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No. V.
To
the Rev. Dr. Schlessinger.
Dear Sir:
In
continuing these letters I feel called upon by your
review of my “Identity of Judaism and Christianity,”
to address you directly as I have already addressed
two others. Though we differ theologically, and I
take up my pen against you, I am happy to remember
many pleasant personal interviews with you, and my
best wishes for your happiness have followed you,
and remain with you, in the bosom of your native
country and of your family.
I
do not expect to have space for a review of all your
objections, for the obvious reason, that it requires
less space to state an objection than to remove it;
but I will endeavour to do you justice, by a candid
consideration of your most important points.
The chief point may as well come first. The
following sentences from your pen have been
attentively considered; and they are certainly full
of meaning. “In the eyes of the Lord,
<<497>>the
belief in different persons in the deity is as great
a sin as incest and murder.” “I hold Protestantism
again as an important progress, but all this does
not prevent us to discover a refined idolatry in the
divine homage paid to Christ.” (Occ. p. 350 cur.
vol.)
Before I try to answer these sentences, let me have
a few hours to look at them steadily, and then to
walk around and look at them from every point, that
I may know precisely where I must stand. It is
stated in the Acts of the Apostles, that when Herod
made an oration, and they gave a shout, saying, “It
is the voice of a god, and not of a man,”
immediately the angel of the Lord smote him, because
he gave not God the glory, and he was eaten of worms
and died. Did not Christ deserve to be equally
punished?
It
might be easier to defend Caligula than Christ. The
Roman emperor who succeeded Tiberius, and wished to
make himself a god, may be more worthy of respect
than the despised king of the Jews who was crucified
under Tiberius. Caligula caused the heads of the
statues of Jupiter and other deified heroes to be
struck off, and his own to be put in their places:
and Christ was equally presuming in calling himself
greater than Solomon and Jonah, and older than
Abraham. Caligula ordered his statue to be erected
in the temple of Jerusalem; and Christ claimed to be
master both of the temple and of the Sabbath.
Caligula proclaimed himself, at one time a male
deity, at another time a female; at one time
Jupiter, at another Mars, at another, Venus or
Diana: so Christ’s statements are various and
contradictory; at one time he is the Saviour of the
world, at another, the Judge; at one time he will
mournfully leave his disciples, so that the hearers
wonder if he will kill himself; at another time, he
will be present with every two or three who may meet
in his name to the end of the world; at one time, he
that sees him sees the Father, and he is in the
Father, and the Father is in him; at another time he
is inferior to the Father, and forsaken of God.
Caligula dedicated a temple to his own divinity, and
Christ promised to erect a temple of his own body
from the grave in three days. Caligula gave up the
erection of <<498>>his statue in the temple of
Jerusalem, that the blood of thousands of Jews might
not be shed, and that his friend Agrippa might not
be disappointed; but Christ, more cruel, required
all his friends to be ready to lay down their lives
for his equality with God, and proclaimed the temple
ruined on account of the opposition to himself.
Caligula professed to be a priest to himself; and
this is fully equalled by the folly of Christ, who
professed to be both an expiation for sin, and to
have the power to forgive sin. Caligula, as he
marched with his army, sent to all the cities that
they should be prepared for him; and all this is to
you no more ridiculous, than the office of John the
Baptist as the forerunner, and the commission of the
seventy disciples as the preparers of the way. From
your point of view it appears equally doubtful,
whether the thirty wounds from which Caligula died
were a sufficient atonement for his impiety, and
whether the crucifixion of Christ was a sufficient
atonement for his own soul.
If
I remember correctly, the assertion is coming on in
the sequel of your review, that, through
Christianity, God punishes the idolatrous gentiles,
in giving them a god from the hated nation of the
Jews. Now, you may say, if we had taken Caligula, a
gentile, as our redeemer and god, we would have
lightened the punishment; or Caligula could easily
have been proved to he the son of David, with all
the force that is in the genealogies of Matthew and
Luke. The worship of Christ is as great a sin as
incest and murder, and what conceivable argument can
show that the worship of Caligula would have been
worse?*
<<499>>
It is a sound, infallible principle in logic, that
what necessarily proves too much, proves nothing,
and is fallacious in itself. If it is too much to
say that Christians, with their doctrine of “God
manifest in the flesh” might just as well be the
followers of Caligula as of Christ, it is then clear
that your argument proves too much. If it is too
much in a Rabbi to point to a Presbyterian church,
and warn his people against entering that church, as
they would not enter a house of incest and murder,
<<500>>then your argument clearly proves too much. I
imagine you here turning round, and trying to breast
the torrent of consequence, which sweeps you resistlessly to such an uncharitable and horrible
position, by such an apology as the following:
Caligula, you say, was a most despicable tyrant,
worse than a brute; he made his own horse his
priest; his claims of divinity carry with them no
sacred truth, no sacred precepts, no elevating
influence. Here you commence a new argument, in
which we are just as ready to help you as in the
preceding. If the worship of Christ among
Presbyterians is as great a sin as incest and
murder, how does it carry with it, wherever it goes,
all sacred truths, all holy precepts, and every
elevating influence, as it certainly does, yourself
being judge in one among many points, namely, the
distribution of the whole Bible? How is it that, in
the worship of Caligula, there is nothing but brutal
ignorance satanic madness, arrogance, impiety, and
cruelty; while in the worship of Christ, you must
acknowledge equally, satanic madness combined with
the most precious mission of truth which God has
ever given to the gentiles; equal impiety combined
in the same heart with much true piety, a worship as
bad as incest and murder, and yet it certainly has,
in many respects, as good an influence as the
worship of the Jews themselves?
Your position is, I believe, the only consistent one
for Jews, and it may be well that you have defined
it so clearly. We both are of one mind that in the
history of Caligula we see exhibited that brutish
stupidity, that detestable arrogance, that
immorality and degradation, which necessarily
accompany, in every instance, the claims of a mere
man to be worshipped as a god. Christ, as an
inspired man, or as a teacher of the unity of God,
cannot stand higher in your estimation than
Caligula. It is folly here to think of compromise.
If Christ was so much as a prophet, we must take him
to be all that he professed to be, and then our
cause is lost. It is impossible that he should be
sent from heaven as a prophet to teach the gentiles
the theology of Judaism, and that he should have a
commission from hell to establish a refined
idolatry, and should fulfil both commissions. Let it
then be perfectly understood,—the attitude of
uncompromising <<501>>antagonism, of severe censure,
of contempt that cannot be eradicated, in which the
Synagogue stands to the Presbyterian Church,—in
which the most sacred sentiment of the Jewish heart
stands to Christianity.
This is enough for the present. May I beg our
readers to keep our difference before them, just as
it is here presented, until I write again, when I
expect to revert to this point in a very brief
argument. Oh, how pitiable is the condition of us
Christians! Rocks and ice! Can you withhold your
tears? We have a faith and worship as detestable as
incest and murder in the eyes of the Lord. If we be
eventually saved, it must be in spite of our
religion: such a religion is infinitely more damning
than saving. Yet our brethren the Jews will not
perform one charitable missionary act for our
conversion to the truth, unless they are forced to
it in self-defence. When God comes and inquires
after the blood of incest, of murder, and, last but
not least, of trinitarianism, in the guilt of which
we their brethren are lying, they may again use the
old selfish reply, “Am I my brother's keeper?”
I
now take up some of the passages in which you say
the New Testament perverts the Hebrew Scriptures,
instead of the alleged consonance and identity.
So
much has been written on the subject of the Virgin
and the seventh chapter of Isaiah, that I cannot
hope to present anything new, and shall fill my
letter with old thoughts.
The kings of Damascene Syria and the ten tribes
united their armies and efforts against Judea and
Jerusalem, caused the throne of David to tremble,
and were driving the king to the impious and
dangerous expedient of forming an alliance with the
Assyrian king for the overthrow of his combined
enemies. The king ought not once to have thought of
forming such an alliance, but should have trusted in
the God of Abraham. Isaiah, in the season of alarm,
was directed to go out with his son Shearjashub to
the king in the highway of the fuller's field, and
to assure him that he should not think of such an
alliance; that his terrors were groundless; that the
invading armies would effect nothing against the
throne; that the confederate kings would continue
<<502>>to be limited to the countries of their
present possession; and that within sixty-five years
Ephraim should cease to be an independent people.
The king was an idolater, and probably believed very
little in either the God or the prophets of
Jerusalem. Isaiah offered to give him a sign that
this remarkable prophecy should be fulfilled—even
urged him to ask some sign in surrounding nature.
The king ought to have accepted cheerfully this
offer of a sign, which might have removed all his
alarm, but, insolently preferring to remain in
unbelief, he refused any sign. Isaiah then reproved
him that he was both vexing the prophets and
wearying unbelief.
“Accept then,” says the prophet, “a sign which the
Lord will give you; a sign which ought of itself to
be sufficient; a sign which will be understood while
the world lasts. In prophetic vision, behold
there the mother of the Messiah;—I see her as
present, now pregnant, now bringing forth a son, and
she calls his name Immanuel, or, God with us. This
coming event appears before me in all the certainty
and all the vividness of something now happening.
God is with the house of David in the promises of
the Messiah, and He will be with us in the person of
the Messiah. Jerusalem cannot be overwhelmed, like
Samaria and other cities; the tribe of Judah cannot
become lost in captivity, like other tribes; the
house of David cannot cease to exist, for the
Messiah Immanuel secures all. Judah will still have
a government, a sceptre and lawgiver, until Shiloh
come. This is the rock on which we stand, the best
of signs that we will be preserved. Only believe in
the Messiah, O king, and you cannot despair. The
little child Immanuel is before me, and what will
follow? ‘Butter and honey shall he eat, until he
knows to reject the evil and choose the good.’ He
will spend his infancy and youth in the very heart
of the country now combined against Judah, in the
tribe of Zebulun, among the rocks and wilds of the
remote, despised Nazareth; and there he will grow up
peacefully and happily, in the enjoyment of the
butter and honey of the land.
And what is implied in all this?—in Immanuel’s
spending his childhood and youth in that country,
and in his living from such simple food? A long
history is implied in this. The present
<<503>>confederation of the two kings must first
perish. Their children and successors must first
perish. The ten tribes must first be completely
carried into captivity, and the land which now sets
you in such terror become a desolate land. Its
inhabitants must first know the humiliation of being
unable to gather much from cultivated fields and
vineyards, and of living from milk and honey, though
they are now plundering oar fields, and forcing us
to such simple living. The tribe of Zebulun must
first cease to have, according to the blessing of
Moses, the abundance of the sea and the hidden
treasures of the sand, and be lost in captivity; and
the rude inhabitants who will succeed must be kept
back in every advance of civilization and comfort by
the incessant dangers and distresses of invasions
and pinching poverty. Galilee of the gentiles must
first be deeply degraded.”
Isa. viii. “For before the child shall know to
reject the evil and choose the good, the land of
whose two kings thou art afraid shall be forsaken.”
The humble rise of the Messiah to manhood, involving
in its circumstances the previous humiliation of
Syria and the ten tribes as a necessary antecedent,
appears to one, says the prophet, just like a
present event: and in these certain events of
the future it is clear that the present triumphs of
combined Syria and Israel cannot be lasting.
Or, possibly, in relation to the last two verses, we
should prefer another interpretation, namely, that
Isaiah, seeing the infant Immanuel in vision, made
the time when this or any such infant, growing from
milk and honey, would, in the course of nature,
arrive at a certain degree of discretion the utmost
measure of the duration of Judea’s present
desolation, of Jerusalem’s terror, and of Ephraim’s
threats. Butter and honey would at present be the
food of the child, until he knows to reject the evil
and choose the good, but no longer; for the invaders
will in the mean time leave, and the cultivation of
the fields be restored. If this be the true view,
the prophet here measures existing calamity by the
natural advancement of the child seen in vision,
precisely as he, in the next chapter, measures it by
his own child Maher-shalal-hash-baz.
Accordingly, the two measures, running parallel,
would only cover the two or three years from that
time to <<504>>the invasion of Tiglath-pileser, in
which Damascus and the ten tribes suffered severely.
The general idea, notwithstanding its minor
variations, is the same expressed in the next
chapter, v. 10. In the face of the invading armies,
the prophet says, “Devise a plan, and it shall be
defeated; speak a word, and it shall not stand,
because God-with-us,” the child and the truth
Immanuel is all that we want. This view is more
plausible from the following context. Threatenings
of the Assyrian invasions, of evils to the house of
David such as had never yet been witnessed,
immediately follow. Isaiah said to Ahaz as much as,
if it were not for the hope of the Messiah, for the
security which we have in Immanuel, we might indeed
sink.
This general interpretation, full of attractive
meaning and interest, is tremendously strengthened
by peculiar expressions and accompanying facts.
1.
The mother of the Messiah was an idea familiar to
the prophets. Micah, the contemporary of Isaiah,
proves it a familiar idea when he says, “Until the
time that she which travaileth hath brought forth.”
(Micah v. 3.) The word
עלמה (almah), which, if it is of
Hebrew derivation, comes from a verb meaning to
conceal, is an appropriate word for a female who
has never been approached or known by the other sex.
The masculine form of the word is applied to David,
when he was too young to be a soldier or to be
admitted to a public office, and to the lad whom
Jonathan took with him to the field to gather up the
arrows. The Septuagint translation gives, in the
passage under consideration, πάξδενος, the proper
word for virgin. Rashi says,
ויש פותרים שזה האות שעלמה
היתה ואינה ראויה לוולד
“There are who interpret that this is the sign, that
she was an almah, and was not fit to have a
child;” and it is not likely that Rashi quoted from
Christians. Aben Ezra says that the essential idea
of almah is that of being young, without
determining whether she is a virgin or married. The
word is used in six other instances. The servant of
Abraham went to seek an almah for Isaac (Gen.
xxiv. 43), unquestionably a virgin. The word is
applied to the virgin sister of Moses (Exod. ii. 8).
In three other instances, Ps. lxviii. 25, Sol. Song,
i. 8, and vi. 8, no one <<505>>will dispute that
virgins in the strictest sense are especially meant.
You assert a strong probability that in Prov. xxx.
19,* almah means a prostitute; I see a much
stronger probability that if the word bethulah
itself had been used, you would have escaped more
easily from our argument by asserting that,
according to Joel i. 8, a bethulah mourns
over her bereavement of the husband of her youth;
and in Isa. xxiii. 12, the best translation may be,
violated bethulah. On the contrary, the Bible
never speaks of an almah who has had a
husband. A stronger single term expressive of pure
virginity, of being concealed, of seclusion from the
other sex, could not have been used.
2.
Events lying remote in the future are sometimes
given as signs. See Ex. iii. 12 ; 1 Sam. ii. 34; Is.
xxxvii. 30, three instances in which the signs were
future events. The miraculous coining of the Messiah
could therefore be a sign though a future event. And
if Isaiah saw Immanuel rising up to manhood in
circumstances necessarily involving a previous
defeat of the enemies, a complete change in the
kings and population of northern Palestine and
Syria, his vision was a sufficient sign.
3.
It is evident that Isaiah had in his eye at that
time some wonderful child, on whom lie built his
highest hopes for Judah and Jerusalem. This is made
as clear as day in the ninth chapter. “For unto us a
child is born, unto us a son is given, and the
government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name
shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty
God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace;”
or, as an Israelite translates, “Wonderful,
counsellor of the mighty God, of the everlasting
Father, the Prince of Peace,”—a translation which is
contrary to the Masoretic interpunction which makes
a mere man the giver of counsel* to the mighty God
and everlasting Father, since every one understands by the counsellor of David the man who
gives him counsel, and which clearly reveals a wish
to wrest the passage from the hands of Christians.
There is every probability that this signally named
child of the ninth chapter is the same with the
Immanuel of the seventh. It is extremely improbable
that Immanuel was an ordinary child to be named so,
just as any parent might name his son Immanuel: if
this was the case, Isaiah would more appropriately
have comforted the king from the name Hezekiah,
my-strength-is-he, the name of the promising
royal son. If both were common children there was as
much in the name Hezekiah as in the name Immanuel.
It is evident that Immanuel was not Hezekiah, since
the latter had already been born more than nine
years. Neither could Immanuel have been,
<<508>>as Aben Ezra supposes, a son of Isaiah; the prophet, in
the next chapter, calls all the Holy Land, as it
should be inundated by the Assyrian armies, the land
of Immanuel; and this land never belonged in any
special sense, to one of the sons of Isaiah.
The prophet’s two sons Shearjashub and Maher-shalal-hash-baz,
were signs and wonders in Israel, or, probably, when
he says his children were for signs and wonders, he
represents another person. Neither Ahaz nor Isaiah
could have been honourably the father of Immanuel,
as each had already a child of some years, and their
wives were no longer young women, unless in the
event of a second marriage.
3.
קראת may be the
third person feminine, like
נפלאת (Psalm cxviii.
23), הבאת (Gen.
xxxiii. 11), קראת
(Deut. xxxi. 29). It is not necessary to take our
Dr. Wise’s view that Isaiah addressed a female.
4.
If Hosea, in a supernatural scene, saw himself
married, and gave names to his three children as
prophetic signs, Isaiah might also see the infant
Messiah, and see Jerusalem’s present calamity
bounded by the time of his growth.
It
is an objection to Christianity often made, that
Matthew should not have represented the words of
Hosea as fulfilled when the infant Jesus was brought
out of Egypt, since the child in Hosea is the people
of Israel, and not any individual, the original
passage being, “When Israel was a child then I loved
him, and called my son out of Egypt.” Suppose, Dr.
Schlessinger, that Judea were your own native
country and home, and that you had been forced to be
an exile for some time in Egypt. In your journey
back to your beloved home, you could consistently
and earnestly pray that God would fulfil, in
yourself, the gracious calling of his son from
Egypt, that he would protect you in going up from
Egypt as he once protected Israel. Every pious man
naturally seizes on coincidences between his own
individual history , and that of Israel and
expresses his prayers and thoughts where the
coincidence suggests it, in quotations from
Scripture. On reaching your home safely, you would
thank the Lord that he had fulfilled to you the same
love in your journey from Egypt which He had once
fulfilled to Israel; <<509>>and this your
thanksgiving would not imply that you considered the
promise exclusively fulfilled in yourself. If a
Rabbi in New York should preach a sermon from the
text, “I called my son from Egypt,” and should
assert that God now, in giving many oppressed
Israelites a happy home in America, fulfils to them
the same promises of love which He fulfilled to the
Israelites in their journey from Egypt, you would
not make a single objection. Why, then, are you so
unwilling to see a single expression of God’s
ancient love to Israel applied to Jesus Christ, as
if likewise fulfilled in him? You suppose Matthew
arguing from this passage on the special divine sonship of Christ, but in this you do him injustice.
Yours most respectfully,
M. R. MILLER. New York, Nov. 12, 1850. |
