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by S. S.
The grass withereth, the flower
fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.—Isaiah, 40.8.
Although the Bible is silent as to the length of
time the children of Israel were oppressed in Egypt, enough is there
expressed to show us that their servitude was sufficiently long to
suppress the finer sensibilities of the people; and to render their
self-esteem so low as to cause them, in a measure, to copy with
servility the manners and customs of the Egyptians. For how else can we
account for the murmurings and rebellions, in many instances, and the
idolatrous spirit shown by the Israelites during their journey in the
wilderness? They that had seen the sublime power of the Most High so
awfully exhibited before Pharaoh and the Egyptian people; they that had
been witnesses of the continual miracles from the first prophetic
mission of Moses until his death, must have strongly imbibed the
idolatrous worship of Egypt, or their hearts would have overflowed with
gratitude towards that great and good Being, who had fed, clothed, and
provided for all their wants, instead of drawing down upon themselves,
by their obduracy of heart, the just punishment of the offended Deity,
the doom of dying in the wilderness without entering the beautiful
country promised in the covenant of Abraham.*
From
the time of the departure of the children of Israel from Egypt, guided
by the pillar of cloud by day, and of fire by night, until their
assemblage before Sinai, we find them in the continual absolute presence
of the Deity, who never left them until their moral and religious law
was fully established; a law that was to be acknowledged as the only
true one, by all the nations of the earth at the appointed time.
The
unity of God is one of those broad truths which must be self-evident to
a mind that can without prejudice contemplate the marvelous correctness
in which the immensity of creation fulfils its destined courses, without
deviating from the laws of its government during the lapse of ages. For
unity of results can only flow from unity of action; we may therefore
ask with truth, Could this be the case if there were more than one
supreme controlling Power? But when we call to mind the religious state
of the Hebrews to which I alluded, we must admit that this belief in the
unity was too important a tenet of faith to be left to the unaided
reflection of man to discover; and that the law was of right compelled
to use such language in reference thereto that none but the willfully
blind could ever be mistaken concerning what he should believe. If we
now turn to the pages of the Bible, the unity of God meets us at every step; we find it written by the finger of the Deity in
the Decalogue; if we search the prophets, the words stand in bold
relief: "Fear ye not, neither be afraid have not I told thee from
that time, and have declared it; ye are even my witnesses, is there a
God besides me? yea, there is no God; I know not any."—Isaiah,
44.8. "See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no God with me;
I kill, and I make alive; I wound and I heal, neither is there any that
can deliver out of my hand."—Deut. 32.39. Do these passages
indicate any redeemer save the eternal Unity? Thick must be the veil
that blinds the votaries of erroneous opinions, which can hinder them
from seeing that the Bible, in every passage where it treats of the
attributes of the Deity, points out in the strongest language which
thought can conceive, that there is no being to share the power and
greatness of God; that He ever has, does now, and will forever reign the
sole, supreme, unchangeable, infallible One.
If
sin had not caused the dispersion of Israel from the land of their
fathers, and they were now a nation dwelling in Canaan, they would not
feel concerned about this or that interpretation which different sects
give to isolated portions of the Scriptures, to support each new-fangled
tenet of their various creeds. Contented with the law concerning which
the perfect One commanded that it should neither be increased nor
diminished, they would feel pity in seeing the attempts made by those
who neither understand the spirit in which the text of the Holy Bible
was written, nor can explain ideas expressed more than three thousand
years ago to an Eastern people whose manners, customs, expression and
modes of thought were totally at variance with existing nations; who
contort the prophecies of Israel's seers so as to express any thing but
what a common sense view requires them to say, and to mean any and every
other nation but the Hebrew; for, contented with the law, they would
obey its ordinances without speculating on the time of the fulfillment of
the prophecies. But situated as we are, it behooves us, when our
religious opinions are attacked by those of an adverse faith, to show
the influence of the law given to us, as well as to our ancestors, by
the One Supreme, and to assert that no prophecy can militate against any
of the statutes given for the government of Israel by the Almighty
himself at his glorious descent on Sinai. Had the Almighty intended at
any time to abrogate any part of his law, He would have plainly said,
This law shall endure throughout your generations until I, or the
messenger I may send, shall alter or annul it. But so far from this
being the case, we find, at the first covenant made with Abraham, (Gen.
17.) that it was to be of everlasting duration, equally binding on his
remotest descendants with himself; that the penalty was to be the cutting off the soul of him who did not obey its
requirements, without qualification as to time and place. Shall the
delusive arguments of those who, guided by false lights, call the
everlasting covenant made with us through Abraham, by the ever blessed
One, of no effect towards the soul's salvation (thus arrogating to
themselves a knowledge above that of Scripture) be of weight with us,
when the advice they give would, if followed, be death to the soul? No!
let us be firm in support of the truth, and let us in patience abide the
time when gentiles, guided by a new
light, shall at last acknowledge that there is salvation in Israel.
There is, moreover, in this, as in all other vital commandments, the
announcement of an everlasting duration. So also as regards the
Sabbath; for as the creation was the first great work of the Almighty
apparent to his creatures, gratitude alone should be a sufficient
inducement for keeping a day in memorial of it, as a willing tribute
from the creature to the Creator. How much more holy, then, should that
day of rest be kept now, when we find the ordinance for so doing in the
Ten Commandments, and see so oft repeated,
"Whosoever
doeth any work on the Sabbath day, he shall surely be put to
death;" "Wherefore the Children of Israel shall keep the Sabbath,
to observe the Sabbath throughout their generations for a perpetual
covenant?"—Ex. 31. l5, 16. Shall we be told that a perpetual
covenant means a definite term of years? What term, then, are we to make
use of to denote eternity? If an ordinance is perpetual, no subsequent
action can change its duration, unless accompanied by the same
manifestation of the Divine Majesty which accompanied its promulgation.
But are we to entertain the idea, that the Deity, like weak and finite
man, needs must legislate to amend that which He ordained to be an everlasting
precept? Forbid it piety! reason rebels at the thought!
Again,
we find in the twenty-third chapter of Leviticus, an enumeration of the
Sabbaths and festivals, and after each commandment concerning the same,
the words, "It shall be a statute for ever throughout your
generations, in all your dwellings;" and we are to be told, when we
keep these Sabbaths and festivals, that we are doing something
displeasing to the Immutable? that we have not light, or we would see
our error in fulfilling the behests of the Divine Law? and that the
Almighty never intended that we should keep them after the thirty-eighth
century, although He commanded us to keep them for ever? If we need
light to convinced of this, thankful should we be for the absence of the
false glare.
In
relation to the perpetual sacrifices, we find the ordinance in the same
chapter, and in the 34th verse of the 16th
chapter, as well as in
other places; and even the priests were prescribed the particular dress
they should officiate in, as a statute for ever.—(Ex: 28. 42, 43). And
as they were to have no inheritance in the land, "they should have
all the tenths of Israel, for an inheritance;" (Num. 18. 19-21,) so
that their whole time might be spent in religious purposes, and in
teaching the law; and in order that the daily and perpetual sacrifices
might never cease through want of ministers, a whole tribe was set apart
for this purpose; "a perpetual inheritance of the Lord." And
yet it has been asserted by those who claim superior wisdom, that the
sacrifices were merely typical, and were to cease after a certain
period; as if the Omniscient One could not penetrate far enough into the
future, to know whether a law that He ordained should last for ever, would serve the purposes for which it was
intended only for a short time, and that after a certain period He
should have to acknowledge that He had ceased to know the future, as
well as the past, by being induced or compelled to send a messenger to
abrogate an everlasting ordinance, because He had found that it would
not answer the end for which it was ordained.
If
a parent, a teacher, or a respected friend, should, through his desire
for our welfare, lay a restriction on us, as the price of his love, and
we know that his knowledge far exceeds ours, and that no selfishness is
mixed up with his advice, but that love for us is the sole incentive of
it: should we not follow the directions of superior knowledge? How much
more ready should we then be in obeying the voice of the Deity!
Confident in his knowledge, we should feel delight in obeying his
behests. In the 11th chapter of Leviticus, we find the
commandment concerning those
animals
of whose flesh we might partake, and of those animals that were to be
considered unclean, and which were forbidden to us to be made food of.
The Most High showing here, no less than every where else, his care of
the bodily as well as the spiritual welfare of his chosen people. Now,
some have advanced, that this law (as well as a number of other laws)
was a merely local ordinance, and that it is not at all necessary for
the soul's salvation to abstain from the forbidden food, when one is out
of the land for the climate of which it was adapted. But, I ask, and
dare the proof from the pages of the Bible, is there any expression made
use of in the commandment that limits it as to place or circumstance?
In
partaking of the forbidden food, we commit two sins: partaking of that
which is not holy, and breaking a command of the most high God. Has not
the wisdom of this law shown itself in the increased numbers of the
Israelites? Would this have been the case had they mixed more freely in
the festivities of the stranger? I think not. Had it been a local law,
it would have been like the law of the sacrifices, specifically confined
to the place where it was to be in force.
Now,
is it to be supposed that the immutable God should descend to the earth,
clothed in his terrible majesty, to give all these laws which He
ordained to be of eternal duration, and then allow finite, erring man to
abrogate that which He deemed of sufficient importance so as to require
his own presence at its promulgation? And to substitute another, in
which a man is the judge and the redeemer? This is contended for by
those who admit that the passages I quote are truly translated from the
original Scriptures, and that they believe in the truth of them; and yet
say, that although these passages declare that the law shall endure for
ever, still they do not believe that this is their meaning. If we cannot
convince such by the text of the Bible, our arguments will not do it;
seeing that their so-called light, like the will-o'-the-wisp, leads them
farther away from the true path. But this will not deter us from
cherishing the beautiful law of our God as the apple of the eye;
trusting in his divine mercy as our passport to heaven, and
acknowledging "That the secret things belong to the Lord our God:
but those things that are revealed belong to us and our children for
ever, that we may do all the words of this law."—(Deut. 29. 29.)
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