The Function of Faith. 273 us of the reasonableness, the propriety, and becomingness of the duties he enjoins. In the present case, the reasonableness of the command to preach the gospel to every creature, may be argued from various considerations. In particular, it clearly flows as an inference from the all-sufficiency of the atonement provided. If the sacrifice of Christ is in and of itself sufficient for the salvation of all, it is but right and reasonable that it should be offered unto all. Its infinite intrinsic value furnishes ample reason for the divine command, and ample ground for justifying the Christian minister in complying with it. In both cases, the atonement must be regarded under the aspect of the sacrifice that has been offered, without reference to the intentions and purposes of God. To allege anything like insincerity on the part of God, in offering to all what was not meant for all, is to advance a charge which would apply with equal force to the arrangements of his common providence, according to which, while abundant provision is made for all, the duty of every man to make use of that provision for the ends for which it was designed, stands unaffected by the secret purpose of heaven in regard to the individual, who may be finally destined never to profit by it. With regard to the preacher, he has obviously nothing to do with the secret councils of the Most High. In discharging the grateful task of inviting, in the name of his Master, all around him, in the streets and lanes of the city, the by-ways and the hedges, to come to the marriage feast, he must not only be conscious of fulfilling his Master's will, but encouraged by knowing that abundant provision has been made for all. In conclusion, we have only a word or two to say as to the function of faith, viewed in relation to the atonement, under the aspects now presented. We have spoken of Christ as the priest, the sacrifice, and the altar. In this arrangement, we have followed what divines have called the order of time, according to which the purposes of God come first, the purchased redemption next, and the application of it last. But, it is obvious that, in the order of nature or actual experience, this arrangement must be inverted. In the day of conversion, the Spirit of God, when applying the work of Christ to the soul, begins with the word of God, in which Christ is exhibited as the altar, or, in other words, points to the blood of Christ as shed for many for the remission of sins. And, in like manner, faith fixes, in its first and more immediate action, upon this aspect of the atonement. Trembling under a sense of guilt, conscious of evil desert, and ready to sink into despair, the newly-awakened sinner sees the blood of the Son of God, which cleanseth from all sin, brought nigh to him, within the range of his vision, and within reach of his hand, in the everlasting gospel. That sight, once obtained, "dispels the fears of guilt and woe." A sacrifice for sin, it appears, has been provided, presented, and accepted; and here its merit and virtue are proffered for the benefit of all. Faith looks to the testimony of God in his word as its proper warrant and foundation. From this the step is easy to the sacrifice that was laid on the altar. As the word of God is the foundation on which faith is built, so Christ crucified, as revealed in that word, is the object on which it rests; and in the fulness and pefection of his atoning work, faith finds a resting-place where it may be shaken indeed, but from whence it never can be dislodged. At this stage the soul is secure in a state of salvation. But another step is needful to attain the joy of that salvation. The faith of affiance rises into that of appropriation, and viewing the atonement, on which alone he rests for pardon and peace, holiness and heaven, as offered up by the great High Priest, he claims him as his own Saviour, and can say with the apostle, "I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Thus, through faith realising the atonement, under all its aspects, the soul reaches "all joy and peace in believing." And the old promise is fulfilled, "Thou shalt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed upon thee; because he trusteth in thee." We are greatly mistaken if, in these statements, we do not express, though in feeble and imperfect language, the uniform experience of the children of God. Varied as that experience is by the accidents of time, tongue, and person, it is, and has ever been, in substance the same. Among the numerous examples of this which crowd upon us as we now write, there is one with which, as it happens to be nearest us, we shall close these remarks. It is that of the Rev. John Cowper, of whose conversion to evangelical views on his death-bed, such a beautiful account has been left by his brother, the Christian poet. The experience of this young man is the more remarkable as being that of a scholar and a gentleman, who, though of the purest and sweetest natural disposition, yet remained, till within a few days of his death, totally blind to the divine beauty and excellency of the gospel. It is of him that Cowper says "I had a brother once. Peace to the memory of a man of worth, The first thing that marked his conversion was a discovery of Christ as revealed and offered to him in the doctrine of the The Temple and the Synagogue. 275 gospel. All at once he stepped out of darkness into God's marvellous light. "The doctrines I had been used to," he said, "referred me to myself for the foundation of my hopes, and there I could find nothing to rest upon. The sheet-anchor of the soul was wanting. I hope he has taught me that which he teaches none but his own. These things were foolishness to me once, but now I have a firm foundation, and am satisfied. I have learned that in a moment which I could not have learned by reading many books for many years.' Identical with this, yet clearly flowing from a view of the all-sufficiency of the Saviour, came the assurance of faith, which he thus expressed : -"Were I to die this night," he said, "I know I should be happy. This assurance, I hope, is quite consistent with the word of God. It is built upon a sense of my utter insufficiency, and the ALL-SUFFICIENCY of Christ." And lastly, the assurance of faith, coupled as it always is with personal appropriation, rose into the assurance of sense; and, mounting upward from the altar to the sacrifice, and from the sacrifice to the priest, his soul realised the eternal love of God his Saviour, and gave vent to its feelings in a flood of holy joy. "Brother, I am as happy as a king. What a mercy it is to a man in my condition to know his acceptance; I am completely satisfied of mine." And then, after acknowledging the goodness of God in discovering unto him, though late, the plan of redemption, he added, "But the crown of all his mercies is this, that he has given me a Saviour, and not only the Saviour of mankind, brother, but MY SAVIOUR.' MOST ART. III.-The Temple and the Synagogue. OST men in our day profess their eagerness to submit their systems and their modes of thought to the test of first principles. Practically, however, it is difficult to renounce a long cherished error, and some are disposed against all reason rather to reassert and to maintain it, with such exaggerations as they hope may give it a new lease of existence. We can hardly divest ourselves of the idea that this explains the policy of the Romanising party in the Church of England, who, having seen the timid demonstrations of former times * On the assurance of faith, our readers will find some further remarks made in a notice of the work entitled "The Increase of Faith," contained in the Critical Notices of the present Number.-ED. made abortive by the progress of controversy, are now vigorously pushing their practices to extremes, which a few years ago would have been thought impossible, in the hope that they may, by their boldness and courage, secure for their darling ritual an advantage which no merits of its own could have obtained. The symbols of the ancient superstition are again set up. The Protestant spirit-once the glory of the Church of England-is denounced and repudiated. And we are instructed how that church should be organised anew, in accordance with traditions of anti-reformation times. Evangelical doctrine and worship are contemptuously disowned, and wherever practicable, the sensuous in worship is placed above the simplicity of the New Testament. The advocates of this strange retrogression profess to appeal to antiquity; but it is a very modern antiquity, whatever in their usual vague manner they profess. They do not, because they cannot, refer in support of their principles to any one authentic document of the two first centuries. If they put their finger on the professed epistles of Ignatius (the only documents now attributed to these centuries that could be quoted as favouring their cause), we challenge the genuineness of these, which is disproved by all modern investigations, while we deny that if they did belong to the age and authorship which they claim, they could fairly be used in support of the monstrous pretensions which the party puts forward. We must look much later in the history of the church for any fair precedent for recognising a priestly character in ministers bearing the name of Christians. We have no objection to go back to antiquity. Indeed, this is what we insist on. Not the antiquity of Laud, certainly, nor of the Nicene Council, nor even of the early centuries, for why should we be content with any authority so modern as these, when we have the writings of apostles inviting us to consult and follow them? Next to saving souls, they took care of the proper organisation of the church. But how did they organise? Not in such a fashion, or on such principles, as the Romanising party recommends. Their whole proceedings were as simple and as natural as possible. At first they were themselves the preachers, the rulers, the almoners of the church. Very soon, like Moses in the wilderness, they laid, first one part and then another of their duty, upon substitutes or coadjutors, that they might give themselves to that part of their work more specially apostolic. Their earliest care secured attention to the poor, by the election of deacons, Then, soon after, elders are found in active work; for when Paul and Barnabas, after their return from their first missionary tour, car Testimony of Christian Antiquity. 277 ried the alms of the Antioch Christians to Jerusalem, the field was already occupied by a trusted eldership; and from that time forward, in every region to which the gospel came, and in every community where the word was successfully preached, the first care of the apostles was the appointment of elders. Now, in all this history, what place do we find for highchurch and ritualistic ideas, such as those advocated in our day by certain parties in the Established Church? Not in the actions of the apostles, who claimed nothing, who exacted nothing, except what was fairly due to their inspired and peculiar position. They often joined in the ordination of others, but for this purpose they assumed no prelatic power. They were themselves ordained, but as history informs us, by other presbyters. Very little indeed is said about their ordination, and of most of them the ordination was not even noticed. In one case, that of Paul and Barnabas, some particulars are recorded, and a list of persons given as their ordainers, Acts xiii. Among these, we find men well known in the Church, but we discover no diocesan bishop or prelate. They were "Simeon, who is called Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene, and Manaen," the foster brother and early companion of the tetrarch Herod, no one of whom assumed prelatic power or authority. This ordination, like Timothy's afterwards, was that of a presbytery. No doubt these ordainers were bishops in the New Testament sense of the word. But in the sense adopted, either ignorantly or "economically," by the high church or ritualistic party, no such functionary was present, or indeed can be shewn at the time to have existed anywhere. Very little importance evidently was then attached to the circumstantials of ordination. It seems to have been enough, that by this act on the part of the church through her rulers, ordination had been bona fide administered; and it is remarkable that there does not exist in written history or authentic tradition, any record to tell us by whose hands the numerous other presbyters received ordination, nor which were the ministers, missionaries or pastors, whom any one of the apostles ordained, or joined in ordaining. Nor can we find, except in monkish legends, any information as to the early episcopal succession in any one of the ancient churches, so that, notwithstanding the bold language used on the subject, it would certainly puzzle any of our modern high church divines, to give us their own ecclesiastical pedigree. All who reverence truth will agree with us, that no evidence on this subject is within their reach so strong as would satisfy a jury to bring in a verdict establishing a legal right to the most paltry piece of property. For our own part, we would esteem it a very idle attempt VOL. XVII.-NO. LXIV. T |