Should these words be ever brought to the notice of those earnest men with whom we have lately been recommended to cultivate union, I would earnestly intreat them to consider whether the Apostles placed absolution and confession in the same position that they are doing; and if not, I would suggest to those zealous men the further question, whether the difference may not be explained by their having completely mistaken the words of our Lord.
Turn next to sacrifice. Now if there be any continuation in any form of a propitiatory sacrifice for sin we must all admit that it is of the utmost possible importance. If it be God’s institution there is no describing the loss of those who live without it. But here I am met with the remarkable fact that, when I look for the theory in the Word of God, I find no trace of it. There is no allusion to a priest, for the ῖεροργοῦντα of Rom. xv. 16, has manifestly nothing to do with the subject. There is no altar, unless Heb. xiii. 10, be referred to, which very few are bold enough to attempt to refer to a sacrificial altar in the Church. There is not a hint as to the persons administering the Lord’s Supper, which is very strange if all the virtue is really dependent on the transmitted priesthood of the sacerdotal sacrifices. And above all, there is not one word about sacrifice in the words of institution, unless it be that τοῦτο ποιεῖτε means, and must mean, “perform this sacrifice.” The whole system hangs on the unproved and unsupported sense, arbitrarily given to these two perfectly simple words, and I would most earnestly put it to those who believe in the continuation of propitiatory sacrifice,—is there any evidence for the doctrine which bears the least appreciable proportion to its intense and overwhelming importance.
The same may be said of the real presence. I am not now speaking of transubstantiation simple, but of the statement that in each element there is present a real true living Saviour,—body, soul, and divinity. Now I fully admit that those who believe in this do not make at all too much of it. I do not see how it is possible to make too much of it. If that same Lord and Saviour who was born at Bethlehem and died on Calvary, is seated on the communion table, as really, and if I may so speak, as socially, as he was seated at the Paschal Supper, so that we may speak to Him there and then, as a person visible before us, I can imagine no adoration too profound, no love too deep to be consecrated to such a presence. If I believed it, my present thought is that I could never leave the Church and never cease to speak of it. It seems as though I must be ever telling those that look for Him, that I have found the Messiah. But here I am met with this most extraordinary difficulty,—that His own Apostles and inspired writers never once alluded to the subject. They often spoke, it is true, of breaking bread, and in one Epistle the Apostle Paul entered fully into the subject of the Lord’s Supper; but the only two texts that I know of as having been ever forced into a reference, are: “Not discerning the Lord’s body,”—which has no allusion to the living person; and the original words of institution: “This is My body and this is My blood,” which distinctly teach a separation in the parts, as opposed to a union of the whole in the person of a living Lord in either element. But I am not stopping to discuss particular texts. Let those who believe the doctrine think what they please respecting them, and I would earnestly ask them to consider two questions.
(1) Did the Apostles give the same proportionate place to the doctrine of the real presence that they are doing? Did it occupy the same place in St. Paul’s teaching as in theirs?
(2) Is the authority for the doctrine at all in proportion to the overwhelming weight of its interest and importance?
Test the matter by the law of proportion, and I have no doubt as to the issue.
But now turn to the other side,—the direct and personal reinstatement of the sinner before God: and here I am as much at a loss as I was before; but not as before to find a text, but because the whole Book of God is full of the subject. It fills the Scriptures as the air fills the room. It is not here or there, but everywhere. In the Old Testament it is predicted, in the New Testament fully manifested. In the teaching of our Lord, in the sermons of His missionaries, in the letters of His Apostles, in all alike you find it. Present and complete forgiveness, complete justification, finished atonement through the perfect sacrifice once for all, and the ever living, never changing advocacy of our blessed Redeemer now at the right hand of the throne of God,—these are subjects not dependent on forced interpretations of minute texts, but which form the substance of the whole teaching of God. They meet you everywhere and you cannot avoid them. I do not quote them, for there would be no end of it. If I wanted, e.g., to quote on the doctrine of justification by faith, I must begin by quoting the two Epistles to the Romans and Galatians; or if on the finished sacrifice and present Priesthood of our Lord and Redeemer, I must begin with the whole Epistle to the Hebrews. We do not rely on words only but on chapters, and not on chapters only, but on whole books,—books inspired for this very purpose; and not on separate books only, but on the whole united testimony of the whole collection of books which God has interwoven together as an abiding witness to the faith once delivered to the saints.
We trust to the whole great, grand, aggregate of the Gospel, and from the whole we learn that there is nothing intermediate between us and our God, but that the atonement being complete, the veil of the temple has been rent from the top to the bottom, and that now there is nothing left but the deadness of our own hearts to prevent our passing in at once, alone, and just as we are, to cast ourselves, in the full assurance of complete reconciliation, for all we need, before the mercy-seat of God.
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