Page images
PDF
EPUB
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

people. And they shall teach no more every man his neigh"bour, and every man his brother, saying, Know ye the Lord; "for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their ini"quity, and will remember their sin no more."* According to this prediction, the ancient Levitical covenant was to be dissolved, and the ordinances of Moses to be succeeded by a Law not in any degree typical, but entirely promotive of real virtue; not requiring ceremonies to preserve it, but in its very essence practical and influential, regulating the temper, and written in the heart.

* Jerem. xxxi, 31-34.

SECT. II.-The Law and the Prophets not only professedly designed to introduce the Gospel, but did in FACT prepare the way for it. Necessity of the Law as a preparation for the Gospel, shown by considering the probable state of the world, if Judaism had never existed-Extreme difficulty of introducing true religion in such a state of mankind-Such universal degeneracy prevented by the Jewish dispensation—Proved by a brief view of the facts adduced in this Work. Adherence of the Jews to their Law, proves the reality of a providential interposition-The prophecies delivered by Moses on this subject prove the same-The Law was typical and figurative of the Gospel-Instances-The moral character of the Law prepared for the Gospel-The connexion of the two schemes shown by various instances-The Jews employed as the immediate instruments for introducing the Gospel. Rejection of the Gospel by the mass of the Jewish nation does not disprove the connexion of the Law and the Gospel-Confirms the proof from prophecy-and from miracles.

GALATIANS, iii. 24.

"The Law was our schoolmaster, to bring us unto Christ."

IN the last Section, I endeavoured to prove the consistency and the connexion of the Jewish and the Christian schemes, by adducing passages from the Law and the Prophets, showing that Judaism was from the first intended to introduce that Messiah "in whom all the nations of the earth were to be blessed;" that the Jewish Lawgiver himself intimated that God would

VOL. II.

2 B

raise up another Prophet like unto himself, and consequently a Lawgiver, with authority to promulgate a new Law; and that the Prophets expressly foretold that the Mosaic ritual was to give place to a new religion of a perfectly spiritual kind, and calculated to embrace all the nations of the earth; declaring all this with increasing clearness, as the era of this great change approached. While, on the other hand, our Lord and his Apostles expressly refer to those predictions, as plainly pointing out the approach, describing the character, and establishing the divine original, of the Gospel. I now proceed to evince, that as the Law and the Prophets were thus avowedly designed to predict and introduce the Gospel of Christ; so they did in fact accomplish this design, their pre-existence being indispensably necessary to prepare for the reception of that Gospel, and in a variety of ways illustrating its importance and facilitating its promulgation.

To place this conclusion in a clear light, let us reflect what would probably have been the situation of mankind, as to religion and morality, if no such nation or system as the Jewish had existed, before the appearance of our Lord. It seems certain that the whole world would have been sunk in the most gross idolatry, and an almost total ignorance of the principles of natural religion.* The very idea of the Supreme Creator and Ruler of the universe would have been obliterated from the minds of men; or at most, thought of only by a few speculative philosophers, who had never ventured to inculcate the necessity of confining adoration to the one true God, or openly to condemn the absurdities and profanations of idolatry, which would have prevailed over the world uncensured, we may almost say unsuspected of error or depravity; since no purer system would have existed, to which an appeal might have been made, as clearly true, or supported by any acknowledged authority.

In such a state of religious blindness all expectations of a future retribution would have appeared ridiculous or incredible from the falsehoods and extravagancies with which that opinion had been universally encumbered and disgraced. The evidence

* Vide Part II. the entire Lect. I. and Lect. II.; Part III. Lect. I. sect. i. and Lect. II. sect. i.

from prophecy could not have existed; and any appeal to miracles would have been disregarded or discredited, from the multitude of lying wonders which had usurped that name, without a single instance of any plainly supernatural interposition.

Had the world been permitted to sink thus universally into ignorance, idolatry, and depravity; almost deprived of all ideas of true religion, and totally estranged from every feeling of pure morality; without any fixed principles to recur to on these subjects, nay almost without a language in which to speak of them; it seems nearly impossible to conceive any means by which mankind could have been instructed or reformed, without utterly subverting the whole course of nature, and forcibly controlling the moral character of man. Darkness would have overspread the earth, and thick darkness the nations; and amidst this universal moral chaos, no spot could have been found, on which the foundation of the Church of God could have been laid; no nation or tribe or family, who, if the standard of true religion were reared, could be expected to rally round it and support the sacred cause.

A degeneracy so fatal and irremediable was effectually prevented by the operation of the Jewish scheme. It has appeared in the progress of this Work, that when the world was rapidly sinking into idolatry with all its profanations and crimes, the pure principles of that patriarchal religion which had originally enlightened mankind, were preserved in the family of Abraham by the transmission of parental instruction until that family became a nation. That then this nation, which would otherwise have been hurried away by the resistless torrent of universal corruption, was placed under the immediate government of Jehovah, as their national Lord and King; rescued from Egypt and settled in Canaan, by a series of miraculous interpositions, which exhibited an irrefragable proof of the power, the providence, and the majesty of the true God, as well as the impotence and nullity of those base idols who usurped his honour in a deluded world.

To preserve this nation as a lasting monument of the divine supremacy, and a permanent asylum, where the truths of religion and the principles of morals might take refuge, and be preserved for a more favourable period, when their salutary influence might be again extended to all mankind with effect,

by the promised Messiah," in whom all nations were to be "blessed," the Mosaic Law was given; which, in this infancy of human reason and human virtue, was to act as the "school"master to bring men to Christ;" a task which it effected by a variety of means which can here be only briefly hinted at.

First, it maintained the radical principles of true theology;* while it clothed them in such a form, and promulgated them in such circumstances, as, without detracting in the slightest particular from their purity and truth, rendered them interesting and attractive to a nation, which could scarcely have been induced to attend to any mere abstract doctrines concerning the being and attributes of the Deity, if he had not authorized them to look up to Him as their peculiar, national, and guardian God.

The same Law inculcated the principles of pure morality, with a similar attention to the feelings and the character of the Jewish nation; † enforcing the entire system by temporal sanctions, which alone were capable of influencing a people, short-sighted, incredulous, attached to present objects, and habituated from the example of the rest of mankind, to consider temporal prosperity and success as the criterion of the power and fidelity of that God, who allowed them to consider him as their national and peculiar Lord and King.

Such a system could be carried into effect only by a particular Providence § proportioning the visible prosperity both of the state and of individuals, to their obedience to the divine Law. The continued display of this wonderful providential interference supplied a perpetually increasing proof of the power, the justice, and the mercy, of Jehovah; and exhibited the most awful and instructive examples to mankind, of the general conduct of God's moral government.||

The Mosaic Law not only promulgated a system of true religion and pure morality, and supported that system by the most powerful sanctions; but it guarded it from the contagion of that idolatry and vice which universally prevailed, by a corresponding system of peculiar laws and manners, rites and ceremonies,

*Vide Part II. Lect. I.

Ib. Lect. II. III. and IV.

Vide supra, Part III. Lect. III. sect. i. ii.

§ Ib. Part III. Lect. II. the entire.

Vide the last Lecture; also, Part III. Lect. III. sect. i

calculated to form a barrier between the chosen people and the idolatrous world:* while by the multitude of its rites, the magnificence, first of the sanctuary, and afterwards of the temple, the solemnity and attraction of its festivals, and finally by the influence of the Priests and Levites, who were set apart as the public instructors of the nation in morals and religion, it supplied the means of counteracting the attractions of idolatry.

Further, the Mosaic institution combined the civil government, the national religion, the tenure of private property, and the regulations of domestic life in one connected scheme;† all whose parts tended to one object, the permanence of the entire system. It thus effectually secured that object, notwithstanding the crimes and errors of the chosen people, their idolatries and apostasies both private and public, (which no system of moral government could totally prevent :) amidst the powerful temptations from without, and the wrong propensities from within, necessarily arising from the general state of the world, and the peculiar character of the Jewish people, during the entire period from Moses to Christ.

If it be objected, that nothing but a pure and spiritual worship is worthy of God, and that the combination of moral precepts with ritual observances was inconsistent and incredible; I would answer, with a late ingenious writer, that the natural progress of human improvement had not yet brought any nation of the earth, perhaps, certainly not the Israelites, to the capacity of a worship purely spiritual. To this fact their early history gives ample evidence. But if they could have been formed to it, such a worship, consisting in pious sentiments, and the natural, spontaneous, and unprescribed expressions of them, would not have formed a more proper test for the purpose of exhibiting a proof (by way of specimen) of the moral government of God, than pure moral merit would have been. It would have been equally difficult to ascertain the reality and purity of either. The one would have been as latent and unobservable as the other. Either of them would have required a penetration, attention, and comprehension of mind, which men do not acquire either early or easily, but only with care and

* Vide Part I. Lect. VI. and Part II. Lect. II. III. IV. Part I. Lect. IV. and Part II. Lect. II. III. IV.

« PreviousContinue »