Q. 1. Dear Mr. Editor,
Referring to the query in the last month's number of the “Bible Treasury” as to a passage in “Recent Utterances,” dealing with propitiation, and your reply thereto, it may interest many of your readers to peruse the following extract, which may be found on pages 562 and 563, vol. vi. (Expository), of the Collected Writings of J. N. Darby, edited by William Kelly. The italics are my own.
“Set on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the heavens.” Why so? Because if we have nothing more to be done, Christ has nothing more to do. (I speak not of the priestly work, but of bearing away sins). He is resting, having nothing more to do (chap. 10.). The offering has been made and cannot be repeated (chap. 8:2, 3). The whole of the priesthood is carried on in heaven itself. The offering was another thing. The offerer brought the victim, the priest received the blood and carried it in. On the day of atonement there was another thing: the priest had to go through the whole thing by himself—not carrying on the work of intercession, but that of representing the people. Christ took this place. He could say “Mine iniquities,” &c., for He bore our sins. We can never speak of bearing our sins; He the sinless One bore them for us. He was the victim, and at the same time the confessor, owning all the sins. Then, as priestly work, He carries in the blood, having offered Himself without spot to God (the burnt offering in that sense). He was “made sin.” He offered Himself freely up, and the sins were laid on Him: first He takes that dreadful cup, then goes and sprinkles that place. His priesthood is entirely in heaven. The tabernacle was on earth: there was the court of the tabernacle; and inside the court was out of the world, and not inside heaven. He was lifted up (John 12) to draw all men unto Him.
For further instances of the author's views, see same volume, page 537, fifteen lines from the top; page 555, lines 1-21; page 582, line 13; and in vol. vii., page 85, five lines from the bottom, and page 284, ten lines from the bottom.
Now I quote the above not as settling, or even tending to settle, the point in dispute—the word of God will do that for subject minds, but in order to show that at least one “well-taught” man held the views you and others so strongly denounce, and that at least one editor, other than the editor of the party organ to which you allude, sent forth these views without one note of warning.
To me the solemn thing in the present and recent controversies is the prevalence of mere assertion; and absence, or distortion, of the word of God; and I am thankful that you refuse the glaring attempt at this latter, recently perpetrated by Mr. P. But this is all foreseen; for speaking, I doubt not, of this very Epistle to the Hebrews, Peter tells us of those who are unlearned and unstable wresting to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15, 16.)
May the Lord keep us, in deed and in truth, holding fast His word, and, if not consonant therewith, letting our creeds and views go.
A. Without consenting to open these pages to controversy, I print J. F.'s effort to implicate J. N. D. in the strange doctrine of Mr. C. E. S. on propitiation. It seems the fashion now, on both sides of the Atlantic, to quote the late Mr. D. for errors which he never taught but abhorred. It were better to stick to scripture. Similar blunders (to give them the mildest designation) had been made in his lifetime. Many witnesses must remember this or that brother saying, “But, Mr. D., the Synopsis says so and so,” to which came the prompt reply, “Then the Synopsis is wrong.” The truth is, however, that only these brothers were wrong; for the Synopsis was right, and tallied with the fresh statements of its author.
After examining carefully all the passages we are now referred to, I affirm that Mr. S.'s heterodoxy finds no countenance from the writings, any more than from the oral ministry, of Mr. D. How then account for this confident but baseless reference? The very passage cited at length distinguishes the high-priestly action on the day of atonement from the whole of the priesthood carried on in heaven itself. The propitiation was on the cross of Christ, Whom God set forth a mercy-seat through faith in His blood; and when He set Himself down on the right hand of the majesty on high, it was as having Himself made the purification of sins. It is mere fiction that He had to make propitiation there. It is true that Mr. D., like everybody else, has allowed himself, from the Aaronic type, the figurative language of Christ's “carrying in the blood,” &c. just as he elsewhere speaks of burying the remembrance of our sins in the grave of Christ. Is it possible that any are so “unlearned and unstable” as to take such words in a literal and material way?
In not a vestige of his Collected Writings does Mr. D. teach propitiation after death, in heaven, and in the disembodied state, consequently, before resurrection, as Mr. S. teaches: all which things are false and no truth, but the undermining and supplanting of revealed truth by a really revolting dream from the enemy. Readers who are not leavened will see that Mr. D.'s doctrine was no other than that which has been now, as always, maintained in these pages, if they weigh his Doctrinal iv. 325, where he says, “save the fact of propitiation in Chapter 2 [Heb.] in which the high-priest represented the people (not a proper act of priesthood, though of the high-priest on the day of atonement).” Now the pith of Mr. S.'s theory is the putting together of Heb. 2:17; 9:12, and 8:4, which results in deadly error annulling the cross, and inventing a ghostly priesthood; whereas Mr. D. expressly discriminates Heb. 2:17; and thus maintains the holy balance of the truth, giving the cross its fundamental value, and showing the true distinctive character of priesthood on high. Mr. D. expressly calls the propitiation “an exceptional case.” It was here below and by the blood of the cross, though the right hand of God in heaven alone adequately expresses its moral glory and efficacy.
But if plain scripture is so gravely perverted, we must not wonder at the misunderstanding of a dead saint's words. If he had been alive, they would probably have been lot alone. But it is well, if error be at work, that it should come out plainly, and that we should know who seriously stand for the truth.
Yours faithfully,
J.F.
Q. 2. “Reception at the Lord's table.”
A. The true standard by which to try the question is the claim not of a Christian, but of Christ, as revealed by the written word; and this in spirit, not letter. Compare 1 John 5:2.
Now the question raised of late years among us is one of value for the Christ of God, or of indifference to Big dishonor indirectly if not directly. An ecclesiastical error of episcopacy, Presbyterianism, or independency is quite subordinate. A known saint of proved godliness, being a member of these ostensibly orthodox societies, we receive, if seeking to break breed; but we should require him first to clear himself if false doctrine were taught where he goes. Still more peremptorily should we refuse one who came from a heterodox party, as Campbellites, Irvingites; &c. even if he were said to be ever so pious and possessed personal soundness. Scripture is too plain: he is a partaker of their evil deeds, and we decline to license his lukewarm and leavened state. The assembly can rightly be nothing else than the pillar and support of the truth, without becoming a party to Christ's shame, and, in these last days especially, a trap for unwary souls. The present ruin of the church in no way alters the responsibility, though the sphere be only two or three on that ground; otherwise it is at best a human society, exposed to Satan instead of shielded of the Lord, even were each soul there a saint.
It would be well to say plainly where the many simple Christians are, whose only disqualification seems to, be that others call, them “Open brethren.” If known to be only so called, and not such really they would claim and have help to guard them, from the snare they are exposed to, by teaching them truth more fully. All would welcome a call for care in this way, One such company lately came before us; and God was pleased to clear their way; and they are happily in fellowship, gathered to Christ's name, instead of floating without divine principle or center. Another recently presumed to be such proved to be O. B. A third for which simplicity was vaunted, the O. B. declared to be “a bad meeting,” and too loose for them, though individually admissible. But those of us, who, moving most about have the best means of information, do not know of these undefiled meetings; and we are certainly guiltless of refusing any snob persons. And, if we, believe scripture, we are sure that Christians may be defiled by a lax principle which glosses over evil generally, and particularly in doctrine. It is a deep fall when a Christian sinks below even the law of God— “though he wist it not, yet is he guilty.” Could we any longer, in dealing, with so delicate a case, trust the spiritual judgment of one so dull in hearing God's word? Only he who is firm in truth can safely show grace, Such looseness as this is really to have slipped away from God's principles into a practice never yet sanctioned; and may it never be!
Nor is it ignorant souls that have, given us trouble, but rather people more or less intelligent, anxious for their ease or zealous for their friends, but heartless as to Christ or the responsibility of those gathered to His name corporately. Of this character is the argument from those within guilty of intimacy in private with such as are publicly rejected. How sad, instead of censuring this sort of laxity, to apply it as a reason to throw down the holy barriers, or make it seem a yoke too hard to bear! There is a wide margin, on the one hand, between treating an offender as a heathen man and a publican, and, on the other, receiving him at the Lord's table.
So also the balance is uneven and the weights unjust which put the O. B. companies with Anglicanism and dissent. Both the Church of England and the Nonconformists emerged from darkness into better light; whereas the O. B. began by departing from what was of God in order to screen the partisans of an antichrist, and have never cleared themselves from this plague-spot: to do so would be to give up their raison d'être. Then, again, the O. B. profess, like ourselves, to be gathered to Christ's name, and deny that they are a sect, as they believe Anglicans and Dissenters to be. In both ways therefore it is untrue and unjust to deal with them alike, according to our conviction and that of the O. B. God judges according to profession; and so should we. The falling back of the O. B. on congregational ground also is to escape from corporate responsibility. But this aggravates their guilt, instead of leaving us, more free to receive individually from them, as from churches or chapels. What then is the worth of the palliation before us?
Indeed it may be doubted if any respectable teacher among the O. B. would go so far as the text and note of this paper to destroy the true force of Matt. 18:18-20. Think of lowering it down to Christian intercourse apart from any ecclesiastical position! Thus to blot out the solemnity of “Verily I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven,” and reduce it to ordinary prayer and Christian intercourse, looks like infatuation, as it certainly is a misinterpretation of the first magnitude. And this is the more deplorable because the writer in his last printed “Letter” taught the contrary—taught the truth here we all hold as of the deepest importance practically. Now he denies it to the irreparable loss of himself and all who are influenced thereby, if any should be so weak as to turn away from the very voice of the good Shepherd Himself. Certainly we who profit incalculably by this rich provision of the Savior's grace are not, if wise and, true, the men to condone the guilt of so mischievous a perversion. May the Lord recover by and to His own truth, and save the weak and careless from shipwreck.