The course of Israel, as illustrating God's dealings and purposes with the redeemed people, culminates in the supreme and resplendent glories of the General Assembly on the holy mount. It is the close of a record of absolute grace on the one side and absolute unworthiness on the other. We now come to the consideration of a new aspect of things altogether: namely, the history of Israel, (1) as illustrating man under the law; and (2) as being the repository of the principles of (a) divine service and (b) divine testimony.
“All other nations but the Jewish,” says S. T. Coleridge, “seem to look backwards, and also to exist in the present; but in the Jewish scheme everything is prospective and preparatory: nothing, however trifling, is done for itself alone; but all is typical of something yet to come." “Old Fuller” has an ingenious conceit to the effect that “the Hebrew tongue hath no proper present tense, but two future tenses.” The author of Religio Medici says, “It is not unremarkable what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continued two thousand years without the least alteration; whereas we see the laws of other commonwealths do alter with occasions; and even those that pretend their original from some divinity too have vanished without trace or memory.” Even Renan, whose difficult task it is to put as changeable and evolutionary an appearance on the Jewish system as possible, says, “This organism was completed 450 years [more like 1450, though] before Christ. Judaism then became an abridgment of all the religious work of the world.“
Thus do even the smallest actions of the Jews become magnified and thrown forward over the field of the world's vision, as in the specter of the Brocken in Hungary, when the traveler sees his shadow projected by the light behind him athwart the whole sky, enormously enlarged in all its dimensions: when he raises his walking-stick or casts a stone on the ground, the projected shadow seems like Odin plucking up a tree by the roots, or Jupiter casting Mount Aetna on Typhon.
In considering the Jewish records then we are not merely studying ancient history, but contemporary history, of principles and events such as we are now passing through. So when Israel is placed under the law he is tested as representing all mankind, and when he has the sanctuary and testimony committed to him, he is privileged on behalf of the whole race: it is not merely national or parochial, it is cosmic. To test the whole world in any other way so as to give a definite historic result would be manifestly impossible. The principle is the same as that which we see going on all day long in every-day life: in nearly all cases of trading the buyer only sees a small sample of the merchandise that he is invited to purchase. It is impossible for him to see, taste, and smell the whole bulk. So the hand is pushed into the corn sack, cotton bale, or tea chest, and a little taken out to represent the whole; or the “valinch” is plunged into the wine-butt and withdrawn with a sample so small that its absence is not missed, yet by it both buyer and seller agree to abide. If it be satisfactory, well and good; if not, the bulk is judged by the sample and rejected. And this last is what happened when Israel's corruption was finally proved: the time of probation was ended, and it was said, “Now is the judgment of this world.”
The law is given amid circumstances of appalling grandeur, with lurid “fire, and blackness, and darkness, and tempest,” in contrast with the gospel,, which came in with the symbolism of luminous tongues—the law being given in one language, the gospel in all; the law to condemn, the gospel to save; the law to detect what was lacking, the gospel to supply it; the law to disclose sin, the gospel to disclose righteousness; the law to pronounce judgment, the gospel to proclaim mercy; the law to detect man, the gospel to reveal God. The law's commands are numerous, negative, and complicated; the gospel's command is simple and single— “That we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ” and “love one another.”
Yet “the law is holy. . . . and just, and good,” and perfectly adapted to the testing purpose to which it. has been applied, and also to the purpose for which it has been designed, of being a “schoolmaster [to bring us] unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” This figure implies a preparatory stage of things during a period of immaturity, at the expiration of which is found the liberty of Christ, which, the Galatians so little understood. But that liberty no more implies license than the liberty of a youth freed from the authority of his schoolmaster implies freedom from the restraints of the amenities of honor and propriety. “Liberty” is bounded by “Christ.” Usually we have a stronger regard for, and appreciation of, our schoolmasters when we reach maturity than we ever had before. We certainly do not wish to destroy them—that would be antinomian—nor to continue in subjection to them—that were—to be Galatian and antichristian.
Of (2a) the principles of divine service anon. But of (2b) the testimony I may here say that Israel has certainly at all times been a powerful evidence to God's rule and the character of it in the earth. “Ye are My witnesses;” and not only so in being the custodians of the divine oracles, but in themselves and in respect of their whole history whether in good or evil. For infinite wisdom had so adjusted the matter that whilst they jealously guarded and carried about those scriptures that condemned nearly every step they took, even their national sins and judgments were evidences that those oracles were divinely inspired. The more deeply this is considered the more will be seen the wisdom of the reply which Frederick the Great's chaplain made when the king asked him for an evidence in brief of the inspiration of scripture. He answered, “The Jews, sire.” And very powerful negative evidence to this comes just now from an opponent. Henan says, “It was only eighteen hundred years after Jesus Christ that the work of the Jewish people met with the first severe blow [from those of his own line of thought]. It then became doubtful to minds that were at all cultivated whether the things of this world were ruled by a just God.” This is naive, but very important: the Jewish people have carried the evidence of the role of a just God over the whole earth even till now. It is true that some small scientists are stated to have recently upset the whole thing; but perhaps it may even survive that. (We seem to remember that a brilliant fellow-countryman of M. Renan claimed to have done something of the sort a century ago, when he said that it took twelve men to build up Christianity and only one (i.e., himself) to pull it down. Still, somehow it survived and used his own house Afterward to print Bibles in.)
The purpose of God is sure to be brought about. If He says to the Jews, “Ye are My witnesses,” they shall be so in one way or another. He does not light candles to put them under beds or bushels: if they are not a testimony in the burning and shining light of obedience and blessing, they shall be so in the gross darkness of sin and curse. If not by a flaming candle, it shall be by a smoking candle. And no one can hide it; Pharaoh and many another tried to do so, but, like the man in the Indian proverb who tried to shut up the sun, moon, and stars in three chests, with very imperfect success.