SERMON XVII – William Elbert Munsey
THE LAST WORDS OF JESUS.
“It is finished.”— John 19: 30.
THE text is short, but it records the end of the grandest and most momentous tragedy ever enacted in this sin-scarred, sin- cursed world. It is the conclusion of a drama whose opening scene is a withered garden, a forbidden tree, a subtle tempter, an angry God, a fallen pair — sweeping on in solemn array till the whole culminated in the horrors of Calvary. These were the last words of Jesus upon the cross, and like everything else which fell from His lips have a weighty significance. The life, death, resurrection, ascension, and intercession of Christ, are all more or less necessary to the perfection of redemption in its totality, as an effectual scheme for the salvation of sinners. His sufferings and death constitute the sacrificial part. The text is the authoritative chronicle of the completion of sacrificial redemption. This is the meaning of the text, and the only meaning. To evolve the significance of the fact recorded in the text, it is necessary to notice the effect of the fact upon the phenomena of the Old Dispensation. The finishing of sacrificial redemption implied the finishing :
I. The Providential work of the Jewish nation. The en- tire history of the Jews from the call of Abraham to their final dispersion under Vespasian Caesar was providential, and with reference to one end ; the fulfilment of the promise made in the beginning, that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Man was so deeply fallen, his moral nature was so corrupt, the development of mind marked off so low a degree upon the scale of mental excellency, human language was so imperfect, the facilities for the transmission of truth were so few, and the age being antecedent to the dawn of accredited history, the subject of this promise could not make His appearance in the earlier ages of the world. Some initiatory process was necessary to prepare the mind of the world to receive salvation by mediation, involving sacrifice and intercession, the only plan where- by men could be saved at all. Religion as a system of truth, could only be received by the human mind gradually. The elementary principles must first be taught and embraced, then the mind according to its own laws must advance step by step to the acquisition of the whole.
To have a general notion of the whole system is necessary to understand any part of it. It could only be revealed in parts. Hence, if God had not resorted to some especial and supernatural means to take care of these parts, revealed in advance of the perfection of the whole system, and which therefore were incomprehensible, they would have been expelled from the attention of mankind, and lost in the almost endless vicissitudes of human history. It was necessary that these parts should be preserved in the world until the other parts could be added, and the system finished. In other words it was necessary that religion should be nursed in its infancy, till maturity, when in some kind of sense it could take care of itself.
When mankind multiplied their lives were shortened, and the intervening years between them and Adam who walked and talked with God increased, tradition became an unsafe channel for the transmission of the few principles of religion then known, and God selected one family, one nation, as the retainer of the elementary principles of religion, till accord ing to the reason and nature of the thing the whole could be perfected by the advent of the world’s Redeemer — by His life, sufferings, and death. The Jews were the nation selected by God for so responsible a purpose. ” Unto them,” says Paul, “were committed the oracles of God.” The nationality of the Jews was to be a fixed fact then, till the Messiah came. So much is implied in the prophetic blessing of Jacob pronounced upon Judah the father of the tribe denominated “Jews,” of which Christ was to come: “The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet till Shiloh come.”
For a nationality to remain permanent and fixed among the revolutions of earth, and to be able to withstand the pressure of outside influences continually bearing upon it, several things in the construction of the nationality are neces- sary : 1. Its government must be a unity. 2. The constitu- tion of the government must be so perfect as not to fall below the mental and social status of the people, as they advance in civilization. 3. Its government must be such as not to impede the advance of its people in the grand march of pro- gressive civilization. 4. Its government must not be so far in advance of the people as not to be adapted to their mental and social infancy. 5. The elements of the nationality itself must be homogeneous— indeed they must have a kind of elective affinity for each other. The people themselves must have common tendencies of character, a unity of inter- ests, and a common religion. 6. The nationality must be isolated from the other nationalities of earth. God’s providence over the Jews formed their nationality according to these laws.
1. Their government was a unity because it was theocratic, and God is essentially and necessarily a unity. To philosophically elaborate and illustrate this proposition is unnecessary, as it will be received as truth from the mere statement.
2. Their government being theocratic it was perfect, therefore never liable to be outstripped by the people in their advance along the highway of civilization. And to a universal theocracy the mind of the world is directed in the Bible as the final and fixed result into which the issues of Providence and grace will ultimate. To establish such a theocracy is the reason of the action of all providential and redemptive agents and dispensations. And till all governments are resolved into a theocracy they will never cease revolutionizing. God in Christ is to be the King of the world, and a pure theocracy is to be the government of mankind.
3. Their government being theocratic it did not, as a matter of course, impede, but rather promote the action of every element in a healthy and advancing civilization. This is evident from the wisdom, goodness, and holiness of God, and the constitution and nature of their government as given to us in the Bible.
4. To prevent their government from being so far in ad- vance of the people as not be adapted to them, the people were prepared by a forty years’ discipline in the wilderness to be the citizens of such a nationality, and the subjects of such a government.
5. The people were united together by the most admirable system of municipal, civic, and social regulations, which ever governed any people. The very laws of dependency and reciprocity established between the Jewish families, classes and tribes, were such as naturally to bind them together. Their distinguished ancestry ; their common and eventful history ; their frequent national and religious convocations ; and their common religion, which was the essence of their whole economy, and* the chief business of all the people ; were all elements of unity which bound their nationality as with clasps of inseverable adamant. And though the Jewish nationality is now destroyed, yet where- ever the fragments have floated, these fragments still have an affinity for each other.
6. To meet the sixth condition for a permanent and fixed nationality, God isolated them from the balance of mankind. This was done, not only to preserve their nationality, but to preserve them from a demoralizing contact with a corrupt world, as their work was such as to demand national holiness. It was necessary that this isolation should be brought about without taking them out of the world, because they were to be the receivers and dispensers of a religion God intended for the world’s benefit. God accomplished it therefore; First, by making them peculiar and exclusive : peculiar in their government, peculiar in their religion, peculiar in their language, peculiar in their manners, peculiar in their eating, peculiar in their drinking, peculiar in their garments, peculiar in their domestic and social relations. They were even for- bidden to intermarry with the surrounding nations. Everything appertaining to this strange, grand old people, was peculiar. Second, by locating them away off the paths of the world’s travel and commerce, in a mountainous country. A country producing so abundantly they needed not to buy of the surrounding nations, yet its productions were of that character as then not to be demanded in the markets of the world. They were commercially isolated from intercommu- nications with other nations to a great degree. God built the Jewish nationality in which to preserve the elementary principles of religion, till according to the laws of the human mind and the nature of things, the system could be finished by the coming and work of the promised seed. Till that event it could not be destroyed.
Also, threading the history of the Jews was the line of Christ’s genealogy beginning at Seth, whom Eve claimed as the father of the promised seed, and traced link by link by the inspired penmen, all other genealogies being dropped, down to Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Judah, David, to the bloom- ing virgin of Bethlehem. From Adam it took the line of Seth’s descendants ; from Noah the line of Shem ; from Abraham the line of Isaac ; from Isaac the line of Jacob ; from Jacob it went glimmering like a thread of gold down the successive generations of Judah. Unbroken it stretched over the flood, over Babel, over Goshen, over the wrecks of antiquity, from Eve to Mary, from the guarded beauties of Eden to the wretched manger in the city of David.
Pallas, in Grecian Mythology, was the Goddess of wisdom. She was the same with Minerva of the Romans. The Trojans possessed a statue of her called Palladium — Pallas, Palladium. They said it had fallen from the skies. Upon the preservation of this statue they believed the safety of Troy depended. Now, the elementary principles of religion pre- served in the constitution and institutions of the Jewish nation, and in a remote and collateral sense the genealogical line of Christ, constituted the Palladium of Judah’ s nation- ality. ” The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a law- giver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” The ten tribes were carried into captivity and scattered forever. Ben- jamin was swallowed up in Judah ; but Judah lived on in distinct and regal sovereignty. True his cities were often burned, his country desolated, his children carried into cap- tivity ; true the hordes of North, South, and East, often overran his territory and it seemed he was swept from the face of the earth, but out of his own ashes, like the phoenix, he ever arose and hastened on to the coming Shiloh. Till Shiloh came he could not die — his nationality could not be destroyed.
But Shiloh came, and coming of the house of David, of the tribe of Judah, ended forever the necessity of a consecutive Jewish genealogy ; and by His work completed the system of religion. He took the elementary principles out of the Jewish Repository, and commencing with them built a splendid fabric, finely finished by His incarnation and work ; whose stupendous, architectural, and symmetrical grandeur ; whose foundations, walls, columns, arches, turrets, and altars, elicited the wondering admiration of universal being, and called angels in its courts to study the wisdom and love of God in the redemption of sinners. Shiloh came, and finished the system of religion, then rent the veil and let the Gentiles into God, and the Shekinah shining out through the fracture from the Jewish Holy of Holies burst in floods of glory upon the night of the world. O God ! lengthen and brighten its beams till it shall verge into a millennial sky and earth’s Jubilee shall begin. Shiloh came and found Christianity in its nonage, as the mere ward of Jewish nationality, and reared it at once into a legal majority, affranchised it, and dismissed the guardian. No longer a babe it needed no nurse, and the nurse died. The work of the Jewish nation was finished with the finishing of sacrificial redemption. Christ’s death finished it and His dying words were its epitaph — and a nationality older than Moses passed away, the sceptre departed from Judah and a lawgiver from between his feet, and the children of Palestine are wanderers among all nations.
The finishing of sacrificial redemption implied:
II. The finishing of the Dispensation of Types and Symbols preceding Jesus. — The former dispensation was one of types and symbols. It was this necessarily : 1. The mind of man was not capable in earlier ages of the world to receive the elementary principles of religion as abstract principles, hence they were lodged in types and symbols where they could see them and hear them. 2. The spirit of man was not capable in the earlier ages of the world to receive religion in its abstract spirituality — he could only be effectually approached through his senses ; therefore religion was lodged in types and symbols where he could take sensual cognizance of it. And today when you find a contracted spirituality in man, you find a tendency to run after the visible and tangible, the typical and symbolical, in religion, rather than the spiritual. The chief power of some religious denominations which are behind the times at least eighteen hundred and sixty-seven years, consist in the capabilities of their systematic formula, and gorgeous paraphernalia, to please the senses — in fact to encourage and develop that part in man which it is the office of true religion to subdue. 3. Religion could only be revealed in parts ; without the whole these parts could not be understood : therefore, man could not remember them, or remembering he would not take enough interest in them to preserve them. Consequently God lodged them in types and symbols whose philosophic and adapted action upon the senses was such as to insure their preservation. 4. Men’s language conforms to their mental and spiritual condition. In the earlier ages of the world the mental and spiritual in man were so subordinated to the sensual, that the language was too sensuous to receive and perpetuate a spiritual religion, therefore it was lodged in types and symbols for its conservation. 5. In the earliest ages of the world, there was no written language, and if religion could have .been communicated intelligently and appreciatively to the mind, tradition was too unreliable and unsafe to entrust with so valuable a treasure — and we have another and final reason for its lodgment in types and symbols.
The former dispensation was one of types and symbols. Adam, Abel, Melchizedek, Isaac, Moses, David, Solomon, and the Joshua of the prophets were all types of Christ in some especial application. Noah’s ark, Jacob’s ladder, the tabernacle, the temple, the veils of both, ark of the covenant, the mercy seat, the brazen altar, golden altar, golden candle- stick, brazen laver, manna, brazen serpent, rock of Horeb, cities of refuge, the tree of life, in some sense were all types of Christ, and are so treated in the Scriptures. The High Priest of the Jews in the performance of every function appertaining to his sacerdotal office, was a type of Christ our High Priest — especially and preeminently so, when on the great annual day of Atonement he offered two expiatory sin offerings, one for himself and one for the people, and entered twice into the Holy of Holies, once for himself and once for the people, and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice seven times upon the mercy seat, and seven times before it.
The Holy of Holies was a chamber in the extremity of the temple. In this chamber was the ark of the covenant, a small, oblong chest made of acacia wood plated within and without with gold, its upper edge ornamented with a golden border or rim. This ark was a splendid type of the covenant of redemption, hence called the ” Ark of the Covenant.” In the ark were the tables containing the law to be propitiated ; Aaron’s rod which budded in evidence of the Divine authority of the Priestly Office, the sole means of its propitiation ; and a golden vase containing manna, typical of the revivification and nourishment of the soul de- rived from the vicarious offering of the pure humanity of the Son of God — ” I am the living bread which came down from Heaven.” The ark was covered with a golden lid called the mercy seat. Immediately above this golden lid God dwelt in an appropriate symbol. Here we have the propitiated God, appropriately enthroned upon a mercy seat, and that mercy seat covering and resting upon that which contained an unrepealed, still-binding, yet satisfied law.
On the two extremities of the mercy seat were two cherubims of beaten gold, with their wings extended and lifted up overshadowing the ark and the symbol of God’s presence, with their faces towards each other and inclined towards the mercy seat ; typical that the entire scheme was in accordance with the highest principles of cherubic intelligence, and that it met with the intelligent approval of all unfallen spiritual beings ; typical of angelic study into the Divine plan, intimating that it was a philosophic development of principles eternally existing in the system of God, and that it was a profound embodied manifestation of the Divine wisdom and goodness which was worthy of their closest attention and deepest thought, yet never could be fully understood ; and typical of angelic agency in the establishment and perfection of the scheme, of that which Stephen said was given ” by the disposition of angels,” or as Paul expresses it, of that which ” was ordained by angels in the hands of a mediator.”
Before the ark stood the- High Priest, typical of Christ ; clothed in his robes, typical of Christ’s righteousness; upon his bosom his breastplate set with twelve precious stones severally engraved with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel, typical of the abiding interest of all the Israel of God in the mediation of Christ, and that their names are imperishably engraven upon His memory and heart ; in his breastplate the Urim and Thummim — Urim signifying lights, Thummim signifying perfections — in virtue of which the High Priest gave oracular answers to the people, typical that God through Christ is the source of all experimentally religious knowledge, and the infallible truth of salvation’s- plan as accomplished by the work of Christ and taught by His sacred lips ; upon his brow a golden mitre engraved with the phrase, ” Holiness to the Lord,” typical that perfect holiness was essential in a mediator between God and man, and that the coming Saviour would possess the required qualification ; in his hand a censer of burning incense, typical of the inter- cessions of Christ, and God’s great pleasure in a reconciliation with man through Christ ; sprinkling blood the instrument of propitiation upon the mercy seat, the throne of the symbol of the Being to be propitiated, and the covering of the law the thing to be propitiated — typical of the expiatory nature and efficiency of the blood of Christ ; and sprinkling the propitiatory blood upon the mercy seat and before it seven times — seven meaning perfection — typical of the perfect atonement to be made by Christ. What a magnificent, proportionate, and appropriate aggregation of symbols, symbolizing the existence, nature, and agreement of all the facts, things, principles, and agencies, involved in the atonement.
Every antediluvian, patriarchal, and Jewish sacrifice which was peculiar, was a type of Christ. As the crooked smoke of Abel’s altar climbed toward God, he looked away by faith to the promised seed. Paul defined his faith together with all those worshippers who lived before Christ, when in writing of faith in the very connection in which I am using it, he writes, ” Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” God instituted sacrificial worship as typical, and Abel looked upon it from that fact as an evidence of a coming Saviour whom he i; hoped for,” and was not then ” seen.” Such was the significance of the sacrifices of Noah, of Abraham and the more diversified and systematic sacrifices of the Jews. Like finger-posts along the dusty highway of time, they pointed the faith of the worshipper to a sacrificial Saviour. As types they foreshadowed the great Antetype. They were the adumbrations of a substance yet to come, the significant shadows of redemptive entity still ahead. In fact the mode of the consecration offering, the breast of the sacrifice being waved by the Priest to the right and left before the Lord — horizontally, the shoulder of the sacrifice being heaved up and down by the priest before the Lord— perpendicularly, marked in the air a cross prefiguring the manner of Jesus’ death. The faith of heaven’s true worshippers in the old dispensation, propped upon a thousand altars, glimmering in the blood of a thousand sacrifices, stretched down to Christ the prepollent centre to which the faith of mankind before and since gravitated and gravitates.
But this vast dispensation of types and symbols was only elemental, preparative, and preliminary. It was a dispensation of services which operated upon the outside man. Its power was exerted from without working in upon the mind. Hence its rites were imposing* its symbols splendid, its ser- vices sublime. And though the exigencies involved in man’s nature, relations, and condition, made it an antecedent in- dispensable to something better, yet it had not power com- mensurate with its pomp and the drive of its immense machinery. It worked around the cause in the realms of effect, therefore it was not ultimate, but rudimental and introductory— opening the way for something better. It was only the propaedeutics of the science of religion. The stern old “letter” lacked a soul.
But the finishing of redemption was its finishing. The work of the finishing of the one, was the record of the finishing of the other. The completion of sacrificial redemption was its death doom, and the old ” schoolmaster ” laid down ferrule and died — and the bellowing earthquake which rent the rocks of Calvary and tore the veil of the temple asunder was his funeral knell. ” It is finished,” said Christ, and the vast ecclesiastical system of the patriarchs and Moses, colossal in structure and hoary in antiquity, came down with a crash which crushed its own temple. Its bloody altars drifted far out into oblivion, and its priestly vestments now hang in tattered shreds upon the ruins of history. Jesus the great Antetype took all its rites, types, and symbols with him to his cross, and nailed them there. They died with him and were buried with him ; and when he arose a living conqueror with a living religion by his side, he left them to moulder in the damp vault of his tomb forever.
When Jesus cried ” It is finished,” Christianity, the Minerva of heaven, the child of God, threw aside the swaddling clothes of its typical infancy, and came forth a stalwart giant whose determined and advancing tread shook hell, whose brandishing mace laid low at his feet in crushed and ruined dust the towers of iniquity, and whose shout of triumph awaked the dead. It came forth a dispensation of power working inside of the man. It exerted its power from within, working out- wards. It does not fritter away its strength in the regions of effect, but strikes right at the cause. And it has power equal to its beauty, and equal to drive the machinery of redemption to a hell-astounding, world-redeeming, and heaven- applauding ultimate. It meets all man’s wants. It is adapted to all man’s necessities. It will never be changed, and never superseded. Its principles are eternal, its elements homogeneous, its constitution imperishable. Even in its present dispensational form it will live while man’s probation endures — till the last nail is driven in the last coffin of earth’s last dead child. The first dispensation lacked power, the last is peculiarly a dispensation of power ; the first was power exerted ab extra working inwards, the last is power exerted ab intra working outwards ; the one was typical, the other is antitypical ; the one was elementary, the other is ultimate ; the one was the propedeutics, the other is the science ; the one was Christianity begun, the other is Christianity finished ; the one was visible, the other is invisible ; the mode of the one was sensual, the mode of the other is spiritual. The finishing of sacrificial redemption implied the finishing :
III. Of the promissory and prophetic dispensation of the Old Testament, so far as such dispensation had reference to the nature and incarnation of Christ, to the history of his life and death as the son of David, and as the sacrifice for mail’s sin. Long before the coming of Christ the Scriptures had foretold his origin and relationships, the circumstances and events of his birth, the circumstances and events of his life, the circumstances of his ministry, the circumstances and events of his death, and a graphic and minute description of his natural and moral character. They even went further than the textual limits of this discourse will permit us to elaborate and amplify — extending to the circumstances of his burial, resurrection, ascension and future intercession. Jesus of Nazareth filled the description to the letter, neither rising above it nor falling below it, and in that he filled it proved himself to be the archetype of the prophetic portraiture.
Hear some of the lofty predictions of Scripture : The night of the world had begun. Adam and Eve were trembling before their Judge. The curse of God was resting upon them. As yet they had heard no words of hope, and seen no lines of light threading the texture of the frowning cloud of wrathful darkness overshadowing the brow of their God. God turned to the serpent, and they listened with awful interest : ” I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.” This was a curse to the serpent, but a promise to them — the promise of a Redeemer. The serpent had conquered them, but in his turn he was to have a conqueror. The head is the sensorium, the centre of intelligent life ; the heel is but an inferior part of the body. Though Satan has bruised the heel of Jesus, yet the foot of our Immanuel’s power is now upon his head.
David sitting upon Mount Sion, sang of a coming Messiah, the trill of his accompaniments dancing with joy upon the quivering strings of his golden harp. He went down into Death’s black river singing, he sang beneath the wave, he ascended the opposite bank still singing ; and though twenty-eight centuries have trodden upon his grave, and ground kingdoms to dust in their stately march to the Judgment, still he sings — away, away on the other shore — in his palatial home built by Him who built the universe, its beautiful domes frosted with gems and glittering forever under the beaming glories of heaven’s setless sun. Yet all the while his theme has been the same — Jesus it was, Jesus it is, and Jesus it will ever be. Absorbing, conquering theme, it will ring forever ; and as countless thousands are ever crossing and ascending, it is ever sounding louder, rising, widening, rolling, thundering, echoing, till its melodies fill the universe.
Isaiah, the prince of prophets, whose book is the linguistic and poetic masterpiece of the Bible, is more graphic and happy in his prophetic delineations of the character and mission of Christ, than any of the sacred writers. Hear him : ” Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given ; and the government shall be upon his shoulders : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” ” A child is born” — showing its relations to humanity, ” A son is given ” — showing its relations to Divinity. The reason of the appropriateness of the other designations is at once perceived. Here titles significant of nature are piled upon titles, till the whole mounts to a climax of indestructible grandeur and inextinguishable glory, whose apex is the axle upon which the wheels of redemption whirl as level as the scanning eye of God, and as steady as His throne, and upon it the faith of the world may climb, and cling, and grow, till it drops its fruit in heaven. We might follow this inimitable old prophet as he advances— now giving the melting sweet- ness of Christ’s character, and the benevolence of his life ; now describing his sufferings ; now dilating upon his qualifications as the Messiah ; now delineating with a master’s hand, and pencilling with an artist’s touch, the glory of his kingdom in its millennial ripeness — growing grander, and ascending higher at every step ; but we must bid adieu, remembering that by and by we will see him and talk with him on the other shore.
The other prophets tell their story in their turn. Daniel tells when Christ will come; Micah where He will come from ; Malachi of His forerunner. The Old Testament began with Christ, and it ends with Him. ” The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy,” says John. Jesus is the Alpha and Omega of the Bible, its animus, its mind, its spirit. He is the moral of its fables, the truth of its allegories, the archetype of its imagery, the antitype of its types. He is the vital substance which gives meaning to its genealogies, meaning to its histories, meaning to its chronologies ; the secret of its unity, the secret of its strength, the secret of its beauty. Take Jesus out of the Bible and its essence is extracted, and nothing but a cold, dry, inconsistent, sense- less, lifeless thing remains. Take Jesus out of the Bible and it would be like extracting calcium out of lime, carbon out of diamond, truth out of history, invention out of fiction, matter out of physics, mind out of metaphysics, numbers out of mathematics, cause and effect out of philosophy — – that which constitutes the essential in the nature of the thing is extracted out of the thing.
The Bible is a splendid edifice of which God was the architect, and angels, prophets, kings, and evangelists were the builders. Jesus is its foundation, and the keystone of its arches. Take Jesus out of it and the whole falls into ruins. But with Jesus for its foundation, Jesus for the voussoir of its arches, it is an imperishable fortress whose walls can never be scaled, whose towers can never be levelled, though attacked by all hell’s enginery, and besieged by all hell’s legions. Look ! the name of Jesus is on every page. Through this narrative and genealogy it runs like a line of glimmering silver ; it threads this majestic epic like a golden strand of orient light ; it lies glittering in the beautiful idyls of David like a central gem around which the melodious numbers of this prince of Israel’s singers cluster like Jewels. With Jesus on every page it is transplendent with glory — it is a lamp to our feet. But with* the finishing of sacrificial redemption, all the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament which had reference to the nature and incarnation of Christ, to the history of his life and death as the son of David, and as the sacrifice for sin were fulfilled ; and they lost their superior importance by losing their prospective significance, and they sank to the level of historical records, remarkable only because being prophetic they were records in advance of the fulfilment of the fact.
IV. But the great fact which was accomplished by the death of Jesus, and of whose accomplishment the text is the official record, and which involved in its completion the finishing of the providential work of the Jewish nation, the finishing of the dispensation of types and symbols preceding Jesus, and the finishing of the promissory and prophetic dispensation of the Old Testament with the especial limitations already mentioned, was The Work of Sacrificial Redemption.
Man sinned, the law could not forgive, it could not be abrogated, it could not remit its claims, and God had no prerogative to pardon above law. God, Himself, was insulted, His nature and attributes were outraged ; and man being an integral and essential part in the unity of the system of God, his sin disturbed his own relations to the system and sadly impaired the unity of the whole. Sin is the violation of law the basis of order, therefore it is essentially disorganizing and destructive of all unity ; and being also a foreign element in the system of God, like the action of any foreign substance when introduced into an organized unity it subverted and destroyed the unity. Immediate death to the sinner was the inexorable and logical result of Sin. Death, the sum of all penalties, the aggregation of all evils, the quintessence of all horrors, was the penalty, and man must die. Man was powerless to save himself — self-redemption was philosophically impossible. His redemption however might be accomplished upon certain well-defined and legal principles.
If some scheme could be introduced which could extend pardon to the sinner, which could give him a sanctified and pure nature — a nature so radically new and good that it would be equivalent to being born again, which could also enable him when changed for future obedience — and which could at the same time expel sin out of the system of God, heal the breach made in the system by the introduction of sin, readjust and perfect the original unity of the system, maintain the majesty and authority of law, meet the ends of justice, glorify God and all His attributes, man might be redeemed and saved. No element in such a scheme must involve the slightest departure from the unbending, inexorable, and eternal principles of God’s nature, God’s system, and God’s government. Such a scheme must be no unnatural fungus growing on the system of God, no miserable hybrid born of the unlawful union of a sickly mercy and a truckling Justice, no heteroclitic thing created for the occasional abnormity, no patchwork, no afterthought ; but a normal and synchronal part of the system of God itself, finding its philosophy in the philosophy of the system, and existing and proceeding in its development according to laws as eternal and unchangeable as God.
And such it was. Long before man was made it was. “We speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, which God ordained before the world unto our glory.” Every system has a recuperative power. The recuperative power in every system is but the developments of the natural forces of the system exerted to expel foreign substances and to heal and preserve itself. Now Redemption is but the systematic development, in perfection, of the recuperative power of the universal system of God — the vis vitae of the system. This recuperative power, however, in the system of God, is exerted necessarily only to preserve the system, not to preserve any offending member of the system. The object of its exertion is achieved if the system is preserved, whether it involve the separation of the offending member in question, or the healing and retention of the member in the unity.
Whether the sinner be redeemed or damned it makes no difference with relation to the system — it has recuperative power sufficient to preserve itself; but to preserve itself one or the other must result — the sinner must be saved or lost, he cannot exist in the system an unredeemed and unpunished sinner, and the system survive. The redemption of man, therefore, though it is the philosophic action of the recuperative power of the system of God, is a matter of grace upon the part of God, the Head and sensorium of the system — for the same result with reference to the system could be accomplished by the final, irremediable, and eternal death of the sinner. The scheme of Redemption is perceived to be as old as the system of God itself, but its institution in the concrete is a matter of grace.
Man’s will but consented to sin when he was hurled by the dynamic energies of the life-giving and life-restorative power of the system of God, down the awful slope of death to that under and outer darkness beyond the boundaries of normal being ; but the mercy of God interfered, and ordered the same power which was destroying man to expel and destroy the sin but save the sinner ; and immediately redemption’s scheme, the masterpiece of heaven’s mind, the result of heaven’s laws, leaped in philosophic birth from the womb of a chilling abstraction, upon the stage of a living concrete, and commenced a legal philosophic development, sweeping to a perfection which culminated when Jesus died. Wondrous, glorious Scheme ! grand in its beginning, grander in its development, grandest in its completion. But attention ! profound attention ! to the Royal Immanuel the immaculate man, the incarnated God, which constituted and constitutes its subject — Ecce Homo! Ecce Deus !
A few shepherds were gathered together, watching their flocks and guarding them from wild beasts. The place was the country in the hilly environs of Bethlehem, the home of the poor, but regal line, of the royal singer of Israel. The time was night, and the cold star beams glanced but feebly upon hills and valleys trod by the feet of Abraham, and hung but a pale and sickly livery upon the dark walls of the city of David. While they watched, suddenly a flood of glory shone around them, and looking up they beheld an angel, who said to them : ” Fear not : for behold I bring good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you ; ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.” This remarkable announcement was scarcely finished, when suddenly a vast multitude of angels appeared in the sky praising God. The whole dome of heaven, vocal, seemed to drop with the improvisations of the angelic songsters. The night air quivered with the reiterations of their chorus : ” Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”
After the flight into Egypt, the murder of the babes of Bethlehem, and the return to Nazareth, the subject of this announcement disappeared until twelve years after, he was found by Mary sitting in the temple in the midst of the doc- tors and rabbis of the Jewish nation, hearing them and asking them questions. After this, he disappeared from general notice for twenty-two years, till he was officially introduced to mankind upon the banks of the Jordan by a voice directly from heaven, saying: “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” He then commenced his public ministry. He overcame Satan in the wilderness, taught in the synagogues, taught in the temph, taught along the way- side, and preached and prayed in the mountain. He com- forted the poor, administered to the needy, healed the sick, cast out devils, stilled the tempest, raised the dead. He was goodness embodied, virtue exemplified, holiness incarnated. He was the highest model of humanity, the highest type of the race, a man without an equal.
The third passover of his public ministry arrived. He and his disciples convened in a large upper chamber to eat the Passover, fifteen hundred and twenty-eight years after its institution. Said Christ, ” I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” And he proceeded to erect upon the ruins of- this old Jewish festival another institution. He took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples, saying, ” Take, eat, this is my body.” After supper, he took the cup, and said, ” Drink ye all of it ; for this is my blood of the new covenant.” He then washed his disciples’ feet, and mournfully predicted his betrayal by one of them, and his denial by another. It was a solemn and sad parting. There was probably a few moments of sorrowful silence, then they sang a hymn, after which they went to Mount Olivet. He then selected three of his disciples and went to a garden at the foot of the mount, and requested them to watch with him — and said, ” My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”
Why so sorrowful ? Because the aggregated sins of earth’s unnumbered millions, dead, living, and unborn, were piled upon his head and heart, and he was about to suffer in man’s stead for all of them, till Justice, insulted and outraged by . the intensely aggravated human crimes of centuries, would itself — itself, the offended without a third adjudicating party — declare that it was satisfied. He was about to be exposed, unaided- and unfriended, to the kindled vengeance of an exasperated law, which had waited four thousand years for the satisfaction of its original claims, augmented by man’s offences a millionfold per moment as the outstanding debt grew older. He was about to suffer the most excruciating, frightful, and horrid of deaths in the history of human suffering and homicides. He was about to be made the victim of the blackest treachery in the annals of perfidy, and to be forsaken and disowned by some of his followers as a miserable impostor. He was about to pass through a test at which his human nature drew back appalled, and upon the success of which the eternal interest of all mankind depended, and during which if he faltered but the least the salvation and hopes of man- kind would be everlastingly blasted. And he knew that his success was not fated, but that it depended upon his own power as a moral agent, and that while a failure was not probable, it was possible. And in all the bitterness of his heart he said : ” My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”
He went a little further, and staggering beneath the weight of his sorrow fell upon the ground. Near was the city of Jerusalem. The dissonant hum of multitudinous thousands come to the Passover, and the resounding clamor and shouts of priestly mobs rang discordantly upon the air. In cruel pitilessness the music of proud Moriah’s temple poured its trumpet melodies over the surrounding hills, and died away in echoes amid the tombs of the prophets. The rising moon looked coldly on, and dropped its chilly beams upon the dewdrops which wept in his flowing locks. Peter, James, and John, fell asleep. Ah ! he must tread the wine-press alone.
But the agony of his devotion was disturbed by the tramp of martial feet ; a disciple has betrayed him ; the others for- sake him and flee. He was arrested and led away to Annas, then to Caiaphas, then to Pilate, to Herod, then back to Pilate — a hellish rabble following and crowding upon his weary steps, and yelling till the very dust of the kings sent back from their sepulchral vaults the echoes, ” Crucify him, Crucify him.” Said Pilate, ” I, having examined him before you, have found no fault in this man, touching those things whereof ye accuse him.” “I find no evil in him.” Here was the decision of the court, and it passed into record. u Crucify him, Crucify him,” howled the mob. ” What hath he done?” said Pilate — “Crucify him, Crucify him,” responded the Priests — ” Crucify him, Crucify him,” still shouted the beastly rabble. Pilate then washed his hands in the presence of the people, and said, ” I am innocent of the blood of this just person : see ye to it.” — ” Take ye him and crucify him : for I find no fault in him.” Shame on you, truck- ling, cowardly, tyrannical Judge ! You said the lofty man before your bar, for whose protection if innocent all the power of Rome was pledged, was not guilty of the charges preferred against him, yet you ordered the infliction of the penalty. Universal manhood blushes with shame that you were a man. You may wash your hands forever, but you are a murderer, and the crime of deicide will follow you to tiie Judgment seat of Him you once, you being the witness, so unjustly condemned.
They then crowned him with thorns, they spit upon him, they mocked him, they scourged him, and led him away to Calvary. The cross was lying upon the ground, they stretched him upon it, the weighty hammer drove the nail through his hands into the wood ; his feet were crossed and one spike served to fasten them both, driving through into the wood. The cross was lifted, and with its lifting the world was raised and dropped into its place and fastened there. Millions of worlds may float to-day in space. Many of them are larger and probably grander than this poor earth. They may be strewn with diamonds, and robed with flowers which never fade, and whose beauty and fragrance exceed our most gorgeous dreams. But if they have no Calvary to diadem their beauty, of all the worlds which God has made and which crowd the universe, our world is king — the king of spheres — and the highway which leads from it to heaven is more frequently trodden by angels. We have our Cal- vary— Grand Old Calvary ! — Heaven’s Sacrificial altar — the moral axis of the world upon which the wheels of Redemption move. Near it,
” I would for ever stay,
Weep and gaze my soul away ;
Thou art heaven on earth to me,
Lovely, Mournful Calvary.”
But it was now high twelve when the cross was properly adjusted, and Jesus was left there to hang and die. The sun had proudly run his wonted way and was blazing in the zenith — in a moment more he would strike the declivity of the west, and rolling in glorious pomp to the horizon would close the day. Yet a great darkness fell upon the earth. The sins of all mankind from Eden to the Judgment, gathering from every continent paved with hyperborean ice, or sown with tropical sands, driven by the breath of God, collected on the reeking mount, and piled around the cross, and up to heaven, and widening threw their sable pall all over the world. Angels shaved the darkness with weeping wing, demons ran and howled, and Sinai rocked and bellowed while continents shook, and its penal thunders long pent up, sped through the shivering night, and tore through the quivering flesh of the suffering Son of God, and burst with horrid death in life’s throbbing seat — while God’s eternal attributes emptied their vials of burning wrath upon the , gory head and mangled brow of the Sacrifice. Yet, astounding madness ! the priests, the scribes, the elders, the mob, reviled and mocked him, and hurled their infernal satire at the patient sufferer. But hear Jesus : ” Father, forgive them : for they know not what they do.”
Unlike these, another voice, feebled by suffering, is heard, but it murmurs a prayer : ” Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom.” The heart that can pray for its enemies, though breaking, can hear a penitent’s prayer: ” To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,” and before the sun was down, and the Sabbath came on, Jesus entered the Paradise of God with the soul of the dying thief as evidence of the worth of his blood, and the fulness of Redemption. He saw his poor and probably widowed mother weeping at the foot of the cross, and John standing by. Said Jesus to her : “Woman, behold thy son !” — to John : “Behold thy mother.” — John, take care of my mother; mother, let John take my place as your son when I am gone.
Three o’clock in the afternoon arrived. An awful shade of insufferable anguish passed over the face of the suffering Saviour — ” My God, my God ! why hast thou forsaken me?” — angels have forsaken me — not one remaining — the last one flew away at the advance of the guard in the garden ; and the last human friend that might be able to assist me is gone, but all this I could endure so long as ,.hou wast with me—” Why hast thou forsaken me ? ” I am friendless and alone among my enemies — the Jews, the power of Rome supported by its conquering legions, and all hell are against me-— But oh, “My God, my God,” my only stay, “Why hast thou forsaken me ? ” Jesus had undertaken the work of redemption, and had taken the sinner’s place, and he must feel God’s displeasure. But this was enough — the cup of his suffering was rapidly filling, and now it mounted full to the brim, and he is dying. Dying now ! O God, He is dying ! Look at the pale brow, the livid face, the sinking eye, the quivering lip. The Lord of Glory is dying ! Hear it, Jerusalem ! Hear it, Patriarchs ! Hear it, tombs of the Prophets ! Hear it, Angels, and tell it as you fly, till all tht stars shall put on mourning, and all the spheres go wailing in orphanage along their eternal circuits. The Lord of Glory is dying !
“It is finished,” said Jesus, li and he bowed his head, and gave up the Ghost.” Earth quaked, her continents reeled, her mountains bowed, Lebanon shook his frosty top and all his cedars groaned, the granite split, the limestone arches of Machpelah’s cave rent and shivered, threatened to crush to finer dust the bones of Abraham ; inexorable law flung its liquidated bond into Sinai’s fires and hushed its wrathful thunders ; the bloody sword of Justice satisfied, descending cleft in twain the Jewish veil, its blood adhering to the sundering edges and was sheathed behind the Mercy Seat, and God’s perfections opened wide their arms to receive the redeemed and repentant rebel. ” It is finished.” The work of sacrificial redemption long begun, at last was done. Every legal and philosophic condition involved in the nature of God, His attributes, system, Government, and law, in the nature of man, man’s relations and condition, and in the nature of things, necessary to a perfect redemption, was fully met in the nature, character, work, sufferings, and death of Jesus. Nothing was lacking, and sacrificial redemption, the greatest scheme of the universe, for whose development all natures, principles, beings, causes, effects, and events, with concreted action worked for four thousand years, was completed, and stood forth in commanding and wondrous grandeur a structure which rose to heaven.
Its massive foundations were lain before Cain was born. Angels, men, and demons, do what they would, do what they could, were impressed as workmen under Jesus, the master- builder, and slowly through the lapse of ages, the building rose stone by stone. The deluge rolled above the mountain tops and scattered the dust of antediluvian generations all over the world, the tower of Babel sank in crumbling ruins, cities were built and burned, nations were born and nations died, but still the work went on ; increasing in strength, in- creasing in beauty, increasing in glory, till it ascended above the clouds, towered beyond the stars, and lifted its battlemented walls, glittering turrets and burnished domes in sight of the city of God. The work was nearly done — Jesus was dying — and as He died He dropped the keystone in the last and highest arch, and placed the cornerstone, the rejected corner- stone, stained with blood, hewn out of the quarries at the expense of his life, upon the summit of the last and highest corner, and said, “It is finished.”
Aerial vibrations caught the news, and murmured it along the glens, whispered it among the rocks, sang it through the trees, sounded it in the caves, trumpeted it in the hurricane, thundered it in the storm — till every rippling wave and foaming surge, every slanting hill and mountain peak, every island small and continent vast, shouted it to other spheres, as this old earth now redeemed went rolling on with speed of the lightning’s flash along its circling track. The tidings flew from world to world, from star to star, and sun to sun, from earth to heaven. Angels shouted it into the ears of the dead —shouted it in space— shouted it at the gates of hell- shouted it on every sphere— shouted it from the boundaries of being— shouted on every floral hill of heaven, every spire of the city }f God rocking and chiming, every wall and tower echoing — and all the sainted dead shouting in chorus, crowded to the throne of God and bowed in awful reverence and profoundest adoration, and said, ” Amen.” ” It is finished ” — Beautiful scheme ! Splendid plan ! Symmetric whole ! Grand as God ! His character’s transcript, His wisdom’s embodiment, His love’s incarnation, His perfection’s duplicate, His ideal of the good. Well begun, successfully built, sublimely finished — and there it stood, the study of angels, the hope of men, the wonder of the universe, the crowning work of creation’s God, the masterpiece of heaven — Finished !