It remains now to examine the system of symbols, in the sense not of confession of faith, but of sensible forms before the eye, which Irvingites have elaborated in their late history. It is known that this development is due to the prophets so called, notably to their first pillar, Mr. Taplin. Here again we have distinct, undeniable, departure from the inspired authority of the true apostles and prophets to Judaizing. The divine institution of Baptism and the Eucharist gives no warrant for the least addition, still less for wholesale invention, unrecognized in the N. T. for the church of God. Wherever introduced by man, it is essentially an alien, as it is a supplanter of faith. Now we walk by faith, not by sight. There is no legitimate adoption of it beyond divine authority. New objects of the kind are but idols; and well it is, if superstition degrade not what the Lord instituted into kindred evil. It is for Him to command, for the church to obey. It is not for us to initiate but to follow. All else is but presumption and indeed rebellion.
But let us hear what these men plead as cited from “Symbols used in worship.” “A type is that which is something absent and future; as for example Adam was a type of Christ; the sacrifices of the law were types of the sacrifice of Christ. A symbol, on the contrary, is something used to set forth and signify things really present, but unappreciable by the senses. It may also present a visible memorial of additional important truth. For instance the light which is kept burning before the altar, when the holy sacrament is there, symbolizes to us the Lord's invisible presence; but it is also from its very nature a memorial to us that He who is our life is our light also; and not ours only but the light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world.... Symbolism is in fact the science of exhibiting invisible truth by visible and appropriate signs, in order that our senses may be made the helps and handmaids of our spirits, and we may be the better able to worship God. If this end be not attained, symbols are useless.” Then the brass, the silver, and the gold of the Jewish Tabernacle are referred to, “a gradual increase of costliness from the court to the holy place, and from thence to the most holy. Doubtless these things typified different degrees of spiritual worship; but they also symbolized the truth that the more sacred the place and service the more costly should be the means employed. A palace is not furnished like a cottage; a drawing room is not furnished like a kitchen. We do not appear before a king in mean raiment.... It is barely possible for purity of heart to co-exist with voluntary impurity, either of our dwellings or of our persons.” To read such effusions of naturalism is painful coming from men professing Christ; but alas! Christendom is so fallen from faith that not a few outside this party accept the sentiment as just in the main and apposite.
John 4 overthrows the system; as does the Epistle to the Hebrews expressly. The hour has come when the ritual of Jerusalem, divinely appointed though it was, is passed away. The rival way of Samaria or of aught else is vain. It is a question of worshipping the Father: His children alone are competent, having received the Spirit of adoption by which they cry Abba, Father. The hour now is, when the true worshippers worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such doth the Father seek to be His worshippers. God is a spirit; and they that worship Him must worship in spirit and truth. The Lord had previously spoken of His giving the Holy Spirit (verse 14), without which Christian worship cannot be. Then, as we have seen, He contrasts it even with Levitical service, and intimates that it alone is now acceptable. For God is no longer hidden as in Judaism, but revealed in His Son which changes all and brings in what is new and eternal; and as God is seeking in fullness of love as a Father, so He can only be worshipped in spirit and truth as suits His nature. It is no longer man tested by law on the ground of what he ought to do. Rejecting the Messiah, the Son, they are proved to be lost and dead, like the poor Samaritan, till Jesus quickens them, and gives the Holy Ghost; and the Father's grace is thus known as seeking even such and making them His own, thenceforth true worshippers.
The Epistle to the Hebrews indicates a similar result in connection with the purifying of the conscience by the blood of Christ and His entrance into heavenly glory, before which the earthly ordinances of Israel fade into nothingness. Yet are they beautiful types if rightly apprehended as shadowing the “better thing” now come in Christ. But it is a retreat from the true light which now shines to set up under the gospel symbols of our own or borrowed from the law. This is to go back to type or symbol where God has given us the blessed anti-types. We are no longer babes needing such pictures. The Christian is of age, as Gal. 4 insists to counteract an analogous turning back to rudiments now discarded, and pernicious when thus misused.
Apostolic practice entirely falls in with this, if we allow for the gracious patience of God in gradually weaning those who had been Jews from the temple and its connected observances. But even from the beginning of the church nothing can be plainer or more certain than the simple and unworldly character of all that was found in “their own company” (Acts 4:23). They broke bread “at home” (Acts 2:46). Years after Pentecost we never hear of grand or beautiful buildings, which assuredly, if in any way an object, they had heart and means to erect. The utmost we hear of is “the upper chamber” to break bread in (Acts 20:7, 8), or of the school of Tyrannus where the apostle daily discoursed, or lectured (chap. xix. 9). Not a trace in the inspired record, not a hint, of the earthly splendor of the Jewish temple sought to be imitated or exceeded in the church of God. On the contrary, all the evidence of the N. T. points to a total change of principle, because God was calling out and forming a body on earth to walk and worship by the power of the Holy Spirit in the faith and enjoyment of a Savior enthroned in heaven, Who gave them each and all to draw near boldly to the throne of grace. Without doubt we are thus as believers, in presence of a glory revealed to us but not to the world, which pales all the pretentious efforts of architecture, or music, or eloquence in Christendom; yea, which is expressly compared with the law given by Moses, (even though this had unequivocally divine sanction for the time and the end then in view), in order to assert its immeasurable superiority.
Christ risen and exalted on high, in virtue not only of His person but of His work on the cross, is the center of the surpassing glory, a glory with which we have the fullest association assured to us now, and of which the Holy Spirit Who has anointed us is the seal, as He is the earnest in our hearts. No Christian questions that “the annulled” system, the law, was with glory when and as introduced by God; but how much more does the ministration of the Spirit and of righteousness, “that which abides,” exceed as it subsists in glory! There is one thing however absolutely needful for appreciating this truth, faith (alas! how rare) in holding fast our present heavenly relationship to Christ, as simply as the burdened conscience looks to Him dead and risen, and finds justification and peace with God. How could brass or silver or gold or precious stones, how could fine linen or blue or scarlet or purple, mingle with such worship? The thought of severing the members of the one body by a greater or less nearness answering to the court and the Holy place and the Holiest demonstrates the blankest ignorance of Christian standing and worship, as well as of the true meaning of their instructive shadows.
So does the argument founded on the symbols of social position, or of the distinctions in a household. It is a return to man and nature under divine government, out of which the gospel now takes even Israelites to give a new and unheard-of intimacy by union with Christ, and this to Gentile no less than to Jewish believers. It is, to frame a human analogy, pleasing to the flesh and essentially of the world, when God calls to a heavenly reality even while we are on earth, which is the proper testimony of our faith in an unbelieving and hostile world.
It is the remark of one who wrote before me on this subject, and more forcibly than the author himself knew, that the incarnation is bound up with symbolism. But he ought not to have degraded it by pointing as examples to the Buddhist, or the Moslem, or the Quaker. For we have shown already, that however precious a truth Incarnation is, to stop short there is to stop short of Christianity. “For the love of Christ constraineth us, because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then all died; and He died for all, that they who live should no longer live to themselves but to Him Who for their sakes died and rose again. Wherefore we henceforth know no one after the flesh; even though we have known Christ according to flesh, yet now we know [Him so] no more. Wherefore if any one is in Christ [there is] a new creation: the old things have passed away; behold they are become new and all things are of God Who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” This is Christianity. Christ, the Incarnate Word, was still minister of circumcision till He died for our sins and rose and ascended to become Head of the Church by divine counsels. Eph. 1, Col. 1. How few look on the unseen and heavenly objects which give character to worship!
Professed teachers are not entitled to ignore the characteristic truths of Christianity. Hence the doctrinal care in the N. T. to call away from earthly temple, officials, and rites, to the one sacrifice of infinite efficacy, to the one Priest after the Melchisedec order but Aaronic exercise, only far beyond either type, and to the heavenly and the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man. To see the accomplishment of all in Him is the real honor of the ancient types; to reproduce them on earth and by men is the darkness of unbelief. And amazing it is that any bearing the Lord's name can so trifle with such scriptures as Heb. 7:12, 18, 19; 8:6-13; to refer to no more, though one might well press chapter ix. and the first half of chapter 10.
What can be more overwhelming than the condemnation poured on symbolism among not only Irvingites but Romanists of every shade (for they differ almost as much as Dissenters, and to talk of their unity is the merest self-deception) by the apostle's word in Heb. 9:1, in speaking of God's house in Israel where the symbolism was divine throughout. In the light of Christ at God's right hand, the sanctuary is pronounced “a worldly one.” How much more all imitations, under the direction of Mr. Taplin or any other man since! This is the irrevocable decision of the Holy Spirit for the Christian. So in verse 24, Christ is said to have entered, not into holy places made with hands (like Aaron or his sons): these were but figures of the true. The heavenly things which Moses saw were really the originals which the tabernacle reflected. And now the true assume their place and moment; and Christ, having obtained everlasting redemption is gone into heaven itself now to appear before the face of God for us. The way into the true holies is now made manifest; and we are invited and exhorted to draw near within, for the veil is rent. Not incarnation, but Christ's shed blood alone makes us free by faith to approach boldly. Symbolism in effect denies the cross and leads us hack to Judaism. Let every believer take warning: it is an enemy of Christ and a snare to souls, however fair a show in the flesh. Nothing can excuse rebellion against the Lord as He is now revealed in heavenly glory.