The author before us, then, has the merit of promising what, if he could fulfil it, would entitle him to the gratitude of thousands. We do not say, we are very far from thinking, that he has actually accomplished so high an enterprise, though he seems to be ambitious enough to hope that he has not come far short of it. He somewhere calls his book a treatise; he would have done better to call it an essay; nor need he have been ashamed of a word which Locke has used in his work on the Human Understanding. Before concluding, we shall take occasion to express our serious sense, how very much his execution falls below his purpose; but certainly it is a great purpose which he sets before him, and for that he is to be praised. And there is at least this singular merit in his performance, as he has given it to the public, that he is clear-sighted and fair enough to view our Lord's work in its true light, as including in it the establishment of a visible kingdom or church. In proportion, then, as we shall presently find it our duty to pass some severe remarks upon his volume, as it comes before us, so do we feel bound, before doing so, to give some specimens of it in that point of view in which we consider it really to subserve the cause of revealed truth. And in the sketch which we are now about to give of the first steps of his investigation, we must not be understood to make him responsible for the language in which we shall exhibit them to our readers, and which will unavoidably involve our own corrections of his ailment, and our own coloring.
Among a people, then, accustomed by the most sacred traditions of their religion to a belief in the appearance, from time to time, of divine messengers for their instruction and reformation, and to the expectation of one such messenger to come, the last and greatest of all, who should also be their king and deliverer as well as their teacher, suddenly is found, after a long break in the succession and a period of national degradation, a prophet of the old stamp, in one of the deserts of the country---John, the son of Zachary. He announces the promised kingdom as close at hand, calls his countrymen to repentance, and institutes a rite symbolical of it. The people seem disposed to take him for the destined Saviour; but he points out to them a [{623}] private person in the crowd which is flocking about him; and henceforth the interest which his own preaching has excited centres in that other. Thus our Lord is introduced to the notice of his countrymen.
Thus brought before the world, he opens his mission. What is the first impression it makes upon us? Admiration of its singular simplicity both as to object and work. Such of course ought to be its character, if it was to be the fulfilment of the ancient, long-expected promise; and such it was, as our Lord proclaimed it. Other men, who do a work, do not set about it as their object; they make several failures; they are led on to it by circumstances; they miscalculate their powers; or they are drifted from the first in a direction different from that which they had chosen; they do most where they are expected to do least. But our Lord said and did. "He formed one plan and executed it," (p. 18). Next, what was that plan? Let us consider the force of the words in which, as the Baptist before him, he introduced his ministry; "The kingdom of God is at hand." What was meant by the kingdom of God? "The conception was no new one, but familiar to every Jew," (p. 19.) At the first formation of the nation and state of the Israelites the Almighty had been their king; when a line of earthly kings was introduced, then God spoke by the prophets. The existence of the theocracy was the very constitution and boast of Israel, as limited monarchy, liberty, and equality are the boast respectively of certain modern nations. Moreover, the gospel proclamation ran, "Poenitentiam agite; for the kingdom of heaven is at hand;" here again was another and recognized token of a theophany; for the mission of a prophet, as we have said above, was commonly a call to reformation and expiation of sin. A divine mission, then, such as our Lord's, was a falling back upon the original covenant between God and his people; but next, while it was an event of old and familiar occurrence, it ever had carried with it in its past instances something new, in connection with the circumstances under which it took place. The prophets were accustomed to give interpretations, or to introduce modifications of the letter of the law, to add to its conditions and to enlarge its application. It was to be expected, then, that now, when the new prophet, to whom the Baptist pointed, opened his commission, he too, in like manner, would be found to be engaged in a restoration, but in a restoration which should also be a religious advance; and that the more if he really was the special, final prophet of the theocracy, to whom all former prophets had looked forward, and in whom their long and august line was to be summed up and perfected. In proportion as his work was to be more signal, so would his new revelations be wider and more wonderful.
Did our Lord fulfil these expectations? Yes, there was this peculiarity in his mission, that he came not only as one of the prophets in the kingdom of God, but as the king himself of that kingdom. Thus his mission involves the most exact return to the original polity of Israel, which the appointment of Saul had disarranged, while it recognizes also the line of prophets, and infuses a new spirit into the law. Throughout his ministry our Lord claimed and received the title of king, which no prophet ever had done before. On his birth, the wise men came to worship "the king of the Jews;" "thou art the Son of God, thou art the king of Israel," cried Nathanael after his baptism; and on his cross the charge recorded against him was that he professed to be "king of the Jews." "During his whole public life," says the author, "he is distinguished from the other prominent characters of Jewish history by his unbounded personal pretensions. He calls himself habitually king and master. He claims expressly the character of that divine Messiah for which the ancient prophets had directed the nation to look," (page 25.)
He is, then, a King, as well as a Prophet; but is he as one of the old heroic kings, David or Solomon? Had such been his pretension, he had not, in his own words, "discerned the signs of the times." It would have been a false step in him, into which other would-be champions of Israel, before and after him, actually fell, and in consequence failed. But here this young Prophet is from the first distinct, decided, and original. His contemporaries, indeed, the wisest, the most experienced, were wedded to the notion of a revival of the barbaric kingdom. "Their heads were full of the languid dreams of commentators, the impracticable pedantries of men who live in the past," (p. 27.) But he gave to the old prophetic promises an interpretation which they could undeniably bear, but which they did not immediately suggest; which we can maintain to be true, while we can deny them to be imperative. He had his own prompt, definite conception of the restored theocracy; it was his own, and not another's; it was suited to the new age; it was triumphantly carried out in the event.
In what, then, did he consider his royalty to consist? First, what was it not? It did not consist in the ordinary functions of royalty; it did not prevent his payment of tribute to Caesar; it did not make him a judge in questions of criminal or of civil law, in a question of adultery, or in the adjudication of an inheritance; nor did it give him the command of armies. Then perhaps, after all, it was but a figurative royalty, as when the Eridanus is called "fluviorum rex," or Aristotle "the prince of philosophers." No; it was not a figurative royalty either. To call one's self a king, without being one, is playing with edged tools--as in the story of the innkeeper's son, who was put to death for calling himself "heir to the crown." Christ certainly knew what he was saying. "He had provoked the accusation of rebellion against the Roman government: he must have known that the language he used would be interpreted so. Was there then nothing substantial in the royalty he claimed? Did he die for a metaphor?" (p. 28.) He meant what he said, and therefore his kingdom was literal and real; it was visible; but what were its visible prerogatives, if they were not those in which earthly royalty commonly consists? In truth he passed by the lesser powers of royalty, to claim the higher. He claimed certain divine and transcendent functions of the original theocracy, which had been in abeyance since that theocracy had been infringed, which even to David had not been delegated, which had never been exercised except by the Almighty. God had created, first the people, next the state, which he deigned to govern. "The origin of other nations is lost in antiquity," (p. 33;) but "this people," runs the sacred word, "have I formed for myself." And "He who first called the nation did for it the second work of a king: he gave it a law," (p. 34) Now it is very striking to observe that these two incommunicable attributes of divine royalty, as exemplified in the history of the Israelites, are the very two which our Lord assumed. He was the maker and the lawgiver of his subjects. He said in the commencement of his ministry, "Follow me;" and he added, "and I will make you"--you in turn--"fishers of men." And the next we read of him is, that his disciples came to him on the Mount, and he opened his mouth and taught them. And so again, at the end of it, "Go ye, make disciples of all nations, teaching them." "Thus the very words for which the [Jewish] nation chiefly hymned their Jehovah, he undertook in his name to do. He undertook to be the father of an everlasting state, and the legislator of a world-wide society," (p. 36;) that is, showing himself, according to the prophetic announcement, to be "Admirabilis, consiliarius, pater futuri saeculi, princeps pacis. "
To these two claims he adds a third: first, he chooses the subjects of his kingdom; next, he gives them a law; but thirdly, he judges them--judges them in a far truer and fuller sense than in the old kingdom even the Almighty judged his people. The God of Israel ordained national rewards and punishments for national obedience or transgression; he did not judge his subjects one by one; but our Lord takes upon himself the supreme and final judgment of every one of his subjects, not to speak of the whole human race (though, from the nature of the case, this function cannot belong to his visible kingdom.) "He considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his hand," (p, 40.)
We shall mention one further function of the new King and his new kingdom: its benefits are even bound up with the maintenance of this law of political unity. "To organize a society, and to bind the members of it together by the closest ties, were the business of his life. For this reason it was that he called men away from their home, imposed upon some a wandering life, upon others the sacrifice of their property, and endeavored by all means to divorce them from their former connections, in order that they might find a new home in the church. For this reason he instituted a solemn initiation, and for this reason he refused absolutely to any one a dispensation from it. For this reason, too . . . he established a common feast, which was through all ages to remind Christians of their indissoluble union," (p. 92.) But cui bono is a visible kingdom, when the great end of our Lord's ministry is moral advancement and preparation for a future state? It is easy to understand, for instance, how a sermon may benefit, or personal example, or religious friends, or household piety. We can learn to imitate a saint or a martyr, we can cherish a lesson, we can study a treatise, we can obey a rule; but what is the definite advantage to a preacher or a moralist of an external organization, of a visible kingdom? Yet Christ says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God," as well as "his justice." Socrates wished to improve men, but he laid no stress on their acting in concert in order to secure that improvement; on the contrary, the Christian law is political, as certainly as it is moral. Why is this? It arises out of the intimate relation between him and his subjects, which, in bringing them all to him as their common Father, necessarily brings them to each other. Our Lord says, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name, I am in the midst of them." Fellowship between his followers is made a distinct object and duty, because it is a means, according to the provisions of his system, by which in some special way they are brought near to him. This is declared, still more strikingly than in the text we have just quoted, in the parable of the vine and its branches, and in that (if it is to be called a parable) of the Bread of Life. The Almighty King of Israel was ever, indeed, invisibly present in the glory above the Ark, but he did not manifest himself there or anywhere else as a present cause of spiritual strength to his people; but the new king is not only ever present, but to every one of his subjects individually is he a first element and perennial source of life. He is not only the head of his kingdom, but also its animating principle and its centre of power. The author whom we are reviewing does not quite reach the great doctrine here suggested, but he goes near it in the following passage: "Some men have appeared who have been as 'levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another course." Homer by creating literature, Socrates by creating science, Caesar by carrying civilization inland from the shores of the Mediterranean, Newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. [{626}] But these men gave a single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the planets in motion. Christ claims to be a perpetual attractive power, like the sun, which determines their orbit. They contributed to men some discovery, and passed away; Christ's discovery is himself. To humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, cling to me--cling ever closer to me. If we believe St. John, he represented himself as the light of the world, as the shepherd of the souls of men, as the way to immortality, as the vine or life-tree of humanity,' (p. 177.) He ends this beautiful passage, of which we have already quoted as much as our limits allow, by saying that "He instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and blood."