At the time of Christ’s coming, baptism was a rite already familiar to the Jews. The evangelists testify of them that, “when they come from the market, except they baptize (ean mē baptisōntai) they eat not. And many other things there be which they have received to hold, as the baptisms (baptismous) of cups and pots and brazen vessels and tables.”—Mark vii, 3, 4. On account of this rule of tradition, a Pharisee at whose table Jesus was a guest “marveled that he had not first baptized (ebaptisthē) before dinner.”—Luke xi, 38. Hence, when John came, a priest, baptizing, there was no question raised as to the origin, nature, form, or divine authority of the ordinance which he administered. The Pharisees, in their challenge of him, confine themselves to the single demand, by what authority he ventured to require Israel to come to his baptism, since he confessed that he was neither Christ nor Elias nor that prophet. (John i, 25.) Their familiarity with the rite forbade any question concerning it. Had we no further light on the subject, we might suppose that this ordinance had no better source than the unauthorized inventions of Jewish tradition. But the Apostle Paul,[2] an Hebrew of the Hebrews, taught at the feet of Gamaliel, and versed in all questions of the law, excludes such an idea. He declares that in the first tabernacle “were offered both gifts and sacrifices that could not make him that did the service perfect as pertaining to the conscience; which stood only in meats and drinks and (diaphorois baptismois) divers baptisms—carnal ordinances imposed on them until the time of reformation.”—Heb. ix, 9, 10. The conjunction “and” (“divers baptisms and carnal ordinances”) is wanting in the best Greek manuscripts; is rejected by the critical editors, and is undoubtedly spurious. The phrase “carnal ordinances” is not an additional item in the enumeration, but a comprehensive description of “the meats and drinks and divers baptisms” of the law. Paul thus speaks of them by way of contrast with the spiritual grace and righteousness of the Lord Jesus. A critical examination of this passage will be made hereafter. For the present, we note two points as attested by the apostle:
1. Among the Levitical ordinances there were not one but divers baptisms.
2. These were not merely allowable rites, but were “imposed” on Israel as part of the institutions ordained of God at Sinai.
It may be proper to add that they were baptisms of persons, and not of things. They were rites which were designed to purify the flesh of the worshiper. (vs. 9, 13, 14.)
These baptisms were, therefore, well known to Israel, from the days of Moses. This explains the fact that, in the New Testament, we find no instruction as to the form of the ordinance. It was an ancient rite, described in the books of Moses and familiar to the Jews when Christ came. No description, therefore, was requisite. We are then to look to the Old Testament to ascertain the form and manner of baptism.
Says Dr. Carson: “We deny that the phrase ‘divers baptisms’ includes the sprinklings. The phrase alludes to the immersion of the different things that by the law were to be immersed.”[3] Had this learned writer pointed out the things that were to be immersed, and the places in the law where this was required, it would have saved us some trouble. In default of such information, our first inquiry in turning to the Old Testament will be for that form of observance. We take up the books of Moses, and examine his instructions as to all the prominent institutions of divine service. But among these we find no immersion of the person. We enter into minuter detail, and study every rule and prescription of the entire system as enjoined on priests, Levites, and people, respectively. But still there is no trace of an ordinance for the immersion of the person or any part of it. We extend our field of inquiry, and search the entire volume of the Old Testament. But the result remains the same. From the first chapter of Genesis to the last of Malachi, there is not to be found a record nor an intimation of such an ordinance imposed on Israel or observed by them at any time. Not only is this true as to baptismal immersion performed by an official administrator upon a recipient subject. It is equally true as to any conceivable form or mode of immersion, self-performed or administered. There is no trace of it. But here is Paul’s testimony that there were “divers baptisms imposed.” By baptisms, then, Paul certainly did not mean immersions.
The impregnable position thus reached is further fortified by the fact that, in all the variety and exuberance of figurative language used in the Bible to illustrate the method of God’s grace, no recourse is ever had to the figure of immersion. All agree that the sacraments are significant ordinances. If, then, the significance of baptism at all depends on the immersion of the person in water, we would justly expect to find frequent use of the figure of immersion, as representing the spiritual realities of which baptism is the symbol. But we search the Scriptures in vain for that figure so employed. It never once occurs.
As there are no immersions in the Old Testament, we must look for the divers baptisms under some other form. Assuming that in this rite there must be a sacramental use of water, we will first examine the ancient sacraments. On a careful analysis of the ordinances comprehended in the Levitical system, we find among them four which strictly conform to the definition of a sacrament, and which are the only sacraments described or referred to in the Old Testament.
1. Sacrifice.—The first of these in origin and prominence was sacrifice. Originating in Eden, and incorporated in the Levitical system, it had all the characteristics of a sacrament. In it the life blood of clean animals was shed and sprinkled, and their bodies burned upon the altar. Thus were represented the shedding of Christ’s blood, and his offering of atonement to the justice of God. But here is no water. It is not the baptism for which we seek.
2. Circumcision.—The second of the Old Testament sacraments was circumcision, whereby God sealed to Abraham and his seed the covenant of blessings to them and all nations through the blood of the promised Seed. Here, again, no one will pretend to identify the ordinance with the baptisms of Paul.
3. The Passover.—The third of the Old Testament sacraments, the first of the Levitical dispensation, was the feast of the passover. In it, the paschal lamb was slain, its blood sprinkled on the lintels and door posts of the houses, and the flesh roasted and eaten with unleavened bread and bitter herbs. At Sinai, this ordinance was modified by requiring the feast to be observed at the sanctuary, the blood being sprinkled on the altar, and the fat burned thereon. And, to the other elements appointed in Egypt, the general provisions of the Mosaic law added wine. All peace offerings, free will offerings, and offerings at the solemn feasts, of which the passover was one, were to be accompanied with wine, and were eaten by the offerers, except certain parts, that were burned on the altar. (See Num. xv, 5, 7, 10; xxviii, 7, 14.) This ordinance, eliminated of its sacrificial elements, is perpetuated in the Lord’s supper. In it was no water. It was not the rite for which we seek.
4. Baptism.—There remains but one more of the Mosaic sacraments. It was instituted at Sinai. In it, water was essential, and by it was symbolized the renewing agency of the Holy Spirit. It was “a purification for sin,” an initiatory ordinance, by which remission of sins and admission to the benefits of the covenant were signified and sealed to the faith of the recipients. It occupied, under the Old Testament economy, the very position, and had the significance, which belong to Christian baptism under the New. Moreover, it appears under several modifications, and is thus conformed to Paul’s designation of “divers baptisms,” whilst these, in their circumstantial variations, were essentially one and the same ordinance.
The occasion of the first recorded administration of this rite was the reception of Israel into covenant with God at Sinai. For more than two hundred years they had dwelt in Egypt, and for a large part of the time had been bondmen there. The history of their sojourn in the wilderness shows that not only was their manhood debased by the bondage, but their souls had been corrupted by the idolatries of the Egyptians (Josh. xxiv, 14; Ezek. xx, 7), and they had forgotten the covenant and forsaken the God of their fathers. They were apostate, and, in Scriptural language, unclean.
But now the fullness of time had come, when the promises made to the fathers must be fulfilled. Leaving the nations to walk after their own ways, God was about to erect to himself a visible throne and kingdom among men, to be a witness for him against the apostasy of the race. He was about to arouse Israel from her debasement and slavery, to establish with her his covenant, and to organize and ordain her his peculiar people—his Church.
Proportioned to the importance of such an occasion was the grandeur of the scene and the gravity of the transactions. Of them we have two accounts, one from the pen of Moses (Ex. xx-xxiv), and the other from the Apostle Paul, in exposition of his statement as to the divers baptisms. (Heb. ix, 18-20.) As to these accounts, two or three points of explanation are necessary. (1) The two words, “covenant” and “testament,” represent but one in the originals in these places, of which “covenant” is the literal meaning. (2) Paul mentions water (Heb. ix, 19), of which Moses does not speak. The fact is significant, as the apostle is in the act of illustrating the “divers baptisms,” of which he had just before spoken. (3) The word “oxen,” in our translation (Ex. xxiv, 5), should be “bulls.” Oxen were not lawful for sacrifice. Yearling animals seem to have been preferred. Says Micah, “Shall I come before the Lord with burnt-offerings, with calves of a year old?”—Micah vi, 6. Hence Paul indifferently calls them bulls and calves. The goats of which he speaks were no doubt among the burnt-offerings of Moses’s narrative. Both “small and great cattle” seem to have been offered on all great national solemnities.
The redeemed tribes came to Sinai in the third month after the exodus. Moses was called up into the mount and commanded to propose to them the covenant of God. It was in these terms: “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 a holy nation.”—Ex. xix, 3-6. This proposal the people, with one voice, accepted. God then commanded Moses: “Sanctify the people to-day and to-morrow, and let them wash their clothes and be ready against the third day; for the third day the Lord will come down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai.”—Vs. 10, 11. On the third day, in the morning, there were thunders and lightnings, and a thick cloud upon the mount, and the voice of the trumpet exceeding loud, so that all the people trembled. And Mount Sinai was altogether on a smoke, because the Lord descended upon it in fire, and the smoke thereof ascended as the smoke of a furnace, and the whole mount quaked greatly. And when the voice of the trumpet sounded long, and waxed louder and louder, Moses spake, and God answered him by a voice. And the Lord came down upon the top of the mount; and the Lord called Moses up to the top of the mount, and Moses went up.
In the midst of this tremendous scene, so well calculated to fill the people with awe, and to deter them from the thought of a profane approach, Moses was nevertheless charged to go down and warn the people, and set bounds around the mountain, lest they should break through unto the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish. After such means, used to impress Israel with a profound sense of God’s majesty and their infinite estrangement from him, his voice was heard, uttering in their ears the Ten Commandments, prefaced with the announcement of himself as their God and Redeemer. (Compare Deut. iv, 7-13.) At the entreaty of the people, the terribleness of God’s audible voice was withdrawn, and Moses was sent to tell them the words of the Lord and his judgments. The people again unanimously declared, “All the words which the Lord hath said, will we do.”—Ex. xxiv, 3.
In this sublime transaction we have all the scenes and circumstances of a mighty revival of true religion. It is a vast camp-meeting, in which God himself is the preacher, speaking in men’s ears with an audible voice from the top of Sinai, and alternately proclaiming the law of righteousness and the gospel of grace, calling Israel from their idolatries and sins to return unto him, and offering himself as not only the God of their fathers, but their own Deliverer already from the Egyptian bondage, and ready to be their God and portion—to give them at once the earthly Canaan, and to make it a pledge of their ultimate endowment with the heavenly. The people had professed with one accord to turn to God, and pledged themselves, emphatically and repeatedly, to take him as their God, to walk in his statutes and do his will, to be his people.
It is true that, to many, the gospel then preached was of no profit, for lack of faith; whose carcasses therefore fell in the wilderness. (Heb. iii, 17-19; iv, 2.) But it is equally true that the vast majority of the assembly at Sinai were children and generous youth, who had not yet been besotted by the Egyptian bondage. To them that day, which was known in their after history as “the day of the assembly” (Deut. x, 4; xviii, 16), was the beginning of days. Its sublime scenes became in them the spring of a living faith. With honest hearts they laid hold of the covenant, and took the God of the patriarchs for their God. Soon after, the promise of Canaan, forfeited by their rebellious fathers, was transferred to them. (Num. xiv, 28-34.) Trained and disciplined by the forty years’ wandering, it was they who became, through faith, the irresistible host of God, the heroic conquerors and possessors of the land of promise. Centuries afterward, God testified of them that they pleased him: “I remember thee, the kindness of thy youth, the love of thine espousals, when thou wentest after me in the wilderness, in a land that was not sown. Israel was holiness to the Lord, and the firstfruits of his increase.”—Jer. ii, 2, 3. Until the day of Pentecost, no day so memorable, no work of grace so mighty, is recorded in the history of God’s dealings with men as that of the assembly at Sinai.
And as on the day of Pentecost the converts were baptized upon their profession of faith, so was it now. Moses appointed the next day for a solemn ratifying of the transaction. He wrote in a book the words of the Lord’s covenant, the Ten Commandments; and in the morning, at the foot of the mount, built an altar of twelve stones, according to the twelve tribes. On it young men designated by him offered burnt-offerings and sacrificed peace-offerings of young bulls. Moses took half the blood and sprinkled it on the altar. Half of it he kept in basins. He then read the covenant from the book, in the audience of all the people, who again accepted it, saying, “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be obedient.” Moses thereupon took the blood that was in the basins, with water and scarlet wool and hyssop, and sprinkled both the book and all the people, saying, “Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words.”—Ex. xxiv, 8, compared with Heb. ix, 19, 20.
In the morning Moses had already, by divine command, assembled Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel. And no sooner was the covenant finally accepted and sealed with the baptismal rite, than these all went up into the mount, and there celebrated the feast of the covenant. “They saw the God of Israel; and there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of a sapphire stone, and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness. And upon the nobles of Israel, he laid not his hand. Also, they saw the God of Israel, and did eat and drink.”—Ex. xxiv, 1, 9-11. So intimate, privileged, and spiritual was the relation which the covenant established between Israel and God.
Thus was closed this sublime transaction, ever memorable in the history of man and of the church of Christ, in which the invisible God condescended to clothe himself in the majesty of visible glory, to hold audible converse with men, to enter into the bonds of a public and perpetual covenant with them, and to erect them into a kingdom, on the throne of which his presence was revealed in the Shechinah of glory.
Such were the occasion and manner of the first institution and observance of the sacrament of baptism. In its attendant scenes and circumstances, the most august of all God’s displays of his majesty and grace to man; and in its occasion and nature, paramount in importance, and lying at the foundation of the entire administration of grace through Christ. It was the establishing of the visible church.
In all the Sinai transactions, Moses stood as the pre-eminent type of the Lord Jesus Christ; and the rites administered by him were figures of the heavenly realities of Christ’s sacrifice and salvation. This is fully certified by Paul, throughout the epistle to the Hebrews, and especially in the illustration which he gives of his assertion concerning the divers baptisms imposed on Israel. See Heb. ix, 9-14, 19-28. In these places, it distinctly appears that the blood of the Sinai baptism was typical of the atonement of Christ. Not only in this, but in all the Levitical baptisms, as will hereafter appear, blood was necessary to the rite. In fact, it was an essential element in each of the Old Testament sacraments. The one idea of sacrifice was the blood of atonement. The same idea appeared in circumcision, revealing atonement by the blood of the seed of Abraham. In the passover the blood of sprinkling was the most conspicuous feature; and in the Sinai baptism blood and water were the essential elements.
Peter states the Old Testament prophets to have “inquired and searched diligently, searching what, or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did signify, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glory that should follow.”—1 Pet. i, 10, 11. Of the time and manner they were left in ignorance. But the blood, in all their sacraments, was a lucid symbol, pointing them forward to the sufferings of Christ as the essential and alone argument of the favor and grace of God. In it, and in the rites associated with it, they saw, dimly it may be, but surely, the blessed pledge that in the fullness of time “the Messenger of the covenant” would appear (Mal. iii, 2), magnify the law and make it honorable (Isa. xlii, 21), by his knowledge, justify many, bearing their iniquities (Isa. liii, 11), and sprinkle the mercy-seat in heaven, once for all, with his own precious and effectual blood—the blood of the everlasting covenant. (Heb. ix, 24-26; xiii, 20; 1 Pet. i, 11.)
In the Sinai baptism, as at first administered to all Israel, and in all its subsequent forms, living or running water was an essential element. This everywhere, in the Scriptures of the Old Testament and of the New, is the symbol of the Holy Spirit, in his office as the agent by whom the virtue of Christ’s blood is conveyed to men, and spiritual life bestowed. In the figurative language of the Scriptures, the sea, or great body of salt or dead water, represents the dead mass of fallen and depraved humanity. (Dan. vii, 2, 3; Isa. lvii, 20; Rev. xiii, 1; xvii, 15.) Hence, of the new heavens and new earth which are revealed as the inheritance of God’s people, it is said, “And there shall be no more sea.”—Rev. xxi, 1.
The particular source of this figure seems to have been that accursed sea of Sodom, which was more impressively familiar to Israel than any other body of salt water, and which has acquired in modern times the appropriate name of the Dead Sea—a name expressive of the fact that its waters destroy alike vegetation on its banks and animal life in its bosom. Its peculiar and instructive position in the figurative system of the Scriptures appears in the prophecy of Ezekiel (xlvii, 8, 9-11), where the river of living water from the temple is described as flowing eastward to the sea; and being brought forth into the sea, the salt waters are healed, so that “there shall be abundance of fish.”
Contrasted with this figure of sea water is that of living water, that is, the fresh water of rain and of fountains and streams. It is the ordinary symbol of the Holy Spirit. (John vii, 37-39.) The reason is, that, as this water is the cause of life and growth to the creation, animal and vegetable, so, the Spirit is the alone source of spiritual life and growth. The primeval type of that blessed Agent was the river that watered the Garden of Eden, and thence flowing, was parted into four streams to water the earth. This river was a fitting symbol of the Holy Spirit, “which proceedeth from the Father,” the “pure river of water of life clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (John xv, 26; Rev. xxii, 1), not only in its life-giving virtue, but in its abundance and diffusion. But the fall cut man off from its abundant and perennial stream, and thenceforth the figure, as traceable through the Scriptures, ever looks forward to that promised time when the ruin of the fall will be repaired, and the gates of Paradise thrown open again. In the last chapters of the Revelation, that day is revealed in a vision of glory. There is no more sea; but the river of life pours its exhaustless crystal waters through the restored Eden of God. But the garden is no longer the retired home of one human pair, but is built up, a great city, with walls of gems and streets of gold and gates of pearl and the light of the glory of God. And the nations of them that are saved do walk in the light of it. But still it is identified as the same of old, by the flowing river and the tree of life in the midst on its banks. (Rev. ii, 7; xxii, 1, 2; and compare Psalms xlvi, 4; xxiii, 2; John iv, 10, 14; vii, 38, 39; Zech. xiv. 8.) In Ezekiel (xlvii, 1-12) there appears a vision of this river as a prophecy of God’s grace in store for the last times for Israel and the world. In it, the attention of the prophet and of the reader is called distinctly to several points, all of which bear directly on our present inquiry:
1. The source of the waters. In the Revelation, it is described as proceeding out of the throne of God and the Lamb. In Ezekiel the same idea is presented under the figure of the temple, God’s dwelling-place. The waters issue out from under the threshold of the house “at the south side of the altar”—the altar where the sprinkled blood and burning sacrifices testified to the Person by whom, and the price at which, the Spirit is sent. (Compare John vii, 39; xvi, 7; Acts ii, 33.)
2. The exhaustless and increasing flow of the waters is shown to the prophet, who, at a thousand cubits from their source, is led through them,—a stream ankle deep. A thousand cubits farther, he passed through, and they had risen to his knees. Again, a thousand cubits, and the waters were to his loins; and at a thousand cubits more it was a river that he could not pass over. “And he said unto me, Son of man, hast thou seen this?”
3. The river was a fountain of life. On its banks were “very many trees,” “all trees for meat,” with fadeless leaf and exhaustless fruit, “the fruit thereof for meat, and the leaf thereof for medicine.” “And there shall be a very great multitude of fish” in the Dead Sea, “because these waters shall come thither.” For “it shall come to pass that every thing that liveth which moveth, whithersoever the river shall come shall live. Every thing shall live, whither the river cometh.”
4. By these living waters, the Dead Sea of depraved humanity shall be healed. “Now this sea of Sodom,” says Thompson, “is so intolerably bitter, that, although the Jordan, the Arnon, and many other streams have been pouring into it their vast contributions of sweet water for thousands of years, it continues as nauseous and deadly as ever. Nothing lives in it; neither fish nor reptiles nor even animalculæ can abide its desperate malignity. But these waters from the sanctuary heal it. The whole world affords no other type of human apostasy so appropriate, so significant. Think of it! There it lies in its sulphurous sepulcher, thirteen hundred feet below the ocean, steaming up like a huge caldron of smouldering bitumen and brimstone! Neither rain from heaven nor mountain torrents nor Jordan’s flood, nor all combined can change its character of utter death. Fit symbol of that great dead sea of depravity and corruption which nothing human can heal!”[4] But the pure waters of the river of life will yet pour into this sea of death a tide of grace by which “the waters shall be healed.”—Ezek. xxvii, 8.
In the prophecy of Joel (iii, 18,) there is another allusion to these waters. Again, in Zechariah a modified form of the same vision appears. “It shall be in that day that living waters shall go out from Jerusalem; half of them toward the former” (the Eastern or Dead) “sea, and half of them toward the hinder sea” (the Mediterranean). “In summer and winter shall it be;” not a mere winter torrent, as are most of the streams of Palestine, but an unfailing river. (Zech. xiv, 8.)
Such is the type of the Spirit, as his graces flowed in Eden, and shall be given to the world, in the times of restitution. But, for the present times, the symbols of rain and fountains of springing water are used in the Scriptures as the appropriate types of the now limited and unequal measure and distribution of the Spirit. The manner and effects of his agency are set forth under three forms, each having its own significance:
1. Inasmuch as the rains of heaven are the great source of life and refreshment to the earth and vegetation, the coming of the Spirit and his efficiency as a life-giving and sanctifying power sent down from heaven are expressed by water, shed down, poured, or sprinkled, as the rain descends. Says God to Israel: “I will pour water upon him that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground; I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed and my blessing upon thine offspring.”—Isa. xliv, 3. The Psalmist says of the graces of the Spirit to be bestowed by Messiah, “He shall come down like rain upon the mown grass” (the stubble, after mowing) “as showers that water the earth.”—Psalm lxxii, 6. Of this we shall see more hereafter.
2. The act of faith by which the believer seeks and receives more and more of the indwelling Spirit is symbolized by thirsting and drinking of living water. “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”—Isa. lv, 1. “If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink.... This he spake of the Spirit which they that believe on him should receive.”—John vii, 37-39. “Let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”—Rev. xxii, 17. The intimate relation which this figure sustains, responsive to the one preceding, is illustrated by the expression wherein God describes the land of promise: “A land of hills and valleys, and drinketh water of the rain of heaven. A land which the Lord thy God careth for.”—Deut. xi, 11, 12. With this, compare the language of Paul: “The earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing of God; but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected and is nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned. But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you.”—Heb. vi, 7-9. The figure is further illustrated in the sublime description given by Ezekiel of the destruction of Assyria, in which he speaks of “the trees of Eden, the choice and best of Lebanon, all that drink water,” and so grow and flourish. (Ezek. xxxi, 16.)
3. The duty of the penitent to yield himself with diligent obedience to the sanctifying power and grace of the Holy Spirit, to put away sin and follow after holiness, is enjoined under the figure of washing himself with water. “Wash ye; make you clean; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes; cease to do evil; learn to to well.”—Isa. i, 16, 17. “O Jerusalem, wash thine heart from wickedness, that thou mayest be saved.”—Jer. iv, 14. So, James cries, “Cleanse your hands, ye sinners; and purify your hearts, ye double-minded.”—Jas. iv, 8. In the rite of self-washing, to which these last passages refer, the pure water still symbolized the Holy Spirit given by Jesus Christ; whilst the washing expressed the privilege and duty of God’s people conforming their lives to the law of holiness, and exercising the graces which the Spirit gives.
The interest attaching to the Sinai baptism is greatly enhanced by its immediate and intimate relation to us. The covenant then sealed is the fundamental and perpetual charter of the visible church. The transaction by which it was established was the inauguration of that church. It was the espousal of the bride of Christ, whose betrothal took place in the covenant with Abraham. So it is expressly and repeatedly stated by the Spirit of God in the prophets. (See Jer. ii, 1, 2; Ezek. xvi, 3-14; xxiii; Hos. ii, 2, 15, 16.) It is true that this is controverted. It is asserted that the relations established by the covenants between God and Israel were secular and political, not spiritual; that the blessings therein secured were temporal; that they conveyed nothing but a guarantee that Israel should become a numerous and powerful nation, that God would be their political king, the Head of their commonwealth, and that the land of Palestine should be their possession and home. How utterly at variance with the teachings of God’s Word are these assertions a brief analysis of the record will prove.
The covenant of Sinai was the culmination of a series of transactions which began with the calling of Abram from Ur of the Chaldees. “The Lord had said unto Abram, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation, and I will bless thee and make thy name great; and thou shalt be a blessing; and I will bless them that bless thee, and curse him that curseth thee; and in thee shall all families of the earth be blessed.”—Gen. xii, 1-3. Respecting this record, the following points are made clear in the New Testament: (1) That under the type of Canaan, “the land that I will show thee,” heaven was the ultimate inheritance offered to Abram; and that it was so understood by him and the patriarchs. (Gal. iv, 26; Heb. xi, 10, 14-16.) (2) That the blessings promised through him to all the families of the earth were the atonement and salvation of Jesus Christ; and that this also was so understood by Abram. (Gen. xvii, 7; Gal. iii, 16, John viii, 56.) Thus, in his call from Chaldea, and the promises annexed to it, God “preached before the gospel unto Abraham.”—Gal. iii, 8. So far, certainly, the transaction is eminently spiritual.
About ten years after the coming of Abram into the land of Canaan, the promises were confirmed to him by being incorporated into covenant form, and ratified by a seal. Respecting this first covenant, the record of which is contained in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis, the following are the essential points:
1. The interview was opened by the Lord with an assurance so spiritual and large as to be exhaustive of every thing that heaven can bestow. “The Lord came unto Abram in a vision, saying, Fear not, Abram; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” Whatever else was promised or given, after an assurance thus rich and comprehensive of time and eternity, must evidently be interpreted in a sense subordinate to it. No minor particulars can ever exhaust or limit the treasury thus opened. Henceforth God himself belongs to the patriarch.
2. An innumerable seed was assured to him, as heirs with him of the promises; and he is told that not to him but to his seed should the earthly Canaan be given. (Vs. 5, 18; and compare xvii, 7, 8.)
3. Abram’s faith was the condition of the covenant. “He believed in the Lord, and he counted it to him for righteousness.”—Vs. 6.
4. The promises thus made and accepted were confirmed by a sacrifice appointed of God, and his acceptance of it was manifested by the sign of a smoking furnace and a burning lamp, passing between the pieces. (Vs. 8, 9, 17, 18.)
5. It was an express provision of the covenant thus ratified that, so far as it concerned the seed of Abram, its realization was to be held in abeyance four hundred years. (Vs. 13-16.) It was the betrothal, of which the marriage consummation could only take place when the long-suffering of God toward the nations was exhausted and the iniquity of the Amorites was full.
About fifteen years afterward God was pleased to appear again to the patriarch, to renew the covenant, and to confirm it with a new seal. (Gen. xvii, 1-21.) Of this edition of the covenant the principal provisions were: (1) That he should be a father of many nations. (2) That Canaan should be, to him and his seed, an everlasting possession. (3) That God would be a God to him and to his seed after him. By the first of these promises, as Paul assures us, Abraham was made the heir of the world, and the father of all believers; of the gospel day, as well as before it; of the Gentile nations, as well as of Israel. (Rom. iv, 11-18; Gal. iii, 7-9, 14.) Hence the name given him of God, in confirmation of this promise (Gen. xvii, 5), Abraham, “Father of a multitude,” Father of the church of Christ. But the central fact of this transaction remains. The covenant was epitomized in one brief word: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.”—v. 7.
1. The covenant thus set forth is “an everlasting covenant;” no lapse of time can alter or abrogate its terms.
2. By it the Godhead assumed toward Abraham and his seed relations peculiar, exclusive, and of boundless grace. God, even the infinite and almighty God, can do no more than to give himself. Christian can conceive no more, and the most blessed of all heaven’s ransomed host will know and enjoy no more than this, which was first assured to Abram, in those words, “Fear not; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward;” and is now concentrated into that one word, “Thy God.” What can there be, not spiritual, in a covenant thus summed? And what spiritual gift or blessing is not comprehended in it? But this is not all. Whilst Paul testifies that all who believe are the seed of Abraham, and heirs with him of the promises, he also declares that Christ was the seed to whom distinctively and on behalf of his people they were addressed: “To Abraham and his seed were the promises made. He saith not, And to seeds as of many, but as of one: And to thy seed, which is Christ.”—Gal. iii, 16. It thus appears that the promises in question were addressed immediately to the Lord Jesus, and they indicate all the intimacy and grace of his relation to the Father,—the relation which he claimed, when, from the cross, he appealed to the Father by that title: “My God! my God! why hast thou forsaken me?” It follows, that the title of others to this promise is mediate only: “As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ.... And if ye be Christ’s, then are ye Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.”—Ib. 27-29.
It was with a view to this relation of the covenant to the Lord Jesus, that circumcision was appointed as a seal of it. In that rite was signified satisfaction to justice through the blood of the promised Seed, and the crucifying of our old man with him, to the putting off and destroying of the body of the flesh. (Deut. x, 16; Jer. iv, 4; Rom. vi, 6; Col. ii, 11, 12.)
Upon occasion of the offering of Isaac, the covenant was again confirmed to Abraham in promises which do not mention Canaan, but are summed in the intensive assurances: “In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea-shore, and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed.”—Gen. xxii, 16-18. What seed it was to whom these promises were made, we have seen before. The assurance to him of triumph over his enemies renews the pledge made to Eve, through the curse upon the serpent, “Her seed shall bruise thy head.”—Gen. iii, 15. Of the same thing, the Spirit in Isaiah says: “Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he hath poured out his soul unto death, and he was numbered with the transgressors; and he bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.”—Isa. liii, 12. Of it, Paul says: “He must reign, till he hath put all enemies under his feet.”—1 Cor. xv, 25.
The covenant thus interpreted, was confirmed to Abraham with an oath (v. 16), of which Paul says: “Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath; 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 lay hold upon the hope set before us. Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil, whither the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus.”—Heb. vi, 17-20. Here, again, it appears that the covenant with Abraham comprehended in its terms the very highest hopes which Christ’s blood has purchased,—which he, in heaven, as his people’s forerunner, now possesses, and which with him they shall finally share; and that the oath by which it was confirmed contemplated these very things, and was designed to perfect the faith and confidence of his people, in the gospel day, as well as of the patriarchs and saints of old.
It is thus manifest that while the Abrahamic covenant did undoubtedly convey to Abraham and his seed after the flesh many and precious temporal blessings, it was at the same time an embodiment of the very terms of the covenant between God and his Christ; that its provisions of grace to man are bestowed wholly in Christ; and that it is, therefore, exclusive and everlasting. There can be no reconciliation between God and man, but upon the terms of this covenant. There can, therefore, be no people of God, no true church of Christ, but of those who accept and are embraced in, and built upon, that alone foundation, “the everlasting covenant” made with Abraham.
At length, the four hundred years were past. The probation of the apostate nations was finished. The iniquity of the Amorites was full. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, and sent Moses into Egypt, saying to him: “I am Jehovah. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name, Jehovah, was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them, to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. Wherefore, say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments; and I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”—Ex. vi, 2-8. In this initial communication we have the key to the Sinai covenant, and to all God’s subsequent dealings with Israel. In it three things are specially observable. (1.) The Abrahamic covenant is designated, “my covenant,” in accordance with what we have already seen as to the nature of that covenant, as exclusive and everlasting. (2.) Its scope is stated in those all-embracing terms, “I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God.” (3.) The possession of the earthly Canaan is specified as a minor particular, under this comprehensive pledge.
With all this the Sinai covenant was in accord. Its conditional terms we have seen, as propounded through Moses. “Thus shalt thou say to the house of Jacob, and tell the children of Israel: Ye have seen what I did to 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.”—Ex. xix, 3-5. The “voice” which they were to obey they heard on the next day, when God spake to them the words of the law, from the midst of the smoke and flame. Of it Moses afterward reminded the people: “Ye came near and stood under the mountain; and the mountain burned with fire unto the midst of heaven, with darkness, clouds, and thick darkness. And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire: ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude, only a voice. And he declared unto you his covenant which he commanded you to perform, even ten commandments; and he wrote them upon two tables of stone.”—Deut. iv, 11-13. Very great emphasis attaches to the Ten Commandments, in their relation as thus the fundamental law of the covenant. The first overture having been addressed to Israel, in the terms, “If ye will obey my voice,” and by them accepted, the next day that voice was heard uttering those commandments. Again the people are called upon, and again respond in pledge of obedience. Moses then wrote in “the book of the covenant” all these words of the Lord, and read them in the audience of the people. And it was not till again they promised obedience to the terms thus set before them that the covenant was ratified, as we have seen. The Ten Commandments were then, by the finger of God, engraved on the two tables of stone, which were thence known as “the tables of the covenant.” These were placed in “the ark of the covenant,” which was in the holy of holies, in “the tabernacle of the covenant.” Both of these derived their names and significance from these tables, which were the very center of the whole system of religion and worship connected with the tabernacle. The lid of the ark which covered these tables was the golden mercy-seat, with its cherubim of gold, between which stood the pillar of glory, the Shechinah, overshadowing the mercy-seat. It thus typified God’s throne of grace immovably based upon the firm foundation of his eternal law—mercy to man only possible on condition of satisfaction to that law. Therefore, when remembrance of sins was made every year (Heb. x, 3), it was by the sprinkling of blood upon the mercy-seat and the ark of the covenant. (Ib. ix, 7.) A proper regard to the fact that the moral law was thus the fundamental condition of the covenant, while the ritual law was no part of it, but a later system of testimony, would have prevented much perplexing and erroneous speculation on the subject.
But the covenant had a second condition, “If ye will keep my covenant.” This second clause is implied in the first. But it is none the less important and significant, as being a categorical statement of the nature of the obedience required. We have already pointed out the fact that by “my covenant” was meant the covenant with Abraham, so interpreted by God himself in his first communication to Israel in Egypt. The covenant thus defined had but one condition and two promises. The promises were, to bring them out of the bondage of Egypt and give them the land of Canaan, and to be to them a God. The condition was, that Israel, in turn, would surrender themselves to be for a people to God. (Ex. vi, 7.) This condition is the only thing that can be meant by the phrase, “If ye will keep my covenant.” It was the only duty laid upon them by that covenant. We thus find the two fundamental conditions of the Sinai covenant to have been in the terms, “If ye will obey my voice indeed”—the voice that spake in the Ten Commandments—and, “If ye will keep my covenant,” to be a willing people unto me, and cleave to me as your God. Such was the foundation-stone on which the church was built.
As were the conditions of the covenant, so were its promises altogether and eminently spiritual.
1. “Ye shall be unto me a peculiar treasure above all people; for all the earth is mine.” A treasure is a property, valuable, highly prized, and cherished. It is riches to the owner; his enjoyments largely depend thereon; and over it he therefore exercises a watchful guardianship. Such was the relation which, by the covenant, God conferred on Israel. The expression is strengthened by the qualifying adjective, “peculiar,” which means, special and exclusive. “My own special treasure.” What was thus implied may be gathered from a single Scripture. Says the Lord, by Malachi: “Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written before him for them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name. And they shall be mine, saith the Lord of hosts, in that day when I make up my jewels” (“my peculiar treasures.” The word in the original is the same), “and I will spare them, as a man spareth his own son that serveth him. Then shall ye return and discern between the righteous and the wicked; between him that serveth God, and him that serveth him not.”—Mal. iii. 16-18. By this clause, Israel became the object of God’s assiduous watchfulness and constant care as his own peculiar treasure of price.
2. The parenthetic clause, “For all the earth is mine,” is of singular interest. The covenant with Abraham conveyed the assurance that in him should “all the families of the earth be blessed.” The clause inserted in the Sinai overture was a reminder to Israel of that fact, to certify them and the world that the purpose concerning the latter was unchanged, that the peculiar relation now assumed toward Israel was not incongruous to it; that, on the contrary, whilst Israel was first, it was not alone in the obligations and promises of the covenant. “All the earth is mine;” and the claim which, in such a transaction, God thus makes he will surely vindicate, in his own good time, by taking his own to himself, bringing them, also, within the pale of his covenant, and gathering from them a revenue of praise and glory.
3. “A kingdom of priests.” Israel’s acceptance of the first condition of the covenant, “If ye will obey my voice,” erected them into a kingdom, of which God was the alone sovereign,—the kingdom of God. This promise defines the character and function of that kingdom,—“a kingdom of priests;” or, rather, “a priest-kingdom.” Israel was thus ordained to the exalted office of intercessory mediation for the world, and of testimony to it on God’s behalf. Had ten righteous men been found in the cities of the plain, they would have been spared, for the sake of those ten. (Gen. xviii, 32.) The angels of destruction could do nothing to Sodom until Lot departed out of it. (Ib. xix, 22.) Had one righteous man been found in Jerusalem in the days of Jeremiah, the city would have been spared for the sake of that one. (Jer. v, 1.) Aaron the priest, with his golden censer—a type of the prayers of the saints (Rev. v, 8; viii, 3)—standing between the living and the dead, stayed the plague in the camp of Israel. (Num. xvi, 46-48.) So, Israel itself was now ordained a mediating priest, to stand for the time then present, between the living and the dead of the nations, in the ordinances at the sanctuary, uplifting a censer of intercession which stayed the sword of justice that was ready to destroy them; and appointed to become at length the agent of the world’s salvation, through atonement made by one of their nation, and the gospel sent forth from Jerusalem to all the world, by the preaching of Israel’s sons. Thus was it a priest-kingdom, set apart and sanctified of God, to be for salvation to all the ends of the earth.
This priestly consecration of Israel, moreover, constituted her a witness on behalf of God among the nations. It was the lighting of a lamp to shine amid the darkness of the world. The office to which she was thus ordained was not yet aggressive; for the times of the Gentiles were not come. Yet was hers none the less a public and active testimony, which, if they would, the Gentiles could hear, a gospel light which did, in fact, penetrate far into the darkness, and prepared the nations for the coming of Christ and the gospel day. For the time being, it was the office of Israel to cherish the light, by keeping the oracles and maintaining the ordinances of God’s worship, and transmitting them to their children, until the fullness of time.
4. “A holy nation.” The word “holy” primarily designates the completeness and symmetry of the moral perfections of God. From hence, it is transferred to those attributes in the intelligent creatures which are in the likeness of God’s holiness. And, as the distinguishing characteristic of holiness in a creature is surrender and consecration to God, the word is used to designate all such things as are his by peculiar dedication to his service. Thus, the altar, the tabernacle, and all the vessels and things pertaining thereto, were holy. So the tithe of the land, of the flocks, and of the herds, was holy; and the firstborn of men and of beasts. (Lev. xxvii, 30, 32; Luke ii, 23.) In this sense of accepted consecration, and of appropriation to himself, God here puts upon Israel the designation of “a holy nation.” Henceforth, they were so named, and the obligation implied therein constantly insisted upon, as demanding from them real separation to God, and holiness of heart and life. Says the Lord: “Ye shall be holy men unto me, neither shall ye eat any flesh that is torn of beasts in the field.”—Ex. xxii, 31. Moses exhorts them to abhor and destroy the idols of the land, “For thou art a holy people unto the Lord thy God; the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth.... Thou shalt, therefore, keep the commandments and the statutes and the judgments which I command thee this day to do them.”—Deut. vii, 6-11. From this article of the covenant, the New Testament designation of the members of the visible church is derived. Says Peter, “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.”—1 Peter, ii, 9. Hence, the name of “saints,” or, “holy ones,” which, familiar in the Psalms, is constantly used in the epistles, as the distinctive title of the members of the New Testament Church.
Thus it appears that in all the provisions of the covenant earthly and temporal blessings are not once alluded to. That clause of the Abrahamic covenant which concerned the possession of Canaan was, indeed, referred to at Sinai, and Israel was assured of its fulfillment. (Ex. xxiii, 23.) But it was then, and ever after, spoken of and treated as already and finally settled by the promise made to Abraham. (Ex. vi, 3-8; Deut. vii, 7-9; ix, 5, 6; Psalm cv, 8-11.) Moreover, the bestowal of Canaan was in no sense a secular transaction. Not only as a type of the better country was it designed and calculated to awaken and stimulate heavenly aspirations. (Heb. xi, 8-16.) But, like the fastnesses of the Alps, for centuries the retreat and home of the gospel among the martyr Waldenses, Canaan, planted in the very center of the old world-empires, and upon the mid line of march of the world’s great history, was chosen and prepared of God as a fortress of security entrenched for Israel’s protection, in the midst of the apostate and hostile nations, while tending and nourishing the beacon fire of gospel light which glowed on Mount Zion, and shed its beams afar into the gloom of thick darkness which enshrouded the world. As such, it was assured to Abraham’s seed by the covenant with him and the seal set in their flesh.
The Sinai covenant gave origin to the visible church of God. By the visible church, I mean that society among men which God has called and taken into covenant and communion with himself, and ordained to be his witness to the world. Two points are essentially involved in the definition. The first is the relation to God established by the terms—“I will take you to me for a people; and I will be to you a God.” The second is the office to which the church is thus called and ordained, to be God’s witness, testifying on his behalf against the world’s apostasy. Such is Peter’s declaration, quoting the terms of the Sinai covenant, and applying them to the New Testament church: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light; which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God.”—1 Peter ii, 9, 10. This privilege of communion, and this office of testimony were implied and involved in the whole covenant, and all its terms; but especially indicated by that expression, “Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.” It is the privilege of priests to draw nigh to God, and their office to testify on God’s behalf to men.
The manner and meaning of the designation by which, throughout the Greek Scriptures of the Old Testament and of the New, the body thus constituted is known as the ekklēsia, the church, is worthy of special notice in this connection. The fact of God having met with Israel at Sinai, and communed with them in an audible voice, is referred to by Moses and emphasized as being a signal demonstration of relations established of extraordinary intimacy. “What nation is there so great, which hath God so nigh unto them as the Lord our God in all things that we call upon him for?... Take heed to thyself, and keep thy soul diligently, lest thou forget the things which thine eyes have seen, and lest they depart from thy heart, all the days of thy life; but teach them thy sons and thy sons’ sons, specially the day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb, when the Lord said unto me, Gather me the people together, and I will make them hear my words, that they may learn to fear me all the days that they shall live upon the earth, and that they may teach their children.... And the Lord spake unto you out of the midst of the fire; ye heard the voice of the words, but saw no similitude; only ye heard a voice.”—Deut. iv, 7-13. Again, he says: “Ask now of the days that are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and ask from one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such a thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it. Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of fire, as thou, hast heard, and live? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, and by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terrors, according to all that the Lord thy God did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is God; there is none else beside him.”—Ib. iv, 32-35.
The presence of God with Israel, thus impressively manifested, was not casual or transient. The fires and the terrors of Sinai were indeed withdrawn. But the tabernacle of testimony was erected, and the shechinah there revealed for the express purpose of being a testimony to Israel that God was with them dwelling in their midst. Of the services to be there established, he directed Moses that there should be “a continual burnt-offering throughout your generations, at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation before the Lord, where I will meet you to speak there unto thee. And there will I meet with the children of Israel, and the tabernacle” (or rather, as the margin, “Israel”) “shall be sanctified by my glory. And I will dwell among the children of Israel, and will be their God.”—Ex. xxix, 42-46.
Thus the gathering of Israel at Sinai was not a mere congregation or assembling of the people to each other, but a meeting with God; and this fact is very remarkably indicated in the Septuagint Greek. In the description of the Sinai scene, given in Deut. iv, in that version, the tenth verse stands thus: “The day that thou stoodest before the Lord thy God in Horeb (tē hēmera tēs ekklēsias), in the day of the assembly, when the Lord said to me (Ekklēsiason pros me), Assemble to me the people.” Previous to that occasion the word ekklēsia is not found in the Greek Scriptures. That day was, by Moses, habitually designated “the day of the ekklēsia—the assembly” (Deut. ix, 10; x, 4; xviii, 16), and the reason of the designation is thus, by the Greek translators, stamped upon the face of that version. It was so called because the people on that day met with God, in compliance with the command (Ekklēsiason), “Assemble to me the people.” In accordance with the special meaning to which the word was thus appropriated it is used throughout the Scriptures. In the Old Testament and Apocrypha it occurs nearly one hundred times, and a careful examination fails to discover an instance in which it is used otherwise than to designate Israel in their sacred character as the covenant people of God. In that sense it passed into the New Testament. In one place it is exceptionally used by the town clerk of the Greek city of Ephesus, and by Luke, after him, in its classic meaning, to designate an assembly of the freemen of the city. (Acts xix, 39, 41.) But everywhere else it is employed in the same sense as in the Septuagint. It is thus applied (1) to Israel in the wilderness (Acts vii, 38), and at the temple (Heb. ii, 12); (2) to the religious assemblies of the Jews during the time of Christ’s ministry (Matt. xviii, 17), and ever afterwards, in the Acts, Epistles, and Revelation, to the New Testament Church. According, therefore, to the uniform usage of the Scriptures, the word is appropriated to designate an assembly with God, and, in a secondary sense, the people as related to such an assembly. Such is the designation given to Israel as the people of God by covenant and fellowship, among whom he held the communion of mutual converse, he with them in the words of his testimony and the communications of his grace, and they with him in all things in which they called upon him. (Deut. iv, 7. Compare Matt. xviii, 20; Acts x, 33.) In the assembly of Israel, the church of the apostles finds an origin in no wise unworthy her own lofty character and office. Happy she when with conscious experience she can take to herself the glad words of Israel’s song, “There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved; God shall help her, and that right early.... The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge.”—Psalm xlvi, 4-7.
The following were the essential features of the constitution of the church thus erected:
1. Its fundamental charter was the covenant, embracing the ten commandments, in the reciprocal terms which have been considered in the preceding chapter.
2. The persons with whom these terms were made, and who were comprehended in the society thereupon erected, were all those, whether of Israel or the Gentiles, together with their households, who made credible profession of accepting the covenant, and were thereupon sealed with its baptismal seal. To this point we shall presently return.
3. The radical principle of organization was that of parental headship and family unity. The family is the divine original of all human society, as the parental office is of all human authority. Upon this basis was founded the Abrahamic covenant, and upon it was erected the system of government for Israel. It was administered by the fathers of families, of houses, and of tribes; the first-born son succeeding to his father as head of his house, under the designation of elder. This system was recognized in the first commission of Moses from God, and the elders, or heads of houses, were united with him in his mission to Pharaoh. (Ex. iii, 16, 18; iv, 29.) To them was committed the ordering of the passover on the night of the exodus. (Ib. xii, 21.) At Sinai, before the giving of the covenant, the system was perfected in its details, at the suggestion of Jethro, with the sanction of God. (Ex. xviii, 12-24.) Immediately upon the sealing of the covenant seventy of the elders, who had been previously assembled by the command of God, went up, as already stated, with Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu, into the mount, and there celebrated on Israel’s behalf the feast of the covenant. “They saw the God of Israel, and did eat and drink.”—Ex. xxiv, 1, 9-11. Afterward, when the covenant was renewed in the plains of Moab, the relation of the elders thereto, in their official capacity, was expressly stated. “Ye stand this day, all of you, before the Lord your God, your captains of your tribes, your elders and your officers, with all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives.”—Deut. xxix, 10.
Such were the essential features of the constitution of the church, as ordained at Sinai. To her, thus organized, were given ordinances of testimony, concerning which a few points only are here necessary. Since she was appointed simply to maintain, in her position in the midst of the nations, the lamp of gospel truth ever shining, until the set time should come for sending it forth through the world, the ordinances of testimony which were intrusted to her were adapted expressly to this office. They were: (1.) The oracles of God, his written word, from time to time imparted through Moses and other holy men, who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. (Rom. iii, 2; 2 Pet. i, 21.) (2.) The holy convocations of the Sabbath days. (Lev. xxiii, 3; 1 Kings iv, 23; Acts xv, 21.) (3.) The priesthood and ritual service. (4.) The sanctuary worship and festivals. (5.) Public professions of faith, occasional and stated. (Deut. xxvi.) (6.) Poetic recitations and psalmody. (Ex. xv, 1-21; Deut. xxxi, xxxii; the book of Psalms.)
It was with a special view to the witnessing office of the church of Israel that the ritual system was constructed. The covenant and the ritual were testimonies to the better covenant and the heavenly realities which belong to it. It is with this view that the word “testimony” is so much used in designating them. Thus the Ten Commandments, the fundamental law of the covenant, were frequently designated “the testimony.” (Ex. xxv, 21.) The tables on which they were written were, in like manner, “the tables of the testimony.” They were kept in “the ark of the testimony,” which was in “the tabernacle of the testimony.” In the same way the whole system of ordinances and laws given to Israel is designated “the testimonies of God.” Of them, and the office of the church concerning them, the Psalmist says: “He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children, that the generation to come might know them: even the children which should be born; who should arise and declare them to their children; that they might set their hope in God, and not forget his works, but keep his commandments.”—Psalm lxxviii, 5-7.
Respecting the ritual system, there are two propositions which are believed to be demonstrable, but are here presented without argument. The first is, that these rites were not dark forms, veiling rather than disclosing a new revelation; but were inscriptions in luminous characters, setting forth the doctrines of a faith well understood by the patriarchs and fathers from the beginning, and from them transmitted and known to Israel. Second. The ritual forms in which the gospel was clothed in the Levitical system were far more suitable for the purposes of popular instruction and world-wide dissemination than would have been any conceivable exposition of it in writing. The art of writing was in its infancy. A written gospel would have been, even to Israel, a sealed book; how much more to all other people! The history and laws were put in writing and kept at the sanctuary for the direction of the priests and magistrates in the performance of their duties, the administration of justice, and the instruction of Israel. But the gospel, for the people, was clothed in forms which required no interpreter, which meant the same in every language under heaven, and which were calculated, by their appeals to the imagination through the eye and the senses, to stamp themselves indelibly upon the memory and the affections. Thus were they eminently adapted to arrest the attention and impress the minds of strangers, and of the young, for whom especially they were designed. (Ex. xii, 26; xiii, 14; Deut. vi, 20; Josh. iv, 6, 21; 1 Kings viii, 41, 42.)
The fact is of an importance which entitles it to distinct and emphatic mention, that the Aaronic priesthood and the ritual law were no part of the constitution of the church, as it was established by the covenant. They were not in existence when the covenant was made, but were ordinances afterward given to the church, as already existent and organized. They were bestowed as means of fulfilling her witnessing office, means adapted to the times and circumstances of Israel, but subject to be modified, as they were in the temple system, or to be wholly suspended or set aside, without impairing the constitution of the church or the completeness and efficiency of its organization. Not only thus did the covenant precede the ritual law and the priesthood, but when, forty years afterward, the covenant was renewed, and the parties to it were enumerated in detail, the priests were altogether ignored. (Deut. xxix, 10-12.) They were in no wise essential to it.
With some slight circumstantial differences, having reference to the difference in the office of the church under the two dispensations, the conditions of membership were essentially the same as propounded at Sinai and as prescribed under the gospel. While the spiritual blessings of the covenant were from the beginning conditioned upon true faith and loving obedience, the privilege of membership in the visible church was at Sinai bestowed upon those, with their households, who made credible profession of these graces, and upon them only. On “the day of the assembly,” all the people professed to take God for their God, and to devote themselves to him as his believing and obedient people. And as on the days of Pentecost, so on this occasion, the profession was accepted, and their admission was sealed with baptism; although doubtless, in both cases, there were false professors included with the true. With certain exceptions, ordained for special reasons (Deut. xxiii, 1-8), the conditions of membership were the same for the Gentile world as for Israel. The law was explicit and most emphatic on this point. “One ordinance shall be both for you of the congregation and also for the stranger that sojourneth with you, an ordinance forever in your generations: as ye are, so shall the stranger be before the Lord. One law and one manner shall be for you and for the stranger that sojourneth with you.”—Num. xv, 14-16, and 29; and see ix, 14; xix, 10; Ex. xii, 43-49; Deut. xxxi, 12; Josh. viii, 33, etc.
For eliminating unworthy members, the means provided in the Sinai ordinances were as abundant as those now enjoyed by the church, and would seem to have been as well adapted to the effectual securing of the end proposed. They come under three heads. (1.) Certain offenses were visited with the penalty of death or of utter separation from the communion of Israel. (Ex. xxxi, 14; Num. ix, 13, etc.) (2.) The expenses incident to a faithful performance of the duties required of members of the church of Israel were large and continual. Firstfruits, firstlings, and tithes, trespass offerings, sin offerings, freewill offerings, and other oblations, made up an aggregate which can not have fallen short of one-fifth of all the income of Israel, and probably went far beyond that amount. The law provided none but moral means for enforcing these requirements; and numerous facts in the history of Israel show that by many they were entirely neglected. (Neh. xiii, 10-13; Mal. iii, 8-10.) Those who thus withheld what belonged to the Lord were self-excluded from the fellowship of the covenant society, and were “cut off from the congregation (ekklēsia from the church) of the Lord.” (3.) The irksome and humiliating nature of the regulations concerning uncleanness and purifying were very efficient means of separating between the believing and the profane. As we shall presently see, occasions of uncleanness were of almost daily occurrence, in every house. These required a conscientious watchfulness and assiduity, in guarding against defilement, and in using the appointed rites of purifying, which often involved the interruption and expense of journeys to the sanctuary and offerings there.
The communion of the church of Israel thus consisted of those only, with their families, who added to the obligations of a public profession of faith, a fidelity to all the requirements of the law, its moral precepts, its ritual observances, its tithes and offerings, its rites of purifying and its annual feasts. In a word, the account given of Zacharias and Elizabeth describes the character required, in order to fellowship in the church of Israel: “Righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.”—Luke i, 6. Such, and such only, were the clean, to whom the privileges of Israel’s communion belonged. To them they were certified by the seal of baptism.
It is commonly assumed that baptism has come into the place and office of circumcision. This I conceive to be a mistaken view, which involves the whole subject in confusion. Circumcision is the distinctive and peculiar seal of the Abrahamic covenant. While it is true, that in that covenant, as relating to the terms of salvation, all believers were accounted as seed of Abraham, and heirs of the promises, it is equally true that, by its terms, peculiar blessings unspeakably great were assured to the seed of the patriarch after the flesh. Not only was Christ to come of his flesh; not only was the church to be for fifteen centuries constituted of his offspring, but Paul moreover testifies, that richer blessings than they have ever yet enjoyed are to be bestowed on Israel and on the Gentiles through Israel, in the coming future: “If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fullness?... For if the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead?”—Rom. xi, 12, 15. This the apostle, futhermore, puts upon the ground that “the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.”—Ib. 29. It was with a view to this relation of the covenant to Abraham’s natural seed, that circumcision was appointed as its seal. Said God: “I will establish my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee.”—Gen. xvii, 7. Hence, by circumcision, the token of the covenant was set in the flesh of the males, through whom the descent is counted. So long, therefore, as the church was, for the divine purposes, restricted to the family of Israel, the rite of circumcision was necessary as a prerequisite condition of admission to its privileges, because it was the seal of incorporation by birth or adoption into that family. But this did not constitute admission into the church. The Sinai covenant had its own baptismal seal. The church consisted, not of Israel, the circumcised; but only of the clean of Israel. Of this, baptism was the token and seal. It hence resulted that when the restriction was removed, and the gospel was given to the Gentiles, emancipated from the yoke of circumcision, baptism remained unchanged in place or office, the original and only seal of actual admission to the fellowship and privileges of the church of God. Of all this we shall see more hereafter.