bibleteacher.org: The Rent Veil

CHAPTER 7: MESSIAH WITHIN THE VEIL

We spoke of Messiah longing for the time when the veil should be rent, and when, through Himself, there should be unobstructed access to the innermost shrine of God. "How am I straitened till it be accomplished." We spoke also of His dreading this rending, this death,--so that "with strong crying and tears He prayed to Him who was able to save Him from death" (Heb 5:7).

Let us now see Him looking beyond the veil, surveying the glory, and anticipating His own entrance into it, as our forerunner, the first fruits of them that slept, the first-begotten of the dead. "For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God" (Heb 12:2). That to which He looked forward was not so much the rending of the veil, as the result of that rending,--both for Himself and for His Church, His body, the redeemed from among men.

The veil was rent; rent "once for all"; rent for ever. Yet there was a sense in which it was to be restored, though after another fashion than before. Messiah could not be "holden" by death, because He was the Holy One, who could not see corruption. Death must be annulled. The broken body must be made whole; resurrection must come forth out of death; and that resurrection was to be life, and glory, and blessedness. Through the rent veil of His own flesh, He was (if we may so use the figure) to enter into "glory and honor, and immortality." Thus He speaks in the sixteenth Psalm:--

"Therefore my heart is glad, Yea, my glory rejoiceth: My flesh also shall rest in hope. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell; Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life: In thy presence is fulness of joy; At thy right hand are pleasures for evermore."

Let us dwell upon these verses in connection with Messiah's entrance within the veil.

The speaker in this Psalm is undoubtedly Christ. This we learn from Peter's sermon at Jerusalem (Acts 2:25). He is speaking to the Father, as His Father and our Father. He speaks as the lowly, dependent son of man; as one who needed help and looked to the Father for it; as one who trusted in the Lord and walked by faith, not by sight; as one who realized the Father's love, anticipated the joy set before Him, and had respect to the recompense of the reward.

He speaks, moreover, as one who saw death before Him,-- "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell"; and looking into the dark grave, on the edge of which He was standing, just about to plunge into it, He casts His eye upwards and pleads, with strong crying and tears, for resurrection, and joy, and glory,-- "Thou wilt show me the path of life." For the words of the Psalm are the united utterances of confidence, expectation, and prayer; not unlike those of Paul, "I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand; henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness."

He speaks too as one who was bearing our curse; as one who was made sin for us; and to whom everything connected with sin and its penalty was infinitely terrible; not the less terrible, but the more, because the sin and the penalty were not His own, but ours. The death which now confronted Him was one of the ingredients of the fearful cup, against which He prayed in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from me"; for we read that, "in the days of His flesh He made supplication, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save Him from death." In this Psalm, indeed, we do not hear these strong cryings and tears, which the valley of the Kedron then heard. All is calm; the bitterness of death is past; the power of the king of terrors seems broken; the gloom of the grave is lost in the anticipated brightness of the resurrection light and glory. But still the scene is similar; though in the Psalm the light predominates over the darkness, and there is not the agony, nor the bloody sweat, nor the exceeding sorrow. It is our Surety looking the king of terrors in the face; contemplating the shadows of the three days and nights in the heat of the earth; surveying Joseph's tomb, and while accepting that as His prison-house for a season, anticipating the deliverance by the Father's power, and rejoicing in the prospect of the everlasting gladness.

The first thing that occupies His thoughts is resurrection. The path of death is before Him; and He asks that He may know the path of life;--the way out of the tomb as well as the way into it. Death is to Him an enemy; an enemy from which as the Prince of life His holy soul would recoil even more than we. The grave is to Him a prison-house, gloomy as Jeremiah's low dungeon or Joseph's pit, not the less gloomy because He approaches it as a conqueror, as bringing life and immortality to light, as the resurrection and the life. Into that prison-house He must descend; for though rich He has stooped to be poor; and this is the extremity of his poverty, the lowest depth of His low estate,--even the surrender of that, for which even the richest on earth will part with everything,--life itself. But out of that dungeon He cries to be brought; and for this rescue He puts Himself entirely into the Father's hands, "Thou wilt show me the path of life."

Very blessed and glorious did resurrection seem in the eyes of the Prince of life, of Him who is the resurrection and the life. Infinitely hateful did death and the grave appear to Him who was the Conqueror of death, the Spoiler of the grave. He had undertaken to die, for as the second Adam He came to undergo the penalty of the first, "dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return"; yet not the less bitter was the cup, not the less gloomy was the valley of the shadow of death; not the less welcome was the thought of resurrection.

The next thing which fills His thoughts is the presence of God,--that glorious presence which He had left when He "came down from heaven." His thoughts are of the Father's face, the Father's house, the Father's presence. Earth to Him was so different from heaven. He had not yet come to the "Why hast Thou forsaken me?" but He felt the difference between this earth and the heaven He had quitted. There was no such "presence" here. All was sin, evil, hatred, darkness; the presence of evil men and mocking devils; not the presence of God. God seemed far away. This world seemed empty and dreary. He called to mind the home, and the love, and the holiness He had left; and He longed for a return to these. "Thy presence!" What a meaning in these words, coming from the lips of the lonely Son of God in His desolation and friendlessness and exile here. "Thy presence!" How full of recollection would they be to Him as He uttered them; and how intensely would that recollection stimulate the anticipation and the hope!

Of this same Messiah, the speaker in the psalm, we read afterwards, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the same was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1); and elsewhere He speaks thus of Himself: "Jehovah possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His works of old; I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was...I was by Him, as one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him" (Prov 8:22,30); and again, He, in the days of His flesh, thus prayed: "O Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the glory which I had with Thee before the world was" (John 17:5). Thus we see that the "presence" or "face" of God had been His special and eternal portion. His past eternity was associated entirely with this glorious presence. No wonder then that in the day of His deepest weakness,--when the last enemy confronted Him with his hideous presence, He should recall the Father's presence; anticipating the day of restoration to that presence, and repossession of the glory which He had before the world was.

"Thy presence," said the only-begotten of the Father looking up into the Father's face! He speaks as the sin-bearer, on whom the chastisement of our sins was laid, and between whom and heaven these sins had drawn a veil; He speaks as an exile, far from home, weary, troubled, exceeding sorrowful even unto death; He speaks as a Son feeling the bitterness of separation from His Father's presence, and of distance from His Father's house; He speaks as one longing for home and kindred, and the unimpeded outflowings of paternal love. "Thy presence," says the Man of sorrows looking round on an evil world;--oh, that I were there! "Thy presence," says the forsaken Son of man, for "lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness";--oh, that I were there! "Thy presence," not this waste howling wilderness, this region of pain, and disease, and sin, and death, and tombs. "Thy presence," not these temptations, these devils, these enemies, these false friends; not this blasphemy, this reproach, this scorn, this betrayal, this denial, this buffeting, this scourging, this spitting, this mockery! "Thy presence,"--oh, that I were there; nevertheless, not my will but Thine be done.

Only through death can He reach life, for He is burdened with our sin and our death; and death is to Him the path of life. He must go through the veil to enter into the presence of God. Only through the grave,--the stronghold of death, and of him who has the power of death,--can He ascend into the presence of God; and therefore, when about to enter the dark valley, He commits Himself to the Father's guidance, to the keeping of Him who said, "Behold my servant whom I uphold," the keeping of which He himself, by the mouth of David, had spoken: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me." Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth, Capernaum, Gethsemane, Golgotha,--these were all but stages in His way up to "the presence"--the presence of the Father; and it is when approaching the last of these, with the consciousness of His nearness to that presence, only one more dark passage to wind through, that He gives utterance to this psalm,--His psalm in prospect of resurrection and glory,-- "I have set the Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved: therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope; for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt Thou suffer Thine holy One to see corruption; Thou wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."

Connected with this "presence," this glory within the veil, he speaks of "fulness of joy." On earth, in the day of His banishment here, He found want, not fulness. He was poor and needy; no house, no table, no chamber, no pillow of His own. His was the extremity of human poverty; though rich He had become poor; he was hungry, thirsty, weary, with no place to lay His head. Though He knew no sin, He tasted the sinner's portion of want and sorrow. He was in the far country, the land of the mighty famine; and looking upwards to the happy heaven which He had left, He could say, "How many servants in my Father's house have bread and to spare, and I perish with hunger." Drinking also of the sinner's deep cup of wrath, He was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. It was as such that He looked up so often as we find Him in the Gospels doing, and as we find Him in this Psalm, with wistful eye reminding Himself of the joy He had left, and anticipating the augmented joy that was so soon to be His when, having traversed this vale of tears, and passed through the gates of death, He was to re-ascend to His Father, and reenter the courts of glory and joy. "Fulness of joy" is His prospect; fulness of joy in the presence of God. Concerning this going to the Father He spoke to His disciples; and then added, "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full." It is of this same full joy that He speaks in our psalm; a joy which was to be the fulness of all joy; a joy which was to be His recompense for the earthly sorrow of His sin-bearing life and death; a joy which He was to share with His redeemed, and on which they too should enter, when they, like Him, had triumphed over death, and been caught up into the clouds to meet Him in the air; a joy which would be to them, in that wondrous day, infinitely more than a compensation for earthly tribulation; even as one of themselves has written, "Our present light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more acceding and eternal weight of glory."

This was "the joy set before Him," because of which He endured the cross; and here He calls it FULNESS OF JOY. That which He calls fulness must be so; for He knows what joy is, and what its fulness is; just as He knew what sorrow was and its fulness. The amount of joy sufficient to fill a soul like His must be infinite; it must be joy unspeakable and full of glory. The amount of joy reckoned by the Father sufficient as the reward of the sorrow of such a Son, must be infinite indeed. What then must that be which Messiah reckons the fulness of joy. What a day was that for Him when, death and sorrow ended, He entered on life and gladness! And what a day will that be, yet in store for Him and for His saints, when we, as His joint-heirs, shall enter on all that life and gladness; the day of His glorious coming, when that shall be fulfilled which is written, "Come forth, O ye daughters of Jerusalem, and behold King Solomon with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him, in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart."

Besides the "presence" or "face" of God within the veil, Messiah sees the right hand; the place of honor and power and favor,--the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens; and at that right hand there are pleasures for evermore; eternal enjoyments, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard. For all the things on which Messiah's soul rests are everlasting; the life, the fulness, the joy, the presence, the pleasures,--all eternal! No wonder, then, that He who knows what eternity is,--an eternity of glory and gladness,--should feel that "the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed"; and should, when going up to the cross, and down into the grave, say with calm but happy confidence, "Thou wilt show me the path of life, in Thy presence is fulness of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore." Most mysterious are such words as these from the lips of Him who is the resurrection and the life; and yet it is just because they come from Him,--from this Prince of Life,--that they are so assuring, so comforting to us. His oneness with us, and our oneness with Him, account for all the mystery. His oneness with us, as our substitute and sinbearer, the endurer of our curse and cross and death, accounts for all that is mysterious in this Psalm. Our oneness with Him clears up all that is wonderful in such words as "I am the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Blessed, thrice-blessed oneness,--mutual oneness; He one with us, we one with Him, in life, in death, in burial, in resurrection, and in glory. Now we can take up His words as truly meant for us, "Thou wilt show us the path of life"; for in believing God's testimony to the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, we have become one with Him!

In all this we have,

1. Messiah's estimate of death. He abhors it. It is His enemy as well as ours. He came to conquer it, to destroy it for ever. He conquers it by being conquered by it; He slays it by allowing Himself to be slain by it. He crucifies it, kills it, buries it for ever. Death is swallowed up in victory. "O death," He says, "I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy destruction."

2. Messiah's estimate of resurrection. He longs for it; both on His own account and His people's. It is the consummation of that which He calls life. It is the second life, more glorious than the first; the opposite extreme of being to that which is called "the second death." The Son of God came into the world as the Prince of Life; He came not merely that He might die, but that He might live; and that all who identify themselves with Him by the acceptance of the divine testimony concerning His life and death and resurrection, might not only have life, but might have it more abundantly. Resurrection is our hope, even as it was His; the first, the better resurrection; and as we toil onwards in our pilgrimage, burdened with the mortality of this vile body, and seeing death on every side of us, we take up Messiah's words of hope and gladness, "Thou wilt show me the path of life."

3. Messiah's estimate of joy. He recognizes it as a thing greatly to be desired, not despised; as the true and healthy, or, as men say, the "normal" condition of creaturehood. God Himself is the blessed one; and He formed His creatures to be sharers of His blessedness. Heaven is full of joy; and all its dwellers are vessels of gladness. Earth was not made for sorrow, but for joy; and, before long, that song shall be sung over the new creation, "Let the heavens rejoice, and let the earth be glad." For this day of joy Christ longed, anticipating it as the consummation of all that He had come to do. As the eternal Word which was with the Father, He knew what joy was; as the Man of sorrows, He knew what sorrow was. He was in the true condition and circumstances to take the proper estimate of joy. And here He tells us what that estimate was. He longed to be done with sorrow, which was as the shadow of hell; He "desired with desire" to enter into the joy set before Him, the joy of life, the joy of resurrection, the joy of God's presence and right hand for ever. Let our eye, like His, be fixed on that coming gladness,--that sunrise of eternity for which the Church is waiting and creation groans. That hope will cheer, will nerve, will liberate, will heal, will animate, will purify; will do miracles for us. As yet, the joy has not arrived. It doth not yet appear what we shall be. Not now; not here; not on this side of the grave! But the promise of its possession, and the assurance that when it does arrive, it will be great enough and long enough to make up for all trial and all delay, are sufficient to keep us ever looking, waiting, watching. Resurrection is coming, with all its light and joy; and then comes the world's second dawn, and the Church's long-expected dayspring; the cessation of creation's groans, the times of the restitution of all things; the new heavens and the new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

4. Messiah's estimate of the Father's love. It is this love that is His portion; it is in this love that He abides and rejoices; for it is He who says, "Thy loving kindness is better than life." No one knew so well as He did the glorious truth, "God is love; and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him." The Father's love! Here His soul found its resting-place, in the midst of human hatred and reproach. The Father's love! It was with this that He comforted Himself, and with this it was that He comforted His Church, saying, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you"; "Thou hast loved them as thou hast loved me"; "Thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world"; "that the love wherewith Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Is that love to us what it was to Him? It was His rest, is it ours? It was into this hidden chamber, this holy of holies, that He retired, when the world's storms beat upon Him; is it in this that we take refuge in our evil days? It was sufficient for His infinitely capacious soul; it may well suffice for ours. Is, then, His estimate of the Father's love our estimate? Is this love our gladness? Is its sunshine the brightness of our daily life? And with simple confidence in it, like Messiah's, do we look into and look through the future, however dark, saying, "Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is fulness of joy, and at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore?"

On all that light, and joy, and fulness, and love, Messiah has now entered. For eighteen hundred years He has been in that presence, and at that right hand, which He longed for; and though yet greater things are in store for Him in the day of His promised advent, yet He has now for ages been done with sorrow and death, with reproach and hatred. He has entered on His rest; He has passed into life; His blessedness is now without a shadow. And is not this a thought full of joy to us? He whom we love is happy! No second Gethsemane nor Golgotha for Him. Whatever may befall us, whatever of tribulation we may have yet to pass through, He is blessed; it is all well with Him. He has trodden the path of life; He has entered into that presence which He longed for; He has sat down at that right hand where there are pleasures for evermore. Is this not a joyful thought to us here, even in the midst of our weakness and sorrow? And was it not to this He referred when He said, "If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said I go unto the Father"? and was it not with forgetfulness of this that He reproached His disciples, "Now I go my way to Him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, whither goest Thou? but because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart."

Should we not rejoice in His joy? Should not the thought of His happiness be a continual source of consolation to us? Amid the dreariness of the desert, it was a cheering thought to Israel that there was such a region as Canaan, over which the barrenness of the waste howling wilderness had no power. Amid the griefs and cares of earth, it is a blessed thought to us that there is such a place as heaven, to which the storm reaches not, and where there has never been known, neither shall be, one cloud, one pain, one sin. So amid the troubles of our own troubled spirits, or the sorrows of those about us, it is a happy thought that there is one heart, once full of grief, that now grieves no more; one eye that often wept, which now weeps no more; and that this blessed One is none other than our beloved Lord,--once the Man of sorrows. He who loved us, He whom, not having seen, we love, is now for ever blessed; He has entered that presence where there is fulness of joy; He has taken His seat at that right hand, where there are pleasures for evermore.

Does not this comfort and gladden us? What He now is, and what we so soon shall be,--this gives vigor and consolation. It lifts us almost unconsciously into a calmer region, and gives us to breathe the very air of the kingdom. It purifies, too, and strengthens; it makes us forget the things which are behind, and reach forward to what lies before.

The prospect of resurrection and glory sustained the soul of our Surety here. This was the joy set before Him. Let us set it before ourselves, that we may not be moved. We have much to do both with the future and the past. In that future lies our inheritance, and we cannot but be seeking to pierce the veil that hides it. But in the past we find our resting-place. Christ has ascended on high, leading captivity captive; he has ascended to His Father and our Father, to His God and our God. The work is done. The blood is shed. The fire has consumed the sacrifice. It is finished! This is the testimony which we bring from God, in the belief of which we are saved. It needs no second sacrifice; no repetition of the great burnt-offering. That which saves the sinner is done. Another has done it all. Messiah has done it all; and our gospel is not a command to do, but simply to take what another has done. He who ceases from His own labors, and enters on these labors of another, has taken possession of all to which these labors entitled Him, who so performed them, even the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God, the Savior of the world.

CHAPTER 8:THE BLOOD WITHIN THE VEIL

The day of atonement brought the three courts of the tabernacle into one. On that day the high priest passed from the outmost to the innermost; implying that he had equally to do with all the holy places, and that they whom he represented had also to do with these.

He carried the incense from the golden altar into the holiest; and he carried the blood from the brazen altar into the same. It was one blood, one incense, one priest for all the three.

The blood, which was sprinkled on the mercy-seat, was from without. The sacrifice was not slain in the inner courts, but in the outer. It was blood from without that was carried in the priestly basin within the veil, sprinkling the veil, the floor, the ark, the mercy-seat, and the feet of the cherubim as they stood upon the golden covering. In being carried within, it lost none of its expiating virtue and value: nay, it seemed to acquire more virtue and more value as it lay upon the furniture of the holy of holies.

Its efficacy, when thus brought within the veil, was enhanced; and it did not the less speak to those without because itself was within. It had come from without, and its voice spoke to those who were without. It spoke but from one small point, yet it goes beyond the tabernacle, beyond Israel, beyond Palestine, to the men of every kindred and nation, and tongue and people. It contained a worldwide message, so that each one hearing of that atoning blood might at once say, Then God is summoning me back to Himself; He is saying to me, "be thou reconciled to me"; He is sending to me, from the altar and the mercy-seat, an invitation of mingled righteousness and grace.

This propitiation rests on substitution. In all these symbolical transactions we have one vast thought,--the transference of guilt from one to another, legally and judicially; the presentation of one death for another, as perfectly valid for all ends of justice, and quite as suitable before God as the judge, to meet every governmental claim as the direct infliction of the appointed penalty on the actual transgressor.

There are two things which the whole Levitical service assumes, and without which it is simple mockery of man, that Sin is reality, and that Substitution is righteousness.

1. Sin is a real thing. Men do not think so, even when with their lips they utter the word. It is but a shadow to them, a mere name, no more.

Sin is a sore evil. It is not felt to be so, yet it is not the less truly such. It is not hated, it is not shunned as an evil,--an evil whose greatness no one can measure or tell. When men speak of it they do so as painters speak of shade in a scene or picture; as rather a needful thing, nay, a thing of beauty in its own way. They have no due sense or estimate of it at all. It is not to them what it is to God. It is not by any means in their books what it is in the book of God.

Yet, right views of sin are the key to the Bible, the key to the history of the world, and the key to God's purposes concerning it. He who does not know what sin is cannot understand the Bible. It must be a dark and strange book to him. He cannot solve the difficulties of the world's history. All is perplexed and contradictory. He cannot enter into God's purposes respecting it either in curse or in blessing, either in condemnation or redemption. Sin is not misfortune, but guilt; not disease, but crime; not an evil, but the evil, the evil of evils, the root of all evils; terrible in itself as fraught with all that we call "moral evil," and terrible in its judicial effects as necessarily and inexorably bound up with irresistible and irreversible condemnation.

In spite of all the divine teaching, both in God's book and in the world's history, man refuses to believe that sin is what God has proclaimed it, and what its own development, in the annals of the ages, has shown that it really is.

The first and fundamental lesson of the Levitical service is the infinite evil of sin. Sacrifice is God's declaration of His estimate of SIN. Strike this thought out of it, and sacrifice is simple barbarism,--a coarse emblem of the vengeance of a Jupiter, or a Moloch, or a Baal upon helpless creaturehood.

2. Substitution is righteousness.--I do not argue this question; I merely indicate that scripture assumes this.

Often has the doctrine of substitution been evil spoken of as a slander against God's free love. It has been called a commercial transaction, a bargain inconsistent with true generosity, a money-payment of so much love for so much suffering. Philosophy, falsely so called, has frequently, by such representations, striven to write down a truth for which it could not find a niche in its speculations, and of which the philosopher himself had never felt His need. With any book less buoyant than the Bible to float it up, this doctrine must long before this have been submerged under the weight of ridicule, which the wisdom of this world has brought to bear upon it.

But it has been seen that the Bible and the truth of substitution cannot be sundered. They must sink or float together. The great philosophic puzzle with many, who were not prepared to cast off the Scriptures, was how to disentangle the two, so as to strike out the doctrine and yet preserve the old Book.

This difficulty has been felt all the more, because in the Bible itself there are no indications of any misgivings as to the doctrine, no explanations meant to smooth angularities and make the doctrine less philosophically objectionable. As if unconscious of the force of any such objection, it makes use of figures, once and again, which are directly taken from the commercial transactions of life. Even if what is branded as the mercantile theology could be proved untrue, it is certainly very like what we find in the Bible; nor can one help feeling that if the above theology be untrue, it is rather strange that the Bible should lay itself so open to the suspicion of favoring it. For, after all, the strongest statements and most obnoxious figures are those of that Book itself. Eliminate these and we are ready to hear how philosophy can argue. We do not say "explain them," we say "eliminate them"; for our difficulty lies in the simple existence of such passages. Why are they there, if substitution and transference be not true? They are stumbling-blocks and snares. Let these passages themselves bear the blame, if blame there is. It is idle to revile a doctrine, yet leave the figures, from which it is drawn, untouched and uncondemned.

Substitution may be philosophical or unphilosophical, defensible or indefensible; still it is imbedded in the Bible; specially in the sacrificial books and sacerdotal ordinances. Its writers may be credited or discredited; but no one can deny that substitution was an article of their creed, and that they meant to teach this doctrine if they meant anything at all. We might as well affirm that Moses did not mean to teach creation in Genesis, or Israel's deliverance in Exodus, as that he did not profess to promulgate Substitution in Leviticus. Substitution is in that book beyond all question; along with that book let it stand or fall.

There is then substitution revealed to us beyond mistake in Scripture; revealed in connection with Israel's worship, Israel's tabernacle, and Israel's Messiah. The special thing in that service, in that sanctuary, and in that Deliverer, with which substitution is connected, is THE BLOOD. Hence it is with blood that we find atonement, expiation, and propitiation connected. For the blood is the life; and it is the substitution of one life for another that accomplishes these results, and brings with it these blessings to the guilty.

Let me take two passages, one from the Old Testament, the other from the New, in illustration of what the blood is affirmed to be and to do. I give but a brief sketch of what I suppose they include; but it will suffice to show what Scripture teaches on the subject.

The first is Zechariah 9:11, "As for thee also, BY THE BLOOD OF THY COVENANT I have sent forth thy prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water." Blood here is declared to be the cause of deliverance,--the blood of the covenant; as if without this covenanted bloodshedding there could be no setting free of the prisoner. The blood goes in, the prisoner comes out. The blood touches his chain, and it falls off. The blood drops on the prison-bar, and the gate flies open. It is blood that does it all; blood whose virtue is recognized by God; blood whose effects and results are embraced in the everlasting covenant; the covenant of peace, the covenant of deliverance, the covenant of liberty, the covenant of life. But let us look more closely at the language of the prophet.

The words "as for thee also," or "thou also," are the very words of our Lord, when weeping over Jerusalem; "Even thou," thou, the guiltiest of the guilty, the most undeserving and unlovable of all. Thus our text starts with a declaration of the great love of God,--Messiah's love to Israel,-- "Yea, He loved the people." "God is love," runs through this whole passage; and "where sin abounded grace did much more abound."

To this passage the apostle seems to refer in Hebrews 13:20, as to the bringing up Christ from the dead by the blood of the everlasting covenant. The prophet's words were fulfilled in Christ's resurrection, as Hosea's (11:1) were in his return from Egypt. (See also Psalm 18 and 40)

The words of Zechariah shall yet be fulfilled in Israel. The day of deliverance for the beloved nation is surely coming. She shall know the power of the covenant-blood to protect, to deliver, to save, to bless. It is not simply "blood" expiating sin in general, but "covenant-blood," linking that expiation specially to Israel, and Israel to it. It is Passover-blood, bringing out of Egypt. Passing over this, however, let us take up the words in their widest sense. Let us see what the covenant-blood can do, not for Israel only, but for us.

The blood finds us "prisoners," captives, "lawful captives," exiles. It finds us righteously condemned, sold to our enemies, under wrath. Let us see what it does for us.

1. It removes the necessity for imprisonment. Such a necessity did exist. Law must take its course. Its claims must be satisfied. No leaving the prison till the uttermost farthing has been paid. The blood has made the satisfaction. It has met the claim. It has provided for the payment of the penalty. The necessity for the imprisonment no longer exists. The law consents.

2. It makes it right for God to deliver. Deliverance must be the work of righteousness, not of Almightiness alone. It was righteousness that sent the sinner to prison, and barred the door against all exit. It is righteousness that must bring him forth; and this righteousness is secured by the blood of the covenant. It is now as unrighteous to detain the captive, as before it would have been unrighteous to bring him forth.

3. It opens the prison-door. That door is locked, and barred, and guarded. No skill can open it, no force can unbar it, no money can bribe its guards. It cannot be opened by the earthquake, or the fire, or the lightning. Only righteousness can open it; and that prison-opening righteousness comes through the blood of the covenant; the great bloodshedding makes the prison-gates fly open; it rolls away the stone.

4. It makes it safe for the prisoner to come forth. For the avenger stands without, on the watch. He has a right to be there. He has a right to seize the prisoner, and to take vengeance. But the blood stays all this. The covenant-blood conducts the prisoner forth, and the sight of it bids the avenger flee. That avenger was the executioner of guilt, and the guilt is gone. The blood has removed that which gave him power. He sees the blood, and withdraws his hand.

5. It reconciles to God. It is the blood of propitiation, the blood of atonement. It makes up the variance between the sinner and God. It removes the ground of distance and dispeace. It brings nigh those that were afar off, by making distance no longer a righteous necessity, and nearness a thing of which the law approves, and in which God delights. It is reconciling blood.

6. It redeems. "Thou hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood." It is the ransom or purchase-money. It was necessary that the sinner, sold and imprisoned, should be bought back again at a price such as would satisfy law and justice. And the blood has been found to be ample payment,--the very ransom needed by those whom death had made captive.

7. It cleanses. We are washed from our sins in this covenant-blood; our robes are washed white in the blood of the Lamb. All that sin had done this blood undoes. All its pollution this blood washes away. It is purifying blood; and, as such, it fits for worship, for drawing near to God.

8. It pacifies. It comes into contact with the sinner's conscience, and removes the sense of guilt,--takes away the terror. The soul is at peace, and is kept in peace by this blood. "He has made peace by the blood of His cross."

Let these things suffice to show the power of the covenant-blood. Such it was, such it is, such it will be.

It is as efficacious as ever. It has lost none of its power. Age does not change it, nor repeated use weaken its efficacy. It can still do all it once did for the sinner. Its potency is divine.

It is as sufficient, as suitable, as free, as near as ever. He whose blood it is comes up to each of us, and presents it to us in all its fulness and power. Take it as it is presented, and all the benefits of this covenant-blood forthwith become yours; and though you may be the unworthiest of the unworthy, you are reckoned by God clean every whit; a forgiven sinner, a delivered prisoner, a saved man.

The second passage to which I would refer is Hebrews 10:19:-- "Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest (or literally 'the holies' 'or holy places') by the blood of Jesus; by a new and living way which He hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say his flesh; and having an High Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water."

As in the former passage, so in this, it is only a brief sketch that I can here give; not attempting to expound the words or illustrate the argument, but to bring out the emboldening of which the apostle speaks in connection with the blood. Deliverance by the blood was the idea of the former passage; boldness by the blood is the idea of this. The boldness comes to us from what that blood reveals to us of God, and of the way in which He has met the sinner and provided for his entrance into the sanctuary as a worshipper.

It is not so much doctrine that the apostle delivers to us in his Epistles, as "the fulness of Christ," that fulness as supplying the sinner's wants and as bringing him into that relationship to God, which God's purpose of redemption designed, and which was needful for the sinner's blessedness.

God's full provision in Christ for us as sinners is continually brought before us; and we are invited to avail ourselves of it. The provision for the removal of wrath, for pardon, for reconciliation, for service, is fully detailed, that we may know the "manifold grace of God" and "the unsearchable riches of Christ." For instance:

In the Epistle to the Romans we have the provision in Christ fitting us for work:--viz., that righteousness of God which delivers us from condemnation and sets us free to serve or work for Him who hath delivered us: and in the last chapter of that epistle we have the list of a noble band of apostolic workers.

In the Epistle to the Ephesians we have the provision for conflict:--viz, the being filled with the Spirit and His gifts, that we may wrestle against principalities and powers. The armor and weapons for the warfare are described in the concluding chapter.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have the provision for worship. For God is seeking worshippers, and He has made provision for making such. It is to worship that He calls us in this epistle; and He points to that which enables us to become acceptable worshippers:--to that which, so soon as it is understood and believed, turns the chief of sinners and the farthest off of prodigals into an acceptable and happy worshipper.

He assumes that "boldness" or "confidence" is essential to this: and this boldness has been provided. There is, 1. the open door of the sanctuary; 2. liberty to enter; 3. boldness in drawing near to God; 4. access to all the courts; for the expression is not simply "the holiest" but "the holy places"; as if we had the fullest right to every part of the sanctuary, the full range of the holy places.

This boldness is the opposite of dread, and darkness, and suspicion, and uncertainty. It is not merely the reversal of Adam's flying from God into the trees of the garden, but it is the entire removal of all sense of danger, or fear of unacceptableness,--nay, it is the importation of childlike and unhesitating confidence, in virtue of which we go in without trembling and without blushing; for God's provision is so ample that in going into His courts and going up to His throne we are neither afraid nor ashamed. All that would have produced such feelings has been taken away. This boldness is effected,

1. By something without us. It is not anything within us,--our evidences, or experiences, or feelings; not even our regeneration, and our being conscious of the Spirit's work in us. It is entirely by something without us,--the blood of Jesus.

2. By something in the heavens. It is into the heaven of heavens that we are to enter in worshipping God; and that which gives us boldness in entering there, must be something which has been presented there, as the apostle says,-- "the heavenly things themselves by better sacrifices than these." The blood was shed on earth, but presented in heaven; Christ entered in with His own blood.

3. By something about which there can be no mistake. The question as to the existence of the blood or its being presented in heaven, is settled once for all on the authority of God. We need not reason about it. God has told us that it has been done. As to our own feelings there may be many mistakes; but as to the presentation of the blood, there can be no doubt and no mistake. It is a certainty; and on that certainty we rest.

4. By something which shows that the ground of dread is removed. The dread arose from the thought, 1. I am guilty; 2. God must be my enemy; 3. I dare not come near him; 4. He must condemn me. The blood of Jesus meets these causes of terror, and shows the provision which God has made for the removal of them all. The sight of the blood dispels my terror and relieves my conscience, and says, Be of good cheer. For it shows the penalty paid by a substitute,--the full penalty; a divine life given in room of a human life, the wages of sin paid by the death of a divine substitute.

5. By something which God has accepted. God has accepted the blood! He raised Him whose blood it is; and this was acceptance. He set Him on His throne at His right hand. This is acceptance. He presents him as the Lamb slain. This is acceptance. He has testified to His acceptance of it. It is blood which God has accepted for that pardon and cleansing and reconciling that we preach; blood by which law is magnified and righteousness exalted.

6. By something which glorifies God. That bloodshedding glorifies Him. The sinner's admission and entrance glorifies Him,--glorifies Him more than his exclusion and banishment and death. The blood by which God is thus glorified in receiving the sinner, must give boldness. I am going in to glorify God; and my going in will glorify Him, in consequence of that blood,--this cannot but embolden me.

7. By something which tells that God wants my worship. God came down seeking worshippers. He wants your worship,--this is His message. That tabernacle says He wants you as a worshipper. That laver, blood, incense, mercy-seat, all say He wants you as a worshipper. He is in earnest in seeking you to worship Him. He wants you to come in and serve in His courts,--as a priest!

We go in through the open gate, the rent veil: by the new and living way, the blood-dropped pavement. Personally we are sprinkled from an evil conscience; i.e., at the altar; our bodies are washed, i.e., at the laver. Thus there are such things as the following, resulting from all this.

1. Liberty of conscience. I mean liberty of conscience before God. A "good conscience" comes to us through the blood upon the mercy-seat. A conscience void of offense before men we may have in other ways, but only in this can all have a conscience void of offense before the Searcher of hearts. It is the blood which purges the conscience from dead works, as did the water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer cleanse the Israelite who had touched a dead body. By the blood the "true heart" comes.

2. Confident approach to God. Instead of flying from God, we turn to Him. Instead of trembling as we cross the threshold of His sanctuary, we lift up our heads like those who know that only here are they on secure ground,--like the flying manslayer entering the gate of the Refuge City. The blood removes the dread, and makes us feel safe even under the holy light of the glory. We are protected by the blood; we are comforted by the blood: for this blood casteth out all fear.

3. Happy intercourse. A sinner's fellowship with God must be carried on through the blood. That blood was meant to remove everything that would have hindered communion; or that would have kept God at a distance from the sinner, and the sinner at a distance from God. But it is not merely that we are brought nigh by the blood of Christ; we are brought nigh in the fulness of a tranquil spirit, which feels that it can now unbosom itself to God, in the certainty of confiding love. Fear has been supplanted by joy. The intercourse is the intercourse of trusting happy hearts, pouring out their love into each other; and the Spirit bears witness to the blood in this respect, by imparting the childlike frame, and teaching us to cry Abba Father.

4. Spiritual service. There seems nothing spiritual in the blood; and yet without the blood spiritual service is an impossibility. Abel's sacrifice seemed a more carnal thing than Cain's offering of the choicest fruits of Eden, yet it was in Abel's that God recognized the spirituality and the acceptable service. It is the blood which divests us of that externalism which cleaves to the service of the sinner,--which strips us of a hollow ritualism; which turns death into life, hollowness into substance, and unreality into truth. Spiritual service has ever been connected with the bloodshedding of atonement, which by its appeal to the inner man, draws out the whole spiritual being in happy obedience and willing devoted service.

5. Holy worship. Holiness is not associated with darkness, or gorgeous rites, or glittering robes, or fragrant incense, or swelling music, or a magnificent temple, or an unnumbered multitude. All these may be unholy things, hateful to God. There may be the absence of all these, and yet there may be holy worship: the worship of holy lips; the worship of holy hands; the worship of holy knees; the worship of a holy soul. It is the blood that consecrates; whether it be man or place, whether it be voice or soul. That which is presented to God must have passed through the blood, else it is unholy, however imposing and splendid. If it has come through the blood, it is holy, however small and mean and poor. All worship is unclean save that which has been sanctified by the blood. All holy worship begins with the blood, and is carried on by means of the blood. We go within the rent veil to worship, not without blood. For it is the blood which sprinkled on the worshipper makes him first, and then his worship, acceptable. This is "entire consecration."

CHAPTER 9: GOD SEEKING WORSHIPPERS

For ages before God sought a temple, He had been seeking worshippers. He could do without the former, but not without the latter.

His first sanctuary was but a tent; and three thousand years had elapsed before He said, Build me a house wherein I may dwell. Yet all this time He was seeking for worshippers amongst the sons of men. By man's sin God had lost the worship of earth, and He had set Himself to regain it.

1. He wants LOVE. Being the infinitely lovable God, He asks love from man--from every man; love according to His worth and beauty.

2. He claims OBEDIENCE. For His will is the fountainhead of all law; and He expects that this will of His should be in all things conformed to.

3. He expects SERVICE. The willing and living service of man's whole being is what He claims and desires,--the service of body, soul, and spirit.

4. He asks for WORSHIP. He does not stand in need of human praise or prayer; yet He asks for these, He delights in these, He wants the inner praise of the silent heart. He wants the uttered praise of the fervent lip and tongue. He desires the solitary praise of the closet; and still more the loud harmony of the great congregation; for "the Lord loveth the gates of Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob," (Psa 87:2). True praise is a "speaking well of God", (1 Peter 1:3), speaking of Him in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, according to His excellency. "Bless the Lord, O my soul" (Psa 103:1), "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 1:3).

It was of "worship" that the Lord spoke so much to the woman of Sychar. To Nicodemus He said nothing of this; nor indeed to any others. It was in regard to "worship" that the Samaritans had gone so far astray, therefore He speaks specially of this,--even to this poor profligate. He spoke to her of "the Father," and of "the worship of the Father" (John 4:21); reminding her that God was a spirit and that "they who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." And then He adds these memorable words, "the Father seeketh such to worship Him."

It was of the difference between outward and inward religion, between the real and the unreal, between the acceptable and the unacceptable, that He spoke to the woman. Samaria and Jerusalem, Gerizzim and Moriah, these were but external things. There was no religious virtue connected with them; God is not the God of the outward, but of the inward; not the God of places, but of living creatures; not the God of cities and mountains, but the God of hearts and souls. No rites, however numerous or gorgeous or beautiful, can be a substitute for the life and the spirit. The question is not intellectual, or aesthetic, or pictorial, but spiritual; not as to what gratifies our eye or ear, our sense of the great or the tasteful, but what is acceptable to God and according to His instructions.

Where am I to worship God? man asks; but he answers it in his own way; as all false religions, and indeed some true ones, have done. On certain sacred spots, he says, where some man of God has lived, where some martyr's blood has been shed, where the footsteps of good men are recorded to have been, which have been consecrated by certain priestly rites,--there and there only must men worship God. God's answer to the question, Where am I to worship God? is, EVERYWHERE: on sea and land, vale or hill, desert or garden, city or village or moor,--anywhere and everywhere. For certain purposes God set apart Sinai for a season, and then Moriah; but not to the exclusion of other places. And even these consecrations are at an end. Sinai is but the old red granite hill,--no more,--where now no man worships. Moriah is but the old limestone platform, now desecrated by false worship. "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father" (John 4:21).

When am I to worship God? man asks; but he answers it in his own way also. Only at certain times, he says,--certain hours, and certain days, fixed and arranged by priestly authority, or ecclesiastical law, or traditional rule. God's answer is, "at all times and seasons": pray without ceasing. The naming of certain hours and days is necessary for the gathering together of the worshippers; but worship is to be perpetual, without restriction of times. All hours are holy; all days are holy, in so far as worship is concerned; only one day having been specially appointed of God, and that not for restriction but for order.

How am I to worship God? man asks; and he has answered it also in his own way. In the gorgeous temple, in the pillared cathedral, with incense, and vestments, and forms, and ceremonies, and processions, and postures, he says.[14] But these performances are the will-worship of self-righteousness, not the obedient service of men worshipping God in ways of His own ordination. Man cannot teach man how to worship God. When he tries it he utterly fails. He distorts worship; he misrepresents God, and he indulges his own sensuous or self-righteous tastes. His "dim religious light" is but a reflection of his own gloomy spirit, and an ignorant misrepresentation of Him "who is light, and in whom is no darkness at all." God's answer to man's question is given in the Lord's words, "they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." The vestments may or may not be comely; that matters not. The music may or may not be fine: the knees may or may not be bent; the hands may or may not be clasped; the place of worship may or may not be a cathedral, or a consecrated fabric. These are immaterial things; adjuncts of religion, not its essence. The true worship is that of the inner man; and all things else are of little moment. As it is with love so it is with worship. The heart is everything. God can do without the bended knee, but not without the broken heart.

It is of the Father that Christ is here speaking;--of Him whose name is not only God but Father,[15] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. As the fountainhead of all being in heaven and in earth, the paternal Creator, the Father of spirits, the great Father-spirit, the God of the spirits of all flesh, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, yet who visiteth earth in His fatherly love,--as such He is here spoken of by our Lord. He is a spirit, yet He is no vague or cold abstraction, no mere assemblage of what we call attributes, but full of life and love; with the heart of a Father, with the pity and power and care of a Father, and also with all a Father's resources and rights. Though we have broken off from that Father and gone into the far country, that does not change His paternal nature, though it alters our relationship to Him and the treatment we are to receive at His hands. He made the fatherly heart of man, and He did so after the likeness of His own. That fatherly heart yearns over His wandered family; "His tender mercies are over all His works."

It is as Father that he is seeking worshippers, and seeking them here on earth among the fallen sons of men.

He seeketh! That word means more than it seems. He is in search of something; of something which He has lost; of something which He counts precious; of something which He cannot afford to lose. Great as He is, there are many things which He cannot think of letting go. His very greatness makes Him needy for it makes Him understand the value, not only of every soul which He has formed, but of every atom of dust which He has created. When He misses any part of His creation He goes or sends in search of it; He will not part with it. Men of common souls, when they lose anything, are apt to say, Let it go, I can do without it. Men of great minds, when they lose anything, say, I must have it back again, I cannot afford to lose it. Much more is this true of the infinite Jehovah. It is His greatness that makes Him so susceptible of loss. Others may overlook the lost thing. He cannot. He must go in quest of it.

It is the same kind of seeking and searching as the prophet Ezekiel, speaking in the name of Jehovah, declares,-- "I will search and seek," (34:11); and to which our Lord so often refers, when He represents Himself as "seeking the lost" (Luke 19:10); it may be the lost sheep, or the lost piece of silver, or the lost son.

We must not dilute these expressions, and say that they simply imply that God is willing to have us back again if we will come; that He is willing to take us as worshippers if we will come. All that comes very far short of the meaning. And though we may say, what can the infinite Jehovah be in want of; what can He need, to whom belongs not only the heaven of heavens but the whole universe;--still we must see how anxious He is to show us His unutterable earnestness in seeking and in searching.

Such is the attitude of God! He bends down from His eternal throne to seek; as if the want of something here on earth, on this old sinful earth, would be a grievous and irreparable loss. What value does He attach to us and to our worship!

Yes, the Father seeketh worshippers! He is in search of many things of which sin has robbed Him; affection, homage, allegiance, reverence, obedience; but worship,--the worship of man, and of man's earth, He is specially seeking and claiming. He so created this world, that from it there should arise, without ceasing, wide as the universal air, that fragrance of holy worship, from the creatures which He had made and placed upon its surface. The command is not merely, "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," but "thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only shalt thou serve." Over this broken command He mourns; "it grieves Him at His heart"; and He seeks to have it restored in man. He loves worship from human hearts and lips, and He will not be satisfied without it. It might seem a small thing to lose the worship of a creature's heart, here on this low and evil earth. Can He not let it go? It will only be the worse for the creature, not for Him, who has the worship of heaven, and of ten thousand times ten thousand angels. No; He cannot lose that worship. It is precious to Him. He must have it back.

O man, God speaks to you and says, "Worship me." He comes up to each sinner upon earth and says, "Worship me." If He does so, He must care for you and He must care for your worship. It is not a matter of indifference to Him whether you worship Him or not. It concerns Him, and it concerns you. Perhaps the thought comes up within you, what does God care for my worship? I may praise, or I may not, what does He care? I may sing, or I may blaspheme, what does it matter to Him? He cares much. It concerns Him deeply. He is thoroughly in earnest when He asks you to worship Him. He wants these lips of yours, that tongue of yours, that heart of yours. He wants them all for Himself. Will you give Him what He wants?

You say He has enough of praise in heaven, what can he want on earth? He has angels in myriads to praise Him, does He really desire my voice? Will He be grieved if I refuse it? Yes, He desires your voice, and He will be grieved if you withhold it. He has many a nobler tongue than yours, but still He wants yours. He has many a sweeter voice than yours, still He is bent on having that poor sinful voice. Oh come and worship me, He says.

This answers the question so often put by the inquiring, What warrant have I for coming to God. God wants you. Is not that enough? What more would you have? He wants you to draw near. He has no pleasure in your distance. He wants you to praise Him, to worship Him. He is seeking your worship. Do you mean to ask, What warrant have I for worshipping God? Rather should you ask, What warrant have I for refusing to worship Him? Is it possible that you can think yourself at liberty not to worship Him; nay, think that you are not under any obligation to worship Him, until you can ascertain your election, or feel within you some special change which you can consider God's call to worship Him?

His search for worshippers is a worldwide one. It goes over the whole earth; and His call on men to worship is equally universal. He made man to worship and to love; can He ever forego such claims, or can man ever be in a position in which that claim ceases, or that obligation is canceled? Can his sinfulness or unworthiness exempt him from the duty, or make it unwarrantable in him to come and worship Jehovah?

Let us hear how He speaks to the sons of men, Jew and Gentile:--

"Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands! Sing forth the honor of His name, Make His praise glorious." (Psa 66:1)

Again He speaks,--

"O sing unto the Lord a new song; Sing unto the Lord, all the earth! Sing unto the Lord, Bless His name! Show forth His salvation from day to day." (Psa 96:1)

Again He speaks,--

"Praise ye the Lord! For it is good to sing praises unto our God; For it is pleasant; Yea, praise is comely." (Psa 147:1)

Nay, He calls on all nature to praise Him. He claims the homage of the inanimate creation.

"Let the heavens rejoice, And let the earth be glad; Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof. Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein; Then shall the trees of the wood rejoice Before the Lord." (Psa 96:11-13)

Thus is God seeking for worshippers here on earth. And what is His gospel but the proclamation of His gracious search for worshippers? He sends out His glad tidings of great joy, that He may draw men to Himself and make them worshippers of His own glorious self.

The shepherd loses one of his flock; and he misses it. The shepherd misses the sheep more than the sheep misses the shepherd. The sheep is too precious to be lost. It must be sought for and found; whatever toil or peril may be in the way. Even life itself is not to be grudged in behalf of the lost one, "The good Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep," as if the life of the sheep were more valuable than that of the Shepherd.

The woman loses one of her ten silver pieces, she cannot afford to lose it. She must have it back again. She seeks till she find it. It does not miss her, but she misses it. She seeks and finds!

The father loses his son; and is troubled. The son may not miss the father, but the father misses the son; nor can he rest till he has taken him in his arms again, and set him down at his table with gladness and feasting.

But the passage we are considering brings before us something beyond all this. It is not the shepherd seeking his sheep, nor the woman her silver, nor the father his son; it is Jehovah seeking worshippers! and He is in earnest. He wants to be worshipped by the sons of Adam. He desires the worship of earth no less than that of heaven. He has the praise of angels, but He must have that of men. Such is the value He sets upon us, and such is His love?

But it is spiritual worship, and spiritual worshippers that He is seeking: "The Father seeketh such to worship Him." The outward man is nothing, it is the inner man He is in quest of. The worship must come, not from the walls of the temple, but from the innermost shrine. It must be something pervading the man's whole being, and coming up from the depths of the soul; otherwise, it is but as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal. Forms, sounds, gestures, dresses, ornaments, are not worship. They are but "Mouth-honour breath, Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not."

Instead of constituting worship, these outward things are often but excuses for refusing the inward service. Man pleases himself with a sensuous and theatrical externalism, because he hates the spiritual and the true. God says, "Give me thine heart." Man says, "No; but I will give you my voice." God says, "Give me thy soul." Man says, "No; but I will give Thee my knee and my bended body." But it will not do. "God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."

But what provision has God made for all this? It is not enough to say to us, "Be worshippers,"--this might be said to the unsinning, and they would at once comply. "Let all the angels of God worship Him." But say this to a sinner, and he will ask, "How can I, a man of unclean lips and unclean heart, approach the infinitely holy One? It would not be safe in me to come, nor would it be right in God to allow me to approach." There must be provision for this;--something which will satisfy the sinner's conscience, remove the sinner's dread, win the sinner's confidence, on the one hand, and satisfy God, vindicate righteousness, magnify holiness, on the other.

For this there is the twofold provision of the blood and the Spirit. The blood satisfies God's righteousness and the sinner's conscience. The Holy Spirit renews the man, so as to draw out his heart in worship. It is the blood that propitiates, and it is the Spirit that transforms. God presents this blood freely to the sinner; God proclaims His desire to give this Spirit freely.

"May I use this blood?" perhaps one says. Use it! Certainly. Thou fool, why shouldst thou ask such a question? Use it! Yes; for thou must either use it, or trample on it. Which of these wilt thou do?

"May I expect the Spirit?" some one may say. Expect Him! What! art thou more willing to have the Spirit than God is to give Him? Art thou so willing, and God so unwilling? Thou fool, who has persuaded thee to believe such a lie?

God has come to thee, O man! saying, "I want thee for a worshipper": wilt thou become one? Remember, thou must either be a worshipper or a blasphemer; which wilt thou be?

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FOOTNOTES:

[1] I intended to have said something more upon this point; but room fails me. I meant to have noticed the Seventh of the Romans in connection with some recent opinions. But I content myself with the following letter, which appeared in the London Record of October 19th, to show the extreme lengths to which some are prepared to go in advocating their tenets. Rather than reconsider their own opinions, they will affirm that the Apostle Paul fell from grace, went into heresy, and that the Seventh of the Romans is the confession of his fall and heresy. An English Clergyman thus writes to the London Record:--

"I am surprised that in dealing with Mr. Pearsall Smith's errors, no one, so far as I know, has yet called attention to his tract, 'Bondage and Liberty,' on the Seventh of Romans.

"He asserts that St. Paul 'fell from grace,' and became entangled in the Galatian heresy! That there may be no kind of mistake, I give his own words:--

"'But having begun in the Spirit, he had sought to be made perfect by the activities of the flesh, the consequences of which were that sin revived and "he died," or lost his full communion with Christ, and victory through faith over sin.

"'You have had now to travel along with Paul in the Seventh of Romans, in this passage which is manifestly the experience of a Christian, though not a true Christian experience. After having once exclaimed, "How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" you have been deceived, mistaking your own efforts to keep God's law for the walk of faith; and the result has been that sin has been--not conquered, but to a sad extent manifested.

"'It is this agonizing experience of yours of failure in your inward and outward walk that was shared by Paul in this parenthesis--following his declaration of the death of believers to sin and to the law--to which he here limits the pronoun "I," as the acknowledgment of how a Christian may fail, rather than as belonging to the proper experience of a Christian. It was this experience that made him so zealous in warning the Galatians against legalism in their walk. It was the agony of this "falling from grace" and coming "under law" in his practical ways that brought out the cry of despair, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?"

"'But, brother Paul, thy agony is ended when, as in a moment, and with a sudden joy that precludes explanation, thou again beholdest Jesus dawning on thy soul as a Deliverer, not only from wrath, but from sinning. "I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord."'

"As may be supposed, there is much nonsense and confusion in the little book from which the above is taken, but I submit whether there is not something worse, and which calls for vigorous treatment at the hands of faithful, sensible, Evangelical men?"

[2] 1. It is interesting to notice the way in which the negative particle is used in the different designations of God. He is called invisible,--He who cannot be seen, He who cannot lie (Titus 1:2) incorruptible (Rom 1:23; 1 Tim 1:17) He who cannot be tempted (James 1:13): He who only hath immortality (1 Tim 6:16). In connection with the things of God, and of Christ, we have a similar use of the same negative particle:--Thus, "His eternal power and Godhead" (ROM 1:20); unfading (1 Peter 1:4); immutability (Heb 6:17); without repentance (Rom 11:29); undefiled (Heb 7:26); past finding out (Rom 11:33); unchangeable (Heb 7:24). These instances will illustrate the truth that very much of what we express of God, is expressed in the form of a contrast to the things of man.

[3] John Howe thus writes on this point, in his treatise on "Delighting in God":--"The most excellent portion, in whom all things that may render Him such do concur and meet together; all desirable and imaginable riches and fulness, together with large bounty, flowing goodness, every way correspondent to the wants and cravings of indigent and thirsty souls. How infinitely delightful is it to view and enjoy Him as our portion...every way complete and full, it being the all-comprehensive good which is this portion, God all-sufficient...making His boundless fulness overflow to the replenishing of thirsty longing souls."

[4] "How pleasant to lose themselves in Him; to be swallowed up in the overcoming sense of His boundless, all-sufficient, everywhere flowing fulness! By this dependence they make this fulness of God their own. They have nothing to do but to depend; to live upon a present self-sufficient good, which alone is enough to replenish all desires. How can we divide the highest pleasure, the fullest satisfaction, from this dependence! 'Tis to live at the rate of a god; a godlike life; a living upon immense fulness; as He lives."--Howe's Blessedness of the Righteous, Chapter 8.

[5] "God's excellency, His wisdom, His purity and love seemed to appear in everything; in the sun, moon, and stars; in the clouds and blue sky; in the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water, and all nature--which used greatly to fix my mind."--Jonathan Edwards

[6] Literally, "dying thou shalt die,"--that is, "thou shalt commence dying"; life with thee is at an end. Thus man was made to live, he was made immortal; it was sin that brought in mortality.

[7] The true Priest,--"the High Priest of the good things to come"--stands at the gate to receive all who come. He refuses none, however imperfect they and their offering may be; for it is His perfection and His perfect offering that give the right of entrance to the sinner; He receives all comers. "Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out."

[8] "The veils, which were composed of four things, declared the four elements; for the fine linen was proper to signify the earth, because the flax grows out of the earth; the purple signified the sea, because that colour is dyed by the blood of a sea shell-fish; the blue is fit to signify the air, and the scarlet will be an indication of fire."--Antiq. b. iii. chap. 7. sect. 7.

[9] Dr. A. A. Bonar's Commentary on Leviticus, pp. 68, 69.

[10] In the previous verse he had spoken of the "blood of Jesus,"--so here we understand him to say that the veil is the body of Him whose name is Jesus; that one name at which every knee shall bow: that one name of which all prophecy is the testimony (Rev 19:10). In the above passage, in Philippians, it is very noticeable that JESUS by itself should be so specially singled out; JESUS as the special name for worship and for worshippers. "In the name of Jesus every knee shall bow." Of all His many names this is the one which the Father delights to honour, and round which the eternal adoration of heaven and earth is to gather. It is the name of names:--the name above every name,--JESUS.

[11] Christ's calling Peter by the name of Satan, and thus identifying him, in what he had just been saying, with the old tempter, carries us back to the first promise, in which that tempter heard his own doom and man's deliverance predicted. If Jesus did not die, if the heel of the woman's seed were not bruised, the first promise fell to the ground. Satan knew how much turned upon the bruising of the heel of that seed, and how necessary it was to the bruising of his own head. Nothing could have more identified Peter with Satan than the position he took up here as to the non-necessity for his Master's death. Nicodemus did not understand the person of the Lord; Peter did not understand His work, nor see the necessity for His sacrificial death.

[12] "Therefore even that which shall be born shall be holy; it shall be called the Son of God."

[13] Dr. Owen dwells at length upon this point, the forming of Christ's body by the Holy Spirit. "The framing, forming, and miraculous conception of the body of Christ, in the womb of the blessed virgin, was the peculiar and special work of the Holy Ghost...It was effected by an act of infinite creating power, yet it was formed or made of the substance of the blessed virgin."--On the Holy Spirit, b. ii. chap. 3.

[14] These are defended on the ground that they teach certain truths. But worship is not for teaching; it is for the taught. To multiply teaching and symbols is to injure worship; for teaching is not worship, and worship is not teaching.

[15] The name Father occurs but seldom in the Old Testament; and not in the same sense as that in which our Lord here uses it. In such places as Deuteronomy 32:6, Isaiah 63:16, 64:8, Jeremiah 31:9, the word refers specially to Jehovah's relationship to Israel, as head of the family; but in our Lord's words the reference is to the great spiritual Fatherhead inherent in His nature, as the invisible God, Jehovah, the being of beings, God over all, head and parent of the universe: not in the modern sense of an equal fatherhood, into the possession of which every man is born; but in the sense contained in the words "we are His offspring" (Acts 17:28), and "in Him we live, and move, and have our being."

[16] "The designation was most apt, of so excellent a creature, to this office and use, to be immediately sacred to Himself and His own converse: His temple and habitation, the mansion and residence of His presence and indwelling glory! There was nothing whereto he was herein designed whereof His nature was not capable. His soul was, after the required manner, receptive of a deity; its powers were competent to their appointed work and employment; it could entertain God by knowledge and contemplation of His glorious excellencies, by reverence and love, by adoration and praise. This was the highest kind of dignity whereto creature nature could be raised,--the most honourable state. How high and quick an advance! This moment nothing; the next, a being capable and full of God."--Howe's Living Temple.

[17] In all these passages the word used signifies the inner part or shrine of the building,--the holy place and the holy of holies. We are the holy of holies, where the cherubim dwelt, where Jehovah dwelt, where He is said to "dwell between the cherubim"; or as it really is, to "inhabit the cherubim"; the cherubim being His habitation. Into this inner shrine the blood was brought, but not the fire. The effects of the fire were there, the smoking incense, but not the fire itself; for into this sanctuary no wrath can enter. The wrath has been expended and exhausted outside; and this sanctuary is the abode of love and favour; they who belong to it have been delivered from wrath for ever. They are the monuments of exhausted wrath,--wrath which has spent itself upon another, and which has passed away from them for ever. I may notice that it was into the holy place, that Judas threw the pieces of silver,--going to the gate, and flinging them in among the priest as they were carrying on the service.

[18] "Satan would keep souls from believing by persuading them that they are not yet qualified and sufficiently fitted for Christ, and that they have not seen themselves absolutely lost, not so much burdened with sin as they should. And, it is to be feared, that Satan makes use of many of God's ministers, as the old prophet mentioned, 1 Kings 13:11, &c,. to keep off, and drive away souls from Christ, under the notion of preaching peremptory doctrine for Christ, and so seek to fit men for him, as some have preached many months together this doctrine, before they would preach Christ at all; whereas their commission, and the example of Christ and His disciples, was to preach glad tidings first."--Powel, an old Puritan.