Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

substitute for that discovery, and that it was system of cyphers, or symbols, the true interpretation of which was reserved to a future period. It is no more essential to the existence of a type that its import be understood before it is verified, than it is essential to prophecy that its just interpretation be comprehended before it is fulfilled. If we consider the benefit derived to the ancient church, from prophecy in its strictest sense, we shall find it consisted not in making men prophets, or enabling them to foretel future events, but rather in maintaining high and consolatory views of the providence and the attributes of God, accompanied with a firm but humble assurance of his gracious interposition in their concerns.

A general expectation of the Messiah's advent, as of some glorious and divine personage, who would bestow the highest spiritual and temporal felicity, without descending to details, or foreseeing the precise method by which his interposition was to become effectual, appears to have nearly bounded the views of such as "waited for the consolation of Israel." Thus vague and general, at least, were the expectations of the faithful at the time of his appearance: to suppose they were ever materially different, is a gratuitous supposition, totally devoid of proof.

In discussing this point, it is expedient to distinguish betwixt the fact, and the doctrine of the atonement. The aspect of the atonement of God considered as a transaction, is towards God;

considered as a doctrine, towards man.

Viewed in

the former light, its operation is essential, unchangeable, eternal-"He was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world." Considered in the latter, its operation is moral, and therefore subject to all the varieties incident to human nature. The cross, considered as the meritorious basis of acceptance, the only real satisfaction for sin, is the centre around which all the purposes of mercy to fallen man have continued to revolve: fixed and determined in the council of God, it operated as the grand consideration in the divine mind, on which salvation was awarded to penitent believers in the earliest ages, as it will continue to operate in the same manner to the latest boundaries of time. Hence it is manifest that this great transaction could admit of no substitute. But that discovery of it, which constitutes the doctrine of the atonement, though highly important, is not of equal necessity. Its moral impression, its beneficial effects on the mind, were capable of being secured by the institution of sacrifice, though in an inferior degree; while the offender, by confessing his sins over the head of the victim, which he afterwards slew, distinctly recognised his guilt, his just exposure to destruction, and his exclusive reliance on divine mercy.

By such elements of penitential sorrow, and humble submission, accompanied with a general expectation of a Messiah, devout worshippers were prepared for the reception of the sublimer

[blocks in formation]

mysteries of the gospel; and thus "the law became a schoolmaster to lead them to Christ."

When St. Paul asserts that the same law was a shadow of "good things to come, and not the very image of those things," he clearly intimates an essential difference between the two economies, and that the Mosaic did not afford that acquaintance with the method of pardon and reconcilement, which constitutes the distinguishing glory of the gospel. But if the Levitical sacrifices instructed the pious Jew in the doctrine of vicarious atonement as it is now exhibited, they were already possessed of the substance, and the law could with no propriety be styled a schoolmaster intended to lead them to Christ, who had already arrived thither.

The passage to which we have already adverted, which affirms that the way into the holiest of all was not made manifest during the continuance of the first tabernacle, merits attentive consideration. From this and other similar passages, many of the fathers were led to infer that the souls of departed saints were not immediately received at death into the beatific vision, but waited for their future. crowns till the general resurrection, while some of them were permitted to accompany our Saviour at his ascension, as trophies of his victory over the last enemy. As this is a notion which, it is probable, few at present will be disposed to embrace, so it was the necessary result of interpreting the words in too absolute a sense, and of

transferring to the objects themselves, what may with more propriety be referred to the conception entertained of those objects. Chrysostom paraphrases the text by remarking that the way into the holiest, or into heaven, was (äßaros) inaccessible: St. Paul merely affirms that it was not made manifest. Distinct from these two interpretations it seems impossible to find a third: the words must either intend that the way itself was not opened, or that the knowledge of it was not communicated, which is equivalent to asserting that the doctrine of the vicarious sacrifice of Christ was reserved to be developed in a future day.

If the justice of these observations be admitted, the situation of Jewish believers will appear indeed to have been far removed from that of christians, and the gospel dispensation will derive a prodigious accession of splendour from the comparison. It will be seen that they were "shut up," to use the language of inspiration, unto the faith to be revealed, that their state was comparatively gloomy, though not hopeless; and that they were upheld by general assurances of divine mercy, confirmed by the acceptance of their offerings; while they possessed no clear and distinct conception of the way in which it would be displayed, or by what expedient its exercise could be rendered consistent with the immutable holiness and justice of the divine nature.

"Ibant obscuri sola sub nocte per umbras."

Led by a way that they knew not, the obscurity with which they were surrounded must often have dismayed them; while the perturbations of conscience, on every recurrence of guilt, would clothe the last enemy with new terrors, and deepen the shades which invest the sepulchre. Hence arose that language of despondency uttered by Hezekiah, David, and others in the prospect of dissolution, together with the gloomy pictures which they frequently draw of the regions beyond the grave, natural to such as were "all their life, through fear of death, subject to bondage." Exposed to danger from which they knew no definite mode of escape, and placed on the confines of an eternity feebly and faintly illuminated, they had no other resource besides an implicit confidence in mysterious mercy.

But notwithstanding the extreme imperfection of their views, inasmuch as they cordially embraced the promises of God in the proportion in which they were then propounded, and cherished the expectation of a great Deliverer in the person of the Messiah, they possessed the spirit of faith. Genuine faith, considered as a principle, is characterized, not so much by the particular truths which it embraces, as by its origin, its nature, and its effects. When St. Paul describes the faith by which the elders obtained a good report, he refers not to the mysteries of the gospel, but specifies the persuasion that the worlds were made, or created, by the word of God, in opposition to

« AnteriorContinuar »