Living questions of the age

Front matter

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THE AGE.

Chapter I

GOD REVEALED IN THREE PROGRESSIVE NAMES, OR CHARACTERS, FROM LESS TO MORE PERFECT.

" Hallowed be Thy NAME."

It is agreed that the human mind has its abilities and susceptibilities and laws, which, if not so clearly denned, yet are as certain and specific in their offices and action as the properties and laws of matter. It is agreed, likewise, that the mental is adjusted to the material world by means and media which organize the subjective with the objective in adapted relations. Clearness of vision on this subject is sometimes hindered, it may be, by writers on mental philosophy, who seem " to see through a glass, darkly." They involve the personal, conscious, responsible Ego with the attributes and laws which pertain to it ; yet all agree that whatever differences there may be in definitions, the laws and attributes of mind exist, and that their methods of action and their adaptation to accomplish certain ends are definite and specific; although we may not always clearly discern all the subtle relations connected with the subject. To suppose, therefore, any religion to be true, or to be from the Author of the human mind, which is not adapted in its methods and manifestations to enlighten and purify that mind, is simply absurd. If the Bible does not contain means and methods adapted to human nature, it is not true to man. But we shall see this more clearly in the end than in the beginning.

It will be the aim of this chapter to show that there is a Science of Religion, or rather, that the principles of such a science are in the Bible ; and that a vindication of the truth of Scripture must, in the end, depend upon the deductions of this science. It repeats things previously written, with enlargement and more specific application.

While some able writers on scientific subjects, by the form of their statements, awaken doubt in regard to the question whether the Bible contains a revealed religion, yet we are sure that misapprehension in regard to the import of the Scriptures, and adhesion by Christian teachers to opinions and interpretations promulged amid the shadows of darker ages, create a distrust of religion far more damaging than are the utterances of the learned men which they honestly endeavor to discredit.*

It is agreed by all well-informed men that in the processes of creation organic beings have been advanced from lower to higher forms and organs. Whether by evolution or by specific creation — to the fact of progressive advancement in form and faculty, from the mollusk to the mammal, all parties assent. It is likewise agreed that preceding species of organic life generally include some forms that are typical, or prophetic of the advanced species that are to succeed them.

Accepting this principle of progress as indicating the mode of working which characterizes the Creative Mind, it will be gratifying to those who cannot doubt the

* One of the most injurious mistakes of religious teachers is that of amalgamating the three Dispensations into one system of duty. It leads ministers to apologize for sin and eulogize character which was righteous according to Moses, but is sinful according to Christ. An effort to conform to the laws of the Colonies, the Confederacy, and "the United States, as of equal validity in our time, would not be so absurd and injurious as the effort to mix and amalgamate into one the three progressive yet distinct Dispensations of Divine Kevelation. The ground principles, of course, are the same in all dispensations of law, and the Ten Commandments are fundamental in all legislation ; but with progress of knowledge in a state there is progress of responsibility ; and laws must be adjusted to the advancement of society.

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deductions of geological science to find an analogous series of development in the processes of Eevelation. And if any, not having the fear of Butler before their eyes, think fit to doubt the value of analogy from the material to the moral, then we say that the exposition which we are about to propound is, in itself, sustained by an induction of facts which evince that the scheme of progress in Revelation is as demonstrable, nay, more so, than it is in the series of animated nature.

EVOLUTION* OF THE DIVIDE CHAEACTEE.

The Bible affirms three Dispensations in which Truth has been developed progressively from the less to the more perfect, both in light and purity. These three, for the present, may be designated : 1st, the Patriarchal, or Dispensation of Creation ; 2d, the Mosaic, or Dispensation of Law; 3d, the Christian, or Dispensation of Truth and Love. By involving these three, which the Bible expressly forbids, and seeking for perfect Truth and Love in each, good men do constant injury to the cause they endeavor to promote.

* We use the word evolution in its proper sense. God was then what He is now ; hut His character was not fully revealed.

First Dispensation.

The attributes of God revealed in the First Dispensation were only His natural attributes — " eternal power and Godhead" — those which may be deduced from nature — Intelligence to design and Power to produce and govern the things that are made. The moral attributes of the Godhead — conscience and affection, righteousness and love — were only partially revealed in this First Dispensation. God as revealed by creation and in creation, was declared to be the One proper object of worship and obedience. Something was gained by this : — it antagonized creature worship, and directed the natural religious emotions of men to the God of Nature.

Under the Dispensation of Creation, therefore, the Bible tells us that God was known only as El Shaddai (Heb.), God Almighty. This much only was included in the meaning of the word by which His character was revealed to the patriarchs. This statement is important, and is sustained by the best-informed Hebrew scholars, such as Dr. William Smith, classical examiner in the University of London, and many others. Dr. Smith says "the Hebrew form, El Shaddai, properly describes God in that character in which He is exhibited to all men in His works, as the Creator, Sustainer, and Supreme Governor of the World ; hence it is used to denote any being believed in and worshipped as God." The sacred name El and its plural Elohim are not only ante-Mosaic but ante-Abrahamic, and were common as designating the object of worship in the region of the Euphrates and Mediterranean in the earliest period. The name of the Deity in those regions was soon corrupted and took on plural forms. The Elohim of the Hebrews and Baalim of the Phoenicians are cognate plurals used by tribes originating in the same region, and about the same period of prehistoric time. Perhaps the plural is the form that the objects of nature suggest to the senses. Both the singular and plural forms are in the Book of Job, the author of which, an Idumean Arab, wrote before the time of Abraham, and about the time when plural designations of the Deity were becoming prevalent. This probably was the occasion of the removal of Abraham from Mesopotamia, where idolatry had become prevalent, to Canaan, where the One God — El Shaddai — was still worshipped, as may be seen in the case of Melchizedek, and the prefix to the name of Abraham's house-steward, El-iezer of Damascus. -Thenceforward until, and perhaps during the bondage in Egypt, El Shaddai, the Almighty Creator and Ruler, was worshipped as the true God, if not as the only God, by the Hebrew people. Transcribers occasionally interpolated the later Divine Name, Jehovah, but the Law-giver states authoritatively that the name indicating Power and Providence was the only name known to worshippers daring the First Dispensation.* This name was recognized even on the cross. There Mercy implored Power in the agonizing beseechment, " Eloi ! Eloi ! lama sabachthani."

Second Dispensation,

When the Second Dispensation, the Dispensation of Law, was about to be inaugurated, the people were explicitly informed that the character of God about to be unfolded to them was in advance of what was known to their progenitors. The God-head of Power and Providence, worshipped in the First Dispensation, was now to be clothed with the attributes Justice and Mercy; hence He reveals Himself as the Almighty God worshipped by the patriarchs, but in a new Name, or character. He instructs the Law-giver to announce to the new nation the name Jehovah (Ex. vi, 3) : " The Almighty — El Shaddai — spake unto Moses, I am Jehovah : I appeared unto Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by the name God Almighty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known unto them." The contents of this new name was declared unto Moses at the initiation of the Second Dispensation, and the ritual service was appended in order to unfold the character which it contained. The attributes of the new character were announced literally as follows : " Jehovah, Jehovah, the Almighty is merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth ; keeping mercy for thousands ; forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation." This definition gives the attributes of the Divine Being worshipped during the existence of the Mosaic Economy ; and this was the character in which He was worshipped and obeyed until Truth and Love came by Jesus Christ, and a third name* advanced to the ultimate was revealed for the worship of men.

But the righteousness of the legal dispensation of Moses was the righteousness natural to man, not the " righteousness of the kingdom of heaven" as taught by Christ. The law of retaliation and the law that might

* It will make the subject of the Divine Name more intelligible to the reader if he will recognize, what is no doubt true, t.e., that Moses used the word name in the Egyptian sense in which he was educated, and which the Israelites understood; viz., an oval containing signs, declaring the personal character of the reigning sovereigns. On slabs in the Louvre and British Museum, Kamses II. is figured worshipping before his own name.

gives right are laws of Gocl in and over nature; and the Second Dispensation, although a development out of the First, and an advance from the First, was not designed to elevate men above these natural laws. The character of God, revealed in His second Name, recognized the enforcement rather than the abrogation of the law of the strongest and the law of retaliation. Jehovah- Almighty was a God of mercy, pardoning the iniquity of those who worshipped and obeyed Him ; but upon His enemies He " visited the iniquities of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and fourth generation."

The natural impulse of retaliation, which God still maintains in the realm of nature, was recognized in the contents of the Divine Name of the Second Dispensation, and was codified and executed by Moses. The Jews were bound thereby to its observance; hence in their wars they slay parent and child ; and in their songs they sing the praises of those who destroy by violence their enemies, and the wives and children of their enemies. But while they do this, they explicitly recognize the fact that they do it in accordance with what their enemies had done to them, and as being, therefore, acceptable to Jehovah, who " visited the iniquity of the fathers upon the children." Thus King David, who was loyal to the law, prays (Ps. cix), " Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow," * * * "because that he remembered not to show mercy, but persecuted the poor and needy man." And another psalmist says (Ps. cxxxvii, 8, 9), " O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed ; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us : happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones." Thus these cruelties are avowed in the Second Dispensation as sanctioned by Jehovah, and by the natural law of retaliation.

While, therefore, the Jews, occupying a position between nature and grace, were raised above the laws of nature in some respects and subjected to them in others, reason sanctions the opinion that they were advanced only so far and so fast as the moral attributes of the human mind can be moulded into higher qualities and habits."* " God legislates for species, not for individuals." Better — Law is for species, providence for individuals ; and the public mind can make progress only by slow advances, and these advances aided by written language, after its signs have a settled significance. By this means alone, as the mind is made, experience of the past may be accumulated as a basis of progress in the future. To this stage the Eastern people had attained in the time of Moses. In this case, and in all others, the social nature of mind must be destroyed or the law of progressive advance in knowledge must be observed ; observed even in the case of Divine interposition to promote national advancement.

Third Dispensation.

The Third, or Christian Dispensation, again revealed a new name, or character of God, declared to be in advance of, or rather in addition to, the knowledge of previous dispensations. The complete manifestation of the Divine character was by Jesus Christ. In Him, and by Him, the glorious crowning attributes of Love and Truth were fully revealed. " The law came by Moses, but Grace and Truth by Jesus Christ." The doctrine that by Christ alone the Divine Character is fully manifested, is so patent in the New Testament that it is strange how this essential truth of religion has been misapprehended, or rather, not apprehended at all. "The light shineth in the darkness, and the darkness apprehendeth it not." The fact that Jesus professes to be a new name of God is surely revealed in the Third Dispensation. He claims for Himself that He comes to the world in the Divine Name, and to reveal the Divine Nature (John v, 43), "I am come in my Father's Name, and ye receive me not." He manifested the Divine Character and they rejected it. Theologians

2* interpret this into the sense that Christ claimed to come by the authority of the Father; but this exegesis is rendered invalid by the words of Christ which follow : " If another shall come in his own name (manifesting a selfish and aspiring character like your own), him will ye receive." The plain import is that which Christ and the apostles constantly preached (John xii, 44), that in rejecting Christ men rejected the Father, and in receiving Him they received the Father.

In the beginning of His ministry Jesus announced His relation to the Father in phraseology that is surely absurd in any other interpretation than the one herein propounded. He said (Matt, xi, 27), " No man knoweth the Son but the Father; and no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son will reveal Him." That is, the Son's nature (not God and man, as the catechisms say, but God in man, as the Scriptures say) — the Divine in the human, is not fully revealed, but is known only to the Father ; but the Father's nature, known only to the Son, is fully revealed. This is an explicit and pregnant statement, absurd in all senses but the true one.

But as Jesus drew near the manifestation of love that fulfilled His mission. His statements on this subject were explicit and complete. The Divine Love which had been exhibited in the life of Christ culminated in His passion and self-sacrifice. Hence the apostles were referred to a period after the revelation of the Divine Name should be completed for the full light then to be revealed; and for the advance in faith, and the change in the form of prayer, which it required. Referring to the completeness of the work given Him to do, Jesus said (John xvii, 6), " Father, I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou hast given me out of the world." And immediately following, in the last words of prayer and instruction spoken in the presence of His disciples, He said (John xvii, 26), " And I have declared (Gr. gnorizo — made known) unto them thy name, and will declare it : that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." That is, Jesus, before His sacrifice, had revealed the Divine Character in part, and by His sacrifice would reveal it wholly to the men who were to instruct the world in the knowledge of God. And He further promised that after the cross, when the Holy Spirit should come in His personality, or in Scripture phrase, " when He should send the Holy Ghost in His own name" as the spiritual Christ, then the Divine Character would be fully revealed. The sum of the doctrine is, Christ revealed the Father's Name through His humanity, and the Holy Spirit came in the personality of Jesus, and revealed the name that was in Christ to his people. As He said,

" When the Spirit of Truth is come He shall not speak of Himself, but He shall glorify me, for He shall receive of mine and show it unto you ; all things that the Father hath are mine ; therefore said I, He shall take of mine, and shall show it unto you."

These words of Jesus are striking, explicit, conclusive in regard to the doctrine of this exposition.

The perfect manifestation of the new name in the third, or Christian Dispensation, being thus developed, Jesus instructs them and us not to pray any longer to God, as His name, or character, was revealed in the Old Testament, but to God as revealed in Him.* Hitherto, as the Old Testament was not yet superseded, they had prayed to Jehovah, as revealed by Moses. But (John xvi, 23) "in that day," etc., after the cross, "ye shall ask me nothing, but whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name (viewing Him in My Character), He will give it you." And (John xiv, 13) "whatsoever ye ask the Father in my name, I will do it." And again, "Hitherto ye have asked nothing in my name; ask and receive, that your joy may be full." That is, the fulness of love in the Godhead, as revealed in Him,

* This prospective adjustment of the duty of prayer to the New Name when it should he fully revealed, is a striking proof that Christ worked according to a plan of salvation not then fully developed.

would fill them with peace and joy, which faith in the name Jehovah, as revealed to Moses, could not do. The same truth he presents in different phraseology, and speaks of its efficacy in a different application. In view of the persecutions and distresses to which they would be subjected, he says (John xvi, 1), " Let not your heart be troubled : ye believe in God, believe also in me." That is, If ye would have' strength and solace in trouble, believe not only in Jehovah as revealed in the Second Dispensation, but add to this the character of the Father in heaven as it is revealed in me ; then what the law could not do, faith in Love will accomplish.

The apostles understood Jesus in the sense of this exposition. The two chief writers of the apostolic letters immediately affirm the doctrine of the Godhead in Christ, and announce faith in Him as giving the only true knowledge of God. Peter writes (1 Pet. i, 21), "By Christ ye believe in God, that raised Him up from the dead, and gave Him glory ; that your faith and hope might be in God" Paul says (2 Cor. iv, 6), "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

Jesus constantly claimed that the Father's true attributes were in Himself (John xvi, 15), "All things that the Father hath are mine ;" (John xiv, 7), " If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also ;" " The Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works and speaketh the words/ 7

Furthermore, and finally, this revelation in the Third Dispensation of the third name of God, including the attributes of the two previous names, but perfected in the third, is declared to be the saving power for the human soul; and that there is no Eternal life except by faith in God as thus revealed : (Acts iv, 12), " There is none other name given under the heavens among men whereby they must be saved;" (John vi, 44), " No man can come unto the Father but by me ;" (John iii, 18), " Men are condemned already who do not believe in the NAME of the only begotten Son of God;" (Col. iii, 17), and " whatsoever ye do, do all in the NAME of Jesus Christ, giving thanks to God and the Father, by Him;" (John xii, 44), "He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on Him that sent me." There is no meaning in such passages ; they are absurd, unless faith in Christ according to the Scriptures is faith in God revealed in Christ, and not in man the revealer.

As a consummate proclamation of the doctrine by which men enter into Life, it is inscribed in the words of Jesus over the portals of the kingdom of heaven : " Go ye into all the world, teach all nations, baptizing them into the NAME of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost." One name successively involved and evolved in the Dispensations — El Shaddai — Jehovah — JESUS — the Pleroma manifested in the Third name, and efficaciously adapted as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to the needs of the human mind.

Old Testament Confirmation.

There is abundant testimony both by the record and by a self-evidencing philosophy to sustain the preceding exposition of the Doctrine of the Divine Name. Testimony confirming its truth as clearly as the different parts of a system show the unity of the plan. The First Dispensation, as its central interest, relates to families; hence home gossip and home life would be its chief topic of concern. It would have a literature portraying the childish and clannish and selfish phases of thought in the early families of men. The " endless genealogies and old wives' fables," spoken of by Paul, maternal partialities and cunning, tales unfit to be read, and conduct unfit to be tolerated in our time, would be the current talk and tradition natural to the Dispensation of Nature. Such, the Bible informs us, were chief characteristics of the worshippers of the First Dispensation. Any other record would be suspicious. A true picture of what was true to the men of these times must be composed in part of lustful and superstitious incidents. Those who object to this record assume the untenable position that God was to the Abrahamic worshippers what He is to us : and that the rude tent life of the early nomads can be judged by our New Testament civilization.

The Second Dispensation — that of the struggling infancy of the nation — w T ould naturally have its fabulous period; as all infant nations, in the absence of enlightened instruction and religious records, must necessarily have. The Books of the Law, preserved only in some of the priestly families, would in the strife and varying fortunes of the tribes become scarce and their contents unknown ; and superstition and the marvellous would necessarily mingle largely with their fealty to Jehovah. Such was the period of the Judges. The record tells us (1 Sam. iii, 1), " The Word of the Lord was precious in those days; there was no open vision." The fabulous aspect of some of the sketches between Joshua and Saul exhibits a true and natural aspect of the national life of the period. If it w 7 ere otherwise it would imply a continuous miracle, and therefore would not be true, because a miracle continued is a natural law. Whether a true record of a fabulous age is by Divine supervision, theologians may determine. It teaches, at least, that where there is no revelation superstition is the natural product of the human mind. An analogous condition followed the introduction of the Christian Dispensation. The territory over which a knowledge of the Sacred Writings had existed was harassed and divided by contending sects and states. The Scriptures of the New Testament were mostly hidden in a dead language ; and the dark ages of Papal fable and superstition ensued. Luther found a Bible in his convent. It enlightened his mind, and through him the Reformation was introduced, which closed the fabulous age of Christianity for those who received it, as finding the Book of the Law in the temple, by King Josiah, closed the fabulous age of the Second Dispensation. These records of superstitions are the natural history of the development of the religious element of the human mind in the absence of Written Revelation.

In the geological formations there are prophetic types of succeeding forms. This law is better defined in Revelation than in geology. The trial of Abraham, in the call to sacrifice his son Isaac, is a marked incident of the First Dispensation, prophetic of the vicarious sacrifices in the Dispensation of Moses. Theologians have missed its import and thereby done injury. There is evidence that the sacrifice of the first-born was not an b 3 uncommon horror in the time of Abraham. The patriarch, without any revelation of the Divine Character beyond what was given in the dispensation of creation, could not know but that God — El Shaddai — would be pleased with such a sacrifice. Nothing in his Dispensation had instructed him to the contrary. By this event Abraham was enlightened in regard to the Divine Clemency. He was taught that human sacrifices were not acceptable to God ; and the idea created by the substitution was a type in the patriarchal age of the ritual vicarious forms of the Mosaic law; and more dimly, perhaps, of the great sacrifice which the whole ritual system prefigured. The types of the Second Dispensation are surely sufficiently marked to satisfy unbiassed enquirers that the typal forms of the fossil series of sacred history are initiatory conceptions of one Dispensation to be fully developed in the succeeding one.

The Tabernacle itself was not only a pattern of the three Dispensations, but a continued prophecy of the holier character of the Christian. The Jews did not understand its import, and do not until the present day. The tent in which was represented the Divine Presence was divided into three courts. The outer court, representing the First Dispensation, was open to all; wide in its embrace as Nature herself. Into the second court the Jews only might enter; this symbolized the Second Dispensation, where Jehovah was worshipped by the people to whom His second name was declared. Beyond the court of the Jews was the " Holy of Holies" — the " Most Holy Place" — separated by a veil from those who worshipped in the court of the Jews. Into this " Most Holy Place" no Jew might enter, nor even look. The High Priest could pass the veil but once a year, and then not without an acknowledgment by sacrifice of his own sinfulness and that of his people. This third, or Most Holy Court, represented the Christian Dispensation, veiled from the Jews and from all the world until the death of Christ. When Jesus, on the cross, cried, " It is finished," the veil of the temple, which separated the Holy of Holies, was rent from the top to the bottom (Matt, xxvii, 50, 51). The imperfect passed, and perfect Truth and Love were inaugurated in the world, " to be manifested to all in due time."

An exhibition of the fact that the Sabbath-day is a progressive memorial, advanced with the Three Dispensations, and adjusted successively to the increasing knowledge of the object of worship, will aid in revealing its sacred value as a foundation institution in all the Dispensations.

That the Sabbath rest is a constitutional necessity for man and laboring animals, physiologists and the investigations of the British Parliament long ago determined.

That it was, and is, a moral necessity, in the development of the Divine Dispensations, we shall see by examining the relation which it sustained to each of these as they succeed each other. Where there are institutions that must be sustained by the application of moral means and motives, there must be time and place provided to make the necessary impressions by the motive-power upon the minds of the people. The Divide Name, as progressively revealed, is the only true object of worship ; but there must be a time to contemplate the attributes of the Creator's Character, in order that the soul may be assimilated to the object worshipped. Without such an institution worship would cease, and hence the power of the Divine Character to elevate and eventually purify the human soul would be lost. Hence the institution of the Sabbath, ordained in the beginning, would be accommodated to the vitalizing aspects of the Divixe Name, as successively developed in the Advancing Dispensations.