The sentiment which Dean Stanley expresses has my full concurrence; but I go still further, and maintain that there is in the pathetic narrative of Abraham's sacrifice something more than he points out. This interposition of God in order to arrest the very act which he has required is in accord with the general doctrine of the Bible, expressly condemning human sacrifices; [Footnote 25] but Abraham's as well as several other examples prove how such sacrifices continued to exist in the ferocious traditions and manners, not only of several nations of Semitic origin, but even of the Hebrews themselves. God's intent is to try Abraham, and he pauses as soon as Abraham's obedience to the divine order is beyond doubt. Abraham does not hesitate to execute the divine command; he expresses no surprise at it. The sacrifice of Isaac is prepared, and very nearly consummated, as an event almost of course. Here we have man in the grossest and blindest condition of barbarism, in the presence of God, in whom as sovereign he believes, and whose sovereignty it is not his purpose to dispute.
[Footnote 25: Leviticus xviii. 21; Deuteronomy xii. 31; Ezekiel xx. 26. This question is treated and conclusively solved in the Theologische Encyclopedie of Herzog, art. Sacrifice, vol. x. p. 621.]
It would be easy for me to multiply these examples, and to show, in many other passages of the Bible, the following fundamental characteristic of Biblical History: the thought and word of man, although constantly in presence of the divine law and of the divine action, yet in contact and contrast with the thought and word of God. I prefer seeking for proofs in support of my conviction in a comparison of the Old and New Testaments, and in the light which Christianity sheds upon the Hebrew Revelation, which it does not contradict, but to which it applies a movement of progress.
I say progress,—progress immense, infinitely grander than man's imagination could ever have conceived,—and at the same time the character of the divine work remaining absolutely the same. It is no longer, as in the Old Testament, the stormy combat, the continuous struggle of God and of man in the events of the world and in the life of the people. God no longer interposes in the New Testament to warn or direct, to raise up or humble, to recompense or to punish man in this world; he decides no longer directly the issue of battle or the destiny of states. It is still God, God in Jesus Christ, with all his sublimity: He, and He only, occupies and fills the place. He appears there under a different aspect. In his human form, He is weakness itself, intended and destined to become the very type of humility and of suffering; the voluntary victim, who expiates man's sin; the victim of man's fall. But in the midst of His miseries it is God, God as He was for Israel in all the splendour of His power. Christ's own knowledge of this appears throughout. He says it, He manifests it unceasingly by actions and by words; sometimes by natural effects, sometimes by miracles. And yet how different! what a range in the object and the bearing of His actions and of His words! In the Old Testament the scene concentrates itself upon a corner of the world, a single people, a petty nation, separated by God from the rest of the world, in order to withdraw it from the contagion of idolatry;—but now it is for the whole world, for all nations, for future as well as for living generations, for the Gentile as well as for the Jew, for the barbarians of Malta as well as for the Greeks of Athens, that the God of the New Testament manifests Himself and speaks; it is over the whole of humanity that He spreads His light and orders His servants to extend His empire.
He does more, much more. That divine light which Jesus comes to spread over the whole world, although it continues to emanate from the same fountain, becomes more complete and more pure. Jesus is the first to recognise the fact that the ancient law, although issuing from God, bears here and there traces of human errors and passions. "I am not come," says he, "to abolish the law, but to fulfil it." How fulfil it? By removing the errors with which it had become intermixed owing to the imperfect nature of the men, of the time, and of the place, at which it appeared, and by filling up the gaps which that imperfection had entailed. He disentangles the ancient law from every human element, and brings it back to its one divine element, its one pure and perfect source. I refrain from all argument or commentary. I will not cite anything in proof of this grand fact but those very texts of the Ancient and of the New Testament which embody their most essential precepts.
I read in Exodus, "Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe." [Footnote 26] Jesus effaces this lex talionis. "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love your enemies; bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you." [Footnote 27]
[Footnote 26: Exodus xxi. 24, 25.]
[Footnote 27: Matthew v. 43, 44.]