Observer, Jan. 1, '72. truth, or a passing over the masses of the poor and needy, there would have been occasion for much of the foregoing; but when no one has submitted any such plan, and while it would have no chance of being adopted, if proposed, the opposition thus put forth, is like calling out fire engines when there is not only no fire but not even a smell of smoke. We would, most certainly, not pass the large emigrant ship, to render help to the pleasure yacht. The illustration was uncalled for, as there was no one at the annual meeting more disposed to do so, than "Christian" himself. Nor does he succeed better when he undertakes to express "the Editor's opinion." Those who want the Editor's opinion will please obtain it from his note in the October issue. The Editor knows that as a people we have, to some extent, compromised ourselves in favour of the one class, but he does not consider that we should now make compensation to the other by a similar course; and he has not written anything which looks in that direction. He requires that we shall not compromise ourselves in favour of any class-that we shall become all things to all men, that we.may save some. The Editor will be quite content if his brethren will take the conduct of the apostle Paul as a fair specimen of what he desires for our time. While we refuse to worship intellect in broadcloth, let us also decline to deify ignorance in fustian "Cast not your pearls before swine" does not, in the Editor's estimation, mean distribute tracts in back streets and courts, and leave the better class of houses unvisited. But, as we said, the matter must now rest till means are suggested for bringing men of culture and position under the influence of the truth. We ask no more than that. If the truth will not attract them to Christ and the Church, they must remain unsaved. And we only ask that to the extent that shall place them on a level with the masses, so far as facilities for attracting their attention to the things of the kingdom are concerned. ED. CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO JUDAISM.* CERTAIN of the Jews are growing very angry with the London Society for promoting Christianity among their race and, consequently, a writer, who signs himself "Nathan Meyer," is making, in the "Jewish Chronicle," a desperate onslaught against the Christian religion. In this pamphlet G. G. turns his powerful weapons upon the Jew "Nathan," and drives him out of every stronghold, showing him to be but little less infidel to the Prophets and Religion of the Ancient Nations than he is to Christ and His apostles. The work is divided into chapters thus-Introductory-Historical-Moral Anatomy-Phantasma or Reality-The Messiah of Prophecy -Israel in Captivity-Mediation and Sacrifice-Development -The Miraculous-The Christian church and the Christian morality-Character of Christ and Prospects of Christianity. To say that this pamphlet is well written and powerful, is to say what all who know the Author will expect. But it may not be too much to say, that in these respects it is better than his best. Weighty chapters of irresistible argument puts the Jew in the dust, completely vanquished. A portion of the chapter devoted to "Development" will suffice to justify the foregoing estimate of the work "There is an argument for the inspiration of the New Testament documents, which escapes mere logicians, but which is very powerful among men who have vision for truth, and ears for spiritual music. The New Testament writers are distinguished by majestic simplicity. There is deep peace and solemn gladness among them, and even in passages of occasional rapture, there is always strong control. All things treated, are treated in such a pure and saintly manner; and even authority is so reasonable and gentle, that we insensibly come under dominion without any loss of freedom. To find a difference, we need not vault into dark ages when a haughty Latin priesthood intruded between God and humanity, we only need pass to the age after the Apostles fell asleep, and the writers who came into notice in that and the succeeding age. What a gulf, deep and wide, we seem to have passed over, and how different the moral atmosphere. Read Irenneus, Hippolytus, Justin Martyr, Lactantius, Tertullian, and though you *A Reply to the Panchristianism of N. Meyer, by GEORGE GREENWELL-Bayley, Wrexham, Observer, Jan. 1, '72. still find true things, how great the loss in dignity and purity. The simplicity and glory are departed, the power and the moderation are gone. Another wind blows, another sun shines. Bad philosophy, false deduction, and fanatical passion, all begin to show their evil faces. The sweet, pure river of life that was once seen flowing from the throne is discoloured and turbulent, and has neither the music nor the power of yore. This, as the ages advanced, went on from bad to worse, for the books of life were buried in cloister darkness, and the system of Priestism which prevailed, and the tone of thinking and speaking which prevailed, had no resemblance to ancient Christianity. Evil times succeeded the age of life, and there were, as our Jewish author insists at great length, forged prophecies and corrupt readings, and, finally, shameful idolatry. N. Meyer does not, however, speak wisely on the subject. His authorities are mainly such unreliable Socinians as Theophilus Lindsey and Mr. Yates. If he will turn to Bishop Horsley's examination of Priestley, or Bishop Bull's refutation of Episcopius, or Dr. Wardlaw in reply to Yates, or Canon Liddon, of our own day, he will understand better what the church has always believed concerning the Son of God, and he will discover how small the authorities are upon whom he leans with such misplaced confidence. "There While dealing with forced prophecies, we get the following illustration from our Author as the meaning of the sublime 53rd of Isaiah: "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" "The Lord hath comforted his people, he hath redeemed Jerusalem. The Lord hath made bare his holy arm." lii. 9. "For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground." "The men of Judah his pleasant plant." v. 7. "I will pour floods upon the dry ground." xliv. 3. "She is planted in the wilderness in a dry and thirsty ground." Ezekiel xix. 13. is no beauty, that we should desire him." "From Zion all her beauty is departed." "Is this the city that was called the perfection of beauty." Lam. i. 6, and ii. 15. "He is despised and rejected of men." "And all they that despise thee shall bow themselves down at the soles of thy feet." lx. 14. "Thus have they despised my people that they should be no more a nation before them." Jeremiah xxxiii. 24. 66 Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows." "The Lord bindeth up the breach of his people, and healeth the stroke of their wound." xxx. 26. "Before me continually is grief and wounds." Jeremiah vi. 7. "Our fathers have sinned, and are not, and we have borne their iniquities." Lam. v. 7. "He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter." "I will feed the flock of slaughter, even you, O poor of the flock." Zechariah xi. 7. He was taken from prison and from judgment. Bring out the prisoners from the prison, and them that sit in darkness out of the prison house." xliii. 7. prisoners, go forth; to them that are in darkness, shew yourselves." xlix. 9. "Who shall declare his generation?" "And they shall repair the waste cities the desolations of many generations." xi. 4 Through the transgression of my people came infliction upon them." Benisch. "We have transgressed, and have rebelled." has made us the off-scouring and refuse in the midst of the people." "All our enemies have opened their mouths against us." Lam. iii. 42-46. "And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death." Babylon hath been a golden cup in the Lord's hand, that made all the earth drunken." Ezekiel ii. 7 and 13. "He shall see his seed he shall prolong his days." "And I will bring forth a seed out of Jacob, and out of Judah an inheritor of my mountains, and my elect shall inherit it, and my servants shall dwell there." lxv. 9 and 20. Therefore will I divide a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong." "Who gave Jacob for a spoil, and Israel to the robbers?" xliii. 6. "And they that spoil thee shall be a spoil." Jeremiah xxx. 16. "Say to the "Thou Many a desperate effort has been made to darken the 53rd of Isaiah, because of its clear testimony to the great Intercessor, who made His soul an offering for sin, but none have been more successful than our author By intersecting passages pell-mell from all quarters between the verses quoted, he manages to involve the matter in labyrinthyne confusion. The passage, as he gives it, looks like a slice from ancient chaos, and deserves to be preserved in the British Museum. The old alchemists laboured hard to transmute the inferior metals into gold, our author toils to transmute the fine gold into copper. Gesenius, the German Hebraist, found that Isaiah himself was the victim, and parades his discovery with much show of Hebrew and reasoning; but our English Jew has a different theory, though not more compatible with grammatical construction or logical propriety. It appears that the Jewish nation was the person stricken and afflicted, not for his own sins, but for the sins of the people in a former age, and that the stripes were healing to the past and the future. He (Israel) made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death, buried in Babylon, to be raised by Cyrus, or in some future age. If this is not the meaning I beg Observer, Jan. 1, '72 absolution, for I have done my best to understand Meyer. If this be the meaning of Isaiah, prophecy is, indeed, an undrained bog or bottomless marsh, and great repairs are needed before travellers pass any more through that country. See 1. The reader will observe that our Jewish author, in his running commentary, has failed to quote the most emphatic of the verses in the chapter which declare the vicarious sufferings of the person who is pourtrayed, and the one which he has quoted is spoiled on the authority of Dr. Benisch. The only result of the dislocation, which Benisch attempts, is to wrench one verse out of the jointed harmony to which it belongs. the statements unquoted: “But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed." "All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way, and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquities of us all.” "Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him, he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin." "By his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he shall bear their iniquities." "Because he hath poured out his soul into death, and he was numbered with the transgressors, and he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." If language has any meaning, we surely have here a pure and lofty person who was bruised and wounded unto death, not for His own sins, for there was no violence or guile in Him, but for the sins of others. His great grief and anguish was the fruit of the great love which led Him to consent to be numbered with transgressors, that we might have healing from His wounds, and life from His death. It is impossible to tear this out of the chapter without drawing blood, and leaving the prophecy a body of dust and ashes. 2. On the author's supposition that Israel, as a collective person, constitutes in continuity the person spoken of, there is a strange imbroglio among the personal and relative pronouns, and the nominative and objective cases. "We," "he," "our" and "him," get into hopeless ravelment. 3. Even with his own theory, the author fails in getting away from the vicarious and the substitutional, for the mysterious national personality receives undeserved blows, and endures unmerited agonies, in fact, passes through a great anguish of expiation to purge away sin from another, who turns out by some enchantment to be the same. 4. We greatly desire to know when Israel endured this terrible infliction, notwithstanding her manifest purity and faithfulness. It could not be when she found her grave in Babylon anong the wicked and the rich, for it was on account of her violence and deceit that the city was stormed, the land defiled, the temple burned, and the people driven into exile. On the whole, christian men are likely to conclude that the christian exegeses of the prophecy need have no fear, if this be a sample of the artillery to be brought into the field." And now having said this much, and having been delighted with the main portions of the work, we cannot put it down without feeling deep regret. In days not so long ago the Author used to revel, as he still does, in contemplating the glory of the kingdom of God and Christ in its yet future and everlasting dispensation. Then, if we understood him, he was content to speak of an existence of the kingdom, in "some sense," from the time of the Saviour's sojourn on earth. Now, however cloudy and unsatisfactory this may have been, it had the merit of giving us a present dispensation of the kingdom, and of enabling us to honour the Christ as verily, even now, OUR KING. But in place of this we are now told that— "Had the nation received the anointed One, unquestionably, the kinghom of power and glory would have shown forth in accomplishment; but as the people were hardened in their hearts, and blinded in their eyes, the glory slowly departed, and the kingdom which had been approaching, retreated in the profound darkness." A brief book notice does not admit of argument and refutation. We need, in common justice, to point out the blot which disfigures the author's otherwise fair and worthy pages, and the more so as from this erring doctrine we expect only harm, and that continually. Taught among us it prepares the way for Christadelphianism, and more especially when presented in connection with that complete want of faith in the gospel, as a power ultimately to bring the multitudes to Christ, which also comes out in this otherwise excellent pamphlet. Observer, Jan. 1, 72. WORDS FROM THE WORK TABLE.-No. XXXVI. REPUBLICAN versus MONARCHICAL. "Let us therefore follow after the things which make for peace, and things wherewith one may edify another."-ROM. xiv. MUCH is now said about Republicanism. In the minds of some, Republicanism means the right to do as you like, when you like and where you like. It is a glorious license and most perfect equality. This spirit now and then seems to creep into churches, where, by some, politics are as well studied as the Bible, or even better. In the Bible, however, we find no trace of Republicanism. In becoming Christians we are translated from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son; the government of which is purely Monarchical. There we have the king-Jesus-the kingdom, and the legislature. The laws promulged by Christ's ambassadors are absolute, and will so remain through all time. The polity of Christ's kingdom is complete, and we have not the right to alter, take from, or add thereto. True, there are minor matters left to our discretion, but even these are hedged round with commands as to the manner of our conduct therein. Throwing off the slavery of sin, we become free; but we should ever bear in mind that Liberty and Libertinism are widely different. We have to take heed lest by any means our liberty become a stumbling-block to the weak. Love and loving submission are ruling principles in the Christian Economy. "A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples. If ye love me, keep my commandments. He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my father." "Love worketh no ill to his neighbour: therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved his church, and gave himself for it." Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands." Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart as unto Christ." "Submitting yourselves one to another in the fear of God." Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves: for they watch for your souls, as they that must give account, that they may do it with joy and not with grief; for that is unprofitable for you." Herein is no scope for that do-as-you-likeism to which allusion has been made. 66 66 Our God is a God of order; through all His works in Nature this is pre-eminently evident. Law and order reign, from the starry canopy above to the smallest insect that lives, or to the tiniest moss, "Whose silken verdure clothes The time-worn rock, and whose bright capsules rise Like fairy urns on stalks of golden sheen." This being so, how dare we be disorderly in our service to Him who has declared that "obedience is better than sacrifice." ALL ARE EQUAL." Not in the broad acceptation of this Republican motto. We are not all equal. Some are better workmen than others; some are more sober, more industrious, more self-denying, more Christlike. These are better men, better fathers, and better rulers than the idle and self-indulgent; and the Scriptures bid us give double honour to him that ruleth well. Among the twelve there was evidently one dearer Observer, Jan. 1, '72. to the Lord than the rest-"The disciple whom he loved and who leaned upon his bosom." How closely must he have resembled his Master in spirit, ere he rested on His bosom; yet we read of no jealousy among the rest, no murmuring at the privileged position of this loved one. In this we have a lesson worth the learning."Be ye not envious one of another. Let each esteem another better than himself. Let no man think of himself more highly than he ought. Be not wise in your own conceits." In the primitive church all were not equal; gifts were diverse, then as All may be useful, but not in the same way. The body cannot be all head or all tongue; and members overgrown or increased in numbers become a monstrosity. now. Paul, to the Corinthians, graphically delineates the church as the body of Christ, and shows the absurdity of one member usurping the functions of another; then pointing to the diverse gifts, or offices, he asks, “Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Have all the gift of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But covet earnestly the best gifts and yet show I unto you a more excellent way." He then proceeds, in that delightful chapter, the thirteenth-which, to my mind, is a beautiful poem, to show that love, pure and undefiled, will shine forth and outlast the greatest and brightest intellectual gifts. Love binds together. Striving after position and power scatters abroad. If we contemplate the divisions that now and then take place in our midst, and trace them to their source, we shall most frequently find that they have arisen from a desire on the part of one or more to please self, to fill some office, or, in a word, to a Diotrephesian spirit, forgetting altogether the apostolic injunction, "Yea, all of you be subject one to another and be clothed with humility, for God resisteth the proud and giveth grace to the humble. Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time; casting your care upon Him; for He careth for you." How much heartburning and wicked envyings would be avoided; how much precious time and strength of Christ's devoted servants would be saved; how much opportunity would be given to make inroads upon the world, if this spirit of subordination were more largely cultivated? In gifts, in capability, in intellect we are not equal. We have the eloquent Apollos and the stammering man who can scarcely utter five consecutive words acceptably. We have the polished scholar who has dug deep into the Bible mine and the illiterate brother who has not inclined after knowledge. We have Fathers in Israel and Babes in Christ. Are these equal in their position and office in the church? Verily, nay! The church is a school; and we place not children who cannot read in the highest class. They must rise step by step. It is their right to reach the highest class, but they must qualify themselves before they can attain it. My brother, why did you occupy the time this morning? You knew was present." Oh, I have as much right to speak as he has." Well, I think you sadly lacking in courtesy and judgment. We can hear you at any time; and we should have had from him something that we could have fed upon, far superior to what you have the power to give us. I do hope, next time he is present, that you will not occupy the time." "Indeed I can't promise. The right to speak is as much mine as his." Some of our earnest brothers make a mistake at this point. They must do something in the church; they do not wish to be drones in the live. What shall they do? Instead of consulting senior brethren, they Bro. 66 66 |