SERMON VII. THE RESEMBLANCE OF MELCHISEDEK HEB. vii. 21. "THE LORD SWARE AND WILL NOT REPENT, THOU ART A PRIEST FOR EVER AFTER THE ORDER OF MELCHISEDEK." THERE is something very solemn in the thought that a man shall be lifted above his generation, moulded distinct from all his contemporaries, and thus stand out, not in respect of his own interest, but with a reference to some personage of a remote futurity, -a pledge that he shall arise, a portraiture of his character and a specimen of his history. These instances are but few, and only appear in relation to Him who was to come, and to the purposes of his mission. Prophet does not announce and foreshadow prophet. Christ only is thus predicted and prefigured. And this must always be remembered that, in examining the narrative of them who thus were appointed to signify Him beforehand, we are bound to connect all these indications primarily with the persons themselves. They run their course of living and responsible acts. They may be quite unconscious that they are harbingers of that expected one. They may never have passed in imagination beyond their individual and relative obligations. And equally must it be remembered that, in the direction given to their character and history, no possible violence is done to their liberty. The Spirit of a sound mind only developes the native germ and element by consistent motive and under intelligent influence. But we behold them in their proper stations and at their distant intervals, the mute yet the not less expressive, the dim yet the not less certain, types which anticipate and represent These ancients are the Son of God. Their faces are ever turned to Him. We recognise his progress from their peculiar bias and attitude, as from flowers we can dial the course of the sun. From their place and manifestation we learn his approach, as from the position of the stars during the night we can compute the morrow's dawn. So regarding them, how interesting is the narrative of all their circumstances and deeds! We follow them, with renewed pleasure and with labouring suspense, from scene to scene. However minute the transaction, it is full of meaning. invested with a mysteriousness that not only awakens our curiosity but commands our awe. But how dull becomes the tale, how trivial the biography, when this application is denied! It is an obtrusion of littleness on our attention. The humble citizen is arrayed in royal attire. The domestic hearth is kindled into a public beacon. Nothing, however, can be inconsiderable, nothing indifferent, nothing too incidental, nothing too personal, when all is but the index to a Saviour, for whom are all things, -when all is but the uplifted signal of an Event unparalleled in the annals of time and the revolutions of eternity. Hence our sympathy with men who otherwise would be very inferior figures of the historic stage: who could never have attained, for any other reason, to niche or pedestal in the temple of fame. But when we ask them each,-" Art thou He that should come ?" they all enjoin and all assist us to look for another. Their testimony is unanimous, "I am not the Christ. He it is, who coming after me is preferred before me." They cast not their own shadow. They live not to themselves. It is very important, in all these examinations, to hold fast as a first principle that the correspondence which is supposed is not of the Messiah to any earlier personages, but of them to Him. He is the Prototype. Theirs only is the conformity. Like the morning-planet that announces and catches the first light of the sun, these herald and reflect Him to whom they are so mysteriously bound. And we might suppose that there was something almost arbitrary in the appointment of these representatives of the Messiah. As in the selection of his apostles, "He called unto him whomsoever he would." But wisdom, fitness, and moral arrangement, shine most distinctly in their mission. The correspondence is always easy, natural, and fixed. New images are presented of the Original: reiterated preludes of warning and announcement resound along the line of march, and proclaim the hastening approach of the Deliverer! Type is not so frequently an intelligent, moral, accommodation and coincidence, as artificial parallelism of rite and usage. It is not so often of persons as of things. But the scope may be complex: there may be the bold relief of the man along with the mystic purport of the institution. Both combine in the Text. Priesthood is shown to attach to the Saviour and to be intended to describe his mediatorial undertaking: that priesthood is further specified as following the pattern of a particular priest. This is the method of our Discourse. I. WE SEE IN THE OFFICE OF PRIESTHOOD AN IDEA AND A PRINCIPLE WHICH EXCLUSIVELY BEAR UPON THE INCARNATE MANIFESTATION AND REDEEMING WORK OF JESUS CHRIST. From the beginning the function of offering sacrifice was known and practised. The individual might act it for himself. It soon became vicarious. It grew into a service and a dignity. It widely, if not universally, obtained. Where it is now unknown, a Deity is not acknowledged, and both ideas have evidently been lost, and must have declined together. It is still most commonly recognised. The conception of its meaning and design is easily received. It pervades every form of language and every association of thought. The characteristics of this ministration can only just be enumerated; though the enumeration, we must bear in mind, has exclusive respect to the revealed and heavenordained priesthood. It was religious. All adoration and piety were founded upon it. They only acquired rule and acceptance in it. They were mere sentiments and performances of will-worship without its sanctity and sanction. It was representative. He who was invested with it was "ordained for men in things pertaining to God." But this was not all he was rather appointed between heaven and the people, than between the people and heaven. "No man taketh this honour It was divinely conferred. unto himself; but he that is called of God." It was regulated by the strictest provisions. Tribe and family were the security for the directness of its succession and the authority of its discharge. It was imparted by solemn induction. The candidate must pass through many ceremonials the most solemn and impressive. He must repair to the laver and to the altar: he must be compurgated by sacrifice and anointed by chrism. His unworthiness and his accountability were enforced on his mind by these humbling and consecrating preparations. It resolved itself into invariable duties. 1. To offer sacrifice. "Every high priest is ordained to offer gifts and sacrifices." "Gifts" were oblations of a votive and eucharistic kind: "sacrifices" were the inflictions of death upon a victim with confession of sin and hope of expiation. The flowers which grew just on the border of Eden might suffice for the one: the firstlings of the earliest folded flock were demanded for the other. Cain could present his wreaths and clusters with an unbroken heart and unbelieving boast: Abel, in the "fuller sacrifice" of the palpitating and bleeding lamb, proved his consciousness of guilt and that he looked beyond himself for an atonement. But this rite is most singular. -It cannot have originated in any human reasoning. As a substitution, how could that which is incapable of sin be accepted in room of the sinner? As a compensation, how could animal suffering, apart from all the proper effects of evil on a moral nature, be allowed to counterweigh the just penalty of the law? As an attraction, how could a Divine complacency be imagined in a waste of life given to be enjoyed, and, though always intended to be perishable, unforfeited by sin? What is there in the operations of Nature to favour the idea? What is there in the analogies which ever raise themselves between our intellectual convictions and material impressions? What is there in our ordinary conceptions and judgments? It is something strange, to our first view unlikely, and which is to be forced upon Say, that all nations agree in it,-that does not establish its us. spontaneous suggestion. Every nation records it as a prescribed and revealed means of propitiation. It existed beyond the memory of any people. Grant that it is a discovery of Infinite Wisdom, and all is plain and consistent. It was made known in its original purity of meaning and exercise. Truth was forsaken, but its form was not altogether lost in the dispersion of man. The light of tradition was refracted most perversely, but it was not entirely quenched. -It cannot be justified but upon some indemnifying principle. We immediately allow the right of the Creator over all that he has made. "For every beast of the forest is mine, and the cattle upon a thousand hills. I know all the fowls of the mountains: and the wild beasts of the field are mine." But this very claim prepares us for his ulterior demand: "Will I eat the flesh of bulls, or drink the blood of goats?" His tender mercies are over all his works. Towards the meanest creature, even the most short-lived, he deals in considerate and lavish benignity. "Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God?” "Doth God take care for oxen ?" "And should I not spare Nineveh, that great city, wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that cannot discern between their right hand and their left hand? and also much cattle?" It cannot be the caprice of power. But if some high principle of His government be meditated, if an infinite amount of spiritual happiness be thus secured, if the salvation of man, for whose benefit all these inferior tribes were produced, be manifestly involved, then, what is the expense of their life and blood,-falling as this expense most assuredly does under the condition of original being,*—in comparison of ends which can It is to be regretted that many, in reading this passage, "Wherefore as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin," though it is limited by the following sentence, so death passed upon all men,"—have thus thought to explain the death of the inferior animals. They argue that these die because of our sin. It is a supposition to make the mocker strong. For we find organic remains of unknown creatures, whose existence must have been long anterior to the present condition and use of our planet. Is it not an absurdity to hold the immortality, or, which is the same thing, the deathlessness, of the insect and the worm? The revolution is not in them but in ourselves. They die as they would always die. |