lusts, I can feel its rending passions, I can trace out the slow corrosion of evil habits, the convulsive movements of sudden sins; I can mark all this in myself and others; but these guiltless creatures of God's hand, what have they done? These animals that minister to my wants, that die unrecked of, and unheeded, whence come their strange accumulations of sufferings? This wide-spread plant-world, that contributes to my food, or bears balm to my wounds whence comes its often thwarted development, and stinted growth, its palpable subjection to something more than perishableness, and something more than decay? Is there no answer? Is the attribute of Preserver to be denied to the Creator, or given only under such limitations as to make it a very mockery and a bitterness? Verily, is there no answer?' "' The text leads us to the answer, "the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Him Who hath subjected the same in hope, because the creature itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the sons of GOD." "The answer is, that it was 'by reason of Him Who subjected it.' Not, observe, by Him, simply and directly, but by reason of Him (dià TÒV VπOTάğaνTα) owing to some determination of His counsels, some interposition of His will."-Pp. 5, 6. Again : "When did this subjection take place? Is it, as some of the popular thinkers of our own day would fain persuade us, in consequence of some primal law, that reaches backward into the furthest regions of the past, and that was originally designed to include both us and all mankind in the necessities of a common bondage? Or, is it not rather, as indeed our own hearts already half tell us, and the guarded language of the present text seems not obscurely to indicate,-not the original law, but a counter law, a judicial dispensation, which opposition to the will of a beneficent Creator served to call forth and ratify? In one word, is it not sin that has caused all this, that has cast this shade on creation and drawn the bar-sinister across the broad shield of the handiwork of GOD?"-P. 7. Mr. Ellicott stops here: he refrains from any inquiry into the depth of the mystery-the origin of evil: but surely he might have dwelt upon the moral discipline under which all inquiring minds are subjected, of the impossibility of fathoming this depth. It is no small trial to accept as a fact that which seems so to contradict the idea of the universal goodness of GOD, as the existence of sin. Why am I left thus a prey to evil in all its hideous shapes? Why is there left in me that law in my members warring against the law in my mind, and bringing me into subjection to the law of sin? Why is there no revelation made to explain all this mystery? We believe this to be a great and pressing trial: it is the parent of much of the infidelity of this and past ages. The faith which ac cepts the fact, and acts so as to influence the soul simply to work out its own salvation in spite of doubt and difficulty, is not that commonly found in a philosophic mind. Are not most of the modern heresies founded on this difficulty? Look at Pantheism which ends in making sin a part of the nature of GOD: the Lutheran doctrine of justification by faith alone, with its pecca fortiter : the Calvinistic doctrine of irrespective election: are they not all means to escape from the humble faith in GOD, and the duty of working out our salvation? Well and fully does Mr. Ellicot speak of the discipline of suffering, boldly does he affirm that evil, i.e. the consequence of the existence of sin, is sent by God Himself: in the Old Testament it always appears positive and judicial, the immediate instrument by which disobedience receives its just recompense. "Let us remember that the LORD has declared twice by the mouth of His greatest prophets, with all imaginable distinctness, that He is the Creator of evil as well as good, yes, unrestrictedly the Creator of it; and that it is the eternal prerogative of His Omnipotence that out of the mouth of the Most High should proceed both the one and the other. Let us only be prepared to view the indissoluble connection of evil, suffering, and sin, and then, whether the proposed evil we contemplate be Adamite or pre-Adamite, mundane or ante-mundane, we need fear no Manichæan sophistries, we need seek to shelter ourselves under no spurious views of the Divine benevolence.”—P. 29. There is, however, a great difference in the idea of suffering between the saint of the Old Testament and him of the New; a difference that arises from, and necessarily belongs to, the dispensation of wrath, and the dispensation of mercy. "It does not seem too much to say, that the specifically Christian idea of suffering-as probationary, purifying, or emendatory-seems not to have found an expression in any definite word in the language of the Old Testament. Nearly every word that presents to us the idea of suffering, trouble, or affliction, has some philological affinity to ideas of burden, pressure, fall, ruin, snare, hostility, terror, destruction: more than one term blends cause and effect, and exhibits the idea of affliction and sin in closest union; while, philologically considered, the most elevated conception of human suffering does not appear to rise beyond that of bearing injuries rather than of returning them. So indelible does this impress seem on the very language of the Old Testament, that the familiar wάonua of the New Testament, with its implied ideas of endurance and grief, finds no place in the Greek translation of the Old Testament, just as 'suffering' does not, I believe, occur anywhere in our own English Version."-P. 33. Again : "In the Old Testament we have just seen that the suffering appears mainly under one of two aspects; either in the punishment of disobe VOL. XX. 4 c dience, or as the evidence of a common lot, and the token of a common fall. It was in fact essentially retrospective, its looks were ever turned backward to the circumstance of its first origin, and to the early issues of primal transgression. Its characteristic was retrospect. But in the New Testament all is reversed. The suffering is essentially prospective, as turning the inward eye towards Him, Who, after hallowing suffering by taking its uttermost measure on Himself, is now sitting at the right hand of GOD, the helper of the labouring, and the refresher of the weary prospective, as teaching us to gaze ever more and more longingly to the city that hath foundations, to the rest that remaineth for the children of GOD."-P. 35. Not only does this suffering make perfect the knowledge of sin, and teach the soul the beauty of holiness; not only does it draw down the sympathy of the Great Sufferer, nay, make the child of GOD a partaker in the sufferings of the Crucified; "but there is apparently one still higher aspect disclosed to us in the New Testament, under which we seem to recognize relations yet more mystical, and issues yet more deeply consolatory. But there is a text which seems to say, that holy human sufferings can so far cooperate with the sufferings of our Redeemer, as to be daily and hourly working towards the consummation of all things, and to the hastening of the hour when the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of CHRIST: 'I fill up the lacking measure of the afflictions of CHRIST.'" The sermon that follows, on the "Restitution of all things," the greatest, the highest subject that can exercise the powers of the preacher, Mr. Ellicott introduces with an apology for considering it; and he dismisses it in one sermon. This we cannot think to be right. No apology is needed, rather, he should have devoted more time for its discussion; the glorious restitution of all things, dimly promised in the first prophecy, more strikingly opened out in the magnificent poetry of the great evangelical Prophet, is the point to which all prophecy, all revelation tends; it is that which finally closes the volume of God's message to fallen man and is the last word with which the inspired penman closes the last and greatest vision. The victory over sin, and the consequences of sin; the new heaven and the new earth, which comes out of the purifying fire, which consumes the old; the glorious reign of the Incarnate GOD over and with His saints, Who have with Him and by Him conquered; ought to be the mighty theme on which the powers of the evangelical preacher are engaged, and to which the thought of the Christian should be directed. Three texts (Mr. Ellicott tells us) bear directly on the subject, 2 Cor. v. 18, 19; Col. i. 19; and Eph. i. 9, 10, 11 and these, the preacher well observes, all distinctly announce the restoration of all creation, not of men only, but of all the creation of GOD, which suffered through the Fall. "This restitution is to be boundless in its comprehensiveness. It is to extend, as the expressive words again remind us, to all things,things in heaven, and things in earth.' The uncircumscribed nature of the term again forbids us to narrow what God has left broad, and solemnly suggests, that as the efficacies of CHRIST's Priesthood were without bound, so His kingly power shall be as limitless, extending beyond the bounds of His mediatorial session at GOD's right-hand, and enduring onward into that infinity when GOD shall be all in all.". P. 89. Further: "Perchance, too, after the purging fires have burnt away from the material earth all the seeds of sin which the Flood could not wash away, then may come forth out of its productive bosom races of living creatures, that in all their instincts, capabilities, and existences, may ceaselessly glorify the creative Wisdom. Perhaps grass and flowers then may again clothe the renovated earth, and in all their developments, and through all their changes, may so reflect the restoring power of their Maker, that they, too, may be permitted to have their part in creation's new and universal hymn and then at length shall all that the creature sighed for be granted, all that it tarried for be fully come; and every creature which is in heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them, heard I saying, Blessing and honour, and glory and power, be unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the LAMB for ever and ever.' -Pp. 94, 95. Surely every one must admit that the Redemption must equal the loss; and if the loss ended not in man, but extended itself to all. creation, then to creation also must the Redemption extend: if the earth was cursed because of man's sin, earth must be restored because of man's righteousness: otherwise the Second Adam would fall short of the First. And surely looking thus at the work of the Second Adam, there is brought out in strong relief one great meaning in His miracles: while they are exhibitions of power, while they are, most of them, acts of pure mercy, there underlies a deeper truth; they are parts of His Redemption, in a lower degree, indeed, than the Death and Resurrection, but still with these parts of that great work. When we see the disease pass away from the body of some sufferer when His hand touched his, when we see Death give up his prey at His word, we see the great SAVIOUR: they are each and all anticipations of the final restoration of man to his primal perfection. When we look further, and see the forms of evil in nature sharing in that manifestation of power, when storm and tempest stilled at His word, when the flowing wave became hard under His feet, we see Him extending His power to allay the curse of inanimate nature; when we see Him multiplying the loaves, we see anticipations of the removal of the curse of barrenness from the earth; and does not this thought give a new meaning to His cursing the barren fig-tree, as if it was to show that in His kingdom nothing should be unprofitable? And again in that first miracle when the conscious waters saw their GOD, and blushed,' specially noticed as "a manifestation of His glory," do we not trace in all these the footsteps of the Restorer of all creation? We wish Mr. Ellicott had investigated still further these deep and sublime realities: sermons on the 'Destiny of the Creature' should rather tend to open out the glory that is in store for the sons of GOD: the creation1 groaning and travailing under the burden of sin is only so described by the Apostle in order to raise our minds to the contemplation of the great regeneration, the redemption of our body; and yet how seldom is this done in sermons and books of instruction. The common popular belief that the soul passes at once to judgment and to heaven is not only a false view, but one most deadening to spiritual life; not only does it hinder the realization of that great truth of the regeneration of nature, and the renewal of all things, but it ignores the great duty of sanctifying the body, making it a vessel of honour to GOD. The common popular notion which we have mentioned, induces the belief that the body is a part of the creation which does not partake of the regeneration, something vile,2 earthly, contemptible, from which we should rejoice to be free, a sort of Manichæan doctrine, which the false spiritualism of the present age encourages. Mr. Ellicott well this in his sermon on the "three-fold nature of man," exposes pointing out how Scripture does not put, as popular teaching does, the body in opposition to the soul, but the flesh to the spirit. The Sacramental system, taught and practised in its fulness, can alone combat, and overthrow this mischievous belief: we must have a complete change in the idea of spirituality; it must cease to be a mere abstraction, it must be made to pervade the whole being of man, in act as well as in thought; it must run through life into the region of death itself. Yet this mischief has ever been the characteristic of the Western Church, as may be seen in contrasting it in its popular aspect: with us funerals are dark, gloomy, 1 Mr. Ellicott enters into some disquisition as to the meaning of the word ' creation' and 'creature' (kríσis); in which he arrives at the conclusion that the word is intended to signify all created beings, and that therefore creation' is the more fitting word to express its meaning: he justifies this opinion by an appeal to the older fathers, especially S. Irenæus, against S. Augustine : who gives his judgment in favour of a more restricted signification, the human race, only. In this opinion we think he is right. We cannot but wonder that Mr. Ellicott did not quote Wisdom v. 17; xvi. 24; and xix. 6: where there can be no doubt but that all creation is intended. 2 The English translation of Phil. iii. 21, gives some countenance to this mistaken notion of the vileness' of the body, ("Who shall change this vile body,") but the original Greek gives none: the words are τὸ σῶμα τῆς ταπεινώσεως ἡμῶν, which asserts no more than that our body partakes of the debasing effects of the fall. The Blessed Virgin uses the like expression with regard to herself ("the lowliness of His handmaiden”) τὴν ταπείνωσιν τῆς δούλης αὐτοῦ. |