English
Here is a religion commending itself to you by its inherent goodness, or by the answer of the faithful witness within us, as well as by its fulfilment of those better anticipations which God breathed as signs of His purpose among a remarkable people of old ; and this argument would hold good for spiritual men, if we had even much scantier record of the first establishment of Christianity in the world, or if any one imbued with an infection of Hindii thought, should extend the region of Mdya, by supposing ever so much play of imagination in the outset, and fancying humanity to have divined the thought of Grod in a great poem, rather than to have seen it embodied in deed and man ; for still our conscience, af- fections, and our faith would conspire to lay hold on this as the truth of things unseen, which are eternal. Blessed would be * Paley's Bvidenoei. 410 POSITIVE AUTHORITY OF CHRISTIANITY. those who believed, though not seeing. But on the other hand, the Church may now point bodily to the Son of God blessing, and healing, and bearing our sins on the shameful tree. She has the witness, not only of the Spirit, but of water and of blood. She believes, both because she sees in spirit, and be- cause faithftil men have seen in the flesh. Hence she may say, Even if this faith of Christ were less manifestly Divine than it appears to us by experience, yet it comes to us on that highest authority, which we dare not gainsay. It may call for obedience and trust, as well as for compliance and assent. For whatever is extraordinary in its facts, has the guarantee of no less extra- ordinary witness. Twelve men suffice the English law for any verdict ; and twelve men have set to their seals, that they and many others saw wonders done by Jesus in the flesh such as no man without Gt)d can do. These wonders were works of good- ness, but also of supernatural power. Nor was there any room for mistake; since multitudes looked on, and the men healed and raised from the dead, were seen surviving long afterwards *. Christ Himself was seen often, and by manyf, after His resur- rection from the dead. Nor is there power in the ordinary laws of nature, which without any physical antecedent could work such cures and restorations as Christ wrought. He revived, for instance, the corpse already decaying in the grave. It remains, then, that some new or extraordinary cause, and that no less than the wisdom or power which orders and wields nature, must in such cases have interposed. For the S^khyasts rightly infer that every effect must have adequate cause. Nor is it a little gain to have our minds thus disentangled from the chain of sensuous effects by striking indications of that mental power, which is both in nature and over it, and without whose present will no material forces could flow. For we are thus saved from the Sdnkhyasts' error of fancying nature self-dependent ; and in acknowledging soul, as they do, we also ascribe to the highest soul that superiority of which it gives signs by thus working. * Qaadratus, Apology, ap. Bouth. f i Corinthians xv. OLD TESTAMENT TYPES. 411 Bat moreover, when the Ahnighty thus does things extra- ordinary, it is to excite our attention, and to give us reason for believing, or motive to obey. Christ's religion therefore comes into the world with a Divine attestation, adequate to the vast effects which flow from it, which are again a secondary con- firmation of its first evidence, and worthy of the long train of providences which paved the way for it. " But when we take the Gospels of the four Evangelists as giving a literal account of Christ's life on earth, and the Acts as describing the progress of the Apostles, and their Epistles as preserving their words, then not only the works of Christ are more manifest, but the prophetic parallel of the Old Testament becomes more wonderfully complete, than wlien we considered only the main design of the Hebrew polity, and its general fulfilment in our faith. It seems now probable to us, that a divine design of such magnitude should have many correspon- dencies in all its parts ; and such we find to be the case in fact. The Paschal Lamb, eaten in Eucharist for the redemption of Israel from Egypt, now signifies the better offering of Christ, on which His upright ones feed in spirit, when delivered from the worse bondage of evil habits. The sin-offering, burnt without the camp, implies that Christ should suffer outside of the local city, and an outcast from the aiv^ient polity of the Jews, and that His followers must often bear reproach in being cast out of societies of men. The passing tlirough the Red Sea becomes an emblem of baptism, and the stricken rock of Christ stricken for our healing. If we wander, with hearts half satisfied, and an earnest expectation of tilings better to come, yet sustained by signs of our heavenly Father's love, in this world, so did the Israelites for forty years in the wilderness. K they must pass a river, so must we a river of death, into a better land. If the high priest entered once a year into a holy place, bearing blood in sign of the people's contrition, so is our spiritual Intercessor gone within the holiest veil of the unseen world, carrying in thought the memory of all He did and suffered in unveiling the 412 TYPES PBOPHETICAL. (THE GOSPEL.) love of God, and prevailing for na with a prayer which the Father cannot refuse. If great deliverers were of old bom in Bethlehem, the house of bread, so was Christ. K they were despised by their people, Christ dwelt in Nazareth, out of which no good was thought to come. If they were set apart as Naza- rites, Christ was separate from eveiy evil of thought and deed. If the ancient judges affected not pomp of warhorse and chariot, but administered law as they journeyed in simple estate, so Christ shewed the nature of His kingdom, when He entered Jerusalem * lowly, and riding on an ass.* If old deliverances of the nation, or decrees of return from exile, had been glad tidings which made the feet of their heralds beautiful upon the mountains, the message which Christ preaches of deliverance for all men from evil, is more especially a Gospel or good news. If the poor need sympathy. He brings it tliem ; if the weary long for rest, He invites them to it ; if sinners are boimd with a burthen of shame. He takes it away in the unveiling of a love which has outrun and exceeded all our eagerness to destroy our better souls ; if the simple need instruction. He gives them in purity of heart a direct sight of truths which no learning can teach ; if to some men poverty, and to some wealth, and to others temp- tation, and to many an entanglement of all things in life as if by misplacement of the great enemy, brings a snare, and to all men death brings fear, Christ sweeps away all these things, by open- ing around us and within us a kingdom, in which the Lord God reigneth, and His will is done, both in earth and heaven. So, whatever is *the plague of any man*s heart,' Christ takes it away. Thus His Gospel is not a fixed or a hard thing, but good news to each man according to his need. Again, if the old prophets brought their messages through sufiering, see if there was ever any sorrow like unto Christ's sorrow. * ify soul is exceeding aarrawful, even unto death,^ He says. * And He went a little farther, and fell on His face, and prayed, 0 my Father, if it he possible^ let this cup pass from me: nevertheless , not as I taillj but as thou wiUJ* Well might angels appear from heaven TYPES PBOPHETICAL. 413 comforting so Divine a sufferer. Again, if, as they looked on the brazen serpent, the Israelites were healed of the serpents' stings, so by faith gazing on the fiilfihnent of what is meant in all offerings, and on the perfect self-consecration of Jesus on the cross, we become healed of those wounds which the old serpent, the author or type of all evil, has wrought in our better souls. Once more, if God called of old Israel out of Egypt to be His son, and made him a firstborn among the nations, and lifted him in a little time, as on the third day*, from imder the yoke of bondage, so having through the suffering of Christ fulfilled all His will in Him, He lifted Him from the grave on the third day, and made Him a king for ever.