Temporal sanctions

by those of

a future

The Christian Religion, then, arose, succeeded be it remembered, among a People who state. not only looked for a temporal Deliverer and Prince in their Messiah, but who had been accustomed to the sanction of temporal rewards and judgments to the divine Law;°-whose Laws, in religious and in secular matters alike, I claimed to be an immediate revelation from Heaven whose civil Rulers were regarded as delegates from "the Lord their God, who was their king," and were enjoined to punish with death, as a revolt from the Supreme Civil Authority, as a crime of the character of hightreason, any departure from the prescribed religion. It arose in a Nation regarding themselves as subjects of a " Kingdom of God” that was, emphatically, a kingdom of this world: and its most prominent character was its being "a Kingdom not of this world :" it was in all respects the very reverse in respect of the points just mentioned, or what might have been expected, humanly-speaking, from Jewish individuals, and of what was expected by the Jewish Nation; and it may be added, of what many Christians have in every Age laboured to represent and to make it. While the mass

• See Essay I., 1st Series: "On the Peculiarities," &c. And also Discourse "On National Blessings."

of his own People were seeking to "take Jesus by force to make Him a King" (a procedure which has been, virtually, imitated by a large proportion of his professed followers ever since) He Himself and his Apostles, uniformly and sedulously, both in their precepts, and in their conduct, rejected as alien from the character of the Gospel, all employment of secular coercion in behalf of their religion,-all encroachment on "the things that be Cæsar's;" and maintained the purely spiritual character of that "Kingdom of Heaven" which they proclaimed.

On this every way most important point, I have treated at large in the first Essay in this volume, and also, in the Essay on Persecution (3d Series), and the Essays on the Dangers to Christianity, (4th Series.)

Christian

ity a reli

out Sacri

fice, Altar

§ 14. Moreover the Gospel-religion was introduced by men,-whether gion withJews or Gentiles,-who had never or Temple. heard of or conceived such a thing as a religion without a Sacrificing Priest,—without Altars for Sacrifice, without Sacrifices themselves,— without either a Temple, or at least some High Place, Grove, or other sacred spot answering to a Temple; or some place, that is, in which

the Deity worshipped was supposed more especially to dwell.P

The Apostles preached, for the first timethe first, both to Jew and Gentile-a religion quite opposite in all these respects to all that had ever been heard of before-a religion without any Sacrifice but that offered up by its Founder in his own person;-without any Sacrificing Priest (Hiereus) except Him, the great and true High Priest, and consequently with no Priest (in that sense) on Earth; except so far as every one of the worshippers was required to present himself as a "living Sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God ;" and a religion without any Temple, except the collected Congregation of the Worshippers themselves.

Let any one but contemplate the striking contrast, between the confined-the local character, of the Mosaic system, and the character

P Hence the name of Naòs from vaíɛiv, " to dwell." See Hinds's "Three Temples."

See Discourse "On the Christian Priesthood," appended to Bampton Lectures.

* Hebrews, ch. iv.

Rom. xii. This offering the Apostle calls Ovoíav (oav, a living Sacrifice," as distinguished from the slain animals offered up in other religions; and also λoyıkǹ λarpsía, “a reasonable service," as opposed to the irrational animals slain on the altars.

*I have treated of this point in one of a volume of Discourses delivered in Dublin.

of boundless extension stamped on the Gospel of Christ. "In the place which the Lord shall choose" (says Moses ") "to set his Name therein, there shalt thou offer thy Sacrifices." "The hour cometh" (says Jesus) when men shall neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father:" . . . . . "wheresoever two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them."y “In his Temple" (says the Psalmist ; i. e. in his temple at Jerusalem) "doth every one speak of his glory :" . . . . . "there will I" (Jehovah)" dwell, for I have a delight therein;" "Ye are the Temple" (says the Apostle Paul) "of the Holy Ghost, which dwelleth in you."a

Christianity such a

system

as

Man would

devised,

have suc

propaga

in

Now all this is deserving of attentive reflection, both as important in reference to a right knowledge of the true not have character of the religion of the Gospel, nor could and also as furnishing a strong inter- ceeded nal evidence as to its origin. For not ting. only is it inconceivable that any impostor or enthusiast would have ever devised or dreamed of any thing both so strange, and so unacceptable, as must have seemed, in those days, a religion without Priest, Altar, Sacrifice, or Temple, (in the sense in which men had always

u Deut. xii. z Ps. xxix.

* John iv.
a 1 Cor. iii.

y Matt. xviii.

been accustomed to them ;) but also it is no less incredible that any persons unaided by miraculous powers, should have succeeded-as the Apostles did—in propagating such a religion. Sacrifices But what is most to our present

and sacri

ficing Priests, ex

Christian

purpose to remark, is, that the Sacred cluded from Writers did not omit the mention of ity. these things, and leave it to the discretion of each Church to introduce them or not; but they plainly appear to have distinctly excluded them. It is not that they made little or no mention of Temples, Sacrifices, and sacrificing Priests; they mention them, and allude to them, perpetually; as existing, in the ordinary sense of the terms, among the Jews, and also among the Pagans; and again they also perpetually mention and allude to them in reference to the religion of the Gospel, invariably, and manifestly, in a different sense. Jesus Christ as the Christian Priest and Christian Sacrifice,Christians themselves as "living Sacrifices," the Sacrifice of beneficence to the Poor,b-the Temple composed of the Christian Worshippers themselves; who are exhorted to "build up" (or edify, oixodouɛtv) one another, as "living stones" of the Temple of the Holy Ghost;-all these are spoken of and alluded to continually;

b"To do good and to distribute, forget not, for with such sacrifices, (Ovoíais,) God is well pleased."

с 1 Peter ii. 5, &c.