We must never allow the apostolic succession to be handed about without its being accompanied by the apostolic spirit. Every man is in the apostolic succession who believes in the apostles, who follows them as they followed Christ, and who would know nothing among men but Jesus Christ and Him crucified.
“And they burn unto the Lord every morning and every evening burnt sacrifices and sweet incense; the shew-bread also set they in order upon the pure table; and the candlestick of gold with the lamps thereof, to burn every evening.”
At that time piety was mechanical. It could not be otherwise. God never forces history. The days come, each with its own burden and its own blessing, its own dawn and its own apocalypse. We can not have today what is due tomorrow. God’s seasons move in measured revolution, and come to us in orderly and timely procession; and no man can hasten them by lighting his camp fire, or striking his matches, or kindling his little inflammable powder.
We can not imitate the Sun.
Some have tried to mimic the stars; but where is the image of the Sun that the Sun has not obliterated by one mid-day look?
The time came when all these ordinances were set aside. There was to be no more burning; there was to be no morning sacrifice and evening sacrifice and sweet incense, or shew-bread and candlestick of gold and lamps thereof for evening burning.
“Ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to them any more; but ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born, which are written in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than that of Abel.”
So we may misuse history by going back and making that necessary which has already been abrogated. We may thus ill-treat the day of rest, by measuring it and weighing it in Jewish scales. We may cast a cloud over the day of jubilee that comes every week, by measuring its beginning and its ending by Jewish arithmetic; we may make the whole week sabbatic by Christian consecration. There will always be ordinances, because while man is in the body he needs external helps, collateral assistances and auxiliaries. He is not always equally awake; he is not always equally spiritual. He needs the communion of saints, the coming together in holy fellowship, all the associations of a sacred time and a sacred place, and through the active yet subtle ministry of these he comes to feel that he is in touch with God. “Here in the body pent” we need such aids as can penetrate our prison and minister to the liberty of the soul.
Now Abijah says, as a kind of climax:
“And, behold, God himself is with us for our captain, and His priests with sounding trumpets to cry alarm against you. O children of Israel, fight ye not against the Lord God of your fathers; for ye shall not prosper.”