Church and State as Seen in the Formation of Christendom

by T. W. Allies

After this the Apostle goes on to exhibit the second act of His High-Priesthood, springing out of the first, and its consummation—the abrogation of the ancient sacrifices, although divinely instituted, and the substitution for them of that Body which God had fitted to Him. “In saying before, Sacrifices and oblations and holocausts for sin Thou wouldst not, neither are they pleasing to Thee, which are offered according to the law: then said I, Behold I come to do Thy will, O God: He taketh away the first, that He may establish that which followeth. In the which will we are sanctified by the oblation of the Body of Jesus Christ once.” As the first act, the Incarnation, runs on into the second, the Atonement, so the second depends on the first. Without the assumption by God the Son of a created nature, the nature of man, there would be no sacrifice for man and no reconciliation. The source of sanctification is the offering of the Body of the God-man, of no other body; and without the Godhead of Christ His religion would be the shadow of a dream.

How, again, was this second act of His High-Priesthood, the oblation of His Body on the cross once for all for the sins of the whole world, to be impressed upon the world?

Human acts pass away into the abyss of past time, and the ever-flowing tide of successive existence sweeps them into the background. The sufferings and teachings of our Lord Himself, even His death upon the cross, would in themselves as human acts be subject to this lot. How were they to be made ever-living and ever-present, rescued from oblivion, carried in the heart and professed by the lips of men in every succeeding generation until the day of doom?

Truly there was wisdom needed for this effect, and what did our Lord do?

He was at the very point of completing that will of God which He came to do, and for which a Body was fitted to Him. Having celebrated the Pasch of the Law, which had been instituted so many ages before, as the speaking type of what He was to accomplish, He with a word made His disciples priests to offer that Body which He then first gave to them, which on the morrow He was to offer on the cross, and in doing this utter the “Consummatum est.” The Priesthood, which was to carry in itself the whole power and virtue of His Church, He created before the sacrifice of the cross, but in immediate view of it, as the first act, as it were, of His Passion.

But the Priesthood which He created, and the offering in which it consisted, sprung from the union of the two acts which formed His own High-Priesthood, the assumption of the manhood for the purpose of redeeming man, and the execution of that purpose by His death on the cross. The Priesthood contained them both in itself, for the Body given was the Body broken on the cross, the Blood given was the Blood shed on the cross; and they were both the Body and Blood of a God-man. “Do this, He said, in commemoration of Me;” and as long as it was done daily, the double truth, the double benefit of God to man, the double marvel of redeeming love, offering itself and offering what is divine for the erring creature, could not fade from remembrance. It is as present now as it was at the hour of the crucifixion, and will be equally present to the end of the world.

But in order better to understand the force and meaning of our Lord’s action, it is necessary to consider the institution which, at the time of it, was in existence and full operation all over the world, the institution, that is, of bloody sacrifice.

From the beginning of history, and in all countries, the intercourse between God and man consisted in two things, prayer and sacrifice, and they were carried on together. For this much the Greek may fitly represent all Gentilism. Now Plato represents Euthyphron as saying to Socrates, “If any one knows how to say and to do things acceptable to the gods by praying and by sacrificing, that is piety, and such conduct preserves both private families and the commonwealth; and the contrary to these acceptable things is impiety, which overthrows and destroys everything.” To which Socrates replies, “You call, then, piety a certain knowledge of sacrifice and prayer.” “I do.” “Then sacrifice is giving to the gods, and prayer asking of them.”[84]

A most careful student[85] of the Greek mind tells us: “As the need of the gods was felt by man in all the events of his life, in every work and every purpose, sacrificial worship, the burnt-offering, or the briefer libation-offering, ran through the whole of his being, and seemed to be prayer clothed in action.” And again, “We have shown that man conceived of the Godhead not only as by its immortality infinitely exalted above himself, but likewise as the Ruler and Administrator of the whole universe and the being of man; and moreover, that man, in spite of all doubt and error as to the nature of his gods, in spite of his allowing impersonal powers to be at their side who threaten their dignity, yet never detaches himself from them, because he always feels himself impelled to seek a living personal Godhead. To this he was riveted by the insoluble bonds of a spiritual and natural need; and the recognition of this dependence, the expression of human subjection, the tribute of homage which man offers in the certainty of needing its grace, that is piety, as it is shown in action and in word, that is to say, in sacrifice and in prayer.” And “the whole worship, that is, all sacrifices and divination, are made by Plato to be identical with the communion of gods and men with each other.”[86]

Another writer,[87] most learned in Greek and Roman antiquity, says: “These two constitute the oldest and most general form of honouring God. It might perhaps be said that the first word of the original man was a prayer, and the first act of the fallen man a sacrifice. Moses in Genesis, at any rate, carries the origin of sacrifice up to the first history of man, to Cain and Abel; the Greek legends, to Prometheus and the centaur Chiron, or to the eldest kings, Melisseus, Phoronæus, and Cecrops.