LITMIR.BIZ

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was revealed that sanctity is no thing of place and time, that a way is open from earth to heaven, from every field or mountain trod by human feet, and through every roof that shelters a human head; that, amid the crowd and crush of life, each soul is in personal solitude with God, and by speech or silence (be they but true and loving) may tell its cares and find its peace; that a divine allegiance might cost nothing, but the strife of a dutiful will and the patience of a filial heart—how could any priesthood hope to stand? See how Jesus himself, when the temple was close at hand, and the sunshine dressed it in its splendor, yet withdrew his prayers to the midnight of Mount Olivet. He entered those courts to teach, rather than to worship; and when there, he is felt to take no consecration, but to give it; to bring with him the living spirit of God, and spread it throughout all the place. When evening closes his teachings, and he returns late over the Mount to Bethany, did he not feel that there was more of God in the night-breeze on his brow, and the heaven above him, and the sad love within him, than in the place called "Holy" which he had left? And when he had knocked at the gate of Lazarus the risen and become his guest—when, after the labors of the day, he unburdened his spirit to the affections of that family, and spake of things divine to the sisters listening at his feet—did they not feel, as they retired at length, that the whole house was full of God, and that there is no sanctuary like the shrine, not made with hands, within us all? In childhood, he had once preferred the temple and its teachings to his parents' home: now, to his deeper experience, the temple has lost its truth; while the cottage and the walks of Nazareth, the daily voices and constant duties of this life, seem covered with the purest consecration. True, he vindicated the sanctity of the temple, when he heard within its enclosure the hum of traffic and the chink of gain, and would not have the house of prayer turned into a place of merchandise: because in this there was imposture and a lie, and Mammon and the Lord must ever dwell apart. In nothing must there be mockery and falsehood; and while the temple stands, it must be a temple true.

      Our Lord's whole ministry, then, (to which we may add that of his Apostles,) was conceived in a spirit quite opposite to that of priesthood. A missionary life, without fixed locality, without form, without rites; with teaching free, occasional, and various, with sympathies ever with the people, and a strain of speech never marked by invective, except against the ruling sacerdotal influence;—all these characters proclaim him, purely and emphatically, the Prophet of the Lord. It deserves notice that, unless as the name of his enemies, the word "Priest" (ἱεÏÎµÏ Ï) never occurs in either the historical or epistolary writings of the New Testament, except in the Epistle to the Hebrews. And there its application is not a little remarkable. It is applied to Christ alone; it is declared to belong to him only after his ascension; it is said that, while on earth, he neither was, nor could be, a priest; and if it is admitted that he holds the office in heaven, this is only to satisfy the demand of the Hebrew Christians for some sacerdotal ideas in their religion, and to reconcile them to having no priest on earth. The writer acknowledges one great pontiff in the world above, that the whole race may be superseded in the world below; and banishes priesthood into invisibility, that men may never see its shadow more. All the terms of office which are given to the first preachers of the Gospel and superintendents of churches—as Deacon, Elder or Presbyter, Overseer or Bishop—are lay terms, belonging previously, not to ecclesiastical, but to civil life; an indication, surely, that no analogy was thought to exist between the Apostolic and the Sacerdotal relations.[9] I shall, no doubt, be reminded of the words, in which our Lord is supposed to have given their commission to his first representatives: "Whatsoever ye bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever ye loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven"; and shall be asked whether this does not convey to them and their successors an official authority to forgive sins, and dispense the decrees of the unseen world. I reply briefly:—

      1st. That the power here granted does not relate to the dispensations of the future life, but solely to what would be termed, in modern language, the allotment of church-membership. The previous verse proves this, furnishing as it does a particular case of the general authority here assigned. It directs the Apostles under what circumstances they are to remove an offender from a Christian society, and treat him as an unconverted man, as a heathen man and a publican. Having given them their rule, he freely trusts the application of it to them: and being about to retire erelong from personal intervention in the affairs of his kingdom, he assures them that their decisions shall be his, and that he may be considered as adopting in heaven their determinations upon earth. He simply "consigns to his Apostles discretionary power to direct the affairs of his Church, and superintend the diffusion of the glad tidings: they may bind and loose, that is, open and shut the door of admission to their community, as their judgment may determine; employing or rejecting applicants for the missionary office; dissociating from their assemblies obstinate delinquents; receiving with openness, or dismissing with suspicion, each candidate for instruction, according to their estimate of his qualifications and motives."

      2dly. It is to be observed, that there is no appearance of any one being in the contemplation of our Lord, beyond the persons immediately addressed. Not a word is said of any official successor or any distant age. No indication is afforded, that any idea of futurity was present to the mind of Jesus: and a title of perpetual office, an instrument creating and endowing an endless priesthood, ought, it will be admitted, to be somewhat more explicit than this. But where the power has been successfully claimed, the title is seldom difficult to prove.

      The alleged ritual of Christianity, consisting of the sacraments of Baptism and the Communion, will be found no less destitute of sanction from the Scriptures. The former we shall see reason to regard as simply an initiatory form, applicable only to Christian converts, and limited therefore to adults; the latter as purely a commemoration: neither therefore having any sacramental or mystical efficacy.

      For baptism it is impossible to establish any supernatural origin. It is admitted to have existed before the Christian era; and to have been employed by the Jews on the admission of proselytes to their religion. It is certain that it is not an enjoined rite in the Mosaic dispensation; and, though prevalent before the period of the New Testament, is nowhere enforced or recognized in the writings of the Old. It arose therefore in the interval between the only two systems which Christians acknowledged to be supernatural; and must be considered as of natural and human origin, invested, thus far, with no higher authority than its own appropriateness may confer. There seem to have been two modes of construing the symbol: the one founded on the cleansing effect of the water on the person of the baptized himself; the other, on the appearance of his immersion (which was complete) to the eye of a spectator. The former was an image of the heathen convert's purification from a foul idolatry, and his transition to a stainless condition under a divine and justifying law. The latter represented him, when he vanished in the stream, as interred to this world, sunk utterly from its sight; and when he reappeared, as emerging or born again to a better state; the "old man" was "buried in baptism," and when he "rose again," he had altogether "become new."[10] The ceremony then was appropriately used in any case of transition from a depressed and corrupt state of existence to a hopeful and blessed one; from a false or imperfect religion to one true and heavenly.

      But it will be said, whatever the origin of baptism, it was employed and sanctioned by our Lord, who commissioned his Apostles to go and baptize all nations. True; but is there no difference between the adoption of a practice already extant—of a practice which was as much the mere institutional dress of the Apostles' nation, as the sandals whose dust they were to shake off against the faithless were the customary clothing of the Apostles' feet—and the authoritative appointment of a sacrament? They were going forth to make converts: and why should they not have recourse to the form familiarly associated with the act? Familiar association recommended its adoption in that age and clime; and the absence of such association elsewhere and in other times may be thought to justify its disuse. At all events, a ceremony thus taken up must be presumed to retain its acquired sense and its established extent of application: and if so, baptism must be strictly limited to the admission of proselytes from other faiths. This accords with the known practice of the Apostles, who cannot be shown to have baptized any but those whom they had personally, or by their missionaries, persuaded to become Christians. Not a single case of the use of the rite with children can be adduced from Scripture; and the only argument by which such employment of it is ever justified is this: that a household is said to have

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