saints, richly endowed with the Spirit, have some-
thing of the same now?
1 Deut. xix. 11-16. 2 Ex. xxi. 14.
3 Gen. ix. 6. 4 Numb. xxxv. 34.
112 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
uncertain murder, there was a cry of blood which could
not be disregarded; and when every effort had failed to
discover the author of the deed, the elders of the city
which lay nearest to the corpse were to regard themselves
as in a manner implicated; they had to come publicly
forward, and not only protest their innocence of the crime,
and their ignorance of the manner in which it had been
committed, but also to go through a process of purifica-
tion by blood and water, that the charge of blood-guilti-
ness might not rest upon them and their land.1
5. We pass on now to the statutes on slavery and the
treatment of those subject to it; which have in various re-
spects been deemed inconsistent with the spirit of the
Decalogue, as embodying the law of brotherly love.
Here, again, it is especially necessary to bear in mind the
state of the world at the time the law was given, and the
relation in which it stood to manners and usages, which
bespoke a very imperfect development both of economical
science and of civil rights. It was necessary that the
law should take things as it found them, and, while
setting before the covenant people the correct ideal of all
that was morally right and good, should still regulate
what pertained to the enforcement of discipline with a
due regard to circumstances more or less anomalous and
perplexing. By constitutional right, all the members of
the covenant were free; they were the Lord’s redeemed
ones, whom He vindicated to Himself from the house of
bondage, that they might be in a condition to serve and
honour Him;2 they were not again to be sold as bond-
men;3 and that they might remain in this freedom from
human servitude, every one had an inheritance assigned
sufficient for the maintenance of himself and his family.
The precautions, too, which were taken to secure the
1 Deut. xxi. 1-9. 2 Ex. xx. 2; Deut. xv. 15. 3 Lev. xxv. 42.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 113
perpetuity of these family possessions, were admirably
devised; if properly guarded and carried out, nothing
had been wanting to provide, so far as external arrange-
ments could effect it, the means of a comfortable liveli-
hood and independence for the families of Israel. But
much must still depend on the individual character of
the people, and the current of events in their history. If,
through adverse circumstances, desolation fell on any por-
tion of the territory—or if, from slothful neglect, particular
inheritances were not duly cultivated, or the resources
they furnished were again improvidently squandered—
above all, if the people in whole or in part should become
involved in the reverses or triumphs of war—such in-
equalities might readily spring up as, in the existing
state of civic life and political arrangements, would most
naturally lead to the introduction of a certain kind of
slavery. It is even possible that, as matters then stood,
the humanest, if not the only practicable thing, that
could be done by legislative enactment, was to bound
and regulate, rather than absolutely interdict, some modi-
fied form of this in itself unhappy relationship. Such, at
least, appears to have been the view countenanced by
the Divine Head of the Theocracy; for the statutes bear-
ing on the subject of slavery are entirely of the kind just
indicated, and, when temperately considered, will be found
to involve a wise adaptation to the circumstances of the
time. Even a brief outline may be enough to establish
this.
(1.) The language alone is of importance here, as indi-
cative of the spirit of the Hebrew Theocracy: it had no
term to designate one class as slaves (in the stricter
sense) and another who did hired service. The term for
both alike is Ebed (db,f,), properly, a labourer or worker, and
hence very naturally one whose calling in life is emphati-
H
114 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
cally of this description, a servant. And, as justly noted
by Saalschütz,l ‘among a people who were engaged in
agricultural employments, whose lawgiver Moses, and
whose kings Saul and David, were taken straight from the
flock and the plough to their high calling, there could not
seem to be anything degrading in a designation derived
from work; and the name of honour applied to Moses
and other righteous men was that of “servant of God.”’
The only ground for concern could be, lest occasion might
be taken to render work galling and oppressive, or inci-
dentally subversive of the great principles of the consti-
tution.
(2.) As a check upon this, at the outset a brand was
set upon man-stealing; he who should be found to have
kidnapped a soul (meaning thereby man or woman) of
the children of Israel, for the purpose of using or selling
that soul as a slave, incurred the penalty of death, as a
violator of the fundamental laws of the kingdom.2
(3.) But a man might, under the constraint of circum-
stances, to save himself and his family from the extre-
mities of want, become fain to part with his freedom, and
bind himself in servitude to another. In such cases, which
should never have been but of an exceptional kind, a
whole series of prescriptions were given to set bounds to
the evil, and secure, during its continuance, the essentials
of a brotherly relationship. The service required was in
no case to be that of an absolute bondman—or, as the
expression literally is, service of a servant (db,fA tdbofa)—
rigorous service, such as might be expected of one into
whose condition no higher element entered.3 His relation
to Jehovah as the Redeemer of Israel must not be allowed
to fall into abeyance. Hence, his general rights and
1 ‘Mosaische Recht,’ c. 101, sec. 1. 2 Lev. xxi. 17; Deut. xxiv. 7.
3 Lev. xxv. 39-43.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 115
privileges as a member of the covenant remained un-
touched: he could inherit property if it accrued to him,
could be redeemed by a kinsman at a fair ransom, was
entitled to the rest of the weekly Sabbaths, and to the
joy and consolation of the stated festivals.1 Besides, the
period of service was limited; it could not extend beyond
six years, after which, in the seventh, came the year
of release; and even then the master was not to let
him go empty, but was to furnish him with supplies to
help him toward an independent position (Ex. xxi. 2;
Deut. xv. 12-14).2 So that the relation of a Hebrew
bondman to his master did not materially differ from
that of one now, who sells his labour to a particular
person, or engages to work to him on definite terms,
for a stated period. A certain exception, no doubt, has
to be made in respect to the provision concerning his
wife and. children: if the wife belonged to him when he
entered into the bond-service, then both wife and children
went out with him; but if the wife had been given
him by the master, wife and children could be claimed
by the master. In the latter case, of course, the servant
1Lev. xxv. 42-52.
2 In respect to the period of release, there is an apparent discrepance in the
passages relating to it; in Ex. xxi. 2, also Deut. xv. 12, the seventh year is
fixed definitely as the time of release; while in Lev. xxv. 40, the year of
Jubilee is named as the terminating point. In the latter passage, and through-
out the chapter, the chief subject of discourse is the Jubilee, and it is only as
connected with it that the other subject comes into consideration. The natural
explanation, therefore, as given by many of our recent writers, is, that in ordi-
nary circumstances the servitude terminated with the commencement of the
seventh year, but when a Jubilee intervened, the bond of servitude, like all
other bonds, ceased as a matter of course. This simple explanation renders
quite unnecessary Ewald’s resort to his theory of earlier and later documents.
The seventh year, however, was not the Sabbatical year, but the seventh from
the entrance of the servitude—the principle of the arrangement being, that,
as after seven days’ work there came the day of rest, and after seven years’
husbandry a year of repose, so after seven years’ servitude a return to freedom.
116 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
would be at perfect liberty to refuse what was offered;
and as it must have been a person of heathen birth that
in the case supposed was offered him for wife (for Hebrew
maid-servants were, equally with the men, entitled to
release in the seventh year),1 the proper Israelite could
not have complied with it, unless the woman had ceased
in spirit to be a heathen, and he had himself made up his
mind to abide in perpetual servitude to his master. The
laws respecting marriage involved these two conditions,
as in a moral respect binding upon the individual in
question; for temporary marriages, and marriages with
unconverted heathens, were alike forbidden. A man
might, however, choose to remain in the position of a
bondman, rather than avail himself of his right to become
free; the supposition of such a case is distinctly made,
and it was ordered that he should go through what could
not but be regarded as a degrading ceremony. On de-
claring that he loved his master, his wife and children,
and that he would not go out free, his master was to
place him before the judges, and in their presence bore
his ear through with an awl into the door or door-post.2
The perforating of the ear and fixing it with the awl to
the door (as appears from the passage in Deuteronomy
to have been the full rite), was undoubtedly intended to
signify the servant’s personal surrender of the freedom
proper to him as an Israelite, that he might attach him-
self to the authority and interest of the master. By the
door, therefore, is most naturally understood the door of
the master’s house, in which the man and his family now
became a kind of fixtures; but whether the ‘for ever’
connected with his obligation of servitude indicated a
strictly life-long continuance, or an unbroken service only
till the year of Jubilee, is differently understood, and can-
1 Deut. xv. 12. 2 Ex. xxi. 6; Deut. xv. 17.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 117
not be quite definitely determined—though the natural
impression is in favour of the former view. The whole
object and bearing of the ceremony were obviously to fix
a sort of stigma on anyone who voluntarily assumed the
condition of such prolonged servitude. His claim, how-
ever, to lenient treatment, and the usual Israelitish
privileges, remained as before.
(4.) A still further supposition is made, that, namely,
of the daughter of an Israelite—not going into ordinary
servitude for the legal term of years, as in Deut. xv. 12,
in which case the regulations laid down for male servants
were in substance applicable here—but being sold (accord-
ing to a prevailing custom in the East) with the double
view of service and betrothal.l She was, in the circum-
stances, supposed to go as a maid-servant, namely, to
engage actively in domestic work; and, at the same
time, she is represented as standing in a betrothed con-
dition to her master. If he was satisfied with her, and
either himself took her to wife, or gave her to his son in
that capacity, then she, of course, became a member of
the family and had the rights of a spouse; but if the con-
nexion, after being formed, was again broken off, then
(besides all the moral blame that might be incurred in
the matter, of which this branch of the law does not
treat) the master was obliged to forfeit the money he had
paid—the maid could not be re-sold, but was instantly to
regain her liberty; though it may be doubtful if she had
the right to sue for a regular divorce. This part of the
question, however, belongs rather to the subject of mar-
riage than to that of servitude.
(5.) Servitude, in a stricter sense than that which the
preceding regulations contemplate, might be exacted of
foreigners. Of the heathen that were round about them,
1Ex.
Xxi. 7-11.
118 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
the Israelites might buy persons for bondmen and bond-
maids, also of the strangers who might be sojourning
among them.1 Then, those who were taken captive in
war, as a matter of course fell into the hands of the
victors, and were reduced to the condition of bondmen.2
The children also, if any should be born to either of the
preceding classes, formed a third source of supply. But
from the very constitution of the kingdom, which secured
a general distribution of the land along with the rights of
citizenship, and rendered next to impossible large accu-
mulations of property, or fields of enterprise that would
call for much servile labour, there was comparatively
little scope or occasion for the growth of this kind of
population. The circumstances of the covenant-people
presented no temptation to it; beyond very moderate
limits, the presence of such a population must have been
a source of trouble and annoyance, rather than of comfort
or strength; and hence, in the historical records, no
indication exists of any regular commerce being carried
on in this line, or even of any considerable numbers
being held in the condition of bondmen. The Phœnician
slave trade is noticed only in connection with what Israel
suffered by it, not for anything they gained;3 and so
little sympathy were they to have with the slave system
practised among the nations around them, that a slave
flying to them for refuge from his heathen master was
not to be delivered up, but to be allowed, under Israelitish
protection, to fix his abode in whatever city he himself
might choose.4 The strangers or foreigners sometimes men-
tioned, and especially in the times of David and Solomon,
as ready for the execution of servile work,5 seem rather
to have been a kind of serfs, than slaves in the ordinary
1 Lev. xxv. 44, 45. 2 Num. xxxi 26-35; Deut. xx. 14, etc. 3 Mic. i. 9; Ob.20.
4 Deut. xxiii. 15-17. 5 1 Kings ix. 20; 2 Chron. ii. 16; viii. 7.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 119
sense—chiefly the descendants, in all probability, of the
heathen families that remained in the land. Of that
class certainly were the Gibeonites, only with a special
destination as to the form of service they were taken
bound to render.1
From the facts just stated, one is naturally led to infer,
that bond-service in the strict sense must have been of
very limited extent among the covenant people, and that,
in so far as it did exist, it must have ever tended to
work toward its own extinction. This also is the im-
pression which the particular statutes on the subject are
fitted to convey. As a rule, the persons belonging to the
house as bondmen or bondmaids were to be treated as
members of the family; they were to enjoy the Sabbath
rest, and partake of the sacrificial meals;2 even if the
priest should have any servants in that position, they
were to eat of the consecrated food which fell to the share
of the master.3 When they submitted to the rite of cir-
cumcision—which, according to Rabbinical tradition, and,
indeed, to the obvious proprieties of things, required
their own deliberate consent—as they thereby entered
into the bond of the covenant, so they became entitled to
eat of the Passover, and, of course, to participate fully in
all the privileges of the covenant.4 If the master should
smite any of his bondmen with a murderous weapon, so
as to cause his death, he was himself liable to the penalty
of murder—for smiting to death with intent to kill is,
without exception, in the case of the stranger as well as the
native Israelite, placed under one condemnation.5 Smit-
ing only to the effect of destroying a tooth or an eye, was
to be followed with the freedom of the slave.6 But when
1 Jos. ix. 23; 2 Sam. xxi. 2 Deut. v. 14, xii. 12, xvi. 11.
3 Lev. xxii. 11. 4 Ex. xii. 44.
5 Ex. xxi. 12 ; Numb. xxxv. 16-18; Lev. xxiv. 17-22.
6 Ex. xxi. 26, 27.
120 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
smiting of that description—smiting, namely, with a rod in
the way of chastisement, with no intent to kill—went so
far as to produce death, it was to be met by deserved
punishment—the atrocity was to be avenged—though it
is not said by what particular infliction (Ex. xxi. 20.)1 The
penalty was apparently left to the discretion of the judges,
and would doubtless vary according to the circumstances.
But if death did not immediately follow, if the servant
lingered a day or two, no additional penalty was to
be imposed; the delay was to be taken as proof that no
fatal result was contemplated by the master, and, in a
pecuniary respect, the death of the victim had itself in-
flicted a heavy mulct.2 Not that, in a moral point of
view, this was an adequate compensation for the undue
severity he had practised, but that the temporal loss
having equalled the recognised value of the subject, it
was deemed inexpedient to go farther in that direction.
For the higher bearing of his procedure, he had still to
place himself in contact with the revelations respecting
sin and atonement.
Taken as a whole, the statutes upon the subject of
slavery, it is impossible to deny, are largely pervaded by
a spirit of mildness and equity, tolerating rather than
properly countenancing and approving of it, and giving
to it a very different character, both as to extent and
manner of working, from what belonged to it in the
nations of heathen antiquity. If brought into comparison,
indeed, with the arrangements of modern civilization, one
1 I take here the view which seems the most probable, which is that
also of Saalschütz, Kalisch, (Ehler in ‘Hertzog,’ art. Sklaverei, and many
others. The smiting to death, in the verse referred to, was only with a rod—
not with a heavy or deadly weapon; and the death, though immediate, was
not intentional. The phrase, he shall be avenged or punished, must therefore
refer to something less than capital punishment.
2 Ex. xxi. 21.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 121
can readily point to features in it which, considered by
themselves, were not in accordance with the ideal of a
well-ordered commonwealth. But such a comparison
would be essentially unfair. For, however high the
standard of moral rectitude set up in the Hebrew com-
monwealth, and in its entireness laid upon the consciences
of the people, the commonwealth in its political adminis-
tration could not move in total isolation from the state
of things around it. At various points it necessarily
took a certain impress from the age and time; and from
the universal prevalence of slavery among their heathen
neighbours, it must often have been impracticable for the
people, when seeking the service they needed, to obtain
it otherwise than in the form of bond service. But as
the persons acquired for the purpose must usually have
been brought from heathen districts, they could not pos-
sibly be placed on a footing with the proper subjects of
the Theocracy. Even, however, as strangers in a de-
pressed condition, they were to be treated in a kind and
considerate manner, as by those who, in their own persons
or through their ancestors, had known the heart and
experience of a stranger;1 and all proper facilities were
besides afforded them, and reasonable encouragements
held out, to their entering into the bond of the covenant,
and merging their condition and prospects with those of
the covenant people. If, after all, things were often not
ordered as they should have been, who that calmly con-
siders the actual position of affairs, would venture to
affirm that it could have been made better by any statu-
tory regulations given for authoritative enforcement?
These must limit themselves to the practically attainable
—if they were not to produce other, and perhaps greater,
evils than those they were intended to prevent.
1Ex. xxiii. 9.
122 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
6. The only remaining class of statutes and judgments
calling for consideration here are those relating to the
subject of marriage. The fundamental law on the sub-
ject merely declared, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery;’
but, as in all the other precepts of the Decalogue, so here,
what should constitute a breach of the command was left
to the moral instincts of mankind; no specific description
was given of adultery, nor was a right marriage relation-
ship more nearly defined. But that marriage, according
to its proper ideal, consisted of the life-union of one man
and one woman, and that the violation of this union by
sexual commerce with another party constituted adultery,
was well enough understood in the earlier ages of the
world, and especially among the covenant-people. ‘The
notion of matrimony has in the Old Testament, from the
very commencement, been conceived in admirable purity
and perfection. Already the wife of Adam is called “a
help at his side,” that is, a companion through life, with
whom he coalesces into one being’ (Gen. ii. 18-24).1 And
this being testified of man in his normal state, as he came
pure and good from the hand of his Creator, clearly
indicated for all coming time what in a family respect
should be his normal condition—as is, indeed, formally
stated in the inference drawn from the original fact:
‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother,
and shall cleave to his wife (his wife, the one individual
standing to him in that relation), and they shall be one
flesh.’ It was a great thing for the covenant-people, to
have had this view of the marriage relation placed so
prominently forward in those sacred records which to-
gether formed their Thorah, or law. And we see it
distinctly reflected, both in the dignity which is thrown
around the wife in ancient Scripture, and in the prevalent
1 Kalisch on Exod. xx. 13.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 123
feeling in behalf of monogamy as the proper form of
matrimonial life. The two, indeed, hang inseparably
together; for wherever polygamy exists, woman falls in
the social scale. But in the glimpses afforded us of family
life in Israel, the women have much freedom and con-
sideration accorded to them;1 and those of them especi-
ally who are presented as the more peculiar types of their
class, appear in an honourable light, as the fitting hand-
maids of their husbands, the rightful mistresses of the
house. Such, certainly, was Sarah in relation to Abraham,
and Rebekah to Isaac; and similar examples, ever and
anon throughout the history, rise into view of married
women, who acted with becoming grace and dignity the
part that properly belonged to them in the household—
as the wife of Manoah, Hannah, Abigail the prudent and
courteous spouse of Nabal, the Shunamite woman, who
dealt so kindly with Elisha, and others of a like description.
It was from no fancy musings, but from living exemplars
such as these, that Solomon drew his noble portraiture,
unequalled in any ancient writing, of the virtuous wife;2
and pronounced such a wife to be a crown to her husband,
and a gift bestowed on him from the Lord.3 So fully
also did the lawgiver himself accord with these senti-
ments, that he allowed the new married man to remain at
home for a year, free from military service and other
public burdens, that he might gladden his wife;4 and in
the reverence and affection charged on children towards
their parents, the mother ever has her place of honour
beside the father.5
In perfect accordance with this regard for woman as
the proper handmaid and spouse of man, there is evidence
of a prevailing sense in men’s minds in favour of mono-
1 Ex. xv. 20; 1 Sam. xviii 6, 7; Ps. lxviii. 25, etc. 2 Prov. xxxi. 10-31.
3Prov. Xii. 4; xix. 14. 4Deut. xxiv. 5. 5Ex. xx. 12; xxi. 17, etc.
124 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
gamy as the normal state of things, while polygamy
carried with it an aspect of disorder and trouble. It was
not by accident, but as an indication and omen of its real
character, that the latter first made its appearance in the
Cainite section of the human family, and has its memorial
in an address savouring of violence and blood.1 How
strongly the mind of Abraham was set against any de-
parture from the original order, is evident from his reluct-
ance to think of anyone but Sarah as the mother of the
seed promised to him—only at last yielding to her advice
respecting Hagar, when no other way seemed open to him
for obtaining the seed he had been assured of—yet for
this also receiving palpable rebukes in providence to mark
the course that had been pursued as an improper violation
of the Divine order. We see this order beautifully kept
by Isaac, though his patience was long tried with the
apparently fruitless expectation of a promised seed; no
thought of another spouse than Rebekah seems ever to
have been entertained by him; nor did Jacob purpose
differently, till by deceit in the first instance, then by
artful cozening, he was drawn into connexions which
brought their recompenses of trouble after them. The
sons of Jacob, the patriarchal heads of the covenant-
people, are at least not known (with the exception, per-
haps, of Simeon) to have possessed more at a time than
one wife; such, more certainly, was the case with Moses,
as also with Aaron; and in the rule laid down for the
priests, who might be regarded as the pattern-men for
Israel, it was ordained that each should take a virgin of
his own people for wife2—purposely contemplating but
one such connexion. In the later descriptions also of
rightly constituted and happy families, the wife is always
spoken of as the one spouse and mother of offspring; and
1 Gen. iv. 23, 24. 2 Lev. xxiii. 14.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 125
severe denunciations are occasionally uttered against un-
fair dealing toward her.1 So that, while there were
unquestionably notorious exceptions, especially among per-
sons in high places, yet with the great mass of the cove-
nant-people monogamy must have been the general rule,
and the one properly recognised order.
Holding this view of the marriage union, the greater
part of the statutes bearing on it in the books of Moses
present no difficulty; their obvious design was to guard
its sanctity, and punish with unsparing rigour its de-
liberate violation. Sexual commerce with another man’s
wife rendered both parties liable to the penalty of
death;2 and if the woman, instead of being actually mar-
ried, was simply betrothed, the penalty remained the
same.3 A man who seduced a girl, and robbed her of
her chastity, was obliged to marry her, and pay fifty
shekels to her father;4 on the other side, a married woman
who was only suspected of having improper intercourse
with another, was subjected to a severe and humiliating
test of her innocence;5 and while suppositions are made of
men having sexual connexion with women, not betrothed
or married, and of entering into relationships not consistent
with strict monogamy, there is never any pronounced
sanction of their conduct, nor is the word concubine (pile-
gesh) once named in the Mosaic statutes as a kind of
recognised relation, separate from and superadditional to
that of wife. The nearest thing to it, perhaps, is in
Ex. xxi. 8, where we have the case formerly referred to
of a man purchasing a maid-servant, under a pledge or
betrothal to take her to wife, or to give her in that capa-
city to his son. As a maid-servant she was so far in his
power, that he could, if he so pleased, break his connexion
1 Ps. xlv., cxxviii.; Prov. xxxi.; Mal. ii. 14. 2 Lev. xx. 10; Deut. xxii. 22.
3 Deut. xxii. 23. 4 Deut. xxii. 28,29. 5 Num. v.
126 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
with her, and cease to keep her as a wife. Yet this is
spoken of as a moral wrong; it was ‘dealing deceitfully
with her;’ and, as already noticed under the statutes
about slavery, he lost his purchase-money—the maid
regained her freedom—a penalty so far being thus imposed
on such capricious behaviour. If, however, he should
retain the person so acquired for his wife, and at the same
time take another, the first was to be continued in her
rights—‘her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage’1
—as if still she alone properly stood in the relation of
spouse, and the other was superadded merely for show
or fleshly indulgence. But did not this also involve a
wrong, as well as the former mode of treatment? And
was it not an anomaly in legislation, that she should
have a certain compensation in the one case and none in
the other? Nay, that while the man was bound by the
nature of the marriage tie to be as one flesh with her, he
should become the same with another person?
Undoubtedly, a certain ground existed for such ques-
tions; and the spiritual guides of the community should
have made it clear, that men had no constitutional right
to act after such a fashion; that in doing so they violated
great moral principles; and that the guilt and the respon-
sibility of such procedure were all their own—the judicial
statutes of the commonwealth only not interposing against
it by specific enactments and penalties. In its moral
bearings, the case was very nearly parallel with another,
which has been even more generally excepted against,
and by our Lord Himself was allowed to be justly liable
to exception; that, namely, of a divorce executed against
a wife for some cause less than actual infidelity.2 This
was the point brought into consideration by the Pharisees
but it is proper to notice—the rather so as the English
1Ex. xxi. 10. 2Deut. xxiv. 1-4.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 127
Bible fails to give a quite correct translation of the
original—that it was not the one which formed the direct
or formal subject of the statute. Exactly rendered, the
passage stands thus:—‘When a man has taken a wife
and married her, and it come to pass that she does not
find favour in his sight, because he has found something
of shame (or nakedness) in her, and he writes for her a
bill of divorcement, and gives it into her hand, and sends
her out of his house: and she has departed from his
house, and gone and become another man’s: and the
latter husband hates her, and writes for her a bill of
divorcement, and gives it into her hand, and sends her
forth out of his house, or the latter husband has died
that took her to wife:—The first husband that sent her
away cannot return to take her for his wife after she has
been defiled; for that were abomination before Jehovah;
and thou shalt not pollute the land which Jehovah thy
God gives thee as an inheritance.’
Thus read, it will be seen that the thing directly
forbidden in the passage is simply the return of the
divorced woman to be again the wife of the man who had
first divorced her; this would indicate a total looseness
in regard to the marriage relationship, and was to be
interdicted as an abomination which would utterly pollute
the land. There is marked, indeed, a double or pro-
gressive defilement: the woman was defiled by her com-
merce with another man after being divorced from her
first husband; and to re-marry her, when so defiled, was
to aggravate the pollution. All, however, that goes
before this prohibitory part is simple narration: when a
man marries a woman, and is displeased with her, and
gives her a bill of divorce, and sends her from him, and
another man does after the same manner—not as our
translators, after Luther and some others, ‘then let him
128 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
write her a bill of divorce,’ and so on. The words do
not properly admit of this rendering; and on that very
point may be said to turn the diversity of view exhibited
in the Gospel narrative,l the one presented by the Phari-
sees, the other given by our Lord. They asked, ‘Why
did Moses command (e]netei<lato) to give a writing of
divorcement, and to put away?’ The Lord replied,
‘Moses, from respect (pro<j) to the hardness of your hearts,
suffered you (e]pe<treyen u[mi?n) to put away your wives:’—not
a privilege to be enjoyed, or a duty to be discharged, but
a permission or tolerance merely suffered to continue,
because of Israel’s participation in the evil of the times—
their moral unfitness for a more stringent application of
the proper rule. The permission in question, so far as
the Mosaic legislation was concerned, went no further
than not distinctly pronouncing upon the practice, or
positively interdicting it. The practice, it is implied,
was not unknown; in all probability it prevailed exten-
sively among the corrupt nations among whom Israel
was to dwell (since things greatly worse were of every-
day occurrence among them); and in so far as any might
adopt it, the judicial authorities were not empowered to
prevent it—that is all; but whatever rashness, or con-
travention of the proper spirit and design of the marriage
relation might be involved in it, this lay still with the
conscience of the individual; he was answerable for it.
Viewed in respect to the grounds of his supposed pro-
cedure, there is a certain vagueness in the form of ex-
pression, which gave rise even in ancient times to very
different modes of interpretation. The two chief words in
the original (rbADA tvar;f,) certainly form a somewhat peculiar
combination—strictly, nakedness of a matter, and as the
term for nakedness is very commonly used for what is
1 Matt. xix. 7, 8.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 129
unbecoming or indecent, it may most naturally be re-
garded as indicating something distasteful or offensive in
that direction. The two great Jewish schools, those of
Hillel and Shammai, were divided in their opinions on
the subject; the school of Hillel included in the expres-
sion everything that might cause dissatisfaction in the
husband, even the bad cooking of his victuals,1 while the
school of Shammai restricted it to uncleanness in the
conjugal sense—defilement of the marriage bed. That
something different, however, something less than this,
must have been intended, is evident alone from a com-
parison of other parts of the Mosaic legislation, which
ordained that a woman guilty of adultery should be, not
divorced, but put to death. It is also evident from the
explanation of our Lord, which ascribed this liberty of
divorce to the hardness of the people’s hearts, and de-
clared its inconsistence with the fundamental principle of
the marriage union, which admitted of a justifiable dis-
solution only by the death or the adulterous behaviour of
one of the parties. The truth appears to have lain between
the two extremes of the Jewish schools referred to; and
something short of actual impurity, yet tending in that
direction—something unbecoming, and fitted to create
dislike in the mind of the husband, or take off his affec-
tions from her—was understood to form, in the case sup-
posed, an occasion for dismissing a wife. It is also
supposed, that if such a step were taken, it would be
done in an orderly manner—not by a mere oral renounce-
ment, as among some Eastern nations, but by a formal
writing, which would usually require the employment of
a neutral person, and perhaps also the signature of
witnesses; that this writing should be deliberately put
into the woman’s hand, and that she should thereafter
1 See quotations in Lightfoot and Wetstein, on the passage in Matthew.
130 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
leave the house and go to another place of abode. These
things, requiring some degree of deliberation and time,
and so far tending to serve as a check on the hasty im-
pulses of passion, are not directly enjoined (as already
said), but presupposed as customary and indispensable
parts of the process in question; and the liberty thereby
granted to the woman to ally herself to another man,
coupled with the strict prohibition against a return to
her first husband, were evidently intended as additional
checks—reasons calling for very serious consideration
before the consummation of an act which carried such
consequences along with it. Still, the act could be done;
no positive statute, capable of legal enforcement, was
issued to prevent it; and was not the licence thus
granted, however arising, a sign of imperfection?
Beyond doubt it was; our Lord admits as much, when
He accounts for it by the hardness of the people’s hearts.
But the person who should avail himself of the licence
was not thereby justified—no more than in Christian
times a wife, or a husband, who, by wilful abandonment
or criminal behaviour, turns the marriage bond into a
nullity. The apostle distinctly states, that a believing
woman is not bound by the law of her husband, when he,
remaining in unbelief and displeased with her procedure,
has forced her into separation;1 he holds such a case not
to be included in the general law of Christ respecting the
perpetuity of marriage, except through death or fornica-
tion; and, by parity of reason, the same must be held
respecting parties, either of whom has become incapable
of fulfilling matrimonial obligations, by being imprisoned
or banished for life. There is here, at least, an approach
to the Old Testament state of things, arising from the
same cause, the hardness of the people’s hearts; and for
1 1 Cor. vii. 15.
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 131
the greater measure of licence, and consequently of prac-
tical imperfection adhering to the old, the question, in its
moral bearings, resolves itself into a wider one—it touches
the principle of progression in the Divine government;
for if, in progress of time the light and privileges granted
to men became much increased, should not the practical
administration or discipline in God’s house receive a cor-
responding elevation? It stands to reason that it should;
and hence certain things might be tolerated, in the sense
of not being actively condemned, at an earlier stage of
the Divine dispensations, which should no longer be borne
with now; while still the standard of moral duty, abso-
lutely considered, does not change, but is the same for
men of every age. There is the same relative difference,
and the same essential agreement, between the church in
its present and in its ultimate stage on earth—the period
of millennial glory: things tolerated now, will not be then.
It is further to be borne in mind, that this, above all
other points in the social system, was the one in respect
to which Orientals stood at a relative disadvantage, and
that feelings and practices were widely prevalent, which
would render stringent regulations of a disciplinary kind
worse than inoperative with a certain class of persons.
There was comparatively little freedom of intercourse,
prior to marriage, between the sexes, especially among
those who were of age. In many cases espousals were
made for the young, rather than by them; multitudes
found themselves joined in wedlock who had scarcely
ever seen each other—never, at least, mingled in familiar
converse; and often, too, they came from such different
classes of society and spheres of life, especially when the
wife was purchased as a bond-maid, or taken as a captive
in war, that it would have been a marvel if estrange-
ments, jealousies, tempers that repelled each other rather
132 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
than coalesced into a proper unity of heart and life, did
not at times appear as the result. Still, doubtless, the
moral obligation remained, growing out of the essential
nature of the marriage relation, and no way invalidated
but enforced by the tenor of the Mosaic revelation, that
the parties should cleave one to another, and abstain
from all that might tarnish the sanctity of their union,
or mar the ends for which it was formed. But in such a
state of things to exclude by positive and rigid enactment
any possibility of relief, even for such as did not in their
hearts realize that obligation, could only have tended to
produce a recoil in the opposite direction; it would have
led them probably to resort to violent measures to rid
themselves of the hated object, or to employ such treat-
ment as would have made death rather to be desired than
life.
The general regulations of the judicial code in respect
to marriage, as well as to other points of moment, thus
appear to admit of justification, when they are considered
with reference to the actual condition of the world. But
when particular cases are looked at, as they arose in the
subsequent history of the people, things are certainly
sometimes met with of which it is difficult to find any
adequate explanation:—the case, for example, of Elime-
lech, a Levite, and apparently a man of probity, not only
married to two wives without any specific reason assigned,
but one of these (Hannah) a person of distinguished piety,
and the subject of special direction and blessing from
Heaven; much more the case of David, and that of his
highly gifted and honoured son Solomon, adding wife to
wife, and concubines to wives, without any apparent con-
sciousness of wrong in the matter—yet all the while pos-
sessing the more peculiar endowments of God’s Spirit; and
though receiving counsels, revelations, sometimes also re-
LECT. IV.] JUDICIAL. STATUTES AND DIRECTIONS. 133
bukes from above, still never directly reproved for depart-
ing on this point from the right ways of the Lord. It is
true, on the other hand, they had no proper warrant for
what they did; they sinned against law—judicial as well as
moral law; and it is also true, that painful results attended
their course, such as might well be deemed practical
reproofs. Such considerations do help us a certain way
to the solution—we can say no more; perplexing diffi-
culties still hang around the subject, which cannot mean-
while be cleared satisfactorily away, only they are
difficulties which relate to the practical administration of
affairs, rather than to the Divine constitution of the king-
dom. There are certain things in other departments of
which the same might be affirmed. But for all in the Old
Economy that bears on it the explicit sanction of Heaven,
though formally differing from what is now established,
the principle so finely exhibited by Augustine in his con-
tendings with the Manichees is perfectly applicable.
Having compared the kingdom of God to a well-regulated
house, in which for wise reasons certain things are per-
mitted or enjoined at one time, which are prohibited at
another, he adds: ‘So is it with these persons who are
indignant when they hear that something was allowed to
good men in a former age, which is not allowed in this;
and because God commanded one thing to the former,
another thing to the latter, for reasons pertaining to the
particular time, while each were alike obedient to the
same righteousness:—And yet in a single mall, and in a
single day, and in a single dwelling, they may see one
thing suiting one member, another a different one; one
thing permitted just now, and again after a time pro-
hibited; something allowed or ordered in a certain corner,
which elsewhere is fitly forbidden or punished. Right-
eousness is not therefore various and mutable, is it? But
134 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
the times over which it presides do not proceed in a
uniform manner, just because they are times. But men,
whose life on earth is short, because they are not able
intelligently to harmonize the causes of earlier times and
of other nations, of which they have not had cognizance,
with those wherewith they are familiar—though in one
body, or day, or house, they can easily see what would
suit a particular member, particular times, particular
offices or persons—take offence at the one, but fall in
with the other.’1
III. There yet remains to be noticed the third great
division of the Law—namely, the rites and ceremonies
which more directly pertained to religion; or, as it is
very commonly designated, the Levitical code of worship
and observance. In what are called the statutes and
judgments, which immediately succeeded the delivery of
the ten commandments, there is scarcely any reference
made to ordinances of this description. A few words
were spoken to the people respecting the kind of altar
they should erect,2 implying that sacrifices were to form
an essential part of worship; also respecting the con-
secration of the first-born for special service to God, the
offering of the frst-fruits, and the appearance of the
males annually at three stated feasts before the Lord;
but that was all. And it was only after the covenant
had been formally ratified and sealed with blood over
1 Confes. L. III. c. 7. Sic sunt isti qui indignantur, cum audierint illo
sæculo licuisse justis aliquid, quod isto non licet justis; et quia illis aliud
præcipit Deus, istis aliud pro temporalibus causis, cum eidem justitiæ utrique
serviunt; cum in uno homine, et in uno die, et in unis ædibus videant aliud
alii membro congruere, et aliud jamdudum licuisse, post horam non licere;
quiddam in illo ungulo permitti aut juberi, quod in isto juste vetetur et vinde-
citur, etc.
2 Ex. xx. 24-26.
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 135
‘ten words’ from Sinai, with those supplementary
statutes, that the ritual of the Levitical system, in its
more distinctive form, came into existence. From its
very place in the history, therefore, it is to be regarded,
not as of primary, but only of secondary moment in the
constitution of the Divine kingdom in Israel; not itself
the foundation, but a building raised on the foundation,
and designed, by a wise accommodation to the state of
things then present, and by the skilful use of material
elements and earthly relations, to secure the proper work-
ing of what really was fundamental, and render it more
certainly productive of the wished for results. The
general connexion is this: God had already redeemed
Israel for His peculiar people, called them to occupy a
near relation to Himself, and proclaimed to them the
great principles of truth and duty which were to regulate
their procedure, so that they might be the true witnesses
of His glory, and the inheritors of His blessing. And for
the purpose of enabling them more readily to apprehend
the nature of this relation, and more distinctly realize the
things belonging to it, the Lord instituted a visible bond
of fellowship, by planting in the midst of their dwellings
a dwelling for Himself, and ordering everything in the
structure of the dwelling, the services to be performed at
it, and the access of the people to its courts, after such a
manner as to keep up right impressions in their mind of
the character of their Divine Head, and of what became
them as sojourners with Him in the land that was to be
emphatically His own. In such a case, it was indis-
pensable that all should be done under the express direc-
tion of God’s hand; for it was as truly a revelation of
His will to the members of the covenant as the direct
utterances of His mouth; it must be made and ordered
throughout according to the pattern of things presented
136 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
to the view of Moses; while the people, on their part,
were to shew their disposition to fall in with the design,
by contributing the materials requisite for the purpose,
and fulfilling the offices assigned them.1
The connexion now indicated between the revelation of
law in the stricter sense, and the structure and use of the
sacred dwelling, comes out very strikingly in the descrip-
tion given of the tabernacle, which, after mentioning the
different kinds of material to be provided, begins first
with the ark of the covenant—the repository, as it might
equally be called, of the Decalogue, since it was merely a
chest for containing the tables of the law, and as such
was taken for the very seat or throne from which Jehovah
manifested His presence and glory.2 It was, therefore,
the most sacred piece of furniture belonging to the
Tabernacle—the centre from which all relating to men’s
fellowship with God was to proceed, and to derive its
essential character. To break this link of connexion
between the ceremonial and the moral, or to invert their
relative order as thus impressed from the first on the
very framework of the Tabernacle, had been virtually to
reject the plan of God, and frustrate the design contem-
plated in this part of His covenant arrangements. For
those who practically ignored the revelation of truth and
duty in the Decalogue, there was properly no house of
God in Israel, no local throne, in connexion with which
they could hold communion with the living Head of the
Theocracy, and present acceptable worship before Him.
And for such as did acknowledge and own that revela-
tion, there could be only this one. The fundamental
truth, that Jehovah the God of Israel is one Lord, before
whom no other God can stand, nor even any form of
worship be allowed which might countenance the idea
1 Ex. xxv. 2, 9, 40, etc. 2 Ex. xxv. 21, 22.
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 137
of a diversity of nature or will in the supreme object
of worship—this must have its expression in the absolute
oneness of the place where Jehovah should put His name,
and where, in the more peculiar acts of worship, He
should be approached by the members of the covenant.
The place itself might be different at one time from what
it was at another; it was left, indeed, altogether unde-
termined at what particular point in the chosen territory,
or even within what tribe, the sacred dwelling should
have its location. This might change from one period to
another; the dwelling itself also might, as the event
proved, change its exterior form—pass from the humble
tent to a gorgeous temple; but its unity must ever remain
intact, so as to exclude the entrance of different theo-
cratical centres, and thereby prevent what would, in
those times, have been its inevitable sequence, the idea
of a plurality of gods to be acknowledged and served.
When we proceed from the sacred dwelling itself to
the institutions and services associated with it, we find
only further proofs of the close connexion between the
Levitical code and the Decalogue, and of the dependence
of the one upon the other. ‘The Levitical prescriptions,’
says Weber excellently,’1 follow the establishment of the
covenant and its realization in the indwelling of Jehovah
in Israel. They are not conditions, but consequences of
the Sinaitic covenant. After Jehovah, in consequence of
His covenant, had taken up His abode in Israel, and
Israel must now dwell before Him, it was necessary to
appoint the ordinances by which this intercourse should
be carried on. Since Israel in itself is impure, and is
constantly defiling itself, because its natural life stands
under the power of sin, it cannot quite directly enter into
fellowship with Jehovah; but what took place at Sinai
1 ‘Von Zorne Gottes,’ p. 143.
138 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
must be ever repeating itself—it must first, in order to
meet with Jehovah, undergo a purification. Hence, one
department of the ordinances of purification in the Levi-
tical part of the Law. But even when it has become
pure, it still cannot approach Jehovah in any manner it
may please, but only as He orders and appoints. It will
not, in spite of all purifications, be so pure, as that it
could venture to approach immediately to the Lord. The
glory of the Lord enthroned above the cherubim would
consume the impure. Therefore must Israel come near
to the Lord through priests whom He has Himself
chosen; and still not personally, but by means of the
gifts which ascend in the fire and rise into Jehovah’s
presence, nor even so without the offerer having been
first covered from the fiery glance of the Holy One
through the blood of His victim. This is the second part
of the Levitical law.’1
It would be impossible here, and, besides, is not required
for the purpose we have more immediately in view, to
go into all the details which belong to a complete and
1 In nothing is the imperfect and temporary nature of the Levitical
economy more distinctly marked than in the appointment of a separate priest-
hood, which was rather necessitated by circumstances, and superinduced upon
the original constitution of the Theocracy, than properly germane to its spirit.
The priestly institution sprang out of the weaknesses and defections of the
time (Ex. xix. 21-24, xxxii.; Lev. xvi; Num. xvi., etc.), hence was destined
to pass away when a higher spiritual elevation was reached by the people of
God. And this (as justly remarked by Ewald, Vol. II. p. 185) ‘is the finest
characteristic of the Old Testament, that even when its original elevated truths
suffer through the violence of the times, it still always gives us to recognise the
original necessary thought, just because in this community itself the consciousness
of it could never be wholly lost. At the last, there still stands prominently out,
here and alone; the great gospel of Ex. xix. 5, which was there before any kind
of hereditary priesthood, and continues after it, however firmly such a priest-
hood had for long ages rooted itself; and even while it stood, the circumstance
that this priesthood had always to tolerate by its side the freest prophetic
function, prevented it from becoming altogether like an Egyptian or a
Brahminical one.’
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 139
exhaustive treatment of the subject. It will be enough
to indicate the leading points relating to it. There is,
then, first of all, in the Levitical code, a teaching element,
which leans upon and confirms that of the Decalogue.
The grand lesson which it proclaimed through a multitude
of rites, and ordinances was, the pure, the good have access
to God’s fellowship and blessing; the unholy, the wicked
are excluded. But who constitute the one class, and who
the other? Here the Levitical code may be said to be
silent—excepting in so far as certain natural and outward
things were ingrafted into it as symbols of what, in the
spiritual sphere, is good or evil. But for the things
themselves which properly are such, it was necessary to
look to the character of God, the Head of the Theocracy,
and as such the type of all who belonged to it—to His
character especially as revealed in that law of moral duty,
which He took for the foundation of His throne and the
centre of His government in Israel. There the great land-
marks of right and wrong, of holy and unholy in God’s
sight, were set up; and in the Levitical code they are
presupposed, and men’s attention called to them, by its
manifold prescriptions concerning clean and unclean,
defilement and purification. Thus, its divers washings
and ever-recurring atonements by blood bespoke existing
impurities, which were such because they were at vari-
ance with the law of righteousness imposed in the Deca-
logue. The Decalogue had pointed, by the predominantly
negative form of its precepts, to the prevailing tendency
in human nature to sin; and in like manner the Levitical
code, by making everything that directly bore on genera-
tion and birth a source of uncleanness, perpetually re-
iterated in men’s ears the lesson, that corruption cleaved
to them, that they were conceived in sin and brought
forth in iniquity. The very institution of a separate
140 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
order for immediate approach to God, and performing, in
behalf of the community, the more sacred offices of religion,
was, as already noticed, a visible sign of actual short-
comings and transgressions among the people: it was a
standing testimony, that they were not holy after the
lofty pattern of holiness exhibited in the law of Jehovah’s
throne. The distinction, also, between clean and unclean
in food, while it deprived them of nothing that was
required either to gratify the taste or minister nourish-
ment to the bodily life—granted them, indeed, what was
best adapted for both—yet served as a daily monitor in
respect to the spiritual dangers that encompassed them,
and of the necessity of exercising themselves to a careful
choosing between one class of things and another, re-
minded them of a good that was to be followed, and of
an evil to be shunned. And then there is a whole series
of defilements springing from contact with what is
emphatically the wages of sin—death, or death’s livid
image, the leprosy, which, wherever it alighted, struck a
fatal blight into the organism of nature, and rendered it a
certain prey to corruption:—things, the very sight and
touch of which formed a call to humiliation, because
carrying with them the mournful evidence, that, while
sojourners with God, men still found themselves in the
region of corruption and death, not in that brighter and
purer region, where life, the life that is incorruptible and
full of glory, for ever dwells.1
1 The passages bearing on the particular subjects adverted to in the text are
contained chiefly in Lev. x.-xv., Numb. xix. For detailed explanations respect-
ing them, and the specific import of each as briefly indicated in the preceding
remarks, see my ‘Typology,’ B. III. c. 8. Though some of the ordinances
may now seem, in their didactic aspect, to be somewhat arbitrary, it would be
quite otherwise for those who were accustomed to symbolical institutions; if
sincere and earnest, they would readily pass from the natural to the spiritual,
and would find in them all the lesson expressed in regard to the class first
mentioned (Lev. xi. 44), that they should be holy as God Himself was holy.
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 141
Viewed in this light, the law of fleshly ordinances was
a great teaching institute—not by itself, but when taken
(according to its true intent) as an auxiliary to the law
of the two tables. Isolated from these, and placed in an
independent position, as having an end of its own to
reach, its teaching would have been at variance with the
truth of things; for it would have led men to make
account of mere outward distinctions, and rest in corporeal
observances. In such a case it would have been the
antithesis rather than the complement of the law from
Sinai, which gave to the moral element the supreme
place: alike in God’s character, and in the homage and
obedience he requires of His people. But, kept in its
proper relation to that law, the Levitical code was for the
members of the old covenant an important means of
instruction; it plied them with warnings and admonitions
respecting sin, as bringing defilement in the sight of God,
and thereby excluding from His fellowship. That such,
however, was the real design of this class of Levitical
ordinances—that they had merely a subsidiary aim, and
derived all their importance and value from the connexion
in which they stood with the moral precepts of the Deca-
logue—is evident from other considerations than those
furnished by their own nature and their place in the
Mosaic legislation. It is evident, first, from this, that
whenever the special judgments of Heaven were denounced
against the covenant people, it never was for neglect
of those ceremonial observances, but always for palpable
breaches of the precepts of the Decalogue;l evident,
again, from this, that whenever the indispensable condi-
tions of access to God’s house and abiding fellowship
with His love are set forth, they are made to turn on
1 Jer. vii. 22-31; Ezek. viii., xviii. 1-13; Hosea iv. 1-3; Amos ii. 4-9;
Micah v., vi.
142 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
conformity to the moral precepts, not to the ceremonial
observances;l evident, yet again and finally, from this,
that whenever the ceremonial observances were put in the
foreground by the people, as things distinct from, and in
lieu of, obedience to the moral precepts, the procedure
was denounced as arbitrary, and the service rejected as a
mockery.2
Beside the teaching element, however, which belonged
to the Levitical institutions, there was another and still
more important one, which we may call their mediating
design. Here also they stood in a kind of supplementary
relation to the law of the ten commandments, but a rela-
tion which implied something more than a simple re-
echoing of their testimony respecting holiness and sin—
something, indeed, essentially different. For that law,
in revealing the righteous demands of God, from its very
nature could make no allowance or provision for the sins
and shortcomings by which those demands were dis-
honoured; it could but threaten condemnation, and, with
its cry of guilt under the throne of God, terrify from His
presence those who might venture to approach. But the
Levitical code, with its mediating priesthood, its rites of
expiation, and ordinances of cleansing; had for its very
object the effecting of a restored communion with God for
those who through sin had forfeited their right to it.
While it by no means ignored the reality or the guilt of
sin—nay, assumed this as the very ground on which it
rested, and so far coincided with the Decalogue—it, at the
same time, secured for those who acknowledged their sin
and humbled themselves on account of it, a way of recon-
ciliation and peace with God. The more special means
for effecting this was through sacrifice—the blood of slain
1 Ps. xv., xxiv., 1., etc.
2 1 Sam. xv. 22; Ps. xl. 7, li.; Isa. i. 2; Micah vi. 8.
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 143
victims—the life-blood of an irrational creature, itself un-
conscious of sin, being accepted by God in His character
of Redeemer for the life of the sinner. A mode of satis-
faction no doubt in itself unsatisfactory, since there was
no just correspondence between the merely sensuous life
of an unthinking animal and the higher life of a rational
and responsible being; in the strict reckoning of justice
the one could form no adequate compensation for the
other. But in this respect it was not singular; it was
part of a scheme of things which bore throughout the
marks of relative imperfection. The sanctuary itself,
which was of narrow dimensions and composed of earthly
and perishable materials, how poor a representation was
it of the dwelling-place of Him who fills heaven and earth
with His presence! And the occasional access of a few
ministering priests into the courts of that worldly sanc-
tuary—an access into its inmost receptacle by one person
only, and by him only once a year—how imperfect an
image of the believer’s freedom of intercourse with God,
and habitual consciousness of His favour and blessing!
Such things might be said to lie upon the surface, and
could not fail, as we shall see, to give a specific direction
to the minds of the more thoughtful and spiritual wor-
shippers. But there still was, in the structure of the
tabernacle, and the regulated services of its worship,
provisional arrangement of Divine ordination by which
transgressors, otherwise excluded, might obtain the forgive-
ness of their sins, and enjoy the blessings of communion
with Heaven. Through this appointed channel God did
in very deed dwell with men on earth; and men, who
would have been repelled with terror by His fiery law,
could come nigh to His seat, and in spirit dwell as in the
secret of His presence.1
1 For the specific
ordinances, I must again refer to my ‘Typology,’ Vol. II.
144 THE REVELATI N OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
One can easily see, however, that the very impeifec-
tions attendant on this state of things required that its
working be very carefully guarded. Definite checks and
limits must be set to the possibility of obtaining the
blessings of forgiveness. For, had an indefinite liberty
been given to make propitiation for sin, and to wash
away the stains of its defilement, how certainly would it
have degenerated into a corrupt and dangerous license!
The Levitical code would have become the foster-mother
of iniquity. The ready access it gave to the means of
purification would have encouraged men to proceed on
their evil courses, assured that if they should add sin to
sin they might also bring victim after victim to expiate
their guilt. Therefore, the right and privilege of expia-
tion were limited to sins of infirmity, or such as spring
from the weakness and imperfection of nature in a world
abounding with temptation; while sins committed with
a high hand, that is, in open and deliberate violation of
the great precepts of the Decalogue, were appointed only
to judgment, as subversive of the very ends of the Theo-
cracy.1 So that here, again, the Levitical code of ordi-
nances leant on the fundamental law of the Decalogue,
and did obeisance to its supreme authority. Only they
who devoutly recognised this law, and in their conscience
strove to walk according to its precepts, had any title to
an interest in the provisions sanctioned for the blotting
out of transgression. Then, as now, ‘to walk in dark-
ness,’ or persistently adhere to the practice of iniquity,
was utterly incompatible with having fellowship with
God.2
One thing further requires to be noted respecting the
Levitical institutions, which is, that while under one
aspect they constituted the rights and privileges of the
1 Lev. iv. 2; Num. xv. 22-30. 2 1 John i. 6.
LECT. IV.] THE CEREMONIAL LAW. 145
Israelite, under another they added to his obligations of
duty. They took the form of law, as well as the Deca-
logue, and, wilful violators of its, prescriptions, were not
less amenable to justice than those who were guilty of
gross immorality.1 And the reason is obvious: for these
Levitical ordinances of purification bore on them the autho-
rity of God as well as those which related to the strictly
moral sphere, and to set them at nought was to dishonour
God; it was also to make light of the means He had
appointed—the only available means—of having the guilt
of transgression covered, which therefore remained umor-
given, yea aggravated, by the despite that was done to the
riches of God’s mercy. Yet, practically, the difficulty and
the danger did not lie much in this particular direction.
Though guilt was no doubt frequently incurred by neglect-
ing the provisions and requirements of the Levitical code,
yet this was sure to be preceded and accompanied by the
far greater guilt of violating the fundamental precepts of
the Decalogue. And, hence, it was always guilt of this
latter description which drew down the heaviest judgments.
If anything, indeed, has more clearly discovered itself
than another, from the whole of this investigation, it is
the fundamental character of the Decalogue—its pre-
eminent and singular place in the Revelation of Law.
This was itself emphatically the law; and all, besides,
which bore that name was but of secondary rank, and
derived its proper value and significance from the relation
in which it stood to the other. Hence, the prominent
regard, as in due time will appear, which, in the use of
the term Law by our Lord and His apostles, was had to
the moral precepts of the Decalogue. Hence, also, the
groundlessness of the statement, which has been often
made by modern writers, that the distinction, with which
1 Lev. vii. 20, xvii. 4, 14; Num. ix. 13.
146 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IV.
we are so familiar, between moral and ceremonial, was not
so sharply drawn in the Books of Moses, and that pre-
cepts of both kinds are there often thrown together, as
if, in Jewish apprehension, no very material difference
existed between them. It is easy to pick out a few
quotations which give a plausible support to such a view.
But a careful examination of the subject as a whole, and
of the relation in which one part stands to another, yields
a quite different result. And Mr Maurice does not put
it too strongly when he says, ‘The distinction between
these commandments and the mere statutes of the Jewish
people has strongly commended itself to the conscience of
modern nations, not because they have denied the latter
to have a divine origin, but because they have felt that
the same wisdom which adapted a certain class of com-
mands to the peculiarities of one locality and age, must
intend a different one for another. The ten command-
ments have no such limitation. . . . All the sub-
sequent legislation, though referred to the same authority,
is separated from these. All the subsequent history was
a witness to the Jew, that in the setting up of any god
besides the Unseen Deliverer; in the fancy that there
could be any likeness of Him in heaven above, or in the
earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth; in the
loss of awe for His name; in the loss of the distinction
between work and rest as the ground of man’s life, and
as having its archetype in the Divine Being, and as
worked by Him into the tissue of the existence of His
own people; in the loss of reverence for parents, for life,
for marriage, for property, for character; and in the
covetous feeling which is at the root of these evils, lay
the sources of political disunion, and the loss of all per-
sonal dignity and manliness.”1
1 ‘Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy,’ p. 13.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 147
LECTURE V.
THE POSITION AND CALLING OF ISRAEL AS PLACED UNDER THE
COVENANT OF LAW, WHAT PRECISELY INVOLVED IN IT—FALSE
VIEWS ON THE SUBJECT EXPOSED—THE MORAL RESULTS THE
ECONOMY, ACCORDING AS THE LAW WAS LEGITIMATELY USED
OR THE REVERSE.
HAVING now considered the nature of the Law as
revealed from Sinai, and the relation in which both
the judicial statutes and the Levitical ordinances stood
to it, our next line of investigation naturally turns on
Israel’s position under it; in which respect such ques-
tions as these press themselves on our regard: How did
the being placed under the covenant of law of itself tend
to affect the real well-being of Israel as a people? or
their representative character as the seed of blessing, the
types of a redeemed church? How far did the proper
effects of the covenant realize themselves in their history,
or others not proper—the result of their own neglect and
waywardness—come in their stead? And did the cove-
nant, in consequence of the things, whether of the one
sort or the other, which transpired during its continuance,
undergo any material alterations, or remain essentially
the same till the bringing in of the new covenant by the
mission and work of Christ?
1. In entering upon the line of thought to which such
questions point, we are struck at the outset with a some-
what remarkable diversity in the representations of Scrip-
148 THE REVELATION OF LAW [LECT. V.
ture itself respecting the natural tendency and bearing
of the law on those who were subject to it. Coming
expressly from Jehovah in the character of Israel’s
Redeemer, it cannot be contemplated otherwise than as
carrying a benign aspect, and aiming at happy results.
Moses extolled the condition of Israel as on this very
account surpassing that of all other people: ‘What
nation is there so great, who hath God so nigh unto
them, as the Lord our God is in all things that we call
upon him for? And what nation is there so great, that
hath statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law,
which I set before you this day.’1 The very last recorded
utterance of the legislator was a rapturous exclamation
over Israel’s now enviable condition and joyful prospects:
‘Happy art thou, O Israel; who is like unto thee, O
people saved by the Lord!’2 And the sentiment is
re-echoed under various forms in other parts of ancient
Scripture, especially in the Psalms. Among the great
acts of mercy and loving-kindness for which the Lord is
praised in Ps. ciii., is the fact that ‘He made known His
ways unto Moses, His acts unto the children of Israel;’
or, as it is put in another Psalm, ‘He shewed His sta-
tutes and His judgments to Israel; He hath not dealt
so with any nation.’3 And then the law itself, and the
blessedness arising from a just acquaintance with its
precepts, are celebrated in the very strongest terms: ‘The
law of the Lord is perfect, converting (quickening) the
soul: the testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the
simple: the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the
heart: the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlighten-
ing the eyes.’4 ‘O how I love thy law! it is my medita-
tion all the day.’ ‘I will never forget thy precepts, for
1 Deut. iv. 7, 8, 2 Deut. xxxiii. 29.
3 Ps. cx1vii. 19, 20. 4 Ps. xix. 7, 8.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 149
with them thou hast quickened me;’ and, generally,
‘Great peace have they who love thy law, and nothing
shall offend them.’1 But another set of passages appear
to point in the very opposite direction; they represent
the law as a source of terror or trouble—a bondage from
which it is true liberty to escape: ‘The law worketh
wrath;’ ‘by the law is the knowledge of sin;’ ‘the
strength of sin is the law;’ and referring distinctly to the
law in the stricter sense—as indeed these other passages
also do—the law engraven in stones—the apostle desig-
nates it ‘the ministration of condemnation and of death.’2
It is clear, on a moment’s reflection, that such diverse,
antagonistic representations could not have been given of
the law in the same respects, or with the same regard to
its direct and primary aim. If both alike were true—as
we cannot doubt they were, being alike found in the
volume of inspiration—it must be from the law having
been contemplated in one of them from a different point
of view, or with regard to different uses and applications
of it from what it was in the other. At present, as we
have to do with the place of the law in the Old Testa-
ment economy, it is more especially the happier class of
representations which come into consideration; they may
fitly, at least, be viewed as occupying the foreground,
while the others may come into particular notice after-
wards.
2. Now, the view which we have seen reason to take
of the nature of the law as revealed through Moses, will
render it unnecessary to do more than make a passing refer-
ence to such modes of explanation as would resolve every-
thing in the covenant with Israel into merely outward
and carnal elements—would make the law, as delivered
1 Ps. cxix. 93, 97, 165.
2 Ro. iii 20, iv. 15; 1 Cor. xv. 56; 2 Cor. iii 7,9; Gal iv. 1-3, v. 1-3.
150 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
to them at Sinai, a comparatively easy and lightsome
thing—satisfied if it could but secure outward wor-
shippers of Jehovah, and respectable citizens of the
commonwealth. The law, we are told by writers of this
class, was one that dealt only ‘in negative measures:’
‘the precepts were negative that the obedience might be
the more possible;’ and he was ‘the good man who
could not be excused to have done what the law forbade,
he who had done the fewest evils.’ So Jeremy Taylor,l
and at more length Spencer, in his learned work on the
Laws of the Hebrews, who endeavoured to shew that the
one great end of the Decalogue, as well as of the cere-
monial law, was to extirpate idolatry, and the fruits that
more immediately spring from it.2 Warburton improved
on it a little, by turning the negative respecting idolatry
into a positive respecting God; but that was all. The
primary end of the law (moral and ceremonial alike) accord-
ing to him was, ‘not to keep the Israelites from idolatry,’
but ‘to preserve the memory of the one God in an idola-
trous world till the coming of Christ,’3—a distinction,
one might almost say, without a difference, and of use
only as a polemical weapon in the hands of its author.
Michaelis followed in the same track, and could find
nothing in the first part of the Decalogue but a provision
for the acknowledgment and worship of one God, in
opposition to the idolatries of heathenism, nor in the
second—not even as condensed into the positive form of
love to one’s neighbour as one’s-self—but a dry injunction
to have respect to one another’s civil rights.4 And to
mention no more (though many more might be noticed),
we meet, in a comparatively late work, with such asser-
tions as the following respecting the Old Covenant, which
1 ‘On Conscience,’ B. II. C. 2, sec. 4; c. 3, sec. 2. 2 L. I. c. 2.
3 ‘Leg. of Moses,’ B. V. sec. 2. 4 ‘Laws of Moses,’ secs. 34, 72.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 151
had the law of the two tables for its basis, that ‘it had
nothing whatever to do with any, except with the nation
of Israel, and nothing whatever with any mere individual
in that nation; that it was made with the nation collec-
tively, and was entirely temporal;’ that its whole sub-
stance lay in this, God promised to give the land of
Canaan to the nation of Israel, so long, but ‘only so long,
as the nation collectively acknowledged Jehovah as the
one God.’ Hence the holiness required was quite irre-
spective of individual righteousness;’ Israel was still the
holy nation, whatever sins might be harboured in its
bosom, so long as it did not cease from the formal recog-
nition and worship of Jehovah.l
We appeal from all such representations to the plain
reading of the law itself (as we have endeavoured to give
it), looked at, as it should be, in its historical connection
and its general bearings. The blinding influence of theory
will obscure even the clearest light; but it is scarcely
possible that any unbiassed mind should apply itself
earnestly to the subject, and take up with so partial and
meagre a view of what, not in one place merely, but in
all Scripture, is made known to us as distinctively God’s
revelation of law to men. The immediate circumstances
that led to it—the special acts and announcements which
might be said to form its historical introduction, are alone
sufficient to compel a higher estimate of the revelation.
The people had just been rescued, it was declared, from
Egypt, had been borne by God on eagles’ wings, and
brought to Himself—for what? Not simply that they
might acknowledge His existence, or preserve His me-
mory, in the face of surrounding idolatry, but that they
might ‘obey His voice and keep His covenant,’ and so
be to Him ‘a kingdom of priests and an holy nation.’2
1 Johnstone’s ‘Israel after the Flesh,’ pp. 7, 87. 2 Ex. xix. 4-6.
152 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
Peculiar nearness to God in position, and, as the proper
consequence and result of that, knowing and reflecting
His character, entering into His mind and will, striving
to be holy as He is holy—this was the end to which all
was directed—the purpose, also, for which they stood
before God as a separate people, and were gathered around
Sinai to hear the law from His mouth:—And if that law
had been aught else than a real disclosure of the mind of
God as to what he demands of His people toward Him-
self and toward each other in the vital interests of truth
and righteousness, it had been (we need not hesitate to
say it) beneath the occasion; failing, as it should have
done, to present the proper ideal, which it was Israel’s
calling to endeavour constantly to have realized. The
formal acknowledgment, forsooth, of Jehovah as the
one true God, and paying due respect to one another’s
civil rights! And that, too, chiefly in the general,
without any distinct bond of obligation on the individual
conscience, quite irrespective of personal righteousness!
Was this a thing so important in itself, so well-pleasing
in the eyes of the pure and heart-searching Jehovah, that
the law requiring it should have been laid as the very
foundation of His throne in Israel, and that the period of
its promulgation should have formed a marked era in the
history of His dispensations among men? The thought
is not for a moment to be entertained. The eternal God
could not so abnegate or demean Himself—no more for
any temporal purpose than for one directly bearing on
the interests of eternity; for in such a matter nothing is
determined by the mere element of duration. He could
not, in consistence with His own unchangeable character,
either ask or accept what should be other than a fit
expression of the homage that is supremely due to Him,
and
the love that willingly yields itself to His require-
LECT.
V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 153
ments.l This, also, is what a fair examination of the law
itself has impressed upon our minds.
Were it necessary to say more, we might add, that
there is a conclusive historical reason against the view of
the law, and the polity founded on it, to which we have
been adverting. According to it, the religion of the Old
Covenant had been nothing more than a kind of bald
theism, adapted to the circumstances of the time—a sort
of natural religion, enshrined amid a cumbrous framework
of ordinances and political regulations, which partly
humoured the semi-heathenish state of the people, and
partly kept them off from the more flagrant pagan cor-
ruptions. Had that, however, been all, the Jews of our
Lord’s time should have been presented to our view as
the best exemplars and most satisfactory results of the
Sinaitic covenant. For in what age of its continuance
was the doctrine of the unity more strictly adhered to?
or when were the institutions connected with it more
generally and punctually observed? It will not do to
say, by way of explanation, that in rejecting Jesus they
set themselves against the very Head of the Theocracy,
and so ran counter to its primary design; for it was not
in that character that He formally appeared and claimed
the homage of men, but rather as Himself the living
embodiment of its great principles, the culmination of its
spiritual aims. It was the practical oversight of these
which constituted the fatal error of those later Jews; and
1 ‘To know and to serve God, that is religion, whether it be with a view to
the present life or to the next, and whatever inducements or encouragements
He may choose to supply. The greatest rewards of endless felicity sought, or
expected, in any other service than His, cannot consecrate that service, nor make
it a part of essential religion. In every original right of moral authority, the
essence of the obligation, and the virtue of compliance with it, are independent
of the kind, or the degree, of the retribution annexed.’—Davison ‘On Prophecy,’
Dis. IV.
154 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
the theoretical oversight of the same, in any view that
may be taken of the covenant of law under which they
were placed, must be equally fatal to its acceptance.
2. Belonging almost to the opposite pole of theological
sentiment, writers of the Cocceian school have sometimes
gone to a different extreme, and have given, if not a false,
yet an artificial and perplexing, rather than a plain and
Scriptural view of Israel’s position under the law. They
were themselves embarrassed by the habit of ranging
everything pertaining to covenant engagements under
one of two heads—the covenant of works, and the cove-
nant of grace. They differ, however, to some extent in
their mode of representation—all, indeed, holding that
the ten commandments, in which the covenant of law
more peculiarly stood, was for substance the same with
the covenant of works; in other words, embodied that
perfect rule of rectitude, on conformity to which hung
man’s original possession of life and blessing; but differ-
ing as to the precise form or aspect under which they
supposed this rule of rectitude to have been presented to
Israel in the Sinaitic covenant. Cocceius himself, in his
mode of representation, did not differ materially from
the view of Calvin, and that generally of the Reformed
theologians. He held that the Decalogue was not for-
mally proposed to the Israelites as the covenant of works;
that it proceeded from Jehovah as the God and Redeemer
of Israel, implying that He had entered with them into a
covenant of grace; that the covenant of law was given to
subserve that covenant of grace, pointing out and enjoining
what was necessary to be done, in order that the children
of the covenant might see how they should live, if they
were to enjoy its blessings—precisely as the evangelical
precepts and exhortations in the New Testament do in
subservience to the Gospel. Its language, he thinks,
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 155
was not, I demand that you do these precepts, and so live
(this had been to mock men with impossibilities); but, I
have called you to life, and now, laying aside fear, come
and hear my voice.1 Indeed, one might say Cocceius
leant rather too much to the assimilation of the law to
the form of things in the New Testament Scriptures.
Witsius, the more systematic expounder of the Cocceian
theology, discriminates more exactly; he finds in the
precepts of the Decalogue the moral elements of the
covenant of works, and in the terror and majesty with
which they were delivered, a sort of reduplication (ingemi-
nationem) of the covenant of works; but still they were
not proposed in the character of that covenant, as if
through obedience to its precepts the people were to
attain to life; they only assumed somewhat of the appear-
ance of the covenant of works to convince the people of
their sinfulness, and drive them out of themselves to look
for the hope of salvation in Christ. But with all this it
in reality assumed and was founded upon the covenant
of grace already made with Israel—Israel, as partakers in
such a covenant of grace, promising to God a sincere
observance of the precepts imposed, and God in turn
promising to accept and bless such observance, though in
itself imperfect.2 A different view, however, came to
1 Animad. de Vet. Test. Quaest. 33; also De Foed., chap. xi. 49-58.
2 De Œcon. Foederum, Lib. IV. chap. iv. secs. 47-54. It is astonishing how
Mr Johnstone, if he really had the entire work of Witsius in his hands, could
have so grossly misrepresented his views on this subject. He says, p. 3, ‘It is
the usual, but an utterly unfounded conception of the old covenant, that “it
points out the way in which, by means of works, salvation is obtained;” that
“the form of this covenant is, The man which doeth these things shall live by
them, and that in it there is a promise of eternal life, consisting in the imme-
diate fruition of God.” I do not hesitate to say, that there is not the shadow
of an authority for this all but universal view of the old covenant.’ The
authority referred to, and briefly quoted, for this sweeping declaration, is
Witsius, De Œcon. Foederum, Lib. I. chap. i. sec. 15. But there Witsius is
treating, not of the old covenant properly so called, but of the covenants
156 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
prevail pretty generally among the English Puritans, who
generally belonged to the Cocceian school, and found its
expression in a book which attained to great popularity,
and became the occasion of a prolonged controversy—
Fisher’s ‘Marrow of Modern Divinity.’ Here it is broadly
asserted, and at some length maintained, that the ten
commandments were formally delivered on Mount Sinai
as the covenant of works, or as a renewal of the Adamic
covenant—not, however, as if the Israelites were expected
to fulfil it, and justify themselves by deeds of law—but
for this, and no other end, ‘that man being thereby con-
vinced of his weakness, might flee to Christ. So that it
was renewed only to help forward and introduce another
and a better covenant.’1 And various authors are referred
to as having previously adopted the same style of repre-
sentation (in particular Preston, Pemble, Walker). Boston,
who was a more correct theologian, and a more discrimi-
nating writer, than the author of the ‘Marrow,’ in his
notes to that work admits that the view in question was
held by ‘some late learned writers,’ but gave it only a
qualified approval. He conceives that both covenants
were delivered on Mount Sinai to the Israelites: ‘First,
the covenant of grace made with Abraham, contained in
the preface, repeated and promulgated there to Israel, to
be believed and embraced by faith, that they might be
saved; to which were annexed the ten commandments,
given by the Mediator Christ, the head of the covenant,
as a rule of life to His covenant people. Secondly, the
abstractly—namely, of works and grace. It is at a much later part of his
treatise that he comes to discuss the old covenant, or covenant of law, and
which, as we have said, he holds to have been neither formally a covenant of
works nor a covenant of grace. As for the assertion that the view ascribed to
Witsius is nearly universal, we can only designate it as for present times a
great exaggeration.
1 Part I. chap. ii.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 157
covenant of works made with Adam contained in the
same ten commands, delivered with thunderings and
lightnings, the meaning of which was afterwards cleared
by Moses describing the righteousness of the law and the
sanction thereof, as the original perfect rule of righteous-
ness to be obeyed; and yet they were no more bound
thereby to seek righteousness by the law than the young
man was by our Saviour’s saying to him, If thou wilt
enter into life, keep the commandments.’ Thus, he adds,
‘there is no confounding of the two covenants of grace
and works.’1
I fear, in saying this, the good man forgot at what
period it was in the Divine dispensations that the law
was given from Sinai. It was still the comparatively dim
twilight of revelation, when the plan of God could be
seen only in a few broken lines and provisional arrange-
ments, which tended to veil, even while they disclosed
the truth. The men of that age could not so easily dis-
tinguish between the two aspects of law here presented,
even if they had got some hint of the diversity; but, as
matters actually stood, it could scarcely be said, that the
two were ever distinctly before them. No one can read
1 Substantially the same representation is given by Colquhoun, ‘Law and
Grace,’ chap. I. sec. 2; Beart’s ‘Eternal Law and Everlasting Gospel;’ and, to name
no more, in the work of the late Dr R. Gordon, ‘Christ in the Old Testament,’
Vol. I. p. 385, seq. It is there said, ‘The giving of the law was thus a new
exhibition of the covenant of works—a declaration of what was necessarily
incumbent on men, if they expected to secure for themselves the favour and
fellowship of God;’ while, shortly after, it is denied that ‘the law was pre-
scribed to Israel as the covenant of works, so as that their acceptance with God
absolutely depended on their fulfilling the condition of that covenant.’ This
ground of acceptance is referred to the previous exhibition of grace and mercy.
What we except to in such a statement is, that it is fitted to create confusion, to
embarrass and perplex people’s minds. It was adopted by the writers in ques-
tion very much from the view they took of the passages, Rom. x. 5, Gal. iii. 12,
where the righteousness of works is described in language derived from the
writings of Moses. But see the exposition on Rom. x. 5, in Supplement.
158 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
the history of the transaction without being convinced,
that in whatever character the law was declared to the
Israelites and established with them as a covenant,
carried with it the bond of a sacred obligation which they
were to strive to make good; and of any other meaning
or design, either on God’s part in imposing, or on their
part in accepting the obligation, the narrative is entirely
silent.
3. But a class—one can scarcely say of theologians (for
the name would be misapplied to persons who in most
things make so complete a travesty of Scripture )—a class,
however, of very dogmatic writers (the Plymouthists) have
recently pushed to its full extreme the view of the law
just stated as the covenant of works—not, like the later
Cocceians, as a kind of side view or secondary aspect
which might also be taken of it, but as its direct, formal,
and only proper character. ‘Law,’ we are told by one of
them, ‘was a distinct and definite dispensation of God,
according to which life was promised consequent on obedi-
ence, and had its whole nature from this, a righteousness
characterized by this principle: obedience first, then life
therein, righteousness.’l This is given as the import of
‘the reasoning of the apostles’ on the subject; and
another of the party, in his ‘Notes on Exodus,’ interprets
the narrative respecting the giving of the law so as to
make it tell in support of the same view. When God,
in the nineteenth chapter of Exodus, delivered to Moses
on the mount the tender and touching address, in which
He related what He had done for the people, what He
now called them to be in honour and blessing, and how,
in order to maintain and enjoy this, they must be ready
to obey His voice and keep His covenant; and when
Moses, after hearing the words, went at God's bidding and
1 Darby ‘On the Law,’ p. 22.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 159
reported them to the people, and received for answer,
‘All that the Lord hath spoken we will do’—this, we
are told, was a virtual renunciation, on the part of Israel,
of their blessed position: ‘instead of rejoicing in God’s
holy promise, they undertook the most presumptuous vow
that mortal lips could utter. Nor was this the language
of a few vain, self-confident spirits, who presumed to
single themselves out from the whole congregation. No,
“All the people answered together, and said, All that
the Lord hath spoken we will do.”’1 And then we are
informed, that because of this proud and presumptuous
spirit, the Lord immediately gave ‘a total alteration to
the aspect of things:’ He wrapt Himself up in the cloud
of thick darkness, assumed an appearance of terrible
majesty, and issued that fiery law, the object of which
was to shew them how incompetent they were to fulfil
what they had undertaken, to reveal what on their own
assumption they ought to be, and place them under the
curse for not being it.
If this were the correct reading of the matter, why, we
naturally ask, should God Himself have taken the initia-
tive in this so-called abandonment of the covenant of pro-
mise? for it was He who sent Moses to the people with
the words, which manifestly sought to evoke an affirma-
tive reply. Why, after such a reply was returned, did it
call forth no formal rebuke, if so be it displayed an in-
tolerable arrogancy and presumption? and the reason,
the only reason, assigned for the Lord’s declared intention
to appear presently in a thick cloud, why should this
have been simply that the people might hear His voice,
and believe Moses for ever?2 Why, also, at the rehearsal
of the transactions in the book of Deuteronomy, did God
say, ‘The people had well said all they had spoken,’ and
1 ‘Notes on Exodus,’ by A. M., p. 232. 2 Ex. xix. 9.
160 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
only further breathed the wish, ‘O that there were such
an heart in them, that they would fear me, and keep all
my commandments always, that it might be well with
them and with their children for ever?’1 Why, above all, if
the case were as now represented, should the formalities of
a covenant transaction have been gone through in the name
of God over the words uttered by Him and responded
to by the people—based, as it must in that case have
been, on what were known on the one side to be impos-
sible conditions, and on the other palpable delusions and
lies? And why, after all, should Israel not the less, but
the more rather, have been pronounced most exalted in
privilege, peculiarly destined to honour and blessing?2
Nothing, surely, can be more fitted to shake our confi-
dence in the transparent simplicity and faithfulness of
God’s recorded dealings with men, than to be taught, as
by a look from behind the scenes, that what wears the
aspect of a solemn transaction, was in reality but a formal
display or an empty mockery. And such, beyond all
reasonable doubt, would be the effect with the great
majority of minds, if the mode of representation before
us should come to be accepted as valid.
4. But it rests upon no solid ground, and has more the
character of an interpolation thrust into the sacred record
than a fair and natural interpretation of its contents.
The revelation of law from Sinai did not come forth in
independence, as if it were to lay the foundation of some-
thing altogether new in men’s experience; nor did it
proceed from God in His character as the God of nature,
exercising His right to impose commands of service on the
consciences of His creatures, which with no other helps
and endowments than those of nature, they were required
with unfailing rectitude to fulfil;—not, therefore, when
1 Deut. v. 28, 29. 2 Ex. xxiii. 27-29; Deut. vi. xxxiii.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 161
when made to take the form of a covenant, was it
the view of exacting what must be given as the prior
indispensable conditions of life and joy? No, the history
of Israel knows nothing of law except in connection with
promise and blessing.1 It was as the Redeemer of Israel
that God spake the words—as in a special sense Israel’s
God (‘I am Jehovah thy God’)—a relation which, we
have our Lord’s explicit testimony for asserting, carries
in its bosom the dowry of life eternal;2 so that grace
here also took precedence of law, life of righteousness;
and the covenant of law, assuming and rooting itself in
the prior covenant of grace, only came to shut the heirs
of promise up to that course of dutiful obedience toward
God, and brotherly kindness toward each other, by which
alone they could accomplish the higher ends of their call-
ing. In form merely was there anything new in this, not
in principle. For what else was involved in the command
given to Abraham, at the establishment of the covenant of
promise, to have it sealed with the ordinance of circum-
cision—the symbol of a sanctified nature and a holy life?
Nay, even before that, the same thing in effect was done,
when the Lord appeared to Abraham and said, ‘I am the
Almighty God, walk before me and be thou perfect,’3—a
word which (as Cocceius justly observes)4 was comprehen-
sive of all true service and righteous behaviour. But an
advance was made by the entrance of the law over such
preceding calls and appointments, and it was this—the
obligation to rectitude of life resting upon the heirs of
promise was now thrown into a categorical and imperative
form, embracing the entire round of moral and religious
duty; yet, not that they might by the observance of this
work themselves into a blissful relation to God, but that,
1 Harless, ‘Ethik.,’ sec. 13. 2 Luke xx. 37, 38.
3 Gen. xvii. 1. 4 De Foed., c. xi. sec. 338.
162 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
as already standing in such a relation, they might walk
worthy of it, and become filled with the fruits of righteous-
ness, which alone could either prove the reality of their
interest in God, or fulfil the calling they had received
from Him.
5. It is true, the people who entered into the bond of
the covenant, as thus proposed, could not of themselves
keep the precepts of the law; and the shameful back-
sliding which took place so shortly after they had for-
mally undertaken to do all that was commanded, but too
plainly shewed how little they yet understood either the
height of their obligations, or the degree of moral strength
that would be required to meet them. It was but gra-
dually, and through a succession of painful and trying
experiences, that the truth in this respect could work
itself into their minds. The law undoubtedly was ex-
ceeding broad. In its matter, that is, in the reach and
compass of its requirements, it did (as the writers formerly
referred to maintained) comprise the sum of moral excel-
lence—the full measure of goodness that man as man is
bound to yield to God and his fellow-men. It was
impossible that God, in His formal revelation of law to
His people, could propound less as the aim of their spirit-
ual endeavours; for conformity to His mind and will, to
be made holy or good after the type of that which He
Himself is, was the ultimate design contemplated in His
covenant arrangements. But in these arrangements He
stood also pledged to His people as the author of life and
blessing; and that mercy and loving-kindness which
prompted Him so to interpose in their behalf, and which
(as if to prevent misapprehension) He embodied even in
His revelation of law, could not possibly be wanting, if
earnestly sought for the ministration of such help as
might be needed to enable them to give, though not a
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 163
faultless, yet a hearty and steadfast obedience. Was not
the whole tabernacle service, springing from the covenant
of Sinai as its centre, and ever circling around it, a stand-
ing and palpable proof of this? Through the rites and
ordinances of that service, access continually lay open for
them to God, as their ever-present guardian and strength;
there the incense of prayer was perpetually ascending to
draw down supplies of help on the needy: and when
consciousness of sin clouded their interest in God, and
troubled them with apprehensions of deserved wrath, there
was the blood of atonement ready to blot out their guilt,
and quicken them, under a fresh sense of forgiveness, to
run the way of God’s commandments. Thus viewed, every
hing is in its proper place; and the covenant of law,
instead of coming to supersede the earlier covenant of
promise, was introduced merely as an handmaid to minister
to its design, and help forward the moral aims it sought
to promote.
6. If now we turn to the writings of the Old Covenant,
we shall find the evidence they furnish in perfect accord-
ance with the view just given; only, we must take it
under two divisions—the one as connected with the
sincere members of the covenant, who made an honest, a
legitimate use of the things belonging to it; the other
with such as made an illegitimate use of them, whose
hearts were not right with God, and who only incidentally,
and as it were by contraries, became witnesses to the
truth. We shall look successively at both, considering
each under a threefold aspect—with reference to God, to
sin and holiness, and to salvation.
7. We look, then, in the first instance, to those who
may be regarded as the more proper representatives of
the Old Covenant; and to these, primarily, in respect to
what concerns their relation to God—His being and
164 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
character. It was certainly not, as we have had occasion
already to state, the sole design of the moral law, or
even of the first table of the law, to preserve the belief
in one personal God, as opposed to the polytheism of the
ancient world; but this was, unquestionably, a very pro-
minent and fundamental part of the design. The tendency
in those remote times was all in the opposite direction.
Polytheism, the offspring of guilt and terror, leading to
the deification and worship of the powers of nature under
the different aspects in which they present themselves to
the natural mind, set in like a mighty flood, and swept
over the earth with an all-subduing force. The very
name of religion came to be identified, in the different
countries of the world, with the adoration of these false
gods; and as civilization and refinement advanced, it
became associated with all that was imposing in architec-
ture, beautiful in art, joyous and attractive in public life.
There was just one region of the earth, one little terri-
tory, within which for many an age this wide-wasting
moral pestilence was withstood—not even there without
sharp contendings and struggles, maintained sometimes
against fearful odds; yet the truth held its place, the
moral barrier raised in defence of it by the Decalogue
preserved the better portion of the covenant-people from
the dangers which in this respect beset them—preserved
them in the knowledge and belief of one God, as the
sovereign Lord and moral Governor of the world. So
deeply did this great truth, from the prominence given to
it in the Old Covenant, and the awful sanctions there
thrown around it, strike its roots into the hearts and
consciences of the people, that it was not only handed
down through successive ages in the face of every adverse
influence, but made itself practically known as a principle
of commanding power and ennobling influence. Of this
LECT. V.] ISRAEL'S POSITION ATD CALLING UNDER IT. 165
the writings of the Old Testament are a varied and pro-
longed witness. These writings were indited by men of
very different grades of intellect and feeling, composed in
circumstances, too, and at periods, widely remote from
each other; yet they are all pervaded by one spirit; they
exhibit a profound belief in the existence of one God, as
the moral Governor of the world, and in His right—His
sole and indefeasible right—to the homage and obedience
of mn. It is the religious view of the world, of the events
of life and the interests of mankind,—the relation in which
these severally stand to the one living God—which is con-
tinually presented in them, and stamps them with a quite
peculiar character and a permanent value. What has
antiquity transmitted to us that in this respect may be
compared to them? We have, doubtless, much to learn
from the literature of Greece and Rome, as regards the
history of kingdoms, the development and portraiture of
character, the arts and refinements of the natural life;
but it is to the writings which enshrined the principles
and breathed the spirit of the Divine law, that the nations
of the world are indebted for that knowledge of God,
which is the foundation at once of true religion and of
sound morality.1
Look at the matter for a moment in its concrete form.
See the mighty difference which appears between Hebrew
monotheism and the polytheism of heathendom, even in
its better phases, on that memorable occasion, in the
closing period of the old economy, when the extremes of
both might be said to meet—the one as represented by
the polished senators of Athens, the other by Paul of
Tarsus. There cannot well be conceived a bolder, and,
morally, a more sublime attitude, than was presented by
this man of God when, addressing the supreme council
1 See Luthardt’s ‘Fundamental Truths of Christianity,’ Lecture VIII.
166 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
of the city on Mars’ hill, he assailed the idolatry of Greece
in the very metropolis of its dominion, and in the presence
of its most wonderful creations. On that elevated plat-
form of religion and art, he had immediately in front of
him the Acropolis, adorned with an entire series of statues
and temples:—among others, the Propylaea, one of the
most expensive and beautiful works of Athenian archi-
tecture, with its temple and bronze statue of Minerva,
under the name of Niké Apteros (wingless victory); the
Erectheium, the most revered of all the sanctuaries of
Athens, containing, as it did, the most ancient statue of
their patron goddess, which was supposed to have fallen
down from heaven, and the sacred olive tree which she
was believed to have called forth from the earth in her
contest with Neptune for the guardianship of the city;
and, towering above all, the Parthenon, the most perfect
structure of ancient heathendom, with its gold and ivory
statue of Minerva, the masterpiece of Phidias; and sculp-
tures besides of such exquisite workmanship, that the
mutilated remains of them have been the admiration of
the world, and, when made accessible in recent times to
the studious of other lands, served to give a fresh impulse
and higher style to the cultivation of modern art:—
Think of all this, and then think of Paul of Tarsus, an
unknown and solitary stranger, a barbarian, a Jew,
standing there, and telling his Athenian audience, in the
midst of these consecrated glories, that the Godhead
could not be likened to objects graven by art or man’s
device, nor dwell in temples made with hands; and that
out of the whole amphitheatre of their shrines and temples
he had been able to discover only one thing which pro-
claimed a truth, and that remarkable for the ignorance it
confessed, rather than the knowledge it revealed—an
altar to the Unknown God; adding, as from his own
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 167
higher vantage-ground, ‘Whom therefore ye ignorantly
worship, Him declare I unto you.’
8. Here, then, was a great result accomplished in the
case of those who in a becoming spirit submitted them-
selves to the bond of the Sinaitic covenant; in the most
fundamental point of religion they became the lights of
the world, the chosen witnesses of Heaven. And such
also they were in a closely related point: their convictions
in regard to holiness and sin. The polytheism of the
heathen world wrought with disastrous effect here; for
losing sight of the one great source and pattern of moral
excellence, and making to themselves gods after their
own likeness, men’s notions of holiness became sadly
deranged, and their convictions of sin were consequently
irregular and superficial. Even the more thoughtful
class of minds—those who sought to work themselves
free from popular delusions, and to be guided only by
the dictates of wisdom—never attained, even in concep-
tion, to the proper measure: the want of right views of
sin cleaves as a fundamental defect to all ancient philo-
sophy. But Israel’s knowledge of the character and law
of God, as it placed them in a different position spiritually,
so it produced different results in experience. How was
God Himself commonly present to their apprehensions?
Pre-eminently as the Holy One of Israel, loving righte-
ousness, and hating iniquity.1 Or, how did their writers
of devotion portray the true worshipper of Jehovah, the
man who had a right to draw near and abide with Him
as a dweller in His house? It was the man who had
entered into the spirit of the Decalogue—the man of
clean hands and a pure heart, who had not lifted up his
soul to vanity, nor sworn deceitfully—the man who had
been wont to walk uprightly, work righteousness, speak
1 Deut. xxxiii. 8; Ps. v. 4, xlv. 7; lsa. i. 4; Heb. i. 12, 13, etc.
168 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
the truth in his heart, exercise himself, in short, to all
suitable manifestations of love to God and man—he alone
was the person to ascend the hill of God, and worship and
serve before Him.1 But, then, who had actually done so?
In whom was the ideal properly realized? Such ques-
tions could not but arise in thoughtful bosoms, and lead
to both profound convictions of sin and a trembling awe
on the spirit when venturing into the presence of God.
Hence the language of penitence, the cry of guilt with
which we are so familiar in Old Testament Scripture:
iniquity is felt cleaving to men as a girdle, yea, entering
as a virulent poison into their natures, breaking out con-
tinually into unhallowed tempers, marring the perfection
of things that were outwardly correct, and taking away
all hope of justification or acceptance with God, on the
ground of personal conformity to His requirements.2
Alive to the fact of an infinitely perfect God, Israel was
also, and on that very account, alive to painful misgiv-
ings and fears of guilt; the humiliating truth comes
forcibly out in its history, that by the law is the know-
ledge of sin; and, unlike all other nations of antiquity,
its one most solemn service throughout the year was that
of the day of atonement—the day for bringing to remem-
brance all its transgressions and all its sins, that they
might be blotted out.
9. Had there been nothing more than law in the Old
Covenant, there had also been nothing further in Israel’s
1 Ps. iv. 3, xv., xxiv. 3-6, xxvi., etc. It cannot be said of these, and many
similar passages in the Psalms, that they indicate an advanced state of things,
higher views of goodness and acceptable worship, than those sanctioned at the
institution of the tabernacle service. For it belonged to Moses, as the mediator
of the Old Covenant, to settle all that pertained to its worship; no one, during
its continuance, had any warrant to prescribe new conditions to the worshipper;
nor indeed was this done in the passages quoted, for they evidently lean on the
terms of the Decalogue.
2 Ps. xix. 12,13, xxxii. 5, li. 5, cx1iii. 2; Isa.lxiv. 6; Job xv. 16, etc.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 169
experience, except the penalties that were the just desert
of sin. But with the true members of the covenant
another thing invariably appears—a fleeing to God as
the Redeemer from sin, the Healer of Israel—or a fall-
ing back from the covenant of law on the covenant of
grace and promise out of which it sprung. Take as an
example the rich and varied record of a believer’s ex-
perience contained in the 119th Psalm. The theme of
discourse there, from beginning to end, is the law of God
—its excellence, its breadth and fulness, its suitableness
to men’s condition, the blessedness of being conformed
to its requirements, and the earnest longings of the pious
heart after all that properly belongs to it:—but things
of this sort perpetually alternate with confessions of
backslidings and sins, fervent cries for pardoning mercy
and restoring grace, and fresh resolutions formed in
dependence on Divine aid to resist the evil, and strive
after higher attainments in the righteousness it enjoins.
And so elsewhere; the consciousness of sin and moral
weakness ever drove the soul to God for deliverance and
help; and especially to the use of that gracious provi-
sion made through the rite of sacrifice for expiating the
guilt of sin and restoring peace to the troubled con-
science. But then this present deliverance bore on it
such marks of imperfection as might well seem to call
for another and more perfect arrangement; since both
the means of reconciliation were inferior (the blood of
bulls and goats), and the measure of it also, even as
things then stood, was incomplete; for the reconciled
were still not permitted to have direct and personal
access into the presence-chamber of Jehovah—they were
permitted only to frequent the courts of His house. The
law, therefore, awakening a sense of guilt and alienation
which could not then be perfectly removed, creating
170 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V
wants and desires it but partially satisfied, while it could
not fail to be productive of fear, was also well fitted to
raise expectations in the bosom of the worshipper of some
better things to come, and dispose him to listen to the
intimations concerning them which it was the part of
prophecy to utter. And in proportion as men of humble
and earnest faith acted on the hints thus given, they
would, in answer to believing prayer and pious medita-
tion, understand that, however the existing provisions
of mercy were to be appreciated, there was a sense
also in which they might be disparaged;1 that they were
indeed ‘God’s treasure-house of mysteries,’ wonderful in
themselves, but wonderful and precious most of all for
the hidden reference they bore to realities which were
not yet disclosed, and into which the eye of faith
naturally desired to look.2
1 As in the following passages: Ps. xl. 6, l. 7-14, li. 16; Hos. vi. 6.
2 See Davison ‘On Prophecy,’ p. 143, who, after referring to the obvious
imperfections in the religion of the Old Covenant, says, ‘The action of the
moral and ceremonial law combined, I conclude to have been such as would
produce, in reasonable and serious minds, that temper which is itself eminently
Christian in its principle, viz., a sense of demerit in transgression; a willing-
ness to accept a better atonement adequate to the needs of the conscience, if
God should provide it, and a desire after inward purity which bodily lustration
might represent but could not supply; in short, that temper which David has
confessed and described when he rejects his reliance upon the legal rites: For
thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it thee, etc. (Ps. li.).’ At the same
time, considering the provision actually made under the law for sin, and the
expectations raised concerning something better to come, it is clear that the
fear spoken of in connection with it could not be, with the true members of
the covenant, properly slavish fear; for in their case the native effect of the
law was always checked by the prayer and hope which grew out of the cove-
nant of promise. It was only that in a more intense degree, which in a certain
degree is still experienced in serious and thoughtful minds under the Gospel.
And in so far as the law then, or at any time, might be found to work wrath
and despair, this, as justly remarked by Harless (‘Ethik,’ p. 161), ‘is the
guilt of men who do not rightly understand, or who misuse the law. For, if
the law were understood, or rather the God who gave the law, then it would
be known that the same God, who in the law threatens death, does not wish
the death of the sinner.’
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 171
Such, briefly, is the evidence furnished by one portion
of the covenant-people, those who constituted the true
Israel, and who used the covenant of law, as it was in-
tended, in due subservience to the prior covenant of
grace. Even with the imperfections cleaving to the
Divine plan, as one of a merely provisional nature, and
corresponding imperfections in the spiritual results pro-
duced by it, we may yet ask if there was not, as regards
that portion of the people, fruit that might well be
deemed worthy of God? Where, in those ancient times,
did life exhibit so many of the purer graces and more
solid virtues? Or where, on the side of truth and right-
eousness, were such perils braved, and such heroic deeds
performed? There alone were the claims of truth and
righteousness even known in such a manner as to reach
the depths of conscience, and bring into proper play the
nobler feelings, desires, and aspirations of the heart. It
is to Israel alone, of all the nations of antiquity, that we
must turn alike for the more meek and lovely, and for
the more stirring examples of moral excellence. Sancti-
fied homes, which possessed the light, and were shone
upon by the favour of Heaven; lives of patient endurance
and suffering, or of strong wrestling for the rights of con-
science, and the privilege of yielding to the behests of
duty; manifestations of zeal and love in behalf of the
higher interests of mankind, such as could scorn all
inferior considerations of flesh and blood, and even rise
at times in ‘the elected saints’ to such a noble elevation,
that they have wished themselves razed out of the book
of life, in an ecstasy of charity, and feeling of infinite
communion’ (Bacon): for refreshing sights and inspiring
exhibitions like these, we must repair to the annals of
that chosen seed, who were trained to the knowledge of
God and moulded by the laws and institutions of His
172 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
kingdom. Must we not, in consideration of them, re-
echo the saying of Moses, ‘O Israel, what people was
like unto thee!—a people saved by the Lord!’1
10. But, unfortunately, there is a darker side to the pic-
ture. There was another, and, for the most part, a larger
and more influential portion of the covenant-people, who
acted very differently, who either openly resiled from the
yoke of the law, or perverted it to a wrong purpose, and
in whom also, though after another fashion, the truth
found a remarkable verification. In this class, the most
prominent thing—that which was always the first to
discover itself, was a restive and reluctant spirit, fretting
against the demands of the law, often even against that
fundamental part of them, which might be said to involve
all the rest—the devout acknowledgment and pure
worship of Jehovah. With this class, the prevailing
tendency to idolatry in the ancient world had attrac-
tions which they were unable to resist. Like so many
around them, in part also among them, they wished a less
exacting, a more sensuous and more easily accessible
mode of worship, than that which was enjoined in the
law and connected with the tabernacle; and so idola-
trous sanctuaries in various localities, with their ac-
companying rites of will-worship, were formed: these
generally first, and then, as a natural consequence, alto-
gether false deities, local or foreign, came to take the
place of Jehovah. There was a strong tide from without
bearing in this direction; it was the spirit of the age,
which human nature is ever ready to fall in with; but
the real ground of the defection, and that which rendered
the apostatizing disposition a kind of chronic disease in
Israel, lay in the affinity between those corrupt idolatries
and the natural inclinations of the heart. Living in
1 See ‘Typology,’ Vol. II. p. 491.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 173
Gospel times, we are wont to speak of the carnal and ritual-
istic nature of the Old Testament worship; but underneath
it all there was a spiritual element; which was distasteful
to the merely natural mind, and the reverse of which was
found in the showy and corrupt rites of heathenism.
These fostered and gratified the sinful desires of the
heart, while the worship of Jehovah repressed and con-
demned them: this was the real secret of that inveterate
drawing in the one direction, and strong antipathy in the
other, which were perpetually breaking forth in the his-
tory of Israel, and turned it, we may say, into a great
battle-ground for the very existence of true religion. In
its essence, it was the conflict of human corruption with
the will, the authority, and the actual being of God; and,
therefore, it never failed to draw down those rebukes in
providence, by which God vindicated the honour of His
name, and made the backslidings of His people to reprove
them. Viewed in this light, the history of Israel, how-
ever melancholy in one respect, is instructive and even
consolatory in another: It shewed how every thing for
Israel, in evil or in good, turned on the relation in which
they stood to the living God, as the object of faith and
worship—how inexcusable, as well as foolish, they were
in hardening their hearts against His ways, and preferring
the transitory pleasures of sin to the abiding recompenses
of His service—and how, in spite of all manifestations of
folly, and combinations of human power and wisdom
against the truth of God, that truth still prevailed, and they
who stood by it, the godly seed, though comparatively
few, proved the real strength or substance of the nation.1
11. There was, however, another form of evil which
manifested itself in this portion of the covenant-people,
which latterly became a very prevalent form, and which so
1 Isa. vi. 13.
174 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
far differed from the other, that it could consist with an
outward adherence to the worship of Jehovah, nay, with
apparent zeal for that worship, while the great ends of
the covenant were trampled under foot. The failure here
lay in false views respecting holiness and sin, neces-
sarily leading also to an utterly false position in regard to
salvation. Instead of viewing the institutions and ser-
vices connected with the tabernacle—the ceremonial part
of the law—as the complement merely of the Sinaitic
tables, intended to help out their design and provide the
means of escape from their just condemnation of sin, the
persons in question exalted it to the first place, and, how-
ever they might stand related to ‘the weightier matters
of the law, judgment, mercy and faith,’ thought all in a
manner accomplished, if they kept the ordinances and
presented the appointed offerings. Many sharp reproofs
and severe denunciations are pronounced against this
mode of procedure, and those who pursued it, in the
writings of the Old Testament, especially the prophets.
Asaph asks such persons in his day, asks them indignantly
in the name of God, what they had to do with declaring
God’s statutes, or going about the things of His covenant,
since they were full of backbiting and deceit, taking part
with thieves and adulterers?1 Isaiah is still more severe
in his language; he finds such characters, after a period
of much backsliding and rebuke, professing great concern
for the interests of religion, diligently frequenting the
courts of God’s house, heaping sacrifices upon the altar,
and stretching out their hands in prayer, while oppression
and iniquity were in their dwellings, and their hands
were even stained with blood. In such a case—so fla-
grantly at variance with the fundamental precepts and
obligations of the covenant—what right, the prophet
1 Psalm 1.
LECT. V.]
ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 175
demands, had they to tread the courts of God’s house or
take part in its services? Who required it? There was
no sincerity, he tells them, in what they did; their altar-
gifts were but lying offerings;1 and their whole service an
abomination in the sight of the Holy One.2 Jeremiah, in
like manner, points out the inexpressible hardihood and
folly of men trusting to the temple and its services for
a blessing, who by their ungodly and wicked lives had
turned it into a resort of evil-doers, a den even of robbers
(vii.); so also Ezekiel (xviii., xxxiii), and some of the
other prophets. By and by, however, a phase of things
entered, although not till after the return from Babylon,
and of which we have no very exact portraiture in Old
Testament times; we see the beginnings of it merely in
the writings of Malachi. The fires of Divine judgment
had now at last purged out from among the people the
more heinous and abominable forms of transgression;
monotheism had come to be rigidly maintained; and from
being neglecters of the law, they passed, many of them, in
a formal respect into the opposite extreme—the extreme,
namely, of making the law, in a manner, every thing for
life and blessing—more than it was ever intended to be,
or in reality could be, consistently with the moral character
of God and the actual condition of men. So the feeling
continued and grew, and meets us in full efflorescence
among the more prominent religionists of the Gospel
era. And there is not, perhaps, a more remarkable
example to be found in history than their case affords of
that form of deceitfulness of the human heart, by which
it can pass from the extreme of dislike to the law and
service of God to the extreme of outward regard and
1 So the expression should be rendered in Isa. i. 13, not merely ‘vain
oblations.’
2 See also ch. xxix. 13, lviii., lix.
176 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT.V.
honour; and yet retain, in the one extreme as well as
the other, the ungodly frame of mind, which is opposed
to their essential character and aim.
It is this latter form of the evil that has most of interest
for us, as it comes prominently into view in New Testa-
ment Scripture. Its fundamental error, as I have said,
lay in isolating the covenant of law, taking it apart from
the prior covenant of promise, as if it was alone sufficient
for men—and not only so, but failing to distinguish
between what was of prime, and what of only secondary
moment in the law, throwing the ceremonial into precisely
the same category with the moral. From this grievous
mistake (which some would still most unaccountably con-
found with proper Judaism) three fatal results of a
practical kind inevitably followed. First, they shut their
eyes upon the depth and spirituality of the law’s require-
ments. They were obliged to do so; for had they per-
ceived these, the idea must of necessity have vanished
from their minds, that they could attain to righteousness
on a merely legal footing; they could never have imagined
that ‘touching the righteousness which is in the law they
were blameless.’1 Thoughts of this description could only
enter when the law was stript of its proper import as the
revelation and sum of moral duty, and reduced to an
outward discipline of specific rules of conduct. When so
reduced, it was quite possible for anyone to feel that the
law’s requirements lay within the compass of the practi-
1 Phil. iii. 6. That Paul speaks thus of his earlier life from a Pharisaic point
of view, is evident from the connection; as he is avowedly recounting the
things which had reference to the flesh (v. 4), and which gave him a merely
external ground of glorying. It is further evident, from what he says of his
relation to the law elsewhere, when he came to a proper understanding of its
real import (Rom. vii.); and also from the utter want of satisfaction, which
even here he expresses, of his former life after the light of truth dawned upon
his
mind (v. 7, 8).
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 177
cable; the task-work of services might with laudable
regularity be gone through; and the feeling of self-right-
eousness, so far from being repressed, would only be the
more fostered and sustained by the number and variety of
the materials it had to work upon. A second result was
the servile spirit in which all in such a case came to be
done. The covenant of Sinai—taken by itself, simply as
the revelation of law—‘genders unto bondage;’1 if it begets
children, they will inevitably be children of a carnal and
slavish, not of a free, loving, and devoted spirit. It cannot
be otherwise. When any one submits to a yoke of service
for which he has no natural inclination, for the sake merely
of certain benefits he expects to reap from it, the heart can-
not but be conscious of a burden; it does what is exacted,
not from any high motives or generous impulses, but
simply because necessary to the end in view—it must
earn its wages. I need hardly say, that it was much in
this spirit the Scribes and Pharisees of our Lord’s time
acted—they were hirelings, and not sons. And the
explanation of their case was what we have just indicated
—they put the law out of its proper place, and applied
themselves to get through a formal obedience to its
requirements, what it was altogether incapable of giving
—what, if got at all by sinful men, must come through
the channel of Divine grace and loving-kindness. It is
the covenant of promise alone, not the covenant of law,
that is the true mother of children in the kingdom of God.
Finally, as a still further result, the persons who thus
erred concerning the law’s place and spirit, could neither
rightly look for the Messiah, nor, when He came, be at all
prepared to receive Him. They fancied they had a1ready
of themselves attained to righteousness, and were little
disposed to think they must be indebted for it to Christ.
1Gal. iv. 24.
178 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V.
They naturally regarded it as foul scorn to be put virtually
on a level with those who had been without law, and
clung to the law as the ground of all their distinctions,
the very charter of their privileges and hopes. So com-
pletely, by misapprehending the proper nature and
relations of things, did the major part of the later Jews
frustrate the object of the law, and turn it from being a
schoolmaster to lead them to Christ, into the jealous and
lordly rival that would keep them at the remotest dis-
tance from Him. And the mournful result for themselves
was, that the rock in which they trusted, itself rose
against them; the law which could condemn but not
expiate their sin, cried for vengeance with a voice that
must be heard, and wrath from heaven fell upon them to
the uttermost.
A marvellous history, on whichever side contemplated!
—whether in the evil or the good connected with it—and
fraught with important lessons, not for those alone who
were its immediate subjects, but for all nations and for
all time. God constituted the seed of Israel the direct
bearers of a Divine revelation, made them subjects alike
of law and promise, and shaped their history so that in
it men might see reflected as in a mirror the essential
character of His kingdom, the blessings that flow from a
hearty submission to His will, and the judgments that
not less certainly come, sooner or later, in the train of
wilful perversion and incorrigible disobedience. In a
sense altogether peculiar, they were called to be God’s
witnesses to the world;1 and by the word of God, which
has embodied itself in their experience and history, they
still remain such—a light in its better aspect to guide
and comfort, in its worse a beacon to admonish and warn.
Like every revelation of God, this word also liveth and
1 Isa. xliii 10.
LECT. V.] ISRAEL’S POSITION AND CALLING UNDER IT. 179
abideth for ever; and among other lessons to be learned
from it, this, which is common to all dispensations, em-
bodied in a pregnant utterance of Augustine, should
never be forgotten, Lex data est ut gratia quaereretur;
gratia data est ut lex impleretur1—the law was given that
grace might be sought; grace was given that the law
might be fulfilled.
1 De Sp. and Lit., sec. xix.
180 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
LECTURE VI.
THE ECONOMICAL ASPECT OF THE LAW—THE DEFECTS ADHERING
TO IT AS SUCH—THE RELATION OF THE PSALMS AND PROPHETS
TO IT—MISTAKEN VIEWS OF THIS RELATION—THE GREAT PRO-
BLEM WITH WHICH THE OLD TESTAMENT CLOSED, AND THE
VIEWS OF DIFFERENT PARTIES RESPECTING ITS SOLUTION.
IN the preceding lecture we have seen what advantages
accrued to Israel, and through them to the world,
from the revelation of law at Sinai, in so far as that
revelation was rightly understood, and was kept in its
proper place. But as yet we have only looked at a part
of the considerations which require to be taken into ac-
count, in order to get a comprehensive view of the work
which the law had to do in Israel, and of much that is
written concerning it in Scripture. There can be no
doubt that the law, taken in its entireness, and as forming
the most prominent feature in the economy brought in by
Moses, however wisely adapted to the time then present,
was still inlaid with certain inherent defects, which dis-
covered themselves in the working of the system, and
paved the way for its ultimate removal. As an economy,
it belonged to an immature stage of the Divine dispensa-
tions, and as such was constituted after a relatively
imperfect form. The institutions and ordinances, also,
which were associated with it, and became an integral
part of its machinery, were in many respects suited to a
comparatively limited territory, and even within the
bounds of that involved not a little that must often have
proved irksome and inconvenient—what an apostle said
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 181
to his brethren, neither they nor their fathers were able
to bear.1 It is plain, therefore, that matters existed then
only in a provisional state, and that a change must some-
how be introduced into the Divine economy, to adapt it
to the general wants and circumstances of mankind. It
becomes, therefore, an interesting and important question,
wherein precisely lay the inherent defects of an economy
modelled so much after the legal form. Also, how these
defects practically discovered themselves; and what other
elements or agencies came into play, to compensate
for the defects in question, and to prepare the way for
the entrance of another and higher state of things. To
such points we shall now endeavour to address ourselves.
I. Whatever may be the contents of law—even if
comprising what is of universal import and obligation—
simply as law, written on perishable materials, and
imposed in so many formal enactments, it has a merely
outward and objective character. And this is what first
falls to be noted here; for the main element of weakness
in the Sinaitic law, viewed in its economical bearings, stood
in its having so much of the outward and objective. It
was engraved on tables of stone, and stood there before
men as a preceptor to instruct them, or a master to
demand their implicit submission, but without any
influence or control over the secret springs and motives of
obedience. And the same, of course, holds with respect
to the ordinances of service, which were appended to it
as supplementary means to subserve its design—more so,
indeed; for they not only possessed the same formally
written character, though not on tables of stone, but bore
throughout on men’s relation to a material fabric, and
their submission to bodily restraints or exercises. The
1 Acts xv. 10.
182 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
whole, therefore, taken by itself, formed a kind of legal
institute, and in its working naturally tended to the
mechanical and formal. It is of the nature of law
whether Divine or human, when imposed as a bond of
order and discipline, to work from without inwards—
acting as an external pressure or constraint on the vital
energies, and seeking to bind them into an orderly and
becoming course. ‘Laws politic,’ says Hooker,l ‘ordained
for external order and regiment amongst men, are never
framed as they should be, unless presuming the will of
man to be inwardly obstinate, rebellious, and averse from
all obedience unto the sacred laws of his nature; in a
word, unless presuming man to be, in regard to his
depraved nature, little better than a wild beast,
they do accordingly provide, notwithstanding, so to
frame his outward actions, that they be no hindrance
to the common good, for which societies are instituted.’
It is the same thing substantially which was uttered
long before by the apostle, when, with reference more
immediately to the Divine law, he said, ‘The law is not
made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and dis-
obedient, for the ungodly, and for sinners:’2 it is such
alone who need the stringent rules and prohibitions of an
outward code of enactments; those who are firmly rooted
in the principles of rectitude, and animated by a genuine
spirit of love, will be a law to themselves. Essentially
the sum, as well as spirit, of the law is love. But
then the law does not of itself elicit love; its object
rather is to supplement the deficiency of love, and by
means of an external discipline form the inner nature
to the habit and direction which would have been in-
stinctively taken by the spirit of love. Still, this spirit
could not be altogether wanting in those for whom the
1 ‘Eccl. Polity,’ I. sec. 10. 2 1 Tim. i. 9.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 183
discipline availed anything, otherwise the result would
have been at most but a well-drilled and heartless for-
malism. It was with them, as in the case of children
who, through the yoke of parental discipline, are trained
to goodness and virtue: the elements of the good are all
there though existing in comparative feebleness, and by
means of the discipline are stimulated to a readiness and
constancy of exercise, which they would otherwise have
failed to put forth. And as a natural consequence, both
of the feebleness of love and of the magisterial presence
and power of law, the principle of fear must have had
relatively greater sway than would belong to it in a more
perfect state of things. The dread of incurring the wrath
of an offended God, and suffering the penalties which
guarded on every side the majesty of His law, would
often deter from sin when no other consideration might
prevail, and quicken the soul to exertions in duty which
it would not have otherwise put forth.
These were, undoubtedly, marks of imperfection im-
pressed on the very nature of the old economy; it
wrought, as the apostle tells us, to a large extent by
weak and beggarly elements; and it did so because it
was the comparative nonage of the church, and the
materials of a more spiritual economy did not yet exist.
‘The atonement was yet but prospective; the Holy
Spirit did not operate as He does under the Gospel; and
God’s gracious designs, as regards the redemption of our
race, lay embedded and concealed in the obscure intimation,
that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s
head, and in the promises to Abraham. Nor were these
defects perfectly remedied throughout the whole course
of the dispensation. To the last the Jew walked in com-
parative darkness; to the last the powerful motives
which affect the Christian, derived from the infinite love
184 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
of God as exhibited in the completed work of redemp-
tion, and from the authoritative announcement of a
future resurrection to life or death eternal, could not be
brought to bear on the ancient believer; to the last,
therefore, he needed stimulants to his piety drawn from
inferior sources.’1
The practical result in some measure corresponded.
It might, indeed, have been greatly better than it
actually was, and would have been, if the proper use
had been generally made of the grace offered in the
covenant of promise; the people would then have had
the law of God in their hearts.2 But this proved to be
the case only with a portion. In many the pulse of life
beat too feebly and irregularly for the requirements of
the law being felt otherwise than a difficult, if not
oppressive yoke. Too often, also, those who should have
been the most exemplary in performing what was en-
joined, and from their position in the commonwealth
should have checked the practice of evil in others, were
themselves the most forward in promoting it. Hence,
the theory of the constitution as to the strict connection
between transgression and punishment gave way: souls
that should have been cut off from the number of their
people, as deliberate covenant-breakers, and in God’s
judgment were cut off, continued to retain their place
in the community, and to exercise its rights.3 By de-
grees, also, the faulty administration of the covenant by
1 Litton’s ‘Bampton Lecture,’ p. 50. 2 Ps. xxxvii. 31.
3 The expression, ‘that soul shall be cut off,’ refers primarily to God’s act,
and is sometimes used where, from the nature of things, human authority could
not interfere—viz., where the violation of law was quite secret, as in Lev.
xvii. 10, xviii. 29, xxii. 3. Hence the words sometimes run, ‘I will cut off
that soul,’ or ‘I will cut him off from my presence.’ But when the act was
open, and the guilt manifest, God’s decision should have been carried out by
the
community, as at Num. xv. 30; Josh. vii. 24-26.
LECT. VI.]
ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS 185
human authority re-acted on the state of heart out of
which it sprung, and strengthened yet more the ten-
dency to fall away. And there being but a partial and
defective exhibition of holiness on the part of the people,
there necessarily ensued on God’s part a proportionate
withdrawal of the promised blessing. So that the aspect
of things in Canaan never presented more than a broken
and irregular impression of that righteousness and pro-
sperity which, like twin sisters, should have accompanied
the people through the whole course of their history.
But did not the Mediator of the covenant Himself appre-
hend this, and at the outset proclaim it, when on the
plains of Moab He so distinctly portrayed the future
backslidings of the people, and foretold the desolations
which should in consequence overtake them?1 Coin-
cident with the birth of the covenant there were thus
given intimations of its imperfect character and temporary
purpose; and it was made clear that, not through the
provisions and agencies therewith connected could the
ultimate good for mankind, or even for Israel itself, be
secured.2
II. The comparative failure in this respect, while in
itself an evil, was overruled to bring out very distinctly,
among the covenant-people, the spiritual element which
was in the law; and this we note as the second point
which here calls for consideration. By spiritual element
I mean the great moral truths embodied in the law in
their relation to the individual heart and conscience.
This could not, of course, be said in any proper sense to
be dependent on the defective observance and faulty
administration of the covenant, but it would, we can
easily understand, be aided by them. The law bore so
1 Deut. xxviii., xxxii. 2 See Davison ‘On Prophecy,’ p. 165.
186 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
much of an external character, that it was quite possible
for persons to maintain a conduct free from all just excep-
tions of a public kind, while still it wanted much to bring
it into accordance with the real spirit and design of the
law; for the outward was of value only as expressive of
the desires and principles of the heart. Even in any cir-
cumstances, the thoughtful meditation of the law must
have had the effect of leading the soul apart, instead of
losing itself amid the decent formalities of a generally
approved behaviour, of bringing it into close personal
dealing with God regarding sin and righteousness. It
could scarcely fail to force itself on the convictions of
those who were thus spiritually exercised, that their
relation to the law, and to Him whose glory was identified
with its proper observance, must materially differ, accord-
ing as it might be the outward man merely that was
drilled into the keeping of the law’s requirements, or along
with this, and under this, the outgoing also of reverent
feelings, holy desires, and pure affections. The members
of the covenant, it would thus come to be felt, were not
alike children of the covenant, even though they might
present much the same appearance of outward conformity
to its handwriting of ordinances. An Israel would be
known as developing itself within Israel—a more special
and select class, who individually came nearer to God than
others, and who might reasonably expect to find God
coming nearer to them, and bestowing on them the more
peculiar tokens of His goodness.
But, plainly, a conviction of this sort, which was
almost unavoidable anyhow, would gather strength in
proportion as differences appeared among the members of
the covenant; and some were seen making conscience of
keeping the statutes of the Lord, while others resigned
themselves to selfish indifference or courses of sin. Re-
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 187
flecting and serious minds would feel assured, that the
one class held a relation to the God of truth and recti-
tude, which could not belong to the other; and though
all might still be called the seed of Israel, and might
alike enjoy the common privileges of the covenant, yet
those who alone properly answered to the description,
and had any just right to look for the favour and protec-
tion of God, must have appeared to be such as, like
Abraham, were observed to keep the commandments of
the Lord and obey His voice.l We judge this to have
been the case from the very nature of things. The law
recognised important relations, general and particular,
human and Divine, and, in connection with them, estab-
lished great moral obligations, which not only called for a
certain appropriate demeanour, but demanded also a
suitable state of feeling and affection. These, of neces-
sity, formed elements of spiritual thought and compara-
tive judgment with the better class of Israelites, and
must have done so the more, the more they found them-
selves surrounded by persons of another spirit than
themselves—mere formal observers of the law, or open
transgressors of its precepts. And that such actually
was the case, we have conclusive evidence in those writ-
ings of the Old Covenant, which give expression to the
personal feelings and reflective judgments of godly men
on the state of things around them.
Take, for example, the Book of Proverbs, immensely
the richest storehouse of thoughtful utterance and prac-
tical wisdom that any nation, not to say single indivi-
dual, has given to the world, does not its leading charac-
teristic, as a writing, stand in the skill and discrimination
with which it draws moral distinctions—distinctions
between one principle of action and one line of conduct
1 Gen. xviii. 19.
188 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
and another? It proceeds throughout on the profound
conviction that there are such distinctions—a right and
a wrong unalterably fixed by the law of God and the
essential nature of things; and, corresponding to this, a
good and an evil in experience, a blessing and a curse.
The Book is the record of a most careful and extensive
observation, gathered, no doubt, in part from the general
field of the world’s history, but chiefly and most espe-
cially from the land of the covenant—the territory which
lay in the light of God’s truth and in the bond of His
law. The comparison is never formally made between
Israel as a nation and the idolatrous nations around it;
no, but rather between class and class, individual and
individual in Israel. There are the fearers of Jehovah
on the one side—those who sincerely listen to the voice
of Divine wisdom, and apply themselves in earnest to all
the works of a pious, upright, and beneficent life; and,
on the other, the vain and foolish, the corrupt and profli-
gate, the envious, the niggardly, the unjust, the scornful,
and the wicked. With both classes, and with manifold
shades and diversities in: each, the writer’s experience had
manifestly made him familiar; and, according to their
respective moral condition—in other words, their relation
to the law and service of God—such also is the portion
of good or evil he associates with their history.
In various portions of the Book of Psalms, the spiritual
element comes out, if possible, still more strongly, and
the moral distinctions are drawn with a yet keener edge;
because for the most part drawn from a personal point of
view, and with reference to a contrast or an antagonism
which was pressing on the faith and interests of the
writer. In such a psalm as the 37th, the contrast
assumes its milder form, and approaches to the style of
the Proverbs; yet still there is perceptible the feeling of
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 189
one who knew himself to be in a struggling minority,
and who needed to encourage his own heart, and the
hearts of those he represented, with considerations drawn
from the eternal principles of God’s law, and the recom-
penses of good and evil therewith connected. But more
commonly the theme of the Psalms in question turns on
the trials of the Lord’s servant in his contendings for
truth and righteousness against those who, though
formally members of the covenant, ranged themselves
in opposition to its real interests. It was the representa-
tive of Heaven’s cause, the true wrestler for righteous-
ness, on the one side, and those, on the other, who had
not the fear of God before their eyes, and sought to
strengthen themselves by their wickedness. It was the
former alone, the Psalmist with manifold frequency pro-
claims, the godly ones, whom the Lord had chosen; the
others were objects of His displeasure, aliens, heathen at
heart, who should be made to perish from the land, or
become entangled in their own arts of destruction. Thus
it appears that the principle, ‘not all Israel who are of
Israel’—in other words, an election within the election, a
spiritual seed from among the visible community of the
covenant-people—though not recognised in the Theocratic
constitution, yet came practically into distinct and pal-
pable operation. It was present as a fact to the minds of
the faithful in almost every age of its history; and so
gave promise of a time when the really distinctive and
fundamental things in men’s relation to God should rise
to their proper place. It follows, therefore, that the law,
considered as a national covenant, did not, in its actual
working, tend to perpetuate, but rather to antiquate
itself; it led to a state of things, which was the prelude
and virtual commencement of an era in which primary
regard
should be had, not to men’s natural descent or
190 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
hereditary position, but to their personal relation to the
redeeming grace of God, and their heartfelt sympathy
with the interests of His kingdom.1
III. The sacred writings just referred to, more especially
the Psalms, besides incidentally testifying to the exist-
ence of a spiritual along with a carnal seed in Israel, had
another and more direct end to serve in respect to the
question now under consideration: by their didactic and
devotional character they made a fresh advance in the
Divine administration toward men, and so far tended to
modify the operation of law. They formed the introduc-
tion of an agency, perfectly harmonious, indeed, with the
outward prescriptions and observances of the law, but
in its own nature higher, and as such tending to pre-
1 There was unavoidably connected with the state of things now described
certain anomalies of a moral kind, which exercised the patience, sometimes
even for a time staggered the faith, of God’s people—cases in which, contrary to
the general tenor of the covenant, wrong appeared to triumph, and the righteous
cause or person was put to the worse. We have specimens of the painful
reflections they gave rise to in such Psalms as xlix., lxxiii.; also in the Book of
Ecclesiastes, and various passages in the prophets. They are to be explained,
so far as an explanation was possible, from the ‘broken and disordered state of
things brought in by the wide-spread unfaithfulness of the people to the
covenant, which necessarily rendered the administration of temporal rewards
and punishments also broken and irregular—although still of such a kind, that
thoughtful observers had enough to satisfy them that there was a righteous God
who judged in the earth. This is surely a better and more Scriptural mode of
viewing such cases, than the rough and sceptical sort of treatment they receive
in ‘Ecce Homo’—where, in reference to acts of moral delinquency not punished
by the judge, it is said, ‘What did Jehovah do? Did He suffer the guilty
man to escape, or had He other ministers of justice beside the judge and the
king? It was supposed that in such cases He called in the powers of nature
against the transgressor, destroyed his vines with hailstones, etc. But this
theory was found to be unsatisfactory. Life is a short term, and prosperous
villany was seen going to an honoured grave. Another conjecture was hazarded:
it was said the bad man prospers sometimes, but he has no children, or at least
his house soon dies out,’ etc. (p. 38). All mere human thought and vain
speculation about the matter!
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 191
pare the way for yet further advances in the same
direction.
The service rendered by this kind of agency was
various; but, in whichever way considered, the effect
must have been in the line now indicated. It un-
doubtedly bore respect, and may be said, perhaps, to
have more immediately owed its origin, to the form of
worship associated with the covenant of law. Partaking
as this did so much of the outward and ceremonial, it
was, as a matter of course, largely identified with parti-
cular times and places, which for the great body of the
people necessarily circumscribed very much the oppor-
tunities of public worship. Long intervals elapsed be-
tween the solemnities which drew them around the one
altar of burnt-offering, and the place where Jehovah, in
a more peculiar sense, put His name. Not only so, but
when the people held their holy convocations in their
several localities (such as the law itself contemplated,l
and which ought to have been of frequent occurrence) no
special legislation was made in respect to the mode of
conducting them; the worshippers were left to their own
discretion and resources, doubtless on the supposition
that the lack would be supplied by the more gifted
members of the community. And in the circumstances
of the time, when written helps were as yet so scanty, one
of the readiest, and one also of the most effectual modes
of supplying it, was by means of the lofty and stirring
notes of sacred song, accompanied by simple but appro-
priate melodies. How near this lay to the thoughts of
the better class of the people, is evident from the fre-
quency which, even in the earlier periods of their national
existence, remarkable incidents and memorable occasions
gave rise to such spirited effusions, as appears from the
1 Lev. xxiii. 3, 24, 27; Num. xxix. 1, 7.
192
THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
songs intermingled with the records of their history.l
These songs were manifestly composed for use in religious
meetings, and were sure to be increasingly employed, and
also to grow in number, in proportion as a spirit of earnest
piety diffused itself among the people. Accordingly, in
the period of revival which was originated by Samuel,
this appears as one of the more distinguishing features of
the time. The schools of the prophets, as they were
called—that is, companies of the more select and godly
members of the community, gathered together into a
kind of spiritual brotherhood, under the presidency of a
prophet, made such abundant use of sacred lyrics that
they had for their distinctive badges musical instruments
—the psaltery, the tabret, the pipe, and the harp.2 David
himself, in his earlier years, was no stranger to these
institutions, and not improbably, by what he witnessed
and felt in them, had his heart first moved to stir up the
gift that was in him to add to their materials of devotion.
But what he received he repaid with increase. The fine
poetical genius with which he was endowed, ennobled as
it was and hallowed by the special gifts of God’s Spirit,
singularly fitted him for giving expression to the spiritual
thoughts and feelings of the people, and even for impart-
ing to these an elevation and a fervour beyond what
should otherwise have belonged to them. And to him,
in his vocation as the sweet Psalmist of Israel, it was
not a little owing that such associations became, not
only means of spiritual culture, but centres of religious
awakening.
Nearly akin to this was another service, which the
Psalmodic literature, and the writings that were some-
1 Ex. xv.; Num. xxi. 17-27; Deut. xxxii.; Judges v.; also Balaam’s pro-
phecies, and the Psalm of Moses.
2 1 Sam. x. 5.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 193
what allied to it, rendered to the religion of the Old
Covenant—one more immediately connected with their
didactic character. That religion was predominantly of
a symbolical nature. The very writing of the Decalogue
on tables of stone possessed this character; and every
act of lustration, every ordinance of service at the temple
or away from it, had couched under it a spiritual meaning.
It had this, however, practically not for all, but only for
those who possessed discernment to look through the
shell into the kernel. The native tendency of the soul
was to rest in the outward; and, instead of searching
into the hidden treasures which lay enclosed in the
external forms of worship, to turn the mere ritualism of
these into a kind of sacred pantomime, which, for all
higher purposes, left the worshipper much where it found
him. The proneness of ancient Israel to give way to this
unthinking, fleshly disposition, comes out with mournful
frequency through the whole of their history. And for
the purpose of correcting it—for the purpose, we may
also say, of providing in this behalf a needed complement
to the institutions and services of the Old Covenant, it
became the calling of the more gifted members of the
community to extract from them their spiritual essence—
to detach the great truths and principles they enshrined,
and, by linking them to the varied experiences and pros-
pects as well of individual as of national life, to invest
them with a significance and a power that might be level
to every understanding; and touch a chord of sympathy
in every reflecting bosom. This was pre-eminently the
calling of David, and of those who succeeded him in the
line of reforming agency he initiated. It was to pour
new life and vigour into the old religion, not merely by
rectifying the partial disorders that had crept into its
administration, and promoting the due observance of its
194 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
solemnities with the lively accompaniment of song and
music—not merely this, but also, and much more, by
popularizing its lessons in compositions adapted to general
use, and providing appropriate forms of utterance for
the devout feelings and desires which the ordinances
of God and the events of life were fitted to call forth.
The thought of God as the Creator and moral Governor
of the world—the Redeemer, the Shepherd, the King of
Israel—of His glorious perfections and wonderful works
—the deliverances He had wrought for His people, the
careful guardianship He exercises over them, the spiritu-
ality of His holy law, as requiring truth in the inward
parts not less than integrity and kindness in the outward
life, His mercy to the penitent, His special nearness to
the humble, to the needy, to the souls struggling with con-
victions of sin or sharp conflicts in the cause of righteous-
ness, yea, His readiness to keep them as in the secret of
His tabernacle, and compass them about with His presence
as with a shield:—these and such-like thoughts, which
were all interwoven with the facts of sacred history and
with the structure and services of the Tabernacle, were
in these inspired productions plainly set forth, clothed in
the forms of an attractive and striking imagery, and
enkindled with the glow of human sympathies and devout
emotions. It is impossible not to see what an approach
was here made to the directness and simplicity both of
instruction and worship, which are the characteristics of
a spiritual dispensation. In proportion as the members
of the covenant became conversant with and used these
helps to faith and devotion, they must have felt at once
more capable of profiting by the worship of the sanctuary,
and less tied to its formal routine; in spirit they could
now realize what was transacted there, and bring it home
to the sanctuary of their bosoms. Jehovah Himself,
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 195
though His dwelling-place was in Zion, was through
these utterances of His Spirit brought near to every
one of them; and alike in their private communings and
in their holy convocations, they possessed the choicest
materials for holding sweet and hallowed converse with
Heaven. And therefore must these Psalms have been
pre-eminently to the Jewish believer what they have been
said to be also in a measure to the Christian—even well-
nigh ‘what the love of parents and the sweet affections of
home, and the clinging memory of infant scenes, and the
generous love of country, are to men of every rank and
order and employment, of every kindred, and tongue,
and nation.’1
IV. The tendency in this direction, however, was
greatly increased by the operation of another element—
the prophetical agency and writings, which attained only
to their greatest fulness and power when the affairs of the
Old Covenant approached their lowest depression. The
raising up of persons from time to time, who should come
with special messages from God to the people, suited to
the ever varying states and exigences of life, was from
the first contemplated in the Theocratic government;2
and certain directions were given both for trying the
pretensions of those who claimed to have such messages
from God, and for treating with becoming reverence and
regard such as had them. This was, certainly, a very
singular arrangement—as justly noticed by G. Baur:—
1 Irving. An incidental proof of this is found in the touching notices in
Ps. cxxxvii., where the Jewish captives are represented as hanging their harps
on the willows, and incapable, when requested by their conquerors, of singing
one of the songs of Zion. It shews how deep a hold the psalmody had taken
of the better minds of the community, and what a powerful influence it exer-
cised over them.
2 Num. xii. 6; Deut. xviii. 17-22.
196 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
‘That the holy will of the one true God should have been
set up before the Israelites in the definite prescriptions
of a law, and that, in order to carry this Divine law
into effect, and prepare for its proper fulfilment, prophets
must appear on the scene,—this is what distinguishes
the religion of Israel, not only from all other pre-
Christian religions, but also from Christianity itself.
For, the legal and prophetical elements of the Old
Testament religion are precisely those through which
it stood in marked contrast to the other religions, and
made an approach to Christianity, while at the same time
it thereby bore the character of a religion which could
not of itself present the most perfect religious state of
things, but could only prepare for it, and hand over the
completion to another.’l
The close relation of prophecy to the law is not too
strongly stated here, and must be kept steadily in view.
In its earlier stages the aim of the prophetic, agency was
almost exclusively directed to the one object of diffusing a
better knowledge of the law, and promoting a more duti-
ful observance of its institutions and precepts. It was
essentially a spirit of revival, called forth by the grievous
disorders and wide-spread degeneracy that prevailed.
Such, as has been already stated, was the leading char-
acter and aim of the religious associations which have
received the name of the ‘schools of the prophets.’ They
were composed of earnest and devoted men, who, under
the direction of one or more persons of really supernatural
gifts (such as Samuel at first, afterwards of Elijah and
Elisha), set their faces boldly against the corruptions
which prevailed, and endeavoured, by religious meetings
in various places, with the powerful excitation of sacred
1 ‘Geschichte der Alttestamentlichen Weissagung,’ by Dr Gustav Baur,
p. 9.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 197
song, to stir up the languid zeal of the people, and engage
them to a hearty surrender to the Divine service. It was
a kind of action which, though apparently somewhat
irregular and spasmodic in its movements, was in nature
not unlike to the evangelistic operations often carried on
in modern times, and reached its end in proportion as
people were brought to consider aright and discharge
their duty as placed under the economy set up by the
hand of Moses. The labours of David, and those gifted
men, chiefly of Levitical families, who succeeded him in
the work of sacred song, so far coincided with the class
of agencies instituted by Samuel, that they also had in
view the proper understanding and due appreciation of
what pertained to the old economy, but employed more
of literary effort, especially of lyrical compositions, for the
purpose, and in these sometimes gave delineations of the
kingdom of God as it should exist in the future, and of
the King who should preside over its affairs and destinies,
which could scarcely be conceived capable of realization,
except by some mighty change in the form of the constitu-
tion and the powers brought to bear on its administration.
But by and by a state of things entered, which proved
the comparative failure of those reforming agencies, and
called for prophetic work of a different kind. Back-
sliding and corruption perpetually returned, after seasons
of revival, and with ever-deepening inveteracy. The
royal house itself, which should have ruled only for
Jehovah, became infected with worldly pride, luxury,
idolatry with its host of attendant vices. Judgment
after judgment had been sent to correct the evil, but all
without permanent effect; and not the realization of
splendid hopes, but the sinking of all into prostration
and ruin, was the fate that seemed more immediately
impending. It was when matters were verging toward
198 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
this deplorable condition, that the prophets, distinctively
so called, came upon the field, and fulfilled, one after
another, their appointed mission. The circumstances
were very materially changed in which they had to act,
from those which belonged to the times of Samuel and
David; but they still stood in substantially the same
relation to the law, differing only in the application
which was made of it to the state and prospects of the
people.
The prophets without exception took up their position
on the basis of law: they appeared as the vindicators of
its authority, the expounders of its meaning, and in a
sense also the avengers of its injured rights; for they
never fail to charge upon the people’s culpable neglect
of its obligations, and persistent adherence to the practices
it condemns, all the visitations of evil which in the course
of God’s providence had befallen them, or the yet greater
calamities that were in prospect. Nor in pointing to the
possibility of escaping the worst, when there was the
utmost reason to apprehend its approach, do they ever
indicate another course than that of a return to the bond
of the covenant, by ceasing from all the acts and indul-
gences against which it was directed: this one path pre-
sented to the people a door of hope. But in this
particular line the prophets abstain from going farther;
they never attempt to improve upon the principles of the
Theocracy, or inculcate a morality that transcends the
ideal of the Decalogue. A claim has sometimes been
made in honour of the prophets, as if their teaching did
transcend, and, in a manner, remodel what had been
previously given—though the quarter from which it
comes may justly beget doubts of its validity. ‘The
remark,’ says Mr Stuart Mill,1 ‘of a distinguished
1 ‘On Representative Government,’ p. 42.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 199.
Hebrew, that the prophets were, in Church and State,
the equivalent of the modern liberty of the press, gives
a just but not an adequate conception of the part fulfilled
in national and universal history by this great element
of Jewish life; by means of which, the canon of inspira-
tion never being complete, the persons most eminent in
genius and moral feeling could not only denounce and
reprobate, with the direct authority of the Almighty,
whatever appeared to them deserving of such treatment,
but could give forth better and higher interpretations of
the national religion, which thenceforth became part of
the religion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself
of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one book,
sees with admiration the vast interval between the moral-
ity and religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the historical
books, and the morality and religion of the prophecies—
a distance as wide as between these last and the Gospels.
Conditions more favourable to progress could not easily
exist; accordingly, the Jews, instead of being stationary,
like other Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most
progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with them,
have been the starting-point and main propelling agency
of modern cultivation.’
There is just enough in the actual history of the case
to give a plausible colour to this representation, and a
measure of truth which may save it from utter repudia-
tion. The recognised place given to the function of pro-
phecy in the Theocratic constitution, was unquestionably
a valuable safeguard against arbitrary power; it secured
a right and warrant for freedom of speech on all that
most essentially concerned the interests of the kingdom;
and as the function was actually exercised, it did unques-
tionably serve, in a very high degree, the purpose of re-
proving abuses, and of unfolding principles of truth and
200 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
duty, which needed only to be believingly apprehended
to fill the mind with a generous aspiration after everything
pure and good. But the language quoted goes a great
deal beyond this. It implies, that we have in the Bible
a specimen, not simply of growing light and progressive
development, but of diverse exhibitions of truth and
duty; that the beginnings of the Hebrew commonwealth
were in this respect extremely crude and defective, but
that in process of time, as men of higher intellect and
finer moral sensibilities (the prophets, to wit) applied
themselves to the task of instruction, everything took a
nobler elevation, and a religion and morality were brought
forth which stood at a wide remove from those of the
Pentateuch. This we altogether deny, and regret the
countenance it has met with from Dean Stanley (as
indeed from many other writers of the day). He quotes
the passage from Mill without the slightest qualification,
and proceeds to support it by specifying the more leading
features in which the prophetic teaching constituted an
advance on what preceded. The particular points are,
first, the unity of God; then the spirituality of God
(meaning thereby His moral character, His justice, love,
and goodness); and lastly, as the necessary result of
this, the exa1tation of the moral above the ceremonial
in religion (‘not sacrifice, not fasting, not ablutions,’ etc.,
but ‘judgment, mercy, and truth’).1 Beyond all doubt,
these were among the leading characteristics of the pro-
phetical teaching; and in that teaching they are set forth
with a clearness, a prominence, and a fervour, which may
justly be termed peculiar, and for which the church of
all ages has reason to be thankful. The circumstances of
the times were such as to call, in a very special manner,
for the bold and explicit announcement of the vital
1 ‘Lectures on Jewish Church,’ end of Lec. XIX. and beginning of Lec. XX.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 201
truths and principles in question; only, it must be re-
membered, they were not given for the purpose of initiat-
ing a higher form of morality and religion, but rather of
staying a perilous degeneracy, and recovering a position
that had been lost. For the truths and principles were
in no respect new; they were interwoven with the writ-
ings and legislation of Moses; and only in the mode and
fulness of the revelation, but not in the things revealed,
does the teaching of the prophets differ from the hand-
writing of Moses. So far from aiming at the introduc-
tion of anything properly new, either in the religion or
the morality of the Old Covenant, it was the object of
their most earnest strivings to turn back the hearts of
the children to the fathers, the disobedient to the wisdom
of the just;1 and the very last in the long line of pro-
phetic agency, while pointing to nobler messengers and
grander revelations in the coming future, charges his
countrymen, as with his parting breath, to ‘remember
the law of Moses which God commanded him in Horeb
for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments.’2 It was
virtually to say, This was meanwhile the best thing for
them; the word of prophecy did not seek to carry them
above the dispensation under which they lived; and not
a higher position, in respect either to God or to one
another, was to be gained by disregarding it, but a fall
into vanity, corruption, and ruin.
But as regards the particular points mentioned by
Stanley, which of them, we should like to know, is want-
ing in the books of Moses, or is denied its just place in
the religious polity he brought in? The grand truth of
the Divine unity is assuredly not wanting; it stands in
the very front of the Decalogue, and from the first chap-
ter in Genesis to the last in Deuteronomy, it is the truth
1 1 Kings xviii. 37; Luke i. 17. 2Mal. iv. 4.
202 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
which above all others is prominent—so prominent, that
(as we have seen) to guard and preserve this doctrine
some would even take as the almost exclusive end of the
Mosaic legislation. Nor is it much otherwise with the
spirituality of God—understanding thereby not only
His incorporeal nature, but also and more peculiarly His
moral character; for this, too, is a pervading element
both in the history and the legislation. It is the key
which opens out to us, so far as it can be opened, the
mystery of paradise and the fall, and the principle which
runs through the entire series of providential dealings, of
blessings bestowed upon some, and judgments inflicted
upon others, which make up so large a portion of patri-
archal history. But the grand testimony for it is in the
law of the ten commandments, given as the revelation of
God’s character, yea, laid as the very foundation of His
throne in Israel—the most sublime exaltation of the
moral above all merely physical notions of Deity, and of
the spiritual over the outward and material in the forms
of worship, to be found in the records of ancient times.
The prophets could but unfold and vindicate the truth so
presented; they could add nothing to its relative signifi-
cance. And if, in the law itself, there were many enact-
ments of a ceremonial kind—and if the Jewish people,
especially in later times, shewed an inclination to give
these the foremost place, to make more account of sacri-
fice, fasting, ablutions, than of judgment, mercy, and
truth—it was in palpable violation (as we have already
shewn) of the evident tendency and bearing of the law
itself. It was only as testifying against an abuse, a
culpable misreading of their religious institutions, that
the prophets sometimes drew so sharply the distinction
between the ceremonial and the moral in religion. At
other
times, they again shewed how they could appreciate
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 203
the symbolical institutions of the law, and enforce their
observance.l There was, then, no proper diversity, much
less any antagonism, between the teaching of the prophets
and the instruction embodied in the commands and ordi-
nances of the law. And we must hold, with Harless,
that there is no ground for regarding ‘the law of God in
Israel as the product of a development-process among the
people of Israel, who gradually arrived at the conscious-
ness of what is good and right in the relation of man to
man, and in the relation of man to God. On the con-
trary, God appears, in opposition to the prevailing spirit
of the people, giving testimony to His will in a progres-
sive revelation. The law did not sink down into the
people of God as a spiritual principle, the development of
which was by God surrendered to the people; but the
entire compass of life’s environments was among this
people placed, through the variety of the law’s enact-
ments, under the prescription of the Divine commanding
will. Instead of being abandoned to the vacillations
and gropings of human knowledge, it stands there (what
can be said neither of conscience nor of any human law)
as beyond doubt the ‘holy law,’ and its command as the
‘holy and righteous and good command!’2
But with this fixed character as to the substance of the
1 Ps. li. 19, cxviii. 27; Isa. xliii. 23, 24, lx. 6, 13; Mal i. 11, iii. 9, 10.
2 ‘Christliche Ethik,’ sec. 16. If due consideration is given to what has
been stated, one will know what to think of the loose and offensive statements
often made by persons, however able, who give forth their ‘short studies on
grave subjects’—such as the following in Froude, ‘The religion of the prophets
was not the religion which was adapted to the hardness of heart of the Israel-
ites of the Exodus. The Gospel set aside the law,’ etc. A certain glimmering
of truth, to give colour to an essentially wrong meaning! It is also somewhat
striking, in this connection, that the exercise of feelings of revenge, so often
charged against the morality of the law, has more appearance of justification
in the Psalms and Prophets than in the prescriptions of the law. But even
in these the countenance given to it is more apparent than real. See Supple-
mentary
Dissertation on the subject.
204
THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
law, there is undoubtedly in the prophetical writings an
advance made in the mode, and along therewith in the
perspicuity, the fulness, and motive power of the instruc-
tion. What in the one lay written in naked prescrip-
tions, or wrapt in the drapery of symbol, is in the other
copiously unfolded, explained, and reasoned upon, accom-
panied also with many touching appeals and forcible
illustrations. Specific points, too, as occasion required,
are brought out with a breadth and prominence which it
was impossible for them to possess in the original revela-
tion. And then in those prophetical writings of later
times, as the falling down of the tabernacle of David
was clearly announced, and the dissolution of the Theo-
cracy in its original form distinctly contemplated, it was
through those writings that the minds of believing men
got such insight as they could obtain into the nature of
that new and better form of things, through which the
blessing (so long deferred) of the covenant of promise
was to be realized, and practical results achieved far sur-
passing what had been found in the past. It is impos-
sible to go here into any detail on this part of the
prophetical writings; but one thing ought to be noted
concerning them, which may also be said to be common
to them all, that while they speak plainly enough of the
old being destined somehow to pass away, they not less
plainly declare that all its moral elements should remain
and come into more effective and general operation.
When Isaiah, for example, makes promise of a king who
should spring as a tender scion from the root of David,
and not only retrieve the fortunes of His kingdom, but
carry everything belonging to it to a state of highest per-
fection and glory, he represents him as bringing the very
mind and will of God to bear on it, taking righteousness
for the girdle of his loins, and establishing all with judg-
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 205
ment and justice.l To magnify the law and make it
honourable, is, in a later part of his prophecies, presented
as the aim with which the Lord was going to manifest
His name in the future, otherwise than He had done in
the past; and, as the final result of the manifestation,
there was to arise a kingdom of perfect order, a people all
righteous, and because righteous full of peace, and bless-
ing, and joyfulness.2 Jeremiah is even more explicit;
he says expressly, that the Lord was going to make a
new covenant with His people, different from that which
he had made after the deliverance from Egypt; yet
different rather in respect to form and efficient adminis-
tration, than in what might be called the essential matter
of the covenant; for this is the explanation given, ‘After
those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their
inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be
their God, and they shall be my people’3—the same law
in substance still, only transferred from the outward to
the inward sphere—from the tables of stone to the fleshy
tables of the heart; and this so as to secure, what had in
a great measure failed under the old form of the cove-
nant, a people with whom God could hold the most
intimate and endearing fellowship. Then, following in
the same line, there are such prophecies as those of
Ezekiel, in which, with a glorious rise in the Divine
kingdom from seeming ruin to the possession of universal
dominion, there is announced a hitherto unknown work
of the Spirit of God, changing hearts of stone into hearts
of flesh, and imparting the disposition and the power to
keep God’s statutes and judgments;4 the sin mar pro-
phecy of Joel, according to which the Spirit was to be
poured out in such measure, that spiritual gifts hitherto
1 Isa. ix. 7, xi. 2 Isa. xlii. 21, lx., lxv. 17, 18.
3 Jer. xxxi 33. 4 Ezek. xvii. 23, 24, xxxvi. 25-27.
206 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
confined to a few should become, in a manner, the com-
mon property of believers;l the prophecy of Micah, that
the mountain of the Lord’s house, the seat of the Divine
kingdom, should be morally exalted by such a manifesta-
tion of the Divine presence, and such a going forth of the
law of the Lord, as would reach all hearts and carry it
with decisive sway over the most distant lands;2 and, to
mention no more, the brief but clear and striking an-
nouncements of Malachi, telling of a sudden coming of
the Lord to His temple, with such demonstrations of
righteousness and means of effective working, as would
burn like a refiner’s fire, and bring forth a living com-
munity of pure and earnest worshippers.3 From the
general strain of these and many similar revelations in
the prophetic Scriptures, it was evidently in the mind
and purpose of God to give a manifestation of Himself
among men for the higher ends and interests of His
covenant, far surpassing anything that had been known
in the history of the past; and that, while the demands
of law should thus be for ever established, the law itself
should be made to take another place than it had been
wont to do in economical arrangements, and should be so
associated with the peculiar gifts and graces of the Spirit,
as to bring out into quite singular prominence the spirit-
ual elements of the covenant, and secure for these far and
wide a commanding influence in the world. So that the
volume of Old Testament prophecy might be said to
close with the presentation of this great problem to the
consideration of thoughtful and believing men—how the
promised blessing for Israel and the world could be
wrought out, so as to maintain in all its integrity the
law of the Divine righteousness, and, at the same time,
provide for powers and agencies coming into play, which
1 Joel ii. 28-32. 2 Micah iv. 1-5. 3 Mal. iii. 1-6.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 207
should necessarily change the law’s place from a higher
to a lower, from a greater to a less prominent position in
the administration of the Dime kingdom!
V. There can be no doubt that, for generations before
the Christian era, the minds of the better part of the
Jewish people were more or less occupied with thoughts
concernmg this problem; and though from its very nature
it was one of Divine, not of human solution, yet as the
period approached for its passing into the sphere of
history, expectation took very determinate forms of be-
lief as to the manner in which it behoved to be done.
These differed widely from each other, but were all so
wide of the true mark, that the very conception of the
plan by which the Divine purpose was to receive its accom-
plishment, proved the Divine insight of Him through
whom it was at last carried into effect. With two of
those forms of thought and belief we are perfectly fami-
liar, they come out so prominently in the Gospel history
—represented, respectively, by the two great divisions of
later Judaism in Palestine—those of the Pharisees and the
Sadducees. Neither party, perhaps, embraced more than
a section of the Jewish people resident in Palestine, but
together they undoubtedly included its more influential
portions—the men who guided the sentiments and ruled
the destinies of their country. The Pharisees, as is well
known, were by much the more numerous and influential
party; and taking their name from a Hebrew word
(parash), which means to separate or place apart, it
denoted them as the men by way of eminence, the more
select and elevated portion of the community, those who
stood at the summit of legal Judaism’ (Neander). In
them the state of feeling described toward the close of
last lecture found its more peculiar development. The
208 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
law was in a manner everything with them; and to pre-
serve it on all sides from dishonour and infringement,
they gradually accumulated an infinite number of rules
and precepts, which tended greatly more to mar than to
further its design. For it led them to fix their regards
almost exclusively on the outward relations of things, to
turn both religion and morality into a rigid formalism;
and, as a matter of course, the form was substituted for
the power of godliness—weightier matters gave way in
practice to comparative trifles—and the law was in great
part made void by what was done to protect and magnify it.
Thus the Pharisees, as a class of religionists, proved them-
selves to be blind in regard to the great problem which was
then waiting its solution; and the more they multiplied
their legal enactments, they but wove a thicker veil for
their own understandings, and became the more incapable
of looking to the end of those things which the law aimed
at establishing. A perpetuation and extension of their
system would have been a bondage and not a deliverance,
a misfortune and not a blessing; since it would have
served to case the world up in a hard, inflexible religious
coat of mail, fitted to repel rather than attract—the very
antithesis of a free, loving, devoted piety.
It had been no better, but in various respects worse, on
the principle of Sadduceeism; for here the deeper elements
of the Old Covenant were not merely overshadowed, or
relatively depreciated, as in Pharisaism, but absolutely
ignored. The spiritual world was to it little more than a
blank; it had an eye only for the visible and earthly
sphere of things; therefore knew nothing of the spiritual
significance of the law, and the depth of meaning which
lay underneath its symbols of worship. For men of this
stamp, the religion of the Old Covenant was the ground
merely of their national polity and of their hopes as a
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 209
people—which consequently had a claim on their respect-
ful observance, but not such as was connected with pain-
ful convictions of sin, or earnest longings after a holier
and better state of things. All that apparently entered
into their dream of prospective glory would have been
realized, if, without any material change in the religious
aspect of things, they should be able, under the leader-
ship of some second David, to rectify the political dis-
orders of the time, relieve themselves of the shame and
oppression of a foreign yoke, and rise to the ascendency
of power and influence in the world, which the antecedents
of their history gave them reason to expect. The more
fundamental elements of the great problem could scarcely
be said to come within their range of vision.
There was much more of an earnest and thoughtful
spirit in a class of religionists who belonged to Judea,
and had their chief settlements about the shores of the
Dead Sea, but who, from their reserved and secluded
habits, are never mentioned in the Gospel history. I
refer to the Essenes, whose religion appears to have been
a strange and somewhat arbitrary compound of ritualistic
and theosophic elements—of Judaism (in the Pharisaic
sense) and asceticism. They are reported to have sent
offerings to the temple, but they did not themselves per-
sonally frequent its courts, deeming it a kind of pollution
to mingle in the throng of such a miscellaneous com-
pany of worshippers; so that many of the most distinctly
commanded observances in the religion of the Old Cove-
nant must have been unscrupulously set aside by them.
But while thus in one direction scorning the restraints of
ceremonialism, and in their general abstinence from mar-
riage, and their communism of goods, chalking freely out
a path for themselves, in other respects the Essenes were
ceremonialists of the straitest sect: they would not
210 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
kindle a fire or remove a vessel on the Sabbath, refused
to use victuals that had been prepared by persons out
of their own hallowed circle, resorted ever and anon to
corporeal ablutions, in particular after having been touched
by an uncircumcised person, or even one of an inferior grade
among themselves.1 Their system was evidently a sincere
but ill-adjusted and abortive attempt at reform; on the
one side, a reaction from the mechanical, selfish, and
worldly spirit of Pharisaism; on the other, an adhesion
to specific forms and ascetic practices, as the choicest
means for reaching the higher degrees of perfection. At
how great a remove did the followers of such a system
stand from the spiritual elevation of the prophets! And
in themselves how obviously incapable of bursting the
shell of Judaism, and understanding how a religion might
be evolved from it of blessed peace, expansive benevo-
lence, and son-like freedom! It was clear that no more
with them than with the others, was found the secret
of the problem which now lay before the people of God:
they could contribute nothing to its solution.
And the same, yet again, has to be said of another
class of reforming Jews, who brought higher powers to
the task than the narrow-minded Essenes, and who gave
to Judaism whatever light could be derived from the
most spiritual philosophy of Greece. I speak now not of
the Jews in Palestine, but of the Alexandrian Jews, more
especially as represented by the thoughtful and contem-
plative Philo. He shrunk from the extremes that some
of his countrymen, in their passion for philosophy, appear
to have run into—‘trampling (as he says of them) upon
the laws in which they were born and bred, upturning
those customs of their country which are liable to no just
censure.’ He, along with the great body even of the
1 Josephus, ‘Ant,.’
xviii. 1, sec. 4; ‘Wars,’ ii. 8, sees. 3-13.
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL
ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 211
philosophizing Jews, still held by the traditions and re-
ligious customs of his fathers, but threw over these a
kind of foreign costume, read them in a Hellenic light,
and thereby sought to obtain from them a more profound
and varied instruction than they were otherwise capable
of yielding. Philo and his coadjutors were so far right,
that they conceived a letter and a spirit to belong to the
Old Testament; but they entirely erred in trying to find
a key to the spirit in the sublimated physics of a Gentile
philosophy—in seeing, for example, in the starry hosts
choirs of the highest and purest angels, in the tabernacle
a pattern of the universe, in the twelve loaves of shew-
bread the twelve months of the year, in the two rows of
them the vernal and autumnal equinox, in the seven-
branched candlestick the seven planets, and so on. This
was truly to seek the living among the dead. It is the
moral, as we have had occasion frequently to repeat,
which is the essential element in the religion of the Old
Testament, underlying all its symbols, interwoven with
all its histories; the spirit which pervades them through-
out is the spirit of the ten commandments. And in
trying to find in them the cover of philosophic ideas, or
the reflex of material nature, everything was turned into
intellectual refinement or a mystic lore, but in the same
proportion ceased to be of real value in the kingdom of
God.
On every side we see only misapprehension and failure.
Not one of the various sections, into which the covenant-
people latterly fell, sufficiently grasped the completed
revelation of the Old Testament, so as even to perceive
how its destined end was to be reached—how its great
problem was to be solved. From the simply ritualistic
and patriotic spirit, as represented by the divergent
212 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VI.
schools of the Pharisees and the Sadducees, it lay hid;
it lay hid also from the theosophic and ascetic spirit, as
represented by the earnest, but exclusive and somewhat
forbidding sect of the Essenes. And when philosophy,
with its intellectual culture and lofty aspirations, came to
the task, it fared no better; the real spirit of the old
economy was not evoked, nor any discovery made of the
way by which its apparent contradictories might be re-
conciled, and an influence of charmed power brought to
bear on the hearts and consciences of men. For anything
that such schools and parties could effect, or even knew
distinctly to propose, the world had slumbered on in its
ancient darkness and corruption—its moral degeneracy
unchecked, its disquieting terrors unallayed, its debasing
superstitions and foul idolatries continuing to hold captive
the souls of men. And if the real reform—the salvation-
work, and the better spirit growing out of it, which like
a vivifying pulse of life was to make itself felt through
society, to cause humanity itself to spring aloft into a
higher sphere, and commence a new career of fruitfulness
in intellectual and moral action—if this should have
found its realization in One who, humanly speaking, was
the least likely to be furnished for the undertaking—One
who not only belonged to the same people, but was
reared in one of their obscurest villages, and under the
roof of one of its humblest cottages—whence, we naturally
ask, could it have been found in Him, but from His
altogether peculiar connection with the Highest? A
failure in every quarter but the one which was most
palpably deficient in human equipment and worldly re-
sources, manifestly bespeaks for that One the preter-
natural insight and all-sufficient help of God. Jesus of
Nazareth did what all others were unable not only to
accomplish, but even adequately to conceive, because He
LECT. VI.] ECONOMICAL ASPECTS AND BEARINGS. 213
was Immanuel, God with us; and so, in spite of the lack
of human advantages, and the fierce opposition of power-
ful foes, He fulfilled the task with which expectation had
been so long travailing in birth, and left the mysterious
problem concerning the future of the Divine kingdom
among men written out in the facts of His marvellous
history, and the rich dowry of grace and blessing He
brought in for His redeemed.
214 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
LECTURE VII.
THE RELATION OF THE LAW TO THE MISSION AND WORK OF
CHRIST—THE SYMBOLICAL AND RITUAL FINDING IN HIM ITS
TERMINATION, AND THE MORAL ITS FORMAL APPROPRIATION
AND PERFECT FULFILMENT.
AS the appearance of the Lord Jesus Christ for the
work of our redemption was unspeakably the great-
est era in the history of God’s dispensations toward men,
we cannot doubt that every thing respecting it was
arranged with infinite wisdom. It took place, as the
apostle tells us, ‘in the fulness of the time’ (Gal. iv. 4).
Many circumstances, both in the church and in the world,
conspired to render it such; and among these may
undoubtedly be placed the fact, that there was not only
a general expectation throughout the world of some one
going to arise in Judea, who should greatly change and
renovate the state of things, but in Judea itself the more
certain hope and longing desire of a select few, who,
taught by the word of prophecy, were anxiously waiting
for the consolation of Israel.’ Yet even with them, as
may be reasonably inferred from what afterwards trans-
pired in Gospel history, the expectation, however sincere
and earnest, was greatly wanting in discernment: it
might justly be said ‘to see through a glass, darkly.’
The great problem which, according to Old Testament
Scripture, had to find its solution in the brighter future of
God’s kingdom, was not distinctly apprehended by any
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 215
known section of the covenant-people; and in all the
more prominent and active members of the community
there were strong currents of opinion and deeply cherished
convictions, which were utterly incompatible with the
proper realization of the Divine plan. This condition of
affairs immensely aggravated the difficulty of the under-
taking for Him, who came in this peculiar work to do
the Father’s will; but it served, at the same time, more
clearly to shew how entirely all was of God—both the
insight to understand what was needed to be done, and
the wisdom, the resolution, the power to carry it into
execution.
If, however, from the position of matters now noticed,
it was necessary that our Lord should move in perfect
independence as regards the religious parties of the time,
it was not less necessary that He should exercise a close
dependence on the religion which they professed in common
to maintain. Coming as the Messiah promised to the
Fathers, He entered, as a matter of course, into the
heritage of all preceding revelations, and therefore could
introduce nothing absolutely new—could only exhibit the
proper growth and development of the old. And so,
while isolating Himself from the Judaism of the Scribes
and Pharisees, Jesus lovingly embraced the Judaism of
the law and the prophets; and, founding upon what had
been already established, took it for His especial calling
to unfold the germs of holy principle which were con-
tained in the past revelations of God, and by word and
deed ripen them into a system of truth and duty adapted
to the mature stage which had now been reached of the
Divine dispensations. It was only in part, indeed, that
this could be done during the personal ministry of our
Lord; for, as the light He was to introduce depended
to a large extent on the work He had to accomplish for
216 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
men, there were many things respecting it which could
not be fully disclosed till the events of His marvellous
history had run their course. It was the redeeming
work of Christ which more than all besides was to give
its tone and impress to the new dispensation; and much
of the teaching on men’s relations to God, on their pre-
sent calling and their future prospects as believers in
Christ, had in consequence to be deferred till the work
itself was finished. This our Lord Himself plainly inti-
mated to His disciples near the close of His career, when
pointing to certain things of which they could not even
then bear the disclosure, but which the Spirit of truth
would reveal to them after His departure, and qualify
them for communicating to others.1 Yet not only were
the materials for all provided by Christ in His earthly
ministry, but the way also was begun to be opened for
their proper application and use; and what was after-
wards done in this respect by the hands of the apostles
was merely the continuation and further unfolding of the
line of instruction already commenced by their Divine
Master.
I. Now, of one thing our Lord’s ministry left no room
to doubt—and it is the more noticeable, as in this He
differed from all around Him—He made a marked dis-
tinction between the symbolical or ritual things of the
Old Covenant, and its strictly moral precepts. He re-
garded the former, as the legal economy itself did, in the
light merely of appendages to the moral temporary
expedients, or provisional substitutes for better things
to come, which had no inherent value in themselves, and
were to give way before the great realities they fore-
1 John xvi. 12-15. See the point admirably exhibited in Bernard’s Bamp-
ton
Lecture, on ‘The Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament.’
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 217
shadowed. Hence the reserve He manifested in regard
to external rites and ceremonies. We read of no act of
bodily lustration in His public history. He expressly
repudiated the idea of washing having in itself any power
to cleanse from spiritual defilement, or of true purifica-
tion at all depending on the kind of food that mght be
partaken of.1 He was the true, the ideal Nazarite, yet
undertook no Nazarene vow. Though combining in
Himself all the functions of prophet, priest, and king,
yet He entered on them by no outward anointing: He
had the real consecrating of the Holy Spirit, visibly de-
scending and abiding with Him.2 And though He did
not abstain from the stated feasts of the Temple, when it
was safe and practicable for Him to be present, yet we
hear of no special offerings for Himself or His disciples on
such occasions. Even as regards the ordinary services
and offerings of the Temple, He claimed a rightful
exemption, on the ground of His essentially Divine
standing, from the tribute-money, the half-shekel contri-
bution, by which they were maintained.3 He was Him-
self, as the Son of the Highest, the Lord of that Temple;
it was the material symbol of what He is in His relation
to His people; and on the occasion of His first public
visit to its courts, He vindicated His right to order its
affairs, by casting out the buyers and sellers; yea, and,
identifying Himself with it, He declared that when He
fell, as the Redeemer of the world, it too should virtually
fall—the Great Inhabitant should be gone—and hence-
forth, no more in one place than another, but in every
place where the children of faith might meet together,
there should true worship and acceptable service be pre-
sented to God.4 Utterances like these plainly rung the
1 Matt. xv. 1-20. 2 John i. 32-34; Luke iii. 22, iv. 18.
3 Matt. xvii. 24-27. 4 John ii. 13-22, iv. 21-24.
218 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
knell of the old ceremonialism. They bespoke a speedy
removing of the external fabric of Judaism, yet such a
removing as would leave greatly more than it took—
instead of the imperfect and temporary shadow, the
eternal substance. And if one might still speak, in the
hallowed language of the sanctuary, of a temple, and a
sacrifice, and a daily ministration, of a sanctity to be
preserved and a pollution to be shunned, it must be as
bound to no specific localities or stereotyped forms, but as
connected with the proper freedom and enlargement of
God’s true children.1
1 The nature of this part of our Lord’s work, and the substance of His teach-
ing respecting it, was strikingly embodied in the first formal manifestation of
His supernatural agency—the shmei?on, which He performed as an appropriate
and fitting commencement to the whole cycle of His miraculous working—
namely, the turning of water into wine at the marriage feast in Cana (John
ii. 1-10). Considered as such a beginning, it certainly has, at first sight, a
somewhat strange appearance; but, on closer examination, this aspect of
strangeness gives way, and the Divine wisdom of the procedure discovers
itself. The transaction, like the period to which it belonged, found a point
of contact between the new and the old in God’s kingdom—it was indicative
of the transition which was on the eve of taking place from the law to
the Gospel. The water-vessels used for the occasion were those ordinarily
employed for purposes of purification according to the law; they stood there
as the representatives of the old economy—the remembrancers of sin and
pollution even in the midst of festive mirth; and had they been associated
merely with water, they could not have been made the bearer of any higher
instruction. But when, after being filled with this, the water was turned into
wine—wine of the finest quality—such as drew forth the spontaneous testimony
not that the old, but that the new was the better, they became the emblem of
the now opening dispensation of grace, which, with its vivifying and refresh-
ing influences, was soon to take the place of the legal purifications. Yet, in
that supplanting of the one by the other, there was not the production of
something absolutely new, but rather the old transformed, elevated, as in the
transmutation of the simple and comparatively feeble element of water into
the naturally powerful and active principle of wine. In the very act of chang-
ing the old into the new, our Lord, so far from ignoring or disparaging the old,
served Himself of it; and it was, we may say, within the shell and framework
of what had been, that the new and better power was made to come forth and
develop itself in the world. Such, in its main features and leading import,
is the sign here wrought by Jesus at the commencement of His public career.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 219
II. Turning now to the moral part of the Old Testa-
ment legislation—to the law strictly so called—we find
our Lord acting in a quite different manner—shewing the
utmost solicitude to preserve intact the revelation at
Sinai, and to have it made, through His teaching, both
better understood, and with fresh sanctions enforced as
the essential rule of righteousness in God’s kingdom—
nay, Himself submitting to bow down to it as the yoke
which, in His great work of obedience, He was to bear,
and, by bearing, to glorify God and redeem man. Let us
look at it first in more immediate connection with the
teaching of Christ.
There was undoubtedly a difference—a difference of a
quite perceptible kind, and one that will not be over-
looked by those who would deal wisely with the records
of God’s dispensations, in respect to the place occupied
by law in the economies headed respectively by Moses
and Christ. It was in His memorable Sermon on the
Mount that our Lord made the chief formal promulgation
of the fundamental principles of His kingdom, which, there-
fore, stood to the coming dispensation in somewhat of the
The occasion, too, on which it was done, fitly accorded with its character; for,
just as in the Old Testament arrangements the feasts were linked to appropriate
seasons in nature, so was it here with the initiatory work of Christ: like the
economical change which the miracle symbolized, the time was one of hope
and gladness. It was the commencing era of a new life to the persons more
immediately concerned, and one that, not only in its natural aspect, had the
sanction and countenance of Christ, but also, from the higher turn given to it
by His miraculous working, made promise of the joy and blessing which was
to result from His great undertaking. Nay, by entering into the bridegroom’s
part, and ministering to the guests the materials of gladness, He foreshadowed
how, as the Regenerator of the world, He should make Himself known as the
kind and gracious Bridegroom of His church. And it seems as if the Baptist
had but caught up the meaning couched under this significant action of our
Lord, when, not long afterwards, he spoke of Jesus as the Bridegroom, whose
voice he, as the Bridegroom’s friend, delighted to hear, and whose appearance
should have been welcomed by all as the harbinger of life and blessing.
220 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
same relation that the imposing promulgation of law
from Sinai did to the ancient Theocracy; and, as if on
purpose to link the two more distinctly and closely
together, He makes to that earlier revelation very fre-
quent and pointed reference in His discourse. But how
strikingly different in mode and circumstance the one
revelation from the other! The two dispensations have
their distinctive characteristics imaged in the two histo-
rical occasions, exhibiting even to the outward eye the
contrast expressed by the Evangelist John, when he said,
‘The law was given by Moses, grace and truth came by
Jesus Christ.’
What a difference in the external scenery alone, in the
two mounts! Sinai is less properly a mountain, in the
ordinary sense of the term, than a lofty and precipitous
rock, in the midst of a wilderness of rocks of similar
aspect and formation—combining, in a degree rarely
equalled, the two features of grandeur and desolation;
‘The Alps unclothed,’ as they have been significantly
called—the Alps stript of all verdure and vegetation,
and cleft on every side into such deep hollows, or rising
into such rugged eminences, as render them alike of
sullen mien and of difficult access. There, amid the
sterner scenery of nature, intensified by the supernatural
elements brought into play for the occasion, the Lord de-
scended as in a chariot of fire, and proclaimed with a
voice of thunder those ten words which were to form
the basis of Israel’s religion and polity. It was amid
quite other scenes and aspects of nature, that the incar-
nate Redeemer met the assembled multitudes of Galilee,
when He proceeded to disclose in their hearing the
fundamental principles of the new and higher constitu-
tion He came to introduce. The exact locality in this
case cannot, indeed, be determined with infallible cer-
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIS’S WORK ON EARTH. 221
tainty—though there is no reason to doubt its connection
with the elevated table-land, rising prominently into
view a few miles to the south of Capernaum, and jutting
up into two little points called the ‘Horns of Hattin,’ to
which tradition has assigned the name of ‘The mount of
the Beatitudes.’ This elevated plain, we are informed,
‘is easily accessible from the Galilean lake, and from
that plain, to the summit [or points just mentioned] is
but a few minutes’ walk. Its situation also is central
both to the peasants of the Galilean hills, and the fisher
men of the lake, between which it stands; and would,
therefore, be a natural resort to Jesus and His disciples,
when they retired for solitude from the shores of the
sea.’1 The prospect from the summit is described even
now as pleasing, though rank weeds are growing around,
and only occasional patches of corn meet the eye;2 but
how much more must it have been so then, when Galilee
was a well-cultivated and fertile region, and the rich
fields which slope downwards to the lake were seen
waving with their summer produce! It was on such an
eminence, embosomed in so fair and pleasing an amphi-
theatre, and, as the multitudes assembled on the occasion
seemed to betoken, under a bright sky and a serene
atmosphere, that the blessed Redeemer chose to give
forth this fresh utterance of Heaven’s mind and will;
and Himself the while, not wrapt in thick darkness, not
even assuming an attitude of imposing grandeur, but
fresh from the benign work of healing, and seated in
humble guise, as a man among his fellow-men, at the
most as a teacher in the midst of His listening disciples.
So did the Son of Man open His mouth and make known
the things which concern His kingdom. What striking
1 Stanley’s ‘Sinai and Palestine,’ p. 368.
2 Robertson’s ‘Researches,’ III. p. 239.
222 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
and appropriate indications of Divine grace and conde-
scension! How well fitted to inspire confidence and
hope! As compared with the scenes and transactions
associated with the giving of the law from Sinai, it
bespoke such an advance in he march of God’s dispensa-
tions, as is seen in the field of nature when it can be
said, ‘The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the
flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of
birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in our
land.’
The discourse which our Lord delivered on the occa-
sion entirely corresponds with the new era which it
marked in the history of God’s dispensations. The
revelation from Sinai, though grafted on a covenant of
grace, and uttered by God as the Redeemer of Israel,
was emphatically a promulgation of law. Its direct and
formal object was to raise aloft the claims of the Divine
righteousness, and meet, with repressive and determined
energy, the corrupt tendencies of human nature. The
Sermon on the Mount, on the other hand, begins with
blessing. It opens with a whole series of beatitudes,
blessing after blessing pouring itself forth as from a full
spring of beneficence, and seeking, with its varied and
copious manifestations of goodness, to leave nothing un-
provided for in the deep wants and longing desires of
men. Yet here also, as in other things, the difference
between the New and the Old is relative only, not
absolute. There are the same fundamental elements in
both, but these differently adjusted, so as fitly to adapt
them to the ends they had to serve, and the times to
which they respectively belonged. In the revelation of
law there was a substratum of grace, recognised in the
words which prefaced the ten commandments, and pro-
mises of grace and blessing
also intermingling with the
LECT. VII.]
HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 223
stern prohibitions and injunctions of which they consist.
And so, inversely, in the Sermon on the Mount, while it
gives grace the priority and the prominence, it is far from
excluding the severer aspect of God’s character and
government. No sooner, indeed, has grace poured itself
forth in a succession of beatitudes, than there appear the
stern demands of righteousness and law—the very law
proclaimed from Sinai—and that law so explained and
enforced as to bring fully under its sway the intents of
the heart, as well as the actions of the life, and by men’s
relation to it determining their place and destinies in the
Messiah’s kingdom.
Here, then, we have our Lord’s own testimony regard-
ing His relation to the law of God. His first and most
comprehensive declaration upon the subject—the one
which may be said to rule all the others—is the utterance
on the mount, ‘Think not that I came to destroy the
law or the prophets, I came not to destroy (katalu?sai, to
dissolve, abrogate, make void), but to fulfil (plhrw?sai).’1
This latter expression must be taken in its plain and
natural sense; therefore, not as some woul understand
it, to confirm or ratify—which is not the import of the
word, and also what the law and the prophets did not
require. God’s word needs no ratification. Nor, as others,
to fill up and complete their teaching—for this were no
proper contrast to the destroying or making void. No;
it means simply to substantiate, by doing what they
required, or making good what they announced. To
fulfil a law (plhrou?n no<mon),was a quite common expression,
in profane as well as sacred writings, and only in the sense
now given.2 So we find Augustine confidently urging
1 Mat. v. 17.
2 Luke xxiv. 44; Acts iii. 18; Rom. xiii. 8; Gal. v. 14. See, for
example, Meyer and Fritzsche on the words. Alford points to what he
224 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
it against the Manichæan perverters of the truth in his
day: ‘The law (says he) is fulfilled when the things are
done which are commanded. . . . Christ came not to
destroy the law but to fulfil it: not that things might be
added to the law which were wanting, but that the
things written in it might be done—which His own
words confirm; for He does not say, “One jot or one
tittle shall not pass from the law” till the things wanting
are added to it, but “till all be done.”’l And uttered as
the declaration was when men’s minds were fermenting
with all manner of opinions respecting the intentions of
Jesus, it was plainly meant to assure them that He
stood in a friendly relation to the law and the prophets,
and could no more, in His teaching than in His work-
ing, do what would be subversive of their design.
They must find in Him only their fulfilment. To
render His meaning still more explicit, our Lord gives
it the advantage of two specific illustrations, one hypo-
thetical, the other actual. ‘Should anyone, therefore
(He says, in ver. 19), annul (not break, as in the English
version, but put away, abrogate, annul, lu<s^) one of these
commandments—the least of them—and teach men so,
he shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven;’ such
is the exact rendering, and it very expressly asserts the
validity of what was found in preceding revelations,
down even to their least commands, in the kingdom pre-
sently to be set up. There was to be no antagonism
calls parallel instances for another meaning; but they are not parallel;
for the question is not what plhrou?n by itself, but what plhrou?n no<mon signifies.
The expression has but one ascertained meaning.
1 Contra Faustum. L. xvii. sec. 6. I have given only what he says on the
expression of our Lord; his mode of explaining the fulfilment, though not in-
correct, is somewhat partial and incomplete:—Ipsa lex cum impleta est, gratia
et veritas facta est. Gratia pertinet ad charitatis plenitudinem, veritas ad pro-
phetiarum
impletionem.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 225
between the new and the old; so far from it, that any one
who had failed to discern and appreciate the righteous-
ness embodied in the smaller things of the law, and on
that account would have them set aside—for so plainly
must the words be understood—he should exhibit such
a want of accordance with the spirit of the new economy,
he should so imperfectly understand and sypathize with
its claims of righteousness, that he might lay his account
to be all but excluded from a place in the kingdom. But
it was quite conceivable, that one might in a certain
sense not except even to the least, and yet be so defective
in the qualities of true righteousness, as to stand in an
altogether false position toward the greater and more
important. There were well-known parties in such a
position at that particular time; and by a reference to
what actually existed among them, our Lord furnishes
another, and to His audience, doubtless, a more startling,
illustration.' For I say unto you,’ He adds, ‘that except
your righteousness should exceed (perisseu<s^, go beyond,
overpass) that of the Scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ The question is
now one of total unfitness and consequent exclusion. In
the preceding and hypothetical statement, our Lord had
declared how even a comparatively small antagonism to
the righteousness of the law should inevitably lower one’s
position in respect to the kingdom; and now, vindicating
this stringency, as well as exemplifying and confirming it,
He points to the mistaken and defective standard preva-
lent among the more conspicuous religionists of the time
as utterly incompatible with any place whatever in the
kingdom. The Scribes are joined with the Pharisees in
upholding the righteousness in question—the one as
representatives of its defective teaching, the other as
examples of its inadequate doing. The Scribes under-
226 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
stood and taught superficially, adhering to the mere
letter of requirement, and hence unduly magnifying the
little, relatively undervaluing or neglecting the great.
The Pharisees, in like manner, practised superficially,
intent mainly on the proprieties of outward observance,
doing the works of law only in so far as they seemed to
be expressly enjoined, and doing them without love,
without life—hence leaving its greater things in reality
undone. A righteousness of this description fell altogether
below what Jesus, as the Head of the new dispensation,
would require of His followers, below also, it is implied,
what was taught in the law and the prophets; for while
He could place Himself in perfect accord with the one,
He entirely repudiated any connection with the other:
the kingdom, as to the righteousness recognised and
expected in it, was to rise on the foundation of the law
and the prophets; but for anyone to stand on the plat-
form of the Scribes and Pharisees, was to belong to an
essentially different sphere.
Now two conclusions seem plainly to flow from this
part of our Lord’s teaching. One is, that He must have
had chiefly in view the moral elements of the old economy,
or the righteousness expressed in its enactments:—I do
not say simply the ten commandments; for though these
always occupied the foremost place in discourses on the
law, did so also here (as appears from the examples pre-
sently referred to by our Lord), yet one can scarcely
think of them when a ‘least’ is spoken of, as they one
and all belonged to the fundamental statutes of the
kingdom. Yet, as it is of the law, in connection with
and subservient to righteousness, that our Lord speaks,
primary respect must be had to the Decalogue, and, in
so far as matters of a ceremonial and judicial nature were
included, to these only as designed to inculcate and
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 227
enforce the principles of holy living; that is, not as mere
outward forms or civil regulations, but as the means and
the measure of practical goodness. For, otherwise, our
Lord’s teaching here would be at variance with what He
taught elsewhere, and with the truth of things. What
He said, for example, on the subject of defilement, that
this does not depend upon corporeal conditions and
questions of food, but simply on the state of the heart
and the issues which proceed from it, formally considered,
was undoubtedly an infringing upon the lesser things of
the law; but not so really, for it was merely a penetrat-
ing through the shell into the kernel, and in direct terms
pressing upon the conscience the lessons intended to be
conveyed by the law’s carnal ordinances. If the letter
fell away, it was only that the spirit might become more
clear and prominent. And so in regard to all the ritual
observances and factitious distinctions associated with
the religion of the Old Covenant—while an entire change
was hinted at by our Lord, and in His name was after-
wards introduce—the commands imposing them were
by no means dishonoured, since the righteousness, for
the sake of which these commands were given, was still
cared for, and even more thoroughly secured than it
could be by them. Rightly viewed, the change was
more properly a fulfilling than an abrogating; an abro-
gating, indeed, formally, yet a fulfilling or establishing
in reality.
Another conclusion which evidently flows from the
statements made by our Lord respecting His own relation
and that of His kingdom to the law and the prophets, is
that the distinctions which He proceeds to draw, in the
Sermon on the Mount, between what had been said in
earlier times on several points of moral and religious
duty,
and what He now said, must have respect not to
228 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
the teaching, strictly speaking, of the law and the pro-
phets, but to the views currently entertained of that
teaching, or the false maxims founded on it. After so
solemnly asserting His entire harmony with the law and
the prophets, and His dependence on them, it would
manifestly have been to lay Himself open to the charge
of inconsistence, and actually to shift the ground which
He professedly occupied in regard to them, if now He
should go on to declare, that, in respect to the great
landmarks of moral and religious duty, they said one
thing, and He said another. This is utterly incredible;
and we must assume, that in every instance where a
precept of the law is quoted among the things said in
former times, even though no improper addition is
coupled with it (as at vers. 27 and 33), there still was an
unwarrantable or quite inadequate view commonly taken
of them, against which our Lord directs His authoritative
deliverance, that He might point the way to the proper
height of spiritual attainment. This view, which the
very nature of the case may be said to demand, is also
confirmed by the formula with which the sayings in
question are introduced: ‘Ye have heard that it was
said to them of old time’ (toi?j a]rxaio<j, to the ancients ).1
1 Commentators are still divided on the construction here, whether the
expression should be taken in the dative or the ablative sense—to the ancients,
or by them. The general tendency of opinion, however, is decidedly in favour
of the former; and though the sense does not materially differ whichever con-
struction is adopted, yet various philological considerations determine for the
dative. (1.) The verb (obsol. r[e<w) is used with great frequency in Matthew’s
Gospel in the passive, but always (unless the cases in chap. v. be exceptions)
with a preposition, u[po< or dia<, when the parties by whom the things spoken are
mentioned—they were spoken by or through such an one. (2.) In the other
passages of Scripture, in which precisely e]r]r[eqh is used, followed as here by
words in the dative without a preposition (Rom. ix. 12, 26; Gal. iii. 16;
Rev. vi. 11; ix. 4), it is beyond doubt the dative import that must be re-
tained. (3.) If it were to be read by the ancients, then a special emphasis must
rest upon the ancients; this will stand in formal contrast to the ‘I’ of our Lord.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 229
It is a very general mode of expression, not such as we
should have expected, If only the deliverances of Scrip-
ture were referred to, or the persons who at first hand
received them from the messengers of Heaven. These
were the honoured fathers of the covenant-people, not
the ancients merely, who at some indefinite period in the
past had heard and thought after some particular manner.
Hence, while they all turn on certain precepts of the
law, these, in two or three of the cases, are expressly
coupled with later additions, indicative of the superficial
view that was taken of them;l and, throughout all the
cases adduced, it is evident from our Lord’s mode of
handling them, that it is not the law per se that is under
consideration, but the law as understood and expounded
according so the frigid style of Rabbinical interpretation
—by persons who looked no further than its form of
sound words, who thought that to kill had to do with
nothing but actual murder, and that a neighbour could
be only one dwelling in good fellowship beside us; who,
in short, turned the law of God’s righteousness, which,
like its Divine Author, must be pervasively spiritual,
The collocation of the words, however, would in that case have been different;
it would have been o[ti< toi?j a]rxaio<j e]r]r[eqh, not o!ti er]r[eqh toi?j a]rxaioi<j. Not only
so, but in most of the repetitions of the formula, in v. 27, according to what seems ,in
the best reading, and in v. 31, 38, 43, according to the received text, the toi?j
a]rxaioi<j is wholly omitted—shewing that it was on the saying of the things, not
on the persons who said them, that the contrast mainly turns. (4.) It may
certainly be regarded as a confirmation of this being, at least, the most natural
and obvious construction (which itself is, in such a matter, of some moment),
that it is the one adopted by all the leading Greek commentators—Chrysostom,
Theophylact, Euthymius. It is that also of the Syriac and Vulgate. Beza
was the first, I believe, who formally proposed the rendering by them of old
time, taking the simple toi?j a]rxaioi<j as equivalent to u[po> toi?j a]rxaioi<j.
1 These are, v. 21, after ‘Thou shalt not kill,’ ‘And whosoever shall kill shall
be liable to the judgment;’ and v. 33-36, in regard to several kinds of oaths;
and v. 43, after ‘Thou shalt love thy neighbour,’ ‘Thou shalt hate thine
enemy.’
230 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
into a mere political code or ecclesiastical rubric. It is
of the law, as thus unduly curtailed, evacuated of its
proper meaning, treated by the Scribes or letter-men
(grammatei?j) as itself but a letter (gra<mma), that Christ
speaks, and, setting His profound and far-reaching view
in opposition to theirs, proclaims, ‘But I say unto you.’
Never on any occasion did Jesus place Himself in such
antagonism to Moses; and least of all could He do so
here, immediately after having so emphatically repudiated
the notion; that He had come to nullify the law and the
prophets, or to cancel men’s obligation to any part of
the righteousness they inculcated. It is to free this
righteousness from the restrictive bonds that had been
laid upon it, and bring it out in its proper breadth and
fulness, that our Lord’s expositions are directed. And
as if to guard against any wrong impressions being pro-
duced by what He now said—to shew that His views of
righteousness were in strict agreement with what is
written in the law and the prophets, and that the germ
of all was already there, He distinctly connected with
them, at a subsequent part of His discourse, His own
enunciation of the law of brotherly love, in what has been
called its finest form, ‘Whatsoever ye would that men
should do to you, do ye even so to them; for this is the
law and the prophets’ (Matt. vii. 12).1
1 I am convinced the connection of our Lord’s discourse—the relation of
the specific illustrations, given in v. 21-48, to the fundamental positions which
they were brought to illustrate, v. 17-20—will admit of no other construction
than the one now given. From early times, others have been adopted—by the
Manichæans, who sought to found on the illustrative expositions an absolute
contrariety between Christ and Moses; and by the great body of the Greek
and Romish theologians, followed in later times by the Socinian, Arminian,
and rationalistic expositors, who understand them of a relative antagonism—
namely, that the law as given by Moses was good as far as it went, but was
carnal and imperfect, and so needed supplementing and enlarging by Christ.
Christ,
consequently, according to this view, placed His sayings in contrast with
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 231
At the same time, there is nothing in all this to pre-
vent us from believing, as, indeed, it is next to impossible
for anyone to avoid feeling, that an advance was made
by our Lord in His own wonderful exposition of the law
—if only that advance is confined to the clearer light
which is thrown on the meaning of its precepts, and the
higher form which is given to their expression. The
Decalogue itself, and the legislation growing out of it,
were in their form adapted to a provisional state of
the law itself, as well as with the external legalisms of the Scribes and Phari-
sees; these, in fact, are regarded as in the main the true exponents of the
Sinaitic law—contrary to the whole tenor of our Lord’s representations of
them, and the position He took up with reference to them. The other, and
what I take to be the correct view, began to be distinctly unfolded and firmly
maintained by Augustine, in his contendings with the Manichæans. This is
the sense expressed in the passage already quoted from his writings, at p. 224;
and in the treatise there referred to, L. xix. 27, he brings out the same meaning
at still greater length, illustrating as well as stating this to have been Christ’s
object, either to give the explanation of the law that was needed, or to secure
its better observance—omnia ex Hebraeorum lege commemoravit, ut quiquid
ex persona sua insuper loqueretur vel ad expositionem requirendam valeret, si
quid illa obscure posuisset, vel ad tutius conservandum quod illa voluisset.
The Protestant church, generally, in its sounder representatives, took the same
view,—Luther, Calvin, Chemnitz (who speaks of the whole passage being cor-
rupted by those who think, Christum hanc suam explicationem opponere ipsi
legi divinae), latterly, Stier, Meyer, Fritzsche, Olshausen, even De Wette,
Bleek, Ewald, and others of a like stamp; so also Tholuck, who gives a
lengthened review of opinions on the subject, and expresses his own view, and
that of many other of the best expositors thus:—‘The object of the Saviour is
twofold; on the one hand, He seeks to exhibit the Mosaic law in its deeper
import as the moral norm of the righteousness of His kingdom; on the other
hand, He aims at an exposure of the laxer Pharisaic righteousness of His con-
temporaries, shewing how inadequate it was to attain the high end in view.’
Neander, Hofmann, and several others of note, have espoused the other view.
In our own country, Mr Liddon (Bampton Lecture for 1866, p. 252) presents
it with rhetorical confidence; while Mr Plumptre (‘Christ and Christendom,’
1866, p. 235), substantially concurs with the old Protestant interpretation,
looking on our Lord’s discourse ‘as a protest against the popular ethics of the
Scribes and Pharisees, professing to be based upon the law, but representing it
most imperfectly.’ Alford would take a middle course, but fails to make his
meaning quite intelligible. The contrast, he thinks, is ‘not between the law
misunderstood, and the law rightly understood, but between the law and its
232 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
things; they had to serve the end of a disciplinary insti-
tution, and as such had to assume more both of an
external and a negative character, than could be regarded
as ideally or absolutely the best. And it was only what
might have been expected in the progress of things—
when that which is perfect was come—that while the
law in its great principles of moral obligation and its
binding power upon the conscience remained, these
should have had an exhibition given to them somewhat
corresponding to the noon-day period of the church’s
ancient exposition, which in their letter, and as given, were vain, and the same
as spiritualized by Chnst;’ but the Divine law, when taken in its letter (that
is, we presume, as a mere outward regimen), is misunderstood, for it never
was meant to be so taken; psalmists and prophets, as well as Christ, protested
against that view of it; and then the more spiritual a law is, if left simply as
law, the more certain is it to be vain as to any saving results.
The parts in our Lord’s sermon which have most the appearance of contra-
riety to the old law, are what is said about swearing (v. 33-36), about the law of
recompense (v. 38-42); also, in a future discourse, what is said on the law of
divorce (Matt. xix. 1-9). In regard to the first, however, the specific oaths of
the Jews referred to by Christ, taken in connection with His later reference to
them in Matt. xxiii. 16-22, shew clearly enough that it is a prevailing abuse
and corruption of the law that was in view. And, as Harless remarks, ‘What
the Lord, the Giver of the law, had commanded in the Old Covenant, namely,
that one should swear in His name (Deut. vi. 13, 18, 20; Ex. xxii. 11), that
could not be forbidden in the new by the Lord, the Fulfiller of the law, without
destroying instead of fulfilling it. Rather in this precisely consists the fulfil-
ment, that what the law commanded without being able properly to secure the
fulfilment, that has now come in the Gospel, and, in consequecce, the precept
respecting swearing has also reached its fulfilment. It is just what Jeremiah
intimated, when he predicted that Israel, after being converted, would swear in
a true and holy manner (iv. 1, 2). What is prohibited in the Gospel of
Matthew are light and frivolous forms of swearing, without any religious feel-
Ing’ (Ethik, sec. 39). As to the law of recompense (not revenge), as meant by
Moses, it is substantially in force still, and must be so in all well-regulated
communities. (See in Lect. IV.) What our Lord taught in connection with it
was, that men in their private relations, and as exponents of love, should not
regard that judicial law as exhausting their duty: to do so was to misapply it.
They should consider how, by forbearance and well-doing, they might benefit a
brother, instead of always exacting of him their due. The case of divorce has
certain difficulties connected with it, yet rather from what in the Old Testament
was
not enacted, permitted merely, than what was. But see in Lect. IV.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 233
history, and the son-like freedom of her spiritual stand-
ing. Accordingly, our Lord does, in the Sermon on the
Mount, and in other parts of His teaching, bring out in a
manner never heretofore done, the spirituality of the law
of God—shews how, just from being the revelation of
His will who is Himself a Spirit, and, as such, necessarily
has a predominant respect to spiritual states and acts,
it reaches in all its precepts to the thoughts and intents
of the heart, and only meets with the obedience it de-
mands, when a pure, generous, self-sacrificing love
regulates men’s desires and feelings, as well as their
words and actions. Hence, things pertaining to the
inner man have here relatively a larger place than of old;
and, as a natural sequel, there is more of the positive,
less of the negative in form; the mind is turned con-
siderably more upon the good that should be done, and
less upon the evil to be shunned. It is still but a differ-
ence in degree, and is often grossly exaggerated by
those who have a particular theory of the life of Christ
to make out—as by the author of ‘Ecce Homo,’ who
represents the morality enjoined in the Pentateuch as
adapted only to half-savage tribes of the desert, the
morality even of Isaiah and the prophets as ‘narrow,
antiquated, and insufficient for the needs’ of men in the
Gospel age, while, in the teaching of Christ, all becomes
changed ‘from a restraint to a motive. Those who
listened to it passed from a region of passive into a
region of active morality. The old legal formula began,
“Thou shalt not;” the new begins with “Thou shalt,”’
etc.1 That this style of representation, in its comparative
estimate of the new and the old, goes to excess, it would
not be difficult to shew; but the mere circumstance that
Mr J. S. Mill charges the expounders of Christian morality
1 ‘Ecce Homo,’ ch. xvi.
234 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
with presenting an ideal essentially defective, because
‘negative rather than positive, passive rather than active,
innocence rather than nobleness, abstinence from evil
rather than energetic pursuit of good,’ is itself a proof
that elements of this description cannot be wanting in
the Christian system.1 In truth, in the New Testament
as well as in the Old, the prohibitory is perpetually
alternating with the hortatory, the shall not with the
shall; even in the Sermon on the Mount the one is
nearly of as frequent occurrence as the other, and must
be so in every revelation of spiritual obligation and moral
duty that is suited to men with corrupt natures, and com-
passed about with manifold temptations. It must lay a
restraint upon their inclinations to evil, as well as direct
and stimulate their efforts to what is good. And the
difference between the discourses of Christ and the
earlier Scriptures on this and the other point now under
consideration, cannot be justly exhibited as more than
a relative one—adapted to a more advanced period
of the Divine dispensations. It is such, however, that
no discerning mind can fail to perceive it; and when
taken in connection with the altogether peculiar illus-
trations given of it in the facts of Gospel history,
places the Christian on a much higher elevation than
that possessed by ancient Israel as to a clear and
1 ‘Essay on Liberty,’ p. 89. It is due, however, to Mr Mill to state that,
while his language in the passage referred to is not free from objection, he yet
distinguishes between the teaching of Christ in this respect, and what he de-
signates ‘the so-called Christian morality’ of later times. The writer of
‘ Ecce Deus,’ in his attack on Mill (p. 261), has not sufficiently attended to this
distinction. In another treatise, Mr Mill appears to find, in the fundamental
principles of the Gospel, all that he himse1f teaches in morals. ‘In the golden
rule of Jesus of Nazareth we read the complete spirit of the ethics of utility.
To do as one would be done by, and to love one’s neighbour as one’s-self,
constitute the ideal perfection of utilitarian morality.’—‘On Utilitarianism,’
p.24.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 235
comprehensive acquaintance with the obligations of moral
duty.l
In perfect accordance with the views respecting the
moral law exhibited in the Sermon on the Mount and
widely different from what He said of the ceremonial
institutions, was the action of our Lord in regard to the
Sabbatism enjoined in the fourth command of the Deca-
logue. He gives no hint whatever of its coming aboli-
tion, but, on the contrary, recognised its Divine ordination,
and merely sought to establish a more wholesome and
rational observance of it than was dreamt of or admitted
by the slaves of the letter. On a variety of occasions
He wrought cures on the Sabbath-day—so often, indeed,
that the action must have been taken on purpose to con-
vey what He deemed salutary and needful instruction
for the time; and on one occasion He allowed His dis-
ciples to satisfy their hunger by plucking the ears of
corn as they passed through a field.2 His watchful
1 The view now given is not, I think, materially different from that of
Wuttke, who conceives something more to have been intended by Christ in
His exposition of the law, than a mere repudiation of the false interpretations
of the Pharisees, namely, such an elucidation and deepening of the import, as
to constitute a further development, or spiritual enlargement (‘Christliche
Sittenlehre,’ sec. 208). He still does not mean that anything absolutely new
was introduced, or a sense put upon the law which was not contained in the
Decalogue; for he had just declared the ‘law of the Old Covenant to be
simply the moral law, valid for all men and times,’ comprehensive of all
righteousness, so that he who should keep it in spirit and in truth would be
altogether righteous before God (sec. 204). But in Christ’s discourse it got a
clearer, profounder exposition, and was thrown also into a higher form. It is
much the same also, apparently, that is meant by Müller when he speaks of
the Decalogue expressing the eternal principles of true morality, and, there-
fore, always fitted to bring about the knowledge of sin and repentance; while
still a far more developed and deeper knowledge of the moral law is given to
the Christian Church through the efficacy of the holy prototype of Christ and
the Holy Spirit, than could have been communicated by Moses to the children
of Israel (On ‘Sin,’ B. I. P. I. c. 1). For this includes, besides law strictly so
called, all supplementary means and privileges.
2 Matt. xii. 1-14; Mark i. 23, 24, iii. 1-5; Luke vi. 1-10, xiii. 10-16; John v., ix.
236 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
adversaries were not slow in marking this procedure, and
charged our Lord with profaning the sacred rest of the
Sabbath. How does He meet their reproaches? Not
by quarrelling with the Divine command, or seeking to
relax its obligation; but by explaining its true purport
and design, as never meant to interfere with such actions
as He performed or sanctioned. In proof of this He
chiefly appeals to precedents and practices which His
adversaries themselves could not but allow, if their minds
had been open to conviction—such as David being per-
mitted in a time of extremity to eat the shew-bread, or
themselves rescuing a sheep when it had fallen into a pit
on the Sabbath—things necessary to the preservation and
support of life; or things, again, of a sacred nature, such
as circumcising children on the legal day, though it
might happen to be a Sabbath, doing the work at the
Temple connected with the appointed service, which in
some respects was greater on the seventh than the other
days of the week, yea, at times involved all the labour
connected with the slaying and roasting of the Paschal
lamb for tens of thousands of people. With such things
the parties in question were quite familiar; and they
should have understood from them, that the prescribed
rest of the Sabbath was to be taken, not in an absolute,
but in a relative sense—not as simply and in every case
cessation from work, irrespective of the ends for which it
might be done, but cessation from ordinary or servile
work, in order that things of higher moment, things
touching on the most important interests of men, might
be cared for. Its sacred repose, therefore, must give
way to the necessary demands of life, even of irra-
tional life, and to whatever is required to bring relief
from actual distress and trouble. It must give way
also
to that kind of work which is more peculiarly con-
LECT. VII.]
HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 237
nected with the service of God and with men’s restored
fellowship with the life and blessedness of Heaven; for
to promote this was the more special design of the Sab-
batical appointment. So, plainly, existing facts shewed
even in Old Testament times, though the Pharisees,
in their zeal for an abstract and imperious legalism
missed the proper reading of them. Jesus grasped,
as usual, the real spirit of the institution; for, we are
to remember, He is explaining the law of the Sabbath
as it then stood, not superseding it by another. He
would have them to understand that, as it is not the
simple abstraction of a man’s property (which may in
certain circumstances be done lawfully, and for his own
temporal good), that constitutes a violation of the eighth
commandment, but a selfish and covetous appropriation of
it by fraud or violence; so, in regard to the fourth, the
prohibition of work had respect only to what was at
variance with its holy and beneficent designs. ‘The
Sabbath was made for man’—with a wise and gracious
adaptation to the requirements of his complex nature,
as apt to be wearied with the toils, and in his spirit
dragged downward by the cares of life; ‘not man for
the Sabbath,’ as if it were an absolute and independent
authority, that must hold its own, however hardly in
doing so it might bear on the wants and interests of
those placed under its control. It has an aim, a high
moral aim, for the real wellbeing of mankind; and by a
conscientious regard to this must everything, in regard
to its outward observance, be ruled.
Such is the view given by our Lord on the law of the
Sabbath, speaking as from the ground of law, and doing
the part merely of a correct expounder of its meaning;
but a thought is introduced and variously expressed, as
from His own higher elevation, in harmony with the
238 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
spiritual aspect of the subject He had presented, and
pointing to still further developments of it. The Temple,
He had said, has claims of service, which it was no proper
desecration of the Sabbath, but the reverse, to satisfy;
and ‘a greater than the Temple was there.’ ‘The Temple
yields to Christ, the Sabbath yields to the Temple, there-
fore the Sabbath yields to Christ’—so the sentiment is
syllogistically expressed by Bengel; but yields, it must
be observed, in both cases alike, only for the performance
of works not antagonistic, but homogeneous, to its nature.
Or, as it is again put, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the
Sabbath.’ Made, as the Sabbath was, for man, there
necessarily belongs to man, within certain limits, a re-
gulating power in respect to its observance, so as to
render it more effectually subservient to its proper ends.
But this power is supremely resident in Him, who is the
Son of Man, in whom Humanity attains to its true ideal
of goodness, whose will is in all things coincident with the
will of God, and who, like the Father, works even while
He rests.1 He is Lord of the Sabbath, and, as such, has
a right to order everything concerning it, so as to make
it, in the fullest sense, a day of blessing for man—a
right, therefore, if He should see fit, to transfer its
observance from the last day of the week to the first,
that it might be associated with the consummation of
His redemptive work, and to make it, in accordance with
the impulsive life and energy thereby brought in, more
than in the past, a day of active and hallowed employ-
ment for the good of men. So much was certainly
implied in the claim of our Lord in reference to the
Sabbath; but as regards the existence of such a day, its
stated place in the ever-recurring weekly cycle, which in
its origin was coeval with the beginning of the world,
`1 John v. 17.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 239
which as a law was inscribed among the fundamental
precepts of the Decalogue, which renders it on the one
side a memorial of the paradise that has been lost, and
on the other a pledge of the paradise to be restored—in
this respect nothing of a reactionary nature fell from our
Lord, nor was any principle advanced which can justly
be said to point in such a direction.
The same spirit substantially discovers itself in the
other occasional references made by our Lord to the
moral law of the Old Covenant, as in those already
noticed; that is, there appears in them the same pro-
found regard to the authoritative teaching of the law,
coupled with an insight into its depth and spirituality of
meaning, which was little apprehended by the superficial
teachers and formalists of the time. Such, for example,
was the character of our Lord’s reference to the fifth com-
mand of the Decalogue, when, replying to the charge of
the Pharisees against His disciples for disregarding the
tradition of the elders about washing before meat, He
retorted on them the greatly more serious charge of
making void the law of God by their traditions—teach-
ing that it was a higher duty for a son to devote his
substance as an offering to God, than to apply it to the
support of his parents—thereby virtually dishonouring
those whom God had commanded him, as a primary duty,
1 It needs scarcely to be said what an interval separates the sayings of our
Lord in the Gospels respecting the Sabbath, from the story reported by
Clement of Alexandria about Christ having seen a man working on the
Sabbath, and saying to him, ‘If thou knowest what thou dost, then art thou
blessed; but if thou knowest not, then art thou accursed.’ It was a story
quite in accordance with the spirit of the school to which Clement belonged;
but to call it, as Mr Plumptre does (‘Christ and Christendom,’ p. 237), a
credible tradition of Christ’s ministry, would certainly require some other test
of credibility than accordance with what is written in the Gospels; for
nothing recorded there gives such a licence to the individual will for dis-
regarding
the Sabbath.
240 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
to honour.l The love and reverence due to parents was
thus declared to be more than burnt-offering, and to
have been so determined in the teaching of the law itself.
The right principle of obedience was also brought out,
but with a more general application, and the absolute
perfection of the law announced, as given in one of its
summaries in the Old Testament, when, near the close
of His ministry, and in answer to a question by one of
the better Scribes, Jesus said, ‘The first of all the com-
mandments is, Hear, O Israel, The Lord our God is one
Lord; and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all
thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind,
and with all thy strength: this is the first commandment.
And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy
neighbour as thyself.’ Not only did our Lord affirm,
that ‘on these two commandments hang all the law and
the prophets,’ but that ‘there is none other command-
ment greater than these’2—evidently meaning that in
them was comprised all moral obligation. And when
the Scribe assented to what was said, and added, that to
exercise such love was more than all whole burnt-offer-
ings and sacrifices, Christ expressed His concurrence, and
even pronounced the person who had attained to such
knowledge not far from the kingdom of God. So, too,
on another and earlier occasion, when the rich young
ruler came running to Him with the question, ‘What
good thing he should do, that he might inherit eternal
life?’3 And on still another, when a certain lawyer stood
up and asked, ‘What shall I do to inherit eternal life?’4
On both occasions alike, as the question was respecting
things to be done, or righteousness to be attained, with
the view of grounding a title thereon to eternal life,
1 Matt. xv. 3-6. 2 Matt. xxii. 40; Mark xii. 31.
3 Matt. xix. 16. 4 Luke x. 25.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 241
Christ pointed the inquirers to the written law of God—
in the one case more particularly to the precepts of the
Decalogue, in the other to the two great comprehensive
precepts of supreme love to God and brotherly love to
man; and, in connection with each, affirmed that, if the
commands were fulfilled, life in the highest sense, eternal
life, would certainly be inherited. In other words, by
fulfilling those commands, there would be that conformity
to the pattern of Divine goodness, on which from the
first all right to the possession of life in God’s kingdom
has been suspended. At the same time, our Lord took
occasion to shew, in both the cases, how far His inquirers
were themselves from having reached this ideal excellence,
or even from distinctly apprehending what was actually
included in the attainment.
This surely is enough; for, touching as these declara-
tions do on the great essentials of religion and morality,
they must be understood in their plainest import; and
anything like subtle ingenuity in dealing with them, or
specious theorizings, would be entirely out of place.
Manifestly, the revelation of law in the Old Testament
was, in our Lord’s view, comprehensive of all righteous-
ness—while still, in respect to form, it partook of the
imperfection of the times, and of the provisional economy,
with which it was more immediately connected; and for
bringing clearly out the measure and extent of the obliga-
tions involved in it, we owe much—who can say how
much?—to the Divine insight of Christ, and the truly
celestial light reflected on it by His matchless teaching
and spotless example. In that respect our Lord might
with fullest propriety say, ‘A new commandment I give
unto you, that ye may love one another; as I have loved
you, that ye may so also love one another:’l—new, how-
l John xiii. 34.
242 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. V
ever, not in regard to the command of love taken by
itself, nor in regard to the degree of love, as if one
were required now to love others, not merely as one’s-self,
but above one’s-self—no, but new simply with reference
to the peerless manifestation of love given in His own
person, and the motive thence arising—altogether peculiar
in its force and efficacy—for His people to strive after
conformity to His example. This, indeed, is the highest
glory that can here be claimed for Jesus; and to contend
with some, under the plea of glorifying His Messiahship,
that He must have signalized His appearance on earth
by the introduction of an essentially new and higher
morality, were in effect to dishonour Him; for it would
break at a vital point the continuity of the Divine dis-
pensations, and stamp the revelation of law which, at
an earlier period of His own mediatorial agency, had in
reality come forth from Himself, as in its very nature
faulty—wanting something which it should have had
a reflection of the character of God, and a rule of life
for those who, as members of His kingdom, were called
to love and honour Him.
II. We turn now from what Christ taught to what He
did. And here, still more than in regard to His propheti-
cal agency, He had a mission peculiarly His own to fulfil
for the good of men, yet not the less one which was
defined beforehand, and in a manner ruled, by the pre-
scriptions of law. For the work of Christ as the
Redeemer neither was, nor could be, anything else than
the triumph of righteousness for man over man’s sin.
And, accordingly, in the intimations that had gone before
concerning Him, this characteristic (as formerly noticed)
was made peculiarly prominent: He was to be girt about
with
righteousness, was to be known as the Lord’s right-
LECT. VII.]
HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 243
eous servant, His elect one, in whom His soul should
delight; so that He might be called ‘The Lord our
Righteousness,’ as well as ‘The Lord our Salvation,’
since in Him all that believed should be justified, or
made righteous, and should glory.1 There have been
those who questioned whether the reality corresponded
with these predictions, or with the claims actually put
forth in behalf of Jesus of Nazareth; but nothing has
ever been alleged in support of such insinuations, except
what has been found in mistaken ideas of His mission, or
wrong interpretations put on certain actions of His life.
Certainly, His enemies in the days of His flesh, who
sought most diligently for grounds of moral accusation
against Him, failed to discover them: He Himself boldly
threw out before them the challenge, ‘Which of you con-
vinceth me of sin?’2 ‘The prince of this world,’ He again
said—the great patron and representative of sin—‘cometh,
and hath nothing in me.’3 Higher still, He said to the
Father, ‘I have glorified thee on earth; I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do’4—no indication
whatever of the slightest failure or shortcoming;—and
this assertion of faultless excellence was re-echoed on the
Father’s side, in the word once and again heard from
Heaven, ‘This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well
pleased.’5
It was an altogether strange phenomenon in the
world’s history. ‘What an impression,’ Dorner justly
asks,6 ‘must have been made upon the disciples by Jesus,
whose spirit was full of peace and of an undisturbed
serenity, who never shewed the slightest trace of having
worked Himself into this peaceful state through hard
1 Isa. xi. 5, xlii. 1, liii 11; Jer. xxiii. 6. 2 John viii. 46.
3 John xiv. 30. 4 John xvii. 4. 5 Matt. iii. 17, xvii. 5.
6 ‘Ueber Jesu Stindlose Vollkommenheit,’ p. 34.
244 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
effort and conflict with sin. There was a man in whom
appeared no sign of repentance or of disquietude in regard
to Himself; a man without solicitude for His soul’s salva-
tion, for He is already possessed of eternal life; He lives
as in heaven. No prayer is heard from Him for sin of
His own, nor is any aversion shewn to enter into the
company of publicans and sinners; in the most trying
moments of His life, it becomes manifest that He is with-
out consciousness of sin. This is an unquestionable fact
of history, whatever explanation may be given of it. For
that He set before Him as His life-purpose the deliver-
ance and reconciliation of the world, that for the execution
of this purpose He knew Himself to be committed to
suffer, even to the cross, and that He actually expired in
the consciousness of having at once executed the purpose
and maintained undisturbed His fellowship with God—
this no more admits of denial than that it would have
been an utterly foolish and absurd idea to have thought
of bringing in redemption for others, if He had been
Himself conscious of needing redemption. . . . . Jesus
was conscious of no sin, just because He was no sinner.
He was, though complete man, like God in sinless per-
fection; and though not, like God, incapable of being
tempted, nor perfected from His birth, and so not in that
sense holy, yet holy in the sense of preserving an innate
purity and incorruptness, and through a quite normal
development, in which the idea of a pure humanity comes
at length to realization, and prevents the design of the
world from remaining unaccomplished. The impression
made by Him is that of the free, the true Son of Man—
needing no new birth, but by nature the new-born man,
and no remedial applications, but Himself consciously
possessing the power fitted to render Him the physician
of diseased humanity.’
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 245
Could such an One really be subject to the law? Was
He not rather above it? So some have been disposed to
maintain, with the avowed design of magnifying the name
of Jesus: it has seemed to them as if they were claiming
for Him a higher honour, when they represented Him as
living above law, precisely as others have sought to do
with respect to His teaching above law. But it is a kind
of honour incompatible with the actual position and calling
of Jesus. To have so lived would have been to place
Himself beyond the sphere which properly belongs to
humanity. He could no longer have been the representa-
tive of the morality which we are bound to cultivate;
His standing in relation to spiritual excellence had been
something exceptional, arbitrary; and wherever this
enters, it is not a higher elevation that is reached, but
rather a descent that is made—the sentimental or expe-
dient then takes the place of the absolutely righteous and
good. To be the Lord of the law, and yet in all things
subject to the law’s demands—moving within the bounds
of law, yet finding them to be no restraint; consenting to
everything the law required as in itself altogether right,
and of a free and ready mind doing it as a Son in the
Father’s house, so that it might as well be said the law lived
in Him, as that He lived in the law:—this is the highest
glory which could be won in righteousness by the man
Christ Jesus, and it is the glory which is ascribed to Him
in Scripture. Never do we find Him there asserting for
Himself as a right, or claiming as a privilege, a release
from ordinary obligations; never was that which is dutiful
and good for others viewed as otherwise for Him, or as
bearing less directly on His responsibilities; and in so
far as the work He had to do was peculiar, so much the
more remarkable was the spirit of surrender with which
He yielded Himself to the authority that lay upon Him.
246 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
Of Himself He declared that He was loved of the Father,
because He kept the Father’s commandments;1 and it is
said of Him, in a word which covers the whole of His
earthly career, ‘He was made of a woman, made under
the law,’2 therefore bound to a life-long subjection to its
requirements; bearing throughout the form of a servant,
but bearing it with the heart of a Son. It was, conse-
quently, not His burden, but ‘His meat to do the will of
His Father, and to finish His work;’3 and the spirit in
which He entered on and ever prosecuted His vicarious
service was that expressed in the language long before
prepared for Him, ‘Lo I come: in the volume of the book
it is written of me; I delight to do thy will, O my God;
yea, thy law is within my heart;’4 and if at other times, so
especially when His work of obedience was reaching its cul-
mination, and He was ready to perfect Himself through
the sacrifice of the cross. The necessity of this great act,
and the place it was to hold in His mediatorial agency,
had been from the first foreseen by Him: He knew (so
He declared near the commencement of His ministry)
that He must be lifted up for the salvation of the world.5
When the awful crisis approached, though He had power
either to retain or to lay down His life, the things which
had been written concerning it (He said) must be accom-
plished, that He should be numbered with the trans-
gressors;6 and the humble, earnest entreaty, ‘Father, if
it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless,
not my will but thine be done,’ only shewed how nature
recoiled from the terribleness, yet meekly bowed to the
necessity, of the doom. For here especially lay the
ground of all that He was to secure of good for His
people. Here the work of reconciliation between sinful
1 John x. 17, 18, xv. 11. 2 Gal. iv. 4. 3 John iv. 34.
4 Ps. xl. 7, 8; Heb. x. 7. 5 John iii. 14. 6 Luke xxii. 37.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 247
men and their offended God must be once for all accom-
plished;—and it was accomplished, by His ‘being made
sin for them who knew no sin, that they might be made
the righteousness of God in Him’—or, as it is again put,
by ‘redeeming them from the curse of the law, by being
Himself made a curse for them.’1
It is impossible here to do more than very briefly
glance at this all-important subject; and the less needful,
as it was so fully treated by the esteemed friend who
immediately preceded me in this Lectureship.2 But,
surely, if there be any thing in the record of our Lord’s
work upon earth, in which more than another the lan-
guage employed concerning it should be taken in its
simplest meaning, it must be in what is said of the very
heart of His undertaking—that on which every thing
might be said to turn for the fulfilment of promise, and
the exhibition of Divine faithfulness and truth. And
there can be no doubt, that the representations just
noticed, and others of a like description, concerning the
death of Christ, do in their natural sense carry a legal
aspect; they bear respect to the demands of law, or the
justice of which law is the expression. They declare
that, to meet those demands in behalf of sinners, Christ
bore a judicial death—a death which, while all-undeserved
on the part of Him who suffered, must be regarded as
the merited judgment of Heaven on human guilt. To
be made a curse, that He might redeem men from the
curse of the law, can have no other meaning than to
endure the penalty, which as transgressors of law they
had incurred, in order that they might escape; nor can
the exchange indicated in the words, ‘He was made sin
for us, that we might be made the righteousness of God
1 2 Cor. v. 21; Gal. iii. 13; Rom. v. 8-10.
2 Rev. Dr J. Buchanan. See his Lecture on ‘Justification.’
248 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
in Him,’ be justly understood to import less than that
He, the righteous One, took the place of sinners in suf-
fering, that they might take His place in favour and
blessing. And the stern necessity for the transaction—a
necessity which even the resources of infinite wisdom, at
the earnest cry of Jesus, found it impossible to evade1—
on what could it rest but the bosom of law, whose
violated claims called for satisfaction? Not that God
delights in blood, but that the paramount interests of
truth and righteousness must be upheld, even though
blood unspeakably precious may have to be shed in their
vindication.
There are many who cannot brook the idea of these
legal claims and awful securities for the establishment of
law and right in the government of God; the sacrifice on
the cross has no attraction for them when viewed in such
an aspect; and the utmost ingenuity has been plied, in
recent times more particularly, to accept the language of
Scripture regarding it, and yet eliminate the element
which alone gives it value or consistence. Thus, with
one class, the idea of sacrifice in this connection is identi-
fled with self-denial, with ‘the entire surrender of the
whole spirit and body to God,’ bearing with meek and
uncomplaining patience the impious rage of men, because
it was the will of the Father He, should do so; when other-
wise He might have met it with counter-violence, or used
His supernatural power to save Himself from the humili-
ating ordeal.2 What, however, is gained by such a
mode of representation? It gets rid, indeed, of what is
called a religion of blood, but only to substitute for it a
morality of blood—and a morality of blood grounded
1 Matt. xxvi. 39.
2 So, for example, Maurice in ‘Theological Essays;’ and ‘Ecce Homo’ (p.
48), with some artistic delineations.
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 249
(for aught that we can see) upon no imperative necessity,
nor in its own nature differing from what has been ex-
hibited by some of Christ’s more illustrious disciples.
Such a view has not even a formal resemblance to the
truth as presented in Scripture; it does not come within
sight of the idea of vicarious sin-bearing or atonement, in
any intelligible sense of the terms. Nor is the matter
much improved by laying stress, with some, on the great-
ness of the opposition which the existing state of the
world rendered it needful for Him to encounter—as when
it is said, ‘He came into collision with the world’s evil,
and bore the penalty of that daring. . . . He bore suffer-
ing to free us from what is worse than suffering, sin:
temporal death to save us from death everlasting’
(Robertson). Nor again, with others, by viewing it in a
merely subjective light, and finding the work to consist in
a kind of sympathetic assumption of our guilt, entering
in spirit into the Father’s judgment upon it, and feeling
and confessing for it the sorrow and repentance it is fitted
to awaken in a perfectly holy soul (Campbell); or as
others prefer putting it, by the manifestation of a bur-
dened love, of the moral suffering of God for men’s sins
and miseries, a Divine self-sacrificing love, to overmaster
sin and conquer the human heart (Bushnell, Young, etc.).
In all such representations, which are substantially
one, though somewhat different in form, there is merely
an accommodation of Scripture language to a type of
doctrine that is essentially at variance with it. For when
expressed in unambiguous terms, what does it amount to
but this: That Christ in His views of sin and righteous-
ness, in the virtue of His life, and the sacrifice of His
death, is the beau-ideal of humanity—our great pattern
and example, the purest reflection of the Father’s love
and
goodness? But that is all. If we catch the spirit of
250 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
His antipathy to sin and devotion to righteousness, we
share with Him in His glory; we link ourselves to the
Divine humanity which has manifested itself in Him;
‘God views us favourably as partaking of that holy, per-
fect, and Divine thing, which was once exhibited on
earth; but there is no judicial procedure, no legal
penalty borne by the Saviour, and for His sake remitted
to the guilty; no direct acceptance for them through the
blood of the atonement. And what comfort were such a
Gospel to the conscience-stricken sinner? It is but a
disguised legalism; for such a perfect exhibition of good-
ness in Christ, feeling, doing, suffering, with perfect con-
formity to the mind of God—what is it, considered by
itself, but the law in a concrete and embodied form?
therefore the sinner’s virtual condemnation; the clear
mirror in which the more steadfastly he looks, the more
he must see how far he has gone from the righteousness
and life of God; and if not imputed to him, till he is
conscious of having imbibed its spirit, where shall be his
security against the agitations of fear, or even the agonies
of despair ?
In the great conflict of life, in the grand struggle
which is proceeding, in our own bosoms and the world
around us, between sin and righteousness, the conscious-
ness of guilt and the desire of salvation, it is not in such
a mystified, impalpable Gospel, as those fine-spun theories
present to us, that any effective aid is to be found.
We must have a solid foundation for our feet to stand
on, a sure and living ground for our confidence before
God. And this we can find only in the old church view
of the sufferings and death of Christ as a satisfaction to
God’s justice for the offence done by our sin to His
violated law. Satisfaction, I say emphatically, to God’s
justice—which some, even evangelical writers, seem dis-
LECT. VII.] HOW RELATED TO CHRIST’S WORK ON EARTH. 251
posed to stumble at; they would say, satisfaction to
God’s honour, indeed, but by no means to God’s justice.l
What, then, I would ask, is God’s honour apart from
God’s justice? His honour can be nothing but the reflex
action or display of His moral attributes; and in the
exercise of these attributes, the fundamental and con-
trolling element is justice. Every one of them is con-
ditioned; love itself is conditioned by the demands of
justice; and to provide scope for the operation of love in
justifying the ungodly consistently with those demands,
is the very ground and reason of the atonement—its
ground and reason primarily in the mind of God, and
because there, then also in its living image, the human
conscience, which instinctively regards punishment as
‘the recoil of the eternal law of right against the trans-
gressor,’ and cannot attain to solid peace but through a
medium of valid expiation. So much so, indeed, that wher-
ever the true expiation is unknown, or but partially under-
stood, it ever goes about to provide expiations of its own.
1 The language referred to occurs in Swainson’s ‘Hulsean Lecture,’ p. 234.
But by implication it is also adopted by those who sharply distinguish between
vicarious suffering and vicarious punishment, accepting the former, but reject-
ing the latter, and treating the transference of guilt on which it rests as an
enormity against which common sense revolts. So, no doubt, it is, as repre-
sented, for example, by Mr Jelletlet, in his ‘Moral Difficulties of the Old
Testament,’ pp. 50-99, who holds the idea of guilt and punishment as insepar-
able from the moral qualities of the individual sinner, consequently inalienable.
But Scripture does not so contemplate them, in the passages referred to in the
text, or in Isa. liii. 56; 1 Pet. ii. 24, etc. And the church doctrine of the
atonement undoubtedly is, and has always been, as stated by the younger
Hodge, ‘that the legal responsibilities of His people were by covenant trans-
ferred to Christ, and that He, as Mediator, was regarded and treated accord-
ingly. The sinful act and the sinful nature are inalienable. The guilt, or just
liability to punishment, is alienable, otherwise no sinner can be saved.’—
‘The Atonement,’ chap. xx. Hence the sufferings are penal in their character,
in moral value equivalent and greatly more to the guilt of the redeemed,
though not in all respects identically the same, which they could not pos-
sibly
be.
252 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VII.
Thus has the law been established1—most signally
established by that very feature of the Gospel, which
specially distinguished it from the law—its display of
the redeeming love of God in Christ. ‘Just law indeed,’
to use the words of Milton—
‘Just law indeed, but more exceeding love!
For we by rightful doom remediless,
Were lost in death, till He that dwelt alone,
High throned in secret bliss, for us frail dust
Emptied His glory, even to nakedness;
And that great covenant, which we still transgress,
Entirely satisfied;
And the full wrath beside
Of vengeful justice bore for our excess.’2
Yes; hold fast by this broadly marked distinction, yet
mutual interconnection, between the law and the Gospel;
contemplate the law, or the justice which it reveals and
demands, as finding satisfaction in the atoning work of
Christ; and this work again, by reason of that very satis-
faction, securing an eternal reign of peace and blessing in
the kingdom of God; and then, perhaps, you will not be
indisposed to say of law, as thus magnified and in turn
magnifying and blessing, with one of the profoundest of
our old divines, that ‘her seat is the bosom of God, her
voice the harmony of the world: all things in heaven and
earth do her homage—the very least as feeling her care,
and the greatest as not exempted from her power; both
angels and men and creatures, of what condition soever,
though each in different sort and manner, yet all with
uniform consent, admiring her as the mother of peace
and joy.’3
1 Rom. iii. 31. 2 Milton, Poem on the ‘Crucifixion.’
3 Hooker, ‘Eccl. Polity.’
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 253
LECTURE VIII.
THE RELATION OF THE LAW TO THE CONSTITUTION, THE PRIVI-
LEGES, AND THE CALLING OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH.
HOW Christ, in His mediatorial work, stood related to
the law, and how He bore Himself in respect to it,
we have already seen; and we have now a similar inquiry
to prosecute in connection with the Christian church.
This line of inquiry, in its more essential features, can be
nothing more than the continuation of the one already
pursued. For whatever distinctively belongs to the
Christian church—whether as regards her light, her
privileges, her obligations, or her prospects—it springs
from Christ as its living ground; it is entirely the result
of what He Himself is and accomplished on earth; and
whatever room there might be, when He left the earth,
for more explicit statements or fuller illustrations of the
truth regarding it, in principle all was already there, and
only required, through apostolic agency, to be fitly ex-
pounded and applied, in relation to the souls of men and
the circumstances of the newly constituted society. But
situated as matters then were, with, prejudices and
opinions of an adverse nature so deeply rooted in the
minds of men, and long hallowed associations and practices
that had to be broken up, it was no easy task to get the
truth in its completeness wrought into men’s convictions;
and only gradually, and through repeated struggles with
error and opposition did the apostles of our Lord succeed
254 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
in gaining for the principles of the Gospel a just apprecia-
tion and a firm establishment.
Keeping to the general outline observed in the preced-
ing discussion, we shall, in this fresh line of inquiry,
consider, first, how the Christian scheme of doctrine and
duty was adjusted, under the hand of the apostles, with
reference to things of a ceremonial nature—to a law of
ordinances? and, secondly, what relation it bore to the
great revelation of moral law ?
I. As regards the former of these relations, the way
had been made, so far at least, comparatively plain by
Christ Himself: the law of ordinances, as connected with
the old covenant, now ceased to have any binding autho-
rity. The hour had come when the Temple-worship, with
every ceremonial institution depending on it, should pass
away, having reached their destined end in the death and-
resurrection of Christ. Not immediately, however, did
this truth find its way into the minds even of the apostles,
nor could it obtain a footing in the church without ex-
press and stringent legislation. From the first, the dis-
ciples of our Lord preached in His name the free and full
remission of sins to the penitent and believing, but still
only to such as stood within the bond of the Sinaitic
covenant—the Gospel being viewed, not as properly super-
seding the ancient law of ordinances, but rather as giving
due effect to it—supplying what it was incompetent to
provide. Of what use, then, any more such a law?
Why still continue to observe it? This question, evi-
dently, did not for a time present itself for consideration
to the apostles—their immediate work lying among their
own countrymen in Judea. But it could not be long
kept in abeyance; and such a direction was soon given
to affairs by their Divine head as left them no alternative
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 255
in the matter. The new wine of the kingdom began here
to burst the old bottles first in Stephen and those who
suffered in his persecution—although as to the mode,
perhaps, somewhat prematurely, and with too much
vehemence to reach a settled result. But shortly after-
wards there came the remarkable success of the Gospel in
Samaria, with gifts from the Holy Ghost attesting and
sealing the work; and following upon that, the super-
natural vision granted to Peter of the sheet let down
from heaven with all manner of beasts, unclean and clean
alike, immediately explained and exemplified, under the
special guidance of the Spirit, by the reception into the
Christian church of the heathen family of Cornelius.
These things forced on a crisis in spite of earlier predic-
tions; and by conclusive facts of Divine ordination shewed,
that now Jew and Gentile were on a footing as regards
the blessings of Christ’s salvation; that, as a matter of
course, the observances of the ancient ritual had ceased
in God’s sight to be of any practical avail. The dis-
covery fell as a shock on the minds of Jewish believers.
They did not hesitate to charge Peter with irregularity
or unfaithfulness for the part he had acted in it; and
though the objectors were for the time silenced by the
decisive proofs he was able to adduce of Divine warrant
and approval, yet the legal spirit still lived and again
broke forth, especially when it was seen how the Gentile
converts increased in number, and the church at Antioch,
chiefly composed of such converts, was becoming a kind
of second centre of Christian influence, and of itself send-
ing forth mission-agencies to plant and organize churches
in other regions of heathendom.1 It hence became
necessary to give forth a formal decision on the matter
and a council of the apostles and elders was held for the
1 Acts xiii., xiv.
256 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
explicit purpose of determining whether, along with faith
in Christ, it was necessary in order to salvation that men
should be circumcised and keep the law of Moses.l It is
not needful here to go into the details of this council; but
the judgment of the assembly as to the main point at
issue was clear and peremptory—namely, that the legal
observances were no longer binding, and that Gentile be-
lievers should only be enjoined so far to respect the feel-
ings and usages of their Jewish brethren, as to abstain,
not merely from the open licentiousness which custom
had made allowable in heathendom, but also from liberties
in food which those trained under the law could not re-
gard otherwise than as dangerous or improper. Notwith-
standing this decision, however, so tenaciously did the
old leaven cleave to the Jewish mind, that the ancient
observances retained their place in Jerusalem till the city
and temple were laid in ruins; and the Judaizing spirit
even insinuated itself into some of the Gentile churches,
those especially of Galatia. But it only led to a more
vigorous exposure and firm denunciation of the error
through the apostle to the Gentiles—who affirmed, that
now neither circumcision nor uncircumcision availed any
thing for salvation, but faith, or the regeneration which
comes through faith; that if men betook to circumcision
and the Jewish yoke to secure their spiritual good, Christ
should profit them nothing; that the teaching which led
to the imposition of such a yoke was really another gospel,
not to be encouraged, but anathematized by all who
knew the mind of Christ.2 And the cycle of Christian
instruction on the subject was completed by the explana-
tion given in the epistle to the Hebrews of the general
nature and design of the Old Testament ritual, as at once
fulfilled and abolished in Christ. So that there was here
1 Acts xv. 2 Gal. i. 6, 9, ii. 14, etc.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 257
on the negative side, a very full revelation and authorita-
tive deliverance of the will of God.1
This result, however, not unnaturally gives rise to
another question. If the new state and spiritual life of
Christians was thus expressly dissociated from the old
law of ordinances, was it not directly linked to another
taking its place? The answer to this may be variously
given, according to the sense in which it is understood.
We have no law of ordinances in the New Testament
writings at all corresponding to that which is contained
in the Old. There was a fulness and precision formerly
in the ceremonials of worship, because these belonged to
a provisional and typical economy, and required to be
adjusted with Divine skill to the coming realities for
which they were intended to prepare. But the realities
themselves having come, there is no longer any need for
1 The considerations adduced in the text plainly shew that the apostles, in
the later period of their agency, were of one mind as to the cessation of the
ceremonial law in its binding form even upon Jewish Christians; while still
they continued, especially when resident in Jerusalem, to observe its provisions
and take part in its more peculiar services. They did so, of course, from no
feeling of necessity, but partly from custom, and partly also, apparently indeed
still more, from regard to the strong prejudices of their less enlightened
brethren. Of these there were multitudes, as James intimated to Paul (Acts xxi.
20), who were zealous of the law, and actuated by strong jealousy toward Paul
himself because of the freedom maintained alike in his teaching and his ex-
ample from the legal observances. They were in the position of those described
by our Lord in Luke v. 39—like persons who, having been accustomed to old
wine, did not straightway desire new, although in this case the new was really
better. But the apostles felt that it was necessary to deal tenderly with them,
lest, by a too sudden wrench from their old associations, their faith in the Gospel
might sustain to great a shock. They therefore pursued a conciliatory policy,
doubtless waiting and looking for the time when the Lord Himself would
interpose, and, by the prostration of the Temple and the scattering of the Jewish
nation, would formally take the Old Covenant institutions out of the way, and
render their observance in great measure impossible. The history of the early
church but too clearly proves how necessary this solemn dispensation was for
the Christian church itself, and how dangerous an element even the partial
observance of the old law to some sections of the Jewish believers after the
destruction of the Temple, became to the purity of their faith in Christ.
258 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
such carefully adjusted observances. Hence, neither by
our Lord Himself, nor by His apostles, have any definite
appointments been made to things which were of great
importance under the law—to the kind of place, for
example, in which the members of the Christian community
were to meet for worship—or the form of service they
were to observe when they met—or the officials who were
to conduct it, and whether any particular mode of conse-
cration were required to fit them for doing so. Even in
those ordinances of the new dispensation, which in char-
acter approached most nearly to the old—the Sacraments
of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper—while no doubt is left
as to the permanent place they were to occupy in the
Christian church, how widely different is the manner of
their appointment from that of the somewhat correspond-
ing ordinances of Circumcision and the Passover? In
Circumcision, the precise thing to be done is prescribed,
and the precise day also on which it must be done; and
in the Passover, the kind of sacrifice to be provided, the
time when, and the place where it was to be killed, the
modes of using the blood and of preparing the food, the
manner also in which the feast was to be partaken, and
even the disposal that was to be made of the fragments.
In the Christian sacraments, on the other hand, the sub-
stance alone is brought into view—the kind of elements
to be employed, and the general purport and design with
which they are to be given and received; all, besides, as
to the time, the place, the subordinate acts, the ministerial,
agency, is left entirely unnoticed, as but of secondary
moment, or capable of being readily inferred from the
nature of the ordinances. The converts on the day of
Pentecost were baptized—so the inspired record distinctly
testifies; but where, how, or by whom, is not indicated.
The Ethiopian eunuch was both converted and baptized
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 259
by Philip, one of the seven, who, so far as ordination was
concerned, were ordained merely to ‘serve tables;’ and the
person who baptized Paul is simply designated ‘a certain
disciple at Damascus.’ When the Spirit had manifestly
descended on Cornelius and his household, Peter ‘com-
manded them to be baptized in the name of the Lord;’
but the statement implies that the brethren accompanying
Peter, rather than Peter himself, administered the rite.
Paul, even when claiming to have founded the church at
Corinth, expressly disclaims the administration of baptism
to more than a very few—this being not what he had
specially received his apostolic mission to perform: ‘Christ
sent him not to baptize, but to preach the Gospel.’ 1
He even thanks God he had baptized but a few; could
he possibly have done so, if, in his view, baptizing had
been all one with regenerating? When he speaks of
those whom he was the means of regenerating, he says
they were ‘begotten through the Gospel.’2 And in the
pastoral instructions given by him through Timothy and
Titus to the bishops or presbyters of the apostolic
church, we read only of what they should be as men of
Christian piety and worth, and how they should minister
and apply the word; but not so much as a hint is
dropt as to their exclusive right to dispense and give
validity to the Christian sacraments. All shewing, as
clearly as could well be done by the facts of history, that
nothing absolutely essential in this respect depends upon
circumstances of person, and mode, and time; and that
whatever restrictions might then be observed, or after-
wards introduced, it could only be for the sake of order
and general edification, not to give validity or impart
saving efficacy to what were otherwise but empty symbols
or unauthorised ceremonies.
1 1 Cor. i. 17. 2 l Cor. iv. 15.
260 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
Nor does it appear to have been materially otherwise
with the ordinance of the Supper. The original institu-
tion merely represents our Lord, at the close of the paschal
feast, as taking bread and wine, and, after giving thanks,
presenting them to the disciples, the one to be eaten the
other to be drunk in the character of His body and blood,
and in remembrance of Him. This is all; and when the
church fairly entered on its new career, the record of its
proceedings merely states, with reference to this part of
its observances, that the disciples ‘continued steadfastly in
the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of
bread;’ that ‘they continued in breaking bread from house
to house,’ and were wont to ‘come together on the first
day of the week to break bread.’1 St Paul, too, while
rebuking certain flagrant abuses which had crept into the
church at Corinth in the celebration of the ordinance, and
rehearsing what he says he had received from the Lord
concerning it, maintains a profound silence as to every
thing of a ritualistic description: he mentions only a
Lord’s table with its bread and cup, and the action of
giving and receiving, after the offering of thanks, in com-
memoration of Christ; but says nothing of the particular
kinds of bread and wine, of the status, dress, or actions of
the administrator, or the proper terms of celebration, or
the attitude of the people when partaking, whether sit-
ting, reclining, or kneeling. These, plainly, in the apostle’s
account, were the non-essentials, the mere circumstantial
adjuncts, which it was left to the church to regulate—not
arbitrarily indeed, and assuredly not so as to change a
simply commemorative and sealing ordinance into a propi-
tiatory sacrifice and a stupendous mystery, but with a
suitable adaptation to the nature of the feast and the cir-
cumstances of place and time. This reserve; too, was the
1 Acts ii. 42, 46, xx. 7, 11.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 261
more remarkable, since the apostle did occasionally speak
of Christian gifts and services in sacrificial language; only
never in connection with the ordinance of the Supper.
He spake of the sacrifice of praise, but explains Himself by
calling it the fruit of the lips,1 and a sacrifice to be offered,
not by a priest on earth, but by the one High Priest,
Christ. Charitable contributions to the poor, or to the ser-
vice of the Gospel, are in like manner designated sacrifices
well-pleasing to God; also the presentations of the persons
of believers to God’s service, and His own presentation of
converted heathen before the heavenly throne;2 but not
in one passage is the commemoration of our Lord’s death
in the Supper so represented, or any expression employed
which might seem to point in that direction.3
1 Heb. xiii. 15. 2 Heb. xiii 16; Phil. iv. 18 ; Rom. xii. 1, xv. 16.
3 Desperate efforts have been made by Roman Catholic writers to give
another version to the whole matter, and even to find in the words of institu-
tion direct sacrificial language. Professedly Protestant writers are now treading
to the full in their footsteps, and applying (we may say, perverting) the simple
words of the original to a sense altogether foreign to them. They call the
address of Christ, ‘Do this in remembrance of me,’ a sacrificial word; and one
paraphrases the words after the sense which he says the words (tou?to poiei?te)
‘bear in the Septuagint, Offer this as my memorial’ (‘The Church and the
World,’ pp. 499, 564). It is enough to give the substance of the comment
made on these extraordinary statements by the learned editor of the Contem-
porary Review, No. 21, who says, ‘The words which our Lord employed
nowhere bear a sacrificial sense in the Septuagint. In not one place does such
an expression as poiei?n tou?to occur in a sacrificial sense; it would have been
absurd, and even impossible, that it should, unless tou?to referred to some con-
crete thing then and there represented and designated—as, for example, Lev.
ix. 10—prosh<negke to< o]lokau<twma, kai< e]poi<hsen au]to< w[j kaqh<kai. To this,
perhaps, the superficial ritualist will reply, that such a concrete object is present in the
bread, of which it had just been said by our Lord, This is my body. If he
committed himself so far, we should have to take him back to his school-days,
and to remind him that the demonstrative pronoun when applied to a concrete
object, designates that and that alone, as distinguished from all others: so that
if tou?to poiei?te signified, “Offer this,” then, in order to obey it, that very bread
must have been reserved to have been offered continually. We are driven,
then, to the abstract reference, “this which I am doing;” and this will rule the
meaning
of the verb to be “do,” and not “offer.” Such, indeed, is the only
262
THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
This, however, is a conclusion which many refuse to
acquiesce in. They think that the indeterminateness
spoken of must somehow have been supplied; and that
if the needed materials are not furnished by Scripture,
they must be sought in some collateral source adequate to
meet the deficiency. Hence the Romish theory of un-
written traditions, eking out and often superseding the
teaching of Scripture; the theory of development, claim-
ing for the church the inherent right and power to supple-
ment and authoritatively impose what was originally
defective in her ordinances; and the theory of the
apostolic succession and the impressed character. It were
out of place here, where we have to do merely with the
revelation of law in God’s kingdom, to go into an examina-
tion of such theories, as none of them, except by an abuse
of terms, can be brought within that description. The
things for which those theories are intended to account,
have no distinct place in the expressed mind of our Lord
and His apostles; and so, even if allowable, cannot be
sense of the phrase tou?to poiei?n wherever it occurs (see Gen. iii. 13, 14, xii. 18,
xx. 5, etc.; Luke vii. 8, x. 28, xii. 18; Acts xvi. 18, etc.; Rom. vii. 15, 16, 20,
xii. 20; 1 Cor. ix. 23). Is it conceivable that two authors (Luke and Paul), accus-
tomed to the use of the phrase in its simple everyday meaning, should use it once
only, and that once, on its most solemn occurrence, in a sense altogether un-
precedented, and therefore certain not to be apprehended by their readers?’
The reviewer goes on further to state that the historical evidence is also wholly
against it: the church has, as a rule, understood the ‘Do this’ to mean doing, as
he did, namely, taking the bread, breaking, and distributing it; and adds, ‘Can
anything be plainer than that, but for the requirements of the sacrificial theory of
the Eucharist, such an interpretation would never have been heard of ? And even
with all the warping which men’s philology gets from their peculiar opinions,
can, even now, a single Greek or Hellenistic scholar be found who would, as a
scholar, venture to uphold it?’ It is not too much to say, that the whole that
is written respecting the original observance of the sacraments, the whole also
that St Paul says respecting his own peculiar calling as an ambassador of
Christ, and what he wrote for the instruction of others on the pastoral office,
is a virtual protest against the priestly character of the ministry of the New
Testament; and the one must be ignored before the other can be accepted by
sound believers.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 263
deemed of essential moment. If it is asked—as Dodwell
for example, asked (Paraenesis, 34),—‘Cannot God justly
oblige men, in order to obtain the benefits which it is His
good pleasure to bestow, to employ the means which His
good pleasure has instituted?’ We reply, if He had seen
reason to institute them in such a sense as to render them
in any way essential to salvation, the same reason which
led Him to provide salvation would doubtless also have
led Him to make His pleasure in this respect known—
nay, to have inscribed it, in the most conspicuous manner
on the foundations of the Christian faith; which assuredly
has not been done. Undoubtedly, the form and mode
(as has been further alleged) may be, and sometimes have
been, of indispensable moment: ‘God was not pleased to
cleanse Naaman the Syrian from his leprosy by the water
of any other river than the Jordan; so that, had Naaman
used the rivers of Syria for this purpose, he would have
had no title to expect a cure.’ Certainly; but on this
very account God made His meaning perfectly explicit:
He hung the cure of the Syrian leper on the condition,
not of a sevenfold dipping in water merely, but of such a
dipping in the waters of the Jordan; these particular
waters entered as an essential element into the method
of recovery. And so, doubtless, would have been the
points referred to in connection with the Christian sacra-
ments, if the same relative place had belonged to them;
they would have been noted and prescribed, in a manner
not to be mistaken, in the fundamental records of the
Christian faith; and since they are awanting there, to
introduce and press them in the character of essentials to
salvation, is virtually to disparage those records, and to
do so in a way that runs counter to the wole genius of
Christianity, which exalts the spiritual in comparison with
the outward and formal—retains, we may say, the mini-
264 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
mum of symbolism because it exhibits the maximum of
reality.
But while we thus contend against any law of ordi-
nances in the Christian church of the circumstantial and
specific kind which existed under the old economy, the
two sacraments undoubtedly have the place of ordi-
nances; their observance has been prescribed with legis-
lative sanction and authority; and there can be no
question as to the duty of observing them among the
genuine disciples of Christ; the only, or at least, the
main question is, in what relation do they stand to their
possession of the Spirit and of the life that is in Christ
Jesus? Do they aim at originating, or rather at estab-
lishing and nourishing, the Divine life in the soul? That
it is this latter in the case of the Lord’s Supper admits
of no doubt; the very name implies that the participants
are contemplated as having Spirit and life, since no one
thinks of presenting a feast to the dead. The same also
is implied in the formal design of its appointment, to
keep alive the remembrance of Jesus and of His great
redemptive act in the minds of those who own Him as
their Lord and Saviour—presupposing, therefore, the
existence of a living bond between their souls and Him.
Hence, the one essential pre-requisite to a right and
profitable participation in the ordinance indicated by the
apostle is the possession and exercise of the life of faith:
‘Let a man examine himself (viz., as to his state and
interest in Christ), and so let him eat of that bread and
drink of that cup.’1 Not, then, to convert or quicken,
but to nourish and strengthen the life already implanted
in the soul, by bringing it into fresh contact and com-
munion with the one source of all life and blessing to
sinful men, is the direct good to be sought in the ordi-
1 1 Cor. xi. 28.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 265
nance of the Supper. And though the other sacrament,
Baptism, has to do with the commencement of a Chris-
tian state, not its progressive advancement, and is hence
termed initiatory, it is so, according to the representa-
tions of Scripture, only in a qualified sense; that is,
not as being absolutely originative, or of itself condition-
ing and producing the first rise of life in the soul, but
associated with this early stage, and bringing it forth
into distinct and formal connection with the service and
kingdom of Christ. Such, certainly, is the relation in
which the two stand to each other in the command of
Christ, and the ministry of His immediate representa-
tives—‘Go and teach all nations, baptizing them,’ etc.;
‘He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.’ Not,
therefore, baptized in order to believing, but believing in
order to be baptized; so that, ideally or doctrinally con-
sidered, baptism presupposes faith, and sets the Divine
seal on its blessings and prospects. And so we never
find the evangelists and apostles thrusting baptismal
services into the foreground, as if through such ministra-
tions they expected the vital change to be produced, but
first preaching the Gospel, and then, when this had come
with power into the heart, recognising and confirming
the result by the administration of the ordinance. So
did Peter, for example, on the day of Pentecost; he
made proclamation of the truth concerning Christ and
His salvation; and only when this appeared to have
wrought with convincing power and energy on the people,
he pressed the matter home by urging them to ‘repent
and be baptized every one in the name of Jesus Christ
for the remission of sins, and they should receive the
gift of the Holy Ghost.’ It was a call to see that they
had every thing involved in a sound conversion; for the
kind of repentance spoken of is the metanoia, the change
266 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
of mind which has its root in faith, and implies a spiritual
acquaintance with Christ and the things of His salvation.
At a later period, Peter justifies himself for receiving,
through baptism, the household of Cornelius, on the
ground that they had ‘heard of the Gospel and believed,’
or, as he again puts it, that ‘God purified ther hearts
by faith.’l Such was the process also with the Ethiopian
eunuch, with Lydia, with the jailer at Philippi; so that
baptism was administered by the apostles, not for the
purpose of creating a relation between the individual
and Christ, but of accrediting and completing a rela-
tion already formed. And if baptism also is said to
save, and is specially associated with the work of regene-
ration—as it undoubtedly is2—it can only be because
baptism is viewed, in the case of the adult believer, as
the proper consummation and embodiment of faith’s act-
ings in the reception of Christ. For, constituting in such
a case the solemn response of a believing soul and a
purged conscience to the Gospel call, it fitly represents
the whole process, marks by a significant action the pass-
ing of the boundary-line between nature and grace, and
a formal entrance on the state and privileges of the
redeemed. But apart from this spiritual change pre-
supposed and implied, nothing is effected by the outward
administration; and to be regenerated in the language
of Scripture and the estimation of the apostles, is not to
find admission merely into the Christian church; it is to
become a new creature, and enjoy that witness of the
Spirit which is the pledge and foretaste of eternal life.
What is said of regeneration, is equally said of faith in
Christ (John iii. 18-36; 2 Cor. v. 17, etc,).3
1 Acts xv. 7-9. 2 Rom. vi. 4, 5; Titus iii. 5; 1 Peter iii. 21.
3 See Litton on ‘The Church of Christ,’ p. 291, seq., where this subject is
fully handled.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 267
A certain accommodation, it will be understood, requires
to be made in applying this Scriptural view to the baptism
of infants—much as in the Old Testament rite of cir-
cumcision, which took its beginning with Abraham in
advanced life, and, as so begun, had its proper significance
and bearing determined for all time,1 though appointed
also to embrace the children of the patriarch. Our object
is merely to indicate the general purport and place of
baptism, as also of the Lord’s Supper, in relation to the
spiritual life of the believer in Christ; and to shew that,
in this respect, their place is not primary, but secondary,
seeing that they presuppose a relation of the individual
to Christ, a spiritual life already begun through faith in
the word of Christ, which it is their design to confirm and
build up. They themselves rest upon that word, and
derive from it their meaning and use. Apart from the
Gospel of Christ and an intelligent belief in its contents,
they become, no matter by whom administered or with
what punctuality received, but formal observances, with-
out life and power. So that the grand ordinance, if we
may so use the term, which has to do with the formation
of Christ in the soul, or the actual participation of the life
that is in Him, is this word of the kingdom—the Gospel,
as the apostle calls it, of Christ’s glory2—by the faith of
which, through the Spirit, we are begotten as of incor-
ruptible seed, are justified from sin, and have Christ
Himself dwelling in us.3 To abide in the doctrine of
Christ and keep His word, is to have Him revealed in
our experience for fellowship with that undying life which
is hid with Him in God; it is to have both the Father
and the Son; as, on the other hand, to be without His
word abiding in the soul, is to be in a state of estrange-
1 Rom. iv. 10-12. 2 2 Cor. iv. 4.
3 James i. 18; 1 Peter i. 23; Rom. v. 1; Eph. iii. 17.
268 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
ment from Him, spiritually dead.1 The position, there-
fore, which we are called to maintain toward Christ, rests
more immediately upon the presentation of His person and
work through the word; it has its most decisive touch-
stone in the relation in which, as to spirit and behaviour,
we stand to this word. And as the word comes into the
heart, and abides in the heart through faith, so, of
necessity, faith is the peculiar organ of spiritual life, since
it is that whereby we humbly receive and appropriate
what is freely given us in Christ—‘whereby we trust in
Him, instead of trusting in ourselves—whereby, when
sinking under the consciousness of our blindness and
helplessness, the effect of our habitual sins, we take God’s
word for our rule, God’s strength for our trust, God’s
mercy and grace for the sole ground of peace and comfort
and hope.’2
It is of incalculable moment for the interests of vital
Christianity, that these things should be well understood
and borne in mind; for with the position now assigned to
the word, as connected with the life of Christ, and the
apprehension of that word by a reliant faith, is bound up
the doctrine of a salvation by grace, as contradistinguished
from that of salvation by works; or, as we may otherwise
put it, the attainment of a state of peace and blessing by
fallen man, in a way that is practicable, as contrasted
with a striving after one which is utterly impracticable.
For whatever does not spring freshly and livingly from
faith, can neither be well-pleasing in the eyes of God, nor
can it secure that imperishable boon of eternal life in
God’s kingdom, which comes to sinners only as His free
and sovereign gift. And precisely as this is lost sight of,
whether in the case of individuals, or in the church at
1 John viii. 31, 37, 51, xv. 7; Col. iii. 3; 2 John 9.
2 Hare’s ‘Victory of Faith,’ p. 78.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 269
large, is there sure to discover itself, if not a total care-
lessness and insensibility about spiritual things, then the
resuscitation of a law of ordinances, an excessive regard
to outward forms and ceremonial observances, as if these
were the things of paramount importance, and there could
be no salvation without them; for these are things which
the natural man can do, and, by taking pains to do them,
may readily fancy himself to be something before God.
It is true that, in a certain aspect, this relation of the
believer to the word, the salvation, and the life of Christ,
may be regarded as coming within the domain of law; for
in everything that concerns it—both the provision of
grace and blessing in Christ, and the way in which this
comes to be realized in the experience of men—there is a
revelation of the will of God, which necessarily carries
with it an obligation to obedience—has the essence and
the force of law. Men ought to receive the Gospel of
Christ, and enter into the fellowship of His death and
resurrection: they are commanded to do so, and in doing
it they are said to be obedient to the Gospel, or to the
truth therein exhibited.1 It is even set forth as pre-
eminently the work which God calls or enjoins us in our
fallen condition to do, to believe on Him whom He hath
sent, and the refusing to do this work, and thereby reject-
ing the grace of God provided and offered in Christ, is
the crowning sin of those to whom the Gospel comes in
vain.2 The more special and distinctive acts, also, of the
new life which is given to those who yield themselves to
the calls of the Gospel, are occasionally pressed on them
as duties to be discharged—such as seeking from the
Lord the gifts of grace, being converted to His love and
service, or transformed into the image of Christ, by
1 John iii. 23; Acts xvi. 31; Rom. x. 16; 1 Pet. i. 14.
2 John vi. 29, xv. 22, xvi. 9; Luke xix. 27.
270 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
putting off the old man and putting on the new.1 And
so, speaking from this point of view, the Apostle Paul
does not hesitate, even while striving to exclude the idea
of merit, or of salvation as attainable by obedience to any
law of works, to represent the whole as proceeding in
conformity to law—‘the law of faith;’ and the individuals
themselves are described as, in consequence of their
believing reception of the Gospel, ‘children of obedience,’
or such as have become obedient to the faith.2 Undoubt-
edly the matter admits of being so represented. It is a
mode of representation grounded in the essential nature of
things, since by the very constitution of their being, men
are bound to render account of the light they enjoy and
the advantages placed within their reach; are responsible
to God for what with His help they can attain of good, as
well as for what they are expressly commanded to do.
It is, too, a mode of representation which may justly be
pressed when the object is to arouse men’s dormant
energies, and bring them to consider what solemn issues
depend on the treatment they personally give to the
claims and Gospel of Christ. But it still were a grievous
mistake to suppose, that this is either the only or the prin-
cipal light, in which our relation to the grace and truth
of the Gospel ought to be contemplated. It is not that
in which the Gospel formally presents itself, or is fitted
to produce its happiest results; and on the ground of such
a mode of representation, only incidentally, and for pur-
poses of moral suasion introduced, to do what Luther had
too much reason for saying many great and excellent men
had done—that they not only ‘knew not how to preach
Moses rightly, but sought to make a Moses out of Christ,
out of the Gospel a law-book, out of the word works,’—is
1 Mat. vii 7; Acts iii. 19; Rom. xii. 2; Eph. iv. 22-24.
2 Rom. i. 5, iii. 27; 1 Pet. i. 14; Acts vi. 17.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 271
the most effectual method to render Gospel and law alike
of no avail for salvation. The direct and immediate
aspect under which Christ is made known to us in the
Gospel is unquestionably that of a bestower of blessing,
not a master of laws and services; a gracious and merci-
ful Redeemer, who has at infinite cost wrought out the
plan of our salvation, and laid freely open to our accept-
ance the whole treasury of its unsearchable riches. It is,
therefore, with invitation and promise, rather than with
any thing bearing the aspect of law, that the genuine
disciple of Jesus will ever find that he has immediately to
do: his part is to receive, in the use of Gospel privi-
leges and the exercise of a living faith, the gifts so freely
tendered to him; and endeavour increasingly to apprehend
that for which he is apprehended of Christ, so as to grow
up unto a close and living fellowship with his Divine
Head in all that is His.
II. But leaving now this branch of the subject, we
turn to the other—to consider the relation in which, as
exhibited in the apostolic writings, the church of the New
Testament stands to the moral law—the law as summarily
comprised in the precepts of the Decalogue, or in the two
great commandments of love to God and man.
Here, we must not forget, the prime requisite for a
right perception of the truth is a proper personal relation
to the truth. We must start from the position just de-
scribed—that, namely, of a believing appropriation of the
word of Christ, and the consequent possession of the
Spirit of life which flows from Christ to the members of
His spiritual body. It is from this elevated point of view
that the matter is contemplated in the doctrinal portions
of New Testament Scripture; and hence statements are
sometimes made concerning it, which, while entirely con-
272 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
sonant with the experience of those who have received
with some degree of fulness the powers of that higher life,
cannot be more than imperfectly understood, and may
even be regarded as inconsistent, by such as either stand
altogether without the spiritual sphere, or have but parti-
ally imbibed its spirit. It was so in a measure under the
law, the statements regarding which, in the recorded ex-
perience of Old Testament believers—as to its excellence,
its depth and spirituality of meaning, their delight in its
precepts yet tremblings of soul under its searching and
condemning power, their desire to be conformed to its
teaching yet perpetual declining from the way of its
commandments—could not appear otherwise than strange
and enigmatical to persons who, not having come practi-
cally under the dominion of the law, necessarily possessed
but a superficial knowledge of it. And the same may
justly be expected in a still higher degree now, amid the
complicated and delicate relations as between Moses and
Christ, law and grace, through which the experience of
believers may be said to lie. There is here very pecu-
liarly needed the spiritual discernment which belongs only
to those who are living in the Spirit; and if it may be
affirmed of such that, having a mind to do the will of God,
they shall know of the doctrine that it is of God,l with
equal confidence may it be affirmed of others not thus
spiritually minded, that they cannot adequately know it,
because wanting the proper frame and temper of soul for
justly appreciating it.
The most distinguishing characteristic of the Gospel
dispensation undoubtedly is its prominent exhibition of
grace, as connected with the mediatorial work of Christ.
The great salvation has come; and, in consequence, sins are
not merely pretermitted to believers, as in former times,
1 John vii. 17.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 273
through the forbearance of God, but fully pardoned
through the blood of the Lamb,1 freedom of access is
gained for them into the presence of God, and the gift of
the Spirit to abide with them, and work in them much
more copiously than had been done before. But there is
a gradation only, not a contrast; and as under the Old
Covenant the law-giving, was also the loving God, so
under the New, the loving God is also the law-giving.2
We have seen how much it was so, as represented in the
personal ministry and work of Christ—how completely
He appropriated for Himself and His followers the perfect
law of God, and how also He continually issued precepts
for their observance, in conformity with its tenor, though
in form bearing the impress of His own mind and mission.
The apostles, after the descent of the Holy Spirit, and
the formal entrance of the new economy, pursued sub-
stantially the same course. Thus James, whose style of
thought and expression approaches nearest to those of Old
Testament Scripture, designates the law of brotherly love
the royal law—as that which, in a manner, governs and
controls every other in the sphere of common life—and
tells the Christians that they would do well if they
fulfilled it.3 St Peter, though he specifies no particular
precept of the law, yet points to an injunction in the
book of the law, which is comprehensive of all its right-
eousness, ‘Be ye holy in all manner of conversation; for it
is written, Be ye holy, for I am holy.’4 St John also
speaks freely in his epistles of the Lord’s commandments,
and of the necessity of keeping them, especially of the
great commandment of love; he speaks of the law as of
the well-known definite rule of righteousness, and of sin
as the transgression of the law, to live in which is to
1 Rom. iii. 25, where the pa<reij of the past stands in a kind of contrast to the
a@fesij of the present. 2 See Wuttke, ‘Handbuch der Sitt.,’ chap. ii. sec. 208.
3 James ii. 8. 4 1 Peter i. 16.
274 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
abide in death.1 And St Paul, who in a very peculiar
manner was the representative and herald of the grace
that is in Christ, is, if possible, still more express: ‘Ye
have been called to liberty,’ says he to the Galatians,
only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by
love serve one another; for all the law is fulfilled in one
word—in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself,’2
—plainly identifying the love binding upon Christians
with the love enjoined in the law. The same use is made
by him of the fifth commandment of the Decalogue, in
the Epistle to the Ephesians,3 when urging the duty of
obedience to parents. And in the Epistle to the Romans,
when the course of thought has brought him to the en-
forcement of vital godliness and the duties of a Christian
life, the reference made to the perfection and abiding
authority of the written law is even more full and explicit;
for he gives it as the characteristic of the spiritual
mind, that it assents to the law as ‘holy and just and
good,’ and ‘serves it;’4 while of the carnal mind he says,
‘it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can
be.’5 And when speaking of Christian obligation in its
varied manifestations of kindness between man and man,
he sums up the whole, first in the specific precepts of the
Decalogue, and then in the all-embracing precept of loving
One’s neighbour as one’s-self.6
I should reckon it next to impossible for anyone of
unbiassed mind—with no peculiar theory to support—
with no desire of any kind, but that of giving a fair and
natural interpretation to the teaching of Scripture—to
weigh calmly the series of statements now adduced, and
to derive from them any other impression than this—that
1 1 John ii. 7,8, iii. 7, 8, 23, 24, v. 2, 3; 2 John 5, 6.
2 Gal. v. 13, 14. 3 Eph. vi. 1-3. 4 Rom. vii. 12, 25.
5 Rom. viii. 7. 6 Rom. xiii. 8-10.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 275
the moral law, as revealed in the Old Testament, had with
the apostles of our Lord a recognised place in the
Christian church, and was plainly set forth by them as the
grand test of excellence, and the authoritative rule of life.
They recognised and appealed to it thus simply as it
stood in the written revelation of God, and because so
written;—knowing nothing, apparently, of the refined
explanations of modern thought, which would hold the
morality of the law, indeed, to be binding on Christians,
but not as commanded in the law—that while the sub-
stance or principles of the law may be said to be still
living, in its outward and commanding form it is dead—or
that, as formally expressed law, it is no longer obligatory,
whether with reference to justification, or as a rule of life.1
And yet, unquestionably, there is something in the apos-
tolic mode of contemplating the law which gives a certain
colour to these representations. A marked distinction is
made in various places between the position which Israel
occupied toward the law, and that now occupied by
believers in Christ; such, that there is a sense in which
Israel was placed under it, and in which Christians are
not; that it had a purpose to serve till the fulfilment of
the covenant of promise in Christ, for which it is no
longer specifically required;2 that somehow it is done
away or abolished,3 or, as it is again put, that we are
done away from it, that is, set free, in regard to its right
to lord it over us;4 that we are even dead to it, or are
no longer under it;5 and that the scope or end for which
the law was given is accomplished, and alone can be
accomplished, in Christ for those who are spiritually united
to Him.6
1 See the references in Lec. I. 2 Gal. iii. 19-25, iv. 1-6.
3 2 Cor. iii. 11; Eph. ii. 15; Col. ii. 14. 4 Rom. vii. 6.
5 Rom. vi. 14, vii. 4. 6 Rom. viii. 3, 4, x. 4.
276 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
These are certainly very strong, at first sight even
startling statements, and if looked at superficially, or
taken up and pressed in an isolated manner, might easily
be made to teach a doctrine which would conflict with the
passages previously quoted, or with the use of the law
actually made in them with reference to the Christian life.
That there must be a mode of harmonizing them, we may
rest perfectly assured—though it can only be satisfactorily
made out by a careful examination of the particular
passages, viewed in their proper connection, and with due
regard to the feelings and practices of the time. For the
present, a general outline is all that can be given; the
detailed exegesis on which it leans must be reserved for
another place. Very commonly, indeed, a comparatively
brief method of explanation has been adopted by divines,
according to which Christians are held to be, not under
the law as a covenant, but under it as a rule of life.
Doctrinally, this gives the substance of the matter, but
with a twofold disadvantage: it leaves one point regard-
ing it unexplained, and in form also it is theological
rather than Scriptural. In respect to form, Scripture no
doubt represents the covenant of law, the old covenant, as
in some sense done away, or abolished; but then not
exactly in the sense understood by the expression in the
theological statement just noticed. That covenant of law,
as actually proposed and settled by God, did not stand
opposed to grace, but in subordination to grace, as revealed
in a prior covenant, whose spiritual ends it was designed
to promote; therefore, though made to take the form of a
covenant, its object still was not to give, but to guide
life;1 in other words, to shew distinctly to the people,
and take them bound to consider, how it behoved them to
act toward God, and toward each other as an elect genera-
l Gal. iii. 21.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 277
tion, God’s seed of blessing in the earth. But this, in the
language of theology, does not materially differ from the
use of the law as a rule of life; whereas to be under the
law as a covenant, means in theology to be bound by it
as a covenant of works, to make good, through obedience
to its precepts, a title to life. In such a sense the
Israelites were not placed under it any more than our-
selves; and hence Witsius was disposed to regard it as
not possessing for them the form of a covenant properly
so called, but as presenting merely the rule of duty.1
That, however, were only to abandon a Scriptural for a
theological mode of expression, for undoubtedly it is
called a covenant in Scripture. But apart from the
question of form, the manner of statement under con-
sideration is, in one point of view, defective; for it does
not indicate any difference between the relation of Israel
and the relation of Christians to the law, while still it is
clear, from several of the passages referred to, that there
is some considerable difference: the law had a function to
perform for Israel, and through them for the world, which
is not needed in the same manner or to the same extent
now. Wherein does this difference lie? There is here
evidently, room for more careful and discriminating
explanations. And, in endeavouring to make them, we
must distinguish between what was common to Israel
with the people of God generally, and what was peculiar
to them as belonging to a particular stage in the Divine
plan, living under a still imperfectly developed form of
the Divine dispensations.
Viewed in the former of these aspects, the Israelites
were strictly a representative people; they were chosen
from among mankind, as in the name of mankind, to
hear that law of God, which revealed His righteous-
2 De Œcon. Foed., L. iv. chap. 4. sec. 56.
278 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
ness for their direction and obedience; and though this
came in connection with another revelation, a covenant
of promise through which life and blessing were to be
obtained, yet, considered by itself, it brought out before
them, and charged upon their consciences, the sum of
all moral obligation—whatever is due from men as men,
as moral and responsible beings, to God Himself, and
to their fellow-men. In this the law demanded only
what was right and good—what therefore should have
been willingly rendered by all to whom it came—what,
the more it was considered, men could not but the
more feel must be rendered if matters were to be put
on a solid footing between them and God, and they
were to have a free access to His presence and glory.
But the law could only demand the right, could not
secure the performance of it; it could condemn sin, but not
prevent its commission, which, by reason of the weakness
of flesh, and the heart’s innate tendency to alienation
from God, continued still to proceed in the face of the
commands and threatenings of law:—so that the law, in
its practical working, necessarily came to stand over
against men as a righteous creditor with claims of justice
which had not been satisfied, and deserved retributions
of judgment which were ready to be executed. In this
respect, it had to be taken out of the way, got rid of or
abolished, in a manner consistent with the moral govern-
ment of God—its curse for committed sin borne—and its
right to lord it over men to condemnation and death
brought to an end. It is this great question—a question
which only primarily concerned the Jews, as having been
the direct recipients of the revelation of law, but in which
all men as sinners were alike really interested—that the
apostle chiefly treats in the larger proportion of the
passages recently referred to. It is of the law in this
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 279
point of view, that he speaks of it as a minister of death
—of believers being no longer married to it or under it—
yea, of their being dead to it, dead through the law itself
to the law—and of the law being consequently removed
as a barrier between them and the favour and blessing of
God. And he was led to do so the rather because of the
deep-rooted and prevailing tendency of the time to look
at the law by itself—apart from the covenant of promise
—and to find in obedience to its commands a title to life
and blessing. This, the apostle argues, is utterly to mis-
take its meaning and pervert its design. Taken so, the
law works wrath, not peace; instead of delivering from
sin, it is itself the very sting of sin; hence brings not
blessing, but a curse; not life, but condemnation; and
never till men renounce confidence in their deeds of law,
and lay hold of the hope set before them in Him who for
sinners has satisfied its just demands, and made reconcili-
ation for iniquity, can they obtain deliverance from fear
and guilt, and enter into life. Thus Christ becomes the
end of the law for righteousness to every one that
believeth:’1 in Him alone it reaches its proper aim as
regards the interests of righteousness, for He has per-
fectly fulfilled its commands, in death as well as life has
honoured its claims: and this not for Himself properly,
but for those who through faith join themselves to Him,
and become partakers, both in the work of righteousness
He has accomplished, and the spirit of righteousness He
puts into their hearts.
Such, briefly, is the import of that class of statements
in St Paul’s writings; and in this sense only do they
warrant us to speak of the moral law being done away,
or of our having been set free from it—a sense which
really enhances the importance of the law, most strik-
1 Rom. x. 4.
280 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
ingly exhibits its eternal validity, because shewing us to
be delivered from it, only that we may be brought into
conformity to its spirit and requirements. And, in this
respect, as we have said, there is no difference between
the believer under the old covenant, and the believer
under the new—except that what was little more than
hope before is realization now, what was then but dimly
apprehended, and received only as by way of provisional
forestalments, is now disclosed in all its fulness, and
made the common heritage of believers in Christ. But
there was another respect in which the position of Israel
is to be considered, one in which it was peculiar, since,
according to it, they occupied a particular, and that a
comparatively early, place in the history of the Divine
dispensations. In this respect, the revelation of law had
a prominence given to it which was also peculiar, which
was adapted only to the immature stage to which it be-
longed, and was destined to undergo a change when the
more perfect state of things had come. Considered in
this point of view, the law must be taken in its entire
compass, with the Decalogue, indeed, as its basis, yet
with this not in its naked elements and standing alone,
but, for the sake of greater prominence and stringency,
made the terms of a covenant; and not only so, but, even
while linked to a prior covenant of grace, associated with
pains and penalties which, in the case of deliberate trans-
gression, admitted of no suspension or repeal—associated,
moreover, with a complicated system of rites and ordinances
which were partly designed to teach and enforce upon
men’s minds its great principles and obligations of moral
duty, and partly to provide the means of escape from the
guilt incurred by their imperfect fulfilment or their occa-
sional violation. It was in this complex form that the
law was imposed upon Israel, and interwoven with the
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 281
economical arrangements under which, as a people, they
were placed. It is in that form that it was appointed to
serve the design of an educational or pedagogical insti-
tute, preparatory to the introduction of Gospel times;
and in the same form only that St Paul, in various places
—especially in the Epistle to the Galatians, also in Eph.
ii. 14-17; Col. ii. 14-23—contended for its having been
displaced or taken out of the way by the work of Christ.
In all the passages the moral law is certainly included
in the system of enactment spoken of, but still always in
the connection now mentioned—as part and parcel of a
disciplinary yoke, a pedagogy suited only to the season of
comparative childhood, therefore falling into abeyance with
the arrival of a manhood condition. And the necessity
of this change, it will be observed, he presses with special
reference, not to the strictly moral part of the law, but to
the subsidiary rules and observances with which it was
associated—the value of which, as to their original design,
ceased with the introduction of the Gospel. His view
was, not that men were disposed to make more of the
Decalogue, or of the two great commandments of love,
than he thought altogether proper—precisely the reverse:
it was, because they were allowing the mere temporary
adjuncts, and ritualistic accompaniments of these funda-
mental requirements, to overshadow their importance, and
pave the way for substituting a formal and fictitious pietism
for true godliness and virtue. And hence to prevent, as far
as possible, any misunderstanding of his meaning, he does
not close the epistles in question without pointing in the
most explicit terms to the simply moral demands of the
law as now, not less than formerly, binding on the con-
sciences of men.1
In short, the question handled by the apostle in this
1 Gal. v. 13-22; Eph. vi. 1-9; Col. iii 14, seq.
282 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
part of his writings upon the law, was not whether the
holiness and love it enjoined were to be practised, but how
the practice was to be secured. The utterance of the
law’s precepts in the most peremptory and solemn form
could not do it. The converting of those precepts into
the terms of a covenant, and taking men bound under the
weightiest penalties to observe them, could not do it.
Nor could it be done by a regulated machinery of means
of instruction and ordinances of service, intended to mini-
ster subsidiary help and encouragement to such as were
willing to follow the course of obedience. All these had
been tried, but never with more than partial success—not
because the holiness required was defective, but because
the moral power was wanting to have it realized. And
now there came the more excellent way of the Gospel—the
revelation of that love which is the fulfilling of the law,
in the person of the New Head of humanity, the Lord
from heaven—the revelation of it in full-orbed complete-
ness, even rising to the highest point of sacrifice, and
making provision for as many as would in faith receive it,
that the spirit of this noble, pure, self-sacrificing love
should dwell as a new life, an absorbing and controlling
power, also in their bosom. So that, ‘what the law could
not do in that, it was weak through the flesh, God send-
ing His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin
condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the
law might be fulfilled in us who walk not after the flesh,
but after the spirit.’ He who is replenished with this
spirit of life and love, no longer has the law standing over
him, but, as with Christ in His work on earth, it lives in
him, and he lives in it; the work of the law is written on
his heart, and its spirit is transfused into his life. ‘The
man (it has been justly said) who is truly possessor of
“the spirit of life in Christ Jesus,” cannot have any other
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 283
gods but his Father in heaven; cannot commit adultery;
cannot bear false witness; cannot kill; cannot steal.
Such a man comes down upon all the exercises and avoca-
tions of life from a high altitude of wise and loving
homage to the Son of God, and expounds practically the
saying of the apostle, “Whosoever is born of God sinneth
not, but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and
that wicked one toucheth him not.”. . . . Christ’s cross,
then, delivers Christians from what may be termed moral
drudgery; they are not oppressed and pined serfs, but
freemen and fellow-heirs, serving the Lord Christ with all
gladness of heart. It magnifies the law and makes it
honourable, yet delivers those who accept Jesus Christ as
their Saviour from the bondage of the letter. Instead of
throwing the commandments into contempt, it gave them
a higher moral status, and even Sinai itself becomes shorn
of its greatest terrors when viewed from the elevation of
the cross. Love was really the reason of the law, though
the law looked like an expression of anger. We see this,
now that we love more; love is the best interpreter of
God, for God is love.’1
Thus it is that the Gospel secures liberty, and, at the
same time, guards against licentiousness. To look only,
or even principally, to the demands of law, constituted as
human nature now is, cramps and deadens the energies
of the soul, generates a spirit of bondage, which, ever
vacillating between the fear of doing too little, and the
desire of not doing more than is strictly required, can
know nothing of the higher walks of excellence and worth.
On the other hand, to look to the grace and liberty of the
Gospel away from the law of eternal rectitude, with which
they stand inseparably connected, is to give a perilous
licence to the desires and emotions of the heart, nurses a
1 ‘Ecce Deus,’ chap. xvi.
284 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
spirit of individualism, which, spurning the restraints of
authority, is apt to become the victim of its own caprice,
or the pliant slave of vanity and lust; for true liberty, in
the spiritual as well as in the civil sphere, is a regulated
freedom; it moves within the bonds of law, in a spirit of
rational obedience; and the moment these are set aside,
self-will rises to the ascendant, bringing with it the
witchery and dominion of sin.1 It is only, therefore, the
combined operation of the two which can secure the proper
result; and with whom is that to be found except with
those who have received the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus?
To be replenished with this Spirit, is to be brought within
the sphere of Divine love, which, so far from recoiling
from the law’s demands, can give expression even to its
noblest enthusiasm in a cordial response to the obligations
they impose, and a faithful obedience to the course of
action they prescribe.2
1 Rom. vi. 16.
2 So in the most emphatic moments of our Lord’s life, as at Matt. xi. 26,
xxvi. 39; Jo. x. 18. Nor is a certain correspondence wanting in the finer ex-
emplifications of the good in civil life—as in Lord Nelson with his famous
watchword, ‘England expects every man to do his duty’—patriotism at its
highest stretch being deemed capable of no loftier aspiration or more glorious
service than to give honourable satisfaction to the calls of duty. Statements
are often made by religious writers respecting service done with a special regard
to such calls, which is not strictly correct; as when it is said, ‘Duty is the
very lowest conception of our relation to God—privilege is a higher—honour a
higher—happiness and delight a higher still’ (Irving’s Works, Vol. I. p. 23).
Doubtless, in certain states of mind it is so; and he who does a service merely
because he deems it a duty, feeling himself dragged to it as by a chain, will
be universally regarded as in a low moral condition. But this is by no means
necessary. A sense of the dutiful may be felt, may even be most intensely
realized, when it is associated with the purest feelings and emotions; and in
the higher spheres of spiritual light and excellence—with the elect angels in
heaven, or even the more advanced saints on earth, in their seasons of deepest
moral earnestness—a supreme regard to the dutiful, to the will of God as the
absolutely right and good, we may not hesitate to say, is the profoundest senti-
ment in the bosom. All else, with such nobler spirits, is lost sight of in the
completeness of their surrender to the mind and will of the Eternal.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 285
Besides, by thus calling into play the higher elements
of a Divine life, there is necessarily set to work a spring
or principle of goodness in the heart, which in aim is one
with the law, but which in its modes of operation no law can
exactly define. Experience shews, that in the complicated
affairs of human life, it is impossible to prescribe a set
measure to the exercise of any of the Christian graces,
not even to justice, which in its own nature is the most
determinate of them all. Numberless instances will arise
in which, after all our attempts at precision, principle
alone will need to guide our course, and not any de-
finite landmarks previously set up on the right hand or
the left. But especially is this the case with love, which
of all the graces is the most free and elastic in its move-
ments, and, if strong and fervent, adapts itself with a kind
of sacred instinct to existing wants and opportunities.
There still is, in every variety of state and circumstances,
a right and a wrong—a bad course to be shunned, a good
course to be followed, and possibly a better course still, a
higher and nobler development of love, which it might
be practicable to adopt, were there but grace and strength
adequate to the occasion. But the proper path cannot be
marked out beforehand by formulated rules and legal pre-
cedents. Love must in many respects be a law to itself,
though still under law to God; and the more its flame
has been kindled at the altar of Heaven, and it has caught
the spirit of that Divine philanthropy, which, with the
greatness of its gifts and sacrifices, triumphs over human
enmity and corruption, the more always will it be disposed
to do and sacrifice in return.
In this sense it may be said of Christianity, that it is
more characterized by spirit than by law; that it does
‘not prescribe any system of rules,’ as was connected
with the Old Covenant, that ‘instead of precise rules it
286 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
rather furnishes sublime principles of conduct.’l But
such general statements have their limitations; and if
understood in an absolute sense, with reference either to
the past or the present, they will only serve to mislead.
It was characteristic of the Old Covenant that it had a
system of rules, dealt in exact and definite prescriptions;
but these, it ought to be remembered, were far from de-
fining every thing in the wide field of duty: a very large
proportion of them related merely to the sacrificial worship
of the Temple, and to particular conditions and circum-
stances of life; while in a great variety of things besides,
things pertaining to the weekly service of God and the
procedure of ordinary life, men were to a large extent
thrown upon principle for their guidance, and if this failed,
then they had no specific rule to fall back upon. They
were commanded, for example, to honour the Lord with
their substance—to be kind to the stranger sojourning
amongst them—to treat with compassion and generosity
their poor—to love a brother, and in love rebuke him, if
sin were found to be upon him:—but for carrying out
such commands in all supposable cases, no precise rules
either were or could be given. Some leading instances
only are specified by way of example, but in the great
majority of cases the exact mode of behaviour was neces-
sarily left to the individual. Look, for example, to the
poor widow who cast in her two mites into the treasury—
her whole living—who bade her do so? What legal
enactment prescribed it? Or that other woman, who
with her penitent and grateful tears washed the feet of
our Lord, and wiped them with the hair of her head—
what explicit word had so required it at her hands? In
both cases alike, we may say, love was their only law,
prompting them to do what breathed, indeed, the inmost
1 Whately, ‘Essay on Abol. of Law.’
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 287
spirit of the law, but what no express enactment of law
either did or properly could demand. Yet such things
belonged rather to the Old than to the New dispensation;
they occurred while the New was still only in the forming;
and things similar in kind should much more be expected
now, since the great redemption has come, elevating the
whole sphere of the Divine kingdom, and giving the
Spirit to its real members as an abiding monitor and
guide. This Spirit, in his directive influence, is himself
a living law (Spiritus Sanctus est viva lex), and renders
unnecessary a detailed system of rules and prescriptions
concerning all that should be done, and how exactly to do
it.l But as regards the grand outlines of moral obliga-
tion set forth in the law’s requirements, these not the less
1 Hence, the apostle Paul, when exhorting to the support of a Christian
ministry, and liberality to the poor, specifies no definite proportion, such as the
tenth, but calls upon believers to give according to their ability and as the
Lord had prospered them (1 Cor. xvi. 2; 2 Cor. viii. ix.; Ga1. vi. 6.). In like
manner, when dealing with Philemon respecting Onesimus, he refrains from
prescribing any stringent rule, but plies him with great principles and moving
considerations. But we are not thence warranted to speak of a morality in the
Gospel which ‘exceeds duty and outstrips requirement’ (‘Ecce Homo,’ p. 145);
or, which is but another form of the same thing, prompts us to deeds of super-
erogation. There can be no such deeds now, any more than in former times;
no one can do more than is required of him in the law of God; for that law is
the expression of God’s will, and man’s will cannot be better than God’s. To love
the Lord with all one’s heart, soul, and strength, and one’s neighbour as one’s
self, is the perfection of moral excellence: and what is beyond or beside this,
is not a higher attainment, but a vicious excess or partial development.
There may well enough, indeed, be particular acts of love, or sacrifices of self-
interest, which are not specifically demanded in any formal requirement; for,
as already stated, it never was meant to traverse the whole field of moral action
with such special demands, and the thing is practically impossible. But those
higher moral deeds still come within the sphere of the law’s general require-
ment of love; and not properly as to the degree of love to be manifested, but only
as to the particular form or direction which may be given to the manifestation,
can the course of duty ever be said to lie at the option of the individual. For
a safe statement and application of the distinction between principles and
rules, so far as it can be said to exist in Christianity, see the admirable sermon of
Augustus W. Hare, entitled ‘Principles above Rules.’
288 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
remain in force; and that love which is the peculiar fruit
and evidence of the indwelling Spirit, can only be recog-
nised as in any proper sense a law to itself, so long as it
runs in the channel of those requirements, and is controlled
by a sense of duty. When turning into other directions,
it met once and again, even in the case of the chiefest
apostles, with our Lord’s prompt and stern rebuke.1 And
St John—the most spiritual of all the apostles, if we may
distinguish among them—has in this respect most dis-
tinctly expressed the very heart and substance of the
whole matter, when he says, ‘This is the love of God that
we keep His commandments;’2—or, as it should rather be,
‘This is the love of God, in order that we may keep His
commandments,”—i!na ta>j e]ntola>j au]tou? thrw<men—not that we
do it as a fact, but that we may and should do it as a
scope or aim. It is as if the love of God were implanted
in the bosom for no other end than to dispose and enable
us to keep His commandments; for only in so far as these
are kept, does the love of God in us reach its proper de-
stination. And, therefore, the sense of duty, or the felt
obligation to keep God’s commandments, has with good
reason been called the very backbone of a religious char-
acter.3 It is that which more especially gives strength
and consistency to the soul’s movements, and saves love
itself from degenerating into a dreamy sentimentalism,
from yielding to improper solicitations, or running into
foolish and fanciful extremes. ‘He that saith I know
Him, and keepeth not His commandments, is a liar, and
the truth is not in him. But whoso keepeth His word,
in him verily is the love of God perfected: hereby know
we that we are in Him.’4
It was but a special application of this truth, when Mr
1 Matt. xvi. 23; Luke ix. 55. 2 1 John v. 3.
3 Temple’s ‘Sermons at Rugby,’ p. 36. 4 1 John ii. 4, 5.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 289
Maurice, in a recent production, along with a gentle
rebuke to a Scotch friend, expressed his belief that ‘the
reverence for an unchangeable law and a living lawgiver,
has given to the Scottish character its strength and
solidity;’1 and if so, surely an element of healthful
vigour, which the friends of enlightenment and progress,
instead of trying to weaken where it exists, would do
well rather to encourage and strengthen where it is com-
paratively wanting. It was an utterance, too, in the
same line, but with a more general reference and in a
higher tone, when Ewald, who is often as true in his
moral perceptions as loose and arbitrary in his theological
positions, thus wrote, ‘There exists among men no free
and effective guidance but when the individual human
spirit submits to be directed and governed by the eternal,
all-ruling Spirit, because it has recognised that to resist
His truths and demands is to oppose its own good. But
whatever else may result from the many kinds of direction
and government of men by men, this can only then prove
just and beneficial when it does not run counter to this
supreme law.’2
Enough, however, of human testimonies, and also of
the general argument. We merely sum up in a few
closing sentences what the church is entitled to hold
respecting the still abiding use of the law. (1.) Though
not by any means the sole, it yet is the formal, authorita-
tive teacher of the eternal distinctions between right and
wrong in conduct; the special instrument, therefore, for
keeping alive in men’s souls a sense of duty. Nothing
has yet occurred in the history of mankind which can
with any show of reason be said to supersede this use of
1 Preface to ‘Sermons on the Ten Commandments.’
2 Geschichte, II. p. 165.
290 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. VIII.
the moral law. The theorists of human progression, who
conceive such landmarks to be no longer needed, who
fancy the world has outgrown them, are never long in
meeting with what is well fitted to rebuke their ground-
less satisfaction:—in the disputes, for example, among
themselves as to what oftentimes should be deemed vir-
tuous conduct—in the spread of those philosophic systems,
of the materialistic or pantheistic school, which would
sap the very foundations of piety, and unsettle the dis-
tinctions between good and evil—or, after a coarser
fashion, in the atrocities which are ever and anon bursting
forth in society, and even finding their unscrupulous
apologisers. There is, we know, a condition of righteous-
ness for which the law is not ordained;1 but it is clear as
day, that not only not the world at large, but not even the
most Christian nation in the world, has as yet approached
such a condition. (2.) The law, as the measure of moral
excellence and commanded duty, provides what is needed
to work conviction of shortcomings and sins—by looking
steadfastly into which, men may come to be sensible of the
deep corruption of their natures, their personal inability
to rectify the evil, their guilt and danger, so that they
may betake for refuge to where alone it can be found—
in the blood and Spirit of Christ. The experience of the
apostle must be ever repeating itself anew, ‘I had not
known sin but by the law;’ ‘Through the law I am dead
to the law, that I might live unto God.’ Thus we come
to the practical knowledge of our case; and ‘to know
ourselves diseased is half our cure.’ (3.) Finally, the
imperfections too commonly cleaving to the work of grace
in the redeemed, call for a certain coercive influence of
law even for them. If it has not the function to discharge
for such which it once had, it still has a function, there
1 1 Tim. i. 9.
LECT. VIII.] ITS RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 291
being so little of that perfect love which casteth out fear,
and fear being needed to awe where love has failed to in-
spire and animate. So, even St Paul, replenished as he
was with the life-giving Spirit, found it necessary at times
to place the severer alternative before him: ‘If I preach
the gospel willingly, I have a reward: but if against my
will, a dispensation of the gospel is committed to me;
yea, woe is unto me, if I preach not the gospel.’1 He
even delighted to think of himself as in a peculiar sense
the servant, the bondman, of God or Christ.2 And for
believers generally the two are thus mingled together,
‘Let us have grace, whereby we may serve God accept-
ably, with reverence and godly fear: for our God is a con-
suming fire.’3
1 1 Cor. ix. 16, 17. 2 Rom. i.; Gal. i. 10; Tit. i. 1. 3 Heb. xii 29.
292 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
LECTURE IX.
THE RE-INTRODUCTION OF LAW INTO THE CHTJRCH OF THE NEW
TESTAMENT, IN THE SENSE IN WHICH LAW WAS ABOLISHED BY
CHRIST AND HIS APOSTLES.
THE history of the law, considered as a revelation of
God, reaches its close in the personal work of Christ
and the formal institution of His kingdom among men;
every thing pertaining to it had then, as on God’s part,
assumed its final norm. But there is an instructive,
though at the same time a mournful sequel to that history,
which it will be proper briefly to trace before we take
leave of the subject. It is the history of man’s additions to
God’s testimony—claiming, however, equally with this, the
sanction of Divine authority, and, by gradual and succes-
sive innovations, re-imposing upon the church a legalism,
precisely similar in kind to that which had been done
away in Christ, but greatly more pervasive and exacting
in its demands, and in its practical operation fundamen-
tally at variance with the true spirit of the Gospel.
The rise of this false direction in the Christian church
is the more remarkable, that it not only had the clear
revelations of the Gospel against it, but even ran counter
to what may be called the later development of practical
Judaism itself. The tendency of things under the Old
Covenant, especially from the time that the Theocracy
began outwardly to decay, we formerly saw, was to give
increasing prominence to the spiritual element in the
legal economy, and to make relatively less account of the
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 293
merely outward and ceremonial. This tendency was con-
siderably strengthened by the prolonged dispersion of the
Jewish people, and what everywhere accompanied it, the
synagogal institution, which, to a large extent, took the
place of the priestly ministrations and sacrificial worship
of the Temple. The synagogue, in its constitution and
services, was founded upon what was general, rather than
upon what was distinctive and peculiar, in Judaism; it
made account only of the common priesthood of be-
lievers, and the essential elements of truth and right-
eousness embodied in the records and institutions of the
Old Covenant; and, consequently, the worship to which
it accustomed the people at their stated meetings was
entirely of a spiritual kind—prayer, the reading of in-
spired Scripture, and occasionally the word of brotherly
counselor admonition from some one disposed and
qualified to impart it. Priests, as such, had no peculiar
place either in its organization or its services; and the
rulers who presided over every thing connected with it
were nominated by the people on the ground simply of
personal gifts and reputed character. There still remained,
of course, the observance of such things as the rite of cir-
cumcision, of the distinction of meats, and of days sacredly
set apart from a common to a religious use, which depended
upon nothing local or individual—might be practised
anywhere and by any member of the community. It was
this kind of legalism which first sought to press into the
Christian church—the only kind that could press into it
from the synagogue; but which, though hallowed by
ancient usage, and, besides, possessing nothing of a sacer-
dotal or ascetic nature, was yet firmly repressed by the
apostles, and ejected from the bosom of the churches
which had begun to follow it. No taint of evil, therefore,
was allowed to insinuate itself from this quarter—not
294 THE REVELATION OF LAW [LECT. IX.
even at first, when not a few from the synagogue passed
over into the membership of the church; and much less
afterwards, when the synagogue everywhere arrayed itself
in fierce antagonism to the church:—while, on the other
hand, in the simple polity of the synagogue and its spiritual,
non-ritualistic, if somewhat imperfect worship, the church
found a starting-point fashioned out of those elements in
the Old Covenant, which had at once their correspondence
and their more complete exhibition in the New.
Yet, with all this, one can easily understand, if due
regard be had to the circumstances of the early church,
how a disposition might arise and grow—if not very
carefully guarded against—to assimilate the state of
things in it to that of the preceding dispensation, and
effect a virtual return to the oldness of the letter. There
was the general relation between the two economies to
begin with. Christianity sprang out of Judaism, and
stood related to it as the substance to the shadow. More
than that, a principal part of the Christian, as of the Jew-
ish synagogal worship, consisted in the reading of the
Scriptures of the Old Testament—proportionally a much
larger part than in later times; for the function of
preaching was at first but imperfectly exercised, and the
Scriptures of the New Testament were only by and by
gathered into a volume, and made to share with those of
the Old in the services of the sanctuary. Hence, the
minds of the Christian people were kept habitually con-
versant with the religion, as well as the other affairs of the
Old Covenant, with the Temple and its priesthood, its rites
of purification and ever-recurring oblations; and what
might, perhaps, be still more apt to bias their views, they
heard in the prophetical Scriptures delineations of Gospel
times couched in legal phraseology—intimations, for ex-
ample, of the Lord coming to His temple, that He might
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 295
purify the sons of Levi, and receive from them an offering
of righteousness; of incense and a pure offering being pre-
sented to the Lord from the rising to the setting sun; or
of kings and far-off heathen bringing gifts to His temple.
Inversely, also, in New Testament Scripture, spiritual
things are sometimes described in the language of the
Old—as when believers are said by St John to have an
anointing from the Holy One; or when, in the Epistle to
the Hebrews, they are represented as having an altar,
which those who served the tabernacle had no right to
partake of, and are exhorted to have their bodies washed
with pure water. Such passages, if superficially con-
sidered, and interpreted otherwise than in accordance
with the true spirit of the Gospel, might readily beget a
disposition, might create even a kind of pious desire, to
have the things of the New dispensation fashioned in
some sort after the pattern of the Old, and so to give to
the descriptions a concrete and sensible form, similar to
what they had in the past.
There was, also, it must be added, a class of services and
requirements occupying from the first an important place
in the activities of the Christian church, in which the New
necessarily came into a formal approximation to the Old.
I refer to the pious and charitable contributions which
the members of the Christian community brought for the
relief of the poor, the support of the ministry, and the
celebration of Divine ordinances. These contributions
were essentially the same in kind with the tithes and free-
will offerings of the elder economy; and the apostle,
when treating of them in his first Epistle to the Corin-
thians, brought the one into express comparison with the
other; and on the ground that they who were wont to
minister about holy things lived of the Temple-offerings,
he argued that they also who preached the Gospel should
296 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
live of the Gospel.l In such a case the transition might
seem natural from an essential to a formal agreement.
Why, it might be asked, not give the New somewhat of
the same sacrificial character as the Old, and invest it with
the same sort of ritual accompaniments? Such thoughts
might the more readily occur, if there were influences at
work to dispose the early believers to forsake the channels
of Christian simplicity for the more sensuous attractions
of ritualistic observance.
Now, there were influences of this description not only
existing in all the centres of Christian agency, but also
very actively at work. There was a current of opinion and
feeling perpetually bearing in from the scenes and inter-
course of every-day life, in behalf of temples, altars,
sacrifices, priestly ministrations and dedicatory offerings,
as so essential to Divine worship that the one could hardly
be conceived of without the other; the absence of such
outward materials and instruments of devotion seemed
incompatible with the very existence of the religious
element. Hence, the reproach which was not infrequently
thrown out against the Christians as being godless—a@qeoi
—because they refused to approach the altars, and take
part in the sacrificial rites of heathenism, without appear-
ing to have any of their own as a substitute for them.2
The proper way to meet this prevailing sentiment was to
point to the one great High-Priest, the minister of a
higher than any earthly temple, and to the one perfect
sacrifice, by which, once for all, He accomplished what
never could be done by sacrifices of an inferior kind, and
which, by its infinite worth and ever-prevailing efficacy,
imparts to those interested in it a position so high, and a
character so sacred, that their services of faith and love
become in the sight of God sacrifices of real value. This
1 1 Cor. ix. 12-14. 2 Justin, ‘Apol.,’ chap. 6; ‘Athenagoras,’ chap. 4.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 297
is the light in which the matter is presented in New
Testament Scripture, where Christ is the one and all of a
believer’s confidence, and the whole company of the
faithful have the character assigned them of the royal
priesthood, to whom belongs the privilege of offering up
in Him spiritual sacrifices, which for His sake are accepted
and blessed—the sacrifices, namely, of thanksgivings,
alms-deeds, works of beneficence and well-doing, which,
when springing from genuine faith and love in Christ, are
regarded as offerings of sweet-smelling savour to God.1
But the church had not proceeded far on her course when
she lost to some extent this clear discernment of the truth,
and Correct apprehension of the things relating to her
proper calling and work in Christ; and continually as
men who had been educated in heathenism pressed into
the ranks of the visible church, the number increased of
those within her pale whose preparation for the kingdom
of God had been imperfect, and who had been too long
accustomed to identify religion with the outward and the
visible to be able to grasp sufficiently the spiritual reali-
ties of the Gospel. There consequently arose a tempta-
tion to accommodate the form of Christianity to the taste
of a lower class of persons, and by means of its external
services work upon their natures, as by a new law of
observance and discipline. They might thus hope, with-
out foregoing the realities of the faith, to retain the
allegiance of the less informed, and accomplish by symboli-
cal and ritual appliances what seemed less likely to be
reached by means of a more elevated and spiritual kind.
In these circumstances, it devolved upon the church as
a primary duty to take order for having proper counter-
acting checks and agencies brought into play; especially
to see to it that those who were chosen to direct her
1 1 Pet. ii 5; Phil iv.
8; Heb. xiii. 15, 16.
298 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
counsels and preside over her assemblies, had become
soundly instructed, not only in the principles of the Chris-
tian faith, but also in the organic connection between
the Christian and Jewish dispensations, their respective
differences as well as agreements, and the points wherein
it was necessary to guard Christianity against any undue
approach either to Judaic or heathen observance. But this
was precisely what the early church failed to do—perhaps,
we may say, the greatest failure into which she fell, the
one fraught with the longest train of disastrous results.
For centuries there was no specific theological training
generally adopted for such as aspired to become her guides
in spiritual things, or actually attained to this position.
By much the larger portion even of those who contributed
in the most especial manner to mould her character and
government (Justin, Tertullian, Cyprian, Ambrose, Augus-
tine, Jerome, etc.), were in their early days total or com-
parative strangers to the exact knowledge of Scripture;
their period of culture and training was spent under
heathen guides, with a view to civic or military life; and
when they passed, after a brief process of trial and
instruction, into the ecclesiastical sphere, it could scarcely
be otherwise than with many of the influences of the age
still cleaving to them. Coming to know Christianity
before they knew much of what preceded it, they wanted
what they yet very peculiarly needed—the discipline of a
gradual and successive study of the plan of God’s dispen-
sations, and the directive light of a well-digested scheme
of Scriptural theology. They knew the Bible in portions,
rather than as an organic and progressive whole; and
even for that knowledge, especially in its earlier parts,
they were but poorly furnished with grammatical helps or
with judicious expositions. Should it surprise us if, in
such circumstances, they should often have caught but im-
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 299
perfectly the meaning of Old Testament Scripture—if
they should even sometimes have shewn themselves to be
insufficiently acquainted with its contents—and, in regard
to the institutions and history of former times, should
occasionally leave us at a loss to say whether the true or
the false predominated—spiritualizing the most arbitrary
going hand in hand with the crudest literalisms, profound
thoughts intermingling with puerile conceits, and the
most palpable Judaistic tendencies discovering themselves
while evangelical principles were alone professedly main-
tained? Such are the actual results; and if there be one
point more than another on which the spiritual discern-
ment of those early Fathers was obviously defective, and
their authority is least to be regarded, it is in respect to
the connection between the New and the Old in the
Divine economy. In this particular department, so far
from having any special lights to guide them, they
laboured under peculiar disadvantages; and their proper
place in regard to it is that, not of the venerable doctors
of the Christian church, but of its junior students.
Now let us mark the effect of the unfortunate combi-
nation of circumstances we have indicated, and see how,
by gradual, yet by sure and successive steps, the tendency
in the wrong direction, which was scarcely discernible at
the outset, wrought till it became an evil of gigantic
magnitude, and reduced the church to a worse than
Judaic bondage. In the earlier writings—such as have
come down to us with probable marks of authenticity and
genuineness—we notice nothing in the respect now under
consideration, except a somewhat too close and formal
application of the ritualistic language of the Old Testa-
ment to Christian times, coupled with certain puerile and
mistaken interpretations of its meaning, in the line of
extravagant literalisms. Thus, to begin with the Epistle
300 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
of Clement, which in point of character as well as time is
entitled to the first place, when exhorting the Corin-
thians to lay aside their self-will and conform to the settled
and becoming order of God’s house, he refers to the pre-
scriptions given under the old economy respecting ser-
vices and offerings, which were to be done at the appointed
times and according to God’s good pleasure, nor any-
where men might please, but at the one altar and temple
in Jerusalem. This Clement assigns as a reason why
believers now should perform their offerings (prosfora<j) and
services (leitourgi<aj) at their appointed seasons, and that each
should give thanks to God in his own order, and not
going beyond the rule of the ministry prescribed to him
(c. 40, 41). The passage cannot, as Romish controversialists
and some others have alleged, point otherwise than by
way of example to the legal sacrifices and services; for it
would then, against the whole spirit and many express
statements in the epistle, absolutely merge the functions
and services of the Christian church in those of the
Jewish. On the contrary, in the Christian church he
recognises only two orders, those of bishops or presbyters
and deacons, and these standing related not to any Jewish
functionaries, as to the reason of their appointment, but
to a passage in the prophecies of Isaiah.1 The only ex-
ception that can justly be taken to the statement of
Clement is, that, in referring to legal prescriptions, he did
not mark with sufficient distinctness the diversity exist-
ing between Old and New Testament times; and, In de-
scribing the work proper to Christian pastors, character-
ized it in ritual language as consisting ‘in a holy and
blameless manner of offering the gifts (prosenegko<ntaj ta> dw?ra).’
It is undoubtedly a departure from the style of New
Testament Scripture, and shews how readily, from the
1 Isaiah lx. 17.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 301
predominant use of the Scriptures of the Old Testament,
their language was transferred to Christian acts and
objects. In this respect it formed a commencement which
was but too generally followed, though not quite imme-
diately. For in the epistle of Polycarp, which in its
approach to apostolic simplicity stands next to Clement’s,
there is not even such a slight departure from the mode
of representation current in New Testament Scripture as
we have marked in Clement; the epistle is throughout
practical in its tone and bearing; the presbyters, deacons,
and common believers are each exhorted to be faithful in
their respective duties; and for the proper discharge of
these, and for security against the spiritual dangers of the
times, mention is made only of prayer, fasting, and a
steadfast adherence to the teaching of the pure word of
God. Nor is it materially otherwise in the epistles of
Ignatius, if with Cureton we take the Syriac form of the
three preserved in that language as the only genuine ones,
for in these there is nothing whatever of rites and cere-
monies, priesthood and sacrifice, but only exhortations
to prayer, watchfulness, steadfastness, and unity, with
somewhat of an excessive deference to the bishop in re-
spect especially to the formation of marriages. Even in
the seven epistles, in their shorter Greek form (which is as
much as almost anyone not hopelessly blinded by theory
is now disposed to accept), omitting a few extravagant
statements respecting the bishop, such as that ‘nothing
connected with the church should be done without him,’
that ‘it is not lawful without him either to baptize or
to celebrate a love-feast,’1 the style of exhortation and
address, though often passionate and hyperbolical, can
scarcely be deemed unscriptural: believers are spoken of
as the temple or building of God, they break one and the
1 ‘Smyr.,’ chap. 8.
302 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
same bread, are related to one and the same altar (spirit-
ually understood of course, for it is the entire body of the
faithful that is the subject of discourse), and have many
practical admonitions addressed to them.1
From the uncertainty, however, which hangs around
the epistles of Ignatius, both as to their authorship and
the time of their appearance, it is impossible to assign
them any definite place in the chain of evidences of which
we speak. The epistle to Diognetus, being entirely spirit-
ual and evangelical in its spirit, going even to a kind of
extreme in its depreciation of the Jewish religion, does
not come within the scope of our argument. But the
so-called epistle of Barnabas, though in all probability a
production not earlier than the middle of the second cen-
tury, while quite evangelical in its sentiments, knowing
no proper sacrifice but the one offering of Christ, no temple
but the regenerated souls of believers, is very arbitrary
in the use it makes generally of Old Testament Scripture,
and especially in the many outward, superficial agreements
and prefigurations of Gospel realities—as if the past had
in its very form and outline been intended for an image
of the future.2 Passing on to Justin, he, too, designates
no select class, but the entire company of believers, ‘the
true priestly race of God, who have now the right to offer
sacrifices to Him;’3 and the sacrifices themselves are with
him, sometimes prayers and thanksgivings, sometimes
again the bread and the wine of the Supper, but these
simply as gratefully offered by the Christian people out of
their earthly abundance.4 Sacrifices of blood and libations
of incense, he again says, are no longer required; the only
perfect sacrifices are prayer and thanksgiving, and such
1 Eph. ix., xvi., xxi.; Phil. iv., etc.
2 See, in particular, the fancied prefigurations of regeneration, baptism,
Christ and the cross, in chap. 7-12.
3 ‘Tryp.,’ chap. 116, 117. 4 ‘Tryp.,’ chap. 117; ‘Apol.,’ chap. 65-67.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 303
things as can be distributed to the poor;1 nor does he
know of any functionary who has to do with one or other
of these distinctive offerings but a presiding brother, or
the deacons of the church. In Justin, the Eucharist, or,
as he also puts it, the Eucharistic bread and the Euchar-
istic cup, being especially connected with prayers and
thanksgivings for the great mercies of God, come into
view merely as a peculiar embodiment or representation
of these, and as such are classed with sacrifices and offer-
ings—marking a certain departure from the language of
our Lord and the apostles, and that in the Old Testament
direction—though he also speaks of the celebration as
done in remembrance of Christ’s suffering unto death for
men.2 But Irenaeus makes a further advance in the
same line by representing the Eucharist not merely as
having, like other spiritual acts, somewhat of a sacrificial
character, but as being emphatically the Christian oblation.
‘The Lord gave instruction to His disciples to offer unto
God the first-fruits of His own creatures, not as if He
needed them, but, that they themselves might be neither
unfruitful nor ungrateful, He took that which by its
created nature was bread, and gave thanks, saying, This
is my body. In like manner, also, the cup, which is of
that creation whereto we belong, He confessed to be
His own blood; and taught the new oblation of the New
Testament, which the church, receiving from the apostles,
offers throughout the whole world to God, to Him who
gives us the means of support—the first-fruits of His
gifts in the New Testament.’3 It can scarcely be doubted,
that the close connection which in early times subsisted
between the love-feast, in which the poor of the congrega-
tion partook of the charitable donations of their richer
1 ‘Apol.,’ chap. 13; ‘Tryp.’ chap. 117. 2 ‘Tryp.,’ chap. 41.
3 Irenaeus, iv. chap. 17,
sec. 5.
304 THE
REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
brethren, and the celebration of the Lord’s Supper,
materially contributed to the formation and entertainment
of this view. But in the view itself, at least when so
prominently exhibited, we cannot but perceive an evi-
dent approach to the symbolism of the Old Covenant,
and a corresponding departure from the mode of repre-
sentation in New Testament Scripture.1 For, though in
Irenaeus we find nothing of a priestly caste within the
Christian church, and no altar or temple but such as are
in Heaven,2 yet once distinctly connect the communion
elements (as he did) with the idea of an oblation—the
oblation by way of eminence—an oblation, moreover,
involving some mysterious change in the thing offered,
and the thought was natural that a priest, a priest in the
strictly official sense, must be required to offer it. So
that we might presently expect to hear that the presiding
brother of Justin, the episcopus or presbyter of Irenaeus,
had risen to the dignity of a pontifex. And this is pre-
cisely the fresh advance that meets us in the next writer
of eminence.3
1 See, in preceding Lecture, p. 258. 2 Irenaeus, iv. chap. 18, sec. 6.
3 It is quite true, that the ordinance of the Supper may, without the least
violation of its Scriptural character, be spoken of as the Eucharist, or the dis-
tinctively thanksgiving service. For, calling to remembrance, as it does, the
great gift of God, and even pressing home on each individual a palpable repre-
sentation and offer of that gift, it should call forth in a very peculiar manner
the fervent and united thanksgivings of the church. Hence, from the first it
was accompanied with the special offering of thanks to God and singing of
hymns of praise; and the service might not unjustly be regarded as the culmin-
ation of the church’s adoring gratitude, poured forth over the crowning act
of God’s goodness. But this is still rather the proper and fitting accompani-
ment of the sacrament than the sacrament itself; and when taken as the one
and all in a manner of the service (as it plainly was from the time of Tertullian
and onwards), the primary idea and end of the institution naturally fell into com-
parative abeyance, and the commemoration of a sacrifice became identified with the
ever renewed presentation of it. This, beyond doubt, was the actual course which
the matter took in the hands of the Fathers, though their language is not uni-
form or consistent. But the commemorative character of the ordinance, and
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 305
The writer referred to was Tertullian, who flourished
at the close of the second and the beginning of the third
century in North Africa. Christianity had taken early
root in that region, especially in the cities, where a vigor-
ous race of Roman or Italian colonists formed the governing
part of the population. From the character of the people,
the church there became peculiarly distinguished for its
strength and moral earnestness, and, in many respects,
exercised a formative influence over the government and
polity of the church of Rome, and through her upon
Christendom at large. Tertullian was the first distin-
guished representative of this African church, and he
brought into it the notions of order, and discipline, and
stern administration, which he derived from his position and
training as the son of a Roman centurion, and his educa-
tion as a Roman lawyer—naturally, therefore, predisposed
a legal and ritualistic direction. His writings, accord-
ingly, contain much tending in this direction. And in re-
spect to the matter now immediately before us, he distinctly
names the bishop the summus sacerdos or iIgh-priest,
though the dignity was still only in a provisional and
fluctuating state—growing into definiteness and fixity
rather than having actually attained to it. In his treatise
on baptism, and speaking of the right of administration,
c. 17, he says, ‘The high-priest, indeed, who is the bishop,
has the right of giving it; thereafter presbyters and
deacons, not, however, without the bishop’s authority, for
the sake of the church’s honour, by the preservation of
which peace is secured. Apart from this (alioquin), the
right belongs also to laics; for what is received on a foot-
that with reference to our common participation in the benefits of the great
act commemorated (its sealing virtue or purport as a communion), this is pre-
eminently its Scriptural aspect; and in proportion as it departed from that view,
the church lost the key to the ordinance.
306 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
ing of equality (ex aequo), on the same footing can be
given. The word of the Lord should not be hid by any
one: therefore also baptism, which is not less a thing of
God, can be dispensed by all.’ Elsewhere he applies the
term clerus to denote the body holding ecclesiastical posi-
tions, with evident reference to the previous use of it
in the Old Testament, as a collective designation of the
priests and Levites, as the Lord’s peculiar lot or heritage.1
And for the same purpose he transfers the Roman official
term ordo to the governing, the ecclesiastical body, while,
the laity are the plebs, but with the same kind of shifting
flexibility as before. Urging his favourite point of
absolute monogamy,2 he says, ‘It is written, He has made
us a kingdom and priests to God and our Father. The
authority of the church has made a difference between
the order and the laity (ordinem et plebem), and a stamp
of sacredness is set upon her honour by the meeting of the
order. Moreover, where there is no meeting of the
ecclesiastical order, you both offer (i.e. dispense the com-
munion) and baptize, and alone are a priest to yourself.
But when three are present, though laics, there is a
church; for every one lives by his own faith, nor is there
respect of persons with God.’
It was impossible, however, that matters could remain
long in this kind of suspense—ecclesiastical orders with
their appropriate functions, yet others on occasions taking
their place—a priestly standing for some, yea, a high-
priesthood, with sacrificial work to perform, rising out and
apart from the common priesthood of believers, and yet,
in the absence of those possessing it, the work allowed
to be performed by unconsecrated hands. Once acknow-
ledge the distinction as the normal and proper one, and
it was sure soon to develop into a regular and stereo-
1 ‘De
Monog.,’ chap. 12, 2 ‘De Exhort. Castitatis,’ chap. 7.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION
OF CEREMONIALISM. 307
typed, yea, indispensable arrangement; as, indeed, we pre-
sently find it doing in the hands of Tertullian’s immediate
disciple—Cyprian of Carthage. Bred, like the other, to
the legal profession, and practising in the courts of law
till within a comparatively short period of his elevation
to the episcopate, Cyprian, even more than Tertullian,
partook of the imperial impress, and carried into ecclesias-
tical life its regard for official distinctions and the obser-
vances of a regulated discipline. Every thing, according
to him, seemed to hang upon this. Presbyters, as priests
and bishops, still more as high-priests, held God’s ap-
pointment; His authority was with them; by them His
judgment was pronounced; evils of every kind ensue if
obedience is not paid to them; and in their daily service
at the altar they act in Christ’s stead, imitating what
Christ did, and offering a true and full sacrifice in the
church to God the Father.’1 Such is the style of thought
and speech introduced by Cyprian on this subject, in
practice also vigorously carried out; and here, still more
than in the writings of those who preceded him, the
affairs and incidents of Old Testament Scripture are in the
roughest and most literal manner applied to those of the
New, as if there were no characteristic difference between
them. The passages which describe the functions and
services, the calling and privileges, of the priests and
Levites, are transferred wholesale to the Christian ministry
and diaconate: the rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and
Abiram, has its exact counterpart in the deacon who
treats his bishop with disrespect;2 and all sorts of
external things are freely employed, which, from their
colour or their use, presented any kind of likeness to the
sacraments of the New Testament. Even in the lament-
able defection of Noah in his latter days—in the fact that
1 Epp. 57, sec. 2; 63, sec. 11. 2 Ep. 3, sec. 1.
308 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
he drank wine to excess, with all that followed, there was,
according to Cyprian, ‘exhibited a type of the future
truth, since he drank not water, but wine, and so por-
trayed a figure of the passion of the Lord.’1 Such a
mode of interpretation, so singularly oblivious of the
distinction between letter and spirit—carried, indeed, to
peculiar excess in Cyprian, but in a great degree common
to early Patristic writers generally—could not stop till it
had assimilated the form of things in the new dispensation
to that of the old; since it found, not the principle and
germ merely of Christianity, but its very shape and linea-
ments in the rites and institutions of Judaism.
There was, however, another and a confluent stream of
influence from the prevailing heathenism, which bore
powerfully in the same direction, and in respect to nothing
more than the Christian sacraments, around which the
ritualistic tendency had been more peculiarly concentrat-
ing itself. For, besides what was ever flowing from the
temples, the altars, the festal processions, and other public
rites of idolatry, to beget and foster a sensuous spirit,
there was the more specific and also more fascinating
influence derived throughout the more cultivated por-
tions of the Roman empire, from the celebration of the
mysteries. Uncertain as these singular institutions were
as to their origin and design, and associated, in the later
periods of their history at least, with much that was
disorderly and demoralizing, they still possessed a most
powerful attraction to the popular mind, and, for ages
after the introduction of Christianity, contributed im-
mensely to deepen the hold which the existing religion
had on men’s imaginations and feelings. A sort of
charmed virtue was ascribed to them, whereby the partici-
pants were supposed to be raised to a higher elevation—
1 Ep. 63, sec. 2.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 309
to become commingled in some mysterious way with the
Divine. And by intensifying to the uttermost the
sacerdotal element in the sacraments, especially in the
celebration of the Supper, it came to be thought by the
leaders of the Christian church, that an attractive and
spell-like sway might be found within her pale, similar in
kind to the other, but higher in character and aim.
Hence, every distinguishing epithet applied to the
heathen mysteries, with the view of heightening their
sacredness and magnifying their importance, was trans-
ferred without limitation or reserve to the sacraments:
they were called expressly the mysteries, and with every
variety of designation (muh<seij, teleta<j, teleiw<seij, e]p optei<saj),
etc., the Eucharist, in particular, was the mystery by way of
eminence, ‘the great and terrible mystery;’ to partake of
it was to be initiated (muei?sdai); the officiating priest
was the initiator (musthj, mustagwgo<j), who, in his action
upon the elements, was said conficere Deum (to make
God), or to make the body and blood of Christ, and, in
respect to the initiated, to impart a kind of deification
(qei<wsin), or confer the vision (e]poyi<an)—meaning such an
insight into Divine things as the supernaturally illumi-
nated alone can enjoy. The comparison might be, and has
been, drawn out into the fullest circumstantiality of detail;l
1 See the striking passage quoted from Is. Casaubon, in B. ii. p. 2 of ‘Divine Leg.
of Moses.’ It is of no moment, for the point of view under consideration, whether
the priestly act in the sacrament was considered as actually transubstantiating
the elements; or in some mysterious way changing their character, so as to make
them in power and efficacy the body and blood of Christ. Dr Goode has
adduced apparently conclusive arguments, in the work previously referred to,
for shewing that it was the latter, not the former, that was meant; but he has
not, we think, made due account of the priestly and sacrificial representations
of the ordinance given by the Fathers, which were such as to render their view
of it, in practical effect, scarcely less sensuous, and equally fitted to minister to
superstitious uses as the Roman mass; so that, in spite of all explanations, the
Anglo-Catholic ritualists can claim the great body of Patristic writers, from
the middle of the third century, as, at least, virtually on their side.
310 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
but ‘the thing (as Warburton says) is notorious;’ the
Fathers, who at first denounced in unmeasured terms
the heathen mysteries, afterwards adopted ‘the fatal
counsel’ of bringing the most sacred Christian ordinances
into the closest formal resemblance to them. So that,
far asunder as Judaism and Heathenism were in their
spirit and aims, there still was a class of things in which
they wrought together with disastrous influence on the
course of events in the Christian church. What the one,
when applied at an earlier period to the institutions of the
Gospel, began, the other, at a more advanced stage, con-
summated and crowned as with a super-earthly glory.
The Christian ministry, under the one class of influences,
passed into a vicarious priesthood, having somewhat of its
own to effect or offer; and this priesthood, yielding to the
seductive power of the other, became transformed into a
kind of magic hierophants, in whose hands the symbolical
ordinances of the Gospel exchanged their original sim-
plicity for the cloudy magnificence of potent charms and
indescribable wonders. A formal gain in the external
show and aspect of things, but purchased at an incalculable
loss as to their real virtue! For it was the loss of the
truth in its Scriptural directness and power; and in com-
parison of this, the most attractive influences of an outward
ceremonialism (even if it had borne the explicit sanction
of Heaven) must ever prove a miserable compensation.
But if the legal and ritualistic elements of this new dis-
cipline might be said to concentrate itself here, it could
not, in the nature of things, be confined to one department
of the religious life; it was sure to spread, and actually
did spread, in all directions. Baptism, for example, was
accompanied with a whole series of symbolical services,
preceding and following the rite itself;—the disrobing of
the shoes and the ordinary garments; the turning to the
LECT. IX. RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 311
west with a formal renunciation of the devil; the exorcism
and sanctification both of the subject of baptism, and the
water; the three-fold immersion; then, after the action
with water, the anointing with oil, the administration of
milk and honey, etc.,—the greater part of which, though
confessedly without any warrant in Scripture, are testified
by Tertullian to have been traditionally observed in his
time, and the prevailing custom is pleaded in their behalf
as having virtually won for them the force of law.1
Cyprian presses several of them as indispensable.2 In
like manner, postures in devotion for particular times and
seasons were religiously practised, the signing of one’s
forehead or breast with the mark of the cross (which
already, in Tertullian’s time, seems to have reached its
height), the observance of days of fasting and prescribed
seasons of watching and prayer, as necessary, to some
extent, for all who would lead the Christian life, and, in
the case of those who aspired to be religious in the
stricter sense, growing into a regular and enforced system
of discipline. And the sad thing was, that while this
new and complicated legalism was everywhere in progress,
the leading minds in the church, overlooking the funda-
mental agreements between it and the things they were
bound to reject, deemed themselves sufficiently justified
in countenancing the course pursued, on account of certain
superficial differences. It was true that, after having
been abolished, a vicarious, sacrificing priesthood had
found its way again into the church; but then it differed
from the Jewish in being held, not by fleshly descent, but
by ecclesiastical ordination, and having to do directly
with Christian, not with typical, events and objects. The
observance of Easter on the part of the Asiatics was
characterized as Jewish, in contradistinction to that of the
1 De Cor., c. 3, 4. 2 Ep. 70.
312 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
church at large, which was Christian—not because the
services in the former partook more, in the latter less, of
a ritualistic and sacrificial character, but merely because
the mode of determining the day coincided with the
Jewish in the one case, and in the other somewhat
differed from it.1
And so, in other things, Tertullian, when contending
with the Psychical (as he called them), in behalf of more
frequent fastings than either New Testament Scrip-
ture or ecclesiastical usage had sanctioned, vindicates his
view on the ground of the same sort of circumstantial dis-
tinctions. ‘We, therefore,’ says he, ‘in observing times
and days, and months and years, plainly galatianize (i.e.
imitate the folly of the Galatians), if, in doing so, we
observe Jewish ceremonies, legal solemnities; for the
apostle dissuades us from these, disallowing the continued
observance of the Old Testament, which has been buried
in Christ, and urging that of the New. But, if there is a
new condition in Christ, it will be right that there should
be new solemnities.’2 And then he goes on to press, not
only the now universal observance of Easter, but of fifty
days of exuberant joy after its celebration, and certain
stated fasts, as a proof that the church had already con-
ceded the principle of the matter, and needed only to
proceed farther in the same line to reach a higher perfec-
tion. So that, in the estimation of Tertullian, it was
1 So the merits of the question are exhibited on the occasion of its final settle-
ment at the council of Nicaea, in the letter addressed, in the name of the council,
by Constantine to the Asiatic churches: ‘It seemed, in the first place, to be
a thing unworthy and unbecoming, that, in the celebration of that most holy
solemnity, we should follow the usage of the Jews, who, being persons that
have defiled themselves with a most detestable sin, are deservedly given up to
blindness of mind. Let nothing, therefore, be Common to us with that most
hostile multitude of the Jews’ (Euseb. ‘Vit. Const.,’ iii. 18).
2 ‘De Jejunio,’ c. 14.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 313
enough to escape the condemnation pronounced by the
apostle on the Galatians, and to save the imposition of a
new yoke of carnal services from the charge of Judaism,
if only fresh periods and occasions were fixed for their
observance; that is, if, in respect to the mere accident of
time, they underwent a change:—as if the apostle had
said that he was afraid of the Galatians, and regarded
them as imperilling the interests of the Gospel, not simply
because they made their resort to fleshly ordinances, and
observed times and days, and months and years, but
because the resort was to precisely Jewish things of this
description! What the apostle really condemned was
the commingling with the Gospel of a law of carnal ordi-
nances (no matter where derived), as inevitably tending
to cloud the freeness of its salvation, and bring the filial
spirit proper to it into bondage. Chrysostom saw a
little further into the matter than Tertullian; and yet
did not see far enough, or possess sufficient strength of
conviction, to pierce to the root of the evil. While, there-
fore, not unconscious of the aspect of legalism which had
been settling down upon the church, he rather sought to
throw a gloss over it, than rouse his energies to resist and
expose it. Contending against the Jews, and endeavour-
ing to shew how, though the Christians had been dis-
charged from observing times and seasons, they should
yet celebrate Easter with a true oblation, and should have
their minds prepared and purged for it by exercising
themselves for forty days beforehand ‘to prayers, and alms,
and vigils, and tears, and confession, and other such things,’
it is all only that the soul may get free from conscious-
ness of sin—not as if any observation of days were in
itself necessary or commendable. ‘If, therefore (he
counsels), a Jew or a Greek should ask you, Why do you
fast? Do not say, on account of the Passover [i.e., the
314 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
Christian oblation], nor on account of the cross, since thus
you would give him a great handle. For we do not fast
because of the Passover, nor because of the cross, but
because of our sins, since we are going to approach the
mysteries.’1 But for what other purpose, one might,
justly ask in reply, were the times and seasons of the Old
Covenant, with their confessions, purgations, and sacri-
fices, appointed? Was it not also because of sin, and, in
the absence of the more perfect way of deliverance from it,
to have the minds of the people exercised aright concern-
ing it? And should the same be substantially continued
now—yea, greatly increased and intensified (for Judaism
knew of nothing like such a regularly recurring forty
days of penitence and mortification),—after this new and
better way has come? Such a mode of procedure was
neither more nor less than the Galatian policy of seek-
ing to perfect in the flesh what had been begun in the
spirit. It virtually said, ‘These are legalisms, indeed, if
you regard them as absolutely tied to particular times,
or indispensable to the actual accomplishment of Christ’s
salvation in the soul: you would judaize if you so
observed them.’ What then? Reject the impositions as
fraught with danger to your spiritual good? as sure to
take off the regard of your soul from Christ, and find, at
least, a partial saviour in your prolonged asceticism?
No; the Fathers (says Chrysostom), ‘have seen it meet
to enjoin such things; it is wise, and dutiful for you to
keep to the appointed order; only, see that you do not
lose sight of the great realities of the faith; and feel as if
you might do every day what you more systematically do
in the course of these special solemnities.’2
1 ‘Adv. Jud.,’ iii. 4.
2 See also Origen, Hom. xi. in Lev. sec. 10—who draws well the distinction
between the new and the old in regard to fast days, but practically drops the
difference when he comes to the now stated and customary observances.
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 315
All this shews but too plainly, that the light of the
church had become grievously darkened. The men of
might, if in certain respects they had not lost their hands,
had here, at least virtually, lost their eyes. They did not
perceive that there might be the essence of Judaism—a
bondage even surpassing the bondage of its necessary
symbolism and prescribed ritual of service—though not a
day might be kept, nor a rite observed, in exact conformity
with the ancient institutions. It was the return to ob-
servances the same in kind, however differing in the acci-
dents of time and mode, with those of the Old Covenant—
it was the overshadowing of Christ and His blessed
Gospel by a long procession of penitential exercises and
awe-inspiring solemnities, regulated by the canons of an
approved ecclesiastical order—it was this which consti-
tuted the essentially legal element, and therewith the
anti-evangelical, perilous tendency of such a line of things
—the very same substantially, only in a more developed
form, which, at the beginning of the Gospel, crept into
the churches of Galatia, and drew forth the earnest ex-
postulation and warning of the apostle. This is no mere
conjecture. We can appeal in proof of it to the testi-
mony of the very greatest of the Fathers, though in
giving it he might be said to bear witness against himself.
Augustine was plainly conscious of a misgiving about the
vast multiplication of rites and ceremonies in his day, as
tending to the reproduction, in its worst form, of a spirit
of legalism, while still he conceded to mere usage the
virtual right of perpetuating and enlarging the burden.
Take as an example his two letters to Jariuarius.l He is
there returning an answer to certain questions, which had
been proposed to him by his correspondent concerning the
propriety, or otherwise, of observing some fasts and ordi-
1 ‘Classis,’ ii.; Epp. 54, 55.
316 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
nances, in which the practice of the church was not uni-
form; and in doing so he sets out with a broad enunciation
of the principle, which he wished Januarius to hold by—
namely, that our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His own
declaration in the Gospel, placed His people under a
gentle yoke and a light burden, binding the community
of the New Testament together by sacraments very few
in number, quite easy of observance, in their purport
altogether excellent, and relieving them of those things
which lay as a yoke of bondage on the members of the
Old Covenant. These sacraments, of course, He would
have everywhere observed—yet not these alone, but what
things besides ecclesiastical councils and long continued
usage had sanctioned, though without any authority in
Sacred Scripture nay, even the special usages of parti-
cular localities, if they had obtained a settled footing—
such as fasting on the Sabbath (viz., Saturday, the Jewish
Sabbath) at Rome or Carthage, but not at Milan and
other places, where the practice had not yet established
itself—thus leaving the door open for the entrance of a
state of things very (Efferent from what he declared to be
the manifest design and appointment of Christ in the Gos-
pel. And so the Christian feeling in his bosom expresses
itself before he reaches the close of his second epistle.
‘But this (says he, sec. 35) I very much grieve at,
that many salutary prescriptions which are given in the
Divine Scriptures are too little heeded; and all things
are so full of manifest prejudices, that if one have but
touched the ground with his naked foot during his octaves
(the week of holidays succeeding the Easter baptisms), he
is more severely reprimanded than one who has buried his
soul in intemperance. Therefore, all such ceremonies as
are neither enjoined by the authority of Sacred Scripture,
nor have been decreed by the councils of bishops, nor have
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 317
been confirmed by the usage of the church universal,
should in my judgment be cut off, where one has the
power to do so. For, although it could not be discovered
in what respects they are contrary to the faith, yet they
oppress with servile burdens the religion which the mercy
of God wished to be free, with very few and simple ob-
servances; so that the condition of the Jews was more
tolerable, since though they knew not the time of liberty,
yet they were subjected only to legal burdens, not to
human impositions. But the church of God (he plain-
tively adds), having in her constitution much chaff and
many tares, is tolerant of many things, without, however,
approving or doing what is directly at variance with the
faith or a good life.'
We have here a right apprehension of the evil which
had been making way, but by no means a right conception
of the proper mode of dealing with it. It was not by
such a temporizing policy, and such a faint resistance, that
the swelling tide of ritualism was to be checked then, any
more than now. The question should have been boldly
raised: Since the effect of yielding to usage and ecclesi-
astical councils has been to load the church with imposi-
tions, which have marred its primitive simplicity, and
brought in upon it a worse than Judaic bondage, why not
withstand and reject whatever has not its clear warrant
or implied justification in Scripture? This position, how-
ever, was not taken, in regard to the points now under
consideration, either by Augustine, or by any of the more
prominent guides of the church in the centuries succeed-
ing the apostolic age. On the contrary, they allowed the
untoward influences which were at work to fashion, by
gradual and stealthy advances, a yoke of order and disci-
pline, which, by connivance first, then by authoritative
enactment, acquired the force of law, and stop not till the
318 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
whole spirit and character of the new dispensation had
been brought under its sway. The principle of Augustine,
that in respect to those things on which Scripture is silent,
'the custom of the people of God, or the appointments of
our ancestors, must be held as law'—a principle substan-
tially enunciated nearly two centuries before by Tertullian,
and systematically carried out by Cyprian and others1-
had not failed even under the legal economy to introduce
certain things that were at variance with its fundamental
scope and design; but with the comparative freedom
which exists in the New Testament from detailed enact-
merits and formal restraints, the entire field in a manner
lay open to it, and it was impossible to say how far, in
process of time, and with external circumstances favouring
its development, it might go in multiplying the materials
of the church's bondage to form and symbol. The prac-
tical result has been, that Rome has found in it a sufficient
basis for her mighty mass of ritual observance and ascetic
discipline. Bellarmine's principle here is little else than a
repetition of Augustine's,2 'What are properly called
ecclesiastical traditions are certain ancient customs, origi-
nating either with prelates or the people, which by degrees,
through the tacit consent of the people, have obtained the
force of law.' And so the legalizing tendency proceeded,
gathering and consolidating its materials, till it reached
its culmination in the edifice of the Tridentine Council,
which has been justly said to rest on the two great
1 See Aug.'s 'Ep. to Casulanus,' sec. 2. In his rebus de quibus nihil certi
statuit Scriptura divina, mos populi Dei, vel instituta majorum pro lege tenenda
amt.' Also Ep. ad. Januarium; Tertul. de Corona, sec. 3; Observationes,
quas sine ullius Scripturae instrumento, solius traditionis titulo, et exinde
consuetudinis patrocinio vindicamus.'
2 'De Verbo Dei,' L. iv. c. 2. 'Ecclesiasticae traditiones proprie dicuntur
consuetudines quaedam antiquae, vel a praelatis vel a populis inchoatae, quae
paulatim, tacito consensu populorum, vim legis obtinuerunt.'
LECT.IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 319
pillars—that Christ is a lawgiver in the same sense in
which Moses was, and that the Gospel is a new law pre-
senting, in a spiritualized form, the same features which
the old did1—the same, indeed, in kind, though far sur-
passing them in its multifarious and irksome character,
and operating also after the same disciplinary style, as
the very eulogies of its adherents indicate. In the church,
they tell us, ‘we are placed, as it were, under the disci-
pline of childhood—God having constituted an order
which shall bear rule over His people, and shall bring
them under the yoke of obedience to Himself,'2 What is
this but in effect to say of the Romish church, that she has
brought back her people, through the carnal elements she
has infused into her worship and polity, to the condition
out of which it was the declared purpose of Christ's
mission to raise and elevate the members of His kingdom?
—not her glory, therefore, but her reproach. The new
in her hands has relapsed into the old; what was begun
in the Spirit, she has vainly sought to perfect in the flesh,
and has only succeeded in displacing a religion of spirit for
a religion of forms and ceremonies, and getting the dead
works of a mechanical routine, for the fruits of a living
faith and responsive love.
This were itself bad enough. For it completely inverts
the proper order and relation of things as set forth in New
Testament Scripture—makes more account of external rites
than of essential truths—and, while all-solicitous for the
rightful administration of the one, provides no effectual
guarantee for the due maintenance and inculcation of the
other. The primary aim of the church comes to be the
securing of legitimate dispensers of ordinances, who may,
at the same time, be teachers of heretical doctrine, and
1 Litton ‘On the Church,’ p. 122.
2 Manning ‘On the Unity of the Church,’ p. 264.
320 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
abettors of practical corruption—and in reality have often
been such. But this is by no means the whole of the evil.
For, while avowedly designed to render salvation sure to
those who keep to the prescribed channel of external
order and ritualistic observance, it really brings uncer-
tainty into the whole matter; and places New Testament
believers not only under a more complicated service than
was imposed on those of the Old Testament, but under a
great disadvantage as regards the assurance of their heart
before God. The ancient worshipper, as regards the
mediating of his services and their acceptance with
Heaven, had to do only with objective realities, about
which he could with comparative ease, satisfy himself.
There was for him the one well-known temple with which
Jehovah associated His name—the one altar of burnt-
offering, also perfectly known and obvious to all—the
officiating priesthood, with their local habitations and
carefully preserved genealogies, descending from age to
age, and excluding almost the possibility of doubt; and
the confession of sin which required to be made, and the
offerings on account of it which were to be presented, in
order to the obtaining of forgiveness, both had their
explicit ordination from God, and were directly rendered
to Him: they depended in no degree for their success on
the caprice or the intention of him who served the altar.
But the spiritual element, which it has been impossible to
exclude from the new law of ordinances, has, in the
ritualistic system, changed all this, and introduced in its
stead the most tantalizing and vexatious uncertainty.
The validity of the sacraments depends on the impressed
character of the priesthood, and this, again, on a whole
series of circumstances, of none of which can the sincere
worshipper certainly assure himself. It depends, first of
all, on the ministering priest having been canonically
LECT. IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 321
ordained, after having been himself baptized and admitted
to deacons' orders; and if, as will commonly happen,
several priests have to be dealt with, then the same con-
ditions must be found to meet in each. But these are
only the earlier links. The validity of ordinances depends
not less upon the spiritual pedigree of the priesthood,
who must have received ordination from a bishop, and he
again have been consecrated by at least three bishops,
none of whom has been without baptism, or deacons' and
priests' orders, nor at the time under excommunication,
or in deadly heresy and sin; and so also must it have
been with their predecessors, up through all the ages of
darkness, ignorance, and disorder, to the time of the
apostles. ‘The chance of one's possessing the means of
salvation is (upon the ritualistic theory) just the chance
of there having been no failure of any single link in this
enormous chain from the apostles' time to ours. The
chance against one's possessing the means of salvation is
the chance of such a failure having once occurred. And
is it thus that the Christian is to give diligence to make
his calling and election sure? Is it thus he is to run not
as uncertainly, and to draw near to God in full assurance
of faith?'1 It is easy to affirm, as Dr Hook does, ‘There
is not a bishop or priest or deacon, among us, who may
not, if he please, trace his spiritual descent from Peter
and Paul.' But where is the proof of the assertion? ‘It
is probable,' says Macaulay, ‘that no clergyman in the
church of England can trace up his spiritual genealogy
from bishop to bishop so far back even as the time of the
Conquest. There remain many centuries during which
the history of the transmission of his orders is buried in
utter darkness. And whether he be a priest by succession
from the apostles, depends on the question, whether
1 ‘Cautions for the Times,’ p. 312.
X
322 THE REVELATION OF LAW. [LECT. IX.
during that long period some thousands of events took
place, any one of which may, without any gross improba-
bility, be supposed not to have taken place. We have
not a tittle of evidence for any of these events.’1 It is
therefore justly concluded by the preceding authority, that
‘there is not a minister in all Christendom who is able to
trace up with any approach to certainty his own spiritual
pedigree. Irregularities could not have been wholly ex-
cluded without a perpetual miracle; and that no such
miraculous interference existed, we have even historical
proof.’2 Even this, however, is not the end of the un-
certainties. For, in this new, man-made law of ordi-
nances, there is required the further element of the
knowledge and intention of the parties—those of the
worshippers in confessing to the priest, receiving from
him absolution and the sacraments; and those again of
the priest in administering the rites—the utter want, or
essential defect of which, on either side, vitiates the whole.
And who can tell for certain, whether they really exist
or not? The poor penitent is at the mercy of circum-
stances, connected with the character and position of his
spiritual confidant, which he not only cannot control, but
which, from their remote or impalpable nature, he cannot
even distinctly ascertain: he must either refuse to enter-
tain a doubt, or be a stranger to solid peace.
On every account, therefore, this retrogressive policy,
this confounding of things which essentially differ, is to
be condemned and deplored as the source of incalculable
evils. It is a disturbing as well as an enslaving system,
shackles the souls which Christ has set free, and robs the
Gospel of its essential glory as glad tidings of great joy
to mankind. Men may disguise it from themselves; they
1 Essay on Gladstone's 'Church and State.'
2 Cautions,' etc., p. 302.
LECT IX.] RE-INTRODUCTION OF CEREMONIALISM. 323
may resolutely shut their eyes on its more objectionable
features, or refuse to make full application of its more
distinctive principles; but its native tendency and work-
ing unquestionably are to place the believer under the
Gospel in much closer dependence than even the disciple
of Moses on the carnal elements of a merely external
polity and human administration; and, were it left to his
choice, he might well exchange the fuller knowledge he
has obtained of the eternal world for the larger freedom
from arbitrary impositions, and the more assured posses-
sion of peace with God, which were enjoyed by those who
lived in the earlier periods of the Divine dispensations.
SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
I.
THE DOUBLE FORM OF THE DECALOGUE, AND THE QUESTIONS
TO WHICH IT HAS GIVEN RISE.
IT is to the Decalogue, as recorded in Ex. xx. 1-17, that respect is
usually had in discussions on the law; and in the lecture directly
bearing upon the subject (Lect. IV.), it has been deemed unneces-
sary to notice the slightly diversified form in which the ten words
appear in a subsequent part of the Pentateuch (Deut. v. 6-21).
It were improper, however, in so full an investigation as the present,
to leave the subject without adverting to this other form, and
noticing the few variations from the earlier which occur in it--
variations which, however unimportant in themselves, have given
rise to grave enough inferences and conclusions, which we hold to
be erroneous. The differences are the following:—The fourth
command begins with ‘keep (rOkwA) the Sabbath day to sanctify
it, as the Lord thy God commanded thee,' instead of simply, as in
Exodus, ‘Remember the Sabbath day to sanctify it;’ also, in the
body of the precept, we have, ‘nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any
of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates, that thy
man-servant and thy maid-servant may rest as well as thou,’ instead
of ‘nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates;’ then,
at the close, instead of the reference to God's work at creation in
Exodus, 'or in six days the Lord made heaven and earth,' etc., as
the primary ground and reason of the command, there is merely an
enforcement, from the people's own history, of the merciful regard
already enjoined toward the servile class, ‘And remember that thou
326 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
wast a servant in the land of Egypt, and that the Lord thy God
brought thee out thence, through a mighty hand and by a stretched
out arm; therefore the Lord thy God commanded thee to keep the
Sabbath day.' In the fifth command there is, precisely as in the
fourth, a formal recognition of the previous announcement of the
cam and, ‘Honour thy father and thy mother, as the Lord thy
God commanded thee;' and in the annexed promise, after ‘that thy
days may be long (or prolonged),’ it is added, ‘and that it may go
well with thee’ in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee—
both of the additions existing only in Deuteronomy. In the last
four commands, there is used at the commencement the connecting
particle and (vav), which is wanting in Exodus (for which, in the
English Bible, there is used the disjunctive neither). Finally, the
last precept, which Exodus runs, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor
his man-servant, nor his maid-servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor
any thing that is thy neighbour's,’ stands thus in Deuteronomy,
‘Thou shalt not covet (dmoH;ta) thy neighbour's wife, and thou shalt
not desire (hU,xaH;ti)1 thy neighbour's house, his field, nor his man-
servant nor his maid-servant, his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that
is thy neighbour's.’
1. Now, it is clear, first of all, in respect to the whole of these
alterations in the form of the Decalogue, that in no case do they
affect the substance of the things enjoined: the commands are the
same throughout, and stand in the same order in both the records.
So that viewed simply in the light of law, there is properly no
difference between the earlier and the later form. For we must
distinguish between what is commanded in God's moral law, and
the considerations by which, in whole or in part, it may be enforced:
the one, having its ground in the nature of God, must remain
essentially the same; the other, depending to a large extent on the
circumstances of the people, and God's methods of dealing with
them, may readily admit of variety. It is chiefly in regard to the
law of the Sabbath that, even in this respect, any notable change
has been introduced—the more general reason derived from the
Divine procedure at creation being altogether unnoticed in Deutero-
1 The renderings of the two verbs are unfortunately inverted in the authorized
version.
THE DOUBLE FORM OF THE DECALOGUE. 327
nomy, and stress laid only on what had been done for Israel by the
redemption from bondage, and what in turn they were bound to do
for those among themselves whose condition somewhat resembled
theirs in Egypt. Why there should have been, in this later record, so
entire an ignoring of the one kind of motive, and so prominent an
exhibition of the other, no definite information has been given us,
and we are perhaps but imperfectly able to understand. The one,
however, is no way incompatible with the other, and no more in
this case than in many others are we entitled to regard the
special consideration adduced as virtually cancelling the general,
and narrowing the sphere of the obligation imposed. It is always
dutiful, and is only a specific branch of the great law of brotherly
love, to deal justly toward the stranger, the fatherless, and the
widow, and beware of defrauding them of their rights: yet such
duties are expressly charged upon the Israelites in the book of
Deuteronomy, on the ground that they had been redeemed from
the condition of bondmen in Egypt (chap. xxiv. 17, 18). In other
cases, the general duties of compassion to the poor and help to the
needy are in like manner enforced, and are said, on this special
accounce, to have been commanded (chap. xv. 15, xvi. 12, xxiv.
19-22). Yet surely no one would think of asserting that duties of
such a description had been imposed upon the Israelites merely
because they had been so redeemed, and had not both a prior and
a more general ground of obligation. All that is meant is, that
from what God had done for them as a people, and the relation in
which they stood to Him, they were in a very peculiar manner
bound to the observance of such things—that, if they failed to do
them, they would disregard the special lessons of their history, and
defeat the ends of their corporate existence. And nothing more,
nothing; else, than this is the legitimate interpretation to be put on
the similar reference to Israelitish history in the case before us.
The primary ground of the Sabbath law lay still, as before, in the
primeval sanctifying and blessing of the day at the close of creation,
as indicative of man's calling to enter into God's rest, as well as to
do His work, and to make the pulsation of the Divine life in a
certain sense his own.' But now that Israel had become not only
a free and independent people, but, as such, were already occupying
a prominent place, having laid several powerful tribes at their feet,
and were presently to rise to a still higher position, it was of the
328 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
greatest importance for them to feel that the power and the oppor-
tunities thus given them were to be used in subservience to the
great ends of their calling, and not for any carnal interests and
purposes of their own. As masters, with many helpless captives
needy dependants subject to their control, it behoved them to
remember that they had themselves escaped from servitude through
God's merciful interposition, that as such they stood under law to
Him, and so were specially bound, alike for His glory and for the
common wellbeing of themselves and their dependants, to keep that
ever-recurring day of sacred rest, which, when observed as it was
dsigned, brings all into living fellowship with the mercy and good-
ness of Heaven. By this there was no narrowing of the obligation,
but only, in respect to a particular aspect of it, a special ground of
obedience pressed upon Israel—the same, indeed, which prefaced
the entire Decalogue.
It is scarcely necessary, perhaps, to refer to the slight addition
made to the reason employed in enforcing the observance of the
fifth precept; for nothing new is introduced by it, but only an
amplification of what had been originally presented. That their
days might be prolonged in the land which the Lord had given them
is promise connected, in Exodus, with the honouring of parents;
and this was evidently all one with having a continued enjoyment
of the Lord's favour, or of being prospered in their national affairs.
It was virtually to say, that a well-trained youth, growing up in
reverent obedience to the constituted authorities in the family and
the state, would be the best, and, in the long run, the only effective
preparation for a well-ordered and thriving community. And this
is just a little more distinctly expressed by the additional clause in
Deuteronomy, ‘that it may go well with thee:’ thus and thus only
expect successive generations of a God-fearing and blessed people.
2. But allowing the fitness of such explanations, why, it may be
asked, should they have been necessary? Why, when professing
to rehearse the words which were spoken by God from Sinai, and
which formed the basis of the whole legal economy, should certain
of those words have been omitted, and certain others inserted? Do
not such alterations, even though not introducing any change of
meaning, seem to betray some tampering with the original sources,
or least militate against the plenary inspiration of the Scriptures?
So it has been argued by some modern critics but with no solid
THE DOUBLE FORM OF THE DECALOGUE. 329
ground, if the matter is contemplated from the true Scriptural
point of view. For it is clear that Moses, in the, rehearsal he made
on the plains of Moab of what had been said and done nearly
forty years before at Sinai, intended only to give the substance of
the past, but not the exact reproduction, not the identical words
with the same fulness, and in precisely the same order. A rhe-
torical element pervades the book, mingling with and to some
extent qualifying the use made of historical data. The expression,
twice repeated in the rehearsal of the Decalogue, ‘As the Lord
thy God commanded thee,' was alone sufficient to skew, that while
Moses was giving afresh the solemn utterances of God, he was
doing so with a certain measure of freedom—intent rather upon
the object of reviving wholesome impressions upon the minds of a
comparatively untutored people, than of presenting to critical ears
an exact and literal uniformity. The same freedom also appears
in other rehearsals given by him of what passed in his inter-
views with God.1 And if the general principle be still pressed,
that, on the theory of plenary inspiration, every word of God is
precious, and any addition to it or detraction from it must tend to
mar its completeness or purity, we reply that this is applicable
to the case in hand only when there is an interference with the
contents of Scripture by an unauthorized instrument, or beyond
certain definite limits. Slight verbal deviations, while the sense
remains unaffected, or such incidental changes as serve the pur-
pose of throwing some explanation on the word, while substan-
tially repeating it, and so as to give it a closer adaptation to
existing circumstances, are of frequent occurrence in Scripture,
and perfectly accord with its character and design.2 For this
also is of God. In the cases supposed, it is He who employs the
second instrumentality as well as the first, and thereby teaches the
church, while holding fast by the very word of God as revealed in
Scripture, to use it with a reasonable freedom, and with a fitting
regard to circumstances of time and place. It should also be
remembered, that such slight alterations as those now under con-
sideration have an exegetical value of some importance: they
1 Compare, for example, Deut. x. 1, 2, with Ex. xxxiv. 1, 2; Deut.. x. 11,
with Ex. xxxiii. 1.
2 See, as specimens, the manner of quoting Old Testament Scripture in such
passages as Matt. ii. 6, xi. 10; Rom. xi. 26, 27; Heb. viii. 8-10, etc.
30 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
strongly corroborate the Mosaic authorship of the book of Deute-
ronomy. For, is it conceivable, as Havernick justly asks,1 ‘that a
1ater author would have permitted himself in such an alteration of
what he himself most expressly attributes to Moses, and with the
sacredness and inviolability of which he is deeply impressed, and
not rather have observed the most conscientious exactness in the
repetition of the Mosaic form?' Nothing, he adds, would be
gained by the supposition of some simple forms of the commands
traditionally preserved; for as soon as any form was committed to
writing, we may be certain that, in the case especially of so very
peculiar and fundamental a piece of legislation, that form would
become identified in the popular mind with the thing itself. So
that the alterations in question, which could not but be regarded
as improper if coming from any one except the Mediator Himself
of the Old Covenant, lend important confirmation to the Mosaic
authorship of the book in which they occur.
3. The most important alteration, however, in the later form of
the Decalogue, has yet to be noticed—one, also, which has given
rise to considerable discussion respecting the structure of the
Decalogue itself. It occurs at the commencement of what, in the
Protestant church, is usually designated the tenth command. The
insertion, somewhat later, of the field of one's neighbour, immedi-
ately after his house, as among the things not to be coveted, calls
for no special remark; as it is in the same line with a similar
addition in the fifth command already noticed—being only a further
specification, for the sake of greater explicitness. But the change
at the commencement is of a different sort; for here the two first
clauses are placed in the inverse order to that adopted in Exodus.
There it is: ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife;’ but in Deuteronomy, ‘thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, thou shalt not desire thy
neighbour's house'—there being, along with a different order, a
different verb, expressive of the same general import, but of a less
intensive meaning, in regard to house and other possessions, than
that employed in regard to wife. And occasion has been taken,
partly at least from this, to advocate a division of the Decalogue,
which makes here two separate commands—one, the ninth, ‘Thou
shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife,’ and another, the tenth, ‘Thou
1 ‘Introd. to Pent.,’ c. 25.
THE DOUBLE FORM OF THE DECALOGUE. 331
shalt not desire (so as to covet) thy neighbour's house, his field,’
etc. The view in question can only be partly ascribed to this
source; for Augustine, who is the earliest representative of it
known to us (though he speaks of it as held by others in his day),
and from whom it has descended to the Roman Catholic, as also
to the Lutheran church, was evidently influenced in its favour
fully as much by doctrinal as by exegetical considerations. By
splitting the command against coveting into two, and throwing the
prohibitions against the introduction of false gods and the worship
of the true God by means of idols into one, a division was got of
the Decalogue into three and seven—both sacred numbers, and the
first deemed of special importance, because significant of the great
mystery of ‘the Trinity.’ ‘To me, therefore,’ says Augustine,1 ‘it
appears more fitting that the division into three and seven should
be accepted, because in those things which pertain to God there
appears to more considerate minds (diligentius intuentibus) an
indication of the Trinity.' It was quite in accordance with his
usual style of interpretation, which found intimations of the
Trinity, as of other Divine mysteries, in the most casual notices;
in the mention; for example, of the three water-pots at Cana, the
three loaves which the person in the parable is represented as
going to ask from his friend, etc. Stress, however, is also laid by
Augustine, as by those who follow him, on the twofold prohibition,
‘Thou shalt not covet,’ in both forms of the Decalogue, though
coupled in the one with the house first, and in the other with the
wife—as apparently implying that the coveting in the one case
belonged to a different category from that in the other; and he
thinks there is even a greater difference between the two kinds of
covetous desire, as directed towards a neighbour's wife and a neigh-
bour's property, than between the setting up of other gods beside
Jehovah, and the worshipping of Jehovah by idols.
But this view, though it has recently been vindicated by some
writers of note (in particular, by Sonntag and Kurtz), is liable to
several, and in our judgment quite fatal objections. In the first
place, it is without any support from Jewish authority, which, in
such a matter, is entitled to considerable weight. A measure of
support in its behalf, has, indeed, been sought in the Parashoth, or
sectional arrangement of the Heb. MSS. In the larger proportion
1 ‘Quaest. in Exodium,’ 71.
332 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
of these MSS. (460 out of 694 mentioned by Kennicott) the De-
calogue is divided into ten Parashoth, with spaces between them
commonly marked by a Sethuma (s); and one of these does stand,
in the MSS. referred to, between the two commands against covet-
ing, while it is wanting between the prohibition against having
any other gods, and that against worshipping God by idols. But
the principle of these Parashoth is unknown, and has yet found no
satisfactory explanation. For it is at variance with the only two
divisions of the Decalogue, which are certainly known to have
prevailed among the Jewish authorities—an older one, which is
found alike in Philo1 and Josephus,2 the only one, indeed, men-
done by them, making the division into two fives, the first clos-
ing with the command to honour father and mother; and a later
one, adopted by the Talmudical Jews, according to which there
still remain the two fives, and in the second only one command
against coveting, but in the earlier part the command against
image is combined with that against false gods, and the first com-
mand is simply the declaration, 'I am Jehovah thy God.' This
last classification is certainly erroneous; for in that declaration, as
Origen long ago objected,3 there is nothing that can be called a
command, but an announcement merely as to who it is that does
command (quis sit, qui mandat, ostendit.) Without, however,
going further into Jewish sentiment or belief upon the subject,
it may justly be held as an argument of some weight against the
Augustinian division of the command about coveting into two
separate parts, and still more against the division as a whole into
three and seven, that it appears to have been ignored by both
earlier and later Jews, that it has also no representative among
the Greek Fathers, nor even among the Latins till Augustine.
Another reason against the view is, that it would oblige us to
take the form of the tenth command in Deuteronomy—that which
forbids the coveting of a neighbour's wife first, and his house after-
wards--as the only correct form of the command; consequently, to
suppose the different order presented in Exodus to be the result of
an error in the text. For, were both texts held to be equally
correct, then, on the supposition of the command against coveting
being really twofold, there would be an absolute contrariety:
1 ‘Quis rerun div. haer.,’ sec. 35. 2 ‘Ant.’ iii. c. 6 sec. 5.
3 ‘Hom. in Ex.' 8.
THE DOUBLE FORM OF THE DECALOGUE. 333
according to the one text, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's
house,’ would be the ninth in order, while, according to the other, it
would be, ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.’ If, how-
ever, all the objects of covetous desire were embraced in one
command, it becomes a matter of no moment in what precise
order they are placed: standing first, as it does in Exodus, the
house is a general name for all that belongs to a man in his
domestic relationship, and wife, man-servant, maid-servant, which
follow, are the more prominent particulars included in it; while
in Deuteronomy, the second place only being assigned to house,
and wife standing first, the latter has an independent position of
her own, and house must be understood as comprising whatever
else of a domestic nature is dear and precious to a man. So under-
stood, there is only a slight diversity in the mode of representa-
tion, but no contrariety; and such a view is, therefore, greatly to
be preferred to the other, which requires, without any support
from the evidence of MSS., that there is a textual error in one
of the accounts, and that in this respect that which professes to
be the later and is obviously the freer account of the matter, is to
be held as the more exact representation of the original utterance:
—both of them extremely improbable and entirely hypothetical.
Besides, while there undoubtedly is a specific difference between
evil concupiscence as directed toward the wife of another man, and
the same as directed toward his goods and possessions—sufficient to
entitle the one to a formal repetition after the other—there still is
no essential diversity; nothing like a difference in kind. The
radical affection in each case alike is an inordinate desire to possess
what is another's--only, in the one case with more of a regard to
sensual gratification, in the other to purposes of gain. Hence, also in
the more distinct references made to it in the New Testament, it is
evidently presented as a unity.1 It is quite otherwise, however,
with the commands to have no God but Jehovah, and to make no
use of images in His worship for here there is a real and an easily
recognised distinction—the one having respect to the proper object
of worship, and the other to its proper mode of celebration. True,
no doubt, from the very intimate connection which in ancient times
subsisted between the use of idols in worship, and the doing homage
to distinct deities the two are not unfrequently identified in Old
1 Rom. vii. 7; James i. 15, iv. 5.
334 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
Testament Scripture — being indeed but different stages in one
course of degeneracy;1 still, when formal respect is had to the
two phases of evil, a very marked distinction is drawn between
them, as when the sin of Jeroboam is spoken of as a light thing
compared with that of Ahab, in avowedly setting up the worship
of Baal, and thereby supplanting the worship of Jehovah.2 The
one was a corrupting of the idea of God's character and service, the
other was an ignoring of His very existence.
On every account, therefore, the use which has been made of
the concluding portion of the Decalogue, as given in the book of
Deuteronomy, in the interest of a particular division of its contents,
is to be rejected as untenable. A more obvious and palpable ground
of distinction between the commands must have existed to lay the
basis of a proper division. And if this may be said of the distinc-
tion attempted to be drawn between one part and another of the
command against coveting, still more may it be said of the supposed
reference in the Decalogue at large to the sacred numbers of three
and seven, which has from the first chiefly swayed the minds of
those who favour the division introduced by Augustine. It is of
too inward and refined a nature to have occurred to any one
but a contemplative, semi-mystic student of Scripture while in
things pertaining to the form and structure of a popular religion,
it is rather what may commend itself to the intelligence of men of
ordinary shrewdness and discernment, than what may strike the
fancy of a profound thinker in his closet, which is entitled to con-
sideration. Contemplated from this point of view, no distribution
of the commands of the Decalogue can be compared, for naturalness
and convenience, to that which comes down to us, on the testimony
of Philo and Josephus, as the one generally accepted by the ancient
Jews, which has also received the suffrage, in modern times, of the
great body of the Reformed theologians nor does any appropriation
for the two tables so readily present itself, or appear so simple, as
that of the two fives—though probable reasons can also be alleged
for the division into four and six. But the difference in the latter
respect is of no practical moment.
1 Ex. xxxii. 32; 2 Cor. xiii. 8. 2 1 Kings xvi. 31.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 335
II.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN GOD'S REVELATIONS OF TRUTH
AND DUTY, CONSIDERED WITH AN ESPECIAL RESPECT TO
THEIR CLAIM ON MEN'S RESPONSIBILITIES AND OBLIGA-
TIONS.
THE fact that a historical element enters deeply into God's
revelations of Himself in Scripture, and exercises a material
influence as well in respect to the things presented in them, at
different periods, to men's faith and observance, as to the form or
manner in which it was done, has been throughout assumed in our
discussions on the law, but not made the subject of direct inquiry.
The fact itself admits of no doubt. It is one of the most distin-
guishing characteristics of Scripture as a Divine revelation, and as
such is prominently exhibited at the commencement of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, in the words, ‘God, who at sundry times, and in
divers manners, spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets,
hath in these last days spoken unto us by His Son.' God's voice
has been sounding through the ages, now in this manner, now in
that, and with varying degrees of perspicuity and fulness, but
culminating, in the appearance and mission of the Son, as that
wherein it found its deepest utterance and its most perfect form of
manifestation. The simple fact, however, no longer satisfies; it
comes at certain points into conflict with the critical, individualizing
spirit of the age. But, to have the matter distinctly before us, we
must first look at the consequences necessarily growing out of the
fact with regard to the character it imparts to Divine revelation,
and then consider the exceptions taken against it in whole or
in part.
I. First, in respect to the fact, we have to take into account the
extent to which the characteristic in question prevails. There is
not merely a historical element in Scripture, but this so as even to
impart to the revelation itself a history. Though supernatural in
336 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
its origin, it is yet perfectly natural and human in its mode of
working and its course of development. It stands associated with
human wants and emergencies, as the occasions which called it
forth; human agencies were employed to minister it; and, for
transmission to future times, it has been written in the common
tongues and dialects of men, and under the diversified forms of
composition with which they are otherwise familiar. So little does
this revelation of God affect a merely ideal or super-earthly style—
so much does it let itself down among the transactions and move-
ments of history, that it has ever been with outstanding and
important facts that it has associated its more fundamental ideas.
In these, primarily, God has made Himself known to man. And
hence, alike in the Old and the New Testament Scriptures, the
historical books stand first; the foundation of all is there; the rest
is but the structure built on it; and just as is the reality and
significance of the facts recorded in them, such also is the truth of
the doctrines, and the measure of the obligations and hopes growing
out of them.
But since revelation thus has a history, it necessarily has also a
progress; for all history, in the proper sense, has such. It is not a
purposeless moving to and fro, or a wearisome iteration, a turning
back again upon itself, but an advance—if at times halting, or cir-
cuitous, still an advance—toward some specific end. So, in a
peculiar manner, is it with the book of God's revelation; there is
an end, because it is of Him, who never can work but for some
aim worthy of Himself, and with unerring wisdom subordinates
every thing to its accomplishment. That end may be variously
described, according to the point of view from which it is contem-
plated; but, speaking generally, it may be said to include such an
unfolding of the character and purposes of God in grace, as shall
secure for those who accept its teachings, salvation from the ruin of
sin, practical conformity to the will of God; and the bringing in of
the everlasting kingdom of righteousness and peace, with which
both the good of His people and the glory of His own name are
identified. This is the grand theme pursued throughout; the
different parts and stages of revelation are but progressive develop-
ments of its and, to be rightly understood, must be viewed with
reference to their place in the great whole. So that the revelation
of God in Scripture finds, in this respect, its appropriate image in
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 337
those temple-waters seen in vision by the prophet—issuing at first
like a little streamlet from the seat of the Divine majesty, but
growing apace, and growing, not by supplies ministered from
without, but as it were by self-production, and carrying with it the
more--the more it increased in volume and approached its final
resting place--the vivifying influences which shed all around them
the aspect of life and beauty.
Now this characteristic of Divine revelation, as being historically
developed, and thence subject to the law of progress, has undoubtedly
its dark side to our view; there are points about it which seem
mysterious, and which we have no means of satisfactorily explicat-
ing. In particular, the small measures of light which for ages it
furnished respecting the more peculiar things of God, the imperfect
form of administration under which the affairs of His kingdom
were necessarily placed till the fulness of the time had come for the
manifested Saviour, and still in a measure cleaving to it—such
things undoubtedly appear strange to us, and are somewhat difficult
to reconcile with our abstract notions of wisdom and benevolence.
Why should the world have been kept so long in comparative dark-
ness, when some further communications from the upper Sanctuary
might have relieved it? Why delay so long the forthcoming of the
great realities, on which all was mainly to depend for life and bless-
ing? Or, since the realities have come, why not take more effective
means for having them brought everywhere to bear on the under-
standings and consciences of men? Questions of this sort not
unnaturally present themselves; and though, in regard at least to
the first of them, we can point to a wide-reaching analogy in the
natural course of providence (as has been already noticed at p. 62),
yet, in the general, we want materials for arriving at an intelligent
view of the whole subject, such as might enable us to unravel the
mysteries which hang around it. It behoves us to remember, that
in things which touch so profoundly upon the purposes of God, and
the plan of His universal government, we meanwhile know but in
part; and instead of vainly agitating the questions, why it is thus
and not otherwise, should rather apply our minds to the discovery
of the practical aims, which we have reason to believe stand asso-
ciated with the state of things as it actually exists, and as we
have personally to do with it.
Looking at the matter in this spirit, and with such an object in
338 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
view, we can readily perceive various advantages arising from such
an introduction of the historical element as has been described into
the method of God's revelation of His mind and will to men. First
of all, it serves (if we may so speak) to humanize the revelation—
does, in a measure, for its teachings of truth and duty what, in a
still more peculiar manner, was done by the Incarnation. The
Divine word spoken from the invisible heights, out of the secret
place of Godhead, and the same word uttered from the bosom of
humanity, linked on every side to the relations and experience of
actual life, though they might perfectly coincide in substance, yet
in form how widely different! And in the one how greatly more
fitted than in the other to reach the sympathies and win the
homage of men! It is, indeed, at bottom, merely a recognising
and acting on the truth, that man was made in the image of God,
and that only by laying hold of what remains of this image, and
sanctifying it for higher uses, can the Spirit of God effectually dis-
close Divine things, and obtain for them a proper lodgment in the
soul: the rays of the eternal Sun must reach it, not by direct
effulgence, but ‘through the luminous atmosphere of created minds.’
Then as another result, let it be considered how well this method
accords with and secures that fulness and variety, which is neces-
sary to Scripture as the book which, from its very design, was to pro-
vide the seed-corn of spiritual thought and instruction for all times
—a book for the sanctification of humanity, and the developing in
the soul of a higher life than that of nature. An end like this could
never have been served by some general announcements, systema-
tized exhibitions of doctrine, or stereotyped prescriptions of order
and duty, without respect to diversities of time, and the ever-vary-
ing evolutions of the world's history. There was needed for its
accomplishment precisely what we find in Scripture--a rich and
various treasury of knowledge, with ample materials for quiet
meditation, the incitement of active energy, and the soothing influ-
ences of consolation and hope---and so, resembling more the free-
dom and fulness of nature than the formality and precision of art.
Hence, as has been well said, ‘Scripture cannot be mapped or its
contents catalogued; but, after all our diligence to the end of our
lives, and to the end of the church, it must be an unexplored and
unsubdued land, with heights and valleys, forests and streams, on
the right and left of our path, full of concealed wonders and choice
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 339
treasures.'1 One may readily enough master a system of doctrine,
or become conversant with even a complicated scheme of religious
observance; but a history, a life, especially such lives and memor-
able transactions as are found in Scripture, above all, what is
written of our blessed Lord, His marvellous career, His Divine works
and not less Divine discourses, His atoning death and glorious resur-
rection--who can ever say he has exhausted these? Who does not
rather feel--if he really makes himself at home with them—that
there belongs to them a kind of infinite suggestiveness, such as is
fitted to yield perpetually fresh life and instruction to thoughtful
minds? And this, not as in the case of human works, for a certain
class merely of mankind, but for all who will be at pains to search
into its manifold and pregnant meaning. Hence the Word of God
stands so closely associated with study, meditation, and prayer,
without which it cannot accomplish its design—cannot even make
its treasures properly known. And on this account, ‘the church
and theology must, while they are in the flesh, eat their bread by
the sweet of their brow; which is not only not a judgment, but,
for our present state, a great blessing. If the highest were indeed
so easy and simple, then the flesh would soon become indolent and
satisfied. God gives us the truth in His word, but He takes care
that we must all win it for ourselves ever afresh. He has there-
fore with great wisdom arranged the Bible as it is.'2 Still further,
in the actual structure of revelation, there is an interesting exhibi-
tion of the progressive character of the Divine plan, and of the
organic connection between its several parts--in this a witness of
the general organism of the human family, and, for individual
members thereof, a type of the progress through which the divinely
educated mind must ever pass, as from childhood to youth, and
from youth to the ripeness and vigour of manhood. It thus has, as
it could no otherwise have done, its milk for babes and its meat for
strong men. And the scheme of God for the highest wellbeing of
His people, is seen to be no transient or fitful conception, but a
purpose lying deep in the eternal counsel of His will—thence
graduall working itself into the history of the world—proceeding
onwards from age to age, rising from one stage of development to
another, the same grand principles maintained, the same moral aims
1 Quoted in Trench's ‘Hulsean Lectures,’ p. 94.
2 Auberlen ‘On Divine Revelation,’ p. 237, Eng. Trans.
340 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
pursued, through all external changes of position and varying forms
of administration, till the scheme reached its consummation in the
appearance and kingdom of Christ. How assuring such a pre-
arranged and progressive course to the humble heart of faith, which
desires in earnest to know its God! And how instructive also to
mark the organic unity pervading the external diversity, and to
learn, from the earlier and simpler manifestations of the truth,
the lessons of wisdom, which are equally applicable, but often
mere difficult of apprehension, under its higher and more spiritual
revelations! So that, for those living now in the ends of the world,
there is a rich heritage of instruction, counsel, and admonition laid
up for them in the Word of God, associated with every period of
the church's progress: Jehovah, the unchangeable One, speaks
to them in all; all has been ‘written for their learning, that
through patience and comfort of the Scriptures they might have
hope.'
II. If the account now given of the matter, and the conclusion
just drawn as to its practical bearing—drawn in the language of
Scripture—be correct, then the historical and progressive character
of revelation, the circumstance of God's mind and will being com-
municated, in the first instance, to particular individuals, and
associated with specific times and places in the past, does not
destroy its application or impair its usefulness to men of other
times: we, too, are interested in the facts it records, we are bound
by the law of righteousness it reveals, we have to answer for all its
calls and invitations, its lessons of wisdom and its threatenings of
judgment. But here exception is taken by the representatives and
advocates of individualism, sometimes under a less, sometimes
under a more extreme form; in the one case denying any direct
claim on our faith and obedience, in respect to what is written in
Old Testament Scripture, but yielding it in respect to the New;
in the other, placing both substantially in the same category,
and alleging, that because of the remoteness of the period to which
the Gospel era belongs, and the historical circumstances of the
time no longer existing, the things recorded and enjoined also
in New Testament Scripture are without any binding authority
on the heart and conscience. It may be the part of wisdom to
accredit and observe them, but there can be no moral blame if we
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 341
should feel unable to do that, if we should take up an unbelieving
and independent position.
1. Persons of the former class, who claim only a partial exemp-
tion from the authoritative teaching of Scripture—from the bind-
ing power of its earlier revelations—speak after this fashion:
We were not yet alive, nor did the economy under which we live
exist, when the things were spoken or done, through which God
made revelation of Himself to men of the olden time—when
Abraham, for example, at the Divine command, left his father's
house, and was taken into covenant with God, or when Israel, at a
subsequent period, were redeemed from the land of Egypt, that
they might occupy a certain position and calling; and however
important the transactions may have been in themselves, or how-
ever suitable for the time being the commands given, they still
can have no direct authority over us; nor can we have to do with
them a grounds of moral obligation, except in so far as they have
been resumed in the teaching of Christ, or are responded to in
our Christian consciousness. Of late years this form of objection
has been so frequently advanced, that it is unnecessary to produce
quotations; and not uncommonly the reasons attached especially
to the fifth command in the Decalogue, and also to the fourth as
given in Deut. v. 15, pointing, the one to Israel's heritage of
Canaan, and the other to their redemption from Egypt, are regarded
as conclusive evidences of the merely local and temporal nature
in particular of the commands imposed in the Decalogue.
The mode of contemplation on which this line of objection pro-
ceeds is far from new; in principle it is as old as Christianity.
For the view it adopts of Old Testament Scripture was firmly
maintained by the unbelieving Jews of apostolic times, though
applied by them rather to the blessings promised than to the duties
enjoined. They imagined that, because they were the descendants
of those to whom the word originally came, they alone were
entitled to appropriate the privileges and hopes it secured to the
faithful, or if others, yet only by becoming proselytes to Judaism,
and joining; themselves to the favoured seed. Fierce conflicts
sprung up on this very point in subsequent times. Tertullian
mentions a disputation of great keenness and length, which took
place in his neighbourhood, between a Christian and a Jewish
proselyte, and in which the latter sought ‘to claim the law of
32 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
God for himself’ (sibi vindicare dei legem instituerit). Conceiv-
ing the merits of the question to have been darkened, rather than
otherwise, by words without knowledge, Tertullian took occasion
from it to write his treatise against the Jews, in which he en-
devoured to shew that God, as the Creator and Governor of all
men, gave the law through Moses to one people, but in order that
it might be imparted to all nations, and in, a form which was
destined, according to Old Testament Scripture itself, to undergo
an important change for the better. Nearly two centuries later we
find Augustine resuming the theme, and, after adducing various
passages from Moses and the prophets about the redemption God
had wrought for men, and the greater things still in prospect, the
Jews are introduced as proudly erecting themselves and saying,
‘We are the persons; this is said of us; it was said to us; for we
are Israel, God's people.'l Thus the historical element in revela-
tion, from the time it became peculiarly associated with the family
of Abraham, was turned by them into an argument for claiming
a kind of exclusive right to its provisions—as if Jehovah were the
God of the Jews only; just as now it is applied to the purpose of
fixing on the Jews an exclusive obligation to submit to its require-
ments of duty—except in so far as the matter therein contained
1 ‘Adv. Judmos,’ sec. 9. Both Augustine and Tertullian have sharply ex-
hibited, in their respective treatises, the substantial identity of the calling of
belie ers.in Christian and pre-Christian times. But in respect to the general
principles of duty, they both except the law of the weekly Sabbath; with
them, as with the Fathers generally, this was a prominent distinction between
the believing Jew and the believing Christian—the Sabbath being viewed, in
comer on with many of the later Jews, as a day of simple rest from work—a
kind of sanctimonious idleness and repose—hence, no further related to the
Chrisian than as a prefiguration of his cessation from sin, and spiritual rest in
Christ. All the precepts of the Decalogue they regarded as strictly binding
but this (so expressly Aug., ‘De Spiritu et Lit.,’ c. xiv.; also Tert., ‘De
Idolatria,’ c. 14; ‘Adv. Jud.,’ c. 4); or this only in the sense now specified.
It was a branch of the Patristic misconceptions respecting Old Testament sub-
jects, and one of the most unfortunate of them. Had they rightly understood
the law of the Sabbath, they would undoubtedly have spoken otherwise of it.
Those who dispute my assertion of this will perhaps judge differently when
they hear what Ewald has to say of it. In his remarks on the Decalogue, he
speaks most properly of the design and tendency of the Sabbath (though wrong,
as I conceive, in ascribing its origin to Moses): 'It was necessary (he says) for
the community to have had such a pause in the common lower cares and
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 343
may be coincident with the general principles of moral obligation.
The ground of both applications is the same—namely, by reason of
the historical accompaniments of certain parts of Divine revelation,
to circumscribe its sphere, and confine its authoritative teaching
within merely local and temporary channels.
Now, as this is a point which concerns the proper bearing and
interpretation of Scripture, it is to Scripture itself that the appeal
must be made. But on making such an appeal, the principle that
emerges is very nearly the converse of that just mentioned: it is,
that the particular features in revelation, derived from its historical
accompaniments, were meant to be, not to the prejudice or the
subversion, but rather for the sake, of its general interest and
application. They but served to give more point to its meaning,
and render more secure its preservation in the world. So that,
instead of saying, in respect to one part or another of the sacred
volume, I find therein a word of God to such a person, or at such
a period in the past, therefore not strictly for me; I should rather,
according to the method of Scripture, say, Here, at such a time and
to such a party, was a revelation of the mind and will of Him who
is Lord of heaven and earth, made to persons of like nature and
calling with myself—made, indeed, to them, but only that it might
through them be conveyed and certified to others; and coming, as
it does to me, a component part of the Word, which reveals the
character, of the Most High, and which, as such, He delights most
peculiarly to magnify, I also am bound to listen to it as the voice
of God speaking to me through my brother-man, and should make
conscience of observing it—in so far as it is not plainly of a local
and temporary nature, and consequently unsuited to my position
and circumstances.
avocations of life, that they might collect their energies with the greater zeal
for the life of holiness.' He thinks ‘no institution could be devised which
could so directly lead man both to supply what is lost in the tumult of life,
and effectually to turn his thoughts again to the higher and the eternal. Thus
the Sabbath, though the simplest and most spiritual, is at the same time the
wisest and most fruitful of institutions, the true symbol of the higher religion
which nova entered into the world, and the most eloquent witness to the great-
ness of the human soul which first grasped the idea of it.’ However, Ter-
tullian in one place, ‘Adv. Marcioneni,’ iv. 12, reasons with substantial
correctness as to our Lord's treatment of the Sabbath, and His views regarding
it, maintaining that it allowed certain kinds of work.
344 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
There are, no doubt, things of this latter description in the Word
of God—things which, in their direct and literal form, are in-
applicable to any one now; for this is a necessary consequence of
the play that has been given to the historical element in Scripture.
But then it is in a measure common to all Scripture—not wanting
even in its later communications. Our Lord Himself spake words
to His disciples, addressed to them both commands and promises,
which are no longer applicable in the letter, as when He called
some to leave their ordinary occupations and follow Him, or gave
them assurance of an infallible direction and supernatural gifts.
And how many things are there in the epistles to the churches,
which had special reference to the circumstances of the time, and
called for services which partook of the local and temporary? But
such things create no difficulty to the commonest understanding;
nor, if honestly desirous to learn the mind of God, can any one fail
to derive from such portions of Scripture the lessons they were
designed to teach—on the supposition of the requisite care and
pains being applied to them. It is, therefore, but a difference in
degree which in this respect exists between the Scriptures of the
New and those of the Old Testament; there is in the Old Testa-
ment merely a larger proportion of things which, if viewed super-
ficially, are not, in point of form, applicable to the circumstances, or
binding on the consciences of believers in Christian times; while
yet they are all inwrought with lines of truth, and law, and pro-
mise, which give them a significance and a value for every age of
the church. Nay, such is the admirable order and connection
of God's dispensations, so closely has He knit together the end
with the beginning, and so wisely adjusted the one to the other,
than, many things in those earlier revelations have a light and
meaning to us which they could not have to those whom they
more immediately concerned: the ultimate aim and object of what
was done was more important than its direct use. Read from the
higher vantage-ground of the Gospel, and lighted up by its Divine
realities, Moses and the prophets speak more intelligibly to us of
God; and the life that is from Him, than they could do to those
who, had only such preliminary instructions to guide them.
From the time that God began to select a particular line as the
channel of His revealed will to man, He made it clear that the
good of all was intended. A special honour was in this respect to
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 345
be conferred on the progeny of Shem, as compared with the other
branches of Noah's posterity but it was not doubtfully intimated
that those other branches should participate in the benefit.1 When,
however, the Divine purpose took effect, as it so early did, in the
selection of Abraham and his seed, the end aimed at was from the
first announced to be of the most comprehensive kind--namely,
that in Abraham and his seed ‘all the families of the earth should
be blessed.' It was but giving expression in another form to this
announcement, and breathing the spirit couched in it, when Moses,
pointing to the destiny of Israel, exclaimed, ‘Rejoice, 0 ye nations,
with His people;’2 and when the Psalmist prayed, ‘God be merci-
ful to us and bless us, that thy way may be known upon earth,
thy saving health among all nations’3—the true prosperity of
Israel being thus expressly coupled with the general diffusion of
God's knowledge and blessing, and the one sought with a view to
the other. Hence also the temple, which was at once the symbol
and the centre of all that God was to Israel, was designated by the
prophet ‘an house of prayer for all peoples.’4 And hence, yet
again, and as the proper issue of the whole, Jesus—the Israel by
way of eminence, the impersonation of all that Israel should have
been, but never more than most imperfectly was—the One in whom
at once the calling of Israel and the grand purpose of God for the
good of men found their true realization—He, while appearing only
as a Jew among Jews, yet was not less the life and light of the
world--revealing the Father for men of every age and country, and
making reconciliation for iniquity on behalf of all who should
believe on His name, to the farthest limits of the earth and to the
very end of time.
Looking thus, in a general way, over the field of Divine revela-
tion, we perceive that it bears respect to mankind at large; and
that what is special in it as to person, or time, or place, was not
designed to narrow the range of its application, or render it the
less profitable to any one for ‘doctrine, for reproof, for correction,
and for instruction in righteousness.’ And when we turn to parti-
cular passages of Scripture, and see how God-inspired men under-
stood and used what came from Heaven, in other times and places
1 Gen. ix. 26, 27. 2 Deut. xxxii. 43.
3 Ps. lxvii. 4 Isa. lvi. 7.
346 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
than those in which themselves lived, the same impression is yet
more deepened on our minds—for we find them personally recog-
nising and acting on the principle in question. In the Book of
Psalms, for instance, how constantly do the sacred writers, when
seeking to revive and strengthen a languishing faith, throw them-
selves back upon the earlier manifestations of God, and recal what
He had said or done in former times, as having permanent value
and abiding force even for them! ‘I will remember the works of
the Lord, surely I will remember thy wonders of old. Thou art
the God that doest wonders: Thou has declared thy strength among
the people. Thou hast with thine arm redeemed thy people, the
sons of Jacob and Joseph.’ It was virtually saying, Thou didst it
all, that we might know and believe what Thou canst, and what
Thou wilt do still. The principle is even more strikingly exhibited
in Hosea xii. 3-6, ‘He (namely, Jacob) took his brother by the
heel in the womb, and by his strength he had power with God: yea,
he had power over the angel, and prevailed; he wept, and made
supplication unto Him: he found Him in Bethel, and there He
(God) spake with us—even Jehovah, God of hosts, Jehovah is His
name.' That is, Jehovah, the I am, He who is the same yesterday,
to-day, and for ever, in speaking ages ago with Jacob at Bethel, and
at Peniel giving him strength over the angel, did in effect do the
same with us: the record of these transactions is a testimony of
what He is, and what He is ready to do in our behalf. And so,
the prophet adds, by way of practical application, ‘Therefore turn
thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and wait on thy God
continually.' Passing to New Testament times, the principle under
consideration is both formally vindicated, and practically carried
out. Not only does our Lord generally recognise as of God what-
ever was written in the Law and the Prophets, and recognise it as
what He had come, not to destroy, but to fulfil—not only this, but
He ever appeared as one appropriating, and, in a manner, living on
the word contained in them. Thus, when plied by the tempter
with the plausible request to turn the stones of the desert into
bread, the ready reply was, ‘It is written, Man liveth not by bread
only, but by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of
God’--man does it; man, namely, as the humble, docile, confiding
child of God—he lives thus; so it was written ages ago in the
ever-living Word of God---written, therefore, also for Him, who is
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 347
pre-eminently such a man, as much as if it had been immediately
addressed to Himself. And the same course was followed in the
other temptations: they were successively met and repelled by what
was written aforetime, as equally valid and binding at that time
as when originally penned. To say nothing of the other apostles,
who freely quote Old Testament Scripture, St Paul both formally
sets forth and frequently applies the same great principle:—some-
times in a more general manner, as when he affirms, that ‘the
things written aforetime were written for our learning;’1 or, more
particularly, when speaking of the dealings of God with Israel in
the wilderness, he states that ‘they happened unto them for en-
samples (types), and are written for our admonition;'2 or, again, when
identifying believers under the Gospel with Abraham, he asserts
that ‘they who are of faith are blessed with faithful Abraham’3—
the blessing pronounced upon him being regarded as virtually pro-
nounced also upon those in later times who exercise his faith. And
still more striking is another exposition given of the principle, as
connected with the Abrahamic blessing, in the Epistle to the
Hebrews (chap. vi,), where, referring to the promise and the oath
confirming it, it is said, God thereby shewed ‘to the heirs of pro-
mise the immutability of His counsel,’ so that ‘by two immutable
things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a
strong consolation who have fled for refuge to the hope set before
us’—not that he merely, to whom it was directly given, but that we
too might have it. Therefore, the promise of blessing and its con-
firmatory oath were, according to the author of the epistle, designed
as well for believers in Gospel times as for the father of the faithful;
and why? Simply because they reveal the character and purpose
of God in respect to the covenant of salvation, which, in all that
essentially pertains to them, are independent of place and time,
like their Divine Author changing not, but perpetually entitled to
the faith and confidence of those who seek an interest in their
provisions.
Such is the spirit or principle in which we are taught, on inspired
authority—by Psalmists and Prophets of the Old Testament, by
Christ and His apostles in the New—to regard and use that revela-
tion of truth and duty, which comes to us bound up with the
history of God's dispensations. If any thing can be deemed certain
1 Rom. xv. 3. 2 1 Cor. x. 11. 3 Gal. iii. 9.
348 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
regarding it, it is that we must look through the external accom-
paniments of what is revealed to its heart and substance; in other
words, that we must not allow what is merely circumstantial in the
Divine communications to interfere with that which is essential,
and which, from the organic unity pervading those communications,
is properly of no age or time. The false principle, which in various
forms has from early to present times been put forth, is to invert
this relation—to employ the circumstantial as a lever to undermine
or drive into abeyance the essential. Had such been our Lord's
method of interpreting ancient Scripture, what would it have
availed Him to remember, in His hour of temptation, that man
liveth not by bread only, but by every word of God, since that was
written of Israel as redeemed from Egypt and fed with manna,
while He was a stranger to both? Or, had it been Paul's, how
should he ever have thought of transferring such special transactions
and assurances of blessing as those connected with the faith of
Abraham and the offering of Isaac, to believers generally of subse-
quent times? In acting as they did, they looked beyond the mere
form and appearances of things, and entered into the faith of God's
elect, which ever penetrates beneath the surface, and rather desires
to know how much it is entitled to derive or learn from the written
word of God, than to find how much it is at liberty to reject. But
if there be any portion of Old Testament Scripture which more
than another should be dealt with after this manner, it is surely
that master-piece of legislation—the ten words proclaimed from
Sinai—in which the substance is so easily distinguished from the
accessories of time and place, and the substance itself is so simple,
so reasonable, so perfectly accordant in all it exacts with the
dictates of conscience and the truest wellbeing of mankind, that
there seems to be needed only the thoughtful and earnest spirit of
faith, to say, Lord, here is the manifestation of thy most jest and
righteous will toward me—incline my heart to keep these thy
laws.
And here, indeed, lies the root of the whole matter—whether we
have this spirit of faith or not. The possession and exercise of this
spirit makes all, even the earliest parts of God's revelation to men,
instinct with life and power, because, connecting the whole in our
minds with the ever-abiding presence and immutable verity of
God, it disposes us to feel that we have to do with the evolution
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 349
of an eternal purpose, which step by step has been conducting
fallen man to the righteousness and blessing of Heaven. Nothing
in such a case properly dies. Whatever may be the aspect of God's
word and ways we more immediately contemplate—whether the
doom pronounced on the ungodliness of men, and the judgments
inflicted on their impenitence and guilt—or the deliverances wrought
for the children of faith in their times of danger and distress--or,
finally, the fiery law issued as from the secret place of thunder,
and prescribing the essential principles of a holiness which is the
reflection of God's own pure and blessed nature—whichever it may
be, the more profoundly we regard it as a still living word, ‘for
ever settled in the heavens,’ and apply ourselves in earnest to have
its teaching realized in our experience, the more do we appreciate
its true character, accord with the design for which it was given,
and illustrate the wisdom and goodness of Him who gave it.
2. But there is another and more extreme class of objectors, who
make no distinction in this respect between New and Old Testa-
ment Scripture—who, as regards every thing of a supernatural kind
that has a place in the sacred records, disallow any strict and
proper obligation either to accredit what is testified, or to comply
with its calls of duty. They were not personally present when the
things so marvellous, so remote from one's every-day observation
and experience, are reported to have taken place; and no evidence
of a simply historical kind can give them a claim upon their con-
science. A divinely inspired attestation might, indeed, carry such
a claim, did we certainly possess it; but then inspiration belongs
to the supernatural, and itself requires confirmation. So Mr Fronde,
for example: ‘Unless the Bible is infallible, there can be no moral
obligation to accept the facts which it records; and though there
may be intellectual error in denying them, there can be no moral
sin. Facts may be better or worse authenticated; but all the
proofs in the world of the genuineness and authenticity; of the
human handiwork, cannot establish a claim upon the conscience.
It might be foolish to question Thucydides' account of Pericles,
but no one would call it sinful. Men part with all sobriety of
judgment when they come on ground of this kind.'1
The objection is very adroitly put, and, if the alleged parallel
instance from Grecian history were a fair one, the conclusion would
1 Essay on ‘Theological Difficulties.’
350 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
be inevitable, that it were the height of absurdity to think of esta-
blishing on such a basis a claim of moral responsibility. One is
only disposed to wonder that so palpable an absurdity did not
suggest to such a writer as Mr. Froude the possibility of some
hitch in his own reasoning on the subject, and that it was scarcely
probable the whole race of Christian apologists (comprising many
of the most thoughtful and sagacious intellects of past as well as
present times) should have committed themselves to positions
which bespoke an utter absence of sobriety of judgment. The
argument is really one-sided and sophistical; it proceeds on the
supposition of there being only one element requiring to be taken
into account in the cases represented as parallel—the one, namely,
that is, or might be, common to them both; while others, in which
they differ, are thrown entirely into the background. The account
of Pericles in Thucydides, and the evangelical narratives of Christ's
person and work on earth, could easily be conceived to be alike
genuine and authentic but it would not thence follow that they
stood upon a footing as regards their claim on men's moral respon-
sibilities. For as men occupy no specific moral relation to the life
and transactions of Pericles, they might be true, or they might be
false, for any thing that concerns the conduct we have to maintain
in this world, or the expectations we are warranted to cherish
respecting the next; they might even remain to us a total blank,
without materially affecting the course we pursue in respect either
to God or to our fellow-men. Therefore, let the facts themselves be
ever so certain, and the account transmitted of them beyond the
slightest shade of suspicion, they still do not in the least touch our
conscience; we could at most be but somewhat less intelligent, if
we refused to read or to accredit what is told of them, but we should
not be one whit less happy or virtuous. It is entirely otherwise,
however, with the recorded life and works of Jesus Christ. These
carry on the very face of them a respect to every man's dearest
interests and moral obligations; if true, they bear in the closest
manner on our present condition, and are fraught with results of
infinite moment on our future destinies. And, unless the accounts
we have of them present such obvious and inherent marks of im-
probability or imposture, as ipso facto to relieve us of all need for
investigation, we are bound—morally bound by the relation in
which the course of providence has placed us to them, as well as
HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 351
by the possible results to our own wellbeing to consider the evi-
dence on which they claim our belief, and make up our minds
either to accredit or reject them.
There are undoubtedly persons who do assume the position just
noticed, who hold the supernatural character of the events of
Gospel history as alone sufficient to warrant their peremptory
rejection of its claims to their belief. With them the miraculous
is but another name for the incredible. This, however, is not the
aspect of the question we have here to deal with. Mr Froude's
exception is taken against the facts of Christianity, as connected
with our moral obligations, not because they are miraculous, but
simply because they are facts reported to be such—matters of
historical statement, which, as such, he alleges, however authen-
tically related, cannot bind the conscience, or constitute, if dis-
owned, a ground of moral blame. Is it really so in other things?
Do the properly parallel instances in the transactions of human life
bear out the position? Quite the reverse. A great part of men's
obligations of duty, in the actual pursuits and intercourse of life,
root themselves in facts, of which they can have nothing more than
probable evidence. The whole range of filial duties, and those belong-
ing to the special claims of kindred, are of this description; they
spring out of facts, for which one can have nothing more than pro-
bable evidence, and evidence which sometimes, though fortunately
not often, requires to be sifted in order to get assurance of the truth.
In the department of political life, what statesman, or even compara-
tively humble citizen, can act in accordance with the spirit of the
constitution—vindicate his own or his country's rights, provide
against emergencies, devise and prosecute measures for the common
good—without taking account of things near or remote, which he
can only learn through the probabilities of historical testimony?
And in the ordinary pursuits of business or commercial enterprise,
every thing for men's success may be said to turn on their industry
and skill in ascertaining what the probabilities are of things sup-
posed to have emerged, or in the act of emerging—yea, in threading
their way often through apparently competing probabilities; duty to
themselves and their families obliges them to search thus into the
facts they have to deal with, and to shape their course accordingly.
Is not this, indeed, the very basis of Butler's conclusive argument
in behalf of the kind of evidence on which all Christian obligation
352 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
rests? ‘Probable evidence’ (he says), ‘in its very nature, affords
but an imperfect kind of information, and is to be considered as
relative only to beings of limited capacities. For nothing which
is the possible object of knowledge, whether past, present, or future,
can be probable to an infinite intelligence; since it cannot but be
discerned absolutely as it is in itself, certainly true, or certainly
false. But to us, probability is the very guide of life.'1 And, as
he elsewhere states in the application of this principle, ‘no possible
reason can be given why we may not be in a state of moral proba-
tion, with regard to the exercise of our understanding upon the
subject of religion, as we are with regard to our behaviour in
common affairs.’ And the circumstance, ‘that religion is not in-
tuitively true, but a matter of deduction and inference; that a
conviction of its truth is not forced upon every one, but left to be,
by some, collected with heedful attention to premises—this as
much constitutes religious probation, as much affords sphere, scope,
opportunity for right and wrong behaviour, as any thing whatever
does.'2
Mr Fronde, in his ‘Short Studies on Grave Subjects,’ has too
evidently not found leisure to make himself acquainted with the
principles of Butler's argument; else he could scarcely have written
in the style he has done. But as we fear there are many in the
same position, and others in some danger of being carried away by
the false gnosis of the school to which he belongs, it may not be
improper to give the subject the benefit of the sharp and character-
istic exposition of Mr Rogers. ‘The absurdity, if anywhere, is in
the principle affirmed, namely, that God cannot have constituted it
man's duty to act in cases of very imperfect knowledge; and yet
we see that He has perpetually compelled him to do so; nay, often
in a condition next door to stark ignorance. To vindicate the
wisdom of such a constitution may be impossible; but the fact
cannot be denied. The Christian admits the difficulty alike in
relation to religion and the affairs of this world. He believes, with
Butler, that probability is the guide of life; that man may have
sufficient evidence in a thousand cases to warrant his action, and a
reasonable confidence in its results, though that evidence is very
far removed from certitude:—that, similarly, the mass of men are
1 ‘Analogy,’ Introduction. 2 Ibid., P. II. c.
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 353
justified in saying, that they know a thousand facts of history to
be true, though they have never had the opportunity or capacity
of thoroughly investigating them; that the statesman, the lawyer,
and the physician, are justified in acting, when they yet are com-
pelled to acknowledge that they act only on most unsatisfactory
calculations of probabilities, and amidst a thousand doubts and
difficulties: all which, say we Christians, is true in relation to the
Christian religion, the evidence for which is plainer, after all, than
that on which man, in ten thousand cases, is necessitated to hazard
his fortune or his life. . . . Those whom we call profoundly verged
in the more difficult matters, which depend on moral evidence,
are virtually in the same condition as their humbler neighbours.
When men must act, the decisive facts may be pretty equally
grasped by all; and as for the rest, the enlargement of the circle
of a man's knowledge is, in still greater proportion, the enlargement
of the circle of his ignorance; for the circumscribing periphery is
in darkness. If, as you suppose, it cannot be our duty to act in
reference to an "historical religion," because a satisfactory investi-
gation is impossible to the mass of mankind, the argument may be
retorted on your own theory [that, namely, of F. Newman, which,
as with Mr Fronde, would place its chief reliance on the inner con-
sciousness]. You assert, indeed, that in relation to religion we have
an internal spiritual faculty, which evades this difficulty; yet men
persist in saying, in spite of you, that it is doubtful, first, whether
they have any such; second, whether, if there be one, it be not so
debauched and sophisticated by other faculties, that they can no
longer trust it implicitly; third, what is the amount of its genuine
utterances; fourth, what that of its aberrations; fifth, whether it is
not so dependent on development, education, and association, as to
leave room enough for an auxiliary external revelation—on all
which questions the generality of mankind are just as incapable
of deciding as about any historical question whatever.'1
It is clear from such considerations, that certainty in religion
cannot be attained by attempting to remove it from an historical
to an internal, or strictly spiritual foundation; and also that the
kind of certainty demanded to constitute the ground of moral
obligation, is different from what is universally regarded as con-
stituting such a ground in the common affairs and relations of life.
1 'Eclipse of Faith,' pp. 254-6.
354 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
Besides, the principle against which we argue, were it valid, would
render a general and progressive scheme of revelation impracticable
—since such a thing could be possible only by the historical element
entering into the dispensation of religion, and the historical develop-
ments of one age becoming the starting-point of the next. Even in,
the more general field of the world's progress it would evacuate, for
all essentially moral purposes, the principle, acknowledged also by
the more thoughtful and observant class of theists, that ‘God is in
history’—for this implies, that, as in the facts of history God reveals
Himself, so it is the duty of His rational creatures both to take
cognizance of the facts, and to mark in them the character of the
revelation. Much more must such be man's duty with the higher
revelation which God gives of Himself in Scripture, and which man
needs for the relief of his profoundest wants, and the quickening
of his moral energies. For this, the history of God's kingdom
among men has an important part to play, as well as the direct
teaching of truth and duty. And for the greater and more essential
acts of that history, the genuineness and authenticity of the sacred
records must of necessity form the more immediate evidence and
the indispensable guarantee. Not, however, as if this were the
whole; for the facts which constitute the substance of the Gospel,
and form the ground of its distinctive hopes and obligations, are
commended to our belief by many considerations, which strengthen
the direct historical evidence—in particular, by a whole line of
prophetic testimonies, of which they were the proper culmination;
by the high moral aim of the writings which record them, and of
the witnesses who perilled their lives in attestation of them; by
their adaptation to the more profound convictions of the soul, and
the spiritual reformation which the sincere belief of them has ever
carried in its train. But the misfortune is, this varied and manifold
congruity of evidence receives little patient regard from the literary,
self-sufficient individualism of the age. And here also there is
some ground for the complaint, which has been uttered by a late
writer of superior thought and learning, in respect to the rational-
istic criticism of Germany: ‘Men of mere book learning, who have
never seen what the Spirit of God is working in the church,’ and
who know little of life in general, take it upon themselves to pro-
nounce final judgment upon the greatest revelations of spirit and
life the world has ever, seen; upon the greatest of men, and the
THE HISTORICAL ELEMENT IN REVELATION. 355
greatest outward and inward conflicts; upon events which, more
than all others, have moved the world; upon words and writings
which, more than all others, have been productive of life. What
does not occur in our days, or at least what is not seen by certain
eyes, cannot (it is thought) have happened in an earlier age, the
products of which yet lie before us the greatest in the world, and
to which we have nothing even remotely similar.’1 Too manifestly,
as the writer adds, there is in such things the evidence of an
inward opposition to the truth, and hostility to the church of God.
1 Auberlen, 'The Divine Revelation,' p . 274. Trans,
356 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
III.
WHETHER A SPIRIT OF REVENGE IS COUNTENANCED IN
THE WRITINGS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.
WHEN a spirit of revenge has been charged upon the morality
of the Old Testament, the charge has usually been associated
with passages in the Psalms and the Prophets, rather than with the
precepts of the law. Superficial writers have sometimes, indeed,
endeavoured to find it also in the latter, but without any proper
warrant in the law itself. This, we trust, has been satisfactorily
established at the proper place.1 But there are portions of the
Psalms, and occasional passages in the prophetical writings, which
are very commonly regarded as breathing a spirit of revenge, and,
as such, not unusually have the term vindictive applied to them.
The lyrical character of the Psalms, which not only admitted, but
called for, a certain intermixture of personal feeling with the
thoughts appropriate to the particular theme, naturally afforded
larger scope for utterances of a kind which might with some
plausibility be viewed in that light, than could well be found in
the writings of the Prophets. In the Psalms, the train of thought
often runs in such a strain as this: the Psalmist finds himself
surrounded with enemies, who are pursuing him with bitter malice,
and are even plotting for his destruction; and in pouring out his
heart before God with reference to his position, he prays, not only
that their wicked counsels might be frustrated, and that he might
be delivered from their power, but that they might themselves be
brought to desolation and ruin—that he might see his desire upon
them, in the recoil of mischief upon their own heads, and the
blotting out of their memorial from the land of the living. In a
few Psalms, more particularly the 69th and the 109th, imprecations
of this nature assume so intense a form, and occupy so large a
space, that they give a quite distinctive and characteristic impress
1 Lee. IV., pp. 98, 103.
WHETHER COUNTENANCE GIVEN TO REVENGE. 357
to the whole composition. In others, for the most part, they burst
forth only as brief, but fiery, ebullitions of indignant or wrathful
feeling, amid strains which are predominantly of a cheerful, con-
solatory, or stimulating description:—as in Ps. 63, one of the most
stirring and elevated pieces of devotional writing in existence,
which yet is not brought to a close without an entreaty in respect
to those who were seeking to compass the Psalmist's destruction,
that they should fall by the sword, and become a portion for foxes;
Ps. 139, in which, after the most vivid portraiture of the more
peculiar attributes of God, and the closest personal dealing with
God in reference to them, the Psalmist declares his cordial hatred
of the wicked, and asks God to slay them; or Ps. 68, written in a
predominantly hopeful and jubilant tone, yet opening with the
old war-note of the wilderness, ‘Let God arise, and let His enemies
be scattered,’ and identifying the future prosperity and exaltation
of the Lord's people with their wounding the head, yea, dipping
their feet in the blood, of their enemies, and the tongue of their
dogs in the same. Somewhat corresponding passages are to be
found in Jer. xi. 20, xviii. 23, xx. 12, where the prophet asks the
Lord that he might see his vengeance on those who sought his life;
also in Micah vii. 9, 10.
The late author of ‘The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry,’ having
referred to passages of this description, says: ‘Undoubtedly we
stay the course of our sympathy at such points as these. It could
only be at rare moments of national anguish and deliverance that
expressions of this order could be assimilated with modern feelings.’1
He so far, however, vindicates them as to hold them consistent with
genuine piety in the writers, and suitable to their relative position.
‘These war-energies of the Hebrew mind, in a past time, were
proper to the people and to the age; and would continue to be so
until that revolution in religious thought had been brought about,
which, in abating national enthusiasm, and in bringing immortality
into the place of earthly welfare, gave a wholly new direction to
every element of the moral system.’ This explanation may be said
to point in the right direction, though, if taken alone, it would go
far to antiquate such portions of Old Testament Scripture as no
longer suitable, and even appears to concede to the force of circum-
stances a power of determination in respect to what is right or
1 Isaac Taylor, 'The Spirit of the Hebrew Poetry,' p. 152.
358 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
wrong in spiritual feeling, which it is scarcely proper to allow.
The explanation, however, is partial and defective rather than in-
correct; and, did the choice necessarily lie between them, it were
greatly to be preferred to that often adopted in the more popular
class of commentaries, which would silence objection by turning
the imprecations into predictions. So Horne, for example: ‘The
offence taken at the supposed uncharitable and vindictive spirit
of the imprecations, which occur in some of the Psalms, ceases
immediately if we change the imperative for the future, and read,
not, "Let them be confounded," etc., but, "They shall be confounded"
—of which the Hebrew is equally capable. Such passages will
then have no more difficulty in them than the other frequent pre-
dictions of Divine vengeance in the writings of the prophets, or
denunciations of it in the Gospels.' In a grammatical respect, the
explanation will not stand; for the Hebrew imperative is not so
interchangeable as it supposes with the future, and is not so re-
garded either by the ancient translators or by the more exact of
modern scholars. But even if it were, what would be gained by
it? The real difficulty would be only shifted from one position
to another; and, indeed, from a lower to a higher, because placed
in more immediate connection with the mind and will of God.
Acute rationalists have not been slow to perceive this; and one of
them (Bauer), proceeding on the moral ground assumed in it, though
with a different intent, asks, ‘How could David think otherwise,
than that he had a perfect right to curse his enemies, when he
had before him, according to his conviction, the example of God?’
Bauer saw well enough that, if the matter stood so with reference
to God, there was no need for any change of mood in the verb;
since it could not be wrong for the Psalmist to desire and pray for
what he had reason to believe God was purposed to do. Grant
that to curse, or take vengeance on, one's enemies is known to be
the will of God, and how can it be supposed otherwise than proper
to pray that it be done? The only room for inquiry and dis-
crimination must be, on what ground, and with respect to what
sort of persons, can such a line of desire and entreaty be deemed
justifiable and becoming? Considered with reference to this point,
the language in question will be found to have nothing in it at
variance with sound morality.
First of all, a strong consideration in favour of another view of
WHETHER COUNTENANCE GIVEN TO REVENGE. 359
the passages than one that would find in them the exhibition of a
spirit of revenge, is the circumstance already noticed, that such a
spirit is expressly discouraged in the precepts of the law. For it
was thus stamped as unrighteous for those who lived under that
economy; and to have given way to it in those writings which are
intended to unfold the workings of a devout and earnest spirit in
its more elevated and spiritual moods, would have been a palpable
incongruity. One great object of the Psalmodic literature was to
extract the essence of the law, and turn it into matter both for
communion with God and practical application to the affairs of life.
Nothing, therefore, that jars with the morality or religion inculcated
in the law could find a place here; and the less so on this particular
point, as in other passages there is a distinct response to the teach-
ing of the law regarding it, and a solemn repudiation of the contrary
spirit. In the Proverbs, which stand in close affinity with the
Psalms, there are various passages of this description;1 and one so
explicit and full, that when St Paul would recommend such an
exercise of love as might triumph over all hostile feelings and repay
evil with good, he could find nothing better to express his mind
than the language thus provided to his hand.2 In like manner, in
the Book of Job, which partly belongs to the same class, the
patriarch is represented as declaring, that he would allow his
friends to hold all his calamities sufficiently accounted for if he
had rejoiced over the misfortune of an enemy, or had so much as
wished a curse to his soul.3 Similarly, also, the royal Psalmist—
who goes so far as to invoke the Divine vengeance on his head, if
he had done evil to him that was at peace with him, or had spoiled
him that without cause was his enemy (for so the words should be
rendered in Ps. vii. 4); and once and again, during the course of
his eventful history, when by remarkable turns in providence it
came to be in the power of his hand to avenge himself in a manner
that would at once have opened for him the way to freedom and
enlargement, he put from him the thought with righteous indigna-
tion.4 He even expressed his gratitude to Abigail, and to the
restraining hand of God through her interposition, that he had been
kept from avenging himself on Nabal, and thereby doing what he
1 Prov. x. 12, xvi. 32, xix. 11, xxiv. 17, 18.
2 Prov. xxv. 21, 22; Rom. xii. 19, 20. 3 Job xxxi. 29, 30.
4 1 Sam. xxiv. 5, 6; xxvi. 8-10.
360 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
knew, in the inmost convictions of his soul, to be evil.1 Is it,
then, to be imagined that the spirit which David, as an individual
believer, and in the most critical moments of his life, rejected as
evil, should yet have been infused by him into his Psalms—the
writings which he composed in his holiest seasons, and destined
to permanent and general use in the sanctuary of God? This is
against all probability, and can only be believed when it is forgotten
what the real position of David was, whether as a servant of God,
or as one supernaturally endowed for the purpose of aiding the
devotions and stimulating the faith and hope of the covenant
people. In both respects he would have acted unworthily of his
calling, had he given expression to revengeful feelings.
This, however, is only the negative aspect of the matter; we
turn now, in the second place, to the positive. David, and other men
of faith in former times, could neither teach nor practise revenge;
but they could well enough ask for the application of the law of
recompense, as between them and those who sought their hurt—on
the supposition that the right was on their side, that their cause
was essentially the cause of God. And this supposition is always,
in the cases under consideration, either distinctly made or not
doubtfully implied. If the Psalmist speaks of hating certain per-
sons and counting them his enemies, it is because they hate God
and are in a state that justly exposes them to His wrath. If he
expects to see his desire upon his enemies, their counsels defeated,
their mischievous devices made to return upon their own heads, it
is because God was upon his side and against theirs—because he
was engaged, in doing God's work, while they were seeking to
impede and frustrate it. So, also, with the prophet Jeremiah, and
other servants of God; it was as wrestlers in the cause of righteous-
ness, and in a manner identified with it, that they besought the
retributions of judgment upon their keen and inveterate opponents.
The question, therefore, between the contending parties must of
necessity come to an issue on the law of recompense; and so the
Psalmist sometimes formally puts it, as in Ps. xviii. 23-27, ‘I was
upright before Him, and I kept myself from mine iniquity. There-
fore hath the Lord recompensed me according to my righteousness,
according to the cleanness of my hands in His eyesight. With the
merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man
1 1 Sam. xxv. 31-33.
WHETHER COUNTENANCE GIVEN TO REVENGE. 361
thou wilt shew thyself upright; with the pure thou wilt shew thy-
self pure; for thou wilt save the afflicted people, but wilt bring
down high looks.' To the same effect also in the history.1
This law or principle of recompense is merely an application of
the Divine righteousness according to the parts men take in the
conflict between good and evil. It is confined, therefore, to no
particular age, but, like every other distinguishing characteristic in
the Divine procedure, has its fullest manifestation in the work and
kingdom of Christ. Hence we find our Lord taking frequent
opportunities to unfold it, as well in its benign aspect and operation
toward the righteous, as in its contrary and punitive bearing upon
the wicked; and not merely in respect to these two parties con-
sidered individually and separately, but also in their relation to
each other. As regards individuals, some very striking and pro-
minent exhibitions are given of it,—first, in the form of encourage-
ments to the good, in such passages as the following, Matt. v. 7-10,
x. 40-42, xix. 28, 29; Luke xii. 37; then, also, by way of warning
to the careless and impenitent, in the terrible woes and judgments
pronounced by Jesus upon the cities of Galilee, which heard His
words and saw His mighty works, yet knew not the day of their
merciful visitation; in the like judgments and woes that were
gathering to alight upon the Scribes and Pharisees, upon Jerusalem,
and the Jewish people generally, or more generally still, in the
aggravated doom declared to be the portion of those who (like the
unforgiving servant in parable2) have acted with severity or injus-
tice toward their fellow-men. On the law of recompense in this
form, however, we are not called at present to remark; we have to
do with it only as bearing on the relative position of parties, who
have espoused antagonistic interests—the one hazarding all for the
truth and cause of God, the other setting themselves in determined
array against it. In such cases, the triumph of the one interest
inevitably carries along with it the overthrow of the other and
though it is a sad alternative, yet the heart that is true to its principles
cannot but wish for it. The ungodly world must perish, if Noah
and the faithful remnant are to be saved; at a later period, the
Egyptian host must be drowned in the sea, if the ransomed of the
Lord are to reach a place of safety and enlargement. And so still
onwards—the discomfiture of the enemies of God is the indispens-
1 1 Sam. xxiv. 12-15. 2 Matt. xviii.
362 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
able condition of security and wellbeing to His elect--whose cry
to Heaven in their times of trial and conflict must ever in substance
be, that God would revenge their cause.1 Why should not David
and other ancient wrestlers in that cause have sought such a vindi-
cation when the claims of righteousness demanded it? Why should
they not have wished and prayed that the good should prevail, by
confusion being poured on the bands of evil who had brought it into
peril? Indeed, as matters then stood, no other course was left for
them. There was proceeding a trial of outward strength between
spiritual light and darkness—a contest between forces essentially
antagonistic, in which, if the right should be able to maintain its
position and carry out its designs, the contrary part, with all its
adherents, must be driven from the field. And who can for a
moment hesitate on which side the wishes and prayers of God's
people should have run?
With this agreement, however, in the main between the things
relating to this subject in the past and present dispensations of
God, there is to be noted, thirdly, a difference in outward circum-
stances, which necessarily involves also a certain difference in the
mode of giving effect to the principle of recompense. It is not that
now--since life and immortality have been brought to light by the
Gospel—recompenses of evil as well as good in the cause of God
have ceased to have a place in the present administration of the
Divine kingdom, and that God will do in eternity what He cannot
do in time; but that every thing respecting the kingdom has taken
a higher direction; the outward is relatively less, the inward more;
God's favour and the wellbeing it secures are no longer to be
measured, to the extent they once were, by national prosperity or
temporal distinctions of a palpable kind. Both for individual
believers and for the church at large, the conflict with the powers
of evil has lost certain of its grosser elements; it has now greatly
less to do with weapons of fire and sword, more with such as
directly affect the reason and conscience and it is the special duty
of Christ's followers to strive that the means of this latter descrip-
tion placed at their command should be employed so as to subdue
the corruption of ungodly men—to destroy them as enemies, in
order that as friends they may pass over into the ranks of God's
people. But in desiring and pleading for such spiritual results, the
1 Luke xviii. 7, 8.
WHETHER COUNTENANCE GIVEN TO REVENGE. 363
Christian now, as the Psalmists of old, must pray for the discom-
fiture of all adverse influences, and of all interests, personal or
national, which have linked themselves to the principles of evil.
The prayer of the church must still be, ‘Let all thine enemies
perish, let them that hate thee flee before thee:’--only in pressing
it, one may, and indeed should, have respect to a change for the
better in the spiritual relation of the parties concerned, rather than
in what concerns their temporal condition and their secular resources.
For in the existing state of the world, it is usually by the one much
more than by the other that the cause of truth and righteousness
will be affected, and the tide of battle most effectually turned.
Finally, it must not be forgotten, in regard to the portions of
Old Testament Scripture in question, that while the change of
circumstances has necessarily brought along with it a certain
change in the application of the principle embodied in them, their
employment for religious culture and devotion has by no means
lost either its reason or its importance. It serves to keep alive a
right sense of the sins prevailing in the world, as dishonouring to God
and deserving of His righteous condemnation; of the calling, also,
of the church to wage with these a perpetual warfare, not the less
real and earnest that it has immediately to concern itself with
matters of a spiritual nature. A corrective of this sort is needed
very particularly in the present age, when loose views of holiness
and sin are ready from so many quarters to press in upon the minds
of those who are but partially established in the truth. And it can
only be found in revelations which teach that there is severity as
well as goodness, justice as well as mercy, in the character of God,
which must have its manifestation in a measure even here, but
shall have it pre-eminently in the final issues of His kingdom;
and this for the good of His people, not less than the glory of His
own name. Hence, as justly remarked by Lange,1 ‘Christ recog-
nises, in the fact of His crucifixion having been determined on,2
the certain advent of the great day of wrath which is to bring the
visitation of fire upon all the world. And indeed this inseparable
combination stands in no contrariety to the reconciliation accom-
plished through the death of Christ; for as His death provides for
the world the redemption which could meet all its necessities, so
is the day of wrath the consummating act of redemption for all
1 In Hertzog, 'Zorn Gottes.' 2 Matt. xxiii. 39, xxiv. 1, seq.
364 SUPPLEMENTARY DISSERTATIONS.
believers;1 and the judgment of fire, which with the day of wrath
falls on the impenitent, is grounded in this very circumstance,
that they had not accepted the salvation of God in the death of
Christ, but in this death had sealed the judgment of God upon
their blindness. They have turned the Gospel into a savour of
death unto death.'
1 Luke xxi. 28; 1 Thess. i. 7; 2 Pet. iii. 7-10.
EXPOSITION
OF THE
MORE IMPORTANT PASSAGES ON THE LAW IN
ST PAUL'S EPISTLES.
IT was St Paul more especially who, among the apostles of our Lord,
was called to discuss the subject of the law, as well in its remoter
as its more immediate bearings—in its relation to New as well as Old
Testament times. There is hence a very considerable variety in the
mode of treatment given to it in his epistles, according to the specific
point of view from which it is contemplated; and, at times, an apparent
contrariety, when the passages are isolated from the context and the
occasion, between what is said respecting it in one place, as compared
with what is said in another. It is necessary, therefore, in order to
ground securely the exhibition of doctrine contained in the Lectures, to
give an exegesis of the passages in question, and to do so as nearly
as possible in the order of time in which they proceeded from the pen
of the apostle; for we thus more readily perceive how the matter grew
upon the mind of the apostle, and developed itself in the history of his
apostolical career. I have, therefore, begun with the passage in the
Second Epistle to the Corinthians, which has all the appearance of a
general outline or first draft of his views upon the economy of law,
and its relation to that of the Gospel—an outline which is filled up
in the Epistles to the Galatians and the Romans. According to the
common chronology, the Epistle to the Galatians dates earlier than the
Second to the Corinthians. But Dr Lightfoot, I think, has made the
inverse relation appear more than probable;1 and even were the actual
succession otherwise, the passage in Corinthians must still be held to
go first in the order of nature. In the other cases, the succession is
sufficiently ascertained.
1 See his Comm. on the Epistle, Introd., sec. iii.
366 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
I deem it unnecessary to preface the exposition by an inquiry respect-
ing the different meanings of the term no<moj (law), as used by the apostle,
and whether any appreciable difference is made on the meaning, accord-
ing as it has or wants the article. Much time might be, and often has
been, expended to little purpose in general investigations of this sort;
for the actual sense in each case must be ascertained by an analysis of
the particular passages. There can be no doubt that the term is used
by St Paul in a considerable variety of senses, and in the same senses
sometimes with, sometimes without, the article. In respect to many
of these, such as when it is used of the writings or books containing
the law, or part of the Old Testament Scriptures generally,—or when
employed by a sort of figure to designate any thing which works like a
rule or principle of action, as in the expressions, what sort of law, law
of faith, law of sin, law in one's members, law of in and death, law of the
spirit of life, etc.,—there is only a popular form of speech, which can
scarcely occasion any serious difficulty even to unlettered readers. But
when, as not unfrequently happens, the question to be determined is,
whether the law meant by the apostle is moral law in the abstract, or
that law as embodied in the Decalogue, or the ceremonial law of the
Old Covenant as contradistinguished from the moral, or, finally, these
two conjointly in their economical adjustment, there is no way of reach-
ing a safe conclusion but by a careful examination of the context. For
the most part, even in these uses of the term, no great difficulty will
be experienced by an intelligent and unbiassed mind in determining
which sense is to be preferred.—For the sake of precision, an exact
rendering has been given of all the passages, which occasionally differs
from that of the authorized version.
2 COR. III. 2-18.
‘Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read by all men,
3. Manifested as being an epistle of Christ ministered by us, written
not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of
stone, but in tables of flesh, those of the heart. 4. But such confidence
have we through Christ toward God: 5. Not as if we were sufficient
as of ourselves to think any thing of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of
God; 6. Who also has made us sufficient [to be] ministers of the new
covenant, not of letter, but of Spirit: for the letter killeth, but the Spirit
giveth life. 7. But if the ministration of death in the letter, engraven
on stones, came in glory, so that the children of Israel were not able
steadfastly to look on the face of Moses because of the glory of his face,
[though a glory that was] to vanish away; 8. How shall not rather the
2 COR. III. 2-18, 367
ministration of the Spirit be in glory? 9. For if the ministration of
condemnation was in glory, much more does the ministration of right-
eousness abound in glory. 10. For even that which has been made
glorious has not had glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that
excelleth. 11. For if that which vanisheth away was in glory, much
more is that which abideth in glory. 12. Having then such hope, we
use great boldness of speech; 13. And not as Moses put a veil on his
face, in order that the children of Israel might not steadfastly look to the
end of that which was to vanish away: 14. But their understandings
were blinded; for until this very day the same veil remaineth at the
reading of the old covenant, without having it unveiled (or discovered),
that it is vanished away in Christ. 15. But unto this day, whenever
Moses is read, a veil lies upon their heart. 16. But whenever it shall
have turned to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17. Now the Lord
is the Spirit; but where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
18. But we all, with unveiled face, beholding in a mirror the glory of
the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as
from the Lord the Spirit.'
This section has at first sight a somewhat parenthetical appearance,
and introduces, in a manner that seems quite incidental, a subject not
elsewhere discussed in either of the Epistles to the Corinthians--the
difference in certain respects between the ministration of law and the
ministration of the Gospel. Closer examination, however, shews that it
was not. done without reason, being intended. to meet the unworthy
insinuations, and incorrect or superficial views of the teachers, who by
fair speeches, recommendatory letters or otherwise, had been seeking to
supplant the apostle's authority at Corinth. That a certain Judaistic
leaven existed also among some of these, may not doubtfully be inferred
from their calling themselves by the name of Cephas or Peter (1 Cor.
i. 12). And though the apostle had reason to conclude that the influ-
ence of those designing teachers had already received its death-blow
from the effect produced by his first epistle, we cannot wonder that he
should still have deemed it needful—though only as it were by the way
—to bring out the higher ground which he had won for himself at
Corinth, and the practical evidence this afforded of the Divine power of
his ministry, being in such perfect accordance with the spiritual nature
of the Gospel dispensation, and the superior glory that properly belonged
to it. This, then, is the apostle's starting-point--his own fitness or
sufficiency as a minister of Christ: this, as to power and efficiency, is of
God; it is proved to be so by the life-giving effects which it had pro-
368 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
duced among the Corinthians themselves, these having become like a
living epistle of the truth and power of the Gospel; and this, again, the
apostle goes on to shew, is the best of all testimonials, as being most
thoroughly in accordance with the character of the new covenant,
which in this very respect differs materially from the old.
Ver. 6. Passing over the two or three earlier verses which, for the
purpose we have more immediately in view, call for no special con-
sideration, the apostle, after stating at the close of ver. 5 that his
sufficiency (i[kano<thj) was of God, adds, 'who also has made us sufficient
to be ministers' (i[ka<nwsen—not, as in the authorized version, 'made us
able ministers'), that is, has qualified us for the work of ministers, 'of
the new covenant.' The kai> must be taken in the sense of also, or thus
too: our sufficiency in general is of God, who thus too has made us
sufficient—in this particular line has given proof of His qualifying grace,
by fitting us for the ministry of the new covenant. It is here first
that the term ‘new covenant’ is introduced, suggested, however, by
what had been said of the effects of the apostle's ministry in ver. 3, as
having constituted the members of the church at Corinth his recom-
mendatory letter, written neither with ink, nor on tables of stone, but
by God's Spirit on the heart. The mention of tables of stone on the
one side, and Spirit on the other, naturally called up the thought of the
two covenants — the old and the new -- the old, that which was
established at Sinai, and which, as to its fundamental principles or
terms, stood in the handwriting of the two tables; the new, that indi-
cated by Jeremiah (xxxi. 31-34), according to which there was to be a
writing of God's law upon the hearts of men, an engraving on their
inward parts. Of this new covenant the apostle speaks as a thing
perfectly known and familiar to the minds of his readers: hence simply
new covenant, without the article, not to be rendered 'a new covenant,'
with Meyer, Stanley, and others, as if of something indeterminate, and
there was still room for inquiry which new covenant. This cannot be
supposed; it is rather assumed, that the readers of the epistle knew
both what covenant the expression pointed to, and what was the specific
character of the covenant. The definite article, therefore, may be quite
appropriately used, the new covenant. But then, standing related as
ministers to this new covenant, the apostle goes on to say, they were
ministers (for diako<nouj must be again supplied), not of letter, but of
Spirit (not of gra<mma, but of pneu?ma). The expression is peculiar, and
can only be understood by a reference to the state of things then
existing for in themselves there is no necessary contrast between
letter and spirit. The apostle himself elsewhere uses the word letter in
2 COR. III. 2-18. 369
the plural, in connection with sanctifying and saving effects: the ta> i[era>
gra<mmata, the sacred letters, or writings, he says to Timothy—mean-
ing the Scriptures of the Old Testament—‘are able to make thee wise
unto salvation.’1 And as letters are but the component parts of words,
we may apply here what our Lord Himself affirmed of His words or
sayings (r[h<mata), 'The words which I have spoken to you are spirit
and life.'2 Hence, without pointing to any contrast between old and
new, or outward and inward, we find Justin Martyr, or the author of
'Expositio Fidei,' denoting by the term a passage of Scripture, saying,
in proof of the essential divinity of the Son and Spirit, 'Hear the pass-
age' (a@koue tou? gra<mmatoj, sec. 6); and Cyrill Alex. applies it specifi-
cally to the Scriptures of the New Testament, speaking of what is
fitting 'according to the scope of the New Scripture (kata> to>n tou? ne<ou
gra<mmatoj skopo>n) and ecclesiastical usage.’3 Paul might, therefore, in
perfect accordance with Greek usage, have spoken of himself as a
minister of letter or word, if he had so qualified and used the expression
as to shew that he merely meant by it the oral or written testimony of
God in Christ, which he elsewhere characterizes as ‘the sword of the
Spirit,' and as 'quick and powerful, and sharper than a two-edged
sword.'4 But putting, as he here does, letter in contrast with spirit, it is
quite clear that the apostle had respect to the written testimony or law
of God, considered by itself, and taken apart from all the spiritual influences
with which, as given by Him, it was meant to be associated. And he was
naturally led to this use of the term, with reference especially to Old
Testament Scripture, by the undue, and, in many cases, exclusive
regard paid, at and long before the Gospel era, by the Jewish authori-
ties to the bare terms, or precise letter, of the written word.
Their scribes (gra<mmatei?j) had become very much men of the letter
(gra>mma), as if every thing which a Divine revelation had to aim
at might be accomplished by an exact and proper adherence to the
terms in which it was expressed. Hence arose a contrariety between
Rabbinism, the system of the scribes, and Christianity, but which
might equally be designated a contrariety to the true scope and spirit of
the old covenant itself: the aim of each was substantially one, namely,
to secure a state of things conformable to the revealed will of God; but
the modes taken to accomplish it were essentially different, according. to
the diversity in the respective modes of contemplation. 'Christianity
demanded conversion, Rabbinism satisfied itself with instruction;
Christianity insisted on a state of mind, Rabbinism on legality; Chris-
1 2 Tim. iii. 15. 2 John vi. 63.
3 'De Ador.,' L. xii. 4 Eph. vi. 17; Heb. iv. 12.
370 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
tianity expected from the communication of the Holy Spirit the neces-
sary enlightenment, in order to discern in all things the will of God,
Rabbinism thought it must go into the minutest prescriptions to spew
what was agreeable to the law; Christianity expected from the gift of
the Holy Spirit the necessary power to fulfil the Divine will, Rabbinism
conceived this fulfilment might be secured through church discipline.'1
The inevitable result was, that 'by the external position thus given to
the law, there was nothing Divine in the heart; no repentance, faith,
reformation, and hope, wrought by God's Spirit no kingdom of God
within, but all merely external;' and, in like manner, the prophets were
viewed in a superficial manner, as if pointing, when they spake of
Messias, to a mere worldly kingdom, no true kingdom of Heaven. But
this senseless adherence to the letter was at variance, as we have said,
not merely with Christianity, but with the teaching of the prophets,
and the design of the old covenant itself (when taken in its proper
bearing and connection). And hence (as Schottgen long ago remarked,
in his 'Hor. Heb.,' on the passage before us), by the letter is not to be
understood the literal sense of the Divine word (in which sense many
things in the Gospel were equally liable to abuse with those in the law,
as the call of Christ to follow Him, to bear His cross, etc.), for that
word, as having been given by the Spirit for the direction, not so much
of man's body as his soul, is mainly spiritual, and the law itself is
expressly so called by the apostle in Rom. vii. 14. But by letter must
be understood the outward form merely of what is taught or com-
manded in the word, as contra-distinguished from its spiritual import or
living power—the shell apart from the kernel; and, in this sense,
neither the apostles nor any true messengers of God, in earlier any
more than later times, were ministers of the letter. Not even circum-
cision, Paul elsewhere says, was of this description, that is, as designed
by God, and properly entered into on the part of the people: 'Circum-
cision is of the heart, in the spirit, not in the letter;'2 and the same
might, of course, be said of all the precepts and ordinances of the law;
none of them were intended to be taken and observed in what he calls
'the oldness of the letter.'3 So that it is utterly to mistake the apostle's
meaning here, to suppose that he draws a distinction betwixt the old
and the new in God's revelations; the distinction intended has respect
mainly and primarily to a right and wrong understanding of these
revelations, no matter when given; and only hints, though it cannot be
said distinctly to express, a difference between law and Gospel in this
respect--that letter or formal prescription had a more prominent place in
1 ' Rabbinismus,' in Hertzog; by Pf. Pressel. 2 Rom. ii. 29. 3 Rom. vii. 6.
2 COR. III. 2-18. 371
the one than it has in the other. The meaning was given with sub-
stantial correctness by Luther in his marginal gloss—greatly better
than by many later expositors--'To teach letter is to teach mere law
and work, without the knowledge of God's grace, whereby every thing
that man is and does becomes liable to condemnation and death, for he
can do nothing good without God's grace. To teach spirit is to teach
grace without law and works [i.e., without these as the ground of peace
and blessing], whereby men come to life and salvation.'
'For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life (quickeneth).' This
the apostle assigns as a reason why he and his fellow-labourers were
ministers of the new covenant, in the sense just explained, not of letter
but of spirit; when done otherwise, it is but a ministration of death.
And this, whatever the nature of the word ministered, whether carrying
the aspect of law or of Gospel. More obviously, the result took place
with a ministration of law, since this consisted of requirements which
were opposed to the natural tendencies of the heart, and which, when
seriously looked into, demanded what man was not able of himself to
perform; hence not peace and life, but trouble and death, were the
inevitable consequence—although the law itself, if viewed in its proper
connection, and taken as designed by God, as the apostle elsewhere
testifies, ‘was ordained for life.’ But the Gospel, too, when similarly
treated, that is, when turned either by preacher or hearer into a letter
or form of requirement concerning things to be believed and done with-
out any higher agencies being called into play, in reality achieves
nothing more; it is, in such a case, as the apostle had stated but a few
verses before,2 'a savour of death unto death;' for to take up the yoke
of Christ, to repent and be converted, to become new creatures and lay
hold of everlasting life, is as far above nature as any thing in the law,
and if isolated from the grace with which it ought ever to be associated,
and in its bare terms pressed on men's responsibilities and obligations,
or by men themselves so taken, the result can only be deeper condemna-
tion, death in its more settled and aggravated forms.3
From the preceding exposition, it will be seen that we cannot, with
the older expositors (also Bengel, Meyer, Alford), identify letter with the
old covenant, and spirit with the new; nor altogether hold, with
Stanley, that letter here denotes 'not simply the Hebrew Scriptures,
but the more outward, book or ordinance, as contrasted with the living
power of the Gospel:' we take it generally of outward book or ordi-
nance, whether pertaining to Old or New Testament times. Only, as
from the ostensible and formal character of the two dispensations,
1 Rom. vii. 10. 2 Rom. ii. 16. 3 Matt. xi. 25; John i. 5, v. 40, vi. 44, &c.
372 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
there was more of letter in the one, more of spirit in the other: what
he says of the letter, and of its tendency to kill, admitted of a more
ready and obvious application to the things of the old covenant, than to
those of the new—an application the apostle proceeds immediately to
make. The kind of killing or death (we may add) ascribed to the
letter is certainly not, with some, and, among others, Stanley, to be
understood of physical death, the common heritage of men on account
of sin, but of the spiritual death, which consists in a painful sense of
guilt, and the agonies of a troubled conscience. What is here (briefly
indicated in this respect is more fully developed in Rom. vii., and the
one passage should be taken in connection with the other.
Ver. 7. 'But if the ministration of death in the letter, ‘engraven on
stones, came in glory.’—(The authorized version is unfortunate here.)
We adopt, as stated in the note below, the reading gra<mmati (instead
of that of the received text, gra<mmasin) in the letter, and couple this
immediately with what precedes, not with what follows. The first
clause is, ‘If the ministration of death in the letter’—it being in this
respect alone that the apostle is going to speak of it; to speak, that is,
of the Decalogue in its naked terms and isolated position, as contem-
plated by a spirit utterly opposed to the Gospel—the spirit of Rabbinism
already described. The law itself, so contemplated, is called a minis-
tration of death, because, in its native tendency and operation, certain to
prove the occasion of death; and there can be little doubt that it was
from overlooking the peculiar or qualified sense in which the apostle
thus spake of the law, that some copyists substituted the plural for the
singular, and, instead of 'ministration of death in the letter,' took the
meaning to be ‘ministration of death engraved in letters’—leaving
the subsequent expression, 'in stones' (li<qoij), as a mere appendage to
1 Here there is a diversity in the copies, which are about equally divided between
the singular and the plural form of the word: B D F G exhibit gra<mmati, and
x A C E K L gra<mmasin, the latter outweighing the others somewhat in number, but
not much in authority, as the last three (E K L) belong to the ninth century; and
the natural tendency was to change from gra<mmati, to gra<mmasi, as affording a more
obvious sense when coupled with e]ntetupwme<nh, since it would hardly do to say of the
ten commandments, 'engraven in letter,' while 'engraven in letters' was quite
simple. Hence also, in D, while at first hand it presents gra<mmasi, afterwards has
this changed into the plural; and, both in its later form, and in E K L, e]n is inserted
before ,li<qoij, to help out the sense, which had been injured by joining e]ntetupwme<nh
to e]n gra<mmasin. This also accounts for the versions following this later form. But
the whole has arisen from adopting an obvious and superficial, in preference to the
real and only proper sense. It is of a revelation, not in letters, but in the letter that
the apostle is speaking throughout, and the change to the plural here brings con-
fusion into the whole passage. Lachmann and also Alford adopt gra<mmati.
2 COR. ii. 2-18. 373
the engraving. The change was altogether unhappy; for, first, it loses
sight of that which renders the law a ministration of death—namely,
its being viewed merely in the letter—and then the sense is weakened
by a needless redundancy about the engraving: engraved in letters!
how could it be engraved otherwise, if engraved at all! This was to
be understood of itself, and adds nothing to the import; but the
engraving in stones does add something, for it was the distinctive
peculiarity of the ten commandments to be so engraved, as compared
with the other parts of the Mosaic legislation. We therefore get the
proper sense only by reading, 'If the ministration of death in the
letter, engraven on stones, came in glory.' To speak of a ministration
being engraven sounds somewhat strange; but it is to be understood
as a pregnant expression for, 'the law as ministered by Moses being
engraven.' And when said to have come in glory (e]genh<qh e]n do<c^), the
meaning more fully expressed is, came into existence in glory, had its
introduction so among the covenant-people. What sort of glory is meant,
the apostle, before going further, explains by pointing specifically to
the radiance which shone from the face of Moses when he returned
from the mount with the two tables of the covenant, and which, though
not actually the whole, might yet justly be regarded as the symbol of
the whole, of that glory which accompanied the formal revelation of
law. This glory was such that 'the children of Israel were not able
steadfastly to look on the face of Moses, because of the glory of his
face [though a glory that was] to vanish away.' The corresponding
statement in the history is, that when 'Aaron and all the children of
Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were
afraid to come nigh him.'1 Dazzled with the supernatural appearance,
it seemed to them as if something of the majesty of Heaven now rested
upon Moses, and they durst not approach to fix their eyes intently on
the sight—though still the glory was but transient. The original
record does not directly state this, but plainly enough implies it, as it
associates the shining of Moses' face only with his descent from the
mount, and afterwards with his coming out from the Lord's presence in
the tabernacle: the children of Israel, it is said, saw it then, but not,
we naturally infer, at other times—the shining gradually vanished
away, till brightened up afresh by renewed intercourse with Heaven.
The train of thought, then, in this case, is, that the law written upon
tables of stone, which was the more special and fundamental part of
the legislation brought in by Moses, was, when taken apart and viewed
as a scheme of moral obligation, a ministration of death, because,
1 Lx. xxxiv. 30.
374 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
while requiring only what was good, requiring what man could not
perform; that still there was a glory connected with it as the re-
velation of God's mind and will a glory partly expressed, partly
symbolized, by the radiance that occasionally shone from the face of
Moses, dazzling and affrighting the Israelites, but, at the same time, a
glory which was not abiding, one that, after a little, again disappeared.
Ver. 8. Having stated this respecting the glory of the law, which
formed, in the sense explained, a ministration of death, the apostle asks,
How shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be in glory?'
Why does he not say, the ministration of life, which would have been
the more exact counterpart to the ministration of death? The chief
reason probably was, that this might have created a false impression:
a ministration of law taken in the letter, or simply by itself, can be
nothing else for fallen man than a ministration of death; but there is
no ministration in New Testament times which, with like regularity and
certainty, carries life in its train. No doubt, if spirit here were to be
understood directly and simply of the Holy Spirit (as Chrysostom, 'He
no longer puts what is of the Spirit, viz., life and righteousness,
a]ll ] au]to> to> pneu?ma, but the Spirit itself, which makes the word
greater'), it might well enough be held to involve life—life would be
its inseparable accompaniment, as death of unmitigated law; for in so
far as the Spirit ministers, the result can only be in life and blessing.
But the apostle could not thus identify his apostolic agency with the
third person of the Godhead, and call it absolutely a ministration or
service (diakoni<a) of the Holy Ghost—as if ministration of the Spirit
were all one with dispensation of the Spirit. In popular language they
are often so confounded, but not in Scripture; and the expression in
Gal. iii. 5, ‘He who ministereth (e]pixorhgw?n) to you the Spirit,’ points
not to the apostle as a minister of the new covenant, but to God or
Christ: it is He alone who can minister, in the sense of bestowing, the
Holy Spirit. The ministration or service here meant is undoubtedly the
evangelical ministry of the apostles and their followers—the teaching-
function of the Gospel, as Meyer terms it, and called, he thinks, the
ministration of the Spirit, because it is 'the service which mediates the
Holy Spirit.' Strictly speaking, it is a ministration of word and ordi-
nance, but such as carries along with it, in a quite peculiar degree as
compared with former times, the regenerative, life-giving power of
spiritual influence (the working of the Holy Ghost); and, named from
this as its most distinctive feature, it is characterized as the ministration
of the Spirit—much as a man is often called a soul, because it is from
that more especially he derives what gives him his place and being in
2 COR. III. 2-18. 375
creation:—the Spirit, therefore, not hypostatically considered, but as
a Divine power practically operative through word and ordinance in
bringing life and blessing to the soul.
Vers. 9, 10. ‘For if the ministration of condemnation was in glory,
much more does the ministration of righteousness abound in glory,’
This is substantially a repetition of the same idea as that expressed in
the immediately preceding passage—only with this difference, that the
law in the letter is here presented in its condemnatory, instead of its
killing, aspect—condemnatory, of course, not directly, or in its own
proper nature, but incidentally, and as the result of men's inability to
fulfil its requirements. Accordingly, on the other side, righteousness
is exhibited as the counterpart brought in by the Gospel: what the
one requires, and from not getting becomes an occasion of condemnation,
the other, through the mediation and grace of Christ, actually provides.
A far greater thing, assuredly—hence in connection with it a sur-
passing glory; such, the apostle adds in ver. 10, that the glory which
had accompanied the one might be regarded as nothing in comparison
of the other.
Ver. 11. A still further aspect of the subject is here presented, one
derived from the relative place of the two ministrations in respect to
stability or continuance: ‘for if that which vanisheth away was in glory,
much more is that which abideth in glory.’ In this form of the compari-
son, reference is had to what had been already indicated in the mention of
the new covenant, implying that, with the introduction of this, there was
a superseding or vanishing away of what went before. The two tables
—the law in the letter, which is all one with the service or ministration
of Moses—formed the material of a covenant, which was intended to
last only till the great things of redemption should come; when a new
covenant, and along with that a new service or form of administration
should be introduced, adapted to the progression made in the Divine
economy. The former, therefore, being from its very nature transitory,
could not possibly be so replete with glory as the other; the higher
elements of glory must be with the ultimate and abiding.
Here properly ends the apostle's contrast between the ministration of
letter, and the ministration of spirit—for what follows is rather an
application of the views unfolded in the passage we have been consider-
ing, than any additional revelation of doctrine. From the pregnant
brevity of the passage, and the peculiar style of representation adopted
in it, mistaken notions have often been formed of the apostle's mean-
ing—as if the contrast he presents were to be understood of the Old
and New Testament dispensations generally, of all on the one side that
376 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
was connected with the covenant of law for Israel, and what on the
other is provided and accomplished for mankind in the Gospel of Christ.
So understood, the passage becomes utterly irreconcilable both with the
truth of things and with statements elsewhere made by the apostle
himself. If the law as given by God, and intended to be used by
the covenant people, was simply a service of condemnation and death,
it could have had no proper glory connected with it, and Moses, instead
of being entitled to regard and honour as the mediator that introduced
it, would have been the natural object of repugnance and aversion.
If also the doing or vanishing away spoken of had respect to the law
in its substance, as a revelation of moral truth and duty, where could
be the essential oneness of God's moral character? and how could the
apostle here assert that to be done away, the very thought of doing
away with which he elsewhere rejects as an impiety? 'Do we then,'
says he, 'make void (katargou?men, put away, abolish, the very word in
ver. 11 here) the law through faith? God forbid, yea, we establish the
law' (i[sta<nomen, give it fixed and stable existence).1 The apostle, we may be
sure, could not involve himself in such inconsistencies, nor could he
mean to speak so disparagingly of the revelation of law brought in by
Moses, if viewed in its proper connection, and kept in the place designed
for it by the lawgiver. Moses himself, also, is a witness against the view
under consideration; for he expressly declared that, if the people
hearkened to the voice of God, they should live, and that he set before
them life as well as death, blessing as well as cursing.2 But, certainly,
he could not have said this, if he had had nothing to point to but the
terms of a law, which required perfect love to God, and the love of
one's neighbour as one's-self. This law branched out into the ten
commandments, which were engraved on the tables of stone, and were
by Moses ministered to the people at Sinai, taken apart and read in
the letter of its requirements, could never be for fallen men the path-
way to life, and could only, by reason of their frailty and corruption,
be the occasion of more certain and hopeless perdition. And here lay
the folly of so many of the Jews, and of some Judaizing teachers also
in the Christian church, that they would thus take it apart, and would
thus press it in the letter, as a thing by which life and salvation
might be attained. It is against this that the apostle is here arguing.
He is exposing the idea of Moses being taken for the revealer and
minister of life through the law he introduced, and as such the author
of a polity which was destined to perpetuity. No, he in effect says,
Moses, as the in-bringer of the law, did but shew what constituted life,
1 Rom. iii. 31. 2 Ex. xix. 5, 6; Deut. xxx. 15-19.
2 COR. III. 2-18. 377
but could not give it; he exhibited the pattern, and imposed the
obligations of righteousness, but could not secure their realization;
this was reserved for another and higher than he, who is the Life and
the Light of men; therefore, only condemnation and death can come
from understanding and teaching Moses in the letter—while still, his
ministration of law, if considered as an ordinance of God, and with due
regard to its place in the economy of Heaven—that is, in its relation to
the antecedent covenant of promise, and its subservience to the higher
ends of that covenant—has in it a depth, a spirituality and perpetual
significance for the church, which constitute the elements of a real
glory—a glory that was but faintly imaged by the supernatural bright-
ness on the face of Moses. This is in truth what the apostle presently
states, when shewing, as he proceeds to do, what the carnal Jews
missed by their looking at the ministration of the old covenant merely
in the letter, instead of finding in it, as they should have done, a pre-
paration for the better things to come, and a stepping-stone to the
higher form of administration which was to be brought in by Christ.
Ver. 12. 'Having then such hope, we use great boldness of speech.'
He had said before, ver. 4, that he had such, or so great confidence
toward God—on account of the grace and power which were made to
accompany his ministrations; he knew and felt that he was owned by
God in his work. Now, he says he has such hope—such, namely, as
arises out of the surpassing greatness of the blessing and glory con-
nected with the Gospel and its ministration of spirit, and this not passing
away, but abiding and growing into an eternal fulness and sufficiency
of both; so that hope, as well as confidence, here has its proper scope.
And having it, he could be perfectly open and bold in his speech, as
one who had nothing to conceal, who had nothing to gain by the
ignorance or imperfect enlightenment of the people, who also needed to
practise no reserve in his communications, because the great realities
being come, the clear light was now shining, and the whole counsel of
God lay open.
Ver. 13. 'And not'—he adds, as a negative confirmation of what he
had just stated, and also as an introduction to the notice he is going to
take of the culpable blindness and carnality of the Jews—'And not as
Moses put a veil on his face (an elliptical form of expression for, and
we do not put a veil on our face, or mode of manifestation, as Moses
put a veil on his face), in order that the children of Israel might not
steadfastly look to the end (or cessation) of that which was to be done
away.' The fact only, as already noticed, is mentioned in the history
of the transaction, that Moses put a veil over his face, but not the
378 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
purpose for which it was done—which is left to be inferred from the
nature of the act, and the circumstances that led to its being done.
Nor is it very distinctly indicated either here or in Exodus, whether the
veil was put on by Moses while he addressed the people, or after he
had done speaking with them. The authorized version, at Exodus
xxxiv. 33, expresses the former view, And till Moses had done speak-
ing with them, he put a veil on his face;' but there is nothing in the
original corresponding to the till; it merely states that he finished
speaking with them, and put a veil on his face, which seems to imply,
regarding that first discourse at least, that the veiling was subsequent
to the speaking. And so the ancient versions give it (Sept. e]peidh> kate<-
pause lalw?n e]pe<qhken e]pi> to> pro<swpon au]tou? ka<lumma; Vul Impletisque
sermonibus posuit velamen, super faciem suum). But as to the future, it is
merely said that Moses took the veil off when he went in to speak with
the Lord ‘until he came out;’ and when he came out and spake, the
children of Israel perceived that his face shone: ‘And he put the veil
upon his face again until he went in to speak with Him’ (vets. 34, 35).
The natural impression, however, is, that the method adopted at first
was still followed (though Meyer still takes the other view), namely,
that Moses did not veil his countenance quite immediately when he
came out, but only after he had spoken what he received to say to the
people; and that the direct object of the veil was to conceal from the
view of the people the gradual waning and disappearance of the super-
natural brightness of his skin. But viewing this brightness as a symbol
of the Divine mission of Moses, the apostle ascribes to him a still fur-
ther intention in the veiling of it namely, that the children of Israel
might not, by the perception of its transience, be led to think of the
transitory nature of the service or ministration of Moses itself—for this,
I think with Meyer, whom Alford follows, must be held to be the natural
sense of the words, ‘in order that they might not steadfastly look
(pro>j to> mh> a]teni<sai-pro>j to, with the infinitive always denoting the pur-
pose in the mind of the actor),1 to the end of that which was vanishing
away (transitory).' The vanishing away or transitory (tou? katargou-
me<nou) here is a resumption of the same (to> katargoume<non) in ver. 11; and
which, as we there explained, was the service of Moses as the bringer
in of objective, written law. There was a glory connected with this,
indicated by the shining of his skin (the seal, in a manner, of his Divine
authority), but as the symbol of the glory was transient, so also was
the ministration itself; and Moses, the apostle would have us to under-
stand, was aware of this; but lest the children of Israel should also
1 Matt. v. 28, vi. xiii. 30; Eph. vi. 11; 1 Thess. ii 9, etc.
2 COR. III. 2-18. 379
perceive it, and at the very time the service was introduced might begin
to look forward to its cessation, he concealed from them the fact of the
passing away of the external glory by drawing over it a veil.1 Many
commentators have rejected this view, because appearing to them to
ascribe something derogatory, a kind of dissimulation, to Moses, as if,
while legislating for the people, he wished to hide from them the pro-
visional nature of that legislation, and its relation to the future coming
and kingdom of the Messiah. But this is to extend the object of the
concealment too far: what Moses did in respect to the veil, he doubtless
did under the direction of God; and what is affirmed by the apostle
concerning it is, that the service of Moses as the minister of law
engraven on stones (with all, of course, that became connected with
this), was to be thought of as the service which they were specially to
regard and profit by, according to its proper intent, without needlessly
forestalling the time when it should be superseded by another service
or ministration, that of the Gospel. For the former was the kind of
service meanwhile adapted to their circumstances; and to have shot, as
it were, ahead of it, and fixed their eyes on the introduction of a higher
service, would have but tended to weaken their regard to that under
which they were placed, and rendered them less willing and anxious to
obtain from it the benefits it was capable of yielding. But this did not
imply that they were to be kept ignorant of a coming Messiah, or were
not to know that a great rise was to take place in the manifestations
of God's mind and will to men; for Moses himself gave no doubtful
intimation of this,2 and it was one of the leading objects of later pro-
phets, to make still more distinct announcements on the subject, and
foretell the greater glory of the dispensation which was to come. But
even with these, a certain concealment or reserve was necessary; and
though a mighty change was indicated as going to take place, and the
passing away of the old covenant itself into another, which, in com-
parison of it, was called new, yet so carefully was the ministration of
Moses guarded, and so strongly was its authority pressed during the
time set for its administration, that one of the very last words of
ancient prophecy to the members of the old covenant was, 'Remember
the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb
for all Israel, with the statutes and judgments:3
1 I take the concealing to be the whole that is indicated by the veil, as most indeed
do. Alford would find also the idea of suspension or interruption; but this seems
fanciful; for no ministry is perfectly continuous. St Paul's was liable to suspension
as well as that of Moses.
2 Deut. xviii. 15-18. 3 Mal. iv. 4.
380 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Ver. 14. At the same time, the language used by the apostle implies
that this was not what should have been; it was an imperfect state of
things, and involved a measure of blame; but the blame lay with the
people, not with Moses. He could not make use of such boldness of
speech, regarding Divine things, as was now done by apostles and
preachers of the Gospel; he was even obliged to practise a kind of
disguise, with the view of concealing the transitory nature of the
ministration with which he was more peculiarly charged. And this
for the sake of the spiritual good of the people themselves; because,
considering their state of mind, more of insight in that particular direc-
tion might have turned to evil; and the ultimate reason follows: 'But
their understandings were hardened (noh<mata, thoughts , thinking powers,
understandings).' The connection is not, I conceive, that given by
Stanley: Nay, so true is this, that not their eyes, but their thoughts
were hardened and dulled'—substantially concurred in by Alford, who
takes a]lla< in the sense of But also, and regards it as introducing a
further assertion of their ignorance or blindness—blindness in respect
to things not purposely concealed from them, but which they might
be said to see: such modes of connection are somewhat unnatural,
and scarcely meet the requirements of the case; for something is
needed as a ground for what precedes as well as for what follows.
I take it to be this Moses practised the concealment and reserve
in question, not as if it were what he himself wished, or thought
abstractedly the best; but he did so because the understandings of the
people were hardened, they had little aptitude for spiritual things,
perfectly free and open discourse was not suited to them. And the
apostle goes on to say, it was not peculiar to that generation to be so
—it was a common characteristic of the covenant people (so Stephen
also says1), 'for until this day the same veil remains at the reading of
the old covenant (that is, the book or writings of the covenant), with-
out having it unveiled (discovered) that it (viz., the old covenant) is
vanished away in Christ.' Such appears to be the most natural con-
struction and rendering of this last clause—a]nakalupto<menon being; taken
as the nominative absolute, and the vanishing or being done away being
viewed, in accordance with the use of the expression in the preceding
context, as having respect, not to the veil, but to the old covenant, or the
ministration of Moses. Having been so used once and again, it manifestly.
could not, without very express warrant, be understood now of some-
thing entirely different. It is not, therefore, as in our authorized
version, the veil which is done away in Christ, but the old covenant;
1 Acts vii. 51.
2 COR. III. 2.18. 381
and the evidence of the veil being still spiritually on the hearts of the
Jews, the apostle means to say, consists in their not having it unveiled
or discovered to them that the old does vanish away in Christ. This
was a far more grievous sign of a hardened understanding in the Jews
of the apostle's time, than the hardening spoken of in the time of
Moses; for now the disguise or concealment regarding the cessation
of the Mosaic, service was purposely laid aside; the time of reforma-
tion had come; and not to see the end of that which was transitory,
was to miss the grand design for which it had been given.
Vers. 15, 16. 'But unto this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil
lies upon the heart.' This is merely to be regarded as an explanation
of what was meant in the preceding sentence by the want of discern-
ment, as to the cessation of the old covenant in Christ. It arose from
a veil being, not upon Moses, or upon the book of the covenant (for
the advance of the Divine dispensations had taken every thing of that
sort out of the way), but upon their own heart. There was the real
seat and cause of the blindness. 'But (adds the apostle) whenever it
shall have turned to the Lord, the veil is taken away' (periairei?tai, a
different word from that in the preceding verse, and confining the
application there made of katargei?tai to the old covenant, not to the
veil). There is a certain indefiniteness in the statement, and opinions
differ concerning the subject of the turning—some taking it quite
generally: when any one shall have done so; some supplying Moses
as the symbol or representative of the old covenant: when application
is made of this covenant to the Lord; others, and, indeed, a much
greater number, understand Israel; with substantial correctness—though
it seems better, with Meyer and Alford, to find the subject in the ‘their
heart' of the immediate context: when the heart of the people, whether
individually or collectively, shall have turned to the Lord, then the veil
as a matter of course is taken away, it drops off. The language un-
doubtedly bears respect to what is recorded of Moses when he went
into God's presence—as often as he did so putting off the veil; but it
cannot be ° taken for more than a mere allusion, as the actions them-.
selves were materially different.
Ver. 17. 'Now the Lord is the Spirit.' This is undoubtedly the natural
and proper construction, taking spirit for the predicate, not (as Chrysos-
tom, Theodoret, and several moderns) Lord; and the apostle is to be
understood as resuming the expression in the preceding verse, and con-
necting it with what had been said before of spirit; q. d., Now the Lord,
to whom the heart of Israel turns when converted, is the spirit which
has been previously spoken of as standing in contrast to the letter, and
382 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
the ministration of which has been given as the distinctive characteristic
apostolic agency. By spirit, therefore, must here be understood, not the
Holy Spirit hypostaticaily or personally considered—for in that case it
could not have been so identified with the Lord (by whom is certainly
meant Christ), nor would it properly accord with the sense of spirit, in
verses 6 and 8—but the Spirit in His work of grace on the souls of men
—or Christ Himself in His divine energy manifesting Himself through
the truth of His Gospel to the heart and conscience, as the author of all
spiritual life and blessing. So that it is the inseparable unity of Christ
and the Spirit in the effect wrought by the ministration of word and ordi-
nance, not their hypostatical diversity, which here comes into considera-
tion: Christ present in power, present to enlighten and vivify,--that, as
here understood by the apostle, is the Spirit (in contradistinction to the
mere 'form of knowledge and of truth in the law'); 'but (the apostle
adds—de as the particle of transition from an axiom to its legitimate con-
clusion) where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty'—not there in
the local sense (for e]kei? is wanting in the best authorities, x A B C D.
also in the Syriac and Coptic versions, nor is its employment in such a
manner quite in accordance with the usage of the apostle); but merely
as, along with the substantive verb, declarative of a certain fact: the
man who is spiritually conversant with Christ, who knows Him in the
spirit of His grace and truth, there is for such an one a state of liberty—
he is free to commune with Christ himself, and to deal with the realities
of His work and kingdom, as at home in the region to which they belong.
and possessing, in relation to them, the spirit of sonship.1 Not merely is
the hardened understanding gone which prevents one from seeing them
aright, but a frame of mind is acquired, which is in fitting adaptation to
them, relishing their light and breathing their spirit.
Vet. 18. A still further deduction follows, the climax of the whole
passage rising from the matter discoursed of to the persons in whom
it is realized: ‘but we all with unveiled face beholding in a, mirror
the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from
glory to glory, as from the Lord the Spirit.’ The but at the
beginning indicates a certain implied contrast to the state of others
—the bondmen of the house of Israel, who knew not the Lord
as the Spirit, and the spiritual liberty such knowledge brings, but
it is otherwise with us. We all—that is, we who are Christians,
not apostles merely, or Christian ministers and evangelists, for the
expression is purposely made quite general, in order to comprehend,
along with himself, the whole of those whose case the apostle is now
1 Rom. viii. 15.
2 COR. III. 2-18. 383
handling—‘We all with unveiled face behold.’ The last reference to
the veil had represented it as being upon the heart of the Israelites;
for it was as hearers of the law that he then contemplated them; but
now, as it is in connection with the sight that he is going to unfold the
privilege of New Testament believers, he returns to the thought of the
face in relation to the veil the face of Moses having been veiled,
indeed, to the people, but unveiled in the presence of the Lord, whence
it received impressions of the glory that shone upon it from above. So
we all—after the manner of Moses, though in a higher, because more
spiritual, sense, but unlike the people for whom the glory reflecting
itself on his countenance was veiled—'behold in a mirror the glory of
the Lord.' I adhere to this as the most natural and also the most
suitable sense of the somewhat peculiar word katoptrizo<menoi, as
opposed to that of 'reflecting as in a mirror,' adopted by Chrysostom,
Luther, Calov, also by Olshausen and Stanley. There is no evidence
of the word having been employed in this sense. In the active, it
signifies to 'mirror,' or shew in a glass; in the middle usually, to
'mirror one's-self,' or 'look at one's-self in a mirror,' of which examples
may be seen in Wetstein on the passage, but which is manifestly out
of place here; and to turn the seeing one's-self in a mirror, into re-
flecting one's likeness from it, is to introduce an entirely new and
unwarranted idea into the meaning. Nor could it, if allowable, afford
an appropriate sense; for the mention of the unveiled face undoubtedly
presents a contrast to the representation in vers. 14-16, and has respect
to the free, untrammelled seeing of the Divine glory. There is also in
Philo one undoubted use of the word in this sense (‘Leg. Allegor.,’ III.
33, mhde katoptrisai<mhn e]n a@ll& tini> th>n sh>n i]de<an h} e]n soi< t&? qe&?, neither
would I see mirrored in any other, etc.) The plain meaning, therefore,
is, 'We all with unveiled face (the veil having been removed in con-
version) beholding in a mirror (or seeing mirrored) the glory of the
Lord.' The apostle does not say where or how this mirrored glory is to be
seen, but he supplies the deficiency in the next chapter, when at ver. 4 he
speaks of the light, or rather 'shining forth of the Gospel of the glory
of Christ' (which Satan prevents natural men from perceiving), and at
ver. 6 (when speaking of the contrary result in the case of believers),
he represents God as ' shining in their hearts to the illumination of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.' The
glory, therefore, in so far as it is now accessible to the view of
believers, is to be seen mirrored in the face or person of Jesus Christ,
or, as it is otherwise put, in the Gospel of the glory of Christ—that is,
the Gospel which reveals what He is and has done, and thereby unfolds
384 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
His glory. This is now freely opened to the inspection of believers, and
by beholding it with the eye of faith, 'we are transformed into the
same image' (th>n au]th>n ei]ko<na metamorfou<meqa, the accusative, according
to some, to be explained as that of nearer determination; but better,
perhaps, with Bernhardy, Meyer, and others, to be regarded as expres-
sive of the form implied in the action of the verb, and so indirectly
governed by it; but either way capable of being rendered into English
only by the help of the preposition, ‘transformed into the same image’),
the image, namely, of Christ's glory seen in the mirror of His Gospel, the
living impression of which on our hearts is all one with having Christ
formed in them;1 hence, a deeper change than that which passed upon
the skin of Moses, and indicative of a more intimate connection with the
Lord; for it is now heart with heart, one spiritual image reproducing
itself in another. And this 'from glory to glory'—either from glory
in the image seen, to glory in the effect produced, or rather perhaps
from one stage in the glorious transformation to another, till coming at
last to see Him as He is, we are made altogether like Him.2 Very
different, therefore, from an impression of glory, which was evanescent,
always ready to lose its hold, and tending to vanish away. 'Even as
(the apostle adds) from the Lord the Spirit'—so, I think, the words
should be rendered with Chrysostom, Theodoret, Luther, Beza, and
latterly Stanley, Alford, seeing in them the same kind of identification
of Lord and Spirit as in ver. 17; not, with Fritzsche, Olshausen, De
Wette, Meyer, 'from the Lord of the Spirit,' which would introduce at
the close a new idea, and one not very much to the purpose here, for,
in the only sense in which the expression can be allowed, the Lord has
ever been the Lord of the Spirit—as much in Old Testament times as
now. The English version, 'from the Spirit of the Lord,' is inadmis-
sible, as doing violence to the order of the words. The meaning of the
apostle in this closing sentence is, that the result is in accordance with
the Divine agency accomplishing it—it is such as comes from the
operation of Him who makes Himself known and felt through the vital
energy of the Spirit—whose working is Spirit upon spirit--therefore
penetrating, inward, powerful—seizing the very springs of thought
and feeling in the soul, and bringing them under the habitual influence
of the truth as it is in Christ. This is a mode of working far superior
to that of outward law, because in its very nature quickening, dealing
directly with the conscience, and with the idea of spiritual excellence,
giving also the power to realize it in the heart and conduct.
1 Gal. iv. 19. 2 1 John iii. 3.
GAL. ii. 14-21. 385
GAL. II. 14-21.
‘But when I saw that they were not walking uprightly, according
to the truth of the Gospel, I said to Cephas in the presence of all, If
thou, being a Jew, livest after the manner of the Gentiles, why con-
strainest thou the Gentiles to live as do the Jews? 15. We by nature
Jews, and not sinners of the Gentiles, 16. Knowing, however, that a man
is not justified by the works of the law, [not justified] except through
the faith of Jesus Christ, we also put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we
might be justified out of the faith of Christ, and not out of the works
of the law, because by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.
17. But if, while seeking to be justified in Christ, we ourselves also
were found to be sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? God
forbid. 18. For if the things which I pulled down, these I again build
up, I prove myself to be a transgressor. 19. For I through the law died
to the law, in order that I might live to God. 20. I have been crucified
with Christ; but no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me; and that
which I now live in the flesh I live in faith—that [namely] of the Son
of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. 21. I do not make
void the grace of God; for if righteousness [come] through the law,
then Christ died without cause.'
There is not much of difficulty in this passage considered exegetically,
nor will it call here for any lengthened exposition; but it is of importance
as being, in point of time, the first recorded statement of a mode of repre-
sentation by the apostle, respecting the relation of believers to the law,
which was afterwards more than once repeated, and with greater fulness
brought out. The historical occasion of it, as related in the preceding
verses, was the vacillating conduct of Peter during a temporary sojourn
at Antioch, of uncertain date, but probably not long after the council
which met at Jerusalem concerning circumcision.1 At first he mingled
freely with Gentile believers, in food as well as other things, in token
that all legal distinctions in this respect were abolished; but on the
arrival of some of the stricter party of Jewish Christians from Jerusalem,
he again withdrew, as afraid to offend their religious scruples and meet
their censure. For this he was generally condemned (katagnwsme<noj h#n,
ver. 11); and St Paul, with Christian fidelity, brought the charge dis-
tinctly against him, and, in the verses just cited, shewed how fitted his
conduct was to prejudice the truth of the Gospel.
In this he, first of all, points to what, by their very position as
1 Acts xv.
386 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Christians, they had acknowledged as to the way of salvation—that
they had attained to it, not by what properly belonged to them as Jews,
but by having become believers in Christ. By assuming even for a time
the Gentile mode of life, assuming it as a thing in itself perfectly proper
and legitimate for a Christian, Peter had confessed that salvation had
come to him otherwise than by conformity to the Jewish law; and how,
then, asks Paul, dolt thou constrain the Gentiles to live as do the
Jews?' (literally, to Judaize). He uses a strong expression—a]nagka<zeij,
constrain—to indicate the moral force which the conduct of one so high
in authority as Peter was sure to carry along with it. With many it
would have the weight of a Divine sanction—while yet, as he goes on
to skew, it was in the very face of their Christian profession and hope:
'We by nature Jews, and not sinners of the Gentiles'—that is, not
sinners after such an extreme type, the expression being used much as
in the phrase 'publicans and sinners' in the Gospels; their birth within
the bonds of the covenant had saved them from such a state of degrada-
tion. 'Knowing, however (such plainly is the force of de here, introduc-
ing something of a qualifying nature, materially different, though not
strictly opposite, Winer, sec. 53, b), that a man is not justified by the
works of the law, except (e]a>n mh> the two particles, have no other sense,
but, as ei] mh> in Matt. xii. 4, Rev. ix. 4, perhaps also Gal. i. 19, refer
only to the predicate in the preceding clause, which must be again sup-
plied, 'not justified except') through the faith of Jesus Christ, we also
put our faith in Christ Jesus, that we might be justified.' The meaning
is, that though they were not sinners like the Gentiles, still they were
sinners, and as such conscious of the impossibility of being justified
with God on the ground of any works of law; hence had sought their
justification by simply believing in Christ. By the works of the law here,
as at Rom. iii. 20, and elsewhere in Paul's writings, are undoubtedly to
be understood the works required generally by the law of the old
covenant—not ceremonial as contradistinguished from moral, nor moral
as contradistinguished from ceremonial—but whatever of one kind or
another it imposed in the form of precept—the law, in short, as a rule
of right and wrong, laid in its full compass upon the consciences of men;
but pre-eminently, of course, the law of the ten commandments which lay
at the heart of the whole, and was, so to speak, its pervading root and
spirit. By deeds of conformity to this law they knew they could not
be justified, because they had not kept it; they could be justified only
through the faith of Jesus Christ. The apostle purposely varies the pre-
positions—not e]c e@rgwn, out of works as the ground, or formal cause of
justification, but dia> pis<tewj through faith, as the instrument or medium
GAL. II 14-21 387
by which it is accepted. Coming through faith, it is acknowledged and
received as God's gift in Christ, whereas, had it been of works of law, it
had possessed the character of a right or claim. In the closing part of
the passage, however, he uses the same preposition in respect to both
modes of justification: ‘that we might be justified out of (e]k) the faith
of Christ, not out of the works of the law.' The words resume, with a
personal application to Peter and Paul, what had just been affirmed of
men at large; they knew the general truth, and for themselves had
sought justification in this way—the out of or from being here put in
both cases alike, either as a formal variation, or rather perhaps because
faith and works are contemplated merely as the diverse quarters from
whence the justification might be looked for. And the reason of their
seeking it simply of faith follows, 'because by the works of the law
shall no flesh be justified.' Neither here, nor at Rom. iii. 20, where it
is again repeated, is this weighty utterance given as a quotation from
Old Testament Scripture—though substantially it is so, being to a
nearness the words of the Psalmist,1 'For in thy sight shall no man
living be justified;' and there can be little doubt, that the apostle uses
it in both places as a word which all who knew Scripture would readily
acknowledge and acquiesce in. The no flesh (ou] . . . pa?sa sa<rc) in the
one passage is, according to a common Hebrew usage,2 substantially
equivalent to the no one living (ou] . . . pa?j zw?n) of the other. So that
here we have the great truth of the Gospel as to the way of salvation
announced both in its positive and its negative form: through faith because
of grace—not of works of law, because then necessarily on the ground
of merit, which no one, be he Jew or Gentile, possesses before God.
Ver. 17. The apostle now proceeds to draw a conclusion from the
preceding, taken in connection with what was involved in the incon-
sistent conduct of Peter: 'But if, while seeking to be justified in
Christ (e]n Xrist&?), to be taken strictly, in mystical union with Him; as
the ground or element into which faith brings us), we ourselves also
were found to be sinners (that is, found still to be such; the fact of
our seeking justification in Christ implied that we knew ourselves to be
sinners prior to our coming to Him; but if still found to be so, and
therefore failing—as your conduct would seem to betoken—to get
justification, left as before in the condition of sinners, and needing to
resort again for a ground of justification to works of law), is Christ
therefore a minister of sin?' Is this really the character in which we
contemplate Him, and are going to present Him to the view of men?
Such appears to be the natural sense of the words, and the train of
1 Ps. cxliii. 2. 2 Gen. vi. 12; Num. xvi. 22; Ps. lxv. 2; Isa. xii. 5, etc.
388 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
thought they suggest. The apostle brings out, with a kind of ironical
surprise in the mode of doing it, what was fairly involved in Peter's
behaviour, and would be its inevitable impression upon others; namely,
that having gone as a sinner to Christ for justification, and still finding
himself in the condition of a sinner, he had fallen back again upon
observances of law for what was needed. Could Christ possibly in
such a way be a minister of sin? for, if failing thus to remove its
guilt, in the behalf of those who trusted in Him, He necessarily
ministered to its interests. The question is indignantly answered by
the apostle, 'God forbid:'—the thought is abhorrent, and nothing
must be done which would tend in the least degree to countenance
such an idea. The expression (mh> ge<noito) as used by the apostle,
always imports this, and is always, too, preceded by a question; so
that the apa of the received text is rightly accented, and must be taken
interrogatively. In substance, the view now given is concurred in by
the best recent commentators—Meyer, Alford, Ellicott, Lightfoot, and
indeed by the great majority of commentators of every age, with only
such minor shades of difference as do not affect the main ideas.
Ver. 18. In this verse the apostle confirms what was involved in the
denial (mh> ge<noito) in respect to Christ, and spews where the real
ministration of sin in such a case lies: 'For if the things which I
pulled down, these I again build up, I prove myself to be a transgressor.'
It is Peter's doing that is actually described, but out of delicacy Paul
speaks in his own name. In repairing to Christ, he virtually pulled
down the fabric of law as the ground of justification (formally did so,
under the Divine direction, in the house of Cornelius); but in now
returning to its observance as a matter of principle, he was again
building it up; and in this he proved himself to be a transgressor—
but how? Was it merely by the inconsistency of his conduct, which,
if right in the first instance, must have been wrong in the second?
Or, if right in the building up, involved his condemnation for previously
pulling down? This is all that some commentators find in it (among
whom are Alford and Lightfoot), and who regard the act of trans-
gression as chiefly consisting in the previous pulling down—that is,
deemed to be such by the person himself, as proved in his again
attempting to build up. This seems to be an inadequate view of the
matter, and to fix the idea of transgression on the wrong point—on the
pulling down instead of, as the context requires, on the building up
again; it would make the proving or constituting of the person a
transgressor turn on his own mistaken view of the law, not on the
relation in which he actually stood to the law. The conduct in ques-
GAL. ii. 14-21. 389
tion, however, was plainly chargeable as an act of transgression under
two aspects—one more general, and another more specific: first, such
vacillation, playing fast and loose, in so palpable a manner, with the
things of God, was itself a grave error, a serious moral obliquity; and
secondly, in the retrogression complained of, there was involved a
misapprehension of or departure from the very aim of the law, which
was (considered in its preparatory aspect) to lead men to Christ. The
law was not given to form the ground of men's justification, but to
make them see that another ground was needed; and, after this had
come, to return again to the other was, in a most important particular,
to defeat the intention of the law, to act toward it the part of a trans-
gressor. That this last idea was also in the view of the apostle may
be inferred, not only from the nature of the case, but also from what
immediately follows, in which this very idea respecting the law is
brought prominently into view.
Ver. 19. 'For I through the law died to the law, in order that I
might live to God'—the emphatic position of the e]gw< at the commence-
ment is evidently intended to individualize very particularly the speaker,
‘I for myself;’ it is Paul's own experience that he relates, and relates
for the purpose of shewing how the law, when rightly apprehended,
recoils as it were upon itself, renders an escape from its dominion
necessary for the sinner. And the proof contained in this declaration,
for the purpose more immediately in hand, lies, as noted by Meyer,
specially in the result being said to have been reached dia> no<mou; 'for
he who through the law has been delivered from the law, in order that
he might stand in a higher relation, and again falls back into the legal
relation, acts against the law.' There can be no reasonable doubt, that
the law through which the death is accomplished, is the same as that
to which the death is represented as taking place—not, as Jerome,
Ambrose, Erasmus, Luther, Bengel, etc., the Gospel law, the law of the
spirit of life in Christ in the one case, and the Mosaic law in the other;
for even if it were admissible to take the term law in such different
senses, the point of the apostle's argument would be lost. It was the
law itself in its accusing, condemning power upon his conscience, which
made him die to it as a ground of justification and hope; so that it was
in the interest of the law that he died to it (no<m& a]pe<qanon, dat. commodi),1
the object and result being that he might live to God. It is the same
thought which, at greater length, is unfolded, also in connection. with
Paul's own experience, in Rom. vii. But the process is briefly indicated
also here, in what follows.
1 See Ellicott here, and Fritzsche on Rom. xiv. 7.
390 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Ver. 20. 'I have been crucified with Christ'—sunestau<rwmai, the
perfect, pointing therefore to the past, but extending also to the present
time, and so may be understood indifferently of the one or the other.
It gives the explanation of his death to the law without defeating, but
rather promoting the law's interests. Realizing that through sin he
had fallen under the curse of the law, and that Christ died to bear its
curse for them that believe on Him, he entered in the spirit of faith into
Christ's death, and became partaker in the benefits of His crucifixion.
As put by Chrysostom, 'When he said I died, lest any one should say,
How then dost thou live? he subjoined also the cause of his life, and
showed that the law, indeed, killed him when living, but that Christ
taking hold of him when dead quickened him through death; and he
exhibits a double wonder, both that He (Christ) had recalled the dead
to life, and through death had imparted life.' This higher kind of life,
growing out of his fellowship with Christ's crucifixion, the apostle
describes as one not properly his own, not belonging to his natural self,
but flowing into him from Christ his living Head. It is difficult to
render his words here, so as to give them the precise point and meaning
of the original. The authorized version, adopting a punctuation formerly
common (zw? de>: ou]ke<ti e]gw>, z^ de> e]n e]moi> Xr.), translates, 'Nevertheless I
live, yet not I but Christ liveth in me,'—which, however, would have
required an a]lla> before ou]ke<ti, and is now, therefore, wisely abandoned.
The apostle assumes that his crucifixion with Christ was, as in Christ's
case, but the channel to a higher life, and so he does not simply tell us
that he lives, but whence he has the source and power of life: 'I have
been crucified with Christ; but no longer is it I who live (or, a little
more paraphrastically, thus: but as for living, it is no longer I that do
so), but Christ liveth in me.' It is the appropriation of Christ's own
words: 'I am the living bread that came down from heaven; if any
man eat of this bread he shall live for ever; and the bread that I will
give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.' ‘As the
living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father, so he that eateth
me, even he shall live by me;1 it is expressed also by others of the
apostles, as by John,—' He that bath the Son bath life.'2 Christ dwell-
ing by faith in the heart has become the principle of a new life--a
life hid with him in God, from which, as an inexhaustible fountain-
head, the believer ever draws to the supply of his wants and his fruit-
fulness in well-doing. And so, the apostle adds, 'that which I now
live in the flesh (so far, that is, as I now live in the flesh) I live in
faith—that of the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.'
1 John vi. 51-57. 2 1 John v. 12; compare 1 Pet. i. 2, 3.
GAL. II. 14-21. 391
What he now regards as his life in the flesh, what properly distinguishes
and makes it what it is, is its being in the faith of Christ, finding in such
faith its proper element, and being thereby kept in perpetual fellow-
ship with the fulness of life and blessing that is in Him. And recog-
nising again the great truth, that it was as the dying and atoning
Saviour that Jesus thus became the new source of life for mankind, he
allows his faith to run out into the touching expression of appropriating
confidence, who loved me and gave Himself for me.'
Ver. 21. 'I do not make void (a]qetw?, set at nought, or rather, render
nought) the grace of God,'—namely, as manifested in the gift and death
of Christ, for our deliverance from sin and justification by faith in His
blood then follows the reason, for if righteousness [come] through
the law (through this, that is, as the ground or medium of attaining to
justification), then Christ died without cause not in vain, or to no
effect (for dwrea>n never bears that sense, but always that of the Latin
gratis), though this too might have been said; but the exact meaning is,
there would have been no occasion for his death, or, as Chrysostom
expresses it, the death of Christ would have been superfluous (peritto>j o[
tou? Xristou? qa<natoj). Thus ends the argumentation, which throughout
magnifies the grace of God in the salvation of men through the sacrificial
death and risen life of Christ, and depreciates, in comparison of it,
works of law—but depreciates them simply on the ground that they
are, in the proper sense, unattainable by fallen man—that the law's
requirements of holiness only reveal man's sin and ensure his condemna-
tion—and that, consequently, obedience to these can never be made the
ground of a sinner's confidence and hope toward God, but to his own
shame and confusion.
GAL. III. 19-26.
Ver. 19. Ti< ou#n o[ no<moj; etc. 'Wherefore, then, the law? It was
added because of the transgressions, until the seed shall have come to
whom the promise has been made, being appointed through angels in
the hand of a mediator. 20. Now a mediator is not of one; but
God is one. 21. Is the law then against the promises of God? God
forbid! For if a law were given which could have given life, verily
righteousness should have been of the law. 22. But, on the con-
trary, the Scripture shut up all under sin, in order that the promise by
faith of Jesus Christ might be given to them that believe. 23. But
before the faith came we were kept in ward, shut up under the law for
the faith which was going to be revealed. 24. So that the law has
392 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
become our pedagogue in respect to Christ, in order that we might be
justified by faith. 25. But now that the faith has come, we are no
longer under a pedagogue. 26. For ye are all sons of God through
the faith in Christ Jesus.'
This section respecting the law comes in as a natural sequel to the
line of argumentation which had been pursued by the apostle from the
beginning of the chapter. In that his object was to prove that salva-
tion or blessing was now, and had always been, of promise—of promise
as unfolding the free grace of God to sinful men, and by them appre-
hended and rested on in faith; it had been so in the case of Abraham
hundreds of years before the law was given at Sinai—nor for Abraham
as an individual merely, but as the head of a family, of Gentile as well
as of Jewish origin, who were all destined along with himself, and in
the same manner, to receive the blessing; and the law, which came so
long after, could not by possibility disannul the provisions thus secured
by promise to the believing ; least of all could they be secured by the
law, which carries with it a curse to as many as are under its dominion,
because they have all violated its precepts (v. 10, 11). But if the pro-
mise did so much, it might seem as if the law were disparaged ; hence
the question that follows.
Ver. 19. ‘Wherefore then the law?' Literally, 'What then the
law?' viz., What does it do? What is its place and object? The ti<,
therefore, may be taken in its usual sense, and the passage regarded as
elliptical; but, as to the import, it is all one as if it were put for dia> ti<,
wherefore. The answer is, ‘It was added because of the transgres-
sions'—tw?n paraba<sewn xa<rin. Does this mean in their interest, for their
sake? So Hilgenfeld, Meyer, Jowett, Alford, Lightfoot (Meyer, 'It
was added in favour, zu Gunsten, of transgressions;' Lightfoot, still
more strongly, 'to create transgressions'). But to this view, Ellicott
justly objects, that it ascribes a purpose [viz., in respect to the exis-
tence of transgressions] directly to God;' it would imply not the fact
merely, that by means of the law, and, as Paul elsewhere states, by
reason of the weakness or perversity of the flesh,1 transgressions were
multiplied, but that the production of these was one of the purposes for
which it was given—which seems to come very near making God the
intentional author of sin. Alford explains, that St Paul is here treating
of the law in its propaedeutic office, as tending to prepare the way for
Christ, and says that this office consisted in 'making sin into trans-
gression, so that what was before not a transgression might now
become one'—surely a somewhat arbitrary distinction, as if sin
1 Rom. vii. 5, 8, viii. 3.
GAL. III. 19-26. 393
(a[marti<a) and transgression (para<basij) differed materially from each
other, and what were the one might not also be the other. Neither
Paul's writings generally, nor the statements in this particular section,
afford any ground for such a distinction; for what is here called trans-
gression, and as such is associated with the law, is presently called sin
(ver. 22), as it is also elsewhere.1 And the apostle John expressly
identifies sin and transgression: 'He that committeth sin, trans-
gresseth also the law (th>n a]nomi<an poiei?; does lawlessness, violation of
law=transgression); for sin is transgression' (violation of law).2 To
speak of the law as creating either sin or transgression, is to present
moral evil as something arbitrary or factitious; consequently some-
thing that might, and, but for the creative power of formal law,
should, not have come into existence. The earliest extant interpreta-
tion, the one adopted by the Greek commentators, and by the Fathers
generally, takes the expression of the apostle in a quite opposite sense,
that the law was added for the purpose of preventing or restraining
the spirit of transgression. Thus Chrysostom, ‘The law was given
because of transgressions; that is, that the Jews might not be allowed
to live without check, and glide into the extreme of wickedness, but
that the law might be laid on them like a bridle, disciplining, moulding
them, restraining them from transgression, if not in regard to all, yet
certainly in regard to some of the commandments; so that no small
profit accrues from the law.' To the same effect Jerome, 'Lex trans-
gressiones prohibitura successit,' referring to 1 Tim. i. 9; also Occum.
Theoph., with a great multitude of modern commentators—Erasmus,
Grotius, Morns, Rosenmuller, Olshausen, De Wette, etc. This view,
however, is rejected by recent scholars, as attributing to xa<rin a sense
which is without support—a kind of practically reversed meaning of
the natural one—importing, not in favour, but in contravention of,
opposed to. It is further alleged, that the sense thus yielded, if it
were grammatically tenable, would not suit the connection; as the
apostle's object in the whole of this part of the epistle is to shew, not
what benefit might be derived from the law in the conflict with sin,
but rather what power sin derives from the law. There is, un-
doubtedly, force in both of these objections—though, in regard to the
former, the readiness and unanimity with which the Greek expositors
ascribed such an import to xa<rin, may fairly be taken to indicate, that
the sense was not altogether strange to them, and, if rarely found in
written compositions, may have been not unknown in colloquial usage.
But it appears better, with Ellicott and others, to take xa<rin in the
1 Rom. v. 13, 20, vii. 7, etc. 2 1 John iii. 4.
394 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
somewhat general sense of propter, causa, on account of--sense it un-
questionably bears.1 The sense of the passage will then be, the law was
given on account of the proneness of the people to transgress; pointing
merely to the fact, but with a certain implication in the very manner of
expression, that the evil would not thereby be cured, that transgressions
would become but the more conspicuous. For the law of itself could
not repress the tendency, or diminish the number of transgressions; on
the contrary, its tendency was to render them both more palpable and
more aggravated—while still, if contemplated and used according to
the design of God, as an handmaid to the covenant of promise, it
would have helped most effectually to promote the cause of holiness,
and consequently to repress and limit the manifestation of sin. But
the apostle is here viewing it, as the Jews of his day generally viewed
it, and as the Judaizing teachers in Galatia were evidently doing, in
its separate character and working--as a great institute commanding
one class of things to be done, and the opposite class not to be done—
an institute, therefore, taking to do with transgressions, on account of
which it actually came into being, but which it served rather to expose
and bring to light, than to put down. Thus the law was given on
account of transgressions.
And the apostle subjoins a definition of the period up to which the
law in this objective and covenant form was to continue: ‘until the
seed shall have come to whom the promise has been made’—the form
of the sentence to be explained from the circumstance, that the apostle
puts himself in the position of one at the giving of the law, and from
that as his starting-point looks forward to the moment in the future,
when the seed shall have appeared in whom the promise was to reach
its fulfilment. The meaning is, that while the covenant of promise
was in a provisional state, travelling on to its accomplishment, the law
was needed and was given as an outstanding revelation; but when the
more perfect state of things pointed to in the promise entered, the
other would cease to occupy the place which had previously belonged
to it. A clause of some difficulty is added as to the spiritual agencies
entrusted with its introduction, 'being ordained through angels (ordered
or enjoined through the medium of angels), in the hand of a mediator,'
Very much the same thought is expressed by Stephen on his trial, when
he says the Israelites received the law ei]j diataga>j a]gge<lwn, at the
ordination (according to the arrangements) of angels; and again in
Heb, ii. 2, where the law is characterized as ' the word spoken by
angels.' It is rather singular that in these passages such prominence
1 See Liddell and Scott, Rost and Palm, on the word.
GAL. III. 19-26. 395
should have been given to the ministration of angels at the giving of
the law, while in the history no notice is taken of them, nor any allusion
even to the presence of angels in connection with the law, except the
passing one in the blessing of Moses on the tribes: "The Lord came
from Sinai, and rose up from Seir unto them; He shined forth from
mount Paran, and He came with ten thousands of saints (literally,
from amid myriads of holiness); from His right hand went a fiery law
for them.1 The presence of myriads at the giving of the law is re-
ferred to also in Ps. lxviii. 17; and their mediating agency is more
distinctly expressed by Josephus (h[mw?n de> ta> ka<llista tw?n dogma<twn
kai> o[siw<tata tw?n e]n toi?j no<moij di ] a]gge<lwn para> tou? Qeou? maqo<ntwn, Ant. V.
5, sec. 3), amid by Philo ('De Somn.,' p. 642, M.). But how this change
in the mode of representation came about, or what might be its precise
object, we are unable to say. The passages in Old Testament Scripture
referred to, speak merely of the presence of angelic hosts as attendants
on the Lord at Sinai, but say nothing of their active service in com-
municating the law to Moses; throughout Old Testament Scripture it
is simply from the Lord that Moses is said to have received the law;
and the introduction of an angelic ministry as mediating between the
two, could scarcely have been thought of for the purpose of enhancing
the glory of the law, since it appeared to remove this a step farther
from its Divine source. Accordingly, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the
ministration through angels is regarded as a mark of relative inferiority,
when compared with the direct teaching of the Lord Jesus Christ; but
when not so compared, as in the speech of Stephen, or in the passages
of Philo and Josephus, it is fitly enough associated with the ideas of
peculiar majesty and sacredness. Here, I am inclined to think with
Meyer and Alford, that the mention of angels cannot justly be under-
stood in a depreciatory sense; for the covenant of promise itself, as
established with Abraham, which is the more immediate object of
comparison with the law, was also connected with angelic administra-
tion—more expressly so connected than the giving of the law.2 The
fact alone of an angelic medium is stated by the apostle, as a matter
generally known and believed—though how it should have been worked
into the beliefs of the people, while Old Testament Scripture is so silent
upon the subject, we have no specific information; all we can say is,
that it had come somehow to be understood. As to the mediator, in
whose hands the law was established at Sinai, there can be no reason-
able doubt that Moses was meant; he literally bore in his hand to the
people, from the mount, the tables that contained its fundamental
1 Dent. xxxiii. 2. 2 Gen. xxii. 11.
396 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
principles.1 Philo And the Rabbinical Jews so regarded Moses;2 the
Fathers (Basil and Theodoret excepted) mistook the meaning of the
apostle when, under mediator, they understood him to point to Christ;
and they are followed by several modern interpreters of note—Calvin,
Pareus, Calov, etc. But the other view is so much the more natural
one, and is now so generally acquiesced in, that there is no need for en-
larging on it. In the mention of a mediator, however, I see no ground
for discovering (with Ellicott) an intentional note of inferiority in the
law as compared with the covenant of promise. A mark of difference
it certainly formed, but we have no reason to think of any thing more.
Ver. 20. This point of difference is here more distinctly exhibited
‘Now a mediator is not of one; but God is one.’ The passage is some-
what famous for the variety of interpretations to which it has given
rise.3 A very considerable number, however, are manifestly fanciful
and arbitrary; and among recent commentators of note there has been
a substantial agreement in regard to the leading thoughts presented in
the words, a difference chiefly discovering itself in the application.
'A mediator is not of one'—a general proposition; the office from its
very nature bespeaks more than one party, between whom it is the
part of the mediator to negotiate—hence (though this is left to be
inferred, suggested rather than indicated), involving a certain contin-
gency as to the fulfilment of the contract, since this depends upon the
fidelity of both parties engaging in it. 'But God is one,'—the God,
namely, who gave to Abraham the promise; He gave it of His own
free and sovereign goodness, therefore it depends for its fulfilment
1 Ex. xxxi. 18, xxxii. 15. 2 See Schottgen and Wetstein here.
3 This circumstance, however, has been very loosely stated, and in a way fitted to
produce erroneous impressions. Ellicott notes that it is said to have received in-
terpretations ' which positively exceed 400.' Jowett is more explicit, and affirms,
'It has received 430 interpretations;' but in what sense or on what authority nothing
is indicated. Lightfoot, however, is more moderate, and speaks of only 250 or 300;
but he, equally with the others, conveys the impression that the interpretations
all differ from each other, which is by no means the case. It is apparently a remark
of Winer, in his Excursus on the passage, which has occasioned this manner of speech.
He says that some had set forth, in separate publications, varias et antiquorum et
recentiorum theologorum explicationes (ducentae fere sent et quinquaginta); and he
refers in a note particularly to a person of the name of Keil who had done so, and
Weigaud, who had brought together 243 interpretations. But these various exposi-
tions were not all different; there were so many interpreters, but nothing like so many
interpretations. Winer himself coincides with Keil; and among English interpreters,
a great many are substantially agreed. If the same mode were adopted with other
passages, there is scarcely a text of any difficulty in the New Testament, on which
hundreds of interpretations might not be produced.
GAL. III. 19-26. 397
solely on Him, and as such is sure to the seed, since the oneness which
belongs to His being, equally belongs to His character and purposes.
That sort of distance, or diversity of state and mind, implied in the
work of mediation, is totally awanting here; every thing hangs on the
will and efficient power of the God of the promise. But then the
thought naturally arises, that to bring in, subsequent to the promise,
a covenant requiring mediation, and consequently involving dependence
on other wills than one, is fraught with danger to the promise, and
renders its fulfilment after all uncertain. This is the thought which the
apostle raises in the form of a question in the next verse, and answers
negatively by pointing to the different purposes for which law and pro-
mise were respectively given.
Ver. 21. 'Is the law then against the promises of God? (promises
in the plural, wiht reference, not only to the frequent repetitions of the
word of promise, Gen. xii. 7, xv. 5, 18, xvii., xxii., etc., but also to the
different blessings exhibited in it). God forbid! for if a law were
given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have
been of the law.' The expression, no<moj o[ duna<menoj (the article with a
participle following the noun serving to define and limit the sense in
which the idea in the noun is to be understood, Winer, Gr., sec. 20, 4),
means precisely a law which could, or, a law such as could, possess the
power of giving life. The apostle had already said that the covenant
of grace or promise bestowed life (ver. 11), and in the previous chapter
had enlarged upon it with special reference to his own experience; and
he now adds, that if this inestimable boon for a perishing world could
have been obtained by a legal medium, this would certainly have been
chosen; for in that case man would only have been enjoined to do
what lay within the reach of his capacities and powers, and the humilia-
tion, and shame, and agony of the cross had been unnecessary. But
the thing was impossible; to give life to a sinful, perishing world is
essentially Divine work; if it comes at all it must come as the fruit of
God's free grace and quickening energy. Whatever ends, therefore, the
law might be intended to serve, this could not possibly be one of them;
and to look to it for such a purpose was entirely to mistake its design,
and seek from it what it was powerless to yield. Not, however, after
the fashion of Jowett, who represents the meaning thus: 'The power-
lessness of the law was the actual fact; in modern language it
had become effete; it belonged to a different state of the world;
nothing spiritual or human remained in it.' What the apostle means
is, that, for the object here in view, it never was otherwise: as regards
life-giving, the law in its very nature was powerless.
398 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Ver. 22. 'But on the contrary (a]lla<, a strong adversative, and re-
quiring more than a simple but to bring out its force) the Scripture shut
up all under sin'—sune<kleisen, not shut together, as remarked by Meyer,
Ellicott, Alford, against Bengel, as if the su<n had respect to the num-
bers embraced in the action, and whom it coerced into one and the
same doomed condition. It merely strengthens the meaning of the
verb, so as to indicate the completeness of the action—the closing in,
or shutting up under sin was, so to speak, on every side. And this is
further strengthened by the ta> pa<nta in the neuter, as if he would say,
men and all about them. (Elsewhere, however, he uses the masculine,
in a very similar declaration.)1 The act is justly represented as done
by the Scripture, not by the law—for the law by itself merely required
holiness, and forbade or condemned sin; but the Scriptures of the Old
Testament, or God in these, had (as already indicated, ii, 16, 10, 11)
pronounced all to be guilty of sin, and so had, in a manner, shut them
up without exception under this, as their proper state or condition—
marked them off as violators of law. Not, however, for the purpose of
leaving them there, but 'that the promise by faith of Jesus Christ
might be given to them that believe.' The word promise is here evi-
dently used concretely for all that the word of promise contained—the
blessing of life and salvation; which is again said to be ‘of faith,
pi<stewj, out of this as the source whence it is derived, but of faith as
related to Jesus Christ, and finding all its sufficiency in Him. And to
render the matter still more explicit, to shut out the possibility of the
good being supposed to come through any other channel than faith, it
is added, 'to them that have faith,' or believe—faith's promised bless-
ing is realized simply through the exercise of faith.
Ver. 22. ‘But before the faith came’—faith, that is, in the specific
sense just mentioned, but with reference more particularly to its objec-
tive reality in Christ, with which it is in a manner identified—'we
were kept in ward (such is the exact and proper meaning of e]frourou<meqa,
Vulg. custodiebamur, kept w!sper e]n teixi<w tini<, Chrysostom), shut up
under the law for the faith which was going to be revealed.' The
apostle here associates him self with believers in legal times, personifies
the entire body and succession of such, and represents them as in the
hands of a sort of jailer, who by reason of their transgressions had
them at his mercy, or rather in strict and jealous surveillance, waiting
the time of their deliverance, when it should be given them to believe
in the Lord Jesus Christ. So far from being able to set them free
from their guilt and liability to punishment, the law was their perpetual
1 Rom. xi. 32.
GAL. III. 19-26 399
monitor in respect to these—bound these upon them, but only that they
might the more earnestly and believingly look for the mercy of God in
Jesus Christ, as the only way of escape. The ei]j, for—for the faith
which was going to be revealed—is to be taken ethically, denoting the
aim or destination which the law, in this respect, was intended to serve:
'to the intent, that we should pass over into the state of faith.'1 And the
me<llousan, as Meyer also notes, stands before the pi<stin, an inversion of
the usual order, because the subsequent manifestation of faith in the future
was set over against the existing state, in which it was still wanting.
Ver. 24. The apostle now draws the proper conclusion from this
wardship under law, 'so that the law has become (ge<gonen) our peda-
gogue for (in respect to) Christ, in order that we might be justified by
faith.' The rendering in the authorized version, ‘our schoolmaster,’ does
certainly not give the exact idea of paidagwgo<j; for it suggests simply
teaching or instruction, which was not properly the part of the ancient
pedagogue, but that rather of the slave, who had to take charge of the
boy on his way to and from the school, and to watch over his behaviour
when at play. The pedagogue was the guardian and moral trainer of
the boy till he arrived at puberty. And this corresponds to the office
of the law, which, in the respect now under consideration, was not so
much to teach as to discipline, to restrain, and direct to the one grand
aim—namely, Christ, 'the end of the law for righteousness.’2 The old
Latin translation, however, gave the same sense as our English Testa-
ment; and Ambrose refers to it with approbation: Paidagogus enim,
sicut etiam interpretatio Latina habet, doctor est pueri; qui utique
imperfectae aetati non potest perfecta adhibere praecepta, quae sus-
tinere non queat.3 Such a rendering, and the continent founded on it,
may fairly be regarded as evidence, that a certain amount of instruction
was not unusually communicated by the pedagogue to the boy under
his charge—for Ambrose could scarcely be ignorant whether such was
the case or not; but this was certainly not the predominant idea; and,
as applied by Ambrose, it serves to give a wrong turn to the allusion
here. Instruction, of course, respecting moral truth and duty, was
inseparable from the law; but it is the strict, binding, and imperative
form in which this was given that the apostle has in view, and, con-
sequently, not so much the amount of knowledge imparted, as the
restraining and disciplinary yoke it laid upon those subject to it. The
law would not have men to rest in itself, but to go on to Christ, where
alone they could get what they needed, and enjoy the liberty which is
suitable to persons in the maturity of spiritual life.
1 Meyer. 2 Rom. x. 4. 3 ‘Ep. Classis,’ ii. lxxi. 2.
400 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Vers. 25, 26. 'But now that the faith has come, we are no longer
under a pedagogue; for ye are all sons of God through faith in Christ
Jesus,'—the advance from the nonage state, which required the services
of a pedagogue, to that of comparative maturity, in which the youth
is able to take charge of himself. Ye are sons, ui[oi<—not te<kna merely,
not even pai<dej, in a mere boyish condition—but sons, with the full
powers and privileges that belong to such; and this 'through the faith
in Christ Jesus,' that is, through the faith which rests in Christ, and
brings the soul into living fellowship with Him. In plain terms, the law
as an external bond and discipline is gone, because as partakers of
Christ we have risen to a position in which it is no longer needed—the
Spirit of the law is within.
GAL. IV. 1-7.
Ver. 1. 'Now I say that the heir, as long as he is a child, differs in
nothing from a bond-servant, though he be lord of all; 2. But is under
guardians and stewards, until the time appointed of the father. 3. Even
so we, when we were children, were kept in bondage under the rudi-
ments of the world. 4. But when the fulness of the time came, God
sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5. That He
might redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive
the adoption of sons. 6. But because ye are sons, God sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Abba Father. 7. So then
thou art no more a bond-servant, but a son; and if a son, an heir also
through God.'1
It is unnecessary to enter into a detailed explanation of these verses,
for they are merely a fresh illustration (under a slightly diversified
figure) of the thought expressed in vers. 24-26 of the preceding chapter.
In this respect, however, they are important, as they unfold more dis-
tinctly how the transition is made from the legal to the Christian state,
not only without any danger to the moral condition of those who make
it, but to their great gain. The figure is still that of a child (nh<pioj),
but a child with reference to the inheritance to which he has been born,
not to his personal liberty. However sure his title to the inheritance,
and however direct his relation to it, he is still kept from the proper
fruition of it, during the period of his childhood, because wanting the
mind necessary to make the proper use of it: therefore, placed under
1 The correct text here seems to be plhrono<moj dia> Qeou?, which is the reading of
x A B C, Vulg., Cop., and many of the Fathers.
GAL. IV. 1-7. 401
guardians and stewards, in a virtual position of servitude, till the time
set by his father for his entering on the possession. Of a quite similar
nature, the apostle affirms, was the state of men in pre-Christian times
'We too,' says he, identifying himself with them, ‘when we were
children, were kept in bondage under the rudiments of the world’—
ta> stoixei?a tou? ko<mou. It is a strong mode of expression, but intention-
ally made so, for the purpose of shaming the Galatians out of their
backsliding position. The term stoixei?on originally signifies a pin or peg,
then a letter, a component part or element of a word, then an element
of any sort—whether physically, in respect to the composition of
material nature, or morally, in respect to what goes to constitute a
system of truth or duty. Once only in New Testament Scripture is
the word employed with reference to the physical sphere of things—
namely, in 2 Peter iii. 10, where ‘the elements’ are spoken of as
melting with fervent heat under the action of that purifying fire which
is one day to wrap the world in flames. Misled by this passage, and
by the common use of the word in this sense, most of the Fathers took
it here also in a kind of physical sense, as pointing to the festivals,
such as new moons and sabbatical days, which are ruled by the course of
the sun and moon (Chrysostom, Theodoret, Ambrose), or to the worship
of the stars and other objects in nature (Augustine), in which they have
been followed by a few moderns. But this is unsuitable to the connec-
tion which, however it may include a respect also to heathenish forms
of worship, undoubtedly has to do mainly with the observances of
Judaism, which had no immediate relation to the powers or elements of
nature, but were strictly services of God's appointment. It is neces-
sary, therefore, to take the word here in an ethical sense, and to under-
stand it of the elementary forms or rudiments of a religious state—the
A, B, C, in a manner, of men's moral relationship to God. The apostle
says, the world's rudiments, not simply those of the covenant people;
for, while the ritual of the old covenant was specially for the seed of
Israel, it was never meant to be for them exclusively; others also were
invited to share in its services, and blessings; and, such as it was, it
formed the best, indeed, the sole divinely authorized form of religious
homage and worship for the world in pre-Christian times. In it the
world had, whether consciously or not, the style of worship really
adapted to its state of spiritual non-age. Besides, as it was not merely,
nor even chiefly, to Jewish Christians that the apostle was writing, but
to those who are presently said to have formerly done service to false
gods (ver. 8), an allusion is made, in the very form of the expression, to
the religious rites of heathendom, which, in their prevailing carnality
402 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES,
and outwardness, had a point of affinity with those of the law. The
mode of speech is purposely made comprehensive of heathen as well as
Jewish ceremonialism. And though, as Meyer notes. Paul had to do
only with backslidings of a Judaistic nature, yet this does not prevent
him, with the view of making his readers more thoroughly ashamed of
the trammelled condition to which they had returned, from designating
it in such a manner as to bring it under one idea, and place it in the
same category, with the worship of heathendom. While there was a
spiritual element in the one which was wanting in the other, it was not
on this account that the Galatians had fallen back upon it, but rather
for the sake of that outwardness which was common to both (ver. 10)
—a palpable proof, therefore, of their still low, childish tone of thought
and feeling. The expression stoixei?a tou? ko<smou is found much in the
same sense at Col. ii. 8.
Having noticed this proof of inferiority or servitude in pre-Christian
times, the apostle proceeds (ver. 4) to speak of the time and mode of
deliverance: ‘When the fulness of the time was come (to> plh<rwma,
what filled up, or gave completeness, namely, to the preparatory period
of the world's history, parallel therefore to a@xri th?j proqesmo<aj tou?
patro<j, in ver. 2), God sent forth from Himself (e[cape<steilen, denoting
both pre-existence in Christ and close proximity to the Father) His
Son, born of a woman, born under law.' Born is here the more exact
equivalent to geno<menon, rather than made—nothing being indicated by the
expression but the fact of our Lord's coming into the world with the
nature, and after the manner, of men. The birth, we know, was the
result of an altogether peculiar, supernatural operation of Godhead
but that belongs to an earlier stage than the one here referred to by the
apostle, which has to do simply with Christ's actual appearance among
men. Born under law—not become man merely, but become also
subject to the bonds and obligations of law. The definite article is
better omitted in English before law, as it is in the Greek (u[po> no<mon);
for, while special respect is no doubt had to the law as imposed on the
Jews, yet the meaning is not, as too many (including Meyer, Alford,
Ellicott) would put on it, that our Lord appeared as a Jew among Jews,
and entered into the relations of His countrymen. For the whole nature
and bearings of His work are here spoken of—His salvation in its entire
compass and efficacy for mankind; and so, not what was distinctly
Jewish must have been contemplated in the bond which lay upon Him,
but the common burden of humanity. All this, however, was in the
law, rightly considered, which was revealed at Sinai; the heart and
substance of its requirements of duty; and (implied) threatenings against
GAL. V. 13-15. 403
sin, relate to Gentile as well as Jew; they belong to man as man; and
no otherwise was redemption possible for mankind than by our Lord's
perfect submission, in their behalf, to its demands and penalties.1 His
atoning death, therefore, was, in this point of view, the climax of His
surrender to the claims of law; as said in Heb. x. 10, ‘By the which
will (fulfilled even unto the bearing of an accursed death) we are sanc-
tified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.’
The result, as stated in the words that follow here, has a threefold
issue, ‘in order that He might redeem (e]cagora<s^, might buy off by pay-
ing what was due, as from a state of hopeless servitude) those that
were under the law; [and this] in order that they might receive the
adoption of sons. And because ye are sons (not, with Chrysostom,
Theodoret, and not a few moderns, that ye are sons, or in proof and
token of your being such, but because, or since ye are so, on the ground
of your having received this place and privilege), God sent forth the
Spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying Abba Father.' All follows
by natural consequence from the spiritual union through faith of the
soul with Christ: this brings, first, deliverance from the law's curse,
which falls into abeyance by the removal of sin; then, it secures admis-
sion into the family of which Christ is the head, makes them sons after
the pattern of His sonship; and, finally, because the soul and spirit
here must correspond with the condition, the Spirit of sonship, with its
sense of joyous freedom and enlargement, comes forth to rule in their
hearts. Hence, as the apostle concludes in ver. 7, having risen to such
a condition of sonship, and become endowed with the spirit proper to
it, they could be no more bondmen; they were free, yet not to do what
was contrary to, but only what was in accordance with, the spirit and
tenor of the law. This latter point is brought out distinctly in another
passage—the last we select from this epistle.
GAL. V. 13-15.
‘For ye were called for freedom, brethren; only [use] not your
liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by your love serve (do the part
of bondmen to) one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word,
in this, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. But if ye bite and
devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.'
1 Compare the comment on Rom. iii. 20, where there is noted a precisely similar
fulness of reference in what is said of law.
404 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
The thought expressed in these words is much more fully unfolded in
the epistle to the Romans, so that a few remarks here may suffice.
The for at the commencement connects the passage with the wish
expressed in the preceding verse, that the zealots of the law, who had
been disturbing the Galatians, might be cut off, as tending to mar the
very end of their Christian calling. ‘For ye were called for freedom’
—e]p ] e]leuqeri<% the purpose or aim for this as your proper condition,
called that you might be free.1 Yet this freedom, from its very nature,
involves a species of service—if free in one respect, bound in
another—bound by love to serve one another, and, of course,
also to serve God. He therefore defines the freedom: 'only not
the liberty (mo<non th>n e]leuqeri<an) which is for an occasion to the flesh'
—so the sentence might be construed, taking th>n e]leu in opposition
to the previous sentence, and explanatory of it but it is better
perhaps to regard this part of the verse as elliptical, supplying poiei?te,
or some such verb, and thus giving the sentence an independent, horta-
tory meaning, 'only use not your liberty,' etc. It is a liberty, the
apostle would have them to understand, very different from an unre-
strained license, or fleshly indulgence; and the reason follows, that
though the external bond and discipline of the law is gone, its spirit
ever lives, the spirit of love, which Christians are most especially bound
to cherish and exhibit. In this respect, the law speaks as much as ever
to the conscience of the believer, and can no more be set aside than the
great principles of God's moral government can change. The explana-
tion of Meyer here is excellent: 'The question, how Paul could justly
say of the whole law, that it is fulfilled through the love of one's
neighbour, must not be answered by taking no<moj to signify the Chris-
tian law (Koppe), nor by understanding it only of the moral law (Estius
and others), or of the second table of the Decalogue (Beza and others),
or of every divinely revealed law in general (Schott); for o[ pa?j no<moj
can mean nothing else, from the connection of the entire epistle, than
the whole law of Moses—but by placing one's-self on the elevated
spiritual level of the apostle, from which he looked down upon all the
other commands of the law, and saw them so profoundly subordinated
to the law of love, that whosoever has fulfilled this command, is not to
be regarded otherwise than as having fulfilled all. Contemplated from
this point of view, every thing which does not accord with the precept
of love, falls so entirely into the background,2 that it can no more come
into consideration, but the whole law appears to have been already fulfilled
in love.' Brotherly love alone was mentioned by the apostle, because
1 Winer, sec. 48, c. 2 Rom. xiii. 8-10.
ROM. ii. 13-15. 405
what is here specially in view was the relation of Christians to each
other—their imperative duty to serve one another by the mutual
exercise of love, instead of, as he says in ver. 15, biting and devouring
one another. But no one can fail to understand, that what holds of
love in this lower direction, equally holds of it in the higher; indeed,
rightly understood, the one, as stated by Meyer, may be said to include
the other.
Rom. II. 13-15.
‘For not the hearers of the law are just before God, but the doers
of the law shall be justified. For when Gentiles, who have not the
law, do by nature the things of the law (viz., the things prescribed in
it), these, though they have not the law, are to themselves the law,
being such as shew the law's work written in their hearts, their con-
science jointly bearing witness, and their thoughts (or judgments)
among one another accusing or also excusing.’
I take this to be a section by itself, and cannot concur with those
commentators (including, certainly, some men of note—Calvin, Koppe,
Harless, Hodge), who would connect what is said in vers. 14 and 15 about
Gentiles doing the law, and being a law to themselves, not with the
immediately preceding verse, but with the statement in ver. 12, that
those who have been without the written law shall be judged without
it, and those who have been under such law shall be judged by it.
This seems arbitrary and unnatural, and could only be justified if the
statement in the immediately preceding verse were obviously parenthe-
tical, and incapable of forming a suitable transition to the assertions that
follow. But such is by no means the case. The apostle's line of
thought proceeds in the most regular and orderly manner. There are
(he virtually says) grounds for judgment in the case of all, whether
they have been placed under the written law or not, and ample
materials for condemnation; for the mere privilege of hearing that law
does not give any one a title to be called righteous in God's sight; this
does not make the essential difference between one man and another,
which turns mainly on their relation to the doing of what is required;
the doers alone are justified, and though the heathen have not been
hearers like the Jews, they may be viewed with reference to doing. It
is no proper objection to this view of the connection, that it seems to
bring in out of due place the subject of justification, and to represent
the apostle as indicating the possibility of some among the heathen
406 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
being justified by their works. Justification, in the full Gospel sense
of the term, as acquittal from all guilt, and being treated as righteous,
does not come into consideration here. The question contemplated is a
narrower one—namely, what, in regard to particular requirements of
the law, forms the proper ground of approval, or constitutes a good char-
acter? Is it hearing or doing? Doing, says the apostle; and then
goes on to add that, on this account, Gentiles may justly be placed
in the same category with Jews. 'For when'—here comes his matter
of fact proof or reason—'Gentiles, who have not the law, do by nature
the things of the law, these are to themselves the law.' It is not said
of the Gentiles as a whole that they do this, but only when they do
it, or in so far as any of them do it—implying, no doubt, that what is
done by some may and should be done by others, yet this only as
matter of inference. The want of the article, therefore, has its mean-
ing—not ta> e@qnh, but merely e@qnh; for, though the latter is sometimes
undoubtedly used of the Gentiles in their totality (as at ch. iii. 29, ix.
24), yet this is only, when the things affirmed are applicable to them
universally, which is palpably not the case here. The statement is
indefinite, both as to what proportion of the heathen might be char-
acterized as doers of the law, and to what extent they were so. To
do the things of the law is indeed to do what the law prescribes (x. 5;
Gal. iii. 12); but (here we concur with Dr Hodge) 'whether complete or
partial obedience is intended depends on the context. The man who
pays his debts, honours his parents, is kind to the poor, does the things
of the law; for these are things which the law prescribes. And this
is all the argument of the apostle requires, or his known doctrine allows
us to understand by the phrase, in the present instance.' Indeed, that
such is his meaning, we have only to look to the examples which the
apostle himself adduces a few verses afterwards, which include merely
the law's precepts against stealing, adultery, and sacrilege; and the
qualification which the whole current and tenor of his argument oblige
us to put upon what he states here as to the doing of the law, con-
firms the perfectly similar qualification that we have shewn, ought to
be put upon the justifying spoken of in the verse immediately preced-
ing. It has respect simply to the actions which, in a legal point of
view, are worthy of approval on the one side, or of condemnation on
the other. And as regards the performance of what is ascribed to such
heathen, the law-making (we are told) is of themselves—that is to say,
it is the dictate of their own instinctive sense of right and wrong,
forming, to a certain extent, a substitute for the written law; so also
the law-doing is by nature (fu<sei, causal dative, and undoubtedly to be
ROM. II. 13-15. 407
coupled with the doing), it is such as arises from the impulse and
energy of the moral faculty, naturally implanted in them, as contra-
distinguished from the discipline of a formal legislation, or the gift of
sanctifying grace.
The description in ver. 15 is to be taken as a further characterizing
of the heathen in question, with reference to the power of being to
themselves as the law, and observing it: 'They are such as shew,' in
their behaviour outwardly exhibit, 'the law's work written in their
hearts;' so it is best to put the apostle's statement in English, rather
than 'the work of the law written,' which leaves it doubtful whether
what is said to be written is the law or the law's work. The con-
struction in the original leaves no doubt that it is the latter—to> e@rgon
tou? no<mou grapto>n, the law's work written. This, however, according to
some, is all one with the law itself, 'the work of the law' being
regarded as a mere periphrase for 'the law.' But this is not tenable;
nor is it quite correct to say with Harless,1 that ‘the work of the law
is accusing and judging;' so that the import of the apostle's state-
ment respecting the heathen comes to be, 'They accuse themselves in
their hearts and judge themselves, thereby spewing that what is the
work of the positive law is written upon their hearts.' This is to
make what ought to be regarded as but the incidental and secondary
effect of the law, its primary and distinctive aim. Its more immediate
aim, consequently its proper work, is to teach and command; its work
is done, if people know aright what they should do, and yield them-
selves to the obligation of doing it—failing this, it of course becomes
a witness against them, a complaining and judging authority. But
when the law's work simply is spoken of, it is the direct aim and
intention of the law that should be mainly understood; by doing the
things of the law, they spew that they have prescribed for them-
selves as right what the law prescribes, and imposed on themselves
the obligation which the law imposes. And then, in fitting correspond-
ence with this testimony without, the testimony of a morally upright
conduct, is the testimony of conscience within—'their conscience co-
testifying' (so it is literally, summarturou<shj, testifying along with, viz.,
with the practical operation of the law appearing in the conduct), ' and
among one another, their thoughts accusing or also excusing,' defend-
ing. The metacu> a]llh<lwn, as is now generally allowed, is most exactly
rendered by ‘among one another,’ metacu< being taken as a preposition.
But what is the reference of the c one another?' Does it point to
the diverse sentiments and judgments, sometimes swaying one way,
1 ‘Ethik,’ sec. 8.
408 EXPOSITION OE. PASSAGES.
sometimes another, in the minds of the individual? Or, to a like
diversity among different individuals? I am inclined, with Meyer, to
take it rather in the latter respect; both because, if the reference had
been to the thoughts in the same mind, the tw?n logismw?n would natur-
ally have been placed before metacu> a]llh<lwn (the natural order being
then, their thoughts among one another, or their thoughts alternately,
accusing and excusing); and also because the au]tw?n, in the preceding
clause, and the a]llh<lwn, in this, appear to stand in relation to each
other—the former referring to those who do the works of the law, or
have its work written in their heart, conscience therein concurring and
approving; and the other to the heathen generally who, in their
thoughts and judgments, were ever passing sentence upon the things
done around them, and thereby sheaved that they had a judging power
in their bosoms, according to which they accused what was wrong, and
excused or defended what was right. It is so put, however, that the
accusing was much more frequently exercised than the other accusing
or also (perhaps) excusing.' In other words, the moral sentiment,
when working properly, and exercising itself upon the doings of men
generally, found more materials for condemnation than for justification
and approval. This, however, is implied rather than distinctly stated;
and the leading purport of the apostle's announcement is that, beside
the approving verdict given by conscience, in the case of those who
understood and did what was required in the law, there was ever
manifesting itself a morally judging power among the heathen, con-
demning what was wrong in behaviour, and vindicating what was
right. But all, of course, only within certain limits, and with many
imperfections and errors in detail.
Rom. III. 19, 20.
'Now we know, that whatsoever things the law saith, it speaks to
them who are in the law; in order that every mouth may be stopt, and
all the world become liable to punishment with God. 20. Because by
works of law shall no flesh be justified before Him; for through the
law is the knowledge of sin.'
We have here the more direct and immediate conclusions which the
apostle draws from the evidence he had furnished—that mankind at
large, Jews as well as Gentiles, are alike under sin. The later and
more specific evidence adduced had reference to the Jews; for, in
respect to them, proud as they were of their distinctive privileges, and
ROM. III. 19, 20. 409
conscious of their superiority to the heathen, the difficulty was greatest
in carrying the conviction he was seeking to establish. In their case,
therefore, he did not rest satisfied with general charges of shortcoming
and transgression, but produced a series of quotations from their own
Scriptures, chiefly from the Psalms, but partly also from the prophets.
And then he proceeds to draw his conclusion: 'Now we know (it is
a matter on which we are all agreed), that whatsoever things the law
saith (le<gei), it speaks (lalei?) to them who are in the law.' There can
be no reasonable doubt that the apostle here uses the term law as
virtually comprehensive of the Old Testament Scriptures; for it is on
the ground of certain passages in these Scriptures that the inferential
statement is now made; and the attempts of some commentators to
take the expression in a narrower sense (Ammon, Van Mengel, Ward-
law, etc.), have a strained and unnatural appearance. Yet there is no
reason why we should not (as, with more or less clearness has been
indicated by various expositors) regard the expression as indirectly
referring also to the law in the stricter sense. For, those Scriptures
were the writings of prophetical men, whose primary calling it was to
expound and vindicate the law; and hence, in the declarations they set
forth respecting men's relation to the demands of law, they but served
as the exponents of its testimony; virtually, it was the law itself
speaking through them. Moses, in this respect, might be said to be
represented by the prophets, not to stand apart from them.1 What-
ever, then, the law thus says concerning sin and transgression, it
speaks or addresses to those who are in it; that is, who stand within its
bonds and obligations. The law is regarded as the sphere within
which the parties in question lived; and to these, as the parties with
whom it had more immediately to do, it utters its testimony—primarily
to them, though by no means exclusively; for, as there was nothing
arbitrary in its requirements as, on the contrary, they proceeded on
the essential relations between God and man, the testimony admitted
of a world-wide application. The argument, indeed, is here a fortiori;
if the law could pronounce such charges of guilt on those who had the
advantage of its light, and the privileges with which it was associated,
how much more might like charges be brought against those who lived
beyond its pale! Hence, the apostle makes the next part of his con-
clusion—the design or bearing of the law's testimony respecting actual
sin—quite universal 'in order that every mouth may be stopt (Jew as
well as Gentile, and Gentile as well as Jew), and all the world become
liable to punishment with God.' Such is the exact force of the expres-
1 See at p.198.
410 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
sion used here, u[po<dikoj t&? Qe&?; it denotes one who, on account of mis-
demeanours, is in an actionable state, liable to be proceeded against with
a view to the infliction of deserved penalties, amenable to justice. The
general idea is expressed in the epithet !guilty of the authorized version,
but liable to punishment is preferable, as giving more distinct expression
to it; and the liability is to God (as the dative t&? Qe&?; implies); it is
He who has a right to exact the penalty; though, to avoid harshness in
the translation, we have put, liable to punishment with God.
The language of the apostle here has appeared somewhat too strong
to some commentators; they cannot understand how it should be spoken
of as the proper aim of the law in its announcements to stop every
mouth, as culprits who have nothing to say for themselves in the Divine
court of justice, and to bring all in as liable to punishment; therefore they
would soften the form of the expression, and render, not in order that
such might happen, but so that, as a matter of fact, it has come to be.
But this is to impair the natural. import of the original (which has the
usual telic particle, i!na), and is also unnecessary; for, while the apostle
sets forth such universal conviction of guilt and liability to punishment
as the aim of the law, there is no need for understanding him to mean
more than its aim under one particular aspect—not its sole aim, nor
even its more immediate and primary aim as a part of Divine revelation,
but still an aim in the view of the Lawgiver, and, as the result very
clearly shewed, one which, so far as it remained unaccomplished,
rendered the work and mission of Christ practically fruitless. Where
the law failed to produce conviction of sin and a sense of deserved con-
demnation, there also failed the requisite preparation for the faith of
Christ and still continues to do so.
In ver. 20 we have the ultimate ground or reason of the law's
deliverance upon the guilt of mankind, and their desert of punishment:
‘Because by works of law shall no flesh be justified before Him; for
through the law is the knowledge of sin.’ The dio<ti at the commence-
ment has no other meaning in New Testament Scripture, nor elsewhere,
when used as an illative particle, than because, or for this reason. In
following Beza and some other authorities for the rendering therefore,
our translators have the great body of the more exact interpreters
against them—though they have also the support of some men of solid
learning (Pareus, Rosenmuller, Schottgen, and others). But the
apostle is not here drawing a conclusion; he is grounding the conclu-
sion he had already drawn: the law has brought in a verdict against
all men, and declared them amenable to the awards of Divine justice,
because by works of law shall no flesh be justified before God—not in
ROM. III. 19-20. 411
such a way is this great boon, as a matter of fact, attainable. The
same sentiment was uttered by the apostle, and almost in the same
form of words, in one of his earliest discussions on the subject, and has
already been considered.1 It is substantially, as we there remarked, a
re-assertion of the Psalmist's declaration in Ps. cxliii. 2; and it un-
doubtedly had respect, in its Old as well as New Testament form, to
men's obligations as made known in the revelation of law through
Moses. It is of no moment, therefore, whether we put the expression
simply, 'works of law,' as in the original, without the article, or
with the article, 'works of the law;' for the works meant must be
those which are required in the law, with which the apostle's readers
were familiar, and to which, as contained in Old Testament Scripture,
he had just been referring. But here, as elsewhere in his discussions
on this subject, the apostle has pre-eminent respect to what had the
place of pre-eminent importance in the law itself—namely, its grand
summary of moral and religious obligation in the two tables. This is
clearly enough proved—if any specific proof were needed—by the
examples which he has already given of what he means by transgres-
sions of the law (ch. ii. 21-24, iii. 10-18), and subsequently by the.
positive characteristics, both general and particular, which he connects
with the law (ch. vii. 7, 12, 14, viii. 4, xiii. 8-10). This is the one
distinction of any moment; all others seem at once unnatural and
superfluous. As so contemplated, the law had nothing in it peculiarly
Jewish; it was but the varied application and embodiment of the great
principle of love to God and man; and, judged by these, as every man,
be he Jew or Gentile, is destined to be judged, no mortal man, we are
assured, can stand the test; justification by works of law is a thing
impossible. And the reason follows—'for through the law is the
knowledge of sin' (e]pi<gnwsij, is more than gnw?sij, accurate knowledge
and discernment): the disclosures it makes to those who rightly under-
stand and conscientiously apply it, is not their possession of the perfect
moral excellence which it enjoins, but a manifold cherishing and exhi-
bition of the sin which it condemns. The standard of duty which it
sets up is never by fallen man practically realized; and the more
thoughtfully any one looks into the nature of its claims, and becomes
acquainted with the 'exceeding breadth' of its requirements, the more
always does the conviction force itself upon him, that righteousness
belongeth not to him, but guilt, and shame, and confusion of face.
What is here announced only as a general principle is elsewhere for-
mally taken up by the apostle, and at some length expounded.2 But
1 See on Gal. ii. 16. 2 See at ch. vii. 7, seq. ; also Gal. iii. 19, seq.
412 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
having now distinctly asserted the impossibility of obtaining justifica-
tion by works of law, he goes on to shew how the grace of God has
provided for its being obtained without such works, through the media-
tion of Christ, in behalf of all who believe on Him; and then returns to
present, under other points of view, the different relations and bearings
of the law.
Rom. III. 31.
‘Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid! on the
contrary, we establish the law.’
This important utterance respecting the law comes as a sequel to the
apostle's formal announcement of the great truth, that justification
before God is attainable for fallen men, not through the works of the
law, but only through faith in the propitiation of Christ. The law, he
had said, so far from affording a valid ground of justification, or a plea
of righteousness, brings the knowledge of sin. Then, turning from the
quarter whence salvation could not be found, to the manifested grace
of God, by which it had been freely provided and offered alike to Jew
and Gentile through faith in Christ, the apostle sees himself met with
the objection, coming as from the Jewish point of view, ‘Do we then
make void (katargou?men, do away with, abolish) the law through faith?’
So it might naturally seem to one who had been wont to associate with
the law all his peculiar privileges and hopes. But the apostle indig-
nantly rejects the idea, and says: 'God forbid! On the contrary
(a]lla>, a strong adversative), we establish the law'—that is, we
confirm it, give effect to its authority and obligation.
But the question is how? In saying these words, does the apostle
utter an independent sentence, and give a deliverance on the subject,
without stopping to elucidate and prove it? Or is it rather the an-
nouncement of a general position, which he presently proceeds to make
good from passages and examples out of Old Testament Scripture?
The former view is implied in the present division of chapters, which
places this weighty sentence at the close of chapter third, as if it
formed a deliverance, provisional or ultimate, on the subject as already
considered, not the announcement of a theme to be handled in what
immediately follows. And such has been the prevailing view with a
large class of commentators—with all, indeed, who have understood by
law here, law in the stricter sense, and with reference more especially
to the great moral obligations it imposed on men, whether they be Jew
ROM. iii. 31. 413
or Gentile. But several (Theodoret, Semler, Tholuck, etc.) would
understand the term here of the Old Testament Scriptures generally;
and some recent commentators, while holding it to refer to the distinc-
tively Jewish law, with all its rites and ordinances, expound in a way
not materially different from the others. So, for example, De Wette,
Meyer, the latter of whom says, 'This establishing is accomplished
thus, that 1 the doctrine of Paul sets forth and proves how the justifica-
tion of God's grace through faith was already taught in the law, so
that Paul and his companions did not come into conflict with the law,
as if they sought by a new doctrine to do away with this and put it
in abeyance, but, through their agreement with the law and proof of
their doctrine out of it, they certify and confirm its validity.' To the
like effect, also, Alford, who thus presents the substance of the apostle's
statement, 'That the law itself belonged to a covenant, whose original
recipient was justified by faith, and whose main promise was the recep-
tion and blessing of the Gentiles.' He adds, 'Many commentators have
taken this verse (being misled in some cases by its place at the end of
the chapter) as standing by itself, and have gone into the abstract
grounds why faith does not make void the law (or moral obedience);
which, however true, have no place here; the design being to chew
that the law itself contained this very doctrine, and was founded in
the promise to Abraham on a covenant embracing Jews and Gentiles—
and therefore was not degraded from its dignity by the doctrine, but
rather established as a part of God's dealings—consistent with, explain-
ing, and explained by the Gospel.' One does not, however, see how
this can be said to establish, the law—unless by the law were under-
stood the Old Testament Scriptures generally; and yet both Meyer and
Alford repudiate that: they alike hold that law here must mean the
Mosaic law. The fact that the law given by Moses was founded in
the promise to Abraham, might well enough be said to accord with the
apostle's doctrine of justification by faith, and this doctrine might in
consequence be affirmed not to invalidate the law, or not to interfere
with the purpose for which it was given, but this does not come up to
establishing the law. The apostle's doctrine by itself no more estab-
lished the law than God's promise to Abraham did; and unless one
takes into account the moral grounds on which the plan of God in this
respect proceeds—namely, the provision it makes for the vindication
of the law in the work of Christ and the experience of His people--
neither the one nor the other could with any propriety be said to
establish the law; they merely do not conflict with it, and provide
1 See chap. iv.
414 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
what it was neither designed nor able to accomplish. It is a further
objection to the same view, that the first verse of chap. iv., instead of
being connected with the last verse of the preceding chapter by a ga>r,
for, as it naturally would have been if what follows had been a direct
continuation of that verse, begins with a ti> ou#n, what then?—a mode of
commencement very unlike the introduction of a proof of what im-
mediately precedes, or a consequence deduced from it--one rather that
seems to point farther back, and to resume consideration of the leading
topic in the third chapter—the subject of justification by faith. The
deliverance, on the other hand, respecting the law given in ver. 31, has
all the appearance of a passing declaration made to silence an obtrusive
objection, but left over meanwhile for its fuller vindication, till the
apostle had proceeded further in his course of argumentation.
Taking the passage, then, in what appears to be both its natural
sense and its proper connection, we regard the apostle as giving here a
brief but emphatic statement on the relation of his doctrine of justifica-
tion to the law; but, having still a good deal to advance in proof and
illustration of the doctrine itself, he again for the present resumes his
general theme, and leaves it to be gathered from the subsequent tenor
of his discourse how, or in what sense, the law is established by the
doctrine in question. Referring to the portions which most distinctly
bear upon the point (ch. v. 12-viii. 4), we find the law established by
being viewed as the revelation of God's unchangeable righteousness—
the violation of which has involved all in guilt and ruin, the fulfilment
of which in Christ has re-opened for the fallen the way to peace and
blessing, and the perfect agreement of which, its great principles of
moral obligation, with men's inmost convictions of the pure and good,
must ever impel them to seek after conformity to its requirements—
impel them always the more the nearer they stand to God, and the
more deeply they are imbued with the Spirit of His grace and love.
The law and the Gospel, therefore, are the proper complements of each
other; and, if kept in their respective places, will be found to lend mutual
support and confirmation. So, substantially, the passage is understood
by the great body of evangelical expositors, of whom we may take
Calvin as a specimen: When recourse is had to Christ, first, there is
found in Him the complete righteousness of the law, which, through
imputation, becomes ours also; then sanctification, whereby our hearts
are formed to the observance of the law, which, though imperfect,
strives towards its aim.'
ROM. v. 12-21. 415
Rom. v. 12-21
‘Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and by means
of sin, death, and so death extended unto all men, because all sinned: 13.
For until the law, sin was in the world; but sin is not reckoned where
there is no law. 14. But death reigned from Adam to Moses even over
those who sinned not after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who
is a type (figure) of the future one. 15. But not as the offence so also is
the gift of grace; for if by the offence of the one the many died, much
more did the grace of God, and the gift in grace, which is of the one
man Jesus Christ, abound toward the many. 16. And not as through
one that sinned is the gift; for the judgment was by one to condemna-
tion, but the free gift is by many offences unto justification. 17. For
if by the offence of the one death reigned through the one, much more
shall they who receive the abundance of grace, and of the gift of right-
eousness, reign in life through the one, Jesus Christ. 18. Therefore as
through one offence [it came] upon all men unto condemnation, so also
through one righteous act [it came] upon all men unto justification of
life. 19. For as by the disobedience of one man the many were made
sinners, so also by the obedience of the one shall the many be made
righteous. 20. But the law came in besides, in order that the offence
might abound; but where sin abounded, grace superabounded; 21.
That as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteous-
ness unto life eternal, through Jesus Christ our Lord.'
It is only in part that this passage has respect to the law, and, as
such, calls for special consideration here. The other portions, though
in themselves of great moment, may be noticed only as having an
incidental bearing on the subject now more immediately in hand. There
is a certain abruptness in the transition here suddenly made to the case
of Adam, and the comparative view instituted between him and Christ;
for, though the general sinfulness and corruption of mankind had been
already portrayed, nothing had as yet been indicated as to the primal
source of mischief. The discourse of the apostle hence becomes some-
what involved; since, in order to explicate the points relating to the
one side of his comparison, or prevent it from being misunderstood, he
is obliged to introduce some explanatory statements, before proceeding
to bring out what relates to the other side of the comparison. This
necessarily breaks the continuity of the line of thought in the passage,
while still the general meaning and drift of the whole admit of being
quite definitely ascertained. The wherefore (dia> tou?to) at the outset is
416 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
best referred to the immediate context, vers. 9-11, in which the believer's
state of reconciliation, peace, and hope, through Christ, had been stated,
and which suggested to the apostle the thought of what had been lost
in Adam, as a further mode of magnifying the grace of God; wherefore,
since this unspeakable boon has been secured for us in Christ, we may
justly compare, in order to see the wonderful riches of Divine grace,
what comes to us of evil from Adam, with, what comes to us of good
through Christ—only, as already said, there is an interruption, after
the announcement of the first member, of the comparison, to make
way for some thoughts that were deemed necessary to complete it. As
by one man sin entered into the world, and by means of sin, death—Adam is,
of course, the one man; by his breach of the command laid upon him,
or violation of the covenant of life under which he stood, sin entered
into the world—entered, that is, not merely as a specific act, but as a
dominant power—and in the train of sin, as its appointed recompense,
death. There is nothing new in these announcements—the apostle,
indeed, gives expression to them as matters too well known to require
proof, being clearly exhibited in the history of the fall;1 therefore, he
goes on, and so death extended to all men (ei]j pa<ntaj a]nqrw?pouj dih?lqen),
passed through among, extended to, all men), because all sinned. The
and so at the beginning is as much as which being clone, or such being
the case, Adam having died on account of sin, the evil diffused itself
throughout the whole race of mankind, because all sinned—e]f ] &# pa<ntej
h!marton. Not in whom, with the Vulgate, Augustine, Estius, Beza, and
others, as if the Greek had been e]n &$ but propter id quod, because that
(see Fritzsche here); and, besides, the antecedent (the one man) is too
far removed to admit of such a construction. Nearly all the better and
more recent commentators are agreed in this mode of interpretation,
which is that also of our common version; and the proper import of
the clause cannot be more exactly represented than in the following
exposition of Meyer (as given in the later, which here differs from the
earlier, editions of his work): ‘Because all sinned, namely (observe the
momentary sense of the Aorist), when, through the one, sin entered into
the world. Because, since Adam sinned, all men sinned in and with
him, the representative of the entire race of mankind, death, by reason
of the original connection in Adam between sin and death, has diffused
1 Jowett seems entirely to ignore that history, when he says that 'the oldest trace
of the belief common to the Jews in St Paul's time, that the sin of Adam was the
cause of death to him, is found in the Book of Wisdom, ii. 24.' Certainly, Paul's
mode of reading Old Testament Scripture furnished him with a greatly earlier trace
of it. Compare with the passage here, 2 Cor. xi. 3; 1 Tim. ii. 13-15.
ROM. v. 12-21. 417
itself through all: All have become mortal through Adam's fall, because
the guilt of Adam was the guilt of all.' Plainly, it is the relation of
mankind to Adam in his sinfulness, not their own personal sin (accord-
ing to the Pelagian view), which is asserted to be the procuring cause
of death to mankind; and hence the absolute universality of death, the
sin that caused it being in God's reckoning the sin of humanity, and the
wages of that sin, consequently, men's common heritage.
Ver. 13. But this was a point which called for some additional expla-
nation or proof; for it might seem strange, and even unjust, that that
one sin, with its sad penalty, should involve all alike, if all were not in
substantially the same state of sin and condemnation; particularly after
what the apostle had himself declared but shortly before, that 'where
no law is, there is no transgression' (iv. 15). Might it not, in that
case, be held that those who lived before the law was given, were not
chargeable with sin, and, consequently, not liable to its penalty? No,
says the apostle—there is no room for such a thought to enter; 'for,
until the law (a@xri no<mou, up to the time when it came), sin was in the
world;' that is, not only were men involved in the one act of Adam's
transgression, but sin, as a principle, continued to live and work
in them onwards till the period of the law-giving at Sinai, as
well as after it—sheaving (for that is what it was needful to prove,
and what the statement does prove) that sin in Adam was disease
in the root, and that, as those who sprung from him ever mani-
fested the same moral obliquity, they could not be placed in another
category, or treated after another manner. They, too, were all sinners;
but 'sin (the apostle adds) is not reckoned where there is no law;' sin
and law are correlates of each other; hence, though not, like Israel after-
wards, placed under formal law, those earlier generations must have
been virtually, really under the obligations of law—as, indeed, all by the
very constitution of their nature are (according to what had already
been stated, ii. 9-16). This, however, was not the whole: 'But death
reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned after
the similitude of Adam's transgression;' that is, as I understand it, not
only those who had themselves sinned, who by their violations of moral
duty had given palpable evidence that actual sin was in the world from
Adam to Moses, but even such as were not capable of sinning like
Adam, sinning by any personal overt transgression (infants must be
chiefly understood), these, as well as others, were during all that time
subject to the penalty of sin—death. Relationship to Adam, therefore,
renders all alike, from the first, partakers of a heritage of sin, and as
such subject to condemnation; of which we have two proofs—first, that
418 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
throughout past generations, before the law as well as after it, sin has
been ever manifesting itself in those who were capable of committing
it, and that in the case of others who, by reason of age, were not so
capable, death, which is the penalty of sin, still reigned over them—
though they had not sinned like Adam, they nevertheless died like
Adam. Vers. 13 and 14 thus contain a double proof of the general
position laid down in ver. 12—the universal prevalence of sin (in such
as were capable of committing it), and the universal dominion of death
(whether there had been actual sin or not). And that the former—
the prevalence of actual sin—is included in the apostle's proof, as well
as the latter, seems clear both from the natural import of the words
(sin was in the world, the world all through has been a sinful one), but
also from the account made in the comparative view which follows of
the actual sins or offences of mankind. These, along with the sin of
Adam, constitute the mass of guilt from which deliverance had to be
brought in by the second Adam, and out of which justification unto life
eternal had to be imparted; while the sin of the one man wrought for
all unto condemnation and death, the righteousness of the other pre-
vailed, not only against that sin, but against numberless offences
besides, unto justification and life (ver. 16).
Interpreted thus, every part of the apostle's statement is taken in a
quite natural sense, and has its due effect given to it; but the other
interpretations which have been adopted always fail, in one part or
another, to give what seems a full or natural explanation. For example,
the clause respecting the reckoning or imputing of sin, is understood by
a large number of commentators (Augustine, Ambrose, Luther, Calvin,
Beza, Stuart, etc.) as referring to men's own sense of sin; being with-
out law, they did not charge guilt upon their consciences, did not take
it to heart, or, as put by Usteri, Tholuck, and others, Man did not
feel his sin as a punishment.' But this is to take the verb in an arbi-
trary sense, which plainly denotes a formal transaction, a legal reckon-
ing, as of a matter that may or may not justly be placed to one's
account; and it also introduces an irrelevant consideration; for the
question here was not what men thought of themselves, but how they
stood in reference to the judgment and procedure of God. The view
of Meyer, Alford, and several recent commentators, appears equally
untenable: they understand the passage to say, that while there was
sin constantly existing in the world before Moses, yet it was not
reckoned to men as formal transgression, or as deserving of punish-
ment, because the law had not been given. According to Meyer, 'it
was not brought into reckoning, namely, for punishment, and indeed
ROM. v. 12-21. 419
by God—for it is of the Divine procedure, in consequence of the fall,
that the whole context treats,' Alford modifies it a little, as if the
representation of Meyer were somewhat too strong: 'In the case of
those who had not the written law, sin (a[marti<a) is not formally
reckoned as transgression (para<basij) set over against the command;
but in a certain sense, as distinctly proved, ch. ii. 9-16, it is reckoned,
and they are condemned for it'—that is, reckoned, indeed, but reckoned
as 'in a less degree culpable and punishable.' But this is to put a
meaning on Paul's language, for which Paul himself gives no warrant;
he is speaking, not of degrees of culpability, but of what might or
might not be reckoned sin, and, as such, deserving of death. Besides,
to distinguish between sin and transgression in this way, when the
matter relates to actual guilt, is to make too much hang on a verbal
difference; nor is it warranted by other passages of Scripture.1 Un-
questionably, before the giving of the law, men were not only spoken of
as sinners, but formally reckoned such, judged, held deserving of the
severest penalties;2 and the apostle merely epitomizes this part of Old
Testament history, when he states that sin was in the world up to the
giving of the law, and consequently bespoke the existence of law
(though not formally enacted as from Sinai) of which it constituted the
violation. It is true, he does not ascribe the heritage of death to these
actual violations of law, but only to the sin of Adam; this, however,
does not prevent his seeing in them a proof, that all were held to have
sinned in Adam, and in him to have fallen into a state of depravity and
condemnation—the point immediately in hand. So far, I entirely con-
cur with Dr Hodge: 'If there is no sin without law, there can be no
imputation of sin. As, however, sin was imputed (or reckoned), as
men were sinners, and were so regarded and treated before the law of
Moses, it follows that there must be some more comprehensive law
in relation to which men were sinners, and in virtue of which they
were so regarded and treated.' Assuredly, but I see no reason for
holding that this has reference simply to original sin, or to men's
relation to the one sin of Adam—that they were regarded and
treated as sinners, merely because they were viewed as having
sinned in Adam; for this would be to put rather a forced inter-
pretation on the clause, that sin was in the world till the law, making
it to mean that the sin of Adam's first transgression was in the world.
This were unnatural, especially just after that sin had been mentioned
as a past act; and, besides, by fixing attention only on that one sin,
1 See the remarks at Gal. iii. 19.
2 Gen. iv. 8-12, vi. 3-7, 13, etc., ix. 6, xi. 1-8, xviii. 17, x~x. 29, etc.
420 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
the thought of actual offences would be virtually excluded; while yet
these, as we presently find, form an important item in the comparative
view drawn by the apostle. Take the line of thought to he that which
we have presented, and there is no ground for such objections. All
sinned in Adam'—this is the general position; and the proof is, sin
was in the world from Adam to Moses, as well as since, at once the
fruit of Adam's sin, and the parent of numberless other sins; but,
apart also from these, death has reigned with undistinguishing
equality over one and all, whether or not chargeable with personal
transgressions.
Having made this explanation about sin and death in relation to
Adam's fall, the apostle now begins to wend his course back to the
comparison of the two great heads of humanity; and first notices the
resemblance, by saying of Adam, that he was 'the type of the future
One'—of the Man, by way of eminence, that was afterwards to come.
He was the type in regard to the great principle of headship—it being
true alike of both, that their position in the Divine economy carried
along with it the position of all who are connected with them—the one
in nature, the other in grace. But with this general resemblance, the
apostle goes on to say, there were important differences; and more
especially, first, in regard to the kind of results flowing from the con-
nection—in the one case evil, condemnation, death; in the other good,
justification, life; secondly, in regard to the mode and ground of pro-
cedure—one man's sin bringing upon the many such a heritage of evil,
the righteousness of the other (because of its absolute perfection and
infinite worth) prevailing over many sins to secure a heritage of good,
greatly more than counterbalancing the evil; hence, thirdly, the sur-
passing excellence of grace as manifested in the one line of operations,
as compared with the actings of nature in the other.
Two points only, and these of a somewhat incidental kind, call for a
brief notice. One is, as to the place where the explanatory matter
ends, and the apostle formally concludes the comparison begun in vela
12. It is, as all the better commentators now agree, at vela 18, where
there is a recapitulation of what had been previously stated, and a
pressing of the formal. conclusion: 'Therefore as through one offence,
[it came] upon all men to condemnation, so also through one righteous
act (di ] e[no>j dikaiw<matoj, pointing specially to the consummation of
Christ's work on the cross) [it came] upon all men unto justification
of life,' etc. The other point has respect to what is said of the law
in its bearing on the subject, which was, not to provide the means of
justification, but rather to increase the number of offences from which
ROM. vi. 14-18. 421
justification was needed: 'But the law came in besides (pareish?lqen,
subintravit, entered by the way as a kind of subsidiary element, there-
fore with power only to modify, not to alter essentially, the state of
matters) in order that the offence might abound'—not, of course, in an
arbitrary way to increase the number of sins, or strictly for the purpose
of working in this direction, but with such a certain knowledge of its
tendency so to work, that this might be said to have been its object.
Prescribing to men the way of righteousness, and commanding them to
observe it, the law did but shew the more clearly how far they had
gone from it, and by its very explicitness as to duty, served to multiply
the number and aggravate the guilt of transgressions. Substantially
the same thought is expressed in Gal. iii. 19, so that it is unnecessary
to enlarge on the subject here.
ROM. vi. 14-18.
'For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the
law, but under grace. 15. What then? May we sin, because we are
not under the law, but under grace? God forbid! 16. Know ye not,
that to whom ye yield yourselves servants for obedience, his servants
ye are whom ye obey, whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto
righteousness. 17. But thanks be to God, that ye were the servants
of sin, but ye obeyed from the heart that form of instruction to which
ye were delivered. 18. And being freed from sin, ye became servants
to righteousness.'
This passage respecting the relation of believers to the law, forms
part of a much longer section, in which the apostle handles the connec-
tion between justification and sanctification—spews how the doctrine
of a gratuitous salvation through the faith of Christ, so far from leading
to a life of sin, renders such a life impossible, makes holiness, not sin,
the rule and aim of the believer's course. The fundamental ground of
this result, as the apostle states at the outset (near the beginning of
the chapter) lies in the believer's relation to Christ; he becomes, by the
very faith which justifies him, vitally united to Christ, and consequently
participates in that death of Christ to sin, and that life to righteousness,
which characterize Him as the spiritual Head and Redeemer of His
people. This, therefore, is the security of the believer, and his safe-
guard against the dominion of sin in his soul, that the grace which
saves him has, at the same time, transplanted him into a new state, has
brought him into connection with holy influences, and changed the
422 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
current of his desires and purposes. Hence, the apostle exhorts those
who have undergone this blessed change to realize the great truth
involved in it, and give themselves in earnest to the life of faith and
holiness to which it called them. Sin had no longer any right to reign
over them, and they should not allow it, in fact, to do so. This is
what is meant in ver. 14, 'For sin shall not have dominion over you'
--u[mw?n ou] kurieu<sei, shall not domineer, or lord it over you; the power
to do this was now effectually broken, and they should act under the
buoyant and joyous feeling, that they did not need to be in bondage,
that spiritual liberty-was secured for them. Then comes the reason or
ground of this freedom, 'for ye are not under the law, but under grace.'
In endeavouring to get at the precise meaning of this statement,
which has been variously understood, there is no need for raising any
question as to what is intended by law, whether the Mosaic, or some
other form of law. The proper explication cannot turn on any
difference in this respect for it is plainly of the law as a system of
requirements (no matter what these might specifically be), of the law
as contradistinguished from grace, God's system of free and unmerited
benevolence, that the apostle is speaking consequently, law is taken
into account merely as the appointed rule of righteousness, which men
are bound as rational creatures to keep, and which, for the subjects of
revelation, would naturally be identified with that of Moses. The law
so understood, and by reason of its very excellence as the revelation of
God's pure righteousness, so far from being the deliverer from sin,
is the strength of sin;1 for if placed simply under it, the condition
of fallen man becomes utterly hopeless; it sets before him, and binds
upon his conscience, a scheme of life, which lies quite beyond his
reach, and he falls like a helpless slave under the mastery of sin.
But believers are otherwise situated; they stand under an administra-
tion of grace, which brings the mighty power of redeeming love to
work upon the heart, and, freeing it from condemnation, inspires it
with the life and liberty of the children of God. This new and better
constitution of things supplants, for those who are interested in it, the
ground of sin's dominion in the soul, and-opens for it the way to ulti-
mate perfection in holiness.2
The apostle, however, was writing to those who were still but im-
perfectly acquainted with the operation of grace; and readily conceiv-
ing how they would startle at the thought of believers being no longer
under the law, as involving a dangerous sort of licence, he turns as it
were upon himself, and asks, 'What then? May we sin (the proper
1 1 Cor. xv. 56. 2 The point is unfolded at much greater length in chap. vii.
ROM. vi, 14-18. 423
reading is undoubtedly a[marth<swmen, the subjunctive of deliberation, not
the future a[marth<somen) because we are not under the law, but under
grace?' The question is asked only that an indignant disclaimer may
be given to it: 'God forbid?' The thought is not for a moment to be
entertained; and the moral contradiction, which the supposed inclina-
tion and liberty to sin would involve, is exposed by presenting sin
and obedience (much as our Lord presented God and mammon1) as
antagonistic powers or interests, to the one or other of which all must
stand in a relation of servitude. There is no middle course, as the
apostle states: one must either act as the servant of sin, and receive the
wages thereof in death, or in the spirit of obedience (namely, to God), and
attain to righteousness. 'Servants of obedience' is certainly a peculiar
expression, and would probably have been put, as in ver. 18, servants
of righteousness, but for the purpose of keeping up the parallel—on
the one side sin unto death, on the other obedience unto righteousness.
This personified obedience, however, involves the idea of God, as the
One to whom it is due: the servants of obedience are those who realize
and feel that they must obey God, and this by aiming at righteousness.
And it is implied, that as the service of sin finds in eternity the con-
summation of the death to which it works, so also with the righteous-
ness which is the result of obedience; it is consummated only in the
life to come, when they who have sincerely followed after it shall
receive 'the crown of righteousness from the Lord, the righteous
Judge.'2 Righteousness so considered is not materially different from
eternal life. Further, it is clear, that as obedience implies objection to
an authoritative rule, and the life of grace is here identified with
obedience, the child of grace is not more freed from the prescription of
a rule than those who are in the condition of nature. The life to which
he is called, and after which he must ever strive, is conformity to the
Divine rule of righteousness; just as, on the other side, all sin is a
deviation from such a rule.
The apostle, in ver. 17, expresses his gratitude to God that those to
whom he wrote had passed from the one kind of service to the other:
'But thanks be to God that ye were the servants of sin (the stress
should be on the were, thanks that this is a thing of the past, and can
be spoken of as such), but ye obeyed from the heart that form (tu<pon,
type, rather) of instruction into which ye were delivered.' The form of
expression in this last member of the sentence is peculiar, ei]j o{n
paredo<qhte tupon didaxh?j, literally, obeyed into what pattern of instruc-
tion ye were delivered; evidently a pregnant form of construction for
1 Matt. vi. 24. 2 2 Tim. iv. 8.
424 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
obeyed the pattern of instruction into which ye were delivered (t&? tu<p&
th?j did. ei]j o{n parado<qhte). The Christian instruction they had received
is viewed as a kind of pattern or mould, into which their moral natures
had been in a manner cast, so as to take on its proper impress, and
give forth suitable manifestations of it. It is a question with commen-
tators, whether this plastic sort of instruction is to be understood
generally of the rule of faith and manners in the Gospel, or more
specially of St Paul's mode of teaching the Gospel, as contradistin-
guished from the Judaistic type of Christian doctrine. De Wette,
Meyer, and some others, would take it in the latter sense; but appar-
ently without any sufficient reason, as it would involve a closer relation-
ship on the part of the Romish community to St Paul's teaching than
we have any ground for supposing. It is quite enough to understand
by the expression, the Gospel of the grace of God in its grand outlines
of truth and duty, through whatever precise channel it might have
reached the believers at Rome; this they had not only received, but
from the heart obeyed. 'Paul,' to use the words of Calvin, 'compares
here the hidden power of the Spirit with the external letter of the law,
as though he had said: "Christ inwardly forms our souls in a better way,
than when the law constrains them by threatening and terrifying us."
Thus is dissipated the following calumny, "If Christ free us from
subjection to the law, He brings liberty to sin." He does not, indeed,
allow His people unbridled freedom, that they might frisk about with-
out any restraint, like horses let loose in the fields; but He brings them
to a regular course of life.' It is the same truth substantially which is
taught by our Lord when He says: 'Ye are clean through the word
which I have spoken unto you;' and again, 'Ye shall know the truth,
and the truth shall make you free.’1 And finally, let there be noted
here the beautiful combination in the apostle's statement of the action
of Divine grace and of man's will. 'They obeyed the doctrine heartily;
in this they were active: yet they were cast into the mould of this
doctrine, and thereby received the new form of faith, obedience, and
holiness, from another hand and influence. So that they were active
in obeying the truth; and at the very same time were passive with
regard to the superior influence.'2
The apostle adds, virtually repeating what had been said before, only
with special application to the Christians at Rome: 'And being freed
from sin, ye became servants to righteousness.' This is probably as fit
a rendering of the words (e]doulw<qhte t&> dikaiosu<n^) as can be obtained.
The rendering of Alford, 'Ye were enslaved to righteousness,' though
1 Jo. xv. 3, viii. 32. See also 1 Pet. i. 22. 2 Fraser.
ROM. vii. 425
apparently nearer to the original, is in reality not so; for, to speak of
enslavement in the spiritual sphere can scarcely fail to convey to an
English reader the idea of unwilling constraint, a sort of compulsory
service, which certainly was not what the apostle meant. It is merely
a thorough, life-long, undivided surrender to the cause of righteousness.
And he proceeds to unfold, to the end of the chapter, the blessed nature
of the service to which they had thus given themselves, as contrasted
with that from which they had been withdrawn, and to press the things
which belonged to it on their regard, both from consideration of the
present benefits to be derived from it, and the relation in which it stands
to the eternal recompenses of blessing in God's kingdom.
ROM. VII.
‘Know ye not, brethren (for I speak to them that know the law), that
the law has dominion over a man so long as he lives? 2. For the
married woman is bound by the law to her living husband; but if the
husband have died, she is loosed (lit., made void) from the law of her
husband. 3. So, then, while her husband lives, she shall be called an
adulteress if she become another man's; but if her husband have died,
she is free from the law, so as not to be an adulteress though she have
become another man's. 4. Wherefore, my brethren, ye also were made to
die to the law through the body of Christ, that you might become
another's, even His who was raised from the dead, in order that ye
might bring forth fruit to God. 5. For when we were in the flesh, the
motions of sins which were through the law wrought in our members
to the bringing forth of fruit unto death. 6. But now we have been
delivered from the law, having died to that wherein we were held,
so that we serve in newness of spirit and not in oldness of letter.
7. What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? God forbid! On the
contrary, I had not known sin except through the law; for, indeed, I
had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust.
8. But sin, taking occasion by means of the commandment, wrought in
me all manner of concupiscence; for without the law sin is dead. 9. I
was alive, indeed, without the law once; but when the commandment
came, sin revived, and I died. 10. And the commandment which was
for life, even this was found by me unto death. 11. For sin, taking
occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and through it slew
me. 12. So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just,
and good. 13. Did, then, the good become death to me? God forbid?
[not that] but sin, in order that it might appear sin, through the good
426 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
working in me death, in order that sin, through the commandment,
might become exceeding sinful. 14. For we know that the law is
spiritual; but I am carnal, sold under sin. 15. For what I effect I
know not; for not what I wish do I perform; but what I hate, that do
I. 16. But if I do that which I wish not, I consent to the law that it
is good. 17. Now, however, it is no longer I that effect it, but sin
that dwelleth in me. 18. For I know that in me, that is, in my flesh,
good does not dwell; for to wish is present with me, but to perform
that which is good is not; 19. For not the good which I wish, but the evil
which I do not wish, that I do. 20. But if what I do not wish, that
I do, it is no longer I that perform it, but sin that is dwelling in me.
21. I find, then, this law to me, when wishing to do good, that evil is
present with me. 22. For I consent to the law of God after the inner
man. 23. But I see another law in my members warring against the law
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity with the law of sin that is
in my members. 24. Wretched man that I am who shall deliver me
from the body of this death? 25. Thanks be to God through Christ
Jesus our Lord. So, then, I myself with my mind indeed serve the
law of God, but with my flesh the law of sin.'
The leading object of the apostle in this section is to bring out pre-
cisely the relation of the believer to the law, with the view at once
of establishing the law, and of shewing that he is not under it (ch. iii.
31, vi. 14), but, on the contrary, is freed from it, or dead to it.1 It is
the latter point which comes first, and in treating it, he avails himself
of the image of the marriage-tie, which, as every one acquainted with
the law in such matters knows, holds so long as the contracting parties
live, but when the husband dies, the wife is set free to become united
to another spouse. In like manner, says the apostle, there has been a
death in our experience which has dissolved our original connection
with the law, and united us to the risen Saviour, that we may bring
forth fruit of righteousness to God. This is the comparison in its essential
1 The relation of this whole chapter to chap. vi. 14, is very well stated by Mr
Owen in his note to the translation of Calvin on Romans, at ch. vii. 1 'The connec-
tion of the beginning of this chapter with the 14th verse of the former chapter
deserves to be noticed. He says there, that sin shall not rule over us, because we are
not under law, but under grace. Then he asks in ver. 15 : "Shall we sin because we
are not under law, but under grace? "This last subject, according to his usual mode,
he takes up first, and discusses it till the end of the chapter; and then, in this chapter,
he reassumes the first subject—freedom from the law. This is a striking instance of
the apostle's manner of writing, quite different from what is usual with us in the
present day. He mentions two things; he proceeds with the last, and then goes
back to the first.'
ROM. VII. 427
points of agreement; but as actually applied, there is a difference in
detail. In the natural relation employed, as it is the woman that
represents the case of believers under the Gospel, so it is not her death,
but the death of her husband which dissolves the bond of her obliga-
tion, and sets her free to enter into a new alliance. But with believers
it is their own death, that is, their fellowship with Christ in his death,
which has changed their relationship to the law, and made them
partakers of a life which it had no power to impart. It was, no doubt,
to render the parallel more complete, that the received text, on the
authority of Beza, adopted the reading a]poqano<ntoj in ver. 6, instead of
a]poqano<ntej, to convey the meaning that the death in question had
passed upon the law, not upon us (against all the uncial MSS. x A B C K L,
and other authorities). The apostle never speaks of the law as under-
going change or dying; but in ver. 4 he had expressly said of believers,
that they had died—nay, had been put to death or slain (e]qanw<qhte) to the
law through the body of Christ. The form of expression is purposely
made stronger here than in the case of the natural relation, to indicate
that the death in this case had to do with the infliction of a penalty,
and an infliction in which the law itself might be said to have a part;
for it has respect to Christ's crucifixion or death under the curse of the
law, which is in effect also theirs; so that through the law they become
dead to the law,1 yet in such a sense dead as at the same time to pass
into another and higher life. The comparison, therefore, only holds,
and was only intended to hold, in regard to the fact of death in either
party putting an end to the right and authority of law: with the inter-
vention of death, the prior relation ceased, and it became competent to
enter into a fresh alliance.
But what in this connection is to be understood by the law? and
what by the marriage-like relation supposed to have been held to it?
Here a certain diversity meets us among commentators—though,
among the better class, less now than formerly. The Grotian school,
including Hammond, Locke, and some others in this country, con-
sidered the law, as here used, to be meant chiefly of religious rites and
judicial institutions, or the law in its distinctively Jewish aspect, as the
ground and basis of the temporal economy under which Israel was
placed. But such a view is entirely arbitrary and superficial, and as
such has been generally abandoned. The whole tenor of the apostle's
discourse is against it, which never once points to that part of the Old
Testament legislation which was in its own nature provisional and
temporary. The law of which he speaks is one that penetrates into
1 Gal. ii. 19.
428 POSITION OF PASSAGES
the inmost soul, comes close to the heart and conscience, is in itself
spiritual, holy, just, and good (vers. 7, 12, 14), and one's relation to which
determines the whole question of one's peace and hope toward God
(vers. 24, 25). How any intelligent critics could ever have thought of
finding what corresponded to such a description in the outward ritual
and secular polity of the Hebrew commonwealth, it is difficult to con-
ceive. There is no need, however, while rejecting this view, to go with
some to the opposite extreme of maintaining that the language has
respect exclusively to the moral law, and that what seemed to the
Grotian school to be its one and all, must be altogether eliminated from
it. Speaking, as the apostle does, without reserve or qualification of
the law, and taking for granted the familiar acquaintance of those he
addressed with what was implied in the term, we can here think of
nothing else than the law of Moses—only, it is to be borne in mind
here, as in passages already considered, that of that law the ten com-
mandments occupied, not only the chief, but the properly fundamental
place—the principle of the whole is there as to what it involved of
moral obligation. When reasoning, therefore, of men's relation to the
law, the apostle must be understood to have had this part of the Mosaic
legislation prominently in view; and, consequently, while there is a
direct reference in what he says to the law as ministered by the hand
of Moses, it is of this substantially, as the rule of God's righteous
government, that he speaks; the law as the sum of moral and religious
duty. Hence, the term ' brethren,' by which he designates the persons
whom he sought to instruct respecting the law, is to be taken in the
full sense, not of the Jewish-Christians only at Rome, but of the whole
body of believers; for all alike were interested in the law as here dis-
coursed of, and stood essentially in the same relation to it. But of that
relation in its earlier form, how are we to understand it The com-
parison of the apostle implies, that it was somewhat like a marriage,
and might be presented under that aspect—though he says nothing as
to when or how such a relation was constituted. Indeed, it is not
so properly the formation, or the existence of the relation in question,
as its termination, on which the apostle seeks to fix the attention of his
readers. 'Wherefore,' says he, after stating the law of marriage, or,
'So then, my brethren, ye also were made to die to the law through
the body of Christ, that you might become another's.' Still, the disso-
lution of the one, that the other might be formed, bespoke a formal
resemblance between the relations—a marriage to the law in the first
instance then, on the dissolution of that, a marriage to Christ. How,
then, was that previous marriage formed, and when? Is it to be simply
ROM. VII. 429
identified with the establishment of the covenant at Sinai? And shall
we, with Macknight, explicate the apostle's meaning, by referring to
those passages in which God represents his connection with the Jews
as their king, under the idea of a marriage solemnized at Sinai1--a
marriage 'which was to end when they, with the rest of mankind,
should be put to death in the person of Christ?' But this was
altogether to shift the ground assumed by the apostle—since to be
married to God, and married to the law, are very different things; God
being to His people the fountainhead of grace as well as of law, and,
indeed, of grace more prominently than of law. This was recognised
in the Decalogue itself, which avowedly proceeded from God in the
character of their most gracious Benefactor and Redeemer. To identify
their being married to Him, therefore, with being married to the law (in
the sense here necessarily understood), were virtually to say, that they
entered into covenant with God, or stood related to God, under only
one aspect of His manifestations, and that for fallen men not the
primary and most essential one. It were also at variance with the
view, given by the apostle in another passage,2 of the relation of Israel
to the law, which was no more intended, on the part of God, to be per
se a spouse and a parent of children to the covenant people, than Hagar
in the house of Abraham: when contemplated in such a light, it was
diverted from its proper purpose, and looked to for results which it was
not given to secure.
We must, therefore, ascend higher in the order of God's dipensations
for the proper ground of the apostle's representation here respecting the
law. The marriage relation which he assumes to have existed between
us and it, must be regarded as having its ground in the constitution of
nature rather than of grace; and it is associated with the law as given
to Israel, not as if that law had been formally propounded as a basis
on which they might work themselves into the possession of life and
blessing, but because in its great principles of truth and duty it pre-
sents the terms which men are naturally bound to comply with, in order
that they may warrantably expect such things, and because Israel,
whenever they sought in themselves what they so expected, acknow-
ledged their obligation to seek for it according to the terms therein
prescribed: they sought for it, 'as it were by the works of the law.'
Here, therefore, was the natural ground of such a relationship as that
indicated by the apostle. Contemplated as in substance the revelation
of that righteousness which God has inherently a right to demand of
His rational creatures as a title to His favour, the law holds over men,
1 Jer. ii. 2, iii. 14 ; Ezek. xvi. 8. 2 Gal. iv. 21-31.
430 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
merely as such, an indefeasible claim to their fealty and obedience;
they cannot, by any right or power of their own, shake themselves free
from it the bond of its obligation is upon their conscience, and they
are held by it, whether they will or not (ver. 6): while yet, whenever
they look seriously into the height and depth of its requirements, and
consider the sanctions which enforce its observance, and the penalties
which avenge its violation, they necessarily die to all hope of making
good what it exacts at their hands to secure the blessing. As children
of promise, the covenant people were not called to stand in such a vela-
tion to the law; to place themselves in it was to fall from the grace of
the covenant but with reference to the responsibilities and calling of
nature, it is the relation in which not only they, but mankind generally,
stood and must ever stand to it.
Vers. 5, 6. The statements in these verses are more especially
designed to confirm and illustrate what had been said immediately
before as to the advantage yielded by the new marriage relation over
the old—viz., that it is fruitful of good, while the other was not; but
they also incidentally support the view just given of the first marriage
relation as one pertaining to the state of nature, as contradistinguished
from the state of grace. For when we were in the flesh—this stands
opposed to the being killed or crucified with Christ in the immediately
preceding verse, and so is much the same with being in the state of
fallen nature—subject to the law, yet with a frame of mind utterly
opposed to its pure and holy requirements. It is the state in which
the merely human element (sa<rc) bore sway, and, according to its
native tendency, fretted against and resisted the will of God. To
understand it, with Grotius, Hammond, Whitby, etc., of subjection to
the ordinances of the Old Testament, which, as compared with those
of the New, are elsewhere called fleshly, carnal, beggarly,1 is entirely
to mistake the meaning of the expression. For in that case it would
include God's true and faithful people, as well as others, since they also
were subject to the legal observances of the old covenant, and yet,
being men of faith and love, were endowed with the Spirit, and brought
forth fruit to God. The state of such is always substantially identified
by the apostle with that of believers under the Gospel, not set in
formal opposition to it. But to be in the flesh is to be in a state of
sin, working unto death—as he himself, indeed, explains in chap.
viii. 5-8, where 'having the mind of the flesh,' or 'walking after
the flesh,' is represented as being in a state of ungodliness, utterly
incapable of pleasing God, nay, in living and active enmity to Him.
1 Gal. iii. 3, iv, 9.
ROM. VII. 431
So also at Gal, v. 17-21, where the lusting of the flesh and its
natural results are placed in opposition to the life and Spirit of
God. In all such expressions, the flesh indicates human nature in its
present depraved state; so that 'to be in the flesh' is merely to
be under the influence or power of human depravity. And this is
all one with being under the law; for it is the universal condition
of men, who have not received the Spirit of God,1 and the Spirit
does not come by the law, but by the faith of Christ. Had the true
members of the old covenant stood simply under the law, this would
necessarily have been their condition; but they were under the law as
the heir, though a child, having also the covenant of promise;2 and
therefore were not left merely to the dominion of flesh and law, but
were in a measure partakers of grace, and as such capable of doing
acceptable service to God. Of men, so long as they are in the flesh,
the apostle says, that the motions (paqh<mata, affections, stirrings) of sins
which were through the law wrought in our members to the bringing forth of
fruit unto death. The idea of this passage again recurs and is –more-
fully expressed in ver. 13. We, therefore, need not dwell upon it here.
Its chief peculiarity consists in saying, that the sinful emotions which
work in men's souls before they come under grace are through the law
(dia> tou? no<mou), ascribing to the law some sort of instrumental agency
in their production. This cannot be better stated than it was long ago
by Frase: It is just to say, that the precept, prohibition, and fearful
threatening of the law do instead of subduing sinful affections in an
unrenewed heart, but irritate them, and occasion their excitement and
more violent motion. Nor is this a strange imputation on the law of
God, which is not the proper cause of these motions. These are to be
ascribed to the corruption of men's hearts, which the apostle insinuates
when he ascribes these sinful motions by the law to men in the flesh.
The matter has been often illustrated by the similitude of the sun, by
whose light and heat roses and flowers display their fine colours, and
emit their fragrant smell; whereas by its heat the dunghill emits its
unsavoury steams and ill smell. So the law, which to a sanctified
heart is a means of holy practice, doth, in those who are in the flesh,
occasion the more vehement motions of sinful affections and lustings,
not from any proper causality of the law, but from the energy of the
sinful principles that are in men's hearts and nature. There was great
wrath and sinful passion in Jeroboam by the reproof of the prophets3—
which was not to be imputed to the prophet, but to Jeroboam, a man
in the flesh. In David, a man of very different character Nathan's
1 Gal. viii. 9. 2 Gal. iv. 1-3. 3 1 Kings xiii. 4.
432 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
very sharp reproof had no such effect.' In saying that there not only
were such sinful emotions, stirred rather than repressed by the law,
but that they brought forth fruit unto death—had this, as it were, for
their aim and result—the apostle has respect to the natural design of
marriage as to yielding fruit, but characterizes the fruit in this case as
the reverse of what one desires and expects—a fruit not for life but for
death—hence not to be hailed and rejoiced in, but to be mourned over
and deplored as the just occasion of bitterness and grief. The death,
also, in such a case, must evidently be of a spiritual rather than of a
corporeal nature.
‘But now,’ the apostle adds, giving the reverse side of the picture,
‘we have been delivered (kathrgh<qhmen, made void, discharged) from
the law, having died to that wherein we were held, so that we serve in
newness of spirit, not in oldness of letter.’ The deliverance or freedom
from the law here mentioned is that already explained—namely, release
from it as the ground of justification and life. We die to it in this
respect when we enter through faith into the fellowship of Christ's
sufferings and death; but not with the effect of getting free from any
duties of service—with the effect rather of serving in a higher style of
obedience—serving in newness of spirit (which is all one with bringing
forth fruit to God), not in oldness of letter (bringing forth fruit to
death). These expressions have been virtually explained in the exposi-
tion of 2 Cor. iii. 6, and a few words here may suffice. It is implied,
that those who owned their relation to the law, and were conscious of
no higher relationship, would endeavour after some sort of obedience.
But then, with no power higher than human, and with tendencies in the
human ever running in the opposite direction, the obedience could have
no heart or life in it; it could be only such outward formal obedience as
a fearful, slavish, mercenary spirit is capable of yielding—looking
at the mere letter of the command, and trying to maintain such a con-
formity to it by a fair show in the flesh. This is what is meant by
serving in oldness of letter—the only kind of service which old corrupt
nature is capable of rendering, and one that can bring no real satisfac-
tion to the conscience, or receive any blessing from God. Believers in
Christ are freed from such service, because raised, through fellowship
with Christ, above nature—brought into the region of the Spirit's grace
and power, so that what they do is done under the influence of things
spiritual and Divine, with a sincere and loving heart, and with an
unaffected desire of pleasing God. There is a newness in such service,
and it is newness of spirit, as contradistinguished from the flesh's old-
ness—the mere formalism of a carnal and hireling service. As to the
ROM. VII. 433
things done, it may be the same service still (no change in this respect
is here indicated), but it is service of quite another and higher kind.
Ver. 7. ‘What shall we say then? Is the law sin?' etc. The apostle
here formally states and answers a question, which naturally suggested
itself from his apparent identification of the dominion of sin with sub-
jection to the law. Was the law, then, the actual source and parent of
sin? Is it in itself evil? He repels the idea with a mh> ge<noito, God
forbid. But not satisfied with this, he proceeds to unfold, by a refer-
ence to his own experience, the true relation of the law to sin, and
chews how, by reason of its very goodness, it tends to evolve the
element of sin, and aggravate the sense of it in the soul. The reason
for adopting this mode of representation is stated with admirable pro-
priety and clearness by Alford: 'I ask, why St Paul suddenly changes
here to the first person? The answer is, because he is about to draw
a conclusion negativing the question, Is the law sin? upon purely sub-
jective grounds, proceeding on that which passes within, when the
work of the law is carried on in the heart. And he is about to depict
this work of the law by an example which shall set it forth in vivid
colours, in detail, in its connection with sin in a man. What example,
then, so apposite as his own? Introspective as his character was,
and purified as his inner vision was by the Holy Spirit of God, what
example would so forcibly bring out the inward struggles of the man,
which prove the holiness of the law, while they shew its inseparable
connection with the production of sin? If this be the reason why the
first person is here assumed (and I can find no other which does not
introduce into St Paul's style an arbitrariness and caprice which it
least of all others exhibits), then we must dismiss from our minds all
exegesis which explains the passage of any other, in the first instance, than
of Paul himself: himself, indeed, as an exemplar, wherein others may see
themselves: but not himself in the person of others, be they the Jews,
nationally or individually, or all mankind, or individual men.’ Entirely
concurring in this, which is substantially the Augustinian view of the pas-
sage—the view also which, with solid argument in the main, and sound
evangelical feeling, was set forth and vindicated with great fulness in the
last century by Mr Fraser in his work on Sanctification—we set aside
as arbitrary and unnatural the view of the Grotian school, which
regards Paul as personating here the Jewish people, before and after
the introduction of the law of Moses; the view also of Meyer and
many others, that Paul gives, in his own person, a kind of ideal history
of humanity, first in its original state, then as under law, and lastly as
redeemed in Christ; with various subordinate shades of difference under
434 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
each of these general modes of representation. But holding the delin-
eation of experience to be properly personal, and only as such repre-
sentative, there is no need for supposing that it should in every part
exhibit what is peculiar to the regenerate. The operation of law on
the natural conscience will often, to a considerable extent, produce the
same feelings and convictions as are experienced in a more intense and
vivid form, as with more permanent results, by those who are the
subjects of renewing grace. There is nothing here, however, which
does not more or less find a place in the history of every one who has
come under the power of the quickening Spirit—although some parts
of the description belong more to the initiatory, others to the more
advanced exercises of the believer, several again to those complex
operations, those interminglings of the flesh and the Spirit of which all
believers are at times conscious, and those always the most who are
most sensitively alive to the claims of the Divine righteousness, and
most watchful of the movements of their own souls in reference to
these. A spirit of discrimination, therefore, is needed for the interpre-
tation of the particular parts, even when there is a proper understand-
ing of the general purport and bearing of the passage.
The principle with which the apostle sets out in this narrative of his
inward experience, and which he keeps in view throughout, is one, he
had already announced, that 'by the law is the knowledge of sin'
(iii. 20); for, obviously, what discovers evil cannot be itself evil; it
must be the opposite of evil—good. In answer therefore to the ques-
tion, whether the law is sin, after a strong negation, he says, 'On the
contrary (a]lla<, I cannot see why Alford should regard this simply
adversative sense as not exactly suitable here—the apostle is going
to state precisely the reverse of what an affirmative to the question
would have implied), I had not known sin, except through the law'—
literally, I was not knowing (ou]k e@gnwn), I was in ignorance of sin,
except through the law. This might be taken two ways, either that
he did not know such and such a thing to be in its own nature sinful,
unless the law had condemned it; or he did not know the existence
and operation of sin as a principle in his soul, unless the law had
brought it to light. Both to a certain extent are true, though from
the context it is clear that the latter is what the apostle has mainly, if
not exclusively, in view. It only holds of some things, that they could
not have been known to be sinful but through the law; in regard to
many, especially such as relate to breaches of the second table, the
natural light of conscience is quite sufficient to pronounce upon their
character (as the apostle, indeed, had already affirmed, ii. 14, 15). But
ROM. VII. 435
it is not specific acts of sin, and their objective character, that the
apostle here has in his eye; it is the principle of sin in his own bosom,
as a deep-rooted, latent evil, which was naturally at work there, but
which he was not sensible of till the law, by its prohibition, discovered
it! And so he adds, in further explication of his meaning, ‘For indeed
I had not known lust except the law had said, Thou shalt not lust.’
It is not something strictly new that is here introduced, but a particular
example in illustration of the general statement made immediately
before (te ga<r, denn-ja, fortius est quam ga<r solum; scilicet te istud
non copulat, sed lenius affirmat quam toi, uncle natum est, Fritzsche).
The lusting (e]piqumi<a, sometimes, desire generally, but here inordinate
desire, concupiscence, so elsewhere 1 Tim. vi. 9; 2 Tim. ii. 22; 1 John
ii. 17, etc.) is not to be confined to mere sensual appetite, but includes
all the undue affections and desires of the heart, which, if carried out,
might lead to the overt violation of any of God's commands. The
closing prohibition, therefore, of the Decalogue spreads itself over all
the other precepts, and includes, in its condemnation, every sort of
lusting or concupiscence which tends to the commission of the acts
forbidden in them. Hence it was that the consideration of this par-
ticular command let in such a flood of light upon the apostle's soul, as
to his real state before God. 'He had been a Pharisee, and with great
zeal and earnest effort serving in the oldness of the letter, as he under-
stood it. His mind being biassed by corrupt teaching and sentiment,
he thought himself chargeable with no sin, until the law struck at his
heart within him, as subject to its authority and direction no less than
the outward man. Until then he thought all his works were good.
Now he sees all his works, taking into the account the evil principles,
and the concupiscence which in various forms was set at the root of
all his works, to be evil. Instead of keeping all the commandments
from his youth up, he then saw he had truly fulfilled none of them.'
We have, indeed, the same confession substantially from the apostle
1 Of this use of a[marti<a to denote, not actual sin, but a habitual tendency and con-
stitution of the inward life, Muller says, in his work on Sin (B. I. P. 1, chap. 3): ‘In that passage which gives us the fullest and minutest instruction of sin and its develop-
ment in, man, Rom. vii., it cannot be doubted that a[marti<a is used in the significa-
tion of a power dwelling and working in man, including a sinful bias, a perverted
constitution. So especially in Rom. vii. 8-11: Sin, which before was dead, by the
entrance of the law, revived, and took occasion, by the commandment, to put man
to death; this can have no meaning, unless the term sin means a power dwelling in
man in a concealed manner.' He points to Matt. xii. 33, xv. 19; 1 John ii. 16;
James i. 14, 15, as teaching the same truth, though the term (a[marti<a is not always
used.
436 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
as here, only more briefly unfolded, and with reference more to actual
change of state than to the workings of inward experience, in Phil. iii.
6-10, There also the apostle expresses a perfect satisfaction with his
condition at one time, as if all were right, and then represents this as
giving way to an entirely opposite state of feeling, when he came to
see into the reality of things. What before seemed good, now was
found worthless; what was thought gain, came to be reckoned loss;
what had looked like life, was but death in disguise, and the true life only
found when confidence in the law was forsaken for confidence in Christ.
Ver. 8. 'But sin, taking occasion by means of the commandment,
wrought in me all manner of concupiscence; for without the law sin is
dead.' Sin here is still the principle of sin in the soul, which exists
whether there is any sense or not of its contrariety to law, but only in
a kind of unconscious or slumbering state, till it is confronted with the
peremptory nay of the command. This rouses it into conscious and
active opposition. The command here meant (h[ e]ntolh>) is not the law
in general, but the specific precept referred to just before, ‘Thou shalt
not lust.’ And the principle of the passage is very much the same
with that of Prov. ix. 17, ‘Stolen waters are sweet,’ or with the nitimur
in vetitum semper cupimusque negata of Ovid. So also Augustine: 'The
law, though in itself good, yet, by forbidding, increases sinful desire;
for somehow that which is desired becomes more pleasant simply by
being forbidden'1 It is good, but ‘weak through the flesh.’ The
ungodly heart chafes against the restraint laid on it, and the evil, com-
paratively latent before, rises into active opposition. But when the
apostle says, that 'without the law sin was dead,' he can only mean
dead in the sense and feeling of the soul; for sin not only exists with-
out the law as a principle in the soul, but is ever ready also to go forth
in active exercise on the objects around it; living, therefore, in reality,
though not consciously known and realized as such.
Ver. 9. I was alive without the law once, but when the commandment came,
sin revived, and I died.' Recognising the principle that sin, by inevit-
able necessity, is the source of death, it naturally follows that, according
to the conscious presence and vitality of sin or the reverse, so should
also be the sense of life or death in the soul. While ignorant of the
depth and spirituality of the law, the apostle was unconscious of sin,
and as a matter of course felt and acted as one in the enjoyment of
life; but when the commandment entered with its penetrating light
and Divine authority into the convictions of the inner man, it was like
the opening of a new sense to him; sin sprung into conscious activity,
1 ‘De Sp. et Lit.,’ sec. 6.
ROM. VII. 437
and the pains of death took hold of him. It could be but a relative
thing in the one case, the slumber of sin and the enjoyment of life, and
the quickening of sin into activity, with its production of death, in the
other; for the commandment did not create the evil principle or its
deadly fruit, only awoke the sense and realization of them in the soul.
It is of this, therefore, that the apostle speaks, primarily in his own case,
and indirectly in the case of others. Up to the time that the law in
its wide reaching import and spiritual requirements, takes hold of the
heart, it is as if a man's life were whole in him : whatever errors and
imperfections he may perceive in his past course, they appear but as
incidental failings or partial infirmities, which can easily be excused or
rectified; they seem to leave untouched the seat of life. But with the
right knowledge of the law, if that ever comes, there comes also a true
insight into his case as a sinner; and then all his fancied beauty and
blessedness of life are felt to consume away; he sees himself corrupt at
the core, and an heir of condemnation and death. Such an experience,
of course, belongs to the very threshold of the Christian life, when the
powers of regeneration are just beginning to make themselves known
in the soul.
Ver. 10. 'And (or, so) the commandment which was for life, even
this was found by me unto death'—a mere sequel to the preceding.
The commandment was designed for, or had respect to life; because
making known that wherein life, in the higher sense, properly consists
—the moral purity, rectitude, loving regard to God and man, which are
essential to the harmonious action and blessed fellowship of the soul
with God. But this delineation of life, when turned as a mirror in.
upon the soul, served but to bring to light the features and workings
of a spiritual malady, which had its inevitable result in death.
Ver. 11. This is further explained by the statement, 'For sin, taking
occasion through the commandment, deceived me, and through it slew
me.' The indwelling principle of sin did with the apostle, by the law,
much what the tempter did with Eve, by the tree of the knowledge of
good and evil. It gave rise to false expectations, and so entailed
disastrous results. How should it have done so? Simply by leading
him to imagine that he should find life and blessing in another way
than that prescribed by the commandment. Striving to resist the Divine
call, it would have him seek his good in the gratification of forbidden
desires, but only to involve him in the forlornness and misery of death,
when the living force and authority of the commandment took hold of
his conscience. Then experience taught him the hollowness of sin's
promises, and the stern reality of God's prohibitions and threatenings.
438 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Ver. 12. Now follows the legitimate inference in regard to the law:
'So that the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and
good.' The distinction between the law and the commandment is
merely between the whole and a principal part: all is alike holy, and
that which more especially laid its bond on the desires and affections
of the soul, so far from being excepted, has even two additional epithets
applied to it (just and good), as if on purpose to shew how entirely
accordant even these more spiritual demands are with the claims of
rectitude and the truth of things. The experience of the apostle certi-
fied such to be the character of the law, as being in no proper sense
the cause of the death which he felt had come upon him, but only the
means of discovering the real nature and tendency of what the sinful
principle in his soul had prompted him to covet and seek after.
Ver. 13. 'Did then the good become death to me?' The question
might seem unnecessary after the statements already made; but to
remove the possibility of misapprehension, and present the matter in
a little different light, the apostle puts it. The reply is very explicit
in meaning, but in form somewhat elliptical: ‘God forbid! [not the law
of God, which is good, was made death to me], but sin [was so]; in
order that it might appear sin, through the good working death in me,
in order that sin through the commandment might become exceeding
sinful.' A twofold design—that sin might be exposed in its real char-
acter, and that the heinousness of its evil might appear in turning the
good itself into the occasion and instrument of bringing home to his
experience the pains and sorrows of death. It is here with life in the
spiritual precisely as in the natural sphere. When a deadly disease
has taken possession of the bodily frame, what is the class of things
that most conclusively prove the presence of such a disease? Not
those which are in themselves unfavourable to health, and tend to
impair bodily vigour—for, in that case, one naturally associates the evil
with these, to which no doubt they partly contribute. But let the
reverse supposition be made—let the circumstances of one's position be
altogether favourable—let the subject of disease have the benefit of the
most bracing atmosphere, the most nourishing diet, and of every thing
fitted to minister support and comfort: if still the frame continues to
languish, and the symptoms of death come on apace under the very
regimen of health, who can then shut his eyes to the fact, that a fatal
malady has seized the vitals of his constitution, since the good with
which it is plied, instead of mastering the evil, serves but to discover
its strength, and develop its working? So exactly with the good
exhibited in the law of God: when this is brought to bear on the cor-
ROM. VII. 439
rapt nature of man, the evil not being thereby subdued, but only
rendered more clearly patent to the view, and more sensibly destruc-
tive of all proper life and blessing, it is then especially seen to be
what it really is; namely, sin—and, as such, hateful, pernicious,
deadly.
Vers. 14-25. It is unnecessary here to go into a detailed exposition
of these concluding verses; for, with the exception of the first clause,
'We know that the law is spiritual'—which is also but another form
of the statement in ver. 12, that the law is holy—the passage has
respect, not properly to the apostle's relation to the law, but to his
relation to indwelling sin. And the chief question it gives rise to
is, whether the apostle, in the description he gives of the conflict
between good and evil, represents what he, as a settled believer, and
as an example of believers generally, was conscious of at the time he
wrote the epistle, or what he merely, as a natural man, thought and
felt, personating what natural men generally must think and feel, when
awaking to a right knowledge of truth and duty, but still without the
grace needed to conform them in spirit to it? Both sides of this alter-
native question have been espoused by commentators from compar-
atively early times, as they still are; and it is quite possible to make
the latter alternative, which is usually the one that commends itself to
the less deeply exercised and spiritual class of minds, appear the more
plausible and safe, by pressing one class of expressions to the utter-
most, and passing lightly over another. But undoubtedly the natural
supposition is, that as the apostle had, in the verses immediately preced-
ing, exhibited his own experience as one just awaking under the power
of Divine grace to a right view of his own condition, so, continuing as
he does still to speak in his own person, but in the present tense, he
should be understood to utter the sentiments of which he was presently
conscious. Any view inconsistent with this, or materially differing
from it, would require for its support very conclusive proof, from the
nature of the representation itself. This, however, does not exist.
Certainly, when he describes himself as being 'carnal, sold under sin,'
'doing what he did not wish,' ‘not having good dwelling in him,’ ‘brought
into captivity by the law of sin in his members,’—if such declarations
were isolated, and the full sense put upon them which, taken apart,
they are capable of bearing, the conclusion would be inevitable that
they cannot be understood of one who is in any measure a partaker of
the Divine life. But this would not be a fair mode of dealing with
them, especially when they are coupled with statements that point in
the opposite direction—statements which cannot with any propriety be
440 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
applied to those who are strangers to the life and grace of the Spirit.
The very first announcement is of this description: 'We know that the
law is spiritual'—for who can be truly said to know this, except such
as really have the discernment in Divine things which it is the part
of the Spirit to bestow?1 In like manner, to wish sincerely what is
spiritually good, to consent to it as good, to hate what is of an opposite
nature, to hate it so truly and fixedly that it could be said when done
not to be done by that which constituted one's proper personality as
a man of God, to delight in the law of God, and with his mind to
serve it, these are things which plainly distinguish the regenerated and
spiritual man from one still remaining in the carnality and corruption of
nature. And pointing as they do to the state of thought and feeling
in the higher region of his being, in what the apostle calls 'the inner
man,' they necessarily include the more essential characteristics of the
personal state—those which relate to the deeper springs of its moral
being—and must ultimately determine its place and destiny. What,
therefore, the apostle says on the other and lower side must be taken
in a sense not incompatible with those higher characteristics—must be
understood, in short, of that other self, that old man of flesh or corrup-
tion, which, though no longer predominant, was still not utterly
destroyed. Indeed, the apostle himself furnishes the key to this inter-
pretation, when he distinguishes so sharply between the me in one
sense and the me in another ('in me, that is in my flesh,' ver. 18,
‘I myself with my mind,’ ver. 25), between the law in his members,
working unto sin, and the law of his mind, consenting unto and desiring
the good. He is conscious of a sort of double personality, or rather a
twofold potency in his person, the one derived from nature still adhering
to him and troubling him with its vexatious importunities and fleshly
tendencies, the other holding of the risen life of Christ, and ardently
desirous of the pure and good, And it is, it can only be, of the sinful
emotions, and usually repressed, but sometimes also successful, workings
of that old self, that he speaks of himself as destitute of good, carnal,
and in bondage to the power of evil.
Entirely similar confessions of the dominancy of indwelling sin, and
lamentations over it, have often been heard in every age of the church,
from spiritually-minded persons; and are to be regarded as the indica-
tion, not of the absence of grace, nor of the prevalence of sinful habit,
but of that tenderness of conscience, that delicate perception of the pure
and good, and sensitive recoil from any thing, even in the inner move-
ments of the soul, that is contrary to the holiness of God, which is the
1 1 Cor. ii. 14.
ROM. VII. 441
characteristic of a properly enlightened and spiritual mind. So, in
ancient times, for example, Job who, in his more advanced stage of
enlightenment, confessed himself to be vile, yea abhorred himself, and
repented in dust and ashes (xi. 4, xlii. 8); so in many places David;1 and
very strikingly the writer of Psalm 119, who, after unfolding in every
conceivable variety the thoughts and feelings, the desires and purposes,
of the devout Israelite in reference to the law and service of God, after
repeatedly declaring how he loved the law of God, and delighted in His
commandments, winds up the whole by what cannot but seem to the mere
worldling or formalist a somewhat strange and inconsistent utterance:
‘I have gone astray like a lost sheep: seek thy servant; for I do
not forget thy commandments.' It is the same still. ‘If one over-
heard a serious, upright Christian saying, on some occasion, with much
deep regret—as many such have done—Ah! what a slave am I to
carnal affections and unruly passions? How do they carry me away
and captivate me I—would he hastily say, that this complaint had no
foundation at all in truth? Or, would he conclude, if it had, that this
man was truly and absolutely a slave of sin, and still unregenerate?
A person so judging, I should think, would not deserve to be favour-
ably regarded.'2 And in respect to the relative preponderance of the
two counter-forces in the apostle's representation, the same judicious
author observes: 'What here would strike my mind free of bias is,
that this I on the side of holiness against sin, is the most prevailing,
and what represents the true character of the man; and that sin which
he distinguishes from this I is not the prevailing reigning power in
the man here represented; as it is, however, in every unregenerate man.'
So, also, Augustine happily of himself: ‘I indeed in both, but more I
in that of which I approved, than in. that which I disapproved of as
being in me.’3
We must not enlarge further in this line; but two points of great
importance for our present investigation come prominently out in this
disclosure of the apostle's experience. One is, that, though writing
under the clear light of the Gospel, and a spiritual acquaintance with
its truths, he has no fault to find with the law as a revelation of duty,
or a pattern of moral excellence. What he misses in the law is not the
perfect exhibition to our knowledge of moral goodness, but the power
to communicate moral life. The only reason specified why it cannot
help one to the possession of righteousness, is because of the prevent-
ing flesh, or law of sin in the members, which works in opposition to
1 Ps. xix. 12, 13, xii. 12, li. 3. 2 Fraser. 3 ‘Confes.,’ L. viii. 5.
442 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES
the better knowledge derived from the law of God, and the better
impulse implanted by grace. So that, viewed as an exhibition of good,
the law is represented as in unison with the desires of the regenerated
moral nature, and simply by reason of its goodness, coupled with
remaining imperfections in himself, giving rise, to trouble and distress.
The other point is, that so far from there being any contrariety between
the scope of the law's requirements and the spirit of the new life, the
apostle rejoiced in the higher powers and privileges of this life, chiefly
because through these the hope had come to him of gaining the victory
over the contrariety in his nature to the good in the law, and having it
yet realized in his experience. As thus replenished from above, his
more settled bent and purpose of mind were now on the side of the
righteousness exhibited and enjoined in the law—nay, with his mind
he served it (ver. 25); or, as he expresses himself in the following
chapter, his general characteristic now was to walk not after the flesh
but after the Spirit, and, in proportion as this was the case, to have the
righteousness of the law fulfilled in him (viii. 4). Hence, also, in this
epistle, precisely as in that to the Galatians, when he comes to the
practical exhortations, he points to the law still as the grand outline,
for Christian not less than earlier times, of moral obligation, and urges
his readers to the regular and faithful exercise of that love, which is
the heart and substance of its precepts, as for them also the sum of all
duty (xiii. 8-10). As regards men's relation to the law, therefore, in
the sense meant by the apostle throughout this discussion, the differ-
ence between Old and New Testament times can have respect only to
relative position, o!. to the form and mode of administration, not to the
essentials of duty to God and man.
Rom. X. 4-9.
‘For Christ is the end of the law for (or unto) righteousness to every
one that believeth. 5. For Moses describes the righteousness which is
of the law, that the man who has done those things shall live in them.1
6. But the righteousness which is of faith speaks thus, Say not in thine
heart, Who shall go up into heaven? that is to bring Christ down.
1 The reading here is a little different in three of the older MSS. x A D and the
Vulgate, which omit the au]ta> (those things), and change (with the exception of D, but
here B takes its place) the au]toi?j at the close into aut^. But the sense is much the
same, only, instead of those things, in the doing of which the righteousness consists,
the righteousness itself becomes prominent; it then reads, ‘the man who has done
[it] shall live in it.’
Rom. x. 4-9. 443
7. Or, Who shall go down into the deep (abyss)? that is to bring
Christ up from the dead. 8. But what saith it? The word is nigh
thee, in thy mouth and in thy heart; that is, the word of faith which
we preach; 9. That if thou wilt confess with thy mouth the Lord
Jesus, and believe in thy heart that God raised him from the dead, thou
shalt be saved.'
The subject which gave rise to this fresh statement respecting the
law and its righteousness, as contrasted with the way of salvation by
Christ, was the sad case of the unbelieving Israelites. They had sought
righteousness, indeed, but sought it in the way which lies beyond the
reach of fallen man—the way of their own goodness hence they had
not submitted themselves to, but strenuously resisted the righteousness
of God. The statement implies, that what, in such a case, is of man,
and what is of God, belong to quite different categories—they are
mutually antagonistic. And this is confirmed by the declaration in
ver. 4 as to God's method of making righteous, For Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness to every one that believeth. The general meaning is
plain enough it affirms that Christ is set for righteousness as well as
the law, and that for the believer in Christ this righteousness is made
practically available—he actually attains it. But it is a matter of
dispute in what sense precisely the end (te<loj) of the law is to be under-
stood. Does it denote simply the termination of the legal dispensation
—its termination in the death of Christ, which provided the new method
of justification? Or does it, along with this, indicate the aim and
object of the law—as having found in the work of Christ its destined
completion? There is no lack of authorities on both sides of this
question (for the first, Augustine, Koppe, Ruckert, De Wette, Olshausen,
Meyer, Hodge, &.; for the other, Chrysostom, Therphylact, Beza,
Grotius, Wetstein, Tholuck, Alford, &c.). I am inclined to agree with
the latter class, on the ground that the simple fact of the law's termina-
tion in its provisional character as for a time forming an essential part
in the revealed plan of salvation, scarcely comes up to what seems
required for the occasion. Beyond all doubt, the law had an aim in
this matter, as well as a period of service; nay, just because it had an
aim, and that aim reached its accomplishment in Christ, in a way it
never had done or could do of itself, it therefore ceased from the place
it had occupied. And as the expression here quite naturally carries
this idea, there seems no valid reason why it should not be included.
The law, taken in its complete character, certainly aimed at righteous-
ness; so also does Christ in His mission as the Redeemer; with this
all-important difference, that what could never be properly accomplished
444 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
by the one is accomplished by the other—hence, also, the provisional
character of the one, while the other is permanent. The sense
could scarcely be better given than it was by Chrysostom: ‘If
Christ is the end of the law, he who has not Christ, though he may
appear to have it, has it not; but he who has Christ, though he have
not fulfilled the law, has yet obtained all. So, too, the end of the
Medical art is health. As, therefore, he who has proved able to give
health, though haply unskilled in medicine, has every thing,
while he who is unable to cure, however he may seem capable of
administering the art, has altogether failed. So also in respect to the
law and faith; he who has this has also attained to the end of
that; but he who is destitute of the former, is an alien from both.
For what did the law seek? To make a man righteous; but it was not
able to do so; for no one fulfilled it . . . . . This same end, however,
is better accomplished by Christ through faith.'
The verses that follow give the proof of this proposition—give it out
of Moses—the lawgiver himself being called as a witness against his
misguided and foolish adherents in apostolic times. For Moses describes
the righteousness which is of the law, that the man who has done those things
shall live in them.' The passage referred to, and almost literally quoted,
is Lev. xviii. 5; and the those things are the statutes and judgments
mentioned immediately before; for the whole passage runs thus: ‘Ye
shall do my judgments, and keep mine ordinances, to walk therein; I
am Jehovah your God. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes and my
judgments; which if a man do, he shall live in them.' Taken in its
original connection, the passage undoubtedly points to Israel's happy
privilege as well as sacred calling. Their condition is contrasted with
that of the Egyptians and Canaanites, whose ordinances and customs,
especially in regard to the gratification of lust, are declared to be matters
of horror and abomination before God (vers. 3, 30); they are solemnly
charged to avoid these, and to keep the Lord's ordinances, statutes,
and judgments, both because Jehovah is their God, and because by
doing them they should find life in them, while practices of an opposite
kind had brought judgment and destruction on the Canaanites. Such
is the connection and the import of the original statement. And it
seems, at first sight, somewhat strange, that the apostle should here
refer to it in the way he does, as describing the righteousness which is
obtained by doing in contradistinction to that which comes by believing,
as if the way of attaining life for the members of the Theocracy were
1 The same use is made of the passage in Gal. iii. 12, but without any formal
citation of it.
ROM. X. 4-9. 445
essentially different from, and in some sort antagonistic to, that under
the Gospel. He has so often asserted the reverse of that, and in this
very epistle (ch. ii. 17-29, iii. 19, 20, iv., etc.), that it would certainly
be to misunderstand the application to take it in that absolute sense.
The life which Israel had, whether viewed with respect to the earthly
inheritance, or to the everlasting kingdom of which that was but the
shadow, unquestionably came from their relation to Jehovah in the
covenant of promise, and not from what was imposed in the covenant
of law; the law, with its demands of holiness, its statutes of right, and
ordinances of service, was no further ordained for life than as describing
the moral characteristics in which life, so far as it existed, must exhibit
itself, or, when these failed, appointed what was needed to obtain
cleansing and restoration. The amplest proof has been already adduced
of this (in the exposition of the passages in Corinthians, Romans, and
Galatians, also in Lec. III.). Yet from the prominence of law in the
Theocracy—which was such that even the things which pertained to
forgiveness and the promise of blessing usually took a legal form—the
language employed respecting the calling of the people and their pros-
pects of good were naturally thrown in many cases into the same
form. The people were told that they should live and prosper, only if
they obeyed God's voice, or kept the statutes and ordinances imposed
on them—but without intending to convey the impression, that they
were actually placed under a covenant of works, and that they could
attain to the good promised, and avoid the evil threatened, only if they
did what was enjoined without failure or imperfection. On the con-
trary, those very statutes and ordinances had bound up with them pro-
visions of grace for all but obstinate and presumptuous offenders; by
the terms of the covenant—that is, by the law in its wider sense—they
were called to avail themselves of these, and to make their resort to
God as 'rich in mercy, and plenteous in redemption.' Still, the
language even in such parts carried a legal impress; it linked the
promised good to a prescribed ritual of service; and if people were
minded, in their pride and self-sufficiency, to lay the stress mainly on
the legal element in the covenant—if they should imagine that every
thing was to be earned by the completeness and merit of their obedience,
then it must be meted to them according to their own principle, and
they should have to face the sentence uttered from the sterner side of
the covenant: 'Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things
that are written in the book of the law to do them.'1
Now, keeping these considerations in mind, it is not difficult to
Deut. xxvii. 26 ; Gal. iii. 10.
446 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
understand how St Paul should have singled out the brief passage
under examination as being, when looked at merely by itself, descrip-
tive of the righteousness which is won by obedience to precepts of law,
while yet it was not meant that Israel were expected to attain to such
righteousness, or were, in the strict and absolute sense, dependent on
the attainment of it for life and blessing. It set before them the ideal
which they should earnestly endeavour to realize—which also to a
certain extent they must realize as partakers, if only in an incipient state,
of the Divine life; but not unless they were minded (as the unbelieving
Jews of the apostle's day certainly were) to stand simply upon the
ground of law, and be in no respect debtors of grace, was a complete
and faultless doing to form the condition of receiving the promised
heritage of life. In this case, it assuredly was. The words must then
be pressed in the full rigour and extent of their requirement; for life
could only be ministered and maintained on a legal basis, if the con-
dition of perfect conformity to law had been made good. That Moses,
however, no more than the apostle, intended to assert for Israel such a
strictly legal basis as the condition of life, is evident, not only from
the connection in which that particular declaration stands, but also
from other parts of his writings, in which the evangelical element comes
distinctly into view, in his words to the covenant people. To one of
these, the apostle now turns (vers. 6-9) for a proof of the righteous-
ness of faith; for it must be held with Meyer, Fritzsche, and others,
that it is Moses himself who speaks in the words contained in these
verses. 'The de> in ver. 6 places the righteousness of faith over
against the just-mentioned righteousness of the law, for both of which
kinds of righteousness the testimony of the lawgiver himself is
adduced. The expression, "for Moses describes," in ver. 5, does not
merely apply to the word in that verse, but also stretches over vers.
6-8; and so the objection is not to be urged against our view of the
want of a citation formula at these verses.'1 The passage quoted,
though with some freedom, is in Deut. xxx. 10-14. And it is to be
noticed, as a confirmation of the explanation we have given of the
preceding passage from Leviticus, that this also, though embodying
the evangelical element, and for that very purpose quoted, also carries
the form of law. In the original it stands thus, ‘For this command-
ment which I command thee this day, it is not hidden from thee, neither
is it far off. It is not in heaven that thou shouldst say, Who shall go
up for us to heaven, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and do
it? Neither is it beyond the sea, that thou shouldst say, Who shall
1 Meyer.
ROM. X. 4-9. 447
go over the sea for us, and bring it unto us, that we may hear it and
do it? But the word is very nigh unto thee, in thy mouth and in thy
heart, that thou mayest do it.' The general import is here again quite
plain; namely, that the way of peace and blessing had been made
alike clear and accessible; no one could justly say it was difficult to
be understood, or mocked their efforts with impossibilities, as if, in
order to reach it, heaven had to be scaled, or the boundless ocean to
be crossed:—no, the word was nigh them, and every thing provided
to their hand which was needed to secure what it set before them. But
commentators are divided on the points, whether the passage as spoken
by Moses properly bears the spiritual sense put upon it by the apostle,
or has this sense infused into it by giving it a kind of secondary pro-
phetical bearing—whether the questions, also, considered with regard to
this spiritual sense, are questions of unbelief, questions of embarrassment,
or questions of anxiety. It is not necessary for our immediate purpose
to go into the examination of such points; and for any purpose of a
strictly expository nature, it appears to me that very little depends
on them. A somewhat too specific or realistic view is taken of the
words by those who chiefly raise the questions. The description, in
itself, is so far general, that it might be applied to the calling of the
church of God in every age. Moses applied it, in the first instance, to
the members of the old covenant; Paul, on the ground of this original
application, points to Moses as a witness of the way of salvation by
faith; but in doing so, intersperses comments by way of guiding its
application to Christian times. He takes for granted that those to
whom he wrote looked for salvation, or the righteousness connected with
it, only in Christ; to them, if Christ was near or remote, salvation would
be accessible or the reverse. And the original import of the word, with
this fresh application of it, amounts to nothing more than the following:
God's method of salvation is such, so easy, so accessible, that no one
needs to speak about climbing heaven on the one hand, or diving into
the lowest depths on the other, in order to have the Saviour brought
near to him—He is already near, yea, present, with all His fulness of
life and blessing, in the word of His Gospel; and all that is necessary
for the sinner is to receive this word with an implicit faith, and give
evidence of his hearty appropriation of it, in order to his finding right-
eousness and salvation. Between the case of believers, in this respect,
under the old, and that of believers under the new covenant, there is no
other difference than that now the way of salvation by faith is more
gloriously displayed and more easily apprehended by those who are in
earnest to find it.
448 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Rom. XIV. 1-7.
Now, him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not for judg-
ments of thoughts. 2. One believes he may eat all things; but he that
is weak eateth (only) herbs. 3. Let not him that eateth despise him
that eateth not; and let not him that eateth not judge him that eateth;
for God has accepted him. 4. Who art thou that judgest the servant
of another? To his own master he stands or falls; but he shall be
made to stand, for the Lord is able to make him stand. 5. One esteems
one day above another [lit., day above day]; another esteems every
day: let each be fully persuaded in his own mind. 6. He that regards
the day, to the Lord regards it; and he that eats, to the Lord eats, for
he gives God thanks; and he that eats not (viz., flesh), to the Lord
eats not, and gives God thanks. 7. For none of us lives to himself,
and none dies to himself; for if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we
die, we die to the Lord,' &c.
The subject handled in these verses, as in the chapter generally
from which they are taken, is the treatment that should be given
by Christians of enlightened understandings and ripe judgment in
Divine things to those whom the apostle calls weak in the faith—
persons who, while holding the faith of Christ, were restrained by
some scruples of conscience, or some apprehensions of evil, from
using the liberty in certain respects to which they were called in
Christ. But from the imperfect description which is given of their
case, it is extremely difficult to arrive at an intelligent view of
their religious position, and consequently to determine the precise bear-
ing of the apostle's remarks concerning them on questions of legal
obligation or Christian duty in present times. The general principle
announced at the commencement, that persons weak in the faith
should be received, that is, acknowledged as of the brotherhood of
faith, must be understood as implying, that the weakness did not
touch any vital doctrine, or commonly recognised Christian duty;
for in that case it had been the part of the more intelligent and
steadfast believers to endeavour to convince them of their error, and,
till this was accomplished, keep them at some distance, lest others
should become infected with their leaven. So much is plain; and
hence the negative prescription given in connection with the receiving
of them, that it should not be for judgments of thoughts (ei]j diakri<seij
dialogismw?n)—that is, for doing the part of censorious critics and judges
on the views peculiar to the persons in question. This, certainly, is
ROM. XIV. 1-7. 449
the meaning of the expression—not, as in the English Bible, to doubtful
disputations, which the original words will not strictly bear, and which
also, in its natural import, seems to point rather in the wrong direction.
For the apostle could not mean to say, that it was doubtful which of
the two parties occupied the right position, since he characterized the
one as relatively weak, and as such, of course, falling below the mark,
which they should have aimed at and might have attained. But he
means to say, that the specific weakness having its seat in the thoughts
of the mind, and these thoughts exercising themselves about matters
of no great moment to the Christian life, no harsh judgments should
be passed upon them; the persons should be treated with forbearance
and kindness.
But to what type or class of early Christian converts shall the
persons spoken of be assigned? On this point there has been a con-
siderable diversity of opinion, and the materials apparently are wanting
for any very certain conclusions. They could not be, as some have
supposed, Jewish-Christians, who stood upon the legal distinctions
respecting meat and drink; for these distinctions said nothing about
total abstinence from flesh, or the ordinary use of wine. Nor, with
others, can we account for those self-imposed restraints, by supposing
that it was flesh and wine which had been used in heathen offerings
that the persons in question would not taste; for no limitation of this
sort is so much as hinted at in the apostle's words, nor, if that had
been the precise ground of their refusal, would he have characterized
it as simply a weakness; in another epistle he has at great length
urged abstinence from such kinds of food as a matter of Christian
duty.1 Then, in regard to the distinguishing of days, so as to make
account of some above others, it is difficult to understand how this
could be meant of a scrupulous adherence to the Jewish observances
as to times and seasons, as if any thing depended on such observances
for salvation; for, in the case of the Galatians, the apostle had charac-
terized such adherence to the Jewish ritual, not as a tolerable weakness,
but as a dangerous error—a virtual departure from the simplicity of
the faith. That the parties are to be identified with Christians of the
Ebionite school (according to Baur), who were tinged with the Gnostic
aversion to every thing of a fleshly and materialistic nature, while they
retained their Jewish customs, is altogether improbable—both because
there was no such distinctly formed Ebionite party at the time this
epistle was written, and because, if there had, they could certainly not
have been treated so indulgently by Paul, whose teaching stood in
1 1 Cor. viii. -x.
450 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
such direct antagonism to their views.1 And though there is a nearer
approach to the apparent circumstances of the case in the supposition
of others (Ritschll, Meyer, etc.), that the weak Christians of our passage
were a class of supra-legal religionists, believers probably of the Essene
sect, who brought with them into Christianity some of their rigid observ-
ances and ascetic practices, yet there is no proper historical evidence
of such converts to the faith of Christ existing anywhere, and parti-
cularly at so great a distance from the seat of the Essene party, at the
early period to which the epistle to the Romans belongs. Besides, as
the ascetic and ritualistic peculiarities of the Essenes were essentially
of that type, against which Paul, in other places,2 so earnestly pro-
tested, and in which he descried the beginnings of the great apostacy,
one is at a loss to understand how, on the supposition of its represen-
tatives being found at Rome, he should have made so little account of
the fundamentally erroneous principles interwoven with their beliefs.
Amid this uncertainty as to the specific position of the persons
referred to, it is necessary to proceed with caution in the interpretation
of what is written, and to beware of deducing more general inferences
from it than the expressions absolutely warrant. It was one of the
exhibitions given, the apostle tells us, of weakness of faith, that one
believed he should eat simply vegetables or herbs, while the relatively
strong was persuaded he might partake of whatever was edible; and
it is implied, in ver. 21, that the weakness also sheaved itself with
some in a religious abstinence from wine. But on what grounds the
abstinence was practised—whether as a species of fasting, with a view
to the mortifying of the flesh, or as a protest and example for the good
of others in respect to prevailing excesses in meat and drink, or, finally,
from lingering doubts, originating in ascetic influences, as to the Divine
permission to use such articles of diet on such points nothing is here
indicated, and we are entitled to make no positive assertion. The
personal incident mentioned by Josephus, that, after having in early
life sought to make himself acquainted with the distinctive Jewish
sects, he took up for a time with one Banos, who lived in the desert,
and scrupulously abstained from any clothing but what grew on the
trees, and ate no food but the spontaneous products of the earth; and
the additional fact given in the same direction, that two priests, whom
he describes as excellent men, and whom he accompanied to Rome to
plead their cause, chose for their food only figs and nuts,3 clearly shew
that peculiarities of this sort were not of infrequent occurrence at that
1 See Neander, ‘History of Planting of Christian Church,’ B. iii. c. 7.
2 Col. ii. ; 1 Tim. iv. 3 ‘Life,’ secs. 2, 3.
ROM. XIV. 1-7. 451
time among the Jews, though they were probably of too irregular and
arbitrary a character to come under any common religious definition. Of
the persons here referred to by the apostle, we merely know that, for some
conscientious reasons (adopted by them as individuals, not as belonging
to certain sects), they had thought it their duty neither to eat flesh nor
to drink wine; and the apostle's advice respecting them was, that they
should not on this account be treated with harshness or contempt. It
was a weakness, no doubt, but still one of a comparatively harmless
nature; it had approved itself to their own conscience; let the matter,
therefore, be left to Him who is Lord of the conscience, and who would
not fail to sustain and guide them, if their hearts were right with Him
in the main.
It is scarcely possible to be more particular in regard to the other
form of weakness specified; it is not even very definitely indicated on
which side the weakness lay, or how far there was a weakness. Two
facts only are stated: 'One man esteems one day above another;
another esteems every day' (the alike added in the authorized version
is better omitted). We naturally infer, from the mode of putting the
statement, that the weaker was he who made the distinction of day
above day; but then how was the distinction made? Wherein did he
shew his esteeming of it? Could this have consisted only in his con-
sidering it proper to devote one day in the week more especially to
religious employments and works of mercy? This had surely been a
strange manifestation of weakness, to be marked as such by the apostle,
who himself was wont, along with the great body of the early Chris-
tians, to appropriate the first day of the week to such purposes, and to
style it emphatically the Lord's day.1 Nor has the experience of the
past shewn it to be a weakness, but, on the contrary, to be at once a
source and an indication of strength, to avail one's-self of those statedly
recurring opportunities to withdraw from worldly toil, and have the
soul braced up by more special communion with itself and Heaven for
the work of a Christian calling. Wherever such opportunities are
neglected, and no distinction of days is made as to religious observance,
the result that inevitably ensues is a general decay and gradual extinc-
tion of the religious sentiment. This is admitted by all thoughtful men,
whether they hold the strictly Divine institution of the Lord's day or
not. It is impossible St Paul could be insensible to it, or could wish
to say any thing that tended to such a result. If, therefore, the
esteeming of one day above another is represented as a weakness, one
may suppose that some specific value was attached to the day per se,
1 Acts xxi. 17; 1 Cor. xv. 2; Rev. i. 10.
452 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
as if it had the power of imparting some virtue of its own to the things
done on it, apart from their own inherent character. To attach such
ideas, either to the Jewish weekly and other Sabbaths, or even to the
Christian Lord's day, might be regarded as a weakness; since, while
the setting apart of such days for special exercises had important ends
to serve under both economies, it was only as means to an end; the
time by itself carried no peculiar virtue; and, in contradistinction from
any feeling of this description, every day should be esteemed. But no
day should, in that case, be disesteemed, or regarded as unfit for religious
and beneficent action. Nor does the apostle say so, when the correct
form of his statement is given, as by Lachmann (approved also by Mill,
Griesbach, Meyer1). The words run thus; 'He that regards the day
to the Lord regards it; and he that eats (viz., flesh), eats to the Lord;
for he gives God thanks; and he that eats not, to the Lord eats not,
and gives God thanks.' The negative, as well as the positive side is
exhibited as regards the eating; for both alike eat, and give thanks for
what they eat, only the one in his eating confines himself to a veget-
able diet. But in the other case, the positive alone is exhibited; for
while one may, with a true religious feeling, regard one day more than
another, and even carry this to a kind of superstitious extreme; yet not
to regard the day can scarcely be represented as a thing done to the
Lord. Not the regarding of no particular day is the counter-position
indicated) by the apostle, but the regarding of every day—this, it is
implied, would bespeak the strong man, if so be the other betrayed
something of weakness; and the strength in that case would necessarily
consist in giving one's-self to do every day what others deemed it
enough, or at least best, to do more especially on one—to do, that is,
what may more peculiarly be called works of God. So to employ one's-
self would put all the days on a kind of equality; but, certainly, not
by depriving them alike of regard, or by reducing them to the same
worldly level; on the contrary, by raising them to a common elevation,
devoting them to the special service of Heaven, and the best interests
of humanity. So, did our Lord, the highest exemplar of healthful and
sustained energy in the Divine life; His works were all works of God,
proper therefore for one day as well as another;2 so that it might be
1 These authorities omit the clause in ver. 6, kai> o[ mh> fronw?n th>n h[me<ran, kuri<& ou] fronei?, with all the best MSS., x A B C D E F G, the Italic, Vulgate, Aeth. Copt.
versions, Jer., Aug., and other authorities. To admit a text with such evidence
against it, and only one uncial MS. L. of no great antiquity for it, were to violate
all the established canons of criticism; besides that, it makes no proper sense; at
least not without some considerable straining. 2 John v. 17.
EPH. II. 11-17. 453
truly said of Him, He regarded every day. And yet it was deemed by
Him no way incompatible with this, that He should shew His regard
to the seventh day in a somewhat different manner from what He did
in respect to the other days of the week. In principle, the works done
on this and other days were alike, yet they took, to some extent, their
distinctive forms of manifestation. So that, however often the passage
before us has been held by certain interpreters to argue something at
variance with the religious observance of a Christian Sabbath, this is
found rather by ascribing to it an imaginary sense, than by evolving
its legitimate and proper import.
EPH. II. 11-17.
'Wherefore remember, that once ye, Gentiles in the flesh, who are
called Uncircumcision by that which is called Circumcision in the flesh
wrought by hands; 12. That ye were at that time without Christ,
alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and estranged from the
covenants of promise, not having hope, and without God in the world.
13. But now in Christ Jesus, ye who once were far off were brought
nigh in the blood of Christ. 14. For He is our peace, who made both
one, and broke down the middle wall of the partition—(15) the enmity—
in His flesh, having done away the law of commandments in ordinances,
that he might make the two in Himself into one new man, making
peace; 16. and that He might reconcile both of us in one body to God
through the cross, having slain on it the enmity. 17. And having come,
He preached peace to you who were far off, and peace to them that
were nigh; 18. For through Him we have our access, both of us, in
one Spirit.to the Father.'
This passage has obviously a monitory aim, and is chiefly designed
to awaken a sense of gratitude in the minds of the Ephesians on account
of the wonderful change which, through the mercy of God in Christ,
had been made to pass over their condition. Their elevated state, as
participants in the benefits of Christ's death and the glory of His risen
life, had been described in the preceding verses; and now the apostle
calls upon them to remember how far otherwise it was with them in
their original heathenism, and how entirely they were indebted for the
change to the work of reconciliation accomplished by Christ. The first
two verses delineate in dark colours their position prior to their interest
in Christ. Remember that once ye (pote> u[mei?j, the pote> before u[mei?j with the
best MSS. x A B D), Gentiles in the flesh (a compound expression denoting
454 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
the category or class to which they belonged—Gentiles, or heathen, as
contradistinguished from Jews, and this e]n sarki< —without the article,
because forming one idea with the ta> e@qnh, Winer, Gr. 20, sec. 2—in their
corporeal frame without the mark of covenant relationship to God, hence
visibly in an unsanctified condition), who are called Uncircumcision by that
which is called Circumcision in the flesh wrought by hand. This points to
the hereditary antipathy cherished, or the sacred recoil felt toward
them on the part of the covenant people, so long as they were in their
heathenish state; for to be called Uncircumcision by them was all one
with being accounted reprobate or profane. But when the apostle
speaks of the Circumcision, who so called them being the Circumcision in
the flesh wrought by hands, he insinuates that those who applied the
reproachful epithet to the heathen, and cherished the feelings it ex-
pressed, might not themselves possess the reality which the rite of
circumcision symbolized; it might be, after all, in their case but an out-
ward distinction. The apostle does not venture to say it was more,
knowing well how commonly the rite had lost to his countrymen its
spiritual significancy, and with how many circumcision was no more
than a mere conventional sign or fleshly distinction. But even so, it
drew a line of demarcation between them and the Gentile world, and
bespoke their external nearness to the God of the covenant: it con-
stituted them, as to position and privilege, the chosen people, on whom
God's name was called, while the others wanted even the formal badge
of consecration. In so far as the circumcision was only in the flesh,
these who possessed it had of course little reason to boast it over the
uncircumcised Gentiles, for in that case both alike needed the real
sanctification. which is required for true access to God; and while this
thought could not but appear to aggravate the former degradation of
these believing Gentiles, as having been counted profane by those who
were themselves but nominally otherwise, it at the same time implied
that, as regarded effectual rectification, both parties were substantially
on a footing—what was needed for the one was needed also for the
other.
Ver. 12. The apostle here resumes his interrupted sentence, com-
mences afresh: that ye were at that time (corresponding to the o!ti tote<
u[mei?j in ver. 11) without Christ; that is, not only destitute of the actual
knowledge of Him, but away from any real connection with Him or
friendly relation to Him—so that the hope of a Saviour (which the Jews
had) was as much wanting as the personal enjoyment of His salvation.
What this separation implied, and how far it reached, is stated in what
follows, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel, and estranged from the
EPH. II. 11-17. 455
covenants of promise, not having hope, and without God in the world. By
the polpei<a, or commonwealth of Israel, is evidently meant the theo-
cratic constitution and people of the old covenant, as those alone which
had associated with them the elements of life and blessing—the one
state and community in which fellowship with God was to be found.
From this they were in their heathen condition alienated—a]phllotriw-
me<noi--at the opposite pole, as it were, from the rights of citizenship, but
without implying any thing as to a prior state of connection; for such
an idea, which some would find in the description, would be out of
place here; it is the actual state alone which the apostle characterizes.
Further, they were estranged from (lit., strangers of, ce<noi tw?n, the ce<noi
being put as a sort of antithesis to klhro<nomoi, heirs or possessors of) the
covenants of promise. Under covenants of promise, the apostle could
scarcely mean to include the covenant of law along with the covenant
of Abraham, for the former is not of promise; so that we must either
understand by the expression the successive and somewhat varied forms
given to the Abrahamic covenant, or perhaps that covenant itself in
conjunction with the new covenant of Jeremiah xxxi. 31, which was
also justly entitled to be called a covenant of promise. As heathen, the
Ephesians, in their unconverted state, were entirely out of the region of
these covenants—strangers to the field they embraced with their blessed
prospects of better things to come. And, as the necessary consequence
of this unhappy isolation, they had not hope—that is, were devoid of this
in any such sense as might properly meet the wants of their condition;
hope, as the well-grounded and blessed expectation of a recovery from
the evils of sin, was unknown to them; and they were without God in
the world, unconscious of, and incapable of finding where they were,
any spiritual link of connection with Him. 'They had not God, but
only thoughts about Him; Israel, however, had God and the living word
of His mouth. Hence there belonged to the covenant people what did
not come from themselves, but from that which is greater than man's
heart, the hope of the coming salvation. Heathenism, however, had
but the product of its own state; hopes which had no better security than
the uncertain [utterly inadequate] ground of personal piety.'1
Ver. 13. But now in Christ Jesus ye who once were far of were brought
nigh in the blood of Christ—the contrast to the former state, and strikingly
exhibited as a change that was once for all effected (potentially) in the
atoning work of Christ—though actually experienced, of course, only
when they came to a personal interest in His salvation. So, too, St Peter
speaks of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as having begotten believers
1 Harless.
456 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
to a lively hope (1 Pet. i. 3)—as if the accomplishment of the one
carried the other also in its bosom. The blood of Jesus Christ, by making
provision for the pardon of sin, lays open the way for all to the bosom
of God's household, and of any individual who enters into the fellow-
ship of this blood, or who takes up his standing in the faith of Jesus as
the crucified for sin, it may be said he was brought nigh in the blood of
Christ; in the shedding of that blood, he sees for ever removed the
alienation caused by sin. And to mark very distinctly the efficacious
ground or living source of the boon, the apostle designates the reci-
pients as first 'in Christ Jesus,' and again as finding all 'in the blood of
Christ.'
Vers. 14, 15. A further grounding and explanation of the statement
follows: for He is our peace, who made both one, and broke down the middle
wall of the partition. The language here also is very forcible and preg-
nant. The work of incorporation into God's blessed household is repre-
sented as done once for all in Christ—ideally, the reunion has attained
to realization in Him. Hence, he is called 'Our Peace'—not simply as
Bengel notes, our Pacificator, peacemaker, but the one who, by the
sacrifice of Himself, has procured peace, and is Himself the bond of
union to both (ipse vinculum utrorumque). He is such as regards Jew
and Gentile, having made the twain (the divided parts, ta[ a]mfo<tera)
one, not by acting directly upon their mutual antagonism, and applying
Himself to heal the breach it occasioned, but by elevating both to a
higher unity—effecting for them alike reconciliation with God through
the blood of His cross. Brought through this one medium of reconcili-
ation into a common relation to God, and recognising themselves as
alike children of the one Father of a redeemed and blessed family, the
cause of enmity and alienation as a matter of course fell away—both
parties being lifted into a position where it no longer had room to
operate. This is the apostle's solution of the difficulty, as to the exist-
ing separation between Jew and Gentile: he regards it as the offshoot
of a higher and graver quarrel—the sinful departure and alienation of
both from God; and the healing of the grand breach carries in its train
the healing of the smaller one, by taking out of the way the circum-
stances that incidentally ministered to it. The apostle expresses the
mode of accomplishing the result by saying that Christ broke clown the
middle wall of the partition, or the fence; figurative language, proceed-
ing on the assumption, that the two parties—the one of whom had
been outwardly near, the other far off from, the region of life and
blessing—were both in a manner fenced off from that region—the one
more palpably so, indeed, than the other; separated and fenced off even
EPH. II. 11-17 457
from those who were comparatively near, because wanting the very
appearance and formal badge of a consecrated condition. But the
apostle sees in this only the outer line, as it were, or lower half of that
partition-boundary which lay between men and the proper fellowship of
love in God; for those who were called near, were still, while the old
state of things existed, at some distance; they had not free access to
the presence of God (as the veil in the temple, and the manifold
restrictions of its appointed ritual, too clearly indicated), and were
rather, for the time, tolerated in a measure of nearness, than frankly,
and as of right, admitted into the joyous liberty of Divine communion
and blessedness of life. For both parties, therefore, something had to
be broken down, in order to have the way laid open into the holiest,
and through this into the full brotherhood of love with each other.
What it was, the apostle more distinctly expresses in the next term,
the enmity ('broke down the middle wall of the partition—the enmity—
in His flesh'—so the passage should be pointed and read). The enmity
stands in apposition to the middle wall of partition in the preceding
clause, and more exactly defines it. That this enmity has a certain
respect to the hostile feeling and attitude subsisting between Jew and
Gentile, seems clear from the reference going before to that antagon-
istic relationship and its abolition in Christ ('made both one,' ver. 14,
though previously one stood aloof from the other as profane and out-
cast, ver. 11). But it seems equally clear, that no explanation can be
satisfactory which would limit the expression to this lower sphere; for
the enmity, which Christ destroyed in His flesh, or, as again said, which
He slew through His cross, naturally carries our thoughts up to the
great breach in man's condition, and the great work done by Christ to
heal it. In other expressions, also, the apostle plainly identifies the
removing of this enmity with the reunion of sinners to God; for it is
in reconciling the parties spoken of to God that he describes the enmity
as being slain; and, by the act of gracious mediation which effects
this, Christ is represented as becoming the peace of those who were
near, as well as those who were far off—implying that the one, as
well as the other, notwithstanding their relative advantages, had in
their condition an obstructive barrier to be thrown down, an enmity
to be overcome. Both alike also are represented as partaking of the
same regenerating process—raised together, so as to become not one
man merely, but one new man, as contradistinguished from the old
state of each. Throughout the passage, Christ is plainly described as
doing substantially one and the same work for both, and that a work
which bore directly on their relation to God, while it carried along with
458 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
it also conciliatory and peaceful results in respect to their mutual
relationship to each other. There is no way of understanding this but
by supposing that the apostle saw, in the one class of relations, the fruit
and reflex of the other. The mutual enmity which, like a partition-
wall, shut off Jew from Gentile, had in his view no independent
existence; it was merely the shadow and incidental effect of that
common alienation which sin had produced between man and God; and
it was, he would have his readers to understand, by striking an
effectual blow at that tap-root of the evil (as it might be called) that
Christ had become the medium of a proper reconciliation in regard to
the other and merely consequential form of alienation.
That the destruction of the enmity, through the introduction and
establishment of a state of blessed nearness to God, is said to have
been done in the flesh of Christ, can only be regarded as a brief expres-
sion for His great work in the flesh—virtually synonymous with the
words ‘in His blood’ in ver. 13, and ‘through His cross’ in ver. 16.
‘The expression itself might be coupled either with what precedes, or
with what follows: we might either say [having destroyed] the
enmity in His flesh,’ or, 'in His flesh having abolished (made void)
the law of commandments,' etc. The latter is the connection adopted
in the authorized version, 'having abolished in His flesh the enmity, even
the law of commandments,' etc., including also in the sentence the th?n
e@xqran, and taking the enmity as parallel with the law of commandments.
But this, though supported by many commentators, proceeds on a
somewhat unnatural mode of construing the words; and it better
accords with the proper parallelism of the passage, and also with the
general usage of the two verbs (as one can readily enough speak of
dissolving or breaking down an enmity, but not so well of making it
void, and so abolishing it). But the general sense still remains much
the same; and certainly with the breaking down of the partition-wall,
or dislodging the enmity, the apostle couples the annulling or doing
away of the law of commandments in ordinances as either coincident
with the other, or somehow essential to it. How then was it so?
What precisely, is meant by the law of commandments in ordinances?
And in what sense was the doing away of this in Christ necessary to
the bringing about of the reconciliation and enmity? The law of com-
mandments in ordinances is but another name for the Sinaitic legislation,
or the old covenant. This was, by way of eminence, the law, and as
such composed of specific enactments; these formed its contents and
when further said to be e]n do<gmasin (the latter without the article, because
expressive of one notion with tw?n e]ntolw?n, commandments in individual
EPH. II. 11-17. 459
ordinances1), it points to the form of the contents as being of an
imperative or decretory character, so that the expression may be fitly
enough rendered, with Alford, 'the law of decretory commandments,' or
of 'decretory ordinances,' with Ellicott. It comprised the whole system
of precepts, moral and religious, which were introduced by Moses, and
peremptorily enjoined on the covenant people: the law, in its economical
character, as a scheme of enactments or form of administration, which
was intended, indeed, to mediate the intercourse between God and man,
but was perceived, even while it stood, to be imperfect, and declared as
such to be transitory, destined one day to be supplanted by another
and better.2 The apostle had already, in various passages, given forth
a similar judgment; had affirmed it to be incapable of providing an
effectual remedy for the evils adhering to human nature, fitted rather to
make known and multiply transgression than deliver from its guilt and
doom, hence done away in Christ who brings in the real deliverance.3
So, here again, when setting forth Christ as the only true Peace of the
world, the apostle represents the system of law, with its commands and
ordinances, as done away, in order that humanity might, through faith
in the incarnation and atoning death of Christ, be lifted out of its con-
demned and alienated condition, might be formed into a kind of corpo-
rate body with Himself, and participate in that fellowship of peace and
blessing which He ever enjoys with the Father. But this, obviously,
is a kind of doing away, or making void, which at the same time
confirms. It loosens men's relation to the law in one respect, but
establishes it in another; releases them from it as a provisional
arrangement for coming at the righteousness and life which are
essential to an interest in God, but only that they might find the
end it aimed at in this respect through faith in Christ4—find it as a gift
brought to their hand through the infinite grace and prevailing media-
tion of Christ. Thus, there is nothing arbitrary in the change here
indicated by the apostle: it is a change of form, but not of substance,
for the same great principles of truth and duty characterize both
economies, only brought now to their proper establishment in Christ, and
associated with results which, till then, had been but faintly appre-
hended or partially experienced.5
1 Winer, secs. 31, 10, obs. 1. 2 Jer. xxxi. 31.
3 2 Cor. iii. 11, 14 ; Gal. iii. 19; Rom. v. 20, vii. 5-8. 4 Rom. x. 4.
5 The rendering of the two verses (vers.14, 15), in the authorized version, is in
several respects unfortunate—first, inserting between us; namely, Jew and Gentile,
after the words, 'broken down the middle wall of partition,' thereby confining this
to the earthly sphere; second, separating between the middle wall and the enmity,
460 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
There is, it is proper to add, a certain difference in the doctrinal
statements here made respecting the law, and those elsewhere given;
but it is merely a formal one, and such as naturally arose from the
nature of the subject. The point more immediately handled here has
to do, not with justification before God, but with reconciliation and
peace toward Him, and between one portion of the human family and
another. These, however, are but diverse aspects of the same question;
and the necessity of doing away with the decretory ordinances and
precepts of the old covenant, in order to meet the wants of man's con-
dition, and placing in its stead the atoning work of Christ, holds alike
in both aspects of the matter. But in none of the passages can the
doing away be understood in an absolute sense; it must be taken
relatively. And here, in particular, the apostle, as justly remarked by
Harless, indicating also the connection between this and other state-
ments of the apostle, 'does not treat of the law as regards any part of
its contents, but of the form, the legal externality of its demand, which,
as unfulfilled, wrought enmity, because it pronounced the judgment of
condemnation upon men's guilt, and hence is rendered without effect.
This is done objectively without us, through the atoning death of
Christ.1 Subjectively, it is realized in us, when, as the apostle else-
where expresses himself, the word of faith comes to be in the mouth and
in the heart,2 or, as stated presently here, when Christians, through the
redemption in one Spirit, have access to the Father, and are built into
an habitation of God in the Spirit. This is the subjective realization of
by throwing the latter into the next clause, and joining it to katargh<saj, instead of
to the preceding lu<saj; third, identifying the enmity with the law of command-
ments, ‘the enmity, even the law of commandments.' In the general structure and
connection of the passage, I follow Meyer, Ellicott, Alford, who, especially the two
former, have clearly shewn the advantage in naturalness and grammatical accuracy
of the mode preferred by them over others, also the inadmissibility of joining e]n
do<gmasin with katargh<aj (with the Vulgate, Chrysostom, Theodore, also Grotius',
Bengel, Fritzsche, Harless), as if the meaning were, having abolished, by means of,
Christian doctrines, the law of commandments, or, as Harless, abolished the law on
the side of, or in respect to, the commanding form of its precepts. The New Testa-
ment usage will not admit of either mode of exposition. But the Greek commenta-
tors (Chrysostom, Theophylact, and Ecumenius) were substantially right in their
general view of the passage, understanding the separation and enmity on the one
side, and the reconciliation and peace on the other, to have respect, not merely to Jew
and Gentile, but primarily and mainly to men's relation to God, and only subordin-
ately to the other. Meyer, with many more, take the other view of the partition-
wall and the enmity; the expositions of Calvin, and many of the earlier Protestant
commentators, were by no means satisfactory in the treatment of the passage.
1 Col. ii. 14. 2 Rom. x. 8.
EPH. II. 11-17. 461
the law's displacement. The apostle speaks of it in Rom, vii, 6, when
he says, "We are delivered (kathrgh<qhmen) from the law," as, inversely,
they who would be justified by the law are delivered (kathrgh<qhte)
from Christ.'1 All, therefore, depends upon the sense in which such
expressions are understood, or the respect in which they are applied.
They merely tell us that we have the law made of no force and
effect to us, done away as the ground of justification before God,
or as the means of obtaining a solid reconciliation and peace with Him:
but this simply on account of the high and holy nature of the require-
ments it sets forth, which for fallen men made the good it aimed at
practicably unattainable. Its relation to men's responsibilities as the
revelation of God's righteousness, in the sphere of human life and duty,
remains thereby untouched.
Vers. 16-18. These verses, which contain merely some further
expansion and application of the principles exhibited in. the preceding
context, call for no lengthened remark here. And that He might reconcile
both of us in one body to God through the cross: this was the higher end
of Christ's work on earth—the lower having been mentioned just
before, namely, the uniting of the divided human family into one new
corporate body; and the former, though the last to be named, the first
in order, as being that on which the other depends. It is the recon-
ciliation of both parties to God through the peace-speaking blood of
Christ's cross, which carries them over the fence of earthly divisions
and antipathies. And this being said to be done in one body, points—
not, as some would understand it, to the corporeal frame of Christ, in
which respect the idea of plurality was, from the nature of things,
excluded—but to the compact society, the one corporate, mystical body
which Christ forms for Himself out of the scattered and too often
antagonistic members of the human family. Alike drawn through the
cross to God,2 their common enmity to Him, and their individual
enmities one toward another, receive, in a sense, their death-blow;
they melt away under the redeeming love of the cross; but only, of
course, as regards men's personal experience, when this comes to be
realized as a Divine power in the heart. To this the next clause refers,
which says of Christ, 'And having come, He preached peace to you who were
far off, and peace (the ei]rh<nhn) should be again repeated, with all the better
MSS., and most of the ancient versions) to them that were nigh. This
also is ascribed to Christ, for His agency was continued in that of the
apostles, who, in preaching the tidings of salvation to Jew and Gentile,
derived their authority from His commission, and their success from
1 Gal. v. 4. 2 John xii. 32.
462 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
His presence.1 So that to Christ belongs at once the effective means
of reconciliation, and the bringing of these to bear on the personal state
of mankind. The relatively near (Jews) and the relatively far off
(Gentiles) alike need the salvation provided, and they alike have it
brought within their reach. Then follows the ground or reason on
which the proclamation and assurance of peace proceeds, for through
Him we have our access, both of us, in one spirit to the Father—to (pro<j) the
Father as representing the Godhead, through (dia>) the Son as Mediator,
and by or in (4) the Spirit as the effective agent—shewing clearly the
pre-eminent regard had by the apostle in the whole matter, to the
peaceful relationship of the parties to God. It is this more especially
that is mentioned here, because this is what is primarily and directly
secured by the death of Christ; and the distinction between Jew and
Gentile falls away, because, as component parts of one redeemed family,
they are animated by one Spirit (the Spirit of life and holiness in Christ
Jesus), and in that Spirit are enabled to draw near, and abide near, to
God—equally inmates of His spiritual house, and alike free to partici-
pate in its blessed privileges and hopes.
COL. II. 11-17.
‘In whom (Christ) ye also were circumcised with a circumcision not
wrought by hands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh in the
circumcision of Christ; 12. Buried together with Him in your baptism,
wherein also ye were raised up with Him through your faith in the
operation of God, who raised Him from the dead. 13. And you who
were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He
quickened together with Him,2 having forgiven us all our trespasses;
14. Having wiped out the handwriting in ordinances that was against
us, which was contrary to us, and took it out of the way, nailing it to
His cross; 15. Having put off principalities and powers, He boldly
made a show of them, while in it (viz., the cross) He triumphed over
them. 16. Let no one, therefore, judge you in eating or in drinking,
or in the matter of a feast, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths; 17.
Which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ.'
The phase of false teaching which the apostle meets in this and other
parts of the epistle to the Colossians, is somewhat different from any
1 Matt. xxviii. 20; John xiv. 18; Acts iii. 26, xxiv. 23.
2 The better authorities (x A C K L) have here a second u[ma?j, repeated for the
sake of emphasis, ‘you who were dead . . . He quickened you.’
COL. II. 11-17. 463
thing that presents itself in his other epistles. That it contained a
strong Judaistic element, is plain from the injunctions pressed against
a return to the distinctive rites and services of Judaism; but the parties
espousing and propagating it cannot be regarded as simply Judaising
Christians. For evidently a philosophical or Gnostic element mingled
with the Judaistic, in this peculiar form of false teaching, laying an
undue stress upon the possession of a speculative sort of knowledge,
which sought to carry the mind beyond the province of Scripture, and to
elevate the tone of the religious life by fancied revelations of the angelic
world, and by the practices of an ascetic piety. Apparently, therefore,
the false teaching warned against was a compound of Jewish and
Gnostic peculiarities, somewhat after the fashion of what is reported to
have become known at a later period as the doctrine of Cerinthus, or is
associated with the Gnostic Ebionites, who were probably a sect of
Christianized Essenes. Neither the time at which this epistle was
written, nor the region in which it contemplates the false teaching in
question to have appeared (Phrygia), admits of our connecting it with
the heretical parties just referred to. But there were tendencies work-
ing in the same directions, which found a congenial soil in that part of
Asia Minor, and which, notwithstanding the remonstrances and warn-
ings here addressed to the church of Colossae, continued long to hold
their ground and to prove a snare to believers. In one of the earliest
councils of which the canons have been preserved, that of Laodicea, a
place quite near to Colossae, it was found necessary to prohibit the
practice of angel worship, and also of adherence to some Jewish cus-
toms.1 So late as the fifth century, Theodoret makes mention, in his
comment on this epistle, of oratories still existing in that quarter
dedicated to the Archangel Michael.
In the passage more immediately before us, it is the Judaistic element
in the false doctrine beginning to prevail about Colossae which the
apostle has in view, and which he endeavours to expose by spewing
how the design and object of the Jewish law, with its religious obser-
vances, had found their realization in the work and Gospel of Christ.
Pointing first to the initiatory ordinance of the old religion, he declares
circumcision, not in form, but in spirit, to belong to those who have
heartily embraced the Gospel of Christ—the great truth underlying it,
and for the sake of which it was appointed, having, in the most effec-
tive manner, become exemplified in their experience. In whom ye also
were circumcised with a circumcision not wrought by hands; that is, a work
accomplished by the power of the operation of God upon the soul, as
1 Neander, ‘Planting of Christian Church,’ B. iii. ch. 9.
464 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
contradistinguished from a mere fleshly administration, which is else-
where characterized as a thing wrought by hands.1 When applying
the term circumcision in this way, the definite article should be
wanting in the English, as it is in the Greek—for it could not be
referred to as a thing familiarly known to the Colossians: it was not
the, but a, circumcision, yet one which rose immensely in importance
above the other, and could be made good only by a Divine agency. It
was nothing, however, absolutely new; for in Old Testament Scripture,
also, it was spoken of as a thing that should have gone along with the
external rite, though too frequently wanting in the outwardly circum-
cised.2 So much was this the case, that the apostle, in describing
circumcision according to its true idea, denies it of the act performed
on the body, as apart from the spiritual change this symbolized,
'it is of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter,’3 and what was
merely in the letter he stigmatizes with the name of the concision—as
if it were nothing more than a corporeal cutting.4 The spiritual act,
the inward circumcision, is described as the putting off of the body of
the flesh in the circumcision of Christ. By the body of the flesh is
undoubtedly meant the same as what is elsewhere called 'the old
man which is corrupt,'5 and by a still stronger term, the body
of sin,'6 and 'sinful flesh,' literally, 'flesh of sin'7 the bodily or
fleshly part of our natures being viewed as the seat of the lusts,
which are the prolific source of sin, and bring forth fruit unto
death. To have this put off, therefore, in a spiritual respect, is to be
delivered from the dominion of sin, to die to sin as a controlling and
regulating power, by the pure and holy principles of a Divine life taking
root in the soul, and giving another tone and direction to the general
procedure. When this spiritual change is accomplished, the flesh is, so
to speak, evacuated of its sinful quality—instead of domineering, it
becomes subservient to the good and the change is wrought, the
apostle says, in the circumcision of Christ, that is, in the spiritual
renewal which a union to Rim brings along with it. We are not, with
some, to think here of Christ's personal circumcision, which is entirely
against the connection, since it would introduce an objective ground
where the discourse is of a subjective personal operation. The forming
of Christ in the soul as the author of a new spiritual life—that is for
the individual soul the circumcision of Christ, or, as we may otherwise
call it, the new birth, which, by the Divine impulses of a higher nature,
casts off the power of corruption. Essentially, it is the action of Spirit
1 Eph. ii. 11. 2 Deut. x. 16, xxx. 6; Ezek. xliv. 7. 3 Rom. ii. 29.
4 Phil. 2. 5 Eph. iv. 22, Col. iii. 9. 6 Rom. vi. 6. 7 Rom. viii. 3.
COL. II. 11-17. 465
upon spirit; and the apostle elsewhere describes it as wrought by the
Lord the Spirit,1 or as the result of Christ dwelling in him by faith.2
But here, in what immediately follows, he couples it with baptism, to
shew that, in this higher style of things belonging to New Testament
times, there is substantially the same relation of the inward reality to
an outward ordinance that there was in the Old.
Ver. 12. Buried along with him in your baptism, wherein also ye were raised
through your faith in the operation of God, who raised him from the dead.
It is clear that baptism is viewed here, as in the corresponding passage
of Rom. vi. 3, 4, in its full import and design, ‘in the spirit and not in
the letter,’ as a practical and living embodiment of the great things
which had already taken place in the experience of the believing soul.
Baptism, in this sense, formed a kind of rehearsal of the believer's
regeneration to holiness—solemnly attesting and sealing, both on his
part and God's, that fellowship with Christ in His death and resurrec-
tion, on which all personal interest in the benefits of His redemption
turns. Commentators very generally assume that a reference is made
to the form of baptism by immersion, as imaging the spiritual death,
burial, and resurrection of those who truly receive it. This is not,
however, quite certain, especially as, at the passage in Romans, he
couples with the burial a quite different image—that, namely, of being
planted together with Christ. Nor is it really of any moment; for
beyond doubt the meaning actually conveyed in the language has
respect to the spiritual effect of baptism as sealing the participation of
believers in the great acts of Christ's mediation—identifying them
with Him in His death, burial, and resurrection. The apostle brings
prominently out the latter point of this fellowship with Christ, because
the other was but as the necessary channel to it: wherein also (e]n &$ kai>)
ye were raised up together with Him, so I think it is most naturally ren-
dered, taking the e]n &$ as referring to the baptism. It might certainly
be understood, with many commentators, of Christ (in whom also); but
it seems more natural to confine the reference to the immediate ante-
cedent, and to regard the apostle as indicating, that the whole process
of a spiritual renovation—the rise to newness of life as well as the
death to the corruption of nature—has its representation and embodi-
ment in baptism. And to shew how the outward is here based on the
inward, and derives from this whatever it has of vital force, he adds,
through the faith of the operation of God (that is, as the great majority
of the better commentators understand it, faith in God's operation, the
genitive after pi<stij being usually expressive of the object on which it
1 2 Cor. iii. 18. 2 Gal. ii. 20, Eph. ii. 5-8.
466 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
rests); the spirit of faith in the baptized appropriates the act of God's
mighty power in Christ when He raised Him from the dead, as an act
which transmits its virtue to all who in faith realize and lay hold of
it. Spiritually, they have thus already risen with Rim ; and therein
have the pledge of a literal rising also, when the time for it shall have
come.1
Vers. 13-15. In these verses, there is nothing properly additional to
what has been already stated regarding the work of Christ in its
effect upon the soul; but there is a specific application of this to the
believing Gentiles whom the apostle was addressing, and a more
detailed explanation of the matters involved in it. First, their personal
quickening out of a state of spiritual death and defilement: you being dead
(or when you were dead) in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your
flesh; 'that is, the uncleanness which attached to them as abiding in
their still unsanctified fleshly natures; this as the root of the evil,
though from his particular point of view placed last in the apostle's
statement, and the other, the death in trespasses, the fruit that
sprung from it, and gave evidence of its malignant nature; both
alike were put away by the renewing and quickening energy which
flowed into their experience from the risen life of Christ. Then,
as the essential groundwork and condition of this quickening, there was
the free pardon of their sins: having forgiven us (the apostle including
himself, and making the statement general) all our trespasses—xarisa<-
menoj, the indefinite past, indicating that the thing was virtually done at
once, that forgiveness was secured through the vicarious work of
Christ, as a boon ready to be bestowed on every one who might in a
living faith appropriate the gift. Hence, thirdly, as the necessary con-
dition of this, or its indispensable accompaniment, there was the remov-
ing of what stood in the way of their acquittal from guilt the con-
demning power and authority of the law: having wiped out the hand-
writing in ordinances that was against us, which was contrary to us, and took
it out of the way, nailing it to His cross. What here is meant by the
handwriting in ordinances (xeiro<grafon toi?j do<gmasin) must be the same
with that which fastened on them the charge of guilt and condemnation,
and, as such, formed the great barrier against forgiveness. This, there
can be no doubt, was the law, not in part but in whole—the law in the
1 All this, of course, is to be understood directly of adult baptism—the baptism of
actual believers, or such as had the profession and appearance of believers. The
application of it to the children of believers necessarily calls for certain modifications
in the doctrinal aspect of the matter, as already stated in Lecture VIII. But it is
unnecessary to enter on these here.
COL. II. 11-17. 467
full compass of its requirements; called here the handwriting, with
reference to the frequent mention of writing in connection with it;1
and this in, or with ordinances, namely, decretory enactments (the
dative of instrument, as gra<mmasin at Gal. vi. 11, the enactments form-
ing the material with which the writing was made), pointing to the
peremptory form which the revelation of law assumed. The ex-
pression has already been under consideration at Eph. ii. 15. It cannot
be limited to outward observances, though it is clear, from the use of
the verb and its connection in ver. 20, that these were here specially in
view. Of the law thus described, the apostle says, it was against us,
and as if this were not explicit enough, he adds the separate statement,
which was contrary, or hostile, to us: not meaning of course, that it was
in itself of a grievous or offensive, nature (he elsewhere calls it ‘holy,
just and good’2), but that it bore injuriously upon our condition, and,
from its righteous demands not being satisfied, had come to stand over
against us like a bill of indictment, or Divine summary of undischarged
obligations. But Christ, says the apostle or God in Him, wiped out
the writing (e]calei<yaj, precisely as in Acts iii. 19, with reference to
sins, and in Rev. M. 5, with reference to a name in a book); that is, in
effect deleted it, and so took it out of the way, carried it from among us,
namely, so far as, or in the respect in which, it formed an accusing
witness against us. But, plainly, this could not be done by an arbitrary
abolition of the thing itself; moral and religious obligations cannot be
got rid of in such a way; they must be met by a just and proper
satisfaction; and this is what was stated by the apostle in the next
clause under the figurative expression, nailing it to His cross. Ostensibly
and really Christ's body was the only thing nailed there; but suffering,
as He did, to bear the curse of the law for sin, and actually enduring
the penalty, it was as if the law itself in its condemnatory aspect toward
men was brought to an end—its power in that respect was exhausted.
‘Never,’ says Chrysostom, 'did the apostle speak so magniloquently
(but this applies also to ver. 15). Do you see what zeal he exhibits to
have the handwriting made to disappear? To wit, we were all under
sin and punishment: He being punished, made an end both of sin and
punishment; and He was punished on the cross. There, therefore,
He transfixed it (the handwriting), and then, as having power, He tore
it asunder.' Did with it, in short, what the satisfied creditor does with
his charge of debt, or the appeased judge with his bill of indictment;
cancelled it as a claim that could involve us any more in guilt and
1 Ex. xxxi. 18, xxxiv. 1, 27; Deut. x. 4, xxvii. 3, etc. 2 Rom. vii. 12.
468 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
condemnation, if we receive and trust in Him as He is there presented
to our view.1
Finally, a statement is made respecting the relation of Christ's
work for His people on the cross to what he calls the principalities
and powers: the original is, a]pekdusa<menoj ta>j a]rxa>j kai> ta>j e]cousi<aj
e]deigme<tisen e]n par]r[hsi<%, qriambeu<saj au]touj e]n au]t&?. The exact import
of some of the words, and the proper mode of explicating the sentiment
contained in them, have given rise to some difference of opinion, and
are not quite easily determined. The general bearing of the statement,
however, on the more immediate subject of discourse, is plain enough,
and this, amid the diversity of opinion which exists in other respects,
should not be forgotten. Obviously, it is intended in the first instance
to convey an impression of the completeness of Christ's work on the
cross as to the procuring of forgiveness for sin, and the effecting of a
true cleansing or renewal of state in as many as believed: in this point
of view, the scene of deepest humiliation had become the chosen theatre
of Divine glory—the place and moment of victory over evil. Then, in
token of this, we are told that whatever orders or powers of a higher
kind had, or were anyhow supposed to have, an interest in retaining
things as they were, and consequently in opposing this result, these,
instead of triumphing, as might to the bodily eye have seemed to be
the case, were themselves effectually overthrown on the cross--the
ground and occasion of their power to carry it against men, being
thereby taken out of their hand. So much seems plain; no one call
well fail to derive this amount of instruction from the words; but when
we go into detail, and ask, what precisely are to be understood by those
principalities and powers, who are here said to have lost their ascend-
ency and their means of strength, or how explain the specific acts to
which the result is ascribed, there is some difficulty in arriving at a
satisfactory answer. By far the commonest, as it was also the earliest,
1 It was chiefly on the ground of this passage, including also Eph. ii. 13-17, that
a mode of representation, once very common among a certain class of preachers in
this country, was adopted—namely, that in respect to sinners generally ‘all legal it
barriers to salvation have been removed by Christ.' The representation is perfectly
Scriptural and legitimate, if understood with reference to the objective manifestation
of Christ, and the exhibition of His offered grace to the souls of men. It is un-
doubtedly under this aspect that the truth is here presented by the apostle; and it
is quite in accordance with his statement, to go to sinners of every name and degree,
and tell them to look in faith to Christ, and to rest assured, if they do so, that, by
His work on the cross, all legal barriers have been removed to their complete salva-
tion. But the expression may be, and undoubtedly has sometimes been, used as
importing more than this; and consequently, if still employed, should be cleared of
all ambiguity.
COL. II. 11-17. 469
view of commentators regarding the principalities and powers, holds
them to be demons, the spirits of darkness, who, as instruments of
vengeance, ever seek to press home upon men the consequences of their
sin, but who by reason of the satisfaction given to the demands of
God's law through the death of Christ on the cross, have had the
ground of their successful agency taken from them—the curse given
them to execute has been fully borne—and, instead of now being at
liberty to spoil, and ravage, and destroy, they are themselves, as
regards believers in Christ, in the condition of spoiled and vanquished
forces—their prey gone, their weapons of war perished. Some, how-
ever (Suicer, Rosenmuller, etc.), have conceived that the principalities
and powers in question are to be sought for in the earthly sphere, and
are none other than the authorities, priestly and secular, who arrayed
themselves in opposition to Christ, and thought by crucifying Him to
put an end to His cause. More recently, Hofmann,1 Afford, and a few
more, take the expression to refer to good angels, as having ministered
at the introduction of the law, and thereby thrown around. God a sort
of veil, which hindered the free outgoing of His love, and shrouded His
glory to the view of the heathen, and in a measure also to the covenant
people—this, like an old vesture, being now rent off and cast aside
through the atoning death of Christ, the angelic powers associated with
it are said to be put aside along with it, exhibited as in a state of com-
plete subjection to Christ, and made to follow, as it were, in the
triumphal procession of Him who is the one Lord and Saviour of men.
This last mode of explanation manifestly carries a strained and unnatural
appearance, and represents the angels of Heaven as standing in a rela-
tion to Christ and His people, which is without any real parallel in
other parts of Scripture. According to it, they did the part not of
subordinate agents merely in God's earlier dispensation, but in some
sense of antagonistic forces, and required to be exposed in no very
agreeable aspect, nay, triumphed over, and driven from the field.
There is nothing at all approaching to this in any other passage touch-
ing on the ministry of angels, and the endeavour to accommodate the
language of the apostle so understood to the general doctrine of angels
in Scripture, can only be regarded as a play of fancy. The second view,
also, which has never met with much acceptance, has this fatal objec-
tion against it, that the terms, principalities and powers, always bear
respect in St Paul's writings to spiritual beings and angelic orders;
whether of a good or of an evil nature, is left to be gathered from the
context. Of the two passages just referred to in the Epistle to the
1 ‘Schriftb.’ I. p. 350, seq. 2 Eph. i. 21, vi. 12; Col. i. 16, ii. 10.
470 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
Ephesians, the first applies the terms to good, the second to malignant,
spirits; and it can, therefore, be no valid objection to a like application
in the latter sense here, that in two earlier passages of this epistle they
have been used of the higher intelligences in the heavenly places. The
things asserted of them in each case leave little room to doubt to what
region they should be assigned, and with what kind of agency associ-
ated. And here, both the natural import of the language, and the very
general consent among commentators of all ages in the interpretation of
it, seem to shut us up to the first view specified, and oblige us to regard
the principalities and powers, whose ascendency and influence for evil
received a fatal blow on the death of Christ, as belonging to the empire
of darkness, and not of light. It is no valid objection to this view, that
the definite article is used before the terms in question, as if pointing
to the kind of principalities and powers mentioned in preceding pas-
sages;1 for at Eph. vi. 12 also, where the terms undoubtedly refer to
hostile agencies, the definite article is employed, notwithstanding that,
in the earlier passage where they occur, the words were used in a good
sense. There can be no reason why the same peculiarity might not
occur here; especially as the very nature of the subject implies a
certain individualizing—the principalities and powers, not all such, but
those who, from their antagonism to the good, occupied a hostile
relation to Him who undertook the cause of our redemption. But
allowing this to be the kind of intelligences referred to, there is still
room for difference of opinion respecting the specific acts of dealing said
to have been practised upon them. These are in our version spoiled,
made an open show of, triumphed over. The diversity turns chiefly on the
first, and whether it should be having spoiled, divested them of, or having
stripped off from himself, divested himself of. The former is the render-
ing of the Vulgate, expolians, which has been followed by all the English
versions, and by the great body of modern expositors ‘it contemplates
the principalities and powers as having been equipped with armour,
which God as their conqueror took from them and removed away.'2
And this, as preparatory to their being exhibited in humble guise and
carried off in triumph, undoubtedly presents a quite suitable meaning,
and has hence met with general acceptance. But exception has been
taken to it by some (Deyling, Hofmann, Ellicott, Alford, Wordsworth),
on the ground that the verb a]pekdu<w, in the middle, never bears that
sense, and that the apostle himself very shortly after, in ch. ii-i. 9, uses
exactly the same part of it as here, a]pekdusa<menoj, in the sense, not of
having spoiled, but of having put off, or divested one's-self of, namely,
1 Alford. 2 Meyer.
COL. II. 11-17. 471
the old man and his deeds. This also is the meaning ascribed to the
word by Origen (exuens principatus et potestates1), by Chrysostom, who
says the apostle speaks of diabolical powers here, ' either because
human nature had put on these, or, since it had them as a handle, He
having become a man, put off the handle;' and, to the like effect,
Theophylact and others. Such, undoubtedly, is the more natural and
best supported meaning of the expression'; and the exact idea seems
to be that our Lord (whom, and not God, against Meyer and Afford,
we take to be the proper subject), when He resigned His body to an
accursed death, that He might pay the deserved penalty for our sin,
at the same time put off, or completely reft from Him, and from as
many as should share with Him in His work of victory, those diabolical
agencies who, by reason of sin, had obtained a kind of right to afflict
and bruise humanity; this, as the house of their usurped dominion, or
the victim they hung around with deadly and destructive malice, was
now wrung from their grasp, and they were cast adrift like baffled
and discomfited foes, their cause hopelessly and for ever gone. So
that, by suffering for righteousness, Christ most effectually prevailed
against the evil in our condition;2 and thus turned the shame of the
cross into the highest glory,3 made it the instrument and occasion of
boldly (e]n par]r[hsi<%, in an assured and confident manner) putting to
shame the patrons and abettors of the evil, or exposing their weakness
in this mortal conflict, and triumphing over them even amidst their
apparent victory. Thus explained, though the radical idea is a little
different, the general meaning is much the same as in the authorized
version.
In vers. 16, 17, we have the practical inference from the view that had
been given of the work of Christ: let no one, therefore, judge you in eating
or in drinking, or in the matter of a feast, or of a new moon, or of Sabbaths;
which are a shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. The term brw?sij
is not exactly food, but eating, the act of taking food—as appears by
comparing Rom. xiv. 17, 1 Cor. viii. 4, 2 Cor. ix. 10, with others in
which the passive form, brw?ma, is employed for the thing eaten, or the
food itself.4 But what, of course, is meant by the expression is the kind
of food which one takes, and which was limited by express enactment in
the law of Moses. And the same also in regard to drink (po<sij)—though
here there was no general limitation under the ancient economy; only
in the case of the ministering priest, and of persons under the Nazarite
vow, was a restraint laid in respect to the temperate use of wine.5
1 Hom. in Jos. 8. 2 Heb. ii. 14 ; 1 Pet. iii. 18-22. 3 Jo. iii. 14, 15, xii. 32.
4 1 Cor. iii. 2, vi. 13, x. 3, &c. 5 Lev. x. 9 ; Num. vi. 3.
472 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
These cases, however, were so partial and peculiar, that some have
supposed (in particular Meyer, Ellicott) that among the parties referred
to additional practices of an ascetic kind had been introduced respecting
drinks, of a theosophic or rabbinical origin. This is possible enough;
but no special account can be made of it here, as the distinctions in
question are presently affirmed to stand in a definite relation to the
realities of the Gospel, and, consequently, are contemplated as of Divine
appointment. When he says, Let no one judge you on the subject of
eating and drinking, he may be understood generally to refer to articles
of diet; in respect to these, the distinction as between clean and un-
clean was now gone; and whatever one might take he must not on this
score be judged, or held to act unsuitably to the true ideal of a Christian
life. And, in like manner, with respect to, or in the matter of (for such
undoubtedly is the meaning of e]n me<reil) a feast, a stated solemnity (such
as the Passover or Pentecost), or of a new moon (not strictly a holy
day, except the seventh, but one marked by a few additional obser-
vances), or of Sabbaths. That the latter include, and indeed chiefly
designate, the weekly Sabbath of the Jews, can admit of no reasonable
doubt, both from days of that description comprising by far the greater
part of those bearing the name of Sabbaths, and also because nearly,
if not all, the other days to which the term Sabbath was applied, were
already embraced in the feasts and new moons previously specified.
Thus the distinctively sacred days appointed in the Mosaic law, together
with its stated festivals, its distinctions of clean and unclean in food,
and, by parity of reason, other things of a like outward and ceremonial
nature, are here placed in one category, and declared to be no longer
binding on the consciences of believers, or needful to their Christian
progress. And for this reason, that they were all only shadows of
things to come, while the body is of Christ; that is, they were no more
than imperfect and temporary prefigurations of the work He was to
accomplish, and the benefits to be secured by it to those who believe;
and as such, of course, they fell away when the great reality appeared.
It might seem as if something further should have been concluded—
not merely the non-obligatory observance of those shadowy institutions
of the old covenant, but, as in the Epistle to the Galatians, the essential
antichristianism of their observance. There is, however, a difference
in the two cases; the churches of Galatia had actually fallen back upon
Jewish observances as necessary to their salvation, but the Colossians
were as yet only exposed to the temptation of having in their neigh-
bourhood persons whose teaching and practice lay in a similar direction.
1 2 Con iii. 10, ix. 3.
COL. II. 11-17. 473
So far as yet appeared, correct views of the truth and of their liberty
in Christ might be all that was required to guard against the danger.
But was there no danger from the apostle's own doctrine in another
direction? In coupling Sabbath days with the other peculiar observ-
ances of Judaism, as things done away in Christ, does he not strike at
the obligation of maintaining the observance of one day in seven for
the more especial service of God, and break the connection between the
Lord's day of Christians and the Sabbath of earlier times? So it has
often been alleged, and, among others, very strongly by Alford, who
says, ‘If the observance of the Sabbath had been, in any form, of lasting
obligation on the Christian church, it would have been quite impossible
for the apostle to have spoken thus. The fact of an obligatory rest
of one day, whether the seventh or the first, would have been directly
in the teeth of his assertion here: the holding of such would have been
still to retain the shadow, while we possess the substance.' To this
Ellicott justly replies, that such an assertion 'cannot be substantiated.
The Sabbath of the Jews (he adds), as involving other than mere
national reminiscences, was a ski<a (shadow) of the Lord's day: that a
weekly seventh part of our time should be specially devoted to God,
rests on considerations as old as the creation: that that seventh portion
of the week should be the first day, rests on apostolical, and perhaps,
inferentially, Divine usage and appointment.' Substantially concurring
in this, I still deem it better to say, that in so far as the Sabbath was
a shadow of any thing in Christian times, it was, with all of a like nature,
abolished in Christ; and on that account particularly (though also for
other reasons), the day which took its place from the beginning of the
Gospel dispensation, and had become known and observed, wherever
the Christian church was established, as emphatically the Lord's day,
was changed from the last to the first day of the week. The seventh
day Sabbath had been so long regarded as one of the more distinctive
badges of Judaism, and had also, as an important factor, entered into
many of the other institutions of the old covenant (the stated feasts,
the sabbatical year, the year of Jubilee), that it necessarily came to
partake, to some extent, of their typical character, and, in so far as it did
so, must, like them also, pass away when the time of reformation came.
But this is only one aspect of the sabbatical institution—not the original
and direct, but rather a subsidiary and incidental one. As in a peculiar
sense the day of God—the day, as Jesus Himself testified, which was
made for man, and of which He claimed to be the Lord,l the Sabbath
was essentially one with the Lord's day of the Christian church,
1 Matt. xii. 8; Mark ii. 27, 28.
474 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
which, when the apostle wrote, was everywhere recognised and
observed by believers. For in that respect there was nothing in the
Sabbath of earlier times properly shadowy, or typical of redemption.
It commenced before sin had entered, and while yet there was no need
for a Redeemer. Nor was there any thing properly typical in the
observance of it imposed in the fourth commandment; for this was a
substantial re-enforcement of the primary institution, in its bearing on
the general relation of men to God, and of members of society to each
other. When associated with the typical services of the old covenant,
the same thing virtually happened to it as with circumcision, which
was the sign and seal of the Abrahamic covenant of grace, and had no
immediate connection with the law of Moses; while yet it became so
identified with that law, that it required to be supplanted by another
ordinance of nearly similar import when the seed of blessing arrived, in
which the Abrahamic covenant was to find its fulfilment. So great
had the necessity become for the abolition of the one ordinance and the
introduction of the other, that the apostle virtually declares it to have
been indispensable, when he affirms (in his Epistle to the Galatians), of
those who would still be circumcised, that they were debtors to do the
whole law. At the same time, as regards the original design and
spiritual import of circumcision, this he makes coincident with baptism1
—speaks here (v. 11) of baptized believers as the circumcision of Christ;
and so presents the two ordinances as in principle most closely associated
with each other, differing in form rather than in substance. We have
no reason to suppose his meaning to be different in regard to the Sab-
bath; it is gone so far as its outward rest on the seventh day formed
part of the typical things of Judaism, but no further. Its primeval
character and destination remain. As baptism in the Spirit is Christ's
circumcision, so the Lord's day is His Sabbath; and to be in the Spirit
on that day, worshipping and serving Him in the truth of His Gospel,
is to carry out the intent of the fourth commandment.'
1 Tim. I. 6-11.
‘In respect to which things [viz., love out of a pure heart and a
good conscience, and faith unfeigned], some having gone astray, turned
aside to vain talk; 7. Wishing to be teachers of the law, without
1 Rom. ii. 28, 29, iv. 11.
2 See ‘Typology of Scripture,’ Vol. II. p. 146, from which some of these later
remarks are taken.
1 TIM. I. 6-11. 475
understanding either the things they say, or concerning what things
they make asseveration. 8. Now we know that the law is good, if
one use it lawfully; 9. Knowing this, that the law is not made for a
righteous man, but for lawless and unruly persons, for impious and
sinful, for unholy and profane, for smiters of fathers and smiters of
mothers; 10. For fornicators, abusers of themselves with mankind,
slave-dealers, liars, perjurers, and if there is any thing else that is
contrary to the sound teaching; 11. According to the Gospel of the
glory of the blessed God, with which I was put in trust.'
This passage contains the last recorded statement of St Paul regard-
ing the law; and it is of importance, for a correct understanding of its
import, and bearing on the Christian life, to have a distinct perception
of the point of view from which the apostle is here contemplating it.
This was determined by the class of errorists against whom he was
now seeking to warn Timothy—a class differing materially from those
whom he found it necessary to contend against in his other epistles
(to the Galatians, the Romans, and the Colossians) on the subject of
the law. The latter were sincere, but mistaken and superficial, adherents
of the law in the letter of its requirements, and the full compass of its
ceremonial observances—legalists of the Pharisaical type. But those
here in the eye of the apostle were obviously of a quite different stamp.
So far from being sincere and earnest in their convictions, they are
represented as morally in a very degenerate and perverted condition;
entirely lapsed, or erring from (a]stoxh<santej), what must ever dis-
tinguish the genuine believer, whether altogether enlightened or not in
his apprehensions of the truth—the love which springs from a pure
heart, a good conscience, and faith unfeigned. They not only wanted
this essential characteristic of a sound moral condition, but had, in a
spirit of error and declension, gone into another direction, and for the
exercise of a pure and elevating love had fallen into a kind of empty
talk. Then as to the manner in which this empty talk exhibited itself,
he tells us, that while it turned somehow upon the law, of which they
wished to be more especially the teachers, yet so little were they
qualified for the task, that they neither understood what they spake
about it, nor had any proper acquaintance with the things on which they
made asseveration, or delivered themselves with an assured confidence
(diabebaiou?ntai). How could they, indeed, since they wanted the love
which is the very essence of the law, and the purity of heart and
conscience, which a real conformity to its demands must ever pre-
suppose and require? In such a case, if they continued to make any
account of the law, they necessarily turned aside to some arbitrary or
476 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
fanciful applications of it, which were fitted rather to gratify an idle
curiosity or a vain conceit than to promote its spiritual ends. What
precisely, then, was the character of their perverted ingenuity? Baur
has endeavoured to prove that it took the form of antinomianism; that
the assumed teachers of the law were in reality opponents of the law;
that they were in fact heretics of the Marcionite school, who repudiated
the Divine authority of the law, and were anti-legalists of the most
advanced type. But to call such parties 'teachers of the law' would
be an abuse of terms, besides involving, as a matter of course, the
spurious character of the epistle, since the school of Marcion belongs
to a period considerably subsequent to the apostolic age. The view,
therefore, has met with few supporters even in Germany; and, indeed,
carries improbability on the face of it; for, not only are the parties in
question represented as in some sort teachers of the law, but contem-
plating them as such, and conceding somewhat to them in that respect,
the apostle begins his counter-statement by saying, 'Now we know
that the law is good'—as much as to say, on that common principle
we are agreed; we have no quarrel with them as to the excellence of
the law. The parties, therefore, were legalists, yet not after the
fashion of the Jewish-Christians of Galatia and Colossae, for the manner
of meeting them here is entirely different from that adopted in the
epistles to those churches; they are charged, not with pressing the
continued observance of what about it was temporary, or with exalting
it as a whole out of its proper place, but with ignorance of its real
nature, and making confident assertion of things respecting it which
had no just foundation.
Now, one can readily understand how well such a description would
apply to persons of a dreamy and speculative mood—disposed formally
to abide by the revealed law of God; but, instead of taking its pre-
scriptions in their plain and natural sense, seeking to refine upon them,
and use them chiefly as an occasion or handle for certain mystical
allegorizings and theosophic culture. And this is precisely the form
of evil which (as is now generally believed—for example, by De Wette,
Huther, Ellicott, Alford) prevailed among a class of Jewish believers
about Ephesus—a class combining in itself certain heterogeneous
elements derived from an incipient Gnosticism on the one side, and a
corrupt Judaism on the other. The parties in question would keep by
the law, they would even make more of it than the apostle did; but
then it was the law understood after their own fashion, lifted out of its
proper sphere, and linked to airy speculations or fanciful conceits. In
the works of Philo—probably the soberest, certainly the best surviving
1 TIM. I. 6-11. 477
specimens of this tendency—we find the law to a large extent evacuated
of its moral import, and much that should have been applied to the
heart and conscience turned into the channel of a crude and ill-digested
physics. But in the case of inferior men, morally as well as intellect-
ually inferior, men of a perverted and sophistical cast of mind, both the
fancifulness of the expositions given of the law, and its application to
other than the moral and religious purposes for which it was revealed,
would naturally be of a more marked description. There would now
be wild extravagance, and, under lofty pretensions to superior wisdom,
a mode of interpretation adopted which aimed at establishing a licentious
freedom. And so, indeed, the corresponding passage in Titus distinctly
informs us,1 where the apostle, evidently referring to the same sort of
pretensions and corrupt legalists, says, 'There are many unruly and
vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision, whose
mouths must be stopt, who subvert whole houses, teaching things
which they ought not for filthy lucre's sake.' He further characterizes
them as persons who give heed to Jewish fables and commandments of
men, which turn from the truth, in their actings abominable, and in
their very mind and conscience defiled. So that their fanciful and per-
verted use of the law must have led them quite away from its practical
aim, into purely speculative or allegorical applications. And in such
writings of the apostle John, as were more immediately addressed to the
churches in the same Asiatic region, but at a period somewhat later,
we find indications of a perfectly similar state of mind, only in a more
advanced stage of development. They make mention of the 'blasphemy
of those who say they are Jews and are not, but are of the synagogue
of Satan,' of persons who taught the doctrine of Balaam, who practised
the seductions of Jezebel, who were familiar with the depths of Satan,
etc.:2--statements which could only be made of such as had given way
to foolish imaginations, and lost the right moral perception of things.
To teach the law, therefore, as those persons did, must have been
virtually to defeat its end, because keeping it apart from the practical
designs and purposes which it aimed at securing.
Vers. 8, 9. In opposition to this misuse of the law, the apostle pro-
ceeds to indicate its proper use which he makes to consist in a plain,
direct, and peremptory repression of the corruption and vicious prac-
tices which are at variance with its precepts. Now we know that the
law is good; so far we are perfectly agreed; in itself, the law is unim-
peachable, and can work only good, if one use it lawfully; in other
words, apply it to the great moral ends for which it was given. Then,
1 Titus i. 10. 2 Rev, ii. 9, 14, 20, 24.
478 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGE
as regards this legitimate use, the apostle indicates just one condition,
a single guiding principle, but this perfectly sufficient to check the per-
nicious errors now more immediately in view: knowing this, that the law
is not made for a righteous man. Though the article is not used before
no<moj, it must plainly be taken (as the great majority of expositors, Chry-
sostom, Theophylact, and latterly De Witte, Huther, Weisinger, Alford,
Ellicott) in the specific sense of God's law—the law by way of eminence
—the Decalogue. While, grammatically, Middleton's explanation. 'No
law is enacted,' might be adopted—understanding law in the general
sense, but inclusive of the law of Moses—the connection and obvious
bearing of the passage does not properly admit of such a comprehensive
reference; it is the law, emphatically so called, in the view of God's
professing people, as is clear alone from the respect had in the enume-
ration of crimes (vers. 9, 10) to the successive precepts of the Decalogue.
By the just or righteous person (di<kaioj), for whom the law is not made
(kei?tai), that is, constitutionally enacted or ordained, must be under-
stood not such merely, as in the estimation of the world, are morally
correct, but those who, in the higher Christian sense, are right before
God—very much the same with the class of persons described in ver. 5,
as having attained to the end of the commandment, by the possession
of love, out of a pure heart, and a good conscience, and faith unfeigned.
This certainly includes their justification through faith in the blood of
Christ, but it includes sanctification as well; it is indeed their complex
condition that is indicated, as persons in whose experience the great
principles of righteousness had come to the ascendant and bore rule.
As such, they already have what the law aims at producing ; they are
moving in the way which it prescribes; and so, for them it may justly
be said not to have been enacted. Then, on the other side, the apostle
goes on to describe the different sorts of persons for whom it is enacted
—those whom it is given to check and restrain, and bring to a better
state; beginning with designations of a more general 'kind, and after-
wards employing the more specific. There is no need for dwelling on
them: they are, the lawless and unruly, persons of a self-willed, way-
ward, and rebellious spirit; the ungodly and sinful, the same characters
again, only contemplated from a more distinctly religious point of view,
as devoid of respect to the authority and will of God; the unholy and
profane, differing from the immediately preceding epithets, only as
pointing to the more positive aspect of the ungodly disposition, its
tendency to run into what is openly wicked and irreligious—all, though
general in their nature, having respect to men's relation to God, and
their contrariety to the things enjoined in the earlier precepts of the
1 TIM I. 6-11. 479
Decalogue. Then follow a series of terms which, in regular succession,
denote the characters in question, with reference to the later precepts
of the Decalogue: smiters of fathers and smiters of mothers—breakers
of the fifth command of the law, yet not perhaps strictly parricides and
matricides, as the verb a]loa<w, or a]loia<w, which enters into the com-
position of patrol&<aij and mhtrol&<aij, signifies merely to thresh, smite,
and such like, so that the compound terms do not necessarily import
more than the dishonouring in an offensive manner, the contemptuous
and harsh treatment of parents; men-slayers, the violaters of the sixth com-
mand; fornicators, abusers of themselves with mankind (Sodomites, a]rseno-
koi<taij), the violaters of the seventh; men-stealers, kidnappers and slave-
dealers, the most obnoxious class of transgressors in respect to the
eighth; finally, liars and perjurers, the open and flagrant breakers of the
ninth. But the apostle had no intention of making a full enumeration ;
he points only to the more manifest and palpable forms of transgression
under the several kinds; and, therefore, he winds up the description by
a comprehensive delineation, and if there is any thing else that is contrary
to the sound teaching—that, namely, which proceeds from the true
servants and ambassadors of Christ, and which is characterized as
sound, healthful (u[giai<nous^), in opposition to the sickly and unwhole-
some kind of nutriment ministered by the corrupt teachers of whom he
had been speaking. This term, though used only in the two epistles
to Timothy, is aptly descriptive of the persons referred to—a class
of theosophists, who thought themselves above the ordinary teach-
ing of the Gospel, and the plain precepts of the law, who, in their
aspirations after what they deemed the higher kind of life, restrained
themselves from things in themselves lawful and good; while, on the
other hand, they were dealing falsely with their consciences as to the
fundamental distinctions between right and wrong in their behaviour,
and, under the cloak of godliness, were prosecuting their own selfish
ends.
In ver. 11 a word is added to indicate the conformity of the apostle's
view of the matter with the Divine commission he had received:
according to the Gospel of the glory of the blessed God with which I was
put in trust. The connection with what precedes is general rather
than particular; and the utterance is not to be limited merely to
the sound teaching going before (as if it had been gidaskali<% t^?, or t^?
o]u<s^, kata> to> eu]agge<lion), but must be taken as embracing the whole
of the preceding statement. His view of the law, and of the classes
of character against whom it was more especially directed, its use
rather in repressing evil and convicting of sin than carrying the
480 EXPOSITION OF PASSAGES.
spiritual and good to the higher degrees of perfection, so far from
being a doctrine of his own devising, was in accordance with that
Gospel which is emphatically the revelation of God's glory. It was
not therefore to be thought of or characterized as a low doctrine, but
was in accordance with the essential nature of Godhead, and the high
aims of redeeming love.
INDICES.
I.
PASSAGES OF SCRIPTURE MORE PARTICULARLY REFERRED
TO AND EXPLAINED.
PAGE PAGE
Gen. i. 26, 27, 36 Luke x. 25 240
« ii. 19, 38 « xxii. 19, 261
Ex. xix. 3-7, 80 John ii. 1-10, 218
« xx., 82 « ii. 13-22, 217
« xxi. 2, 115 « v. 17, 238
« xxi. 7-11, 117, 125 « xiii. 34, 241
« xxi. 20, 21, 120 Acts vii. 53, 394
« xxi. 23-25, 103 « xv., 256
« xxxiv. 30, 372 Rom. i. 19-32, 74
« xxxiv. 33, 378 « ii. 13-15, 405
Numb. xxxv. 25, 110 « iii. 19, 20, 408
Deut. v. 6-21, 325 « iii. 25, 273
« xv. 16-17, 116 « iii. 31, 412
« xxiv. 1-4, 127 « v. 8-10, 247
Ps. 1. 174 « v. 12-21, 415
« cxliii. 2, 387 « vi. 14-18, 421
Isa. i. 12-15, 175 « vii., 425
« ix. 7, 204 « x. 4-9, 442
Jer. xxxi. 33, 205 « xiv. 1-7, 948
Mal. iii. 1-6, 206 2 Cor iii. 2-18, 366
« iv. 4, 201 « v. 21, 247
Gal. ii. 14-21, 385
« iii. 13, 247
Mat. v. 17, 223 « iii. 19, 26, 391
« v. 19, 20, 224 « iv. 1-7, 400
« v. 21, seq., 228 « v. 13-15, 403
« vii. 12, 230 Eph. ii. 11-17, 453
“ xii. 1-14, 235 Phil iii. 6, 176, 436
« xv. 3-6, 240 11-17, 462
“ xvii. 24-27, 217 1 Tim. i. 8-11, 474
“ xix. 7, 8, 128 Heb. ii. 2, 394
“ xix. 16, 240 1 Jo. ii. 4, 5, 288
Mark xii. 31, 240 “ v. 3, 288
INDICES.
II.
AUTHORS AND SUBJECTS.
PAGE PAGE
ADAM, the first and second compared, 54 Clement of Rome, on the Christian
Alexandrian Jews as interpreters of ministry and worship, 300
Moses, 210 Cocceius, his views on the covenant
Angels, as related to the giving of of law 154
the law, 394 Cocceian school, their views on the
Apostles, their teaching in reference same, 156
to the moral law, 273 Copernicus, how influenced in his
Aquinas, on man's original perfection, 39 investigations by a regard to
Argyll, Duke of, on natural law, 8 symmetry, 10
Atonement of Christ, false views of, 248
-- lts relation to God's justice, 251 DARBY, his views on the law, 30, 158
Auberlen, on objections of students Darwinian theory of development, 17
and critics to Divine revelation, 394 Davison, on the law in relation to
Augustine, on changes in the Divine redemption, 170
statutes, 133 Death, its relation to the law, 372, 416
— On Christ as fulfilling the law, 224 Decalogue, its general character, 82
— On the multiplication of cere- — Double form of, 325
monies in the Christian church, 315 — Division into two tables, 330
— On the division of the Decalogue, 331 Devotion, how practised after the
— On the historical element in the fall, 68
law, 342 Divorce, statutes respecting, 127
Avenger of blood, the statutes re- Dorner, on Christ's sinlessness, 243
garding, 106
‘ECCE DELIS,’ on Mill's view of
BAPTISM, how few prescriptions re- Christian morality, 234
garding its celebration, 258 — On the believer's relation to the
Barnabas, epistle of, its style of law, 283
interpretation, 302 ‘Eece Homo,’ contradictory views
Baur, G., on the Prophetical insti- on Christian law, 48
tution, 195 On the negative and positive in
Blunt, on patriarchal ritualism, 64 revealed law, 233
Boston, on the law given to Adam, 46 — On goodness exceeding law and
— On law as a covenant, 156 duty, 287
Bellarmine, his principle respecting Essenes, their character as reformers, 209
lawful ceremonies, 318 Eucharist, as a designation for the
Butler, Bishop, on devotion, 68 Lord's Supper, 304
— On conscience, 72 Ewald, on the Jewish priesthood, 138
— On probable evidence, 352 — On the law as comprehensive of
all excellence, 289
CARLYLE, on moral law, 23 — On importance of the Sabbath, 342
‘Cautions to the Times,' in respect
to apostolical succession, 321 FALL OF MAN, and its consequences, 57
Ceremonial law, its nature and design, 134 Faith, its fundamental importance, 267
Ceremonialism, growth of, in early — How related to law, 269
church, 311 Fear, character of in Old Testament
— Greatly more burdensome and times, 170
complicated than in Judaism, 320 Fichte on man's calling, 23
Chrysostom, on ceremonial obser- Fronde, his objection to the obliga.-
vances, 313 tory nature of a historical revela-
Cicero, on eternal and immutable 71 tion, 349
Cities of refuge, wise regulations
concerning, 111 GOD, knowledge of, preserved by
Civilization, imperfect when the the law, 164
law was given, 96 Goel, rights and duties of, 106
INDICES. 483
PAGE PAGE
Goethe, his view of man's vocation, 11 Law, its sphere and operation in
Goode, on the Patristic view of the the natural world, 6
sacraments, 309 — The principles unfolded regard.
Gordon, Dr Robert, on the covenant ing it in the Bible, 11
of law, 157 — The moral, elements of; in man's
condition after the fall, 65
HARLESS, his view of man's original — Why its formal revelation so
state, 43 long deferred, 75
— On the Divine origin o^ f the ^ law, 203 — Its professed design, 78
— On the lawfulness of oaths, 232 — In its form and substance, 82
Hegel on punishment, 102 — Its relation to the covenant of
Historical element in the revelation promise, 78, 84
of law, 347 — Its imperative character, 86
—How related to moral obligation, 346 — How related to the principle of
— Essential to progression in reve- love, 87
lation, 354 —Alleged omis sions of moral duty in, 93
Hodge, Dr A. A., on the Atonement, 251 —The penalties of it, why so
Holiness, how promoted by the law, 167 severe, 100
Hooker, on the nature of law, 182 — Relation of ceremonial to moral
— On its universality, 252 precepts, 134
Horne, Bishop, on the imprecatory — As a covenant, for what end, 159
Psalms, 358 — A preparation for redemption, 169
IDEALISTS, MORAL, their views of — Economical aspects and bear-
law, 22 ings of, 180
Ignatius, on the government and — Its outwardness, a source of
worship of the church, 301 weakness, 181
Image of God, its component ele- — The spiritual element in it, and
ments, 37 how evolved, 187
Irenaeus, on the Eucharist, 303 — How related to the mission and
Irving, Edward, on the sense of work of Christ, 214
duty, 284 — Whether, and how far, binding
Israel, their low moral condition on the Christian church, 253
in Egypt, 78 — Abolition of what was cere-
— Their peculiar place and calling monial, 254
as a redeemed people, 80 — Apostolic enforcement of what
— Their position and calling under was moral, 273
the law, 147 — In what sense done away, 281
—What they owed to the law, 164 — In what sense binding, 282
— Sad consequences of misunder- — Distinction between its essential
standing and resisting it, 176 principles and specific rules, 285
JERUSALEM, council of, in refer- — Its abiding uses, 289
ence to Judaic observances, 206 — Re-introduction into the Church
Jesus Christ, His profound insight in the sense in which it was
into the nature of His Divine abolished by Christ, 292
mission, 212 — In what respect man's relation
— His views on the ceremonialism to it is like a marriage, 427
of the old covenant, 216 Lecky on the Bible and conscience, 24
— His exposition of the moral law, 223 Letter and spirit, their proper con-
— His new commandment, 241 trast, 370
— His perfect obedience to law, 242 Liberty of the Gospel, how related
— How He magnified the law in to the law, 283
His death, 246 Lightfoot on the law given to Adam, 46
Johnstone, Rev. J., on the law design 151 Lord's Supper, comparative freedom
Jowett, on the idealizing oI law, 26 in, from ritualistic prescriptions, 260
Judicial statutes in the law, their MACAULAY, on apostolical succession 321
design and use, 94 Man, his origin al charge and d uty, 50
Justin Martyr, on Christian worship, 302 Manning, on the discipline of the church 319
484 INDICES.
Mansel, views on the authority of Proverbs, book of, its bearing on
conscience, 44 the law, 188
Marriage, fundamental law of, 66, 122 Psalms, book of, the light thrown by
— Statutes in Israel respecting its it on Israel's relation to the law, 189
violation, 131 — Its great service in spiritualiz-
Marrow of Modern Divinity, on the ing the Old Testament worship, 193
covenant of law, 156
Materialistic philosophy, its posi- RABBINISM, spirit of, in interpreta-
tion in regard to moral law, 20 tions, 369
Maurice, on the distinction between Recompense, law of, vindicated, 103
moral and ceremonial in the law, 146 — How related to Christ's teaching, 104
— On obedience to the law, 289 Revenge, forbidden in the law, 98
Michaelis, his low view's on the law, 150 — Whether countenanced in the
Milligan, Dr, on the Decalogue, 29 Psalms and the prophets, 356
Mill, J. S., on the teaching of the Robertson, of Brighton, assertions
prophets, 199 on the law, 25
— On the character of Christian Rogers, Henry, on probable evi-
morality, 234 dence, 352
Moore, Dr, on the first man's place
in creation, 51 SABBATH, its relation to man's state
Muller, J., on Christ's interpreta- and calling, 52
tion of the law, 235 — Christ's interpretation of the
Murder, statutes respecting, 104 law on, 235
Mysteries, heathen, their pervert- Sacraments of the church, mode of
ing influence on Christian worship, 308 institution, with reference to law, 258
— Their relation to Christian life, 264
NEWTON., Sir Isaac, his view of God Sadducees, their failure to under-
as the Creator and Governor of stand the law, or Christ's work, 208
the world, 7 Sermon on the Mount, as compared
— On the possibility of God's in- with the revelation of the law, 220
terference with natural law, 19 Sin, right views of, preserved by
Neonomianism, what, 27 the law, 167
Slavery, statutes regarding, 112
OATHS, Christ's teaching in regard Stahl, on punishment, 102
to them, 232 Stanley, Dean, on the teaching of
Ordinances, law of, relation of the the prophets, 200
Christian church to such, 257
TABERNACLE, why only one allowed, 136
PARTICULAR PROVIDENCE, views of Taylor, Jeremy, views on the law, 150
Scripture regarding, 18 Taylor, Isaac, on imprecatory psalms, 357
Patriarchal times peculiarly distin- Tertullian, on the law given to Adam, 45
guished by promise and kindness, 76 — On the Christian priesthood, 305
Pedagogue, in what sense the law — His ceremonialism, 312
was such, 398 — On the historical element in the
Pharisees, their fatal mistakes about law, 342
the law, 207 Tholuck, on Christ's exposition of
Philo, his defective views of the law, 210 the law, 231
Plumptre, on Christ's exposition of Tree of Knowledge, design of its
the law, 231 appointment, 55
— His use of a legend in Clement, 239
Plymouthists, their views on the WARBURTON, Bishop, his view of
covenant of law, 158 the dispensation of law, 150
Polycarp, on Christian worship and Weber, on the Levitical prescriptions, 137
service, 301 Whately, Archbishop, his views on
Polygamy contrary to the law, 122 the abolition of the law, 27
Progression, principle of, in the Wife, high place of, in the old cove-
Divine economy, 61 nant, 122
Prophets, their calling, in relation Witsius, on the. covenant of law, 155
to the law, 195 Wuttke, on the Sabbath, 53
— Schools of, their design, 191 — On Christ's exposition of the law, 235