Ritualism dethroned and the true church found : or, The divine life in all the Christian ages most revealed in those churches and "Martyrs of Jesus" that have witnessed against a ceremonial and sacramental law ...

Front matter

5 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 5

| UNITED STATES OP AMERICA. |

AXD THE

Contents

CHAP. PAQE

PKELIMINAKY— The Outlook 5

I.— Conceded and Determinate Principles 17

Chapter I. Conceded And Determinate Principles

God accepts not the Form.

GOD never accepted any man for his appearance, his liturgy, or his ritual observance.

The kingdom of God never consisted in " meats and drinks," or " divers baptisms," but in " righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost."

Lip service, and forms of religious worship, have ever been of small account in the divine economy.

Yet, on no subject has the Christian Church, in many of its divisions, been more bewildered than on this.

These have thought that God has given some sacred function to the ceremony, and is very jealous for its maintenance — and touching this, they manifest much zeal for God, but it is questionable whether it be " according to knowledge."

In some portions of Christendom, ritualism and ecclesiasticism are overshadowing the professed Christian Church to an extent that might well cause solicitude on the part of all who wait to see the kingdom of God come, not in word only, but in power, and who are assured that it is essentially a spiritual kingdom, and not a form of external worship.

2 17

Christianity adapted to Universal Acceptance, and to the Unification of All.

Christianity, as a system, is one of ethics, and has in it nothing provincial, nothing schismatic, nothing merely temporary, or local ; but is the transcendent and universal religion. It is God's moral legation, sent alike to all nations, and destined to pervade all nations, and, therefore, adapted alike to all. Its laws and principles are as apposite and appropriate in the torrid as in the frigid zones — on the bleak mountains of Greenland, as by the crystal fountains and lakes of Palestine — in the waterless deserts of Africa, as on the shores of the Jordan or the sea of Galilee. Everywhere, in all climates, circumstances, or conditions of men, in sickness or in health, in vigor or in infirmity, to the Jew and to the Gentile, Christianity is from the beginning and forever the same. It requires nothing that cannot in all this variety of circumstances be equally rendered by each and all. And this, because its whole law is fulfilled in this one word, LOVE.

In its genius and design, it differs from all other religions — since all others are distinguished by their rituals — and their rituals may be said to inhere in the systems, so that the rituals are but the exponents of the systems. "Such was Judaism, Magianism, Mahometanism, Paganism, — and such the Papacy of to-day.

But Christianity is as full-orbed and complete without a ritual as with it ; the same to the slave as to the freeman — to the Puritan, enjoying in full his dear-bought religious heritage, as to the prisoner in his cell — to the exile, banished and precluded from all human society, as to the punctilious worshipper at some thronged and frequented fane. It matters not of what age, race, color, or clime; of what philosophy, school, or sect. Christianity knows none of these distinctions. Like an ocean tide overflowing pools, it wipes them all out; knowing no external lines of demarcation, no boundaries even of dogma or creed, or characteristic, save such as necessarily evince an inward purity of heart; for its boundaries (like the unseen land) are all internal and not external ; its identification is the spirit of man sivayed by the law of love!

Christianity, the love that sent Christ to do and suffer for man, was born in heaven, before ever the " world was," or the nations had a name or a place, or any mode of "worshipping the Father," "of whom are all things;" and was the same in essence before Abraham or Moses, or a ritual law was known — as it has been since a ritual law has passed away. The same hi essence to those apostles that preached and practised Judaism, as to the Apostle Paul, the apostle of the Gentiles, that did not preach nor practise Judaism. The same to the early non-ritualistic Christians, as to those half-blinded by the later apostatizing ritualism of the Papacy ; the same to those who possessed its spirit in the dark middle ages, as in the future millennial glory of Zion ; the same in the past and future of the Church on earth, as in the eternal light and harmony of heaven. Love, the same everywhere, and in all ages, and all worlds, is the ultimate of Christianity, and is the fulfilling of the law.

The Infinite Father looks with equal eye upon all modes of sincere approach to Him, that are in harmony with equal love and good-will to man ! He beholds with equal eye each of the diverse sects that truly " know His name," Himself knowing none of them by the names men have given them, but simply by the registry of heaven, as engraved on the tablet of His infinite heart of love! He concerns not Himself with human disputes about modes of worship, forms of church organization, or ritual observances ; He is as high above these as heaven is above the earth, or God's thoughts above man's. He is only solicitous that the true spirit of penitence, love and worship be found, and Pie is as well pleased with the one worshipper as the other. He wills that the individual members of all folds should walk in w T isdom toward them that are without; in love and harmony with all that are within, and in sanctified

20 HITUALISM DETHRONED.

fellowship one with another. The hist:iy of the Church shows that He has never marked any distinctive fold as the exclusive recipient of His favor ; He has in turn prospered thera all, as their purity or steadfastness in the saving faith would permit; and all alike have been made participants of many of the richest blessings of His grace. Thus has He sealed with His own signet, Gentile and Jew, Waldensian and Catharist, Reformed Episcopalian and Reformed Covenanter, the Independent and the Presbyterian, the Baptist, Methodist and Quaker, the Evangelical Lutheran, and the Moravian, each and all, and ten thousand times ten thousand more, who have received His forgiving smile and benediction ; and their work has been crowned with distinguishing; marks of the Divine favor. Oft have they been honored with unusual success in turning men from sin to holiness ; and which of them in turn has not at intervals shown incipient marks of backsliding, spiritual imbecility and threatened decay?

But this Divine impartiality evinces that it is the spiritual and holy Church, the Christ-like individual, that God accepts, whatever be their creed, their liturgy, their ceremonial observance, or non-observance of ceremony, or their manner of worshipping the God of truth, love, and holiness. Hence we see that Christianity positively appertains to the internal, the heart-worship, and not to the external. This that is internal is all that therein can be positive, unceasing and invariable. Christianity is, and must be, in the nature of things, a spiritual religion. Its seat and subject is the inner man! It is not " in the letter," but "in the spirit." Nothing outward or extrinsic strictly belongs to it. Its precepts and commands, each and all, inculcate principles, or the spread of principles to the heart-renovation, or spiritual regeneration of man. Whatever is an attribute or element of benevolence is an element of Christianity, and naught else is or can be. The moral law and the Christian law are simply synonymous terms. That law is co-eternal with God, and as universal as the universe ; Jesus Christ was its embodiment, the teacher, the exemplifier of this universal law. Contingent, local, temporary, or circumstantial laws may grow out of, and be the demand of this universal law in its specific application ; but be it remembered that all these are circumstantial and contingent, and not inherent in Christianity, nor commensurate with it, and have no other binding force than the circumstances which created theirnecessity. The circumstances of God's people in Palestine once demanded a Ceremonial Law, and that law was instituted, and inhered in a system we now term Judaism; but Christianity knows no such ceremonial law, no more than it knows the ceremonies of pagan worship which were cotemporary with Judaism. Christ, the Teacher and Redeemer of all, broke down all these ceremonial walls of partition.

The Genius of Christianity opposed to a Ceremonial

Law.

Its genius of universal adaptability forbids its being encumbered with such a law. Its catholicity and demand for unity forbid its being jeopardized by such a law. It is not supposable or admissible that its All-seeing Founder would consent to jeopardize its unity or catholicity by such a law. The Judaic ritual was designed to be restrictive and local in its application. Its ceremonial was peculiar to one people, and was required of none but the lineage of Abraham. It was appointed for the purpose of distinguishing one nation from all others. It was, therefore, provincial in its design. The design of Christianity is directly the opposite of this, viz. : to unify all nations. Christianity neither can be known by any external and arbitrary sign, nor does it allow of the attempt to be thus known. It does not define, and how preposterous to assert that it appoints a ritual ! True, Christianity requires wisdom in the use of means and measures, because wisdom is an attribute and manifestation of benevolence ; but the measures themselves are not such attributes, nor necessarilv the exponents of benevolence. Good-will is the only law, all else must remain contingent. 'Yet reason affirms that the law of love requires the use of every appropriate means to secure the great ends of benevolence, without placing the benevolent actor under bondage to any of them. The example of Jesus Christ and his apostles, who used in freedom all customary methods, and yet in the end held themselves in bondage to none, substantiates this inference.

No mode or measure casually adapted to secure the great objects of benevolence, can be erected into a positive institution, an unreraissible and unceasing ordinance, as this would externalize the Christian system, causing it to resemble permanently the temporary and local system of Judaism, or the Papacy. It would destroy at once its distinctive features of spirituality, universality, catholicity, and intrinsic excellence and perfection. Christianity calls, regenerates, sanctifies, and saves men as individuals by their own faith, and not by any intervention of a human absolution, or administration of rites. A full obedience to its claims is rendered when the attributes of benevolence are possessed and manifested, without any submission to a ceremonial law. That which secures the heavenly mind, and prepares the soul for the heaven to come, is all that is obligatory upon the Christian believer here. Every well-informed writer upon the evidences of regeneration, and the Christian graces, will very correctly delineate the genuine attributes and manifestations of benevolence. They are very distinctly drawn out in Christ's Sermon on the Mount; in 1 Cor. xiii.; in Gal. vi.; also in modern uninspired treatises, such as " Edwards on the Gracious Affections," "Alleine on True Conversion," and "Finney on Regeneration," and on " Sanctification." The latter writer specifies some forty or more of the attributes, as Love, Mercy, Faith, Patience, Purity, Zeal, etc., all of which undeniably inhere in the spirit of benevolence, or Christian love ; yet not one of them requires or includes obedience to a ceremonial law, while each and all imply obedience to every moral duty enjoined in the moral law. Nor does any truly spiritual mind look to any ceremonial obedience for proof of the spiritual regeneration of any man. Not even a bodily exercise in the external form of prayer, or praise, or exhortation, however intrinsically fit these may be, at suitable times, is regarded as the ever-required exponent of love to God and man, and the invariable manifestation of true piety. Yet, how much more fit that these should be erected into an ordinance as "ordained of God" by an assumed inflexible law, than those arbitrary rites, so oft thus magnified in the eyes of men ? For, deprecate and protest as you will, if you teach that men have not given full proof of repentance, and have not " fulfilled all (moral) righteousness," until they have put on some form of external obedience, you have, to their view, raised that ritual to the dignity of a moral law, and have created in the mind of the novitiate the impression that something very nearly connected with salvation is hinged upon their proper observance of the arbitrary ceremonial. Hence a superstitious reverence for the ceremonial is engendered, as every reader knows, for it is everywhere seen. They deem that their moral state is not quite pleasing to heaven until they have bowed to some form of ceremonial obedience !

Yet if there be no ritual law enjoining upon each Christian believer a form of preaching, of prayer, of praise, of worship, as there is not, while all these are intrinsically adapted to the Christian life and work, how much less should there be a Jaw enjoining that which has no intrinsic merit? Shall tli ere, then, be a law enjoining sacraments, or ceremonies of worship, the intrinsic value of which is at least questionable?

"What is Following Christ?

So in regard to following Christ. The externalized conception is not only infinitely far from Christ's intent in the command, " Follow me," but it is almost infinitely low and unworthy of the Christian's thought. Men, claiming to be sage religious teachers,. talk of following Christ "down the banks of Jordan," as though this were an excellent thing, and very pleasing to Christ himself. If so, why not go to the Jordan (as Mahomet enjoined his followers to go a pilgrimage to Mecca), and there follow Christ down the banks of Jordan ? You would thus very literally be a follower of Christ. AVe will not say that it would prove you spiritually one ! You would much more consistently give proof of being truly in spirit a follower of Christ by visiting the sick, clothing the naked, relieving the distresses of the poor, the orphan and the widow, and seeking to assuage the cup of life's sorrow everywhere ? You are not " made under the (Jewish) law," that you need to be purified (baptized) into the priesthood : you are, if regenerated, already a " king and priest" to God ; and you may, without waiting for any priest (as John was) to lead you down " Jordan's banks," or to any altar, or shrine, bring your soul, and your offering direct to Christ, and to His suffering poor, assured that you will be abundantly accepted without any canonical interposition of any earthly mediator or administrator of rites.

If you think there is any excellence or virtue in following Christ in the external form, w T hy not be circumcised, and eat the Passover; why not recline at your meals as Jesus reclined, and sleep upon such a mattress as did He ? If a minister of Christ, why not commence your sermon without a text, oft, and without a song or prayer in form, and preach chiefly in the open air? If a young man, why not work at the same trade for life, and eat and drink similar food, and clothe yourself with similar raiment? How amazing the infatuation reached by centuries of bigoted and superstitious teaching, filling the imagination of otherwise earnest Christians with the conceit that a ceremonial likeness to, or imitation of Christ, is aught that Christ requires ! Hence the endless inquiry after the manner of some of His bodily acts, and a zealous effort to attain to a full conformity thereto ! Whole denominations of Christians are continually slumping into this pit. Should not Christ's ministers have sufficient spiritual discernment to warn their flocks of the danger and folly of this? A mechanical obedience is not what Christ seeks, but the daily obedience of love. " What and if ye shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he was before ? It is the spirit that quickeneth ! The flesh profiteth nothing ! " And should you follow Christ, bodily toward heaven, as the builders of Babel did, for a little way, would that be of any avail? Suppose you follow Christ down the banks of Jordan and are there baptized precisely as he was, are you the better for it? Or is any one else the better or happier for your act ?

Judaism required no Bodily Imitation.

Even under the strict Jewish ritual law there was no effort to imitate one another in their ceremonial performances. Whom did Moses imitate when he took the hyssop branch, with scarlet wool, and dipping it in blood and water, sprinkled (baptized) all the people ? You say he was the mediator of that covenant, and the founder of the ritual law. Yes ; but what priest ever sought precisely to imitate Moses ? Can one be named ? Moreover, most of the purifyings under the law were self-administered, at least in part. Did they ever seek to imitate one another ? When they washed (baptized) themselves, and bathed their flesh, as so oft, they evidently did as we of modern times do, — they used water with the hand, or with other means of appliance, to secure the bodily cleansing that they sought, having reference only to the result and not to the method of attaining it. No superstitious reverence was paid to a method then ; that was left to those who fail to understand the spirituality of the Christian Dispensation.

This superstitious homage to rites is left for those who fail to see that it is not possible for a spiritual dispensation to require an external ritual, a ceremonial routine, a mere bodily exercise, or bodily imitation one of another, or of some earlier prototype ; — who have also failed to see that if Jewish priests followed Moses the Mediator of the Old Covenant, in baptizing typically, we, ministers of Christ, may follow Christ, the Mediator of the New Covenant, who certainly did not baptize typically. The determinate principle is this: we may forget what Christ did as " under the law," either in respect to circumcision, baptism, sacrifice, or Passover, which all was done that He might be fully accepted of the Jews, to obviate all ceremonial objections, and that those " under the law" might hear the call, and be "redeemed;" and we may follow Christ " in the regeneration," or what Paul calls " the reformation," not in the oldness of the letter, but in that spiritual worship which the " Father seeks," and which requires no ritual or temple service either at Jerusalem or Samaria ; no altars red with blood of beasts, nor purifying s with human hands, either in Jordan, Enon, or Bethabara.

The Judaic Economy a Rudimentary School.

The Judaic economy given by pattern and instruction received in the " holy mount," was rudimentary in its nature ; a school for catechumens, taught by diagrams, rather than a laiv for those matured in the knowledge of God, and the way of salvation. Those diagrams could scarcely claim the authority of positive law; they were simply prescribed methods of instruction, and never reached the altitude, nor wore the aspect of sacraments ; nor were they ever called by that name in all the ages of the Mosaic ritual. Did Moses or a prophet ever reprehend the people of Israel because they had neglected their external purifications? Nay, they were but too fond of placing their chief reliance on these. And in every age it has required the constant vigilance of the spiritual-minded to withhold the mass of worshippers from such a vain trust, where the ritual has been in use at all. But after the lapse into idolatry of which Israel in Egypt was guilty, a ritual, innocent in itself, and less imposing in pomp and circumstance than that of the idolatrous nations, to which also a proper significance might be given, was " added," Paul says, because of "transgressions," until the "seed should come," unto whom was the "promise" of being the inheritor of the "purchased possession," through His one great sacrificial offering and atonement for man. Of this great work of the great Redeemer, all Jewish sacrifices and baptisms were simply typical emblems and foreshadowings. They served in lieu of the antitype itself, the purpose of suggestive symbols of the real atoning sacrifice, and the real baptism which Messiah should enjoin and secure in the purifying of their hearts.* Through these, in the then state of need, moral lessons might be taught, and influences thereby exerted to withhold a half-reformed people from yielding to the constant temptation to idolatry. But when the fulfilment or antitype of all these had come, and was seen and known of all, to keep the type before them still, would have been like keeping the taper burning after the sun has arisen with all his effulgence of light. How can any Christian deny this ?

* Alluding to the difference between the Abrahamic and the Mosaic covenants, Rev. F. G. Hibbard says: "The reader will see that the ceremonial law was not the Church Charter under the former dispensation, but only the temporary discipline and system of elemental instruction under which Jehovah placed the Church for a season. The ceremonial law and the Abrahamic

covenant are not to be confounded In the covenant of Abraham 'all

nations ' were to be blessed. It contained the gospel to the Gentiles (Gal. iii. 8) as well as to the Jews. On the contrary, the institutes of Moses were rather adapted to a high spirit of nationality, and I may say, exchisiveness, among the Jews. One grand design of the ceremonial law was to secure the distinct preservation of the Jewish people until Christ should come. To these ends, the inexorable ritual of Moses was well adapted. Thus a 'middle wall of partition' was kept up between Jews and Gentiles, and a complete separation preserved. . . The ceremonial law is abolished, but the covenant of Abraham is established in Christ." Now the marvel of the ages is, that those who thus can write respecting the difference between a dispensation whose characteristic, as they affirm, is a ceremonial law, and one whose characteristic is, that it is spiritual, and has no ceremonial law, do not see that it would not be to tha breaking down of "partition walls" to annul one ceremonial law, and then immediately establish another, a law of baptisms, which was assuredly a part of the former ceremonial law.

Hibbard, the Methodist writer on Baptism, p. 28, well

" These external ceremonies and symbols originated and assisted their first conceptions of truth; afterward came the long line of illustrious prophets, endowed with supernatural penetration and wisdom, and expounded more fully the spiritual sense of the ' law,' lifting the mind of the nation (the Jewish) through another ascending grade of divine knowledge. And when, finally, by these external means the principles of theology were fully communicated; when the Jews bad so associated with other nations by commerce and travel, but especially by colonizing themselves everywhere, so as to incorporate their elemental ideas of religion into other languages, and in some sense to transfuse their own principles into pagan systems of philosophy and religion ; when the human mind became thus in a measure prepared, when the fulness of time had come, ' God sent forth his own Son/ the great Teacher, to abolish the elemental system, to mature those conceptions of truth, and to complete the illumination of the human mind. . . . These elemental principles once mastered by the mind, they could be easily taken and applied to various subjects at will, while the external machinery, which was the means of imparting them, could be dispensed with. The people of God need be 'no longer under a school-master/ they could now 'leave the first principles of the doctrine of Christ, and go on unto perfection.' . . . All our abstract ideas are derived primarily through the outward senses; hence all primary words in all original languages, though many of them now stand for abstract ideas, originally represented sensible objects."

See also Dale on origin of Baptisma and Baptistes.

The above reasoning of Dr. Hibbard is eminently correct and clear, and it may be remarked that this logic covers the whole ceremonial and ritual law of the Jews, which, moreover, originated not as a law, but was employed by Moses as a means of moral instruction, and so continued by the Levites as a picture lesson for study, rather than as a blind allegiance to a statutory law. What did the Jehovah ever require of Israel, or any other nation, but to " do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with God."

The very need of the type then, was the evidence not only of their estrangement from the knowledge of God, but also, that the perfect dispensation of fulfilled prophecy and promise, by the revelation of the all-efficient atonement, baptizer, and Saviour, had not yet come. These rituals were but sentinels, placed all the way to keep and point the way of the coming

One ; and in the nature of the case, when He comes, these sentinels may stand aside.

Ritualists have monstrously perverted the words of hortation to Moses on Sinai : " See that thou make all things according to the pattern shown thee in the mount ;" as though we were now to build an external tabernacle, as Moses then was directed to do.

Such a charge was pertinent, and carefully observed by Moses, as head of that "ministration," and lawgiver and mediator of the old covenant. But no such pattern of external things was given by Jesus on Calvary ; but rather the nailing of Himself and the old dispensation to the cross, that not the symbol and type should point darkly to the " kingdom of heaven ; " but the glorious antitype should, in its fulness be enjoyed, filling the whole moral horizon with the blessed illumination of the new dispensation, the " kingdom of heaven " already come. Is there any truth more clearly stated in the w r hole New Testament, and especially in the Epistles to the Hebrews and to the Gentile churches? We say, the vision that Moses saw in the mount related to the tabernacle which should be constructed in the wilderness by human hands ; which, Paul tells us, was the figure or symbol of the " true tabernacle," which is not built with human hands, but w T hich "God pitches and not man."

What pattern, as co-worker with God, is man to follow here, but the pattern of the cross?

We have no wilderness tabernacle now ; of course, we need none of its accompaniments, none of its sacrifices, baptisms, oblations ; all these belonged to that external tabernacle, which is now removed and superseded by the heavenly, where Christ "forever" pleads His one "offering," and where the Holy Spirit which He sends is forever the Purifier (Sanctifier), and every sanctified soul is God's temple. Has not Jesus entered into the " true tabernacle," and into the holy of holies (to which also He freely invites us), there to sprinkle the mercyseat with the blood of the everlasting covenant, having obtained eternal redemption for us?

30 KITUALIS3I DETHRONED.

Do we need now to offer expiatory sacrifices ? Are we now (or ever) spiritually cleansed by the waters of baptism ? or do we need the cold external element, when the true spiritual life has come? Christ's baptism (of suffering, and of the Holy Anointing) now baptizes us. Do we need more than this ? The blood of" atonement" is now our sanctifier. Also,

" That blood atones for all our race, And sprinkles now the throne of grace."

It is true that even in the old dispensation, he only that had clean hands and a pure heart (unstained by sin) was accepted in God's " holy hill," and in the " most holy place !" Their outward circumcision was not accepted in lieu of the "circumcision of the heart." Should the annoying concision continue forever? Better that God should form our frames as He would have them at first. That ceremony, like every other, was for a local and temporary object. That attained, God never desired "vain oblations," nor " sacrifices" rather than "judgment, mercy, and the love of God." The moral end ; the fruits of righteousness, was all He ever sought, through these or without them. " What doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly Avith thy God?" The ceremonial was to be used during that " ministration" for such moral end. Yet so ineffectual did it prove, that it was called the "ministration of death" (see 2 Cor. iii.) ; and also, " of the letter that killeth," rather than "of the Spirit that giveth life." Hence Christ "disannulled the commandment" (in the type or letter), "going before," to introduce a more perfect ministration " of the Spirit." Not only is there an intrinsic inability and inaptitude in a ceremonial to purify the soul, but all historic evidence is against the claim of rituals to be successfully serviceable in this w T ork. They can only serve as piers or breakwaters against what is worse. Alternating reformations and backslidings was the record of the Jewish nation after the Mosaic ritual was given, until the nation was well-nigh apostatized from God again. The Greek Church ritualists, and the Papal ritualists have afforded no better record. And what is the record of millions called Protestant : as the High Church Episcopal, the Lutheran, and the ritualistic " Reformation" of Alexander Campbell in this respect? Is it any better ?