NO. II.
In our previous paper, we laid down a fundamental law
of Messianic prophecy, and stated an argument which we would rest upon
it. We would now ask—What is the final cause, the end, the purpose of
that law'! Why did God see fit thus, and not otherwise, to reveal
the character and work of Messiah ? We think that we find an answer to
this question in a thought which was very dear to three men far
separated by time and place, but almost equally great and equally
good—-St Augustine, Pascal, and Neander—the thought that God is at once
a self-concealing and a self-revealing God—one who makes known Himself,
and yet hides Himself, to try men's hearts, and see what is in them—a
light shining in the darkness. At the very same instant, and in the very
same action or event that He reveals Himself to the susceptible, He
conceals Himself from the unsusceptible. He never throws such a darkness
around Him, that we cannot find Him, if we anxiously look for Him; He
never stands before us so visibly, that we cannot avoid seeing Him, if
we wish to do it.
Now you must observe that, had the full image of
Christ been presented in a single sketch, where all the characteristics
of His complete manifestation as Messiah were laid before us, each in
its proper and relative place, it would have been impossible for any one
to have mistaken the realisation of that ideal—the accomplishment of
that extended system of promise; the prophecy would have been as clear
as the history; Christ would have been preached before the time; there
could not have been any trial of faith when He appeared. We go further.
We even believe that God's purpose of
educating the Jewish people, and, through the Jewish people, the whole
human race, was not otherwise than through this law to be accomplished.
We think it capable of proof, by different lines of argument, that had
the revelation of Messiah's character and work flowed on in one stream,
where good and evil, joy and sorrow, victory and suffering, were mingled
together in the way they were actually realised in Christ's life, that
revelation would have necessarily failed as a system of discipline; and
that the more the revelation was increased, and the clearer it became,
the more completely it would have failed—the more completely it would
have lost all power for national instruction.
It has been a very frequent error, among commentators
and other religious teachers, to pretend to find all that distinguishes
Christianity even in the earliest books of the Old Testament. The
patriarchs have been made to speak and feel as if they had been the
apostles; Genesis has been interpreted as if it had been the last,
instead of the first book of the Bible; the order of time has been paid
no attention to; the gospel, even in its minutest details, has been
imagined to be discovered prefigured in the tabernacle and its
furniture. This error, although dying out, is certainly not quite dead
yet. But its days are obviously doomed. It cannot linger anywhere long.
The danger now seems to be, that the opposition will become as one-sided
as the error which has occasioned it. It will be well, then, to
recognise, that if Messianic prophecy were published by the writers of
Scripture in the way we suppose it was, then Christ and Christianity
were not preached to their contemporaries as He is preached to us
now, and has been preached since the time of the apostles,
notwithstanding that we can find Christ and Christianity in their
teachings. It is, in our opinion, really the fact that there is no
leading principle or characteristic of the gospel which we may not find
described in some one or other of the prophets. But, then, it must be
remembered that we have no difficulty whatever in understanding
the meaning of the Messianic prophecies of either order. We
unconsciously make allowance for the features not presented in the
portion of Scripture we are reading, and so interpret each passage by
assigning to it its proper place relative to the whole historical
Christ. Those to whom it was originally addressed had no such ideal to
which to refer it. They had no historical manifestation to preserve them
from error. They had painfully to compare the passage before them with
all other prophetic intimations, especially with those which were in
appearance contradictory to it, and then they had to construct, by the
mind's own inherent activity, a consistent representation of the
Messianic character and offices.
The fact we have now stated puts a vast difference
between us and the contemporaries even of the latest of the prophets;
and, indeed, until that fact is recognised, we can do nothing but
misinterpret the whole of Jewish history. A man who does not know the
law of gravitation must err at every step in his views of the system of
the universe. A man ignorant of so fundamental a law as we have laid
down, must equally err at every step in his interpretation of the system
of revelation. There is no great fact in it for the right understanding
of which he is not without one essential element.
This law demonstrates, we think, that although those
Jews who lived in the days of the later prophets had great advantages
over those who lived earlier, so far as the materials for forming a
correct conception of the Saviour were concerned, the difficulties in
the way of their doing it increased in the same proportion, and, in
fact, grew naturally out of every increase of means. Hence it was really
not an exceedingly wonderful thing, although it certainly cannot be
justified, that the Jews should, rather than take all this trouble, have
thrown entirely out of account one complete class of the prophetic
declarations in their Scriptures. Their feelings and circumstances, as a
people subject to an oppressive and deeply-hated foreign tyranny,
determined which class should be thus rejected. They determined,
however, nothing more. It is utterly erroneous to trace, as is always
done, the false conception which the Jews entertained of Messiah, to
them as its exclusive causes. They were not direct causes at all; their
influence in originating the popular conception was not immediate. They
were merely indirect causes, or what we would call conditions.
Unless there had been a real difficulty in reconciling the two distinct
series of prophecies into which Messianic revelation divides itself—had
there, in fact, been not two series, but only one—it would have been
quite impossible for them to have formed the notion about Messiah which
they did, even although the Roman rule had been ten times more
oppressive than it was, and their hatred against it ten times more
bitter than it was.
We would now indicate briefly an interesting fact,
which remarkably distinguishes the two orders of prophecies we have
mentioned, and of the reality of which any one may easily convince
himself. It is, that the prophetic utterances of the first kind—those of
which the second Psalm is an instance—identify Christ and
Christianity—the King and His kingdom, the Priest and His people;
whereas those of a contrasted character—those of which the twenty-second
Psalm is an instance— have their whole meaning exhausted, if we
may so speak, in the person of the suffering Messiah.
In prophecies of the first order, we find it
impossible to distinguish, by any clearly-defined lines, what is said of
the Church, and what refers exclusively to its great Head; or rather the
object before us is both in their unity—both as inseparably related, as
so connected, that what is true of the one must finally be true of the
other. The Jews concluded from these prophecies that Christ would
manifest Himself surrounded by the most inconceivable glories, the
utmost outward pomp and majesty; and even down to the present hour, men
have very generally felt as if the language employed had been too grand
for the fulfilment it had. Now, it is in part an answer to say
that this feeling arises from our undervaluing spiritual greatness, and
that all the material imagery introduced, or that can be introduced, so
far from surpassing the reality, falls immeasurably below it. But this
is only in part an answer; for the greatness referred to would
seem very frequently really to be an external visible greatness. Even
this, however, presents no difficulty, when we remember the connexion of
Christ and the Church, or rather their unity, their identity, in these
prophecies. We may, with the utmost confidence, anticipate that the life
which flows from Him will ultimately form to itself a body all glorious
within and without; shape for itself a fitting expression and form: a
Church, covering the whole earth, as the waters the channel of the deep,
filled with all spiritual energies, and clad in all holy beauties—a
militant and victorious visible body, to describe which no human
language is too grand.
It would take a long time and considerable space even
to mention the errors which, we think, have arisen from not recognising
the true object of prophecy in passages of this class. That object is
not Christ, nor yet the Church. It is Christ and the Church.
Specially should we have liked to shew its bearing on millenarian
speculations. It appears to us to dispel a vast amount of the absurdity
that has been written and talked on the millennium, both
for and against.
In the prophecies of a contrasted nature—in the
prophecies of the second class—we have, on the contrary, one solitary
Being presented before us— alone, in awful, mysterious, unparalleled
agony— alone, even His God forsaking Him—men surrounding Him only with
curses and mockery. Here we have a perfectly distinct and definite
object—a single, isolated individual. From this circumstance, it happens
that these are the prophecies which have the greatest apologetic value—
those which weigh most as evidences—those which the Jew and the
unbeliever find it most difficult to avoid the force of. They are not
really more valuable or interesting in themselves; but almost all their
statements were realised and fulfilled in the few short, closing hours
of our Saviour's life, whereas the statements in prophecies of the
contrasted class are fulfilled only in the course of centuries, and over
the whole surface of the earth. The difference of argumentative value
implied in that is, of course, immense.
What is the explanation of this pervading differrence?
Its correct explanation involves a great religious truth—no less a
truth, in fact, than the central truth of all—the doctrine of an
atonement. Since the general law has not itself been fully apprehended,
the argument for the doctrine of atonement which may be raised upon it
has, as might be expected, been entirely lost to theology. The law, the
pervading difference, does mean, however, and very obviously mean, that
while the Church of Christ was to be participant of all the glories of
its great Head, its King, Prophet, and Priest— that while it was freely
and abundantly to receive of all spiritual gifts and graces out of His
fulness, the wine-press of Divine wrath was what He had to tread alone.
There and then He could have no companion. He had to do it not with
His people, but for them. The weary weight of atoning pain
and punishment that He bore none other than Himself could have borne;
but His followers ever have received, and ever will receive, "in a
measure without measure," of all the blessings thus bought by His
solitary sorrows, and sufferings, and blood. |