My Beloved Friend,
I must ask you still to linger with Inc for a little over the stirring times of Josiah, king of Judah; but it is only for the purpose of looking particularly at one grand effect of his beautiful subjection to the authority of holy scripture. I allude to the celebration of the passover, that great foundation feast of the Jewish economy. If I mistake not, we shall find in this event not only a most striking illustration of oar thesis, but also some most valuable and weighty instruction bearing pointedly on “ the present condition of things in the church of God.”
“ Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem: and. they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first maid-h.” This was acting according to the very highest principles of the institution. Hezekiah kept the passover in the second month, thus availing himself of the provision which grace had made for a defiled condition of things. (See Numb. 9:88And Moses said unto them, Stand still, and I will hear what the Lord will command concerning you. (Numbers 9:8); compare with vers. 10, 11,) But Josiah took the very highest ground, as simple faith ever does. God’s grace can meet us in the very lowest condition in which we may be found; but He is ever glorified and gratified when faith plants its foot on the loftiest ground, as presented by divine revelation. Nothing so delights the heart of God as the largest appropriation of an artless faith. Blessed forever be His holy name!
“ And he set the priests in their charges, and encouraged them to the service of the house of the Lord. And said unto the Levites ‘that taught all Israel, [not merely Judah] which were holy unto the Lord, Fat the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the Lord your God, and his people kraal. And prepare yourselves by the houses of your fathers, after your courses, according to the writing of David any of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon his son. And stand in the holy place, according to the divisions of the families of the fathers of your brethren the people, and after the division of the families of the Levites. So kill the Passover, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare your brethren, that they may do according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses.” 2 Chron. 35:1-61Moreover Josiah kept a passover unto the Lord in Jerusalem: and they killed the passover on the fourteenth day of the first month. 2And he set the priests in their charges, and encouraged them to the service of the house of the Lord, 3And said unto the Levites that taught all Israel, which were holy unto the Lord, Put the holy ark in the house which Solomon the son of David king of Israel did build; it shall not be a burden upon your shoulders: serve now the Lord your God, and his people Israel, 4And prepare yourselves by the houses of your fathers, after your courses, according to the writing of David king of Israel, and according to the writing of Solomon his son. 5And stand in the holy place according to the divisions of the families of the fathers of your brethren the people, and after the division of the families of the Levites. 6So kill the passover, and sanctify yourselves, and prepare your brethren, that they may do according to the word of the Lord by the hand of Moses. (2 Chronicles 35:1‑6).
Here, then, my dearest A., we have an uncommonly fine illustration of the first part of our thesis, namely, that “ whatever may be the condition of the public body, it is the privilege of the individual believer to occupy the very highest possible ground.” We find Josiah, in the above passage, going back to the divine standard in reference to the great central feast of Israel. All must be done “ according to the word of the Lord by Moses.” Nothing less, nothing lower, than this would do. Unbelief might suggest a thousand difficulties. The heart might send up a thousand reasonings. It might seem presumptuous, in the face of the general condition of things, to think of aiming at such a lofty standard. It might seem utterly vain to think of acting according to the word of the Lord by Moses. But Josiah was enabled to plant his foot on the loftiest ground, and to take the widest possible range. He took his stand on the authority of the word of the Lord by Moses; and, us to his range of vision, he took in nothing less than the whole Israel of God.
And Josiah was right. You and. I, my beloved and valued friend, are thoroughly persuaded of this. We feel assured that no other line of action would have been according to the integrity of faith, or to the glory of God. True, alas! Israel’s condition had sadly changed, but no change had come over “ the word of the Lord by Moses.” The truth of God is ever the same, and it is by that truth, and nothing else, that faith will ever shape its way. God had not varied His instructions as to the celebration of the passover. There was not one way for Moses, and another way for Josiah, but God’s way for both. Josiah felt this, and he acted accordingly.
And mark the glorious result. “ So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the Passover, and to offer burnt-offerings upon the altar of the Lord, according to the commandment of king Josiah. And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel front the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept.” 2 Chron. 35:16-1916So all the service of the Lord was prepared the same day, to keep the passover, and to offer burnt offerings upon the altar of the Lord, according to the commandment of king Josiah. 17And the children of Israel that were present kept the passover at that time, and the feast of unleavened bread seven days. 18And there was no passover like to that kept in Israel from the days of Samuel the prophet; neither did all the kings of Israel keep such a passover as Josiah kept, and the priests, and the Levites, and all Judah and Israel that were present, and the inhabitants of Jerusalem. 19In the eighteenth year of the reign of Josiah was this passover kept. (2 Chronicles 35:16‑19).
Surely, my dear friend, this is something worth pondering. We have here a striking proof of our statement, that “In darkest days it is the privilege of faith to enjoy as high communion as ever was known in the highest and palmiest moments of the dispensation.” Is it not perfectly magnificent to behold in the days of Josiah, when the whole Jewish polity was on the very eve of dissolution, the celebration of a passover exceeding in its blessedness any that had ever been kept from the days of Samuel the prophet? Does it not prove to our poor narrow unbelieving hearts that there is no limit to the grace of God, and no limit to the range of faith?
Assuredly it does. God can never disappoint the expectations of faith. He did not, he would not, He could not tell His servant Josiah that he had made a mistake in taking such high ground, that he had entirely miscalculated, that he ought to have lowered his standard of action to the level of the nation’s moral condition. Ah! no, dearest A., this would not have been like our God at all. Such is not his manner, blessed and praised be His glorious name for evermore!
Was it that Josiah did not feel and own the general condition of things, as also his own personal failure? Let his penitential tears and rent garments answer. ‘‘ As for the king of Judah, who sent you to inquire of the Lord, so shall ye say unto him, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel concerning the words which thou past heard. Because thine heart was tender, and thou, didst humble thy self before God, when thou heardest his words against this place, and against the inhabitants thereof, and humbledst thyself before me, and didst rend thy clothes, and weep before me; I have even heard thee also, saith the Lord.”
Assuredly Josiah felt the ruin, and wept over it. But he could not surrender the truth of God. He could rend his garments, but he could not, and would not, lower God’s standard. If all was in ruin around him, that was the very reason why he should keep close, very close, to the word of God. For what else had he to cling to? Where was there a single ray of light, where one atom of authority, where a single hair’s-breadth of solid standing ground, save in the imperishable revelation of God? And was not that word for him just as distinctly as it had been for Moses and Joshua, Samuel, and David, and Solomon? Was not he to listen to its voice, and bow down to its holy authority? Were not its priceless lessons as distinctly for him as for all those who had gone before him?
You and I, my friend, have no difficulty as to the true answer to all these inquiries. But how many there are at the present moment who would fain persuade us that the Bible is not a sufficient guide for us at this stage of the world’s history. Such_ changes have taken place, such discoveries have been made in the various fields of scientific investigation, that it is puerile to contend for the all-sufficiency of scripture at this advanced period of the world’s history. In fact, they would have us believe that man’s mind has got in advance of the mind of God, for this is the real amount of the argument. This is what it means, if it means anything. God has written a book for man’s guidance, but that book is now found to be insufficient. A flaw has been discovered in the revelation of God by man’s sagacious and powerful intellect!
And what, then, are we to do? Whither are we to turn? Can it be possible that God has left His people to drift about in a wild, watery waste, without compass, rudder, or chart? Has our Lord Christ left His church or His servants without any competent authority or infallible guidance? Ah! no, blessed be His peerless name! He has given us His own perfect revelation—His own most precious word, which contains within its covers all we can possibly want to know, not only for our individual salvation and guidance, but also for all the most minute details of His church’s history, from the moment in which it was set up upon this earth until that longed-for moment in which He will take it to heaven.
But I must not pursue this line any further just now, deeply as I feel its immense importance. I have referred to it in a former letter, and I shall now for a moment seek to point out what I consider to be a grand lesson for this our day—a lesson strikingly taught in Josiah’s passover.
We invariably find that the heart of every pious Jew—everyone who bowed to the authority of the law of God—turned with a deep, fond, and intense interest to that grand central and foundation feast of the passover, in which, amongst other things, the great truths of redemption and the unity of Israel were strikingly shadowed forth. Every true Israelite, everyone who loved God and loved His word, found delight in the celebration of that most precious institution. It was the impressive memorial of Israel’s redemption—the significant expression of Israel’s unity. Its strict observance, according to all its divinely appointed rites and ordinances, was an obligation binding upon the whole congregation of Israel. The willful neglecter of it was to be cut off from the congregation. It was neither to be neglected on the one hand, nor tampered with on the other. We could not conceive a faithful Israelite altering a single jot or tittle of the prescribed order of the feast. Neither, as to the time nor the mode of its celebration, was there the slightest margin left for the insertion of human thoughts on the subject. The word of the Lord settled everything. The idea of any one undertaking to alter the time or the manner of keeping the all-important feast would never, we may safely assert, enter the mind of any pious, God-fearing, member of the congregation. If we could conceive anyone having the boldness to say that it was quite the same whether the passover was celebrated once a year, or once in three years; and, further, that it was quite the same whether the paschal lamb was sodden or roast, whether there was unleavened bread or not; in short, that, provided people were sincere, it did not matter how the thing was done. How would such an one have been dealt with? Numb. 9 supplies the answer—a brief, but solemn, answer! He shall be cut off.”
Now, my beloved and valued friend, I take it for granted that you agree with your correspondent in thinking that what the feast of the passover was to a faithful Israelite, that the feast of the Lord’s supper is to a true Christian. That was the typo, this the memorial, of the death of Christ. This, I presume, will not be called in question by any devout student of scripture.
I am not now going to occupy your tune with an elaborate exposition of the principles of the Lord’s supper. I merely call your attention to the weighty facts in connection with it, namely, that in no other way than by eating the Lord’s supper do we set forth the great truth of the unity of the body—in no other way do we set forth the death of our Lord. We may speak of these things, hear of them, write about them, read about them, sing about thorn, profess to hold them as true; but only by eating the Lord’s supper according to the word of God do we give expression to them.
As to the first of these most weighty facts, 1 Corinthians x. is conclusive. “ The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we being many are one loaf, one body: for we are all partakers of that one loaf.”
This is most instructive. It teaches us with all possible distinctness that the Lord’s supper is preeminently a communion feast. It cuts up by the roots the notion of any one receiving the Lord’s supper as a mere individual. Not only is there no meaning, and no value, in such a thing, but it is positively false and mischievous, because antagonistic to holy scripture. “ The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” To make it an individual thing—-to set aside the thought of the body—is to mar the integrity of the divine institution, and break the bones of the paschal lamb. It is absolutely essential to the true celebration of the Lord’s supper that the unity of the body should be set forth in the one loaf, of which we all partake. If this be set aside or tampered with, we do not keep the feast according to the mind of Christ. The one loaf on the table of our Lord sets forth the one body, and we, by partaking of that one loaf, give expression to our holy fellowship in the unity of that body.
Now, my beloved friend, it seems to me that this is a deeply important aspect of the Lord’s table, and one not sufficiently understood or carried out in the professing church. I speak not now of the gross error involved in speaking of the Lord’s supper as a sacrifice for the sins of the living and the dead, or as a sacrament or a covenant between the soul and God. All this would be unhesitatingly rejected by the great majority of true Christians.
But does it not strike you that we are all lamentably deficient in apprehending and expressing the precious truth of the unity of the body in the celebration of the Lord’s supper? Is there not a strong tendency in our minds to make that precious feast merely an individual thing between our own souls and the Lord? We think of our own blessing, our own comfort, our own refreshment; or, it may be that many go to the table as a means whereby they may be brought somewhat nearer to Christ, thus placing it on an utterly false basis, and surrounding it with a legal atmosphere.
All this demands our most serious consideration. It behaves all Christians to look well to their foundations as to this matter. We want to come with all humility of mind and teachableness of spirit to the word of God, and bend our attention to its teaching, in this important question. If it be true that partaking of the Lord’s supper in the Lord’s appointed way is the only act in which we express the unity of the body, should we not examine whether we are, in this matter, acting according to the mind of Christ? Is it not a very serious thing for Christians to neglect the Lord’s table? Must it not grieve the heart of Christ to find any of His beloved members satisfied to go on from week to week, and month to month, without ever keeping the feast? Is it possible that a Christian can be in a right state of soul who habitually absents himself from that feast which alone sets forth a truth so precious to Christ, namely, the unity of His body? or can any true lover of the Lord Jesus be satisfied to go on for weeks and months without ever partaking of that which alone calls his crucified Lord to remembrance? The New Testament teaches us that “ on the first day of the week” the Lord’s people came together to break bread. “ The Lord’s supper” and “ the Lord’s day” are blessedly linked together by the teaching of the Holy Ghost. Have we, then, at authority to tamper with this divine order? Are we authorized to alter the time or the mode of keeping the feast? Have we any right to make it once-a month, or once a quarter, or once in six months?
These are plain questions for the heart and conscience of every Christian. I shall leave them to act, and here close this rather long epistle by subscribing myself, as ever,
Dearest A.,
Your deeply affectionate yokefellow,
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