Jewish polity, and transferred to Christian uses. From the same source have come the terms which describe the benefits and privileges which belong to Christians, particularly those expressed in the words, election, calling, adoption, and sanctification, all of which, as we know, are found in the Old Testament applied to the Jewish people, and thence have passed into the Gospel. Very remarkably is the principle I am I am contending for exemplified in the history of the chosen people; their deliverance from Egypt, their wanderings in the wilderness, their contests with the Canaanites, and their final settlement not under Moses the Lawgiver, but under Joshua the typical Saviour, in the promised land. His spiritual perceptions, one would think, must be dull who does not perceive, under these earthly adumbrations, the history both of the Church collectively, and of each Christian's experience in particular, pourtrayed in striking colours; who, on looking back on past trials and past mercies, cannot enter into the spirit of the words addressed of old to Israel, "Thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness, to humble thee and to prove thee;" who does not recognise in the difficulties with which the people had to contend a lively image of the straitness of the gate and narrowness of the way that leadeth to life, in their temporal visit e Deut. viii. 2. ations a pattern of the fatherly chastening from which no true son is exempt, in their final victory and fruition of Canaan a type of the heavenly rest that remaineth for the people of God. This is no fanciful system of accommodation; we have inspired authority for thus reading the Old Testament Scriptures. The use which our Lord makes of the elevation of the brasen serpent', and of the manna in the wilderness, and which St. Paul makes of another interesting occurrence, the water from the rock at Horeb, is familiar to all; and that these are but specimens from the quarry we may gather from the general declaration of the Apostle, that "these things happened" unto the Jews" for ensamples," rather types or models (τύποι), "and they are written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the world are come." Studied with this light thrown upon it, the early history of the Israelites becomes an inexhaustible source of instruction, warning, and consolation; and the conviction arises in the mind of the believer, that so apt a reflection of the Christian life, in its various aspects, cannot be a casual coincidence; in other words, that the Divine wisdom shaped the history of the chosen people, as well as the appointments of the Law, with a special reference to the future dispensation of Christ. In like manner the Jewish privileges, variously f John iii. 14. i 1 Cor. x. 11. 8 John vi. 49, 50. h 1 Cor. x. 4. expressed in the terms just now alluded to, find their counterpart under our dispensation, but in a deeper, and a more spiritual, sense. The external relations of the Law give place to the inward ones of the Gospel. Christians are elected, and called; they are sons of God by adoption; they are a holy nation, a peculiar people; but these terms, as applied to Christians, as much transcend, in their idea, what they signified under the Law, as the religion of Christ is superior to that of Moses. And I cannot but observe, that inattention to this distinction has not unfrequently exercised an injurious influence on the interpretation of the New Testament in this particular point. Hence has proceeded the tendency to lower the meaning of the terms in question, so as to make them signify something entirely separable from a work of the Spirit on the heart; as when it is argued, that St. Paul, in speaking of Christians" as being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world," meant only an election of particular nations, the English nation for example, to the profession of Christianity, because the Jewish election was, in fact, a national one; or that the words "called" and "saints," as used by the same Apostle, signify, respectively, only an external calling by the word, and an external dedication to God, such as equally belonged to the vessels of the tabernacle. Nor can we think that those * See Locke on Romans ix. and Ephes. i. 1—6. expositors have fully unfolded the sense of Scripture, who, rising above the school of Locke and Grotius, yet interpret these expressions to mean merely an admission to ecclesiastical privileges, to the offer of salvation', by which, I presume, is meant admission to the means of grace and a claim to the influences of the Spirit, privileges which, however valuable, by no means imply vital, saving, union with Christ. That many passages, at least, such as those in the Epistle to the Romans, where St. Paul connects election and calling directly with justification and the foretaste of glory, and where he declares, that "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God"," cannot, without straining, be so reduced in import, seems clear; but let me briefly point out what I conceive to be the fundamental error of this type of exposition. The usage of Scripture then seems to furnish us with the following canon of interpretation ;the Theocratical nation is spoken of as the type, or figure, not of local Christian churches, such as that of Rome, or Ephesus, but of the one true church, or, as it is called in Protestant theology, perhaps somewhat improperly, the invisible church, the mystical body of Christ, which in our Prayer-book is defined to be "the blessed company of all faithful," or truly believing, "peo 1 See Whately, Essays on St. Paul, Essay on Election. ple." This is the heavenly Zion, the spiritual Israel, of which the Jewish Theocracy, with its temple, and its appointments of sacrifice and priesthood, was the earthly counterpart. There could be but one temple, the centre of unity to the nation, and so there is but one mystical body under its Head, Christ. And as the members of the church under this its inward, its true aspect, are also, all of them, living members of Christ, vitally incorporated in Him, as the branches in the vine, and under the influence of His Spirit, you will at once perceive that the Theocratical relations under consideration assume, in the Christian application, a deeper meaning than that which has been assigned to them. The Jewish election, and calling, and adoption, it has been observed, belonged to the whole nation without exception; in the Pentateuch it is almost always the nation collectively that is addressed: true, most true: and so under the Gospel, while these privileges belong, in their spiritual fulness, only to the true church, they belong to every member of it without exception. And now follow out the parallel. The nation was not merely invited to leave Egypt, but was drawn out of it by a mighty hand and stretched out arm, so the members of the mystical body are called not merely by the word, but by the Spirit working with the word; the nation was • Communion Service. P Whately, Essay on Election. |