|
(Continued
from p. 250.)
Mr.
M’Neile is perfectly right in his assertion, that “we should deem it
to imply mutability in the Supreme, were we to entertain any belief that
sincere repentance does now require a Mediator to render it
acceptable to the Almighty,* and that we also believe in the human
atonement of fasting.” We believe it, because the whole Bible is our
warrant for so doing. Those verses, which are ever selected by gentiles,
anxious to convert, and which appear to express the Eternal’s
disapprobation of sacrifices, fast days, &c., do indeed express
disapprobation, but of the spirit in which they were offered, not
of the obedience itself. God never made a law, declaring it was for
ever, which He meant to alter or abolish. He never told His people,
His loved, to do what He knew they could not do, and therefore I refuse
to acknowledge a crucified saviour—believing, ay, and rejoicing in the
belief—that firm faith in my God, and in His righteousness, His
mercy, and His Word, will purify my feeble efforts, and lead me unto
Him. I pray you to notice, my dear madam, that I lay no stress upon my
own efforts after good, save what the Word of God permits, nay,
commands, alike in Levit. 24:40, 41; Deut. 30, the whole chapter;
Ezekiel 18, particularly verses 21, 22, and 23; also Ezekiel 33., from
1st verse to 21st, and innumerable other parts of the Law, Psalms, and
Prophets. If in these, in fact in any part of the Old Testament, which
is all an Israelite may acknowledge, the acknowledging an Infinite
Atonement and belief in a crucified saviour, are made the condition of
forgiveness and acceptance in direct words, not either in types,
or figures, or shadows, but as clearly, as literally, as precisely
as the chapters I have quoted: then may an Israelite be condemned
as blind, and deaf, and utterly lost;—but not while the gracious words
of our unutterably gracious God give him the hope and promise of
forgiveness and salvation, simply if he repent, and love,
and obey, and believe, and trust “in the Lord for his
righteousness and strength.” Isaiah 45:17-24.
“In
the German and Polish Jew’s Prayer Book is the following fearful
address to God, on the atoning merit of fasting:—‘Sovereign of the
Universe, it is clearly known to thee, that whilst the holy temple was
established, if a man sinned, he brought an offering, of which they only
offered its fat and blood; yet didst thou in thine abundant mercy grant
him pardon. But now, because of our iniquities, the holy temple is
destroyed, and we have neither sanctuary nor priest to atone for us. O!
may it therefore be acceptable in thy presence, that the diminution of
my fat and blood, which has been diminished this day (by fasting), may
be accounted as fat offered and placed on the altar, and thus be
accepted for me to make atonement for my sins.’”
The
next paragraph, I perceive with joy, that you have answered even as I
should myself. “We do not call that Judaism, any more,”
&c.,* therefore I need not enter upon it.—The next assertion†
Mr. M’Neile would do well to prove, ere he so sweepingly and
daringly promulgates it. It is because the Jews do believe Moses
and the Prophets, that they cannot become Christians. There is
not a single verse, not a single prophecy in the Old Testament, which
will not bear our interpretation as strikingly, convincingly, in favour
of our views and our belief, as it appears to you, dear
madam, in favour of yours. Of course, as is natural, I feel that
they are yet more startlingly convincing to us of the truth
of what we believe, than they can be to you; but I do not say so,
as to the it is exquisitely painful to make any attack upon the creed
of any one, who I believe earnestly seeks to know and love God,
according to the law he follows. I should be grieved, indeed, had I said
or written any thing calculated to give you pain; I wish only to defend;
for my love for my nation is too earnest, too heartfelt, to permit such
a false charge as Mr. M’Neile’s to pass unanswered. The verses which
your reverend correspondent quotes in support of this charge that we do
not believe in Moses and the Prophets, instead of upholding, rather
makes it fall to the ground. The 110th Psalm has, I believe,
long been given up by most Christian divines as prophetical,—the
second Lord, on which so much stress is laid, being simply master,
an earthly ruler, and evidently means David himself, of whom
one of his servants was singing this psalm. When we behold the effects
of the beautiful prophecy contained in Isaiah 11, then will we
indeed acknowledge the “rod out of the stem of Jesse, the branch out
of his roots;” but not till then; simply because we are expressly told
not to do so. For the verse from Zachariah, “the man that is my
fellow with the Lord of Hosts,” a perusal of the 13th
chapter, with the recollection of the many times in which the similar
terms “servant, elect, friend, ay, son, even first-born,” are used
in the same sense, will prove that it is ISRAEL, of whom the Eternal
speaks, not of Himself.
The
next two paragraphs in your reverend correspondent's letter,* are those
which have caused my troubling you, dear madam, with this long, and I
fear to a Christian, little satisfactory letter. Unbelievers, heretics,
dogs, accursed Jews—and many, many other terms equally and cruelly
opprobrious and unjust, has Israel borne, and is still bearing in many
quarters of the globe, ay, and will bear, meekly, silently, trusting in
the Lord to prove them false; but it remained for a clergyman of
Christian England, ay, and in the nineteenth century, to thrust upon
them a charge, which even in times of darkness and tyranny, and
barbarity and blood, had never been promulgated before, “that though
we bow not down to idols; as we worship not the Triune God, we are idolaters.”
I
cannot say, that I remember exactly what words I used on the occasion
referred to; but the words quoted by your correspondent from my speech,
compares the worship of the Jews, in this respect, to that of the
so-called Unitarians. Is not the comparison just? The object of worship
in both cases, is a Being devoid of personalities, devoid therefore of
the resources indispensable for an atonement. Is such a Being the true
God? Is such a Being our God? If their worship be right, what is ours,
and what ought into be called?
It
is wholly in vain that by a flimsy veil of “deep concern, lively
sympathy, and prayerful affection,” Mr. M’Neile would seek to
justify and soften this false and cruel aspersion upon a people whom the
Lord still terms His chosen, His first-born, His beloved. He would know
in what the statement is impious*—in what it is a God-defying charge?
Simply because in making it, he unconsciously (at least so we
hope) casts aspersion on the Lord; he DENIES that word which has said,
Even in affliction, in punishment, in exile, in guilt, still Israel is
mine saith the Lord, who hath said, “If heaven above can be measured,
or the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, then will I
also cast off the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the
Lord,”—words that, even did we acknowledge the blindness and denial
with which we are charged, we might still claim;—then how dare weak
and erring man pronounce us abhorred and utterly cast off? or accuse a
nation so beloved, so cherished, as idolaters, because they do not
worship a Triune God? It is utterly impossible even for the most
prejudiced to read the Prophets and chapters already quoted in Leviticus
and Deuteronomy, without perceiving and feeling, if his heart be
not of stone, the exceeding love borne towards us by the Eternal, even
in our banishment, and while suffering the just punishment called down
on us by our repeated transgressions against the Lord—NOT for denying
and crucifying Him, but for either entirely neglecting the
ordinances of His Holy Law, or performing them with a hardened,
and defying, and rebellious heart, which could not be acceptable to a
God of Love. To enter into all the causes why we refuse to acknowledge
either the existence or the necessity of a Triune God, would occupy far
too large a space, and compel me to merge the defensive into the
offensive, which I will not do. It is no part of my creed or of the law
of my God, to attack and condemn the faith of others, because it does
not chance to be the same as my own. It is not because I cannot
answer, because I cannot bring forward all-sufficient proofs of
the “hope that is in me,” that I am silent on this point,—no, for
in this my “witness is in heaven, my record is on high.” Suffice it
that my belief in a God of Love as depicted and proclaimed in the Old
Testament, alike in the Law, Psalms, Prophets, ay, and in every
narrative and historical part, forbids my believing for a single moment,
that such an important point in the faith of man—the only way to God,
and the only means of salvation, the acknowledgment of a Triune God, and
an atoning Saviour—would have been left to reach the mind and heart of
man through types and shadows. The God of Truth and Love, as
revealed to Moses and Israel, would never have left an article of faith
so important without revealing it, and commanding our obedience and
faith thereunto, as clearly, as precisely, as unanswerably,
as He has, throughout the whole Bible, proclaimed Himself the ONE GOD,
Saviour and Redeemer of Israel,—and instructed us how to worship, in
what to please Him, and how to obtain heaven by earnest strivings after
righteousness, and firm belief and trust in Him to purify and render us
acceptable to Him. He would never have left the sole means of
salvation for an after period and a new covenant to reveal.
He would have said it as distinctly as he bids “the wicked forsake his
way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and return to the Lord, and
He will have MERCY UPON HIM, and to our God, for He will ABUNDANTLY
PARDON; for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your
ways, saith the Lord.” It is the “thought” and “way” of man to
suppose mercy and justice cannot be united without atonement, that man
cannot be forgiven without the price of blood; but the ways and thoughts
of man are not those of God.
Yes,
surely. The mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and he is not a man that
he should lie, neither the son of man that he should repent (Num.
23:19). There is no hope of escape in man; for David says, “none can
by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him.”
Ps. 49:7. Dear sir, do you know, do you feel, is your heart indeed
satisfied, and your conscience at peace, as to how a sinful man can he
received by the Holy One and The True? and made happy in his
presence?
It
appears to me extraordinary how any one, who has in any way reflected or
observed, can for one moment compare the worship of the children of
Israel to that of the Unitarians,* whereas the one adheres to every part
of the law, which their dispersed and scattered state permits, and the
other neither observes nor acknowledges the law at all. So far we
resemble each other, that neither Hebrew nor Unitarian is an idolater;
but no farther; the Unitarian, as every other gentile, can have no
portion in the promises made unto the Jews, save that blessed one which
concerns all the earth, gentiles as well as Jews—that there
shall come a time when the whole world shall know and love the
Lord.
“The
object of worship in both cases,” your reverend correspondent says,
“is a being devoid of personalities, devoid therefore,” &c. If
by this rather obscure sentence he means to assert that we worship a
being without form or substance—a spirit not a person,
one with neither shape nor semblance from which man could make a visible
and palpable object to worship, I rejoice to say his charge is perfectly
correct. We glory in worshipping, as we are commanded, a God
who is a spirit, who is indivisible, immaterial, “who filleth
heaven and earth,” who hath said “no man shall see me and
live;” and therefore is it we will not recognise Jesus as that great
and mighty, yet everloving, ever-compassionating God. We deny not the
possibility of his visiting earth, for all things are possible with God;
but we are not permitted to believe that He would do so, simply because
He is a God of Truth and as He has said, “no man shall see me and
live.” We know that no man could look upon Him, either in his glory or
under human form and live. When we see Him, life, human life must be
annihilated. “If their worship be right what is ours, and what ought
it to be called?Ӡ Not idolatry, which, were this letter
written in Mr. M’Neile’s spirit, I should be justified in saying.
No! blessed be the spirit of all truth, such fearful and condemning
creed is not ours. Believing that my faith is the chosen, the blessed,
the holy and the ONLY one of God: I am compelled to believe that every
other is mistaken, that a dark and blinding veil is thrown over their
communion with and access to God.—Yet do I neither call them
idolaters, nor believe them utterly and eternally lost. According to the
measure of their love, and faith, and deeds, I believe they are
acceptable to that gracious and blessed God who has not created one
thing, much less one being made in His own image, in vain.—Nay more,
the Eternal never works by miracles, when he can by (so called) natural
and gradual means; and therefore I am justified in asserting and
believing, that all those nations who worship God, though not as we do,
(it matters not their several denominations,) are working His will, to
bring the whole world to a knowledge of God, preparatory to that great
and awful day, when all the ends of the earth shall know Him as He is.
The veil thrown over all nations, all religions, save over that of His
chosen, is of God, not of man. He permits it to work out His own will,
prophesied in that stupendous and awful vision of Nebuchadnezzar, the
kingdom of iron, which was to be divided into part of potter’s clay,
and part iron; and, so divided, have, for its appointed time, rule over
the whole earth. I acknowledge alike the Roman, Greek, Protestant, ay,
and Mahomedan, and every petty sect, setting up infallibility for
itself, as instruments of God, working out His will, fulfilling
the prophecy of Daniel, and by teaching a knowledge of the Lord, though veiled,
mistaken, blended with the finite thoughts, and bounded wisdom of
weak and ever variable man; still overruled by the infinite wisdom, and
unfathomable compassion of the Eternal, to prepare all mankind for that
day when “the God of heaven shall set up a kingdom which shall never
be destroyed, and the kingdom shall not be left to other people, but it
shall break in pieces and consume all those kingdoms, and shall stand
for ever.” Daniel 2:44. That kingdom which the Lord hath promised
Israel and Judah, when his wrath shall be turned aside, and we, who are
His witnesses now, shall be once more the kingdom of his glory,
through whom all the nations of the earth shall be blessed. It is quite
impossible, dear madam, in the space of a letter, and one too, which has
already far exceeded bounds in length, to do myself justice on this
subject, which I have thought on for some years. I must try to satisfy myself
with the firm conviction that my belief with regard to the mission of
all religions, which so widely differ from the chosen one of the Lord,
that of Judaism, is purely and strictly scriptural, for
the word of God is my sole authority;—and to satisfy you by the
assurance, that did I condemn all those who differ from me in belief or
practice, as idolaters, I should fear that I was becoming one of
those who provoketh the Lord to anger, by saying, “Stand by thyself,
come not near me, for I am holier than thou.” Your correspondent may
believe it “Godlike love,” to condemn as idolaters, and so as eternally
lost, all those who worship not as he does. My religion,
blessed be the Lord God of truth and love! forbids such fearful and
appalling creed. It bids me, when grieved and mourning at the dark and
sad dissensions which, under the much-abused term religion, devastate
this fair and lovely earth, and choke up man’s heart with wrath, and
hate, and every evil passion, to turn in perfect faith to Him who hath
said, Look unto ME and be ye saved, for your thoughts are not my
thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord; and still I
trust if the goal be the same, it may, through the infinite
compassion of an infinitely merciful God, be reached at length, however
dark and veiled and mistaken be the earthly road which leads to it. I
allude not to those grievously mistaken and erring ones, who, born
heritors of the chosen and holy religion of God, as taught by Him
through Moses, yet, tempted by lucre or ambition, or because they will
not learn the religion of their fathers, turn from the path of light
into those of darkness. I allude but to the gentiles, and the varied
faiths by which they are struggling on to “know the Lord,” and serve
Him according to His word.
(To
be continued.) |
