CHAPTER 5 

The Character of the New Covenant of Christ.

I HAVE now proved that the old covenant and the law given by Moses was only applicable to the Jewish race, and only to such of them as lived in their own land. It did not apply to other nations of the world nor to Jews - 25 - inhabiting foreign soil. And I have shown that the ideal of the new covenant must be helpful to the life of all nations: the members of its kingdom are to be restricted in no way whatever. Considerations of country, race or locality, or anything else are not to affect them in any way at all. The law and life of our Saviour Jesus Christ shows itself to be such, being a renewal of the ancient pre-Mosaic religion, in which Abraham, the friend of God, and his forefathers are shown to have lived. And if you cared to compare the life of Christians and the worship introduced among all nations by Christ with the lives of the men who with Abraham are witnessed to by Scripture as holy and righteous, you would find cne and the same ideal. For they too turned their backs on the errors of polytheism, they relinquished idolatrous superstition, they looked beyond the whole of the visible creation and deified neither sun nor moon, nor any part of the whole. They raised themselves to the Supreme God, Himself the Highest, the Creator of heaven and earth. And Moses himself bears this out in his history of ancient times when he records Abraham's saying:

"I will stretch forth my hand unto God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And when, before this, he introduces Melchizedek, whom he calls the priest of the Most High God, blessing Abraham as follows:

"Blessed be Abraham by God most high, who hath created the heaven and the earth."

And you would find that Enoch and Noah were reckoned just and well pleasing to God in the same way as Abraham. Job, ton, a just, true, blameless, devout man, averse from everything evil, is recorded as pre-Mosaic. He underwent a - 26 - trial of his utter devotion to the God of the Universe when he lost everything he had, and left the greatest example of holiness to posterity, when he spoke these philosophic words:

"21. I myself came forth naked from my mother's womb, and naked shall I depart. The Lord gave, the Lord hath taken away. As the Lord pleased, so it came to pass. Blessed be the name of the Lord."

That he said this as a worshipper of the God of the universe is made quite clear when he goes on to say:

"4. For he is wise in mind and mighty and great; 6. Who shakes the (earth) under heaven from its foundation and its pillars totter. 7. Who commands the sun and it rises not, and he seals up the stars; 8. Who alone has stretched out the heaven." 

If then the teaching of Christ has bidden all nations now to worship no other God but Him whom the men of old and the pre-Mosaic saints believed in, we are clearly partakers of the religion of these men of old time. And if we partake of their religion we shall surely share their blessing. Yes, and equally with us they knew and bore witness to the Word of God, Whom we love to call Christ. They were thought worthy in very remarkable ways of beholding His actual presence and theophany.

Remember how Moses calls the Being, Who appeared to the patriarchs, and often delivered to them the oracles afterwards written down in Scripture, sometimes God and Lord, and sometimes the Angel of the Lord. He clearly implies that this was not the Omnipotent God, but a secondary Being, rightly called the God and Lord of holy men, but the Angel of the Most High His Father. Thus he says:

"10. And Jacob went forth ... to Charran, 11. and came to a certain place, and he slept there. . . . And he - 27 - took of the stones of the place, and put it at his head, and lay down to sleep in that place, 12. and he dreamed: and behold, a ladder fixed on the earth whose top reached to heaven, and the angels of God ascended and descended on it. 13. And the Lord stood upon it, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac: fear not, the earth, the land on which thou liest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed: 14 and thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth."

To which he adds:

"16. And Jacob arose in the morning, and took the stone, which he had put under his head, and set it up as a pillar."

Then further on he calls this God and Lord Who appeared to him the Angel of God. For Jacob says:

"11. For the Angel of God said to me in a dream, Jacob. And I said, What is it? "

And then:

"12. I have seen, he says, all that Laban does to thee. I am the God that was seen by thee in the place of God, where thou anointedst for me there a pillar, and thou vowedst to me there a vow."

This same being who appeared to Abraham is called Lord and God. He teaches the saint mysteriously of His Father's rule, and speaks some things, as it were, of another God, which I will examine in their place. Then, again, it is impious to suppose that the Being who answered Job after his severe trial was the same. For when He shows Himself first in the whirlwind and the clouds He reveals Himself as the God of the Universe, but He goes on to reveal Himself in a way which makes Job say:

"4. Hear me, O Lord, and I will speak. 5. I heard of thee before by the hearing of the ears, but now mine eye hath seen thee." 

And if it is not possible for the Most High God, the - 28 - Invisible, the Uncreated, and the Omnipotent to be said to be seen in mortal form, the Being Who was seen must have been the Word of God, Whom we call Lord as we do the Father. But it is needless for me to labour the point, since it is possible to find instances in Holy Scripture. These I will collect at leisure in connection with my present work to prove that He Who was seen by the patriarchal saints was none other than the Word of God.

Therefore besides the conception of the Creator of the Universe, we and they have inherited also the conception of Christ in common. Hence you can find instances of the pre-Mosaic saints being called "Christs," just as we are called Christians. Hear what the oracle in the Psalms says about them:

"12. When they were few in numbers, very few, and strangers in the land, 13. and they went from nation to nation, from (one) kingdom to another people: 14. He suffered no man to wrong them, and he reproved kings for their sakes, saying: 15. 'Touch not my Christs, and do no evil to my prophets.'"

The whole context shows that this must be referred to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob: they therefore shared the name of Christ with us.