Stem t^e feiBrarg of Q0equeaf ^^ fig ^tm to t^e fei6rarg of (Princeton i^eofogtcaf ^emtnatg BX 9848 .M64 1874 Miller, Matthew R. The luminous unity THE LUMINOUS UNITY, LETTERS ADDRESSED TO THE I^^V. A. GUINZBURG. A RABBI OF BOSTON^r^SS., FROM THE REV. M. R.*MILLER, ON THE QUESTION, IS UNITARIANISM, AS OPPOSED TO TRINITARIANISM, A PRINCIPLE OF HEATHENISM RATHER THAN OF SPECIFIC JUDAISM? iPN I r\^n'^ ■ij>n'?s mni ':inib'i 5??? 17 " Ye believe in God, believe also in me." — Yeshua ha Notseri. " For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me : for he wrote of me. Yeshua ha Notseri. " The Comforter is in the sacred volume." — John Quincy Adams. PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 1874. Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington. Lippincott's Press, Philadelphia. CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction S LETTER I. The Plurality of the Divine Name Adonai 9 LETTER IL The Trinitarian Character of the Tetragrammaton .... 19 LETTER in. " Declared to be the Son of God with Power, — by the Resurrection from the Dead" 46 LETTER IV. The Plurality of the Divine Name Elohim (God) .... 60 LETTER V. Unitarianism more Mohammedan than either Christian or Jewish . 71 LETTER VI. Trinitarianism as a Practical Doctrine — The Trinitarian Relations of Faith, Hope, and Love 86 LETTER VII. Analysis of the First Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews . . 113 3 4 CONTENTS. LETTER VIII. PAGB The Epistle to the Hebrews the True Exponent of Ancient Judaism 138 LETTER IX. General Review of the Argument — Objections answered . . 167 LETTER X. The Spirit of the Lord and his Word, — Isa. lix. 21 . . . . 189 APPENDIX. A Dissertation on the Book of Job 219 Questions designed to assist in the Study of the Foregoing Letters 234 We Pass Away 259 INTRODUCTION. The following letters originated in a plan that Dr. Guinzburg and myself should write letters on the subject of unitarianism, one for it and the other against it ; that our letters should be equal in number, and should be published both in The Israelite, of Cincinnati, and The Episcopalian, of Philadelphia. The first five of the fol- lowing letters appeared in The Israelite, with as many letters in reply to them. These five are here somewhat changed and enlarged ; and five others are added. This is done partly out of deference to the strongly expressed wish of the rabbi that this discussion should not stop, and partly because I have been pursuing the subject with increasing interest and rapture; and I trust that a good service will be accom- plished in rendering the doctrine of the Trinity much clearer to many Christian minds and highly-educated in- tellects than it now is. The arguments in these letters can be very successfully followed by one who is not acquainted with the original languages of the Bible ; but such a reader will find the study rendered much more easy if he will here carefully impress on his memory the following verses, as they here receive a rendering nearer to the original text than they have in the Authorized Version, and a few explanations of I* 5 6 INTRODUCTION. words. The memory ought, at the start, to have a com- plete possession of the following items. Deut. vi. 4 : " Hear, O Israel : Jehovah our Elohim is one Jehovah." The Divine name here occurring twice is the tetra- grammaton ; and such is its supreme holiness that no strictly pious Jew ever reads it aloud. It is never pro- nounced in the synagogue. Gen. XV. 2 : "And Abram said, Adonai, Jehovah, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?" Gen. xviii. 1-4: "And Jehovah appeared to him in the plains of Mamre : and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. And he lifted up his eyes and looked, and, lo, three men stood by him ; and when he saw, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, Adonai, if now I have found favor in thine eyes, pass thou not away from thy servant. Let now a little water be fetched, and wash ye your feet, and rest ye under the tree." Ex. vi. 2, 3: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by El Shaddai, and by my name y^ehovah was I not known to them." Ex. iii. 13, 14: "And they shall say to me, What is his name ? what shall I say unto them ? " And God said unto Moses, / will be that I will be : and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I will be hath sent me unto you." Ex. XV. 2 : " My strength and song is Jah." Ex. xvii. 16: "And he said, that, the hand being on the throne of Jah, war is to Jehovah against Amalek from generation to generation." Ex. xxxiv. 6: "And Jehovah passed by before him, and proclaimed, Jehovah, Jehovah, El, merciful and INTRODUCTION. 7 gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." Solomon's Song viii. 6: "A vehement flame of Jah." Zech. xiv. 9 : " And Jehovah shall be King over all the earth ; in that day Jehovah shall be one, and his name one." El, a name in the singular number, translated, God. Shaddai, also of the singular number, translated. Al- mighty. Eloah, another word of the singular number, trans- lated, God. Elohifn, properly the plural of Eloah, is of very common use, being generally the original word where "God" is in the translation. The questions at the close may be useful to classes or students who have selected the book for a careful study. Recently, an Israelite in England, after he had pub- lished some articles against Christianity, wished to resume the subject, and gave the following reasons, among others. His article appeared in the yewish Chronicle, which, I suppose, is published in London. The following is an extract : " Some of our Christian opponents will not, however, admit that they have made any attack upon us, nor allow that the controversy which we are engaged in is to be considered as a war : they prefer to regard it as a debate of friends in council, who are earnestly seeking after li^ht and truth. They assure us that they do not come among us to annoy us with their arguments and cause dissension in our families ; they are only actuated by a generous desire to promote our welfare and guide us into the way of salvation. Very good : we will accept the sincerity of their declaration, and are quite disposed to meet them in 8 INTR OD UCTION, this way. We will not regard them as enemies, but as mistaken friends. Our controversy shall be not a hostile conflict, but an amicable conference; and thus the objec- tion to it which has been advanced by the upholders of peace and harmony cannot possibly have any force. It is true that any discussion whatever, conducted in a bad spirit, and from which more heat than light is produced, may be wisely hushed ; but when men reason calmly with a sincere desire to remove misunderstandings on each side and arrive at the truth, they cannot fail to obtain some good result ; and those who would arrest their well- directed efforts must clearly be acting from ignorance and timidity. Honest argument, by conveying knowl- edge from mind to mind, awakening reflection, and demonstrating that there is more than one side to every question, so far from causing or prolonging human quar- rels, is the only means of bringing them to a satisfactory close. Friendly controversy is the best reconciler and peacemaker that we have in the world." I look on this extract as a choice gem set in my Intro- duction. M. R. M. THE LUMINOUS UNITY. Is Unitarianism, as opposed to Trinitarianism, a Principle of Heathenism rather than of Specific yiidaisni? LETTER I. Esteemed Friend : — If I remember correctly, it was once written by you, and published, that the Son of God and the Holy Ghost, as Trinitarians view them, are as foreign to genuine Juda- ism as are the false deities of Olympus. Maimonides, I suppose, has said just the same thing ; for we find in the Talmud, the Amsterdam edition, in his comment on the Mishna, at the close of Abodah Zarah, the following memorable sentiment : ^^ Afid know,^^ sdiyahe, " that this people who go astray after 'jFesus, even though their laws are different, all of them are the worshipers of idols, and their festivals all of them are forbidden, and it is proper to behave ourselves towards them according to our rules of behavior towards the worshipers of idols. ' ' I desire most respectfully to say to you that this opin- ion of Christianity appears to me severe ; and I would ask if it ought not to give way, in this age, to a view more charitable. It is, most assuredly, an opinion both ex- tremely uncharitable and essentially untruthful, if it can be proved that the great watchword of Israel, the Shemah Yisrael, that verse which you consider the most weighty and sublime in the Bible and in all your liturgy (Deut. vi. 4) — '^ Hear, O Israel : the Lord our God is the Lord one'^ A* 9 lo THE PLURALITY — both sustains and expresses trinitarianism equally with the unity of God. * I propose to address some letters to you on this point which I have just mentioned, expecting that both your letters and mine will be published in two reli- gious papers, The Israelite and The Episcopalian. I will first invite your attention to the Divine name Adonai, which occurs twice in the public reading of this text as the substitute of the tetragrammaton, and which is uttered so very frequently in the public worship of the synagogue, and With such emphasis, as, for instance, in the reading of the psalm, f — "The voice of Adonai is upon the waters," "The voice of Adonai is powerful," — "The voice of Adonai is full of majesty," — "The voice of Adonai divideth the flames of fire," — "The voice of Adonai shaketh the wilderness," — that any stranger having witnessed the service once may well make it his first question, afterwards, what Adonai means, which ap- peared to be resounding through all the service. I will ••'■• One anecdote is too interesting to be omitted. It is one of the many incidents told to Dr. Bonar while he was in Jerusalem for a few days. It occurred there. " One of the missionaries entered a synagogue one day. A rabbi was preaching. The moment he saw the missionary enter, he stopped, and shouted at the height of his voice, Shemah Yisrael, etc., ' Hear, O Israel, The Lord is our God, the Lord is one;' as if to turn every eye in scorn to one who could maintain that Jesus was the Son of God. It is the rallying-cry of the Jews ; it is a watchword worth a dozen of arguments to them." Dr. Bonar tells this in his book ; and it gives the true picture of the peculiar and supreme appreciation in which this watch- word is held among the Jews. It is possible, however, that there is a slight tincture of unfairness in this story thus told. The Shemah Yisrael is always very prominent in the synagogue worship; and it is possible that the missionary imagined more attention given to hmi than was really intended. "(" I must here notify the reader who is not familiar with the Hebrew that the word Adonai does not occur in this twenty-ninth psalm originally, but the original word is the tetragrammaton, for which Adonai is used as the substitute in the reading of the psalm. OF THE NAME A DONA I. H next dwell on the holy tetragrammaton, which fills two places in this watchword. And, thirdly, I will find another argument in the word Elohim, which occurs once in the watchword. Expecting to have other readers than yourself, I must, for their sake, write many things which you understand much better than I do ; and one of these things is that the three Hebrew words Adon, Adoni, and Adonai differ, as their respective renderings are, Lord, My Lord, and My Lords. Another is that the words shadiin and Adonai are separated by the widest possible difference of meaning. Unitarianism would select the simple Adon, Lord or Master, as the best title for the Deity ; but Judah's choice passes by both Adon and Adoni, and falls on the plural Adonai, My Lords, with an intense preference. This last is the Divine name. When the mysterious Person ap- peared to Gideon as he was threshing wheat at the wine- press, and Gideon at first supposed him to be only a man, he addressed him by the word Adoni, My Lord ; but when he began to speak with Divine authority, causing his voice to be heard as the voice of God, and gave Gideon the assurance of successful conquest and deliver- ance to Israel because he had sent him, Gideon imme- diately changed the word of address to the Divine name Adonai ; and likewise at the close of that conversation this Divine name again occurs. Adonai appeared to be thus peculiarly stamped on both the consciousness and the conscience of the Hebrews in all ages as the more proper word to be used in a direct address to the great Creator. The Bible first brings this word to light, as a Divine name, in the prayers of Abraham. It is found just seven times in the prayers of this patriarch, and he used it only in prayer. It occurs more than one hundred and fifty times in the Bible : the Masorites made a mistake in lim- 12 THE PLURALITY iting it to one hundred and thirty-four or five times. It is remarkably frequent in the psahnsj and it holds its place in the writings of the latest prophets. The word appears first in the fifteenth chapter of Gen- esis, and here it fills two places. "Abram said, Lord God, what wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless?" "And he said. Lord God, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" Or, to restore some of the original words to their places, Abram said, ^' Adonai, Jehovah, what wilt thou give me?" — "Adonai, Jehovah, whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?" This chapter is the record of the original covenant with Abraham, and the name Adofiai f^xst appears here, and occupies two stations, as if from them presiding over the covenant. Abraham was directed to procure different animals, and cut them in halves and leave them lying each half opposite to the other ; and the Lord was to establish the covenant by passing between the pieces. The animals could not be restored to life except by the adhesion of the separated halves, and so the covenant brought the Lord and Abra- ham into a close vital union in one purpose. But how did the Lord manifest his presence in that covenant of the carved pieces ? He was there the One and the Three. The three were — first the great darkness falling upon Abra- ham in unspeakable horrors, secondly the smoking fur- nace which was the fire from God that accepted the sacri- fices, and thirdly the burning lamp in the midst. That covenant may be called the rudiments of the whole Jewish religion. In later and less dark ages, God was still dwelling in the thick darkness; and his fire was on the smoking altar, accepting the same beasts and birds as sacrifices which Abraham had been directed to bring ; and the burning lamp appeared again in the seven lamps of the candlestick, clos ■ to the golden altar. The glory OF THE NAME ADO NAT. 13 of God is the dense darkness to the ungodly, or especially to their guilty conscience ; and it is the fire which accepts the bleeding victim at the altar as an atonement and satisfaction for the penitent ; and it is the burning lamp which sends Divine knowledge, peace, comfort, and joy to the pilgrims on a dark road. The great darkness may stand for the incomprehensibility of God, and his eternity, his justice, his determination not to clear the guilty ; and the burning lamp may be the illuminator, the light of his Spirit. The other point already mentioned, which became known to you in the lessons of your childhood, is that shadim is a word with no mark of holiness on it, while Adonai is a holy name. Shadim means demons. The song of Moses says, "They sacrificed unto devils, not to God" (Deut. xxxii. 17); they sacrificed unto shadim. Though having this horrible meaning, it is very closely allied to the Divine x\d^mQ Shaddai, which means A Imi^h/y ; it has the form of the plural of this holy word. Shaddai contains the idea of unity, and is always of the singular number; and if it had been received into Israel's great watchword as the substitute, instead of the word that was received, unitarianism as opposed to trinitarianism would have been expressed with transcendently greater clearness. Now, my dear friend, if it has become a firm impression on your mind that it is Shaddai which has become the substituted word in this great text, and not Adonai, and that Trinitarians are trying to force it into a plurality, and the result of their work would be to change Shaddai into shadi}?i, and make the verse read. Hear, O Israel, the demons our God are demons a unity, then no wonder if you exclaim that this is sacrilege the most horrible, blasphemy the most impious ! No wonder that you pro- test that the idols and devils which the heathen worshiped 2 14 THE PLURALITY shall never be introduced into this text ; and you are fully justified before the face of high heaven in exclaiming that these are the false deities of Olympus, and that Jupiter, Minerva, and Pluto cannot be too intensely detested in such a connection ! On the other hand, it appears to me that a fair interpre- tation requires the admission that Shaddai and Adojiai are not alike, and that the latter is stamped with a real plurality as it is found in the prayers of Abraham. How can it be consistently interpreted otherwise, in the third place where it occurs in the Bible, namely, in the first verses of the eighteenth chapter of Genesis? The Lord appeared to Abraham in the plains of Mamre at noon ; he lifted up his eyes and saw three men ; he ran to meet them, bowed himself, and said to them, Adonai, or My Lords. He used this word for the three, and so it stood for a holy triad. It could not be a plural of majesty, it was an actual plural. And after this, in company with them on the way to Sodom, he used this word four times in his intercession for Sodom. One of the most solemn prayers of all his life was the prayer of that afternoon. In the evening Lot addressed the two angels with the same word, but, as thus used by Lot, the word, by uni- versal consent, is taken in its ordinary or secular sense, which is indicated by a slight difference in the Masoretic pointing. The next morning. Lot, in his flight from Sodom, said to them, "Oh, not ?,o, Ado/mi /" and he continued in a prayer for mercy ; and here it is stamped as the Divine name used by Lot. Seven times the word is given as having been used by Abraham and Lot between the noon of one day and the sunrising of the next; it is clearly of the plural number, both as the utterance of Abraham and as the utterance of Lot ; it is plural both in its secular sense and as a Divine name; it meant a plu- OF THE NAME ADO NAT. 15 rality and a triad as Abraham used it at noon, and it was repeated four times that same afternoon, in all probability with its meaning unchanged, as the same conversation was continued, and Abraham himself uttered it the five times, and the same persons were addressed. Aben Ezra has dared to say that it may not have been the Adonai, the Divine name, either when Abraham first addressed the three strangers, or when Lot in the morn- ing called out Adonai, and prayed for mercy; but the most pious and learned rabbis were amazed at his saying so, and replied that it has the peculiar Masoretic vowels of the Divine name ; that Onkelos took it in both these places for the Divine name, as he has translated it by the tetragrammaton itself; and the Talmud decides the same way ; and the unvarying rule for the scribes of the law in all ages has been that they must write it as the Divine name in both these places. The Talmud is quoted (Shevu'oth, leaf 35), that in all places the Adonai uttered by Abraham is the holy name. Jonathan ben Uzziel, whose Targum is about as ancient as the New Testament, took the unwarrantable liberty to set the singular number in his translation, in the place of the plural, in the original text. He has the pronoun him in the place of t/ieni ; he reads that Lot prayed to him for mercy, where the original text is that Lot said unto THEM, "Oh, not so, Adonai r^ Possibly this is one of the earliest instances of a rigid Unitarian tampering dishonestly with the words of the Bible. Jonathan pro- bably felt that it must not be permitted to appear as if Lot, praying to God for salvation, was praying to them.*' * Jonathan's Targum is not before me as I write, but I read the following in Mendelssohn's Commentary, which I suppose is sufficient authority for all that is stated above : 1 6 THE PLURALITY I know well that many expositors would object to a strictly trinitarian view of the three who visited Abraham, and they prefer to explain the plurality in that Adonai in this way, that one of the three was the eternal Creator himself, and the other two were created angels minister- ing to him. They thus suppose the plurality of that Adonai to arise from the association of two created angels with the one eternal God. They make the holy word a mixture of the Creator and the creation, of the infinite and the finite, of the eternal and the temporal, of the Almighty and the weakness of created things. If you search among the gods and the demi-gods of Greece, you may possibly find some picture where the head is the god and the lower parts are some inferior being, some quad- ruped or still lower creature; and such a picture may illustrate the mixture which these expounders suppose they find in the Divine name Adonai. But one objection to this hypothesis is that when the people had worshiped the golden calf and deserved to perish with Sodom, Moses made a prayer for them after the model of Abraham's in- tercession for Sodom ; but the Adonai in the prayer of Moses cannot be interpreted in this way. The words of Moses were, "If now I have found grace in thy sight, O Adonai, let Adonai, I pray, go among us ; for it is a stiff- necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin." Unquestionably, there was no mixture of created angels in the word as Moses used it in this prayer. He desired the presence oi Adonai, without any reference to an angel. It troubled him to hear the intimation that some created angel might be sent with them. Likewise in Isaiah's vision of the Lord and the wor- shiping seraphim, when he saw Adonai sitting on a throne high and lifted up, and heard the voice of y^^Avm/ saying, "Whom shall I send? and who will go for us?" the OF THE NAME ADONAI. 17 whole vision separates Adonai and the seraphim far from each other, and it is not probable that the seraphim are included in the word Adonai or in the plural pronoun which is the last word of the inquiry. So likewise in the ninth chapter of Daniel, where Adonai occurs seven times, just as many times as it had been before uttered by Abraham. One of the most wonder- • ful prayers in the Bible fills this chapter. Daniel saw the wrath of God in the desolations of Jerusalem and the dis- persion of the people, and he was distressed in view of their sins. His prayer shows a remarkably frequent repe- tition of the holy name Adonai, which Abraham had used with such power, that he might mitigate the dark cloud of Divine wrath that was over Sodom. Assuredly, the Adonai of Daniel's prayer was the Lord himself, without any mixture of the persons of created angels in it. It was not Gabriel to whom he looked, either directly or indirectly, when he lifted his eyes to Adonai. It is an imagination adverse to genuine Judaism, that either Daniel or Abraham ever made any prayers to created angels, that these might bring their prayers before God and bring back the answer. So again, in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, where the word Adonai occurs fourteen times, — ^just twice as often as Abraham even used it. This may appear the more remarkable as the word is not often found in the Book of Jeremiah. The word was consecrated to prayer : it became marked as the favorite word for the interceding and distressed soi>l in the presence of God. Jeremiah was weeping and praying over the burning of the temple, the desolations of the land, the distress of the people ; and he exclaimed, in the bitterest grief, that the woe resting on the people was worse than the woe of Sodom. No wonder, then, that he remembered Abraham's prayers 2* 1 8 THE PLURALITY OF THE NAME AD ON A L in the afternoon of the vision of the triad, when the ruin of Sodom was to come the next morning, and made the Lamentations so peculiarly resound with the Adonai of that ancient model prayer ! But remember here, that in all the Lamentations there is no reference to any created angel, and such an angel cannot have any part in the plurality of Adonai. This perfect freedom of the plurality of this word from all alloy of the persons of created angels, which is so manifest in the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the prayer of Daniel, the vision of Isaiah, and the prayer of Moses, ought to be accepted as a strong proof of the same perfect purity in the prayers of Abraham and Lot in the last hours of Sodom, which prayers are really the original model. And if this word, as it issued a coin fresh from the mint, and glittering, in the prayers of Abraham, had a triad on its face, or a certain figure of a holy Trinity, it ought to carry that figure ever afterwards, and it ought to be on the same Adonai now, as it resounds in syna- gogues all over the world ; and where it is not on it, there may be some suspicion of a counterfeit ; and where the metal is now such that the original triad cannot be on it, there maybe considerable reason to raise a question, on the possibility that some kind of a counterfeit has got into the currency. M. R. M. LETTER II. Dear Friend : — I now leave the substituted name, and approach the great name which fills two places in the watchword of Israel, as this text has come down to us from the pen of Moses. This is the ineffable name, the four- lettered name, the tetragrammaton, i\\eyod he vav he, the most holy name in all the Bible, the most holy name that has ever been given to men to be seen inscribed in a book. It is the proper name for the Eternal One, and stands for his essence. Other names are epithets or derivatives from some of his attributes or some of his works, as, for in- stance, El, which is expressive of omnipotence, Adonai, which expresses supreme control, Creator, Redeemer, the God of Abraham, the Dweller between the Cherubim ; but this is the essential name, and belonged as completely to God before there was one revolving world or one beam of light as it belongs now. Its majestic form is immu- table ; it cannot ever be changed into the form of the plural number, and it never holds a place, like the name Elohim, among the idols of the heathen : it is never joined with such an adjective as false, to indicate a hea- then deity. Behold it as it stands in the original text : Hear, O Israel : Jehovah our God is one Jehovah ; or, as some prefer to translate the verse : Hear, O Israel : Jeho- vah is our God, Jehovah is one. The argument connected with this name takes the form of three divisions, as follows : 19 20 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER 1. Joshua, the servant and disciple of Moses, could not give this name a plural form, but he appended a phrase to it which is strangely and intensely of the plural num- ber, as its just definition and equivalent. This is found in Josh. xxiv. 19:* "And Joshua said unto the people, Ye cannot serve Jehovah : for he is a holy God." Here the phrase holy God appears to be of the singular num- ber in the English translation ; but the original He- brew has both the noun God in the plural number, and the adjective holy, agreeing with it, in the plural number, which is remarkable here, because in nearly all instances in the Bible the term God, or Elohim, though strictly itself of the plural number, has both the adjectives and the verbs agreeing with it in the singular number. The tetragrammaton stands here as being defined the Gods, the holy ones, the holy persons. 2. An abstract Trinity lies in the tetragrammaton. John, the Divine, unfolds its true meaning when he pro- nounces the blessing of grace and peace "from him which is, and which was, and which is to come." These three times visibly hold their places in the word. It unites the words yehych, which means he will be, and hoveh, which means he is now, and hayah, which means he was, and holds the three words in its adorable unity. These are abstractions which make the impress of the in- finite on our minds. First, here is the great He-will-be, the eternity future. No intellect can imagine its termi- nation, and no arithmetic can give the figures of its mil- lions of ages. The journey of the immortal soul beyond the grave lies through it ; and as we try to count its vast ages, imagination cannot reach any moment to which our OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 21 immortality will not in due time bring us ; and beyond that most distant moment that imagination and arithme- tic can reach, there still lies the same future eternity with- out diminution. The eternity past, that lies in another part of this holy name, has equal majesty ; it is equally beyond the comprehension of all created intellects. There is this difference, that we are always traveling away from it, while we are always traveling into the bosom of the other : we identify no point in one of these which our undying personality will not reach ; but the past eternity is gone, to us, and we cannot ever again touch one of its points. The present moment has its little place between these two unbounded oceans of time. It is like a most slender ribbon drawn across the infinite ocean, or a blazing thread, in which all the created universe has its life, and this thread is never at rest, it is always moving on the surface and measuring off the mighty waves of the future into the past. No object is more limited, no shadow is more transient, and no light more quickly dies; but, withal, it has in its little self all the value of the past eternity and all the promise of the future eternity. All the past is per- petuated and represented in it, and all the future will be unrolling from it. The vastness of eternity had to pro- duce a present moment, a present tense, which comes and goes with the twinkling of an eye, or no created being could ever have come into existence ; and if it should once cease, all men and angels and all worlds would in- stantly be lost in the ocean of eternal time. This blazing moving thread that separates the two oceans would al- most bear to be personified, and the words might be put in its mouth, " No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him;" or, in less holy words, No man 22 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER hath explored the past eternity ; but I, the present mo- ment, the occupant of its bosom, reveal it and possess all its worth. Or we may almost give to the present moment the words of Jesus when one disciple asked him to show them the Father, and he answered, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father : believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?" So the present moment may claim that it reveals all the past, and that it was in all the past eternity, and all that eternity is now in it. To know fully the present moment is to know all the infinite past and foresee all the infinite future. The three tenses in their essential relations give us something very similar to the image of a Divine Trinity. The three times are one : and now can this august unity be illustrated ? Suppose eternity, in its complete import, to take the form of an infinite circle, and that the present tense is a single blazing point moving along on that circle and never turning back or permitting itself to stop for rest : all men and angels, all created worlds, are confined to this one blazing point; they live and move and have their whole actual being in it ; they have traveled forward from the past in it, and they never can get into the future any faster than it will carry them. Thus traveling on in it as the blazing chariot of the universe, they look for- ward along the circle and appear to have a whole eternity before them, and they look back along the circle and it appears as if the whole infinite circle lies in their rear. But the place of the Creator himself is not in that chariot, as their place is ; and all his time is not a single moment, as their time is. There is no past eternity to him, and no future eternity ; there is no old time to him, and no new time, as these things appear to them in their unend- ing ride along the circle. He occupies the centre of the circle ; and this is the explanation how he inhabits eter- OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 23 nity ; and, being thus in the centre, all points of the circle are equally near to his eye and equally within the reach of his hand ; and the year of the world five billion five million six hundred and thirty is the same thing to his eye and hand as the year of the world which I might have put at the head of this letter according to your chronology. 3. A personal Trinity lies in the tetragrammaton. A living Trinity is in it, — not only the Trinity of abstrac- tions, but the Trinity of Divine and eternal life. It spontaneously expands into the form of three personal living names, and these three are equally holy, equally incomprehensible, equally Divine, equally impossible to be transferred so that any one may take the place of any other, and equally impossible ever to be assumed by even the most glorious angel that ever worships before the throne. They are three in one : they are clearly sepa- rated, yet they unite in the one great name. The begin- ning of the tetragrammaton brings out the separate name, I-will-be-that-I-will-be. "Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you ; and they shall say to me. What is his name ? what shall I say unto them ? And God said unto Moses, I-will- be-that-I-will-be : and he said. Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I-will-be hath sent me unto you." (Ex. iii. 13, 14.) This is a voice coming from the depths of the infinite future and proclaiming that God dwells there, and that his living name in the first person, as grammarians say, or the person of the speaker, fills that unending duration. Only God can speak from the bosom of the infinite future. Men and angels and moving worlds never can send forth their voice from any other time than the present moment ; the only time that they can 24 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER call their own is the present : all their future lies in the Omnipotent Hand, and they have no sure hope in the future, except as they can stand on some Divine promise. Let them all fall down in the adoring worship of him who has the name I-will-be-that-I-will-be for himself alone, and to whom all the future is perfectly the same as the present moment. The close of the tetragrammaton furnishes the other Divine name, Jah ; and it stands for the past eternity just as the first name stands for the coming eternity. The hay ah at the close is modified into the personal name Jah ; the strength of the Deity is concentrated in this great name. The past cannot be changed : what is completely past must remain eternally what it already is : so the immutability of God is enshrined in the name Jah. It is radiant with the truth that Divine law must be sustained, and that wickedness must meet its due punish- ment. When the Lord makes his oath against Amalek, he raises his hand to heaven,* or rather, as it is in the seventeenth chapter of Exodus, with the hand laid on the throne of Jah he swears to perpetuate the war against Amalek through all generations. Thus the hand laid on the throne of Jah is the sign of the most fearful oath that is ever made in heaven. All the strength of the infinite past must be exhausted before this oath can fail to be ful- filled. The prophet Isaiah has the word Jah in two places, and in both it stands in the closest connection with the full tetragrammaton : the first is a quotation from the verse in the song of Moses at the Red Sea, " My strength and my song is Jah," which the prophet lengthens by adding the tetragrammaton to the Jah, "My strength and song is Jah Jehovah" (Isa. xii. 2); the * Deut. xxxii. 40. OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 25 Other brings forth the idea of strength and immutability with great emphasis: "Trust in the Lord forever, be- cause in Jah Jehovah is the rock of ages" (Isa. xxvi. 4). Creation naturally brings forw^ard the word Jah, as being connected with it, and having the meaning of God before all, as is illustrated by the verse (Ps. cii. 18), " the people created shall praise Jah." The Targum dwells on the expression in Solomon's Song, "the flame of Jah," that this flame is hell, the world which the Lord created on the second of the six days of creation, to be the abode of the punishment of fire for those who go after strange gods. A singular saying was among the rabbis, that God created the worlds in the two letters of the word Jah. The psalmist says, "Sing unto God, sing praises to his name : extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH." Ps. Ixviii. 4. With the I-will-be-that-I-will-be thus blazing at the opening of the tetragrammaton, and the Jah blazing at its close, the former the Divine name for the future eter- nity and the latter the Divine name for the past eternity, it appears as if the mighty present ought also to have its separate Divine name ; and we do find a second tetra- grammaton which appears to be precisely this separate name, and to be properly designated as the central or interjacent ineffable name. Remember how the Scripture reads : "And God spake to Moses, and said to him, I am Jehovah. And I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob by El Shaddai [God Almighty], and by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." (Ex. vi. 2, 3.) But how can this be brought into harmony with the facts that God did say to Abraham that he was Jehovah who had brought him out from Ur of the Chaldees, and that Abra- ham once gave a name to a mountain and incorporated the tetragrammaton into this name? Aben Ezra doubtless B \ 26 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER declares what is the truth, that the tetragrammaton was certainly known to all these patriarchs. The true inter- pretation must therefore be that it assumed a new mean- ing in the time of Moses, which the patriarchs had never been taught to give it. They viewed it as the sublime term for the unity of God, and as being properly inter- preted, — He-who-will-be, He-who-is-now, and He-who- was ; but they may have looked no further ; they may never have perceived the personal Trinity in it. The name I-will-be-that-I-will-be was first communicated to Moses, and the name Jah is never found before the song of Moses at the Red Sea; and the tetragrammaton, as limited by the first of these on one side, the side of the future eternity, and by the second on the other side, the side of the past eternity, may have been revealed first to Moees and may never have been known to the patriarchs. When the Lord revealed himself to Moses in the fissure of the rock after the offense in the worship of the golden calf, and in connection with the writing of the second tables of the law, he proclaimed a tetragrammaton the first and a tetragrammaton the second: — "The Lord passed by before him, and proclaimed : Jehovah, Jehovah, El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands." (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7.) If it be argued that the two words at the head of this list, being the same, must be interpreted as a mere repetition, our answer is that the tradition of the rabbis contradicts this and requires that they have different meanings. The rabbinic tradition finds thirteen names for God in this list : Jehovah is the first, Jehovah is the second, El the third, Merciful the fourth, Gracious the fifth, and so on, until the last is the thirteenth ; and this proves clearly that a real difference was accepted OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 27 between the first tetragrammaton and the second, other- wise the two ought to have been counted as only one. If you promise to give five designations of George Wash- ington, and count them, George Washington the first, George Washington the second, First in war the third, First in peace the fotirth, and First in the hearts of his countrymen the fifth, it is evident that you give George Washington two meanings, because if you do not your designations really number only four. The preferable interpretation is to take the first tetragrammaton as the patriarchal, and the second as the. new one revealed to Moses which had not been made known to the patri- archs. The first then includes the second, and the second holds its marked place in the present tense between the I-will-be-that-I-will-be of the future and the Jah of the past. This second tetragrammaton comes prominently for- ward in Hosea i. 7, where Jehovah promises, "I will have mercy upon the house of Judah, and I will save them by Jehovah their God, and will not save them by bow, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen." Here the Lord promises salvation, and it will come by the second Lord as the instrument. Collate the two passages, Ps. Ixxxix. 8 and Solomon's Song viii. 6, the first of which reads, "Jehovah, God of hosts ! who is like thee, the Strong One of Jah ! and thy faithfulness round about thee;" the second reads, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm ; for love is strong as death : jealousy is cruel as the grave : the coals thereof are coals of fire, a vehement flame of Jah:" and here Jah appears in the third person, ns gram- marians say, the person spoken of, so all grammar must decide; while the second person, the person spoken to or addressed, is Jehovah, the God of hosts, the Beloved, the 28 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER Dweller in the Bush, the Shekinah, the King of Israel.* Grammar finds other verses in the Bible where Jah, which is here in the third person, is in the second person, and Jehovah of hosts or the Beloved, being here in the second person, is in the third person or the first person ; but the Divine name Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I-will-be-that-I-will-be, cannot ever be properly parsed by the grammarian as being either the third person or the second person, since invariably it is, in its essence and constitution, the first person. It stands for the person speaking, I will be, and is neither the person spoken to nor the person spoken of. Accordingly, if one Divine name stands essentially for the first person, the speaker, and in some verse the Lord of hosts and Jah stand together, the former the person spoken to and the latter the person spoken of, this may be mentioned as three persons appearing in a glass, darkly and distantly. [Whoever says that if the Strong 0?ie of Jah were the right translation in this 89th Psalm, \\\Q. p' sik could not be between chesin and Jah, has overlooked Jer. xxviii. 14. The proper translation of Chesin Jah is the Strong One of Jah, like Kcdosh Yisrael, the Holy One of Israel, and the prophetic name of Solomon, Yedidjah, the beloved of Jah (2 Sam. xii. 25). Even Isa. xxxiii. 21 does not give to us the phrase mighty Jehovah, but as J. Addison Alexander translates it, '■^But there shall Jehovah be mighty for //j-."] * Solomon's Song vii. 5 : " the King is held in the galleries." Abcn Ezra elucidates this in his Commentary, thus: Nin ■D'>t3^^3 liDN "[So " this King is the Messiah, who is bound in accordance with what our ancestors have ^delivered to us, that on the day when Jerusalem was destroyed he was born." The Jews of the present day, who have no faith in the promised Messiah, have wandered to a great distance from the views which their fathers held. OF THE TETRAGRAMAIATON. 29 In the Septuagint and the New Testament, the orighial tetragrammaton is uniformly translated by the word Kiirios, which is, in the English Bible, Lord. This word Kiirios is often applied to Jesus Christ, as in the following in- stances : Matt. vii. 22, " Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord!" John xiii. 13, "Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am;" Luke xvii. 5, "And the apostles said unto the Lord, Increase our faith;" Luke xxiii. 42, "And he said unto Jesus, Lord, remember me when thou comest into thy kingdom;" John XX. 28, "And Thomas answered and said unto him. My Lord and my God;" Acts x. 36, "The word which God sent unto the children of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ (he is Lord of all);" 2 Peter iii. 18, " But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;" Rev. xix. 15, 16, "He treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God ; and he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written. King of kings and Lord of Lords." And when it is remembered that this word Kurios in its holy meaning among the Jews originated from the tetragrammaton, there cannot be any doubt that in all these passages it is really the tetragrammaton translated, and not properly the ancient patriarchal one, but rather the second and central tetragrammaton which was made known to Moses, having its abode in the present tense, and limited on one side by the name I-will- be-that-I-will-be, and on the other by the name Jah. This being admitted, it needs no argument that the Jah is the same as the eternal Father, or God before all. The remaining name, I-will-be-that-I-will-be, admits of a strict application to the Holy Ghost, or the Spirit of God. The Egyptians attributed the perfect knowledge of all the future to the Spirit of God, as is proved by the 3° THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER exclamation of Pharaoh when Joseph had just revealed to him the seven coming years of plenty to be succeeded by as many years of famine : he said to his servants, "Can we find such a one as this is, a man in whom the Spirit of God is?" and, assuredly, the perfect knowledge of the future belongs in the strictest propriety to him whose essential name is I-will-be-that-I-will-be. The Spirit of God anoints a messenger to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound ; and the best thing that Moses could go and say to his oppressed brethren was that this Spirit, as the eternal I-will-be, had sent him ; and the seal of this Spirit was all that his commission needed. The Spirit of God in the beginning moved on the face of the waters ; and there was a moral chaos among the Hebrews in Egypt over which no influence could be effectual ex- cept the influence of the same Spirit. " The Angel of his presence saved them," says Isaiah; "but they re- belled, and vexed his Holy Spirit." Isa. Ixiii. 9, 10. The Jewish commentators of the most enlightened school concede that the tetragrammaton is in some places a dx^jh Dir, and in other places a ixn oty, that is, both a proper name and an appellative, both a proper noun and an adjective noun or a derivative from some event, both a designation of essence and a designation of a quality or agency.* Aben Ezra held that it was * Ki'piog and Kvpiog aaj3ao)0 (l-ord and Lord of Sabaoth), both of them common nouns or appellatives, are used throughout the Septuaginf and the New Testament (Rom. ix. 29, James v. 4) to translate mn> and niN3X iiyn> (Jehovah and Jehovah of hosts) ; and as this appears to indi- cate that both these Hebrew terms were accepted in the light of appella- tives long before Christianity was known in the world, it may be useful to consult carefully one of the highest authorities on this subject, which is OF THE TETRAGRAMMETON. 31 known to the patriarchs as a proper noun, a particular name, but Moses was the first to know it as an appel- Aben Ezra, \yho gives the following as a part of his comment on the third chapter of Exodus : CDSp npo lyDwSi ixnipS pioSi nixS otriDn Kin asyn ot:' :'d i?t innnNa oann jjidS nap Syia la*? Don dn •'ja oan ina Sjjddd iuj BVN T'nj? IN -\aj7 UDD nU'' nS Dm3N 1D3 DX^'n OB* p nSi TiPV '^Vlfl Dty 13 pns'N nVi •>npnx'> cdxi nS pnsi mo '?i;DD itjjb' asp db' ^•'V i^\ i-^Don iDNm iNPn Dtt* oan ^a^^c> an nanni c^py:!-^ wn Dsy NtSi Q^cmax D>3"i Hj? iDN' nS Dspn DB' NinB' onnoND rSiS pn' qiSnib'^ ncN^ NtS ntt'jN ^ja> db' n\n p dn osyn aa' Ninif Sntj'^d naini pDn □2' >^inB' Sntz'^ '-jn nns triN Dm^r.is'a naa icn' pn ■•a nxnn or nxni na'sa njnn xna ns'iao n^n'' nS Dsvn db' TiSm ■>CN nSna njva jwi pnxin omaNn idn'' nS njm nann ncx' oan jd Nin mNni ia n'?npja' nnanS nxn dc pn Dspn qb' ijj>n ^a nSniin nanni Dn\n niaya ntrjcn nSci pan db' Nin •"a niD iS e>m nxn db* NtS aa^ Qan ma nstnn db' idd> najxa nDD> xS axun db' lya-in OB'n Qj rr'nN nSn naa njm icsj?a idw asyn o nnn pnsi ids"' lanxini nixas <» unxd mjni oxpn niCB' □nijB' ••a fvmx no naajn pni nS nil iSe' Nasa mx Nin ix Nin Dxyn 02* niNax '»a idiS caT OB'n DP ix D\n'?N Di? DN ia UNxnn n*? ■na'rv nixaxn 'nSx njn ■•o •]ma NJin ^a mxax □•'nSx o> T'jipa nB'P'' Sxi D^nSs c" naajn Sj? nnip Van lai naS naip nj? piB' db'pb' -iiapai Niajn nmj; nxiajni ^poni icy nB'D dSij; ^d> ni3t>i T\n "^p nxn ma OB'n m xin opa p f" maai "•"'B'npn cioNtSon inp oipan oin^x (■>■> p Vy ninpcn NinE» iiapaB' -iDiNn p.sjn nan Sn yiDB>'7 nasn "tni aicB'n nixax Dn mxas xas •?ai nN-in N7n imsas nx •«nNXini jd n>N-i x^am p xnpj Snie*' n^HM D''a-\ JIB'S Sy xin ia OB'n -inh onSx njni vSy nnDiy DiDB'n n'?Di SsnB'"! >n'7N D^nSx idiS ^DD1B' myi didb* nau mSx xSn ma inxa nB' nini nE' 'jipa aon did Sip^ na' naai i^pn Sn The rabbi here separates a jA^w ha etsem and jA^ot hatoar, or a proper noun and appellative, by four marks. First, a proper noun cannot be made a verb wiih the distinctions of past and future time, as a common noun often is. We cannot say to a friend, Study carefully the character of Abraham and you yourself will soon be Abrakaming. Proper nouns do not admit of such inflection. A proper noun may originate from a verb, as the name Isaac, which is literally he will laugh, but it cannot bring with it any of the verb's inflections. Secondly, an appellative ad-' mits of the plural ; a proper name does not, because it is unchangeably one. If a name has originated with one person, and it now passes to his children or descendants, it has become an appellative. Thirdly, a proper 32 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER lative. This is a remarkable concession, as it appears at first sight to make the rabbinic theology flash with a cer- noun never needs the definite article to point it out. It cannot be said, in Hebrew, The Abraham. The phrase "The preacher," in the book of Ecclesiastes, is not an exception, because, though appHed to only one person, it is properly an appellative. Adam is made a shem toar, an ap- pellative, as is proved by the use of the article, — The Adam, which means one of the race. Fourthly, a proper noun cannot be put in the construct state. The phrase is not admissible, the Isaac of a generation, if the word means only the son of Abraham. A proper noun stands limited and defined by itself, and does not need to stand in the construct state with a noun immediately after it to limit it. The Divine names T\''r\r:K I-will-be and the tetragrammaton are two proper nouns. In view of the phrase fehovah of hosts, many have felt compelled to say that Sabaoth, hosts, itself is a proper Divine name in apposition with the tetragram- maton, or that it was a sign in his host; but this is not to be admitted, because there is Elohe Sabaoth, clearly proving that the translation must be God of hosts, and we never find it except with the tetragrammaton or Elohiin. It should not be a difficulty that Elohim in the absolute state is once found immediately followed by Sabaoth, because the same anomaly is found in the phrase " the prophecy of Oded the prophet ^ if the original is examined (2 Chron. xv. 8). And inasmuch as the Lord inhabits eternity, and exists by himself, and all things exist in him, the tetragrammaton is, accordingly, in some instances like an appellative after the model of "And he remembered the days of old, Moses, his people ;" and its meaning is that he is the Maamid, the Establisher oj beings, the Eternizer of hosts ; and so with Jehovah Elohim are associated the holy angels, and Jehovah of hosts refers to the hosts of heaven. Give no weight to the words of Gaon assuming that the host of Israel is meant, and depending on the verse, "And I will bring forth my hosts, my people, the children of Is- rael" (Ex. vii. 4) ; but rather remember the verse, " All the host of heaven standing by him on his right hand and on his left." (i Kings xxii. 19.) Mark also that Elohim (God) is an appellative as it occurs in both num- bers, singular and plural. Aben Ezra might have added as another evidence that Elohim is an appellative, that the definite article is in some places prefixed to it. On ■ the other hand, the tetragrammaton, I suppose, never takes the article, and it never can be literally of the plural number. But the decisive proof that in some instances it is a shem toar, an appellative, is the phrase jfehovah of hosts, or its construct state in conjunction with the word hosts. These are proved by Aben Ezra to be the celestial, intelli- OF THE TETRA GRAMMA TON. 33 tain trinitarian hue. There are two theories to explain this concession. I. One theory is that the shem ha' etsem, the proper name, was the original, and in a later age it came to be also an appellative. It was first the proper exclusive name for the Almighty, designating his eternal essence, and then the later Scriptures made it a common noun. gent, worshiping hosts. It is an ancient theory, advocated by many rabbis, that the naked word Sabaoth is one of the Divine names. Possibly the object was to escape from the admission that the tetragrammaton is in any instance an appellative. Our rabbi shows how impartial criticism compels to the admission that it is both a proper name and an appellative. See also Aben Ezra on the sixth chapter of Exodus. This long note will be excused on account of the great importance of this one point. And, to illustrate its importance, read the first verse of the Epistle of James: — " James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting." Here Jesus Christ is the Lord or Kurios, and the preceding word God might have had the word Lord also connected with it, which proves that Kurios as a Divine name in the New Testament is an appellative ; but what is the result if the original tetragrammaton, the most holy and ineffable name, is itself found to have tlie same appellative character? When it once proves itself an appellative, like the term Kurios in the verse above, it fatally betrays the cause of unitarianism, passes into the ranks of Trinitarians, and becomes one of the mighty guns in that camp. At least so much is settled beyond dispute, that if the tetragrammaton was once the proper name — nomett propnum — for God, and if it afterwards be- came changed into an appellative or common noun, still retaining all the holiness and strength of its first import, and abounds as an appellative, in the phrase yehovah of hosts, through the later Scriptures, this change was a mighty step towards the doctrine of the New Testament, where the Divine name. Lord, is a real appellative, and the term Lord of hosts is shared both by the Lord of hosts who calls the sword to awake, and the man, his fellow, the shepherd, the Messiah, whom this sword must smite. If the supreme object was to teach the unitarian view that the Deity is only one person, when the tetragrammaton was once known as his proper essential name it should have been left there, and should never have been changed into an appellative ; because when any proper name is changed into an appellative the impression is naturally and logically made that more than one are now known as sharers in the name. B* 34 'J^HE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER Adam furnishes a good illustration. It was first the proper name of one man; but afterwards many came under this name, and the offerer at the Jewish altar is mentioned in the law as an Adam. If the holy name Jehovah was ever thus expanded so as to embrace two or more persons, it is important to remember that the per- sons must have been eternal and Divine, because this name never could receive any meaning carrying it out- side of the eternal circle of Deity. It was not like the appellation Elohim (God), which also stood for heathen deities. It was not like the sublime appellation Holy, — and it was his highest praise that his name was Holy, — because man was also called to be holy in conjunc- tion with God. It was not like the appellative Creator, because Jupiter might be called the Creator in Greek mythology. The tetragrammaton never could become the appellative of any created being, and still less could it ever be transferred to any false god or any deity of imagination's creation. If it ever stood for two or more persons, these persons were persons within the eternal circle of the Godhead. Then how could the name Je- hovah pass from the proper and essential name of one person, so as to become a common name, and still main- tain the impossibility of any application to any other person than the original one ? Was a proper name ever known to become an appellative and still stand for only one person? Has logic ever discovered one such fact? The name Adam could not become an appellative until it began to stand for more human persons than the first man. Caisar was originally the proper name of one per- son, and it passed into an appellative when more than one were Caesars. Napoleon Bonaparte was first the proper name of one person ; but if we say that a certain personage is the Napoleon Bonaparte of his country, the OF THE TETRA GRAMMA TON. 35 word is instantly made an appellative and loses its origi- nal restriction to only one person. This phrase, the Napoleon of his country, contains the word country as a limitation of the word Napoleon, or as indicating where this particular Napoleon is to be found; and so in the phrase Jehovah Sabaoth, Jehovah of hosts, the word Je- hovah is in the coftstruct state, and the word hosts is joined to it to limit it ; but no proper name needs to be thus limited, because it is itself its own perfect limita- tion. If then this most hoXy r\amQ Jehovah has passed, like other proper names, from a proper name to an ap- pellative, behold what inferences, adverse to unitarianism, appear to follow ! 2. The other theory is that the original tetragrammaton was the appellative, and the proper Divine name grew out of it in a later age. The perfect and most interesting illustratfon of this theory is furnished by the name Shaddat, or Almighty, as it is translated. This name Shaddai is classed by Aben Ezra among the Divine appel- latives, on the ground that it has the primary meaning of absolute sufficiency d.ndi unlimited power ; but in all parts of the Bible it presents itself as having already grown from its primary meaning into the perfect state of a proper Divine name, and accordingly it fulfills the four laws which Aben Ezra lays down for proper nouns, and never presents one exception to them : first, it has no variations of form to separate past and future times ; secondly, it is never of the plural number, unless indeed the impure word shadim should occur as its plural, which is an imagination not to be cherished for a moment ; thirdly, it never has the article prefixed, — the word nsrn is never found ; and fourthly, it never appears in the construct state, and hence, while Jehovah Sabaoth occurs very often, Shaddai Sabaoth, or Shaddai of hosts, never 36 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER occurs once. This last point presents it in a clear light how Shaddai always stands as a proper name, while the tetragrammaton departs from it and takes the character of an appellative; and besides, as the phrase Jehovah Sabaoth first comes into existence near the time of David and abounds in the later Scriptures, while it is never found with either Moses or the patriarchs, there is here strong evidence against this second theory, and it appears as if the first theory must be the true one, that the tetragram- maton was originally the proper name, and its appellative character was its development in later ages. But on the hypothesis that the appellative existed originally, and the proper name grew out of it, — on the hypothesis that the tetragrammaton as a proper name is a derivative,* — the * This theory that the word yehai<{in t^tfrn VrNI Nd-H -\(fV 13 njIDDH DtTTIB' ^J; ijiNac mtrp UPN vnNH >:in cind 13T ^nuiNn All the names of the Most High found in the books, all of them, are derivatives from actions ; and this is not to be concealed, — -with the exception of one name, and it is the yod he vav he, which is the proper name for the Most High, and hence it is called the shem meporash, meaning that it conveys a pure conception of the essence of the Most High without any mixture. But his other glorious names admit a participation, in their being derived from actions the like of which are found among us, just as we have already explained that Adonai, the substituted word for yod he vav he, has its origin in the idea of lordship, as is indicated in the text, " The man, the lord of the land, spake roughly with us" (Gen. xlii. 30). In the same sec- tion the verse Zech. xiv. 9 is cited : " In that day Jehovah will be one, and his name one;" and the explanation is appended: nnx Kin 1D3!:' Wl •1TJJ NinB' NtSi laV Dxjjn Hjr ,— nmn nihi laS inN duo ?n Nip"' p NJin ina tpnpn r-iin oSipn t^tnaj t-^v ij; idn irySN ■'ai "ii-nDai OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 37 question arises, What might have been the prerogative or event or circumstance from which the name Jehovah originally grew, and afterwards ripened into the proper essential and exclusive name of the Father of all spirits ? It can be supposed that the primary meaning was the Worker of miracles ; and that Jehovah of hosts means the Upholder of the celestial realm of angels in their glorious existence, after the creation, by a continual miracle. Then, if the theory is that amazing and Divine wonders first placed the holy name on the lips of those who wit- nnx isrinnj oS^ anTJjn nic:rn ■h^v r-hi y^ Ssnon /-laSa idci niNXDjn r-nVij?fln >^ imm mctr aSij xz^r^^ nDN nn D?ij!n trnn oa> uVxN p.si 'inxy S5? nmnS nnvn inx na' Sax fD''jfl Ditt'3 nnj .ninj cnisDH osr Nin ib'n Nr.'n v<-ni Nis-n >«-v Nini n? nSk irjj 'n'73 He desires to say that as he is one, so he will then be called by one name alone, and it will refer to his essence alone, and will not be a derivative. In the Pirke R. Eliezer, he says, " While the world was not ye't created, there existed only the Holy Blessed be He, and his name." Remark well how he brings it out that these derivative names all came into existence after the creation of the world ; and this is the truth, because all depend on actions of God found in the world. But when you separate the pure, simple, absolute essence of God from every action, there is no deriva- tive name left to him in any sense, but only the one particular name indi- cating his essence. And we have no name aside from derivatives except this one, and it is yod he vav he, which is the absolute definite name. Further on, Maimonides explains how this absolute definite name came to be pronounced rarely even by the priests in the temple, and how the name of twelve letters came to be pronounced in the place of the tetra- grammaton. It was not so holy as the tetragrammaton, but was evidently more holy than the substitute Adonai which is now universally used. mm r\>T\-v poD |iN nirnivS ma-j? ainu' J2 Nin istn p dj ne'n nn rri- n fuSv>. niNiiriD invD "inv pijj; Sjj. The other holy name also came into use as a substitute for the tetragrammaton, the name containing forty-two letters. This had also a degree of holiness inferior to the four- lettered name. The rabbis often refer to these two great names, one of twelve letters, the other of forty-two, but very rarely is any attempt made to explain them. The knowledge of them was confined to the learned and pious ; and persons of light habits of thought were not instructed in them. 4 38 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER nessed them ; that all miracles of Divine grace and moral government properly originate in the tetragrammaton ; that Moses obtained a deeper knowledge of this name, and hence he performed the greatest wonders and had such power over nature as no one had had before him ; — and if it is a part of this theory that the miracles of the six days of creation are properly the wonders of Elohim (God), and hence the name Jehovah does not occur once in the first chapter of Genesis, but first comes into view in the second chapter and after the mention of God's resting on the seventh day, so that the miracles of Jeho- vah are really of a higher character than the work of the six days of creation, and rest on this work as the founda- tion ; — if it is also a part of this theory that the term Jehovah is never found in the whole book of Ecclesiastes because there is no reference to miracles in that book, but the works of God are there the operations of nature as established in the creation, without any addition and without any diminution, as if there is nothing new under the sun, but all makes one mighty stream moving by natural laws: it will not, I trust, be found very difficult in my next letter to prove that this whole theory may be used very advantageously to illustrate the precise meaning of the term Son of God as it appears in the beginning of the New Testament. The chief evidence that the tetragrammaton is an appel- lative in some places, as well as the proper essential Divine name in others, is found by these rabbis in the phrase Jehovah of hosts. These hosts may refer to the stars, but they are rather the celestial hosts of worshipers before the throne, — the higher and still higher orders of holy angels. A very wide difference separates the two terms Jehovah and Jehovah of hosts. The former is the essential name ; and whether he is found existing in our time, or existing OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 39 back in eternity, before the foundation of the world, before the first dawn of the morning star, before the first radiance of any world, he has the same perfect and un- changeable name Jehovah. This name is the same mighty light in the eternity before all worlds that it is among the worlds of time. On the contrary, the term Jehovah of hosts arises from a union of the Creator with his crea- tion. The hosts were first created before their Creator could be Jehovah of hosts. The term has the eternity of God for one-half of its support, and the high realm of created and celestial intellect for its other support. If the phrase should come into use, Willis Lord, the Lord of Wooster University, Ohio, here Lord would be in the first place a proper name, in the second place an appellative. The first is the proper name of a personal unity ; it has been his name through all life back to his infancy, and it will be his name till his last day on earth, and will continue to be his name as long as his memory remains among the living ; but the second Lord became his appellative only a short time ago, and long after his proper name had become illustrious in his church, and it may cease to be his appellative long before his death. And this may illustrate the difference between Jehovah and Jehovah of hosts, — how the former is the proper essential Divine name, while the latter must be accepted as an appellative, and first became joined to the essential .name only as far back as yesterday morning, when the morning stars first began to sing together. It may also illustrate the trinitarian relation between the three terms Jah, Jehovah of hosts, and I-will-be-that-I-will-be. The first is God in the unlimited unchangeable past ; the second is God in the limited hastening present moment of angels and men ; the third is God in the unlimited future. The first means God in his essential and eternal 40 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER independence before he had performed one act of crea- tion ; the third means God holding the same independ- ence and essential glory in the future, even if all the celestial host should become like a lamp extinguished and laid away in darkness ; I will be that I will be, will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy ; but the second has its place between these two, very much as the present mo- ment has its place between two infinite oceans of time. And the venerable patriarchal name Jehovah contained the germ of the three names which first began to appear separated in the time of Moses.* Let Jehovah of hosts then be called one of time's names, while the other two are eternity's names ; and several other names are found affiliated with Jehovah of hosts, and belong to the same class. The God of Abra- ham is a term belonging to the same class, since there could not be the God of Abraham until Abraham was born. The Dweller between the Cherubim is another term of the same kind : it could not come into use until the mercy-seat had been furnished with the winged cher- ubim. Another term of the same kind is Jehovah-Tsid- kenu, The Lord our Righteousness, occurring in Jer. * It needs, nevertheless, to be marked here that the proper noun Wil- lis Lord has not furnished a good illustration, since it is not the root which produced the common noun lo7-d in our language; and indeed we see only a merely accidental connection between this proper and this common noun. Not such as this is the connection between Jehovah a proper noun and Jehovah the common noun, between this shem ka'elsetn and this shem toar, but these two stand in the most essential connection ; as, for example, if some one should be called the Moses Montefiore of New York, here Moses Montefiore would be made an appellative or common noun, having as its root the proper name of the distinguished English philanthropist. We leave it a question whether Jehovah the appellative was the root of the proper name or the derivative of it. But the essential and indissoluble relation between the two cannot be questioned. OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 41 xxiii. 6 as one of the names of the Messiah.* First, there must be a people appropriating the righteousness of the Lord to themselves, and then God can have the name among them, Jehovah our Righteousness, but not sooner. If we pass on to the New Testament, we find there terms of this class very numerous. The Lord Jesus is one of them. This term in its specific sense was not heard before the time of Mary the mother. Jesus Christ is another term, referring to the anointing of the Holy Ghost, which can be traced to the very time when it originated. Remember that the name Jehovah has its origin in the infinite vastness of eternity ; and hence we draw a line between it and these other terms which origi- nated at particular points in time. Jehovah of hosts is never mentioned in all the writings of Moses. It is first heard close to the time of David. Almost the first sight of the term that we have is in i Sam. iv. 4: "And the people sent to Shiloh, and brought from thence the ark of the covenant of Jehovah of hosts, the Dweller of the Cherubim." In a foregoing chapter it is recorded that the parents of Samuel brought their sacrifices regularly to Jehovah of hosts in Shiloh. The term had come into general use in the time of David. The magnificent song for the dedication of the temple contains it. "Jehovah of hosts, he is the King of glory:" this is the verse closing that song. The term is found in more than sixty places in Isaiah. It has not yet * Buxtorf, in his Lexicon Hebraicum et Chaldaicum, under the tetra- grammatic name, presents the following extract from the Jewish book, 'Ikkarim, Orat. ii. cap. 28 : mm'? ijpnx nin'> n'lB'Dn db* Jinan Nipii oa'H D'i'2 inNnp' p '7i?i ni "^y D'i:*nD ^"nry i>vyv Sx ■•ysDx — that is, The Scripture calls the name of the Messiah The Lord our Righteousness, because he is the Mediator God, and we will obtain righteousness from God at his hand, wherefore he is called by the name of the tetragram- maton. 42 THE TRIXITARIAN CHARACTER reached its growth ; it obtained a much larger growth in a later age. It overshadows the later books much more generally than it does Isaiah. The Babylonish captivity brought it into a wonderfully popular use. It is found scattered through Jeremiah in seventy-four places. It grew into still more common use after the captivity. Zechariah has it among the first words of his book, and uses it in a remarkable way to expand a single verse ; it is the third verse of the first chapter: "Therefore say thou unto them, Thus saith Jehovah of hosts : Turn ye unto me, saith Jehovah of hosts, and I will turn unto you, saith Jehovah of hosts." Zechariah has this term in fifty-three places. Haggai has it in thirteen places. Malachi has it in twenty-four places. Haggai has a larger use of the term to a hundred verses than Zecha- riah has ; and Malachi, the last prophet, gives us the term Jehovah of hosts more often in the same number of verses than even Haggai does. It blooms in its greatest beauty and strength with the last prophets. It has no such appearance as a tree that has finished its growth and is ready to wither. It has the appearance, in these last prophets, of lights thickly set along the shore at even- tide, and this is the shore of the Hebrew inspired canon. It is as the sound of many voices heard along the shore, and all uttering a cheerful and hopeful good-night. The night passes round, and the shore of the New Testament becomes visible on the other side of the river, and there the similar terms. Lord Jesus and Jesus Christ, are the morning lights scattered about as thickly as the term Jehovah of hosts on this shore ; and they are like many voices on a new shore, or rising from a new dispensation, and saying. Hail to the morning! and their good-morn- ing is in blessed harmony with the good-night that has sounded along this shore. OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 43 These Divine complex names that join the Lord with his creation, and with events in time, certainly cluster in the greatest number and .display their most brilliant and thickest galaxy over that narrow space where the last Hebrew prophets and the writers of the New Testament stand closest together, "Jehovah of hosts, he is the King of glory." So reads the last verse of the twenty-fourth Psalm ; and Aben Ezra thought that this verse had never yet seen the bril- liant day appointed for it, — namely, the day of the Messiah. The psalm was doubtless prepared originally for the dedication of Solomon's temple. The Lord was to come into the temple in the manifestations of his glory and take possession of his house. The cloud-'did pass into the holy place and fill it, so that the priests could not stand before the vision. That was the hour when the stanza was to be sung, "Lift up your heads, O ye gates ; and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? Jehovah, strong and mighty, Jehovah mighty in battle." The Lord might well be praised, as mighty in battle, within the courts and through all the duration of Solomon's temple. He had given David strength in battle. The most illustrious kings of Judah went into battle, as leaders of hosts, in the strength of the Lord. The glory of Judah in those days was connected with the battle. The next stanza is almost a repetition of this one; yet there are marked differences. "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; even lift them up, ye everlasting doors ; and the King of glory shall come in. Who is this King of glory? Jehovah of hosts, he is the King of glory. Selah." This is taken by Aben Ezra to be a stanza, not for Solomon's temple, but for the Messiah's, because in the Messiah's day the saints on earth will be 44 THE TRINITARIAN CHARACTER made like the angels, and so the Lord will then be em- phatically the Lord of hosts, even on earth. The stanza cannot have its application ^to the second temple, because the Lord never took possession of its holy of holies by a miraculous display, and the Shekinah never spoke from its holy apartment. It must, therefore, be a stanza pre- pared especially for the third temple, which the Messiah will build. War is not mentioned in this last stanza, be- cause war will cease under the Messiah, swords will be changed into plowshares and spears into pruning-hooks, and all the nations will dwell quietly in universal peace. In Solomon's temple the praise 'of the Lord as mighty in battle was appropriate, but a different praise will suit best the Messiah's temple. The great light in the temple then will be Jehovah of hosts, of angels and saints, the King of glory. The illustrious commentator appears confident that Je- hovah of hosts, the King of glory, never appeared in the second temple, and therefore a third temple will arise to restore to Israel the glory of the Shekinah. True it is that such miracles as Solomon witnessed were not con- nected with the second temple in its first days; neverthe- less, wondrous events drew the eyes of the world to the second temple in its last days. One did appear there driving out the money-changers from its courts and claiming it as his Father's house. He rode to the temple as the King of Zion, amid universal praises, and yet in the most simple humility. He gave it as his sign that the temple should be destroyed and he would raise it up in three days; and he meant the resurrection of his own body from the dead, which was a greater miracle than it would have been to raise that gorgeous temple of Herod up from ruins in three days. Greater humility never ap- peared before the eyes of men, yet he claimed to have OF THE TETRAGRAMMATON. 45 the services of the hosts of heaven at his call. In the most awful night of his sorrow he prayed that the Father would glorify him, and even that he should be glorified with the Father's own self"; and he referred to that glory which he had had with the Father before the world was. He was seen alive, and then crucified, and alive again, by many witnesses. The voice was heard at the temple, from every side, that the gates should lift up their heads, and the doors should be wide open, to receive him as the King of glory. Now be opened, ye doors of the temple, be opened wide, all ye gates of the courts, to receive him as the Lord of hosts, as having all power in heaven and on earth. But the gates and doors were not opened to him ; they all stood locked in unbelief against him. Loving and believing hearts were the only temples where the gates and doors stood open that this King of glory might enter. That temple, in locking him out, locked darkness up within itself, to become only worse and worse. It shut the day out, and shut itself up, never again to be opened to the light. It passed into shadows and into thick darkness, and all the horrors of dungeons dwelt within it. The Lord needed his temple no longer. Its lamps soon went out ; its altars ceased to send holy joy into the heart. The blood of lambs at its altar be- came the same as the blood of an unclean animal ; and what the prophet had said was verified: "he that sacrificeth a lamb, as if he cut off a dog's neck." Isa. Ixvi. 3. M. R. M. LETTER III. Worthy Correspondent : — Once, in looking through Homer's Iliad, I noticed par- ticularly that the word opisso, in Book vi., line 352, stands for the future time, though its proper meaning is "behind,^^ "backward ;^^ and this appears to prove that in classic authors both the past time and the future time are assigned* to the region of the back, though the com- mon conception is that the future lies in the front rather than at our back. It occurred to me that this might help to explain the answer of the Lord to Moses when, standing at the rock of Horeb after the worship of the golden calf, Moses prayed that he might behold the glory of the Lord. The answer was, that he could not behold the face of the Lord, for no man could behold his face and live, but he might have the sight of his back parts, and when he should be within the inclosure of the rock the Lord would pass by before him, and first the hand of the Lord should be interposed so that he should not see the face, and then it should be removed so that he might look after the Lord and behold his back parts. Since God is a spirit, it would appear that his face and his back parts ought to be found in time, rather than in space. If the great name Jehovah has the present tense in its centre, the face of God ought then to be the centre of the tetragrammaton, while the Ehyeh asher Eh- yeh, I-ttnll-be-that-I-will-be, standing on one side for the infinite future, and the Jah, standing on the other side 46 THE SON OF GOD AND THE RESURRECTION. 47 for the infinite past, maybe taken as the back parts. The hand of the Lord would lie over the name Jehovah to intercept its central radiance \ and especially would it cover and conceal that Jehovah which was new to Moses and had not been known to the patriarchs ; and in the enumeration of Divine titles which was communicated to Moses within the fissure of the rock, — " Jehovah, Jehovah, God, merciful and gracious," — the Divine hand would lie completely over this second tetragrammaton, and the profound, impenetrable mystery would be in the connec- tion of this second with the first. Or the term which came into use in later SigQ?,, Jehovah of hosts, was the per- fect face of God which the Divine hand covered so that Moses could not see it, and it is the radiant face of God which communicates all the blessedness of the present moment to all the hosts of heaven, while the Jah, which fills the past eternity before any host of heaven began to exist, belongs to the back parts of God, and the I-will-be- that-I-will-be, filling the future eternity, belongs also to the back parts. It must here occur to you as a striking coincidence that the name Jehovah is never pronounced in the syna- gogue, and no strictly orthodox Jew would venture to utter it at any time. The synagogue views it as a word wrapped in a cloud and committed to the custody of the Divine hand, as if it is too holy and mysterious ever to be pronounced, and too brilliant to be admitted, like other words, to the gaze of mortals. It is never pronounced according to its letters, but aleph daleth nun yod axe. sub- stituted {or yod he vav he, and its vowels are declared to be the vowels of another word, transferred to it. It holds neither its own letters nor its own vowels, as the voice uses it ; and, in Hebrew, the letters make the body or frame of the word, while the vowels are the soul. It was 48 THE SON OF GOD given to Moses as the name of God forever, but the syna- gogue has given another meaning to this expression, namely, that it is the name to be kept concealed, the name to be hidden always under another name, and never to be pronounced as its own letters would require. The Talmud lays down the law, in the name of Rabbi Aba Shaul, that those pronouncing the name Jehovah accord- ing to its own letters are cut off from the blessedness of the future world. Remember Rabbi Chanina, son of Theradion, and his wife, how he was condemned to be burnt on the pile, and she was to lose her life by the sword ; and what were their crimes? His crime was that he had %2a^ Jehovah and not Adonai, and his wife's fault was that she had not restrained him. Such being the teaching of the Talmud, it is no wonder that, through many long centuries, it has always been considered the most horrible wickedness to attempt to pronounce the tetra- grammaton in the synagogue, while the other names Eh- yeh asher Ehyeh and Jah, though equally holy, have their own vowels, and are pronounced according to their own letters and vowels without any hesitation. The sound of Jehovah is as completely banished from the synagogue as is the name of the Son of God ; and no synagogue will ever begin to pronounce the name Jehovah in its worship, until Jesus, as the Son of God, begins to be preached in it. These two terms have been banished to equal and opposite distances from the synagogue, one as far towards a holy heaven as the other towards an unholy sphere, and when- ever either of them comes back into the synagogue the other will certainly come with it. The New Testament has similar ideas connected with the veil which Moses placed over his face when he spoke to the people and they could not behold his beaming face. They could not look forward to that great end AND THE RESURRECTION. 49 which the separation of the Hebrews from all other nations had in view. Their worship presented before them very many beautiful and holy pictures ; but they could not look away beyond to those lines which should be left written on the face of a distant age, when all these pictures would already be taken down. They could not see that the true glory of Moses consisted in his con- nection with the Son of God who should be revealed. The apostle Paul says that the same veil still continues on their eyes when they hear the Scriptures of Moses read in the synagogues. When they truly turn to the Lord, then the veil will be removed, and they will see that the dis- pensation of the law was only a preparation for a more glorious dispensation. The veil between the eyes of the people and the face of Moses, and the Divine hand be- tween Moses and the face of the Lord, doubtless had the same meaning. The face in the centre of the tetragram- maton, that is, the face of the Son of God, could not then be clearly revealed either to the people or to Moses, The Mosaic system was a luminary in an eclipse, it was a great light with a dark cloud in its centre, and only the corona was shining : the hand of God was this dark cloud covering the centre of the tetragrammaton, concealing its face, holding back its strongest light. The Son of God is not found in the Hebrew Scriptures except with a veil over his face. It is easier to find God the Creator, and the Spirit of God, in the first chapter of Genesis, than to find the Son of God. Whatever may be the strength of our argument for the Trinity, founded on the Divine names Adonai, Jehovah, Elohitn, and Kedoshim, the veil is still left covering the centre of the Trinity; and whatever maybe the transcendent clearness of the argument of the apostle in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrews, to prove the superiority of the Son c 5 5° THE SON OF GOD of God to the angels, — which argument combines seven texts cited from the Hebrew Bible, four of them referring to the Son of God, two to the angels, and one to God the Creator, — still, the apostle himself must leave the Son of God, in all parts of the Jewish Scriptures, with the veil covering his face. Every attempt to find him there is like an attempt to look at the light above the mercy- seat and between the cherubim when the cloud from Aaron's censer had filled the holy of holies. It is like an attempt to discern an object when a cloud is between and a Divine hand has interposed. And, further, philosophy must assent to this view of the face of God and his back parts, as being the most reason- able. Our mortal eyes can gaze at the sun as it is just rising, or as it is setting, but no one can look up into the sun at noon without danger to the eyes. Moses might behold Jah as the luminary rising up from the depths of the past eternity and making all that eternity the seat of his glory, and he might behold him as holding in perfect subjection to his holy will the most distant future that ever enters man's imagination ; but to behold him as the God of the present time rather than of the distant past or the distant future — to behold him as the Lord of hosts, in whom all the hosts of the universe live and move and have their being — might be to look up directly into his face ; it might be to look up into the luminary in the zenith, above all the heads of men and angels : and this might be the vision which no mortal eyes could bear. But, with these fanciful interpretations now laid aside, I address myself to the more solid argument, namely, to prove that the New Testament has written the name Son of God in the brilliant centre of the tetragrammaton, or that Jehovah, as meaning specifically the face of God in contradistinction to his back parts, has become the Son AND THE RESURRECTION. 51 of God in the New Testament. I would show how Chris- tianity rends the holy veil of the temple from the top to the bottom, and introduces light into the cloud and dark- ness that filled the most holy chamber, and points to the precise space over the mercy-seat and between the cher- ubim, and the words written there in flashing letters. The Son of God, the King of Israel ; and then it may follow that he was declared to be the Son of God, with power, " by the resurrection from the dead." The first evidence to be adduced is found in the first chapter of John's gospel: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him ; and without him was not any- thing made that was made. In him was life ; and the life was the light of men. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth." The Word existed in eternity as being with God, and as being God; but in time he took to himself a true human body and a reasonable soul, and thus the Word became flesh to dwell among us. The eternal glory made the assumed human nature the candlestick from which it should shine. The phrase "full of grace and truth" is transcribed from the proclamation to Moses, "The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth;" and it here has the same connection with the only-begotten Son that the original phrase has with the Lord, the Lord God. Another evidence is furnished by the account of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness immediately after his baptism. That was the first of all the battles through . which Christian doctrine has passed ; and that whole battle had for its ground the name Son of God, as 52 THE SON OF GOD claimed by Jesus. It was unitarianism which then made its first furious drive against the name Son of God. If this name can only be wrapped in a cloud, then all Chris- tianity is banished from the light back into a dark cloud. Only strike the word Son of God, and you wound Chris- tianity in its head, in its most vital part, and threaten it with the most deadly wound. A doubt concerning the name Son of God is the worst shadow that ever falls on the Christian system. The mighty enemy, the old ser- pent, knew what he was doing when he tried to connect the term Son of God with some kind of doubt. That battle of the wilderness proceeded in this style : If thou be the Son of God, then let one thing be the consequence ; and again : If thou be the Son of God, things might all result in a certain way. The first thing to be gained by the attacking party was to get some kind of an if joined to the Son of God. If thou be the Son of God, the very name implies that thou hast the plenary power of miracle ; then change these stones into bread by a word, and save thyself from starvation. If thou be the Son of God, all the forces of nature are at thy command, all the hosts of heaven obey thee, and all thy life will flow onward in the channel of miracles j and hence if thou shouldst let thy- self drop from the pinnacle of the temple, thou wouldst fall in perfect safety. Look out over all the kingdoms of the world and their glory : thou claimest to be the Son of God, and consequently the heir of all things; but accept me as thy patron, and all shall be made over to thee in a moment. The whole passage has this merit, that it demonstrates what meaning the term Son of God carried from the be- ginning: it meant the supreme Worker of miracles, the Lord of the celestial hosts, and it has already been proved that the appellative meaning of Jehovah is precisely the AND THE RESURRECTION. 53 same. It was this meaning of the name, Son of God, that caused it to be so intensely hated and feared from the beginning. Another evidence lies in the defense of Jesus when he was blamed for a miracle on the sabbath. "Jesus an- swered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work." (John V. 17.) Jesus claimed the present seventh day as his own time, and wrought miracles with the same free- dom which the Father had in constructing the world. The Jews were enraged not only because he had broken the sabbath, but because he had called God his Father, making himself equal to God. This same point is proved by that remarkable saying of Jesus recorded in John viii. 58: "Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you. Before Abraham was, I am." Jesus thus enshrined himself in that present tense which forms the centre of the adorable tetragrammaton. The New Testament having thus seated Jesus as the Son of God in the brilliant centre of the tetragram- maton, — that centre which was covered by the hand of the Lord before the eyes of Moses, so that he could not see it, but which poured its light through the hand, and consequently the hand itself eventually became luminous and ceased to be intercepting, — a question arises, What has the term Son of God, in this high dignity, done for the world ? has it sent forth a celestial light among all nations ? Let a moment be given for the answer of the question. It has caused thrones of tyranny everywhere to tremble, and banished idolatry and polytheism from the face of the earth, as the shades of the night flee be- fore the rising sun. The gorgeous temples of idolatry throughout the mighty Roman empire fled before it, the altars of Jupiter and Minerva ceased to smoke, the heathen oracles passed into ? ilence. It aroused all the 5* 54 THE SON OF GOD opposition of mighty Rome, and endured centuries of the most bloody persecution ; but early in the fourth century it triumphed, and saw at its feet the most colossal and mighty system of idolatry on the earth. All the wisdom of Greek philosophers, all the magic of Greek poetry, and all the strength of Rome could not preserve a single god or a single goddess of the old system as a living deity. The Jews themselves at the present time hardly have any life better than a dog's life in those countries where this name is not known, or where it is nearly the same as a name unknown, — that is, not understood as the apostles understood it. It has gone among the people of an island shrouded in the darkest clouds of heathenism, oppressed by their invisi- ble horrible demons, and by their bloody tyrants in the shape of men, and has taught them the most sublime and useful lessons in religion and human rights, and raised them to the position of a light for all the world, and placed among them a press issuing more printed Hebrew Bibles in one year than all the Bibles of Palestine during any thousand years while the Hebrews occupied that land as their home. If this new name, Son of God, holds the centre of the Godhead without any right to that place, then here is idolatry destroying itself, Jupiter slaying Jupiter, Satan casting out Satan, the empire of idolatry divided against itself; and such a kingdom can- not stand. This itself proves, as Jesus said, that the kingdom of God has indeed come to you. But the infallible sign confirming the right of Jesus to be placed as the Son of God in the centre of the Trinity, or, which is the same thing, in the brilliant centre of the tetragrammaton where God has his face, was best given by Jesus himself at the first passovcr of his public min- istry, when the Jews demanded his right to enter the AND THE RESURRECTION. 55 temple and claim it as his Father's house and drive out the money-changers. His answer was, " Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." (John ii. 19.) The truth of all the distinctive and essential prin- ciples of Christianity depends on the resurrection of Jesus : if he did arise, all is proved to be true ; if he did not appear alive after his passion, all is a tissue of the worst and most stupid falsehoods. The disciples tell of more than seven times when he appeared, and the reality of his appearance could not be doubted. He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, the Sunday morning after his crucifixion, when another woman was on the same ground and not far from her ; he appeared to ten disciples to- gether, and at another time to the eleven, and a third time to the eleven at Jerusalem ; he appeared to seven of them at the Sea of Tiberias, and at another time to five hundred brethren in Galilee. He walked with them, sat with them, ate with them, conversed with them, and offered his person to their touch and closest inspection. The Talmud mentions his crucifixion at the passover, and the accusation against him ; but I suppose that we have no report from the Jews concerning his resurrection except that which Matthew furnishes, that they bribed the soldiers who had had his body in custody through the night, to say that his disciples came by night and stole him away while they were asleep, and that they suc- ceeded in making this story current among themselves. All this story of the women and the disciples must have been told publicly and universally, to friends and enemies, within the fifty days between the crucifixion and the pentecost. It was such a story that it had to be told at the very time, or it never could have gained any credit. If it had been first mentioned as late as the day of pentecost, the universal answer would have been that 56 THE SON OF GOD if it were true it would certainly have been heard many days before ; and every day later than this pentecost only gave a stupendous increase to the difficulty of gaining any credit for the story if it had not been current at an earlier date. The rabbis who lived while the apostles were still alive have given us in the Talmud the desig- nation of the first day of the week as "the day of the Nazarene;" and this indicates that wherever a Nazarene became known the story of the resurrection on the first day of the week accompanied him. There was no fact more universally received among Christians from the beginning, as being true beyond all question, than the resurrection on the third day. There was no- event more publicly proclaimed or exhibited in a stronger light of supreme importance. After the third day from the cru- cifixion no one could pretend to be a believer in Jesus who did not admit the truth of the resurrection. If the story was not true, the disciples have not the excuse of enthu- siasm, but they must have been willful liars of the most depraved character. It is very true that a crazy imagi- nation may conjure up the most exciting marvels in rela- tion to ghosts and communications from departed spirits by means of sounds and moving tables and in other ways; but all such marvels leave the old body undisturbed in the grave. Or if it is asserted that the body has risen alive, and search is made and the grave is found empty, then either this is a real resurrection, or there is some most flagrant dishonesty, some strange foul play, in the matter. A crazy enthusiasm has never been known to make graves really empty. If the disciples reported that they found in the sepulchre the linen clothes, and the napkin wrapped up and laid away from them by itself, and that his body was seen, the same day, alive, when the truth was that they had taken his body out and left the clothes, the AND THE RESURRECTION. 57 dishonesty and barbarity of their character sink to the most contemptible grade. There was the most extreme stupidity connected with this dishonesty. Nothing can be more stupid than to suppose that they could use that wounded and decaying body to make a respectable name for themselves in the world. The Pharisees and Jews who crucified him can, on this supposition of fraud, be easily proved to be as much implicated in the fraud as were the disciples. They had it in their power to expose the fraud. They could have produced the lifeless body, could have laid it before the eyes of witnesses, and this would have instantly brought the story of the resurrec- tion to silence and shame. It was on the second or third morning of the passover feast that the resurrection should have occurred ; the full moon had been shining all night ; the city was crowded with strangers, and doubtless per- sons were walking every street at all hours in the night ; and if the friends did get the body from the sepulchre that night without being seen, the poor Galilean disciples had no home in or near the city where they could have lodged the body so that the Jews could not find it, and they had no grave where they could bury it and their work escape notice. They had no place, either under the ground or above the ground, to which the Jews could not easily have tracked the body. And if they had had all the knowledge of chemistry which Massachusetts now possesses, they could not have made the body disappear in flames and smoke and escape the eyes of the Jews. If the resurrection was not a reality, the body could have been found, and the Jews ought to have produced it ; and by neglecting this matter they stand equally guilty with the disciples in the greatest fraud that has ever gone forth in the world from apostates and liars. The argument here is that the resurrection must be true, because, if it is 58 THE SON OF GOD not, no men ever were more contemptible and willful deceivers than the disciples, and the Jews are equally responsible for the success of the fraud. If Jesus arose from the dead, the accusation of blasphemy on which he was crucified is proved to be false. This resurrection proves that he had the right to call himself the Son of God, and that he had the right to say that he had the power to lay down his life and the power to take it again, and the right to say, " No man taketh it from me ; but I lay it down of myself." Some scholars attach no particular value to miracles as a confirmation of the truth : they argue that if a thing is true it needs no miracle to prove it true, and if it is not true the most stupendous miracles bring it no help. But here one most glorious fact is strangely overlooked, namely, that, through all the universe, omnipotence and holy truth stand together in close sympathy. Omnipo- tence gives its hand to the truth, but it never gives its hand to help a lie. The lie may indeed have a wonder- ful power at its command to help it on, but this is always a limited power, and omnipotence is never found on its side. Omnipotence always goes with the truth, and never be- trays it, because it is sacredly and eternally wedded, both in heart and in law, to the truth. If Jesus, after his cru- cifixion and the wound in his side by the spear which pierced to his heart, was alive on the third day with the wound perfectly healed, omnipotence restored his life, and no power short of omnipotence could have done it ; and thus omnipotence placed the seal of its own appro- bation on his declaration that he was the Son of God for which he died. Here let one other argument be added, especially for you, my worthy correspondent, as a living teacher in Israel. The miracles of your own Bible are not believed AND THE RESURRECTION. 59 by the prominent rabbis in America ; they are even openly rejected, and are surely doomed to death, except as the resurrection of Jesus furnishes a hope that they may again come to life among your people and bloom in power and beauty as they once did. When the orthodox doctrine concerning miracles dies out from your people, it still continues to bloom in the Christian church by virtue of the power of the resurrection of Jesus ; and your rabbis who now avowedly reject miracles cannot be expected ever to come back to the orthodox faith except on that path which the women traveled to the sepulchre when they found that the body was not there and learned that Jesus was alive. When you deny the reality of miracles, you may as well call the whole Bible a book of heathenism. If there was no miracle on that day when the decalogue was given at Mount Sinai, if the thunder and fire, and the trem- bling of the mountain, and the distinct voice which uttered the commandments, and the engraving of the command- ments on two tables of stone, were all without any mira- cle, then the whole account has precisely the same kind of truth in it that is in Homer's story of the descent of Jupiter in his chariot to Mount Ida, where he diffused a dense vapor all around him, and sent his lightnings flash- ing in the face of the Greek warriors, and held up at noon the golden scales with the lot of death for the Tro- jans at one end and the lot of death for the Greeks at the other end, and the Greek lot sat heavy on the ground, while the Trojan lot mounted to high heaven. Your own Bible must see its miracles placed in the same category with mythological stories, it must become a heathen book in your hands, unless you become a people converted to the faith in the resurrection of Jesus. M. R. M. LETTER IV. Distinguished Hebraist : — I come now to lay before you my argument founded on another Divine name in the Shcmah Yisrael, the name Elohim ; and I must now look at the text in a new light, thus: "Hear, O Israel; Jehovah, our EioJiim, is one Jehovah." This word is properly of the plural number, as if it ought to be translated our Sovereigns ; its principal idea is that of power or supreme control. The two Divine names of the Shemah Yisrael are inscribed at the head of the ten commandments. To bring the original words out so as to be more clearly seen, we must read thus : "I am Jehovah thy Elohim, who have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage;" and in the next verse the same word is clearly of the plural num- ber : "Thou shalt have no other Elohim before me." All the people were familiar with the word in its plural meaning, as is evident from their language in the adora- tion of the golden calf. They said, "These are thy Elohim, O Israel, who have brought thee up from the land of Egypt." (Ex. xxxii. 4.) If it be suggested that in the phrase other Elohim it is the adjective ofher, being of the plural number, and agreeing with it, that proves it plural, and in this last verse it is the plural verb have brought zxifS. the plural pronoun these, both agreeing with it, that prove its real plurality, it is a truthful answer that precisely the same argument can be adduced to prove the 60 THE PLURALITY OF ELOHIM. 6 1 real plurality of the holy name ; because, though hi almost all instances the adjectives and verbs agreeing with Elo- him, when it means the living and true God, are of the singular number, yet in some instances this holy name has its adjective in the plural number and its verb in the plural number. If the following texts are examined in the original, — Gen. xx. 13, Josh. xxiv. 19, Deut. v. 26, Jer. X. 10, Jer. xxiii. 36, 2 Sam. vii. 23, the phrases will be found, — " Elohim caused ?ne to wander from my father's house," — "holy Elohim,'" — " the living Elohwi,^^ — "the words of the living Elohim, the Lord of hosts," — "Israel whom Elohim went to redeem for a people to himself," — in each of which there is either a verb or an adjective of the plural number agreeing with Elohim. This is a good indication that the word must not be in- terpreted as divested of all plurality when it stands for the one true God. The word in the singular number is Eloah, this word Elohim being its plural. This Eloah occurs forty-one times in the book of Job. This book evidently unfolds to us the rich treasures of the patriarchal theology, a theology earlier than that of Moses by several centuries. It contains sublime allusions to the flood, but no allusion to the redemption from Egypt, or any event belonging to the life of Moses, or any later event. The length of the life of Job was such as existed in the time of Jacob ; but men did not live so long in the time of Moses. It is consequently proved that the Divine name Eloah was in very common use among the patriarchs in the time of Job, and it came down to Moses invested with an august and most sacred antiquity. But, with all its recom- mendations, he was very careful how he touched it. He laid it aside, and took the plural word Elohi^n, and com- menced his account of creation with this word, and 6 62 THE PLURALITY wrote it down thirty-two times in the first chapter of Genesis. He wrote that most sacred patriarchal word Eloah only twice in all his five books, and these two times belong to one chapter, namely, the thirty-second chapter of Deuteronomy : the word occurs twice in the sublime song of Moses contained in that chapter. Moses acted towards that word like a man going out to sea, who loves an old friend buried on the shore, and takes two pictures of his friend to beautify the side of the ship and keep the old friend in remembrance. So Moses placed the ancient and sacred Eloah in two places in that sub- lime poetry, to be a remembrancer of a holy antiquity; but he did not allow it to have any other place. This indicates how far it was from his mind to build up a uni- tarian system, because if this had been his object \\\q Eloah was vastly the preferable word. All later writers accepted the hint from Moses, to keep the good unitarian word out of use; since, according to Buxtorf's Concordance, the word occurs in all the Bible only sixteen times, outside of Job, in which it occurs considerably more than twice as often as it appears in all the other books of the Bible. Cognate to this Eloah is the Divine name El, likewise of the singular number, and equally expressive of the unity of God. It occupied the first place among the patriarchs ; it stood in front of all holy names. In the year before the birth of Isaac, God appeared to Abraham and said to him, "I am El Shaddai [God Almighty]; walk before me, and be thou perfect." (Gen. xvii. i.) The heathen soothsayer Balaam placed it in the front of holy names, and used it eight times in his four brief poet- ical deliverances. Job likewise sets it in the front, and in many of his verses it occurs in the first line, and the second distich has Shaddai [Almighty] corresponding to it. An example occurs in Job xxxv. 13 : OF ELOHIM. d^ " Surely El will not hear vanity, Neither will Shaddai regard it." It is eminently the holy name throughout the body of the book of Job. Moses dislodged it from its supreme place in patriarchal theology, and filled its place with the doubly trinitarian tetragrammaton, while Elohim, of the plural number and indicative of the plurality of the Deity, was made the substitute for Shaddai, He dis- lodged it from the zenith, and assigned to it a subordi- nate position not very far from the horizon : as in the decalogue, where it is written some distance below the trinitarian terms at the head, and comes in as the noun with which the adjective jealous agrees, giving us the ex- pression a jealous El; and as in the revelation to Moses in connection with the second tables of the law, where the tetragrammaton is written twice at the head, and El follows as the noun to which the adjectives are joined : '■^ El, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, abundant in goodness and truth." In the tenth chapter of Deuter- onomy there again appears to be this same difficulty in connecting adjectives directly with the tetragrammaton or with plural Divine names ; hence, after the words "For the Lord your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords," when the adjectives "great," "mighty," and "terrible " must be used, the word ^/ comes in, that they may be joined to it ; and to make the original plu- rality of the words before it visible in the English lan- guage, we must read, " For Jehovah your Elohim, he is Gods of gods and Lords of lords." And so when the unity of God comes forth in the most distinct and pecu- liar emphasis, when it shines out in its most distinctive lustre, when it presents its sharpest antagonism to all polytheism, the plural names are still preferred to those of the singular number, and where an English ear hears, 64 THE PLURALITY " O give thanks unto the God of gods ; for his mercy endureth forever. O give thanks to the Lord of lords ; for his mercy endureth forever," the Hebrew ear receives the words Elohe Haelohim, Adone Haadonim, every one of them of the plural number, and requiring, as an exact translation, Gods of gods and Lords of lords. See Ps. cxxxvi. 2, 3. Another patriarchal name, intensely of the singular number and inflexibly repugnant to all plurality, strongly expressive of the unity of the Deity, is Shaddai, the origi- nal of the English word Almighty. It occurs thirty-one times in Job. The oracles of the heathen soothsayer Baalam contain it in two places. The good woman Naomi brought it with her back into Israel after she had lived many years among the heathen, and uttered it twice. Moses left it entirely beyond and below the hori- zon of his theology ; he could not permit it to occur even once in his laws, or his prophecies, or his poetry, or any part of the Bible which was properly his own fresh and free composition. He permits it to occur six times in Genesis as a most holy name with the patriarchs Abra- ham, Isaac, and Jacob. He writes it twice as a word spoken by Balaam. He writes it once as a word belong- ing to a communication from the Lord, in Ex. vi. 3 : "And I appeared," says the Lord, "unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name oi El Shaddai ; but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them." In vain you search for this word in any other verse of the pentateuch. The best of all holy names for the building up of a unitarian system of theology was this name Shad- dai ; and if a complex term is preferable, the most ap- propriate of all for unitarian theology is El Shaddai. But, though this complex term came to Moses invested with the highest sacredness, as used by Abraham and OF ELOHIM. 65 Isaac and Jacob, and placed by Job in the brilliant front of all holy names, he would not touch it ; he would not see it written even once in all the heavens and earth of the proper Mosaic theology. It continued always, after the time of Moses, to be a word almost banished out of use ; and I may here raise the question whether it occurs more than twice in all the book of Psalms. These graphic facts prove that Moses never intended to furnish Israel with a system of unitarian theology. The best Divine names for the teaching of Unitarianism he banished almost completely from his school and books, and took in their place names of unquestionable plurality, such as Elohim, Adonai, and Adoniin, words which Uni- tarians cannot consistently use, and which they never pretend to use, except figuratively, or as plurals of majesty, or out of politeness to the multitude of heathen idols. It is infinite injustice to Moses to say that he wished to furnish his nation with the sentence, "Hear, O Israel: Shaddai our El is one Shaddai," as their Divine motto and watchword. What he wished was to banish the patri- archal name Shaddai completely out of sight from the whole sphere of the distinctive Mosaic system ; and he had his wish. Yet this outrageous injustice is precisely what all the synagogues of the world are now doing to Moses by their Unitarianism ; inasmuch as they admit no Trini- tarianism and no real plurality in the Adonai and the Elohim, and make them really of the singular number, as Shaddai is, and interpret them as being of the same im- port. There was no old-fogyism with Moses. He did not make it the study of his life to be able to tell what Rabbi Jacob said in the name of Rabbi Isaac, what Rabbi Isaac said in the name of Rabbi Abraham, or what Rabbi Terah 6* 66 THE PLURALITY said in the name of Rabbi Noah : his aim was to furnish those new sayings which should be the life of the future, and give light and joy to the millions who should arrive on the shore of being ages after he had fallen asleep in death. It was not his aim to have his name glow in the shadow of some ancient patriarch, but he sent his name forward to the distant future ages. He was progressive in the highest sense of the term. It is a most significant fact that the God who sent him back to Egypt gave as his name I-will-be-tJiat-I-will-be ; he was the God of future ages, and Moses was to become the man of the future. When he started out on the sea, he left the shores of patriarchal theology behind him, having the new name of Jehovah, which had not been known to the patriarchs, at the head of the mast, to guide him ; and he boldly went out on the vast ocean to find a new world and higher Elysian fields of theology directly under the sun, which the patriarchs had died without seeing. This ship was constructed only for the voyage ; it was not to be either the house or the temple on the new Elysian fields. The altar sprinkled with blood was not to last always. Lambs and goats were not always to feed the fire on the altar. The worship by bloody sacrifices was an excellent institution for certain ages, but the world was to outgrow the need of such a worship. The man who prays that the altar and bloody sacrifices may be restored to Jerusalem certainly does not understand where the world now is or how it has been moving. Far in the distance, on that ocean of the future, was the little isle of Patmos. We find on this isle the prophet John, the Revelator, who wrote the last book of the New Testament. Moses is the other great prophet, who wrote the first book of the Bible. Let us see if this first pro- phet and this last prophet can here meet and speak in OF ELOHIM. 67 harmony. The first sounds that are heard on Patmos are, "Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come." This is the tetra- grammaton itself unfolded according to the abstract Trinity which lodges in it. This is the ineffable name translated into Greek, that name most holy, even holy, holy, holy, which was inscribed as the highest name on the flag which Moses unfurled. What sound comes next? "And from the seven Spirits which are before his throne." The seven Spirits are the round, full- orbed, complete name for the one Spirit of God, the Holy Ghost. They are, as the Hebrew prophet Zecha- riah says, the seven eyes of the Lord which run to and fro through the whole earth. They are the seven lamps burning before the eternal throne. They are that spirit of the Lord which Isaiah says should rest upon the Son of David ; and this prophet pictures them as being the holy candlestick with seven burners : first, at the top of the main shaft, and as the centre of all and above all, is the spirit of the Lord ; and then, a little lower, on the right side and the left, are the two lamps the "spirit of wisdom and understanding ;" these count three : then, a little lower and a little farther off, on the same sides, the two lamps the "spirit of counsel and might;" these count five : then, still lower and still farther off, on the same sides, the two lamps the "spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord ; ' ' and these fill up the number of seven. We have supposed that the Divine name I-will-be- that-I-will'be means especially this same Spirit, or the seven eyes of the Lord which penetrate all the infinite future. If this is correct, these seven Spirits unfold the distinct mys- tery at the beginning of the tetragrammaton. The words that next follow are these: "And from Jesus Christ, wlio is the faithful witness, and the first-begotten of the dead, 68 THE PLURALITY and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father." His Father ! This appears to mean God of the past eternity, God before all ; and if so, it is the Jah at the other extremity of the tetragrammaton. And so, with the seven Spirits of God at one end, and the Eternal Father at the other end, let us now scrutinize all that lies between, and give particular attention to the interjacent central Person, inasmuch as the space that he fills here appears to be the centre of the tetragrammaton. He is " Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness." Just as the present day gives us the voice of all the past, and truthfully represents the past, so Jesus as the faithful wit- ness is the voice from eternity, the voice of eternal wis- dom, counsel, and love. He is "the first-begotten of the dead." Not strictly the first-begotten of the dead in the chronological sense, because some had awaked from the dead previously to his resurrection ; but the first-begotten of the dead in the sense of supreme dignity. He is the first-begotten very much as Joseph became the first-born of Jacob though he was not his father's eldest son. He is like another Joseph cast out from his brethren ; "he came unto his own, and his own received him not ;" and the words which Jacob addressed to Joseph as his first-born are very applicable to this first-begotten : " The archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him : but his bow abode in strength, and the arms of his hands were made strong by the hands of the mighty God of Jacob." O ye people of Israel ! when you read the word of the Lord by the prophet Zechariah, " I will pour upon the house of David, and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem, the spirit of grace and of supplications; and they shall look upon me whom OF ELOHIM. 69 they have pierced, and they shall mourn for him, as one mourneth for his only son," and your rabbis tell you that this predicts the death of the Messiah, the son of Joseph, who will fall in battle, will you not turn your thoughts to this other son of Joseph whose hands and side were pierced? He has been hated, so that the Tal- mud tells how he has been reported to be in hell, suffer- ing from the heat there, with the most horrible filth seething all around him ; but hear his title at Patmos, ^^ the first-begotten of the dead,^' the highest one among all that have been made alive from sin unto God and triumphed over the penalty of sin which is found in death and the grave. He is ."the prince of the kings of the earth." He is not only the first-begotten in the great world of the righteous and blessed dead, but he is the prince of living kings on earth. He is supreme among all who have been raised to life from a moral death, and he is supreme in all that living world which traces its origin back to the agitated chaos at the beginning of our creation. "Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood." Here comes the live coal from off the Divine altar, and it touches the lips of the prophet John, as it once touched the lips of Isaiah. Neither of these prophets can speak except as there is the altar to send its coal to his lips and as there is the vision of atoning blood at the altar. John beholds the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. The remission of sins is still by the shedding of blood. Everything looks as if Moses has come to meet John here on Patmos and rejoice in this cleaier revelation of the triune God. As straight as ever a ship cuts a path from New York to Liverpool, Moses started for this point, and moved steadily through all the storms on the sea of 70 THE PLURALITY OF ELOHIM. fifteen hundred years, for this harbor of Patmos. His- back turned to the patriarchal shore indicates this. His back turned to the best terms expressive of the unity of God, as Eloah and El and Shaddai and El Shaddai, in- dicates this. The transcendently trinitarian tetragram- maton, floating in the wind over his ship at the highest point of the mast, indicates this. His marked choice of the Divine names of unquestionable plurality indicates this. But Unitarianism would turn his ship right around, and send it back into the old patriarchal harbor whence it started. M. R. M. Note. — The patriarch Melchizedek appears to have preferred the Divine name El to all others. "And Melchizedek king of Salem brought forth bread and wine ; and he was the priest of El most high. And he blessed him, and said, Blessed be Abram of El most high, pos- sessor of heaven and earth: and blessed be El most high, who hath de- livered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all." Gen. xiv. 18-20. LETTER V. My learned Correspondent: — Each of the Divine names which have been examined diffuses a peculiar light through all the great text of the Unity, the Shetnah Yisrael. Let each name be taken by itself, as follows : First, the name Adonai. Hear, O Israel : The three persons that appeared to Abraham the day before the overthrow of Sodom were his holy Adonai: they, as being Jehovah, conversed with him ; and this most holy name does not appear to have belonged to any one of them more than to the other two ; they appear equal in wisdom, power, and glory, in the dignity of their name, the effulgence of mercy, and the blaze of vengeance ; they appear insepa- rable, as seems to be indicated by the verse, "And Jehovah rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brim- stone and fire from Jehovah out of heaven" (Gen, xix. 24) ; as if the one who had conversed with Abraham, and had not manifested himself to Lot, and was in the invisi- bility of the heavenly state when Sodom was overthrown, is to be considered as having been present and co-operat- ing with the other two who bore the same name, Jehovah, and who visibly led Lot out from the city and brought the fire on the place. Yet know that all this does not mean tritheism in any sense: the Divine essence is one. Secondly, the tetragrammaton. 71 72 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH Hear, O Israel : He who is Jehovah, in whom all the past eternity and all the future has its existence, and in whom lives the transient present moment, — even that never-dying present moment in which all created beings have the whole of their consciousness, — He, neverthe- less, has all the infinite past and all the infinite future together as being only one moment with him, — as being his present moment, one, indivisible, and unchangeable. Hear, O Israel : Consider and understand that, though the great name Jehovah did first, in the presence of Moses, that greatest prophet who knew God face to face, myste- riously develop itself into three distinct Divine names, namely, the Jah referring to the past, and the Ehyeh asher Ehyeh referring to the future, and the interjacent Jehovah which was not known to Abraham, that is, not known precisely in this peculiar form, and though these three names are equally Divine, perfect, and glorious, equally incomprehensible and incapable of being ever transferred to any being of the whole creation, and impossible to be substituted one for another, — yet the unity of Jehovah, as held by the patriarchs, remains, and these three are essentially one. Thirdly, the name E/ohwi. Hear, O Israel : The names Elohim and Adonim, of the plural number, with many others of the plural number in the Hebrew tongue, were clearly preferred as names for God by Moses and the prophets who followed, and they rose to be great lights in the heavens of Judaism, while the venerable names El and Eloah and Shaddai, of the singular number and the patriarchal age, descended close to the horizon and almost fell beneath it ; but these holy names of the patriarchal time are radiant with the most essential truth, and the luminous monotheism so beautifully expressed by them must ever be maintained ; AS MOUAMMEDAN. 73 and he who is Elohitn the plurality is also El the unity; he who is Adoniin the plurality is also Shaddai, the One, the Almighty, the Unity. It may be a plurality of forms of being or of centres of internal relations, but it is a unity of inner being, a unity of uncreated life and unde- rived omnipotence and moral perfection and boundless love. Such is the trinitarian interpretation of the great text the Shemah Yisrael : and here the two interpretations, the unitarian and the trinitarian, ought to be carefully ex- amined, and their differences clearly marked. Unita- rianism interprets this text as the stamp of unity upon unity, while Trinitarianism interprets it as the stamp of unity on diversity or plurality. The unitarian interpre- tation is fairly illustrated by such a watchword as the following among Americans : Hear, O Americans ! George Washington, our first President, was one George Washing- ton. Learned Jews have perceived the great difficulty, the flat and bald tautology, in this interpretation ; and Aben Ezra suggested two modes of relief. One was to make Elohitn the principal predicate, — Hear, O Israel : Jehovah is our God, Jehovah is one ; the other was to give the two tetragrammatons different meanings, making one the proper name and the other the appellative, as if one should read. Hear, O Israel : Jehovah our God is the one Universe-Sustainer. It must be admitted that such a motto containing the name of Washington might be useful to Americans ; it must also be admitted that the text before us expresses a great truth even as Unitarians interpret it ; and this would probably be the only possible interpretation if the text were found only in the Greek language or in the English, because in these languages Elohim as a Divine name never appears as plural, and the trinitarian character of the word Jehovah cannot be D 7 74 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH exhibited in a translation. The trinitarian interpreta- tion may be illustrated by the American motto, E pluri- bus tinum. One argument in favor of it is that it gives the text a compass and sublimity beyond any other inter- pretation. The Unitarian finds in this text a surrounding wall of defense for the eternal Godhead against the false gods of man's creation ; the Trinitarian beholds it as an exhibition of glorious truths and mysteries which have their place within the Godhead. The Unitarian holds the chief value of this text to be extrinsic; the Trinitarian holds it to be intrinsic. The Unitarian holds it as a text in polemic theology; the Trinitarian holds it as a text in didactic theology. The Unitarian uses it to fight against the idols on earth; the Trinitarian views it as the glass through which he will gaze at the refulgent mysteries of the Divine nature in the never-ending peace and joy of heaven. The Trinitarian interpretation is the more sub- lime ; and this is a good evidence that it is the true interpretation. We now drop these single words on which we have dwelt so long, and pass into wide religious spheres, to find out the true dwelling-place of Unitarianism. First, Unitarianism as opposed to Trinitarianism has no home in genuine Christianity. There was a Trinity at the baptism of Jesus, the Father by a voice from heaven acknowledging his beloved Son, the Son walking up from the water, the Holy Ghost descending in the form of a dove ; and there is the Trinity in that baptism which Jesus left to be administered by his disciples among all nations; and any public life or any theological system which thus commences and finishes with the Trinity must itself be essentially trinitarian through all its length and breadth. Two such gates never stand at the opposite sides of a unitarian city as those that stand one at the AS MOHAMMEDAN. 75 beginning and the other at the close of the public life of the Son of man. It will require more time to go from gate to gate through that holy Judaism that commenced with Moses fifteen hundred years before Christianity and flourished through so many centuries. One of the first prophets on whom the eye of the Christian falls, as he looks from his own system back into Judaism, is the late prophet Zecha- riah; and Zechariah may first be interrogated whether his Judaism was essentially unitarian. His answer is prompt. Three things must be observed near the begin- ning of his prophecies. First, the Lord speaks towards the close of the third chapter, who will bring forth his servant the Branch: the Lord bringing forth this Branch is one person. Secondly, the Branch himself is still another person, and appears to be the same with the mysterious stone in which the Lord will carve the seven eyes which are the seven "eyes of the Lord which run to and fro through the whole earth."* The same Branch is found * Aben Ezra decides that the Branch in this third chapter of Zechariah is Zerubbabel ; but lie adds, " Many expositors say tliat this Branch is the Messiah, who is called Zerubbabel because he will be of his seed, as it is also said, ' And David my servant will be a prince over them forever.' " The Targum gives the paraphrase, iSjnn NiT'tt'D njj? H'' iniD njx xn " See, I bring forth my servant the Messiah who shall be revealed." Jonathan ben Uzziel calls the Branch of the Lord, in the fourth chapter of Isaiah, " the Messiah of the Lord." As to the point whether this stone mentioned immediately afterwards means the same person with the Branch, when I read how seven eyes are set on this stone, and the Lord declares that he himself will carve them on it, and these seven are afterwards explained, " They are the eyes of the Lord which run to and fro through the whole earth," and I reflect that the eyes are the peculiar windows through which the soul itself is seen in its sharpest emotions ; — when I follow on into the New Testa- ment, and find the expressions concerning Jesus, " These things saith he that hath tlie seven Spirits of God," — " In the midst of the elders stood a 76 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH away back in Isaiah: "In that day shall the Branch of Jehovah be beautiful and glorious" (iv. 2); the same Lamb as it had been slain, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth," I cannot doubt that the stone engraved with seven eyes reappears in the New Testament as being the Messiah. The stone is found in Isaiah xxviii. i6 : " There- fore thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious comer-stone, a sure foundation : he that believeth shall not make haste ;" — on which verse Rashi, the prince of rabbinical commentators, has this comment: " Behold, I am he who has laid already in Zion the stone — already is the decree fixed before me, and I have established the King the Messiah, who shall be in Zion for a stone of proof, meaning citadel and strength, as in the phrases, ' The forts and towers shall be for dens," ' They set up the towers thereof.'" Add to this the authority of the Talmud. " Even the Babylonish Talmud, Tract. Sanhedrin, fol. 38, i, and the book Sohar," says Tholuck on the last verse of the ninth chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, " interpret this passage of the Mcssias (see Schotlgen, Horas Talm., t. ii. pp. 170, 290, 607)." It is so interpreted repeatedly and most explicitly in the New Testament. The stone in the dream of Nebuchadnezzar was cut out without hands, and it broke in pieces the earlier mon- archies and became a great mountain and filled the whole earth ; and no one will doubt that this stone is the Messiah. The stone, in the eighth chapter of Isaiah, is described as being the Lord, first a sanc- tuary, then a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense to both ihe houses of Israel : "and many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken;" and the aged Rabbi Simeon, as he held the child Jesus in his arms and spoke the words, " Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel ; and for a sign that shall be spoken against," doubtless referred to this passage in Isaiah. These are a few facts to illustrate how ancient scholars of the highest authority, both Jews and Christians, agree in finding the Messiah under the title of the stone. They agree, too, that Zerubbabel and Joshua the priest were men to be wondered at, men of marvelous character, as prefiguring the Branch whom the Lord would bring forth before the people. It is true that the modern rabbis do not admit the Messianic character of many passages which the ancient rabbis interpreted in this light ; but this does not impair the value of the ancient Jewish interpretations when they harmonize with the Clu^istian. AS MOHAMMEDAN. 77 stone,' too, is found in Isaiah to be the Lord of hosts, both a sanctuary and a stone of stumbling, a rock of offense, to both the houses of Israel (viii. 13, 14); and the same stone reappears long afterwards, — five hundred years afterwards, — in the last book of the New Testament, as the Lamb that has been slain, "having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven Spirits of God sent forth into all the earth," the strength of the stone being here indicated by the seven horns, and its omniscience by the seven eyes. And, thirdly, the Spirit of the Lord is still another person as he is found in the fourth chapter: " This is the word of the Lord unto Zerubbabel, saying, Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, saith the Lord of hosts." These three points have only to be reviewed closely to identify in them the Chris- tian Trinity. The earlier prophet Ezekiel has his three memorable chapters commencing with his vision in the valley of dry bones, and there he likewise presents the same three points. First, he has the Lord himself, who brings him out in the spirit into the valley of the dead, and unfolds to him the future ; secondly, he has David, the Lord's servant, who will be one Shepherd over all the tribes of Israel and will be king over them forever; — yes, the Jews well said to Jesus, as they looked back to this prophecy, that the Messiah abideth forever; and, thirdly, he has the Holy Ghost at the close of these illus- trious visions of prosperity and vengeance, in this verse, *' Neither will I hide my face any more from them ; for I have poured out my spirit upon the house of Israel, saith the Lord God" (Ezek. xxxix. 29); and these three of Ezekiel are none other than the three of the Christian Trinity. Isaiah, at a still earlier period, and when the throne of David had its golden age, brought forward the same three very clearly. First, here are the illustrious 78 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH verses to which Jesus himself invited particular attention : "The Spirit oi Adonai Jehovah is upon me; because the Lord hath anointed me to preach good tidings unto the meek ; he hath sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound." An earlier prophecy was in these words: "And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." No one needs to inquire here. Where is God, the fountain of every blessing, in these verses? or, Where is the Son of David ? or. Where is the Holy Ghost? There may be concentrations of peculiar light in the Trinity of the New Testament which are not found in these passages, just as powerful rays are now found in the spectrum which were never perceived by Sir Isaac Newton ; but the spectrum is the same now that it was in his day; and it is the same Trinity of Zechariah, Ezekiel, and Isaiah that reappears in the powerful light of the New Testament. The blessing which the priests were appointed to pro- nounce consists of three parts, and contains distinctly the three ideas of God, as the fountain of all blessing, the effulgence of all blessing, and the effectual applica- tion of the blessing to the inner life of the man. "The Lord bless thee and keep thee," points to the fountain of all blessing in God, and to his choice of a people to be brought near himself and to live forever in his presence, and corresponds to " the love of God" in the Christian benediction. " The Lord make his face shine upon thee, and be gracious unto thee," expresses the pouring forth of the blessing in a flood of light; it points to the AS MOHAMMEDAN. 79 Shekinah, the angel of (rod's face, suggests to the Chris- tian the Son of God who is the brightness, the radiation of the Father's glory, and corresponds to the term in the benediction, "the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ." "The Lord lift up his countenance upon thee, and give thee peace," points to the blessing penetrating into all the depths of the soul, when truth, comfort, and peace mingle with all the inner life ; and this is the work assigned to the Holy Ghost in the Christian scheme. These three concentrations of blessing are perfectly suited to the three persons of the Trinity as their centres. Unitarianism as contradicting Trinitarianism is thus, by a fair argument, expelled from the whole field of Judaism ; but does it really lodge in that patriarchal theology which was earlier than Moses? It would appear as if it ought to be found in that theology if it has any place in the Bible, because the names in the singular number for God, such as Eloah, El, Shaddai, and El Shaddai, shone more brilliantly then as the most holy terms than ever they did afterwards. But the plural name Adonai, originating with Abraham, raises a diffi- culty, and makes its protest against the theory that the patriarchs were Unitarians. The three who appeared to Abraham have been already pointed out as his holy Adonai ; and this same word as found in the account of that vision by which Isaiah was called to the office of a prophet is interpreted in the New Testament as standing for both Jesus and the Holy Ghost. The religion of Greece has been thoroughly investi- gated, and the following language expresses the conclu- sion : "The life and essence of all things is from God. Plato's idea of God is of the purest and highest kind. God is one, he is Spirit, he is the supreme and only real being, he is the creator of all things, his providence is 8o UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH over all events. He avoids pantheism on one side, by making God a distinct personal intelligent will; and polytheism on the other, by making him absolute, and therefore one. Plato's theology is pure theism. There is no doubt that Plato was a monotheist, and believed in one God, and when he spoke of gods in the plural was only using the common form of speech." This extract is from the "Ten Great Religions," by James Freeman Clarke, page 295, where the religion of Greece is dis- cussed. The American Indians had a sublime conception of the Great and Good Spirit, the fountain of life, the source of every blessing ; this was with them the one supreme Spirit ; and if it could be proved that the evil spirit which they feared was only a created being of a high order, who had apostatized from his primitive holi- ness, and if they had not been guilty of the worship of the sun and moon, they would certainly in their simple faith have furnished one of the most beautiful exhibitions of Unitarianism. But it would have been Unitarianism growing on heathen ground. Arabia furnishes the best exhibition of Unitarianism. The Koran is the most thoroughly unitarian book. It teaches its disciples to detest the Trinity, and especially to view with inexpressible contempt the term Son of God, as orthodox Christians understand it. The Mussul- man has no time and no will to reason on the question whether God has an Eternal Son ; because simply to mention the question only produces loathing. The ques- tion needs no examination, and he must look on the believer in the Son of God either with profound pity or with a will to see him perish instantly as a polytheist. His Koran gives him the most simple and reasonable faith, namely, one God, one everlasting Father, with JS MOHAMMEDAN. 8 1 no plurality of Divine persons; and he has no heart for any addition of mysteries to that faith. These Uni- tarians now number a population vastly exceeding a hun- dred millions. The early followers of Mohammed were men of flaming zeal. They looked on idolatry as the worst curse of the world, and they felt that they were spreading the greatest possible blessing in bringing all nations to the faith in the unity of God. It was never their profession that their faith was for themselves alone, and that they had no wish for converts : on the con- trary, they were the most bold and enthusiastic propa- gandists, and believed that their own sublime faith ought to be accepted by every man, and that their highest duty to the world was to make it spread. Most mighty and wonderful was the empire that they established in a few years, from Persia and India, through Asia, Africa, and Europe, to the Atlantic Ocean. And when they pene- trated to this ocean, the zeal of one of their chiefs called for a dividing of the waters, that they might march to a new world and there teach the unity of God. History has written on an everlasting rock the follow- ing concatenated truths, namely, that Abraham had two sons, Isaac and Ishmael; that the promise was never given to Ishmael, but it was to Isaac; that in Isaac's posterity all the families of the earth should be blessed ; that a gene- alogy sacred among Christians connects Jesus with Isaac, and a genealogy sacred among Mohammedans connects Mohammed with Ishmael ; that Isaac has given the world the New Testament &nd Christianity, while Ishmael has given the world the Koran and Unitarianism; and that if Unitarianisra as opposed to Trinitarianism is indeed the truth and the world's greatest blessing, Ishmael has most singularly established this blessing in the world, the promise has been fulfilled in Ishmael, and Isaac has failed, D* 82 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH and what the Lord promised especially to Isaac has proved false. This alone ought to be, with all who believe the Bible, a perfectly convincing argument against Unitarianism. The Unitarianism of the Koran has this interesting consistency, that it sends man to reason rather than to miracles to receive the great lessons of religion. Mohammed acknowledged his inability to produce such miracles as Moses and other Hebrew prophets produced. His religion does not claim to have the support of prodigies which convinced and dazzled the multitude. Now, it is becoming well known that Unitarianism natu- rally engenders a distrust of all miracles, and already many have lost all feith in both the miracles of Moses and those of Jesus. The Koran can accommodate such persons with a religion that does not depend on miracles. Further, Mohammedan Unitarianism is proved to be an article of excellent quality, by the earnestness with which it set the world on fire in the first centuries of its history. The Mohammedans believed in the infinite im- portance of their faith in the unity of God, for all the world ; they were not the people to possess the most holy truth for themselves and live with no concern whether others possessed it or not. And if in the present day they still retain all their primitive hatred of idolatry and of trinitarian Divinity, while a coldness has come over their zeal to make the acknowledgment of the Divine unity universal in the world, this only proves that that moon which was once splendidly waxing is now ominously waning, and gives us the right to say that they were once as the youthful, ardent, ruddy warrior, mounted on his steed and having no fear of heat or storm or fire or battle, but now they are more like the pale face marked with extreme age, which seeks rest in the quiet shade. Ardor of youthful blood is always to be ad- AS MOHAMMEDAN. 83 mired ; we must admire this in the Mohammedan religion ; and any religion is in a bad condition if the zeal of its youth has left it and its earnestness to shower blessings from its hand over the world has declined. It must also be said in praise of Mohammed that the distinction was clear in his mind, and is presented clearly in the Koran, between Jesus as the son of a virgin and the orthodox Christian view of Jesus as the Son of God, and that he showed a sacred regard for Christianity with this one exception, that he made the most diametrical opposition to the Trinity. The Son of God was a term which appeared to him only as an abomination, but the son of the Virgin Mary was a term in which he ful)y be- lieved. Many chapters of the Koran might be adduced in proof of this statement, and particularly the third, the fourth, and the nineteenth.' In one place the statement occurs, "Jesus is before God like Adam, whom he pro- duced from the earth and said. Let him be, and he was." In another place we read, "Verily Christ Jesus, the son of Mary, is the apostle of God, and his word, which he conveyed unto Mary, and his spirit. Believe therefore in God and his apostle, but make no mention of a Trinity. Avoid this, and it will prove better for you. There exists one God alone. Far be it from him that he should have a son. All things in heaven and on earth are his, and this God is a sufficient protector." In another place a story is told concerning Mary, in which the miraculous concep- tion of Jesus is the chief point. The Mussulman is taught to have no doubt that the prophecy of Isaiah proved true, that a virgin should become the mother of a son, and this should be one of the wonders in Israel; and it appears to him perfectly consistent to admit the miraculous concep- tion and with the same breath express the utmost contempt for the dogma of the asserted oneness of Jesus with God. 84 UNITARIANISM NOT SO MUCH JEWISH It would be a pleasant sight if, in this free charitable country of America, the rabbis could be seen united in speaking as kind words concerning Jesus as Mohammed spoke. If they both reject Jesus as the Son of God and revile him as a prophet, they treat him with greater con- tumely than Mohammed did. If they must disown him as the Son of God, this does not compel them to despise him as the son of David or to reject the miracle of the Virgin's conception. Christians would be pleased to com- pliment American rabbis as holding to a Unitarianism which can speak as respectful and kind words of Jesus as any thing the Koran contains; for assuredly a Unitarian- ism more bigoted and bitter than Mohammedanism is not needed. But Mohammedanism, though commended by its re- liance on reason, by its flaming zeal to convert all the world to the tenet of the Divine unity, and by its re- spectful language concerning the son of Mary, is not the religion for the Jews. Salvation was to be of the Jews, not of the race of Ishmael. The saying of the last Hebrew prophet is never to be forgotten, that the Lord had loved Jacob, but had hated Esau. It would be a most foolish bargain in any Israelite to exchange his home at Jerusalem for any land of Arabia, for any palace either in Petra or in Mecca, even if all the sand of the region could be laid at his feet changed into gold. The triune theism of Judea ought never to be given up for the Unitarianism of Mecca. The throne of David was to be in all ages the great centre of the true light; it was never to be eclipsed by any throne of Mohammed ; it has the glorious promise written on it, " For imto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be u])on his shoulder : and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The mighty God, The everlasting AS MOHAMMEDAN. 85 Father, The Prince of peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end;" and no throne of Arabia, or Ishmael, or Edom, or Mohammed, or Omar, stands on any such promise. There is no such promise sup])orting the mosque of Omar in Jerusalem, though it has stood there more than a thousand years — longer than both Solomon's temple and the second temple together; and no sanctuary has ever existed in the world more decidedly unitarian than it is. But it belongs not to the Jewish religion ; it proclaims the desolate reign of heathenism ; and the Lord who dwelt between the cherubim does not know it as his house. The Jews are not permitted to embrace Mohammedan- ism, since it is not the genuine Judaism ; and it is indeed lamentable if any of them inculcate a Unitarianism still more degraded than Mohammedanism, having more bitter and contemptuous words to utter against Jesus and the Christian faith, and no belief in any of the miracles recorded in the Bible. M. R. M. LETTER VI. Esteemed Friend: My last letter to you is the last which I can expect to see published in the Israelite ; but as your later letter has come to me, in which I read as follows, " But I am by no means willing, after that you have challenged me to a debate, to consider our debate as broken off sine die,^^ I may be permitted to answer you that probably I am fully as unwilling as you are that our debate should close here, with no further letters coming before the eye of the public. Unquestionably you are an admirer of the illustrious rabbi of the twelfth century, Aben Ezra; and if I take from him my text for the present letter you may be better pleased than if I should take it from the New Tes- tament, He supplies me with an excellent text for a trinitarian discourse, in his notes on Exodus iii. 15 : "And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus sh'alt thou say unto the children of Israel : Jehovah the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you : this is my name forever, and this is my memorial unto all gen- erations." Let me here read you his note: •\\ih nri nannn pii-S Sj? nnxn pn pa'N-in opon Kim nnx cb' my idk>i Dxyn mcir an nisjr nrSs'n nSxi m muci i^nn irNB' n>m I translate it: '■^ And God said 7norco7'cr. Another name; and it is of the meaning of the first one; only the one is in the language of the one speaking, but this is 86 RELATIONS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 87 the language of the person not speaking, and is of a piece with Jah ; and these three names are names of the es- sence" (proper nouns). Most willingly do I accept Aben Ezra's explanation, as here given, of the three Divine names, and all three proper nouns, and make it my text for the present letter. l"he name to which he refers as the first one is Ehyeh ashcr Ehyeh (I-will-be-that-I-will-be). The other name is Jehovah ; and he notes this difference, that the first name is in the first person as this term is used in gram- mar, it reveals God himself speaking, and is a name com- municated from God to man ; but the other name has not this stamp of the person speaking on it, and in its first utterance it may have been either, like the first, a name communicated from God and revealed to man, or a Divine name having its origin with man. The third name is Jah. Here is the Divine Trinity as expounded by Aben Ezra. A brilliant trinitarian motto stands thus at the head of my letter. Vain is the search for any such Trinitarianism as this in heathenism. It is rather the Trinity of the serpent that becomes prominent in heathenism. In the eleventh book of the Iliad, near the beginning, there is a bril- liant description of the armor of Agamemnon. His shield was on him, suspended from a silver belt, and on this belt a winding serpent displayed its whole length; it had one body, and one neck, but this neck supported three heads, and these heads were looking around in all direc- tions, with the sharpest vision. This probably had the meaning that the serpent knew all things past, and all things present, and all things future. The highest honor that could be given to the serpent consisted in presenting it to the gaze and wonder of the world in this three- headed form. If the triune conception of the eternal 88 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS God could be transferred to the serpent, this was the most blasphemous form of the serpent's deification ; and this animal indeed holds a seat of unapproachable dignity in heathen worship. The idea that the serpent excels in wisdom can be traced back to the first man and woman. The first apostasy of man from God was con- nected with the idea that the serpent was man's best counselor, or that the oracles of the serpent were of more value to man than the word of God. The Jews sometimes made themselves similar to the heathen in giving holy honor to the serpent ; and through many centuries, even when the throne of David was most re- splendent and the people had such prophets as Isaiah for their spiritual guides, they still continued to burn incense to the brazen serpent which Moses had prepared and elevated for them in the wilderness. The most famous oracle of Greece was the oracle of the Python, at Delphi, — that is, the oracle of the serpent ; and in its time it dazzled the best-educated intellects of the heathen world. The vestal virgins enjoyed the highest honors that Rome could give ; consuls and prretors had to give way to them on the streets ; the holy serpent was committed to their charge, and they kept its table supplied with meat. Shall I place before your eyes the gods of Greece, — Jupiter, the cloud-gathering Thunderer, the father of gods and men, the wonderful counselor, to whose nod all things in heaven and on earth are perfectly and instantly obedient, and his father Kronos, and Uranos the father of Kronos, and the other deities, Neptune, Pluto, Apollo, and Mercury, the goddesses also, Juno, Athena, Demeter? But there is no need to run through the long list : the truth is instantly transparent that no three can be selected from these which will bear to be placed in any kind of comparison with the Trinity which is taught in the OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 89 Bible. Or shall I bring before you the more distant and ancient Egypt, with the three orders of deities, the first order as worshiped by the priests, the third and lowest order as worshiped by the people, and the second order as being intermediate, — there being eight gods in the highest order, twelve in the second, and seven in the third, with Ammon or the concealed god standing first in the highest order, and Typhon the Egyptian god of destruction standing first in the lowest order, until in the age of Moses his name began to be chiseled out from this post of dignity on the monuments? Here again no kind of resemblance is found to the Trinity that re- veals itself from the tetragrammaton. Or shall I bring still more distant objects under your eye, the Hindoo Trimurti, consisting of Brahma the Creator, Vishnu the preserver, and Siva the destroyer ? This subject may be dismissed with the single remark that the whole Hindoo system is essentially pantheism. Therefore I come back to the Trinity which Aben Ezra has pointed out as appearing on the face of the tetra- grammaton ; and I will now show the connection'of Jah with faith, the connection of Ehyeh asher Ehyeh with hope, and the connection of Jehovah, in its specific limitation, with love. The special connection of Jah is with faith. Most clearly does the prophet Isaiah bring out this connection in the verse (xxvi. 4), "Trust in Jehovah forever, for in Jah Jehovah is the rock of ages." In Jah Jehovah, in the Jah who is Jehovah, or in the Jah who has come out to view from that more ancient patriarchal term Jehovah, is the rock of ages, or the rock of worlds, or, as the English version gives it, "everlasting strength." The rock of mighty ages, the rock of all time, lies in the word Jah. The original, eternal, and unlimited Godhead lies 9° THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS in the word Jab, and all true religious faith has its feet resting on this rock, which never can be moved and never can be measured. All the strength, immutability, eter- nity, righteousness, holiness, and truth of God are in the word Jah. The original fountain of all life through all worlds is in this word. The faith of Israel stands on a strong foundation. This name is invested with all its peculiar and mighty meaning in the very first verse of the Bible where it ap- pears. It first appears in the beginning of the song of Moses at the Red Sea : " My strength and song is Jah." (Ex. XV. 2.) All its subsequent use has this verse as its foundation. Strength lodges in the word ; and when faith says. My strength is Jah, it is the same as saying, That cause that is without a cause, the Father that is first of all, that boundless flame of eternal life to which all the stars and all created worlds belong as the little sparks that have been sent out from it, the omnipotence, the immutability, the eternity, the independence, the essence of God, — this, yea, all this is the strong rock on which I stand and in which I trust. In the verse last quoted, strength and song show a close and beautiful connection. The worship of God by the song is the outward ex- pression of faith ; and hence the faith which says, My strength is Jah, says at the same moment. My song is Jah, The strength which supports the feet of faith as a foundation is also the theme of the Divine song on the tongue of faith. Let the temple which will be built when these tribes become settled in the promised land be dedicated to the worship of Jah. Let its highest praise, the sound of which shall go forth as an illumina- tion to all the dark places of the earth, be the praise of Jah, the sublime Hallelu Jah. This name occurred so frequently in the psalms which OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 91 were used in the resounding worship of the temple, that the temple became impressed on the minds and memories of the people as being the house of Jah ; and hence the good Hezekiah, when he was nigh to death and all hope of making another visit to the courts of the temple appeared to be cut off, made it his bitter complaint that he could not again go to see Jah, — that he should never again see Jah in the land of the living. It was especially commanded that the word Jah should resound in the sublime songs of adoration. A psalm contained the in- junction, "Extol him that rideth upon the heavens by his name Jah." (Ps. Ixviii. 4.)* The most impressive prominence is given to the word in the closing psalms. The hundred and forty-sixth Psalm has for its first word Praise Jah, and for its last word the same Praise Jah. The hundred and forty-seventh Psalm has Praise Jah for its beginning, and the same for its last word. And so of all the following psalms to the end of the book, — the * The following is a translation of the commentary of Rashi on the verse, "Extol him that rideth upon the heavens by Jah his name:" — " By yah his name. That is, by the name Jah, which is the language of fear, as they have translated it in Chaldee by fear, in the verses, My strength and song is jfah ; and likewise. For the hand being laid on the throne of yah, in the Targum. Likewise in the phrase In yak yehovah; that so ye will be redeemed by the word of the fear of the Lord and the strength of the world. Says the Psalmist, Sing praises in his presence, and fear before him, and rejoice : and this is an illustration of him saying in another place, And rejoice with trembling, Ps. ii. 11." This extract from Rashi, the best rabbi from whom to learn the ancient tradition, supplies strong evidence that Jah was the object of fear in the oldest rabbinic theology, just as the Father is, in his place in the Christian Trinity as the first person, the reconciler being the Son, the second person. The Targum of Isaiah xxvi. 4, which Rashi here cites, appears to read, " Rely upon the word {niemra) of Jehovah forever, and for ever and ever ; that so ye will be redeemed by the word of the fear of Jehovah the mighty one of ages." 92 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS hundred and forty-eighth, the hundred and forty-nhith, and the hundred and fiftieth : each one opens with Praise Jah and closes with Praise Jah. He is here praised because the confidence that is placed in him will not be disap- pointed, while the sons of men are as weak and uncertain as that soft breath which death will soon take from them. He assists the needy, he delivers the oppressed, he ex- tends his mercy to the children of sorrow. All Israel must praise Jah ; the temple must ring with his high praises. All nature must become one stupendous temple resound- ing with his praise. The heavens, the heaven of heavens, the angels, the stars, the sun and moon, the clouds, the vapors, the floods, the snow, the stormy wind, the moun- tains, the seas, the dragons, the kings, the princes, the cities, the chosen people, the people of all lands and seas, must unite all their voices in this holy adoration. At the close, all instruments of music assist in the ecstatic and boundless worship. The high firmament sings to its Cre- ator, and the earth pours forth all its voices; the trumpet the psaltery and harp, the timbrel that gives the charm to the dance, the stringed instruments, the organs, the loud cymbals, the high-sounding cymbals, all are here assisting with their best voices in that most stupendous flourish with which the Psalms make their exit. The combined sound of all these instruments makes the close of the Psalms like the vast and beautiful lake where it pours forth all its waters at the cataract amid the thunders of Niagara. But all these thunders come from the inspiration of the name Jah ; and no star has any light except as it pours forth its music in the adoration of Jah. With this explanation, then, xX^'aX strcngtli stands for the strong foundation on which faith plants its foot, and that the song stands for the worship which is properly the out- ward expression or voice of faith, or the psalm or song OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 93 that gave the temple its inner beauty, how wonderfully prophetic do the words prove to be that were uttered at the Red Sea, " My strength and song is Jah !" The special connection of the Divine name Ehyeh asher Ehyeh (I-will-be-that-I-will-be) is with hope. This adorable name is so clearly of the future tense in all its structure, and it was so manifestly used in the peculiar meaning of the future tense when it was first communi- cated to Moses, that no further argument is needed to show that our hope, which is essentially a prospective emotion, is associated with it. It now comes in order to determine, or try to deter- mine, what place the Lord of hosts, the Beloved, fills in the Trinity of the tetragrammaton. When Ehyeh ashcr Ehyeh has risen separately in the beginning of the ancient patriarchal Jehovah, and Jah has risen separately in its last letters, there still remains an element in the centre that does not go into either of these two names, but con- tinues untouched between them. This is the present tense, between the future tense at the beginning and the past tense in the last letters. This element holds its seat in the long sound of the vowel 0, which is the central and most distinct and commanding vocalic sound in the word Jehovah ; it lodges in the Hebrew letter vav, and the Hebrew name for it is holem ; the Greeks called it omega. This central element has been found standing by itself for Jehovah, with Ehyeh asher Ehyeh standing apart from it on one side and Jah standing apart from it on the other side. For instance : take the name of the prophet Joel, or, as a Hebrew would pronounce it, Yoel. The first syllable stands for the tetragrammaton ; the meaning of the name \% Jehovah is El; yet this first sylla- ble has neither the future tense nor the past tense in it. It is only the central element lodging in the 2'av, the 94 THE TRIA'ITARIAN RELATIONS omega, that unites with El in this prophet's name, yet it stands here in unquestioned equality with the full Jehovah. This vav, or central vocalic sound of the tetragramniaton, furnishes the seat which the Beloved fills. The Trinity here is Ehyeh aslier Ehyeh first, and Jah last, and the Beloved in the centre enthroned in that central tetra- granimatic element which became united with El to con- stitute the name Joel. A transparent appropriateness requires that the Beloved be thus placed in the centre of this Trinity. The chief perspective emotion has its field between the prospective emotions and the retrospective emotions. Love is the chief perspective emotion, revealing the man's whole life in the realities of the present hour, while hope sees man in the boundless future, and faith and repentance see man and God in the boundless past. If hope beholds its JEhyeh asher Ehyeh in the unmeasured future, and faith beholds its Jah in the unmeasured past, love holds the hand of its Beloved in the present measured life between the others. We go one great step further, and assert that a theo- logical necessity most majestic and awful sets the Beloved in the centre. With Jah in one side of our belief as omnipotent in all the past, and with I-will-be-that-I-will- be enthroned through all the future in the other side of our belief, tliere is the vast yawning vacancy, the bottom- less chasm, between them, if the Beloved does not hold the intervening space. All our faith in Jah may just stop and settle on this verse, and be able to go no further (Ps. cxxx. 3): "If thou. Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who sliall stand?" or, to restore some of the original words, "If thou, Jah, shouldst mark iniquities, O Adonai, who shall stand ?" If thou, Jah, keepest in the book of thy remembrance and before the eye of thy jus- OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 95 tice all our past iniquities, then, Adonai, we all perish ! And if our faith in Jah must stop at this verse, our hope of immortality becomes a very dim star in the vacant space beyond the grave, and our prospect in the infinite future resembles that scarcely visible planet most dis- tant from the sun, where the sun's light is reduced to a dull luminous point, and unbroken ice and snows that never thaw cover all things, so that no being with a warm heart can ever bear such a world. Now, mark that this is just what all our religion amounts to if the Beloved does not fill that space between Jah and I-will- be-that-I-will-be. Faith in God before all things, and the hope of immortality, must have a glowing love filling the space between them ; for without this they only make a religion with no heart and no life, and as cold as polar ice. A yawning and dismal emptiness Avas in all heathen religions. Specific Judaism brought into that empty space the Lord who should be loved with all the heart and all the soul and all the strength; and this was the specific and glorious work of Judaism for the world. If you set up faith and hope, and ardent love is not present to fill the space between them, or if you have Jah and I-will-be-that-I-will-be before you, and the Beloved is not enthroned between them, you have a vacant chasm there, the most dismal that ever entered the eye of any imagination, and even the most dismal that the Creator's eye ever descries in the immeasurable depths of darkness that lie infinitely far away beneath his throne. What would the Hebrew Bible be if it consisted of only Genesis and the book of Daniel, — the chapters on the patriarchs and creation and God before all, at the beginning, and the wonderful visions of future monarchies and the kingdom of heaven, the imperishable kingdom, at the close, — but there were no glowing Psalms and no 96 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS Song of Solomon in it? It would indeed be a book with its whole heart cut out. Well, let this be one illustration to show what Jah and I-will-be-that-I-will-be are if the Beloved is not in his place between them. Or, if the New Testament is made to consist only of the retrospect- ive record at its beginning and the prospective record at the close, — only the genealogy of the Son of David, and the mysterious lesson that the Word was in the beginning with God, and the Word was God, and all things were made by him, in the beginning, and the Apocalypse at the close, which casts a strong light on all the intermina- ble path that lies in the future, and is brilliant with the visions of the seven seals opened, the seven trumpets, the seven vials of Divine judgment, and, finally, the visions of the resurrection and the ultimate rewards of the righteous and wicked, — but from the centre is dropped out the whole of that life of love when the blind saw, the deaf heard, the lepers were cleansed, the dead were restored to life, the poor received the glad tidings, and of the death on the cross, — here occurs a chasm in the centre changing the whole character of the book, or, rather, indicating the spot where the vital heart of the whole book has dropped out ; and this chasm is another illustration of the chasm in that theology which contains Jah and I-will-be-that-I-will-be without the Beloved in his place between them. Or, suppose that a book appears on the philosophy of man's spiritual and moral nature, the faculties of the immortal soul, and dwells only on the retrospective and the prospective sentiments and emotions, — the retrospective, such as memory, faith, re- pentance, regret, experience, and gratitude, and the pros- pective, which include all anticipations and hopes, — but love is entirely left out \ the love of holiness is not even mentioned, nor the love of power, nor the love of knowl- OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 97 edge, nor the love of property, nor parental love, nor filial love, nor the love of country, nor the love of friends, nor the love of truth, nor the love of angels, nor the love of God burning in the soul, — it is manifest that this book has left out the whole heart of its great subject ; and this is another illustration of what faith and hope are without love in the middle, or of what religion is without the Beloved as the central figure. The Beloved appears in the Pentateuch. Moses pro- nounced his last blessing on the tribe of Benjamin in this language: " The Beloved of Jehovah shall dwell in safety by him ; covering over him all the day, and dwell- ing between his shoulders." (Deut. xxxiii. 12.) The mount which was to support the temple was called the shoulders of Benjamin. There the Shekinah was to occupy his throne in the most holy chamber of the temple. It was believed that the Shekinah would never leave the tribe of Benjamin or Jerusalem for any other mount. The Beloved of the Lord had his home with Benjamin, the protector over him all the day. This Beloved was the Dweller in the Bush, the one who re- vealed himself by the name of Jehovah in the burning bush of Horeb. Hence, when Moses passes in his bene- dictions from Benjamin to Joseph, he again introduces the Beloved as the one who dwelt in the bush, evidently having the future fact in his eye that the Beloved of the Lord should hold his seat between the cherubim, for some time, in the tribe of Joseph, before he should finally settle his home with Benjamin. Many blessed things were men- tioned in the blessing of Joseph, but the crown of all was "the good will of him that dwelt in the bush," the won- derful grace that should descend upon the tribe when the Shekinah should be tarrying at Shiloh. The Beloved was prominent in the visions of the pro- E 9 98 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS phets. Isaiah foresaw the day when all Israel should be a holy people, and the glory of the Lord should be over all the assemblies of Mount Zion, as a cloud and smoke by day and a fire by night ; and then the song to the Beloved came into the prophet's mind: "Now will I sing to my well-beloved a song of my beloved touching his vineyard. My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very fruitful hill." (Isaiah v.) The song proceeds to tell of the labor that was bestowed on the vineyard, and how the Beloved expected the best fruit, but the expectations failed ; and finally how the vineyard was given up to briers and thorns and all the ground was opened to the feet of trav- elers. The prophet Jeremiah dwells on the sad days of the captivity, when the Beloved left the temple and the Babylonians burnt it. In his eleventh and twelfth chap- ters he uses the term Beloved both with the termination indicating that it is masculine and the termination indi- cating that it is feminine. In its feminine form, Yediduth, it is the corrupt church of that age; and God says, "I have forsaken mine house, I have left mine heritage ; I have given the dearly-beloved of my soul into the hand of her enemies." But in its masculine form it stands for the Shekinah whom the Lord calls his own, when he assures the prophet that he need not utter any prayer or cry for the people ; and the Lord's exclamation is, " What hath my Beloved to do in mine house?" — that is, How can my Shekinah abide any longer in a temple so polluted by the people? (This last form is Yedid.) The heart of the Jewish Bible is found in the Hagio- grapha; and there the Beloved is seen most clearly in his excellent beauty. The forty-fifth Psalm is called A So/ig of Loves : all its wonderful inspiration is the inspiration of love. There the Beloved appears as a conqueror and OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 99 king, the occupant of an everlasting throne; and there is the bride in her rich dress and Divine beauty. Distant nations bring their presents to her. But this psalm must fall into the shade by the side of the princely song of attachment, the Song of Songs, the Song of Solomon. This is the transcendently illustrious liymn of the Bible, according to the primitive meaning of the word hymn, namely, a marriage-song. The same Beloved is present everywhere in this song, the Shekinah, the Dweller in the Bush: so say the most learned and worthy rabbis, such as Aben Ezra, and they express their abhorrence of the degrading theory which would find only earthly or human love in all this song. The bush at Horeb was burning in fire yet not consumed; but here all the gardens and vineyards of Solomon are wrapped in a celestial fire, and it all is the fire of love. The church is here seen going up through the wilderness amid pillars of ascending incense, leaning on her Beloved. If any one would understand this song, his hands must drop with myrrh, his fingers with sweet-smelling myrrh, upon the handles of the lock, where the meaning of the song is laid open. Every joy and every grief in the com- munion of Israel with God has its expression in this song. The rabbis have well decided that this song is the holy of holies of the Bible, and the Dweller in the bush, the Beloved, is in it, over the mercy-seat ; and we find here the crowning proof that Jehovah who spake from the bush to Moses is the Beloved of Israel, that he reveals his glory in this characteristic above all others, that the whole flame in which he dwells is the flame of love. Rev. Dr. Guinzburg, you are now invited to pass with me over into the New Testament and have a talk with me on the great subject whether this same Jah and Ehyeh asher Ehyeh and Beloved reveal themselves in the lOO THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS New Testament, whether the Father here stands in the same relation to faith with Jah, and the Holy Spirit in the same relation to hope with Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, and the Beloved is the same Divine person from Malachi to Matthew and from the Pentateuch to the Apocalypse. It may be wonderful to you if you should find it so. May light and love shed their beauty along our path as we proceed in this investigation ! The first question is, Does the Father, in the New Testament, have the same relation to faith that the name Jah has in specific Judaism ? Listen to the voice that answers (John xii. 44) : *' Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me believeth not on me, but on him that sent me." This appears to mean that the deep and strong foundation that' lies under true faith is not prop- erly Jesus by himself, a separate person from the Father, but rather the Father as God, and the Divine attributes of the Father, such as eternity, omnipotence, omniscience, holiness, justice, truth, and love. These attributes, as dwelling in the Father, are the rock of ages on which faith stands. The same view is brought out differently in another passage and on another occasion. " My sheep," says Jesus, "hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me ; and I give unto them eternal life ; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. My Father, which gave them me, is greater than all ; and no man is able to pluck them out of my Fatlier's hand. I and my Father are one." This appears to mean that the more deeply established safety is in the strength of the Father, and that all his strength lies in the depths of that eternal foundation on which the temple of the Christian's saving faith is built. The disciples received Jesus as the Son of God on the testimony of the Father. At his baptism the voice of OF FAITH, IIOPF, AND LOVE. xo\ the Father was heard, ''This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." At the transfiguration the voice from heaven came again, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Shortly before the crucifixion, when Jesus made the prayer, "Father, glorify thy name," a voice came from heaven, "I have both glo- rified it, and will glorify it again;" and that voice came like a peal of thunder, not for the sake of Jesus, but as the testimony of the Father for the people, which they should receive in faith. Thus the belief in the Son of God was only the reception of the testimony of the Father. Paul exhibits that faith by which the believer is justified, and which is illustrated by the faith that was imputed to Abraham for righteousness, in this expression : " If we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead." The chapter which is the great gallery of the pictures of the faith of patriarchs and prophets has these verses near its beginning : " By faith we understand that the universe is framed by the word of God, so that the world which we behold springs not from things that can be seen ;" " Without faith it is impossible to please him : for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him." (Heb. xi.) Worship is the visible form which faith assumes, and Christian prayer looks as directly to the Father as the praise in the Psalms looked towards Jah. There are instances in the New Testament of prayer addressed directly to Jesus, such as the prayer of Stephen in his last moments, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" but such instances are very few. The promise of Jesus in relation to prayer is this : " Verily, verily, I say unto you, what- soever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." Prayer among Christians is the offering up of the 9* I02 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS desires unto God for things agreeable to his will, in the name of Christ. It goes directly to the Father, and ex- pects the blessing to be sent in the name of Christ. The six petitions of the model prayer, commonly called the Lord's prayer, are addressed to our Father in heaven, and no other person is associated with him. Some of the prayers of Jesus were, "Father, glorify thy name;" "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit;" which are left as examples to be followed. The great prayer of the night before the crucifixion is addressed to the Father alone, and often repeats his holy name. The same direct address of prayer to the Father appears to have been followed by Paul. He writes thus: " For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ;" and then he gives the contents of the prayer on his bended knees : " that he would grant you, accord- ing to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man ; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith." (Eph. iii. 14-17.) The second question is, Does the Holy Ghost in the New Testament have the same relation to hope that the name I-will-be-that-I-will-be has in specific Judaism ? The blessed work of the Holy Spirit lies in the bound- less future, and it fills all that future with the peace and joy of heaven. The Holy Spirit first kindles the true love of God in the wicked heart of man : the regenerated heart is the production of this Spirit. He led Jesus into the wilderness ; and he is the guide and comforter of his people through every wilderness of temptation and sor- row. He breathes holy prayers into the heart, and in- spires joys and hopes. He is shedding his influence through the whole life, on the heart, to bring back the holy image of God, and bring it on nearer and nearer to perfection. The hope of the moral regeneration of OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 103 our world is in the work of the Holy Ghost. It is prom- ised that he will abide among believers till the end of the world ; and when the knowledge of God will cover the earth, and peace, holiness, and joy will drive all moral darkness from our world, all this will only show what the Holy Ghost has wrought. There is no better promise for the world than that God will pour his Spirit upon all flesh ; and there is no better promise for the house of David than that God will pour upon it the spirit of grace and of supplications. The work of Jesus is in a certain sense finished, but the great work of the Holy Ghost in our world is still in the future. The sinner's legal title to heaven is one thing, but the moral preparation of his heart and of his whole spiritual nature for heaven is another thing. Jesus has purchased tliis title to heaven by his own blood, and this work is finished ; but the moral preparation for heaven is the work in the hands of the Holy Ghost as long as the man lives. The work of Jesus for the repent- ing sinner reaches perfection in one moment ; which interesting truth may be thus explained, that the mo- ment the sinner accepts by faith God's offer of eternal life, his legal title to heaven is as perfect as it can ever become in millions of ages. The moment a man charged with a crime is pronounced innocent in court, his legal acquittal is as perfect as it ever can become, and it would not be increased by the highest moral ex- cellence in his life during later long years. The day a child is born, it has as perfect a title to be counted a member of the human family as subsequent ages can ever give it. But the work in the hands of the Holy Ghost is a spiritual growth, a moral development, which the pres- ent mortal life never brings to perfection. Justification being an act, and sanctification being a work, as they are I04 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS understood by Christian theologians, illustrate how the Holy Ghost has his dominion in the vast future, while the work of Jesus for the sinner in justification by faith and in the adoption into the family of God is rather the limited and perfect work of a present moment. The third question is. Whether the Beloved who oc- cupied the centre of the Trinity in specific Judaism, and on whom the ancient church leaned going up through the wilderness, who was seen walking through all the gardens of Solomon's Song, is one and the same person constituting the centre of the Trinity in the New Testa- ment ? One of the most definitive names for Jesus in the New Testament is the Beloved. When it is said that the Father by his glorious grace "hath made us accepted in the Beloved," this Beloved is Jesus. Many verses in the gospels present Jesus both as the Beloved of his Father and the Beloved of his people: for instance, "As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you : continue ye in my love." Another verse reads, "For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God." The name Jesus, or Son of God, is the luminous centre from which the radiations of holy love are now spreading, in the beauty of the morning, over all our world. Holy love is essentially religious love. This needs to be made emphatic : it is religious love. And, first, let it be under- stood that it is essentially different from the common love of parents to their children, or the common affection between the members of a family. Most intense may be a parent's kindness to his children, and most intense his interest in their education and their success in the world ; yet his kindness may have no religious character, it may not even once enter the higher sphere of religion. A man may be an exceedingly affectionate parent, and yet OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 105 his avowed creed may be that there is no God, and no heaven for which he ought to pray that his children may be prepared. Love to children is an impulse of nature ; it is no religious principle. The same principle exists' in great strength among brutes ; and brutes, like men, from a natural impulse will defend one another in danger with all their force, and protect the wounded one among them. No love which has its growth from man's animal nature, whatever may be its intensity and whatever may be its excellence, ought to pass for a religious love. The deca- logue commands children to honor their father and mother; but it does not place a law on parents that they must love their children ; it does not descend so low beneath the proper sphere of man's free moral will ; it leaves such love as an impulse of the lower animal nature, and makes no mention of it. Instances are often found where there is the luxuriant and most beautiful growth of this lower affection in a family, while the higher re- ligious duties are in no way acknowledged. The cultiva- tion of the lower field of love and affection might be expected to come nearest to perfection in the family where the whole attention is given to it and the higher field of religious duty is never entered. Let it further be noted that there may be a flaming religious fanaticism with no element of this holy love in it. Such was the fanaticism of the followers of Mohammed, who raised one of the greatest empires that the world ever saw, on an in- tensely unitarian creed ; but is there any one who would assert that holy love was the mainspring of their religion? True holy love may be viewed as a complex excellency of the heart, or sentiment, with the following variety of points in it: — that faith which exclaims, Though my Lord shiy me, yet will I trust in him ; if I cannot place viy trust in him, there is 720 other ; — that loving faith lo6 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS which wades through all the perplexing questions involved in the fact that the wicked have such brilliant success in the present world, while the whole life of the righteous sometimes appears like one continued calamity, and which plants its feet upon the rock and there sings, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee" (Ps. Ixxiii. 25); a high appre- ciation of the value of the immortal soul as having been created originally in the image of God, — namely, the image of his eternity and holiness ; a sympathy with the whole race as having fallen into such a state of sin and woe that it could be truthfully said that "it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth" (Gen. vi. 6); a special sympathy with man as having early fallen into the fatal mistake of a distrust of the word of his Creator, so that he accepted the lying seraph (serpent), or Satan transformed into an angel of light, as a more truthful counselor and a warmer friend ; a conviction that he was justly driven from God's pres- ence, and that he still continues expelled from paradise ; a sorrowful feeling for him as still persevering in the same great sin of a distrust of the word of God, so that he is repeating Adam's sin continually ; a conviction that this distrust of God is the sure road to the soul's utter ruin, the man's everlasting loss ; a belief that God has com- municated certain definite terms on which he will receive man back into his favor and open again the door of para- dise ; a cordial acceptance of these terms, a delight in the study of them, a delight in the spreading of the proclamation of them, a conviction "that the most sacred duty is to instruct all the world in these terms and press their acceptance by every man ; a rapturous delight in all evidences that God and the immortal soul are brought together and reconciled ; an unspeakable joy when one OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 107 sinner repents ; a willingness to give all possible help in the calling of all men to repentance and faith ; and a conviction that man's highest and only true happiness is in his nearness to God by faith and love. These varied elements exhibit and illustrate that true holy love which ministers to the sick and sends food to the poor, wliich brings help to the suffering body, but which believes the woe of the soul, in its distrust of God, to be the infinitely greater woe, and its supreme desire is to bring some help to the soul which may soon fall away from God into everlasting darkness. This is the love which now radi- ates through all the world from the name of Jesus as its. fountain and centre. The love of Jesus translates the Bible into all languages and teaches it in schoofe among all nations. The love of Jesus travels to the howling deserts of heathenism and plants the rose of Sharon there. The love of Jesus knows no difference between Jew and Gentile in respect to the essential wants of the soul and the terms for the forgiveness of sin and admis- sion to eternal life. When any John preaches in the wilderness with the equal flame of zeal and love, calling all to repentance and proclaiming the unquenchable fire for every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit, you may be sure that the name of Jesus inspires him. If any Whitefield is again visiting continents and islands and bringing ships together on the ocean by the attraction of his voice, proclaiming the holiness of God, the amazing love of God to perishing sinners, the blessed word which he has sent us, the great danger of a distrust of that word, the supreme duty of implicit faith in it, and if many listen with tears and are pierced in their consciences as with flaming arrovys, and pray for forgive- ness and turn to righteousness, it is only the love of the Son of God that gives the world such a preacher. lo8 THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS A man may be fortified with sev^en mighty horns planted on his head to drive the orthodox Christian faith away from his sight, yet that faith may penetrate into him without being seen, and strike his heart, and effectually conquer him by the love which it kindles there. Or, to elucidate this thought more fully, a man may be so fortified against the orthodox doctrine, with the objec- tions that three cannot be one and one cannot be three, — that the Father cannot send the Son, and the Son obey the Father, and both be in the Godhead, and still the Godhead remain one and indivisible, — that these objec- tions appear like seven horns occupying his intellect and reason and always hurling the doctrine of the Trinity away from him into the regions of impossibility and self- contradiction ; yet an impression of the perfect holiness of the character of Jesus may enter that man's heart \ and if a true love for the name of Jesus once commences, a true sympathy with Jesus as the friend of sinners, the man becomes a Christian, and virtually an adherent of the orthodox creed; and if the horns do continue for a time to hold their place overshadowing the head or intellect, eventually they become lifeless, weak, brittle, and crum- bling, and at last drop off of themselves. The power of the religion of Jesus is in love; and in many instances this love has effectually captured the heart while the whole intellect still continued to bristle with the sharp and de- fiant horns of adverse argument. Jewish scholars often give a text as a means to assist the memory in retaining some number or some weighty truth; and I will now try to do this for you. I find a text in Solomon's Song, in which I will try to inclose all the contents of the present long letter. First, I suppose, you will look with delight at some of the beautiful bouquets which English poets have gathered as they walked through OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. 109 the Song of Solomon, and particularly through the second chapter. Please look at these : — '' As much as fairest lilies can surpass A thorn in beauty, or in height the grass, So does my love among the virgins shine, Adorned with graces more than half divine ; Or as a tree, that, glorious to behold. Is hung with apples all of ruddy gold, Hesperian fruit, and beautifully high. Extends its branches to the sky. So does my Love the virgin's eyes invite : 'Tis he alone can fix their wandering sight, Among ten thousand eminently bright. " Beneath his pleasing shade My wearied limbs at ease I laid. And on his fragrant boughs reclined my head. I pulled the golden fruit with eager haste ; Sweet was the fruit, and pleasing to the taste. With sparkling wine he crowned the bowl. With gentle ecstasies he filled my soul : Joyous we sat beneath the shady grove. And o'er my head he hung the banners of his love." Now look closely at the third verse of the second chapter: "As the apple-tree among the trees of the wood, so is my Beloved among the sons." Say that the three-headed serpent winding on the silver belt of the shield of Agamemnon is buried in the ground beneath this tree. Say that the broken head of the old serpent in paradise has been laid at the roots of this tree. And say that the bones of many deified serpents of heathen- ism, in Egypt, Rome, and India, have been buried close to the roots of this tree, to enrich the soil. The body of the tree close to the ground and for some distance up is the El Shaddai of the patriarchs, and the great name Jehovah, in the wide meaning which this term had with the patriarchs. A higher part of the body of this tree no THE TRINITARIAN RELATIONS reveals the Trinity of Jah and Jehovah and Eliych asher Ehyeh as Moses brought these three proper Divine names into use. Adonai and the Beloved are terms holding their places through the body of the tree, which, at a good distance above the Mosaic Trinity, becomes the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost of Christian baptism ; the Lord of heaven and earth, and the abiding Comforter, of the New Testament, with the Beloved be- tween them. From these upper parts of the body the mighty branches spread out which throw a shade of com- fort and joy over all the scorching deserts of the earth. No weary traveler has ever come to this shade for protec- tion from the heat and been disappointed. But now look up among the strong branches and behold the beauty of the tree. See its innumerable and rich blossoms, and its swelling buds just ready to open into perfect leaves. Look up again, and behold the numberless golden apples hanging on all its highest branches. These apples are faith, hope, and love, — all the faith, hope, and love of a religious character that have ever distinguished the people of God among the Jews, and the people of God in other nations. All the pages of holy truth that have ever gone from Christian presses to carry light to the heathen are leaves from this tree scat- tered over the earth for the healing of the nations. So long as you continue looking up into the tree you see its wonders of fruit and beauty multiplying more and more. Every kind word that has ever been spoken in the name of the God of Israel is among the holy fruit of this tree. The thrilling Hallelu Jah of the temple is there, and the triumph of the true Christian as he dies in faith calling upon the Lord. The song of Moses is there, and the song of the Lamb also. If you separate Jesus from this tree, and leave only OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. m Moses and the prophets, you cut away all the upper and blooming part, and inflict prodigious injury on the tree. It would be wrong to wrap all the highest branches of this tree in the thin webs of the caterpillar, so that its best leaves and fruit should lose their greenness and perish, and the ground be rendered hideous by the falling of the insect from the withered leaves ; but this is pre- cisely the wrong that is justly charged on every theory which separates all the good that has grown out of Chris- tianity from this tree, and cannot see the works of Paul and John, of Luther and Calvin, of Whitefield and Watts, of the Christian missionaries to the Sandwich Islands and Madagascar, as fruits produced from this tree and now giving it much of its sublime beauty. Here you advance with the objection that Popery is an apple which never grew on a good apple-tree ; and I find you inclined to make this objection very prominent. You emphasize the image-worship of the church of Rome, the prayers to the Virgin, and the horrible persecutions of Jews, Waidenses, and Protestants. I fear that you are like the man who condemns a whole apple-tree because among its branches a serpent was once shot and fell down on its roots to expire. It was predicted by the apostles that a great apostasy should arise in the bosom of Christendom. Paul assured the Thessalonians that the Lord would not soon return to this world, because there must come first "a falling away," and "that man of sin" must be re- vealed, " the son of perdition, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God." And this wicked one is further described, "whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish ; 112 RELATIONS OF FAITH, HOPE, AND LOVE. because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved." Such are the very impressive predic- tions found in the second chapter of the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians. You are safe in enumerating all the abominations which you find in Popery as so many items in the fulfillment of these predictions. And this ought to be with you an additional strong argument in favor of Christianity, that the predictions in the New Testament concerning a blasphemous apostasy which should arise in the Christian church have been so liter- ally and terribly fulfilled. M. R. M. LETTER VII. My learned Correspondent : — Your articles which appeared in the Israelite on the " Morality of Christianity compared with that of Judaism" have left the impression on my mind that you believe some texts from the Hebrew Scriptures to be adduced in the Epistle to the Hebrews with a meaning imposed on them which is foreign to their proper meaning and in some instances even contradicts it. The object of my present letter is to lay before you the first chapter of this epistle and demand of you where you can find a single flaw in all the reasoning. First, let the chapter here be read according to the common version : "God, who at sundry times and in divers man- ners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds ; who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high ; being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. " For unto which of the angels said he at any time. Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee ? lo* 113 114 FIRST CHAPTER And again, I will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son ? And again, when he bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, he saith. And let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels he saith, Who maketh his angels spirits, and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the Son he saith, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteous- ness is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity; therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth ; and the heavens are the works of thine hands : they shall perish, but thou remainest ; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment ; and as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed : but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. " But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool ? *'Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation?" I will next offer you such a paraphrase of this chapter as may set some of the original terms in a clearer light and bring out all the thread of the argument at greater length ; and, if you here watch, you may see some of your objections very easily thrown out of the way: — God, who in different parts and in different ways spake of old to our fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken to us by the Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds ; who being the emanation of the glory and the autograph of his substance, and OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. ^15 upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had through himself effected the expiation of our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Being so much greater than the angels as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they, whether this name be The Son of God, or tlie single name Elohim, the common Hebfew word for God ; because, First, his name So7i of God has an excellence which is wanting in the title of angels as sons of God ; and. Secondly, his name Elohim has an excellence which is wanting in the title of angels as Elohim. As to the first name, The Son of God, let a single question decide the point. To which of the angels said he at any time, Thoii art my Son, this day have I begotten thee ? and again, / will be to him a Father, and he shall be to me a Son ? When again, that is, in another portion of Scrip- ture, in one of the psalms, he would introduce the first-begotten into the world, he says : — the text for the angels now being, Let all the Elohim ivorship God, and the definition of angels being. Making his angels spirits, and his ministers flames of fire. But what says he of the Son ? how vastly different the text which introduces the first-begotten into the world ! thus. Thy throne, O Elohim, is for ever and ever : a sceptre of righteousfiess is the sceptre of thy kingdom. Thoii hast loved righteousness, and hated iniquity. Therefore, O Elohim, thy Elohim hath an- ointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And if a parallel to this passage is made from the verses of another psalm, which reads thus. Thou, Eli Il6 F/KST CHAPTER [my El], m the begiiining didst lay the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest; aiid they all shall wax old as doth a gar?nent, and as a vesture shall thou fold them up, and they shall be changed; but thou art the sa?ne, and thy years shall not fail, — all this last is only the mighty echo from those ages that lie beyond the distant line of crea- tion, of that same address that introduces the first- begotten into the world. To which of the angels can such a text as the fol- lowing ever be applied : Sit thou on my right hand, witil 1 7nake thy enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits, sent forth to execute his service, for the sake of those who shall inherit salvation ? This chapter contains just seven quotations from the old Jewish Scriptures : four of them are adduced as speaking of the Messiah, two refer to the angels, and one refers to God the Creator. Let the critic now come forward who can detect any unfairness in any of these quotations. The first quotation of Messianic prophecy is taken from the second Psalm, and it is in perfect accordance with the Septuagint and the original Hebrew. Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee. The hundred and tenth Psalm is one of identical import with this second Psalm : both celebrate the King whose throne is established on Mount Zion with all the firmness of a celestial and eternal decree, whose enemies may rage but they must come down to the place of his footstool, and into whose presence all the kings of the earth ought to come with humility and trembling, that they may have the privilege of serving him with gladness. The mountains of the OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 117 dead will lie on each side of his conquering chariot, and as he marches forward in his straight course the brook rolls its water along at his feet, of which he drinks and is refreshed. If the question is asked how the Seventy understood the latter half of this text, "Thou art my Son, this day have I begotten thee," the best answer is furnished by the following phrase of the Septuagint in the hundred and tenth Psalm : Ix yaarpv^ T,p6 '^Ew(Tiday night after the com- mencement of the sabbath, to be offered to the Lord the next morning, and they made the proceeding as public as possible, to show their contempt of the Sadducees ; and in every year, when the sheaf was thus given to the Lord on the sabbath, the first day of the passover must have been a Friday. The Sadducees contended that the cutting of the sheaf in that night was a desecration of the sabbath, and that the waving of the sheaf should always be on the morrow after the sabbath, that is, Sunday ; and also the first day of pentecost should always be a Sunday ; and the Karaites hold the same viev with them till the present 1* 202 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD day. (See Jost's Geschichte des Judenthums, Streitig- keiten zwischen Pharisaern und Sadducaern, with Men- delssohn's Commentary on Lev. xxiii. 2, and the Book on the Karaites, dedicated to the Lady Guinzburg.) Doubters on the authority of the New Testament have pointed to a verse in the second chapter of Luke, " And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria;" and they have made a correct criticism, that if the birth of Jesus was at the time of this taxing it could not have been before the death of Herod the Great, as is stated in other places, because this taxation under Cyre- nius was after the reign of Archelaus, and fully nine years after the death of Herod. But the v^oxA p7-otos, which is in this verse, is translated by the word before in John, first chapter and thirtieth verse ; and there it governs the genitive case, as it does here. We read there, " For he was before me," and, by analogy, it ought to be translated here, " This taxing was before Cyrenius the governor of Syria." Most clearly, having occurred while Herod was alive, it was a taxing about ten years earlier than Cyrenius, or the famous taxing which he introduced. Again and again learned Jewish critics have harped on this difiaculty, which so instantly vanishes. I once saw it demonstrated to a Jew that this same government of the genitive by an ad- jective in the superlative degree occAirs in Homer and other Greek authors, and that a correct knowledge of Greek syntax cannot fail to correct the mistake ; but he became almost furious, as if the whole fabric of Judaism would be brought into fearful danger if he could not sustain this silly anachronism against the New Testament. What a blind thing prejudice is ! A few critics have a liabit of handling the four gospels with enormous injustice. They come forward with some fantastic theory and i)ut the torture on every dissentient AND HIS WORD. 203 verse they meet, to get it out of their way. They lay paral- lel passages together, and count how many more words may be in one gospel than in the others ; they raise a difficulty on everything that one has omitted, and if the same story or parable is found in two gospels with differences in the events narrated before it or after it, they search with microscopic care for all appearances of con- tradiction ; if one gospel says Peter and another says Cephas, surely there are ignorant people who do not know that these words have the same meaning, and they may be troubled with this as a contradiction. The true view is that the very marked differences between the gos- pels furnish an unanswerable argument that the writers are four independent witnesses, and that their testimony is the truth. Four witnesses may appear in court and tell completely the same story, and their whole story may be so perfectly alike that every one is convinced that they con- sulted together and arranged previously among them- selves precisely what should be their story. Independent witnesses never put the same facts in precisely the same language and the same connection and order. If the four gospels had been composed according to the measure which these critics apply to them, it would have been made very clear that the whole is the story of one author, and not the stories of four independent writers. A thou- sand times and more have I written the letters M. R. M,, but on no two sheets have I ever written them perfectly the same; and if any note should ever come to me with these letters perfectly as I once wrote them, they might be decisive proof that they were transcribed by careful measurement and that I never wrote them. The four evangelists ought to be allowed to show the same evi- dences of their independence as are allowed to other witnesses in court ; but there cannot be such evidences .204 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD without, differences. All these things show us how strong religious prejudice becomes : it will not read the whole definition of a word in a dictionary, it refuses to see the rules of Greek grammar, and it objects to the indispen- sable evidences that there was no collusion of the evan- gelists. Come, Holy Spirit, come, dispel from our eyes the blindness of religious prejudice ! I see Jesus near to Samaria on the way to Jerusalem, and one comes to him and says, "Lord, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head." This answer indicates that there was a wrong thing in his motives, and that Jesus saw it. Many followed Jesus for the loaves and fishes. This man expected worldly comfort; he expected to come to a good home. Jesus wished him to know that humble poverty was all the prospect his disciples had. This man made the best promise ; but he was not worthy to be trusted, he was not the man to follow through poverty and death. He loved his own flesh too highly. Many persons have no confidence in the conversion of Jews in our own time. They say that no Jew ever enters the Christian church except for support or for a name, or for some object in social life, or from some other sinister mo- tive. When you find any one who has been thoroughly educated as a Jew, and embraces Christianity and is sin- cere, you may be sure you have found a miracle. No Jew ever becomes a genuine Christian except under an influence of the Holy Spirit that is miraculous. It is now easy to some of them to promise that they will follow Jesus whithersoever he goeth, but it is another thing to be sincere ; and how many of them have some other master in their eye than him who lived in poverty AND HIS WORD. 205 beneath the foxes and the birds, so that he had not where to lay his head ! The apostle Paul says '' that no man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost," and assuredly this is true of one people; it is true of the Jews: no Jew becomes a genuine Christian except under the power of the Holy Spirit, and all who do not believe in the Holy Ghost are clearly consistent in denying that there can be any man now on the face of the earth who has been brought up a strict Jew and is now a sincere Christian. Come, Holy Spirit, come ; for in thy absence there is no honest will to follow the Lord, through pov- erty and death, whithersoever he goeth ! At the same time another was nearly ready to follow Jesus; but he said, " Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father." Ah, there was one thing holding him back. His father was still living. His father, we must suppose, was a Jew of the strictest order, and hated the name of Jesus, and could not bear the thought that his son should become a disciple: the grief caused by his son's conversion would be overwhelming, and he had threatened to disinherit him, and ordered him never again to enter his house, if he must follow Jesus. The son felt as if he must first see his father buried, and then he would follow Jesus. There are many such Jews in our own day, — Jews who are convinced that Jesus is indeed the Messiah of Israel, but a dear father must go into his grave before they can be baptized. Come, Holy Spirit, come : it is only thy voice that can ever call them away effectually from waiting at their fathers' graves, and turn their faces to their duty ! "And another also said. Lord, I will follow thee ; but let me first go bid them farewell which are at home at my house." Jesus saw that he had too great a love of his friends at home, and hence that solemn answer was given, 18 2o6 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD — how searching the answer, how alarming ! — " No man having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God." The Holy Spirit is needed to give men such a love of the truth and of holiness that they can leave all their friends at home and never look back with one tear of regret. A self-denial is required which is never properly learned except in the school of the Holy Spirit. Religion is utterly worthless if it be not honest in its hidden parts; and the will to forsake all earthly friends and follow the Lord is never truly honest except in that heart where there has been the mighty work of the Holy Spirit. Tradition is very hurtful in religion if it is admitted to assume the place of the Holy Spirit. It is nowhere found recorded in the Bible that the Lord has said, My oral law, which was received at Sinai and was to be preserved in the memory from age to age, and my words which Moses and the prophets committed to writing, shall never depart from thy mouth, nor from the mouth of thy seed, nor from the mouth of thy seed's seed ; because this would be introducing the traditionary law to fill the place where the Spirit of the Lord stands ; yet, practically, many accept the text just as it would be perverted by such a change. The brazen serpent has its place in the writings of Moses, and there it exists in innocence; but when it passed into the hands of tradition it became an object of idolatrous worship, and incense continued to be burnt to it throagh many centuries. There was a time when the written law had almost passed out of sight, and tradition had assumed almost the whole charge of the Jewish wor- ship ; and the king was once astonished to get a sight of the long-buried law and find how many things were condemned in it which the popular voice then sanctioned. Amazement filled the Christian world in the sixteenth AND HIS WORD. 207 century, when the Scriptures began again to be searched which the priests had long kept concealed, and it was found how tradition had made such a wide departure from the primitive Christian faith, how it had corrupted Chris- tian doctrine and worship, and introduced a large mass of heathenism under new names. Tradition must not be trusted as the interpreter of God's word, because it has horribly abused such a trust ; and the order appointed in the Bible is the Spirit of the Lord first, as the infallible interpreter, and secondly the written word from Moses and the prophets, of which he is the interpreter. It is equally hurtful to religion if the church assumes to fill the place where the Holy Spirit ought to be. One great error now growing within Christendom is to place that trust in the church which ought to be placed in the Lord. Men depend on the church to pray for them, and neglect to pray for themselves ; and if one must answer the question, what he believes, his answer is, I believe what the church believes. It is supposed that private judg- ment may err, but that the judgment of the whole church cannot err. The mistake of these persons is that they depend not so much on the Shepherd of Israel himself as on the flock. He is infallible, but the flock are not infallible ; he is the eternal rock of safety, but the flock may wander and be scattered and fall into a thousand snares. The church may wander from the faith and leave her first love, and fall so low that she has only a name to live while she is dead. No man ought ever to commit his soul to such a body or company for salvation. There is the higher rock on which the soul can stand. If any man depends on his church, it is indirectly an idolatrous adora- tion of himself: because, who is his church? It is only an aggregation of persons like himself, some of them more intelligent than he is, and very many just as igno- 2o8 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD rant. We may carry the open Bible in our hands, and still we will trust in the church more than we trust in the Lord, if the Spirit of the Lord be not present to lead us. A pope commits a great mistake if he attempts to take the seat of the Holy Ghost as the infallible interpreter of the word of God. There is a wide-spread feeling in Christendom that the world ought to have one living person as the infallible interpreter of the true Christian faith. This one living guide ought to have perfect proofs of his infallibility ; his name ought to be known among all nations ; he ought to be a master of all languages, and so all nations might bring religious questions to him to be decided finally and infallibly in his presence. Jesus Christ was an infallible interpreter while he was on earth; but his public life continued only about three years, and his name was little known beyond the limits of Pales- tine; and if any point in his teaching is clear, it is this, that no mortal man should be his successor or vicar on the earth, and that when he should leave the earth the Holy Ghost should be sent in his place, to bring all things to the remembrance of the disciples which he had spoken, to be the comforter, and the infallible interpreter of the truths of salvation, and to abide with his people till the end of the world. Finally, man's reason must not be permitted to usurp the place of the Holy Spirit, as the supreme interpreter of the Scriptures. A living mortal pope will be just as safe a guide as reason if it is made the pope. When the Lord says that his Spirit which is within his people, and his words which are in their mouths, shall not depart out of their mouths as long as the world lasts, his Spirit must not be accepted here as only another name for human reason. The Spirit of the Lord and man's faculty of reason are widely different. AND HIS WORD. 209 When reason is made supreme, religion becomes ration- alism, and the essential character of the whole Bible becomes changed. Abraham is no longer the man to whom the Almighty came in actual visions, but he is a sage of a philosophic turn of mind, who reflected on the rising and setting of the sun and stars, and became con- vinced that they were only the works of God and ought not to be worshiped, and he found out by his own reason the absurdity of the popular belief in many gods. Moses becomes a character obscurely seen among the clouds of false pretension and popular fiction ; he has indeed given a good system of laws, but he has mixed them up with many things that cannot be believed because they contra- dict reason, such as that the finger of God wrote the ten commandments on two tables, that there was salvation for the first-born of Israel in Egypt through the sprinkling of blood at the door, that he continued forty days and forty nights alone with God on the mount to receive the laws, that the manna was the food of the people for forty years, furnishing a double supply every Friday morning, with no supply on Saturday, that the sight of the brazen serpent effected the cure of many who were dying from the sting of the fiery serpents, — so that it is a question how any great living truth could be laid out in such coffins of absurd fictions and not itself become putrid. Especially is the typical character of the Mosaic system denied : it was not composed of prophetic symbols, pointing to better things to come more than a thousand years in the future. Moses was a shrewd legislator, making many false pretensions to inspire the people with awe. Such is rationalism. Behold it : such is the theory when reason supplants the Holy Spirit. Reason has decided that though it is often claimed in the book of Isaiah that the conquests of Cyrus were fore- told in that book long before any eye of man could see 18* 210 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD them, yet these parts of the book must have been written by another Isaiah after the events. Reason has decided that Paul did not believe in his heart the doctrines of the resurrection, of the atonement, and of the second coming of Christ, which he preached. Reason rejects the expla- nation of the Jewish worship which is in the Epistle to the Hebrews, and ventures to suggest a different theory, — that the brazen altar might stand for all animals, the golden altar for all spices, the seven lamps within the sanctuary for the seven stars, the sanctuary and its courts in front for the earth, and the supremely holy apartment for heaven. Reason declares its doubts whether the patri- archs were inspired with a firm hope of a glorious immor- tality ; and when they are seen in the Epistle to the Hebrews traveling as strangers and pilgrims, with no landed possession here, and not expecting rest here, for the eternal city which they believed God had prepared for them, reason shuts its eyes against this light, as being too dazzling. There is a proper place for reason in religion, where it is religion's useful, beautiful, and humble handmaid ; but out of its place it becomes the dangerous sorceress, it becomes the beautiful Cleopatra ; and the disgrace, the madness, the ruin, the desperation, which this guilty woman brought on her Antony and herself are only feeble figures to set forth how dangerous reason is when it is enthroned as a goddess in religion ; and it is always made a goddess when it is set in the place of the Holy Spirit. The French people once attempted to utter blasphemies against the Holy Ghost of the Bible, and to worship reason as their goddess ; and the terrific results which ensued, the refuge which many leading infidels sought in the horrible deed of suicide, ought to be a lesson and a warning never to be forgotten in the world. AND HIS WORD. 211 Supposing that I have some particular friend who has been seduced by the voice of deified reason until he has stumbled into the low pit of skepticism, where he sits in doubt of the veracity of both Moses and Paul, and where all religion has almost passed away from his vision as one of the mists of unenlightened ages, I wish to extend my voice to him and have a few earnest words with him. My friend, is not this a dark pit where you are sitting? Is it not really a dark dungeon ? It is sad indeed if your own pride of intellect and blinding prejudices have brought you to this place. It is sad if you are now here because a strong light once shone on you in a better place, but you inwardly loved darkness rather than light, and this brought you down. You ought to examine whether there has been a hatred of the pure truth concealed in your heart, as all such hatred involves a fearful guilt. If some element of wickedness in your own heart has caused all this darkness in which you are now sitting, you are doing wrong to be sitting here in peace. There is one saying of Jesus which possibly ought to be a touch of fire to your sleeping conscience : the saying is this : "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself." (John vii. 17.) Weigh this verse in your conscience : If any man wills to do the holy will of the Father, if any man wishes to know how he may travel up to God, and how he may gather others with him on the way to heaven, if he truly desires to learn what are the duties for him in the kingdom of God, Jesus appears to declare explicitly that darkness cannot continue to hold him a prisoner. " He shall know of the doctrine;" he will pass out from the dungeon of doubt into light, he will become satisfied whether Jesus brought the message of God or brought his own message. Jesus attaches great importance to truth in the man's 212 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD heart, or those inquiries after the truth which have their origin in sincerity. Subjective truth and objective truth cannot be naturally separated ; where a man desires to have the truth, the bars of prejudice become broken, and the objective light, the external doctrine of Jesus, naturally passes into his heart and fills it. If a man is sitting in darkness concerning the Avill of God because his own will has closed his eyes to the light, he ought to find out the wrong thing in himself before the great day of judgment brings it out. May I offer you, my friend, a key which you may try on the doors of your dark dungeon, and possibly it will open every one ? This key lies in another saying of Jesus. Let me read it : " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him !" (Luke xi. 13.) The Holy Spirit is thus offered to those who are sitting in darkness, to those who are chained in a dungeon; but they do not feel their chains, and sup- i:)Ose they are free. Heaven cannot offer a more precious gift than the Holy Spirit. He is the eternal light within God himself, the light of truth, of faith, of hope, of holi- ness, of love, and of comfort. His holy name appears in brilliant letters through all parts of the Bible. Balaam and Saul knew his power, and fell to the ground, and were compelled to give utterance to his holy inspirations, though they both were travelers by choice in the dark and down- ward road, and they escaped from him only to rush on faster to ruin. Moses and the prophets knew his power, put on their robes of light in his illumination, and re- joiced in his grace. He is sent to those who ask for him, to guide them into light. Have you continued sitting in this dungeon, and never earnestly asked the Father to send you the Spirit ? If prayer may bring you an infal- AND HIS WORD. 213 lible guide and mighty deliverer, prayer is clearly your first duty. The best key to try now on the doors of your prison is prayer. If you remain here because you have no will to make one humble prayer for light, an infinitely more horrible darkness may soon bring its clouds over you, and you will have no one to blame except yourself. If these two texts have the right to be cited as the words of the Holy Ghost, if these two fundamental prin- ciples which support the doctrine of Jesus are sound,— first, that those who sincerely wish to be at work in the holy service of God naturally come to find the Divine will in the teaching of Jesus, and, secondly, that the Holy Spirit comes to guide those who ask for him, into the light, — every man ought instantly to see on what the safety of his soul depends. He ought also to see that two such pillars never support a false doctrine, and that if Jesus spoke thus he must have brought his message from God, If a house has its foundation in holy sincerity without blinding prejudice, and in religious instruction and prayer for the Holy Spirit, travelers need not be afraid to lodge in it over night. My friend, bend your knees, and try to call upon the Lord from your dungeon of skepticism. Unite with me in this prayer : "Thou Father in heaven, thou fountain of all light, if thou sendest thy Holy Spirit to be the guide of the blind, here is one who is blind ; but, though blind, I would try to pray. May I believe in the Holy Spirit and in the Scriptures, if this is the right belief. I would not sit in darkness, when I ought to be doing thy work in the clear light of day. I would not be closing my own eyes against the light, when I ought to be actively holding out a light to others to cheer them on their upward way to God. I would make thy service in thine own kingdom 214 ^-^^-^ SPIRIT OF THE LORD the choice and delight of my heart, rather than the ser- vice of the world. Send thy truth into my heart, even if all the prejudices of my education should be aroused against it. May I receive thy truth, and be unable to resist it, even if it should alarm me, and condemn all my past life, and bring over my soul a horror of great dark- ness. May thy truth be dearer to me than worldly prop- erty and all my friends. Let it not be my condemnation that light has come into the world, but that I loved dark- ness rather than light. ' Search me, O God, and know my heart ; try me, and know my thoughts ; and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.' Lord, what wilt thou have me to do ? I would ask this same thing every day, — What wilt thou have me to do ? If thou dost send thy Spirit in answer to prayer, as Jesus appears to have taught, I would now commit to the hand of thy Spirit my whole soul, and especially my mind struggling in darkness, and my selfish and debased nature." Can the doubter of all religion make this prayer sin- cerely and regularly, never omitting it for a single morning, and not come out of his darkness into light ? It appears to me almost impossible. The sincere wish to come to God's truth, if it exercise itself in the secret whis- pers of prayer, naturally dissolves the strength of skep- ticism, as the warm sun causes the snow to disappear. Prayer carries the soul up into light, too near to God to let skepticism still be freezing over it. Do try, then, my friend, if you can find a true relief for your doubts in prayer. Most men suppose it to be proper to pray for the bread which perishes; but there is a higher propriety in asking God for the spiritual bread which the soul needs. Is it said that skeptics do not pray, — that skepticism reasonably produces a dislike of prayer, or a want of faith AND HIS WORD. 215 in it? then on this single ground let skepticism be uncon- ditionally condemned. If a man is an atheist, still he never can go further than the region of doubts; he never can reach a demonstrated certainty that there is no God : and so long as the whole subject still continues in doubt, his only safe and wise course is to make the prayer every day, "God, if thou dost exist, hear me and give me thy help." Circumstances are often such that it is a man's duty to raise the loudest cry for help even if there be no certainty that there is any one to help him within the reach of his cry. The skeptic never takes one step in the long race of life where it is a certainty that God is so distant from him that his call for mercy and help could not reach him. No man has a right to excuse himself for the entire neglect of prayer on the ground that he is an atheist. He may see no proof satisfactory to himself that there is a God ; yet a God may be, and this God may be the hearer of prayer. If an atheist make it his secret prayer daily that if a God of love does exist his own soul may be visited with the light of this love, there may be a serene gem of honesty in that man's heart more valuable in the sight of God than all the massive learning of scoff- ing and prayerless infidels. There is no senseless head living more unreasonable than the skeptic who supposes that the wonderful religious faculties of the human soul have no deep meaning. Poor people, whose circle of knowledge is very limited, sometimes have the greatest enjoyment in religion ; they may have a pure and intelligent delight in their Bibles, though they have never made the evidences of revealed religion a special study, and have never had time for such studies, and their simple faith in the Divine promises may give them a continued sunshine of the heart along the journey of life, while the scholar of stupendous learning 2i6 THE SPIRIT OF THE LORD and ability may taste no such celestial food. The reason may be that they have obtained by prayer the Holy Spirit as their guide and comforter, and thus they rise in light nearer to God, while the other's learning and pride of intellect convince him of the uselessness of prayer for light, and hold him down heavily to the earth. God brings the poor and humble to his own table, while the rich and the wise may stay away, supposing that they have all needful wisdom without the Holy Spirit, and perish. If the Bible has indeed this precious promise of the Holy Spirit for us in our search after God, it is wrong to speak doubtfully of this gift, and especially is there a flagrant wrong in speaking contemptuously of it. Any word or act which implies a dishonor of the holiness of God or of his spiritual nature is among the most virulent offenses. Whether we learn the character and work of the Holy Spirit in the school of Moses alone, or accept also the teaching of the New Testament along with Moses, Jesus has left a momentous warning for persons of every faith and of all ages, in the words, " He that shall blas- 'pheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation." If you walk close to the truth as your friend, you have the best of all friends; but if the truth be against you, the worst of all enemies is against you. Place the truth in the supreme seat, and your own theory in a lower seat : give up to the truth to determine your theory, and set not up your own theory to determine the truth. Open all the heart, that truth and love may enter and possess it for- ever. If I may imagine these lines printed, and ever perused by some person who hates the light that reproves his deeds and corrects his views, and is stubborn in his preju- AND HIS WORD. 217 dices, I would leave the following lines of Young sound- ing in his ears : " Seize wisdom, ere 'tis torment to be wise ; That is, seize wisdom ere she seizes thee. For what, my small philosopher, is hell? 'Tis nothing but full knowledge of the truth, When truth, resisted long, is sworn our foe, And calls eternity to do her right." M. R. M. 19 APPENDIX. A DISSERTATION ON THE BOOK OF JOB. The book of Job has rendered such peculiar and im- portant aid in the preceding inquiries that it is proposed finally to make it the subject of a special dissertation. The following verse is found in Ezekiel : "Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in it, as I live, saith the Lord God, they shall deliver neither son nor daughter ; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness" (chap. xiv. 20) : — which verse proves that the Jews of the Babylonish captivity knew Job as one whose supplica- tions were needed by his friends for their salvation. If a verse is found in the book which is Chaldee, this does not prove that this verse must have been written so late as the captivity in Babylon ; since it might just as well be argued that Jacob and Laban lived close to the captivity because Chaldee words passed between them in their conversation as they were separating for the last time. Aben Ezra gives his opinion thus: "Job was one of the grandsons of Nahor, the brother of Abraham ; and a view still more agreeable to me is that he was of the sons of Esau." Job could hardly be younger than fifty years when his great reverse came upon him ; and, as he lived one hundred 219 220 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. and forty years afterward, he must have been nearly two hundred years old when he died. Men had ceased long before the time of Moses to live to this age ; and the book of Job was probably composed long before the first book of Moses. " The following instances will show the regularity of the decline, and enable us, with some degree of probability, to determine the period of the world in which Job lived. Noah lived nine hundred and fifty years ; Shem, his son, six hundred ; Arphaxad, his son, four hundred and thirty-eight years ; Salah, four hundred and thirty-three years; Eber, four hundred and sixty-four; Peleg, two hundred and thirty-nine ; Reu, two hundred and thirty-nine ; Serug, two hundred and thirty ; Nahor, two hundred and forty-eight ; Terah, two hundred and five ; Abraham, one hundred and seventy-five; Isaac, one hundred and eighty ; Jacob, one hundred and forty-seven ; Joseph, one hundred and ten ; Moses, one hundred and twenty; Joshua, one hundred and ten. Supposing, then, the age of Job to have been somewhat unusual and ex- traordinary, it would fall in with the period somewhere in the time between Terah and Jacob ; and, if so, he was probably contemporary with the most distinguished of the patriarchs." (^Barnes.) It was the burnt-offering which Job sacrificed regularly for his children, on the hypothesis that they had sinned in their feasts ; and it was the burnt-offering of fourteen animals which his three friends were required to provide in the end, that the sin of their improper language might be forgiven before the Lord in answer to the prayer of Job for them. This proves that the patriarchal burnt- offering was in large part of the nature of a sin-offering; it also proves a probability that the sin-offering in that separate form which Moses gave it did not exist in the time of Job. A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 221 The Divine T\2Xi\^ Jah is not found in Job, which favors the hypothesis that Moses was the first to bring it into use ; and Adonai, as a Divine name, occurs only once in the whole book, namely, in the last verse of the twenty- eighth chapter. Abraham used this name seven times in prayer, thus proving that it was then clothed with all its sacredness; but the horizon surrounding Job was so dif- ferent that this name was barely beginning to touch the horizon with its light. Memory must again be refreshed with the verses in the sixth chapter of Exodus: "And God spake unto Moses, and said unto him, I am Jehovah. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by El Shaddai ; and by my wa^wt Jehovah was I not known to them." It is highly interesting to examine how these two patriarchal names. El and Shaddai, appear in Job. El goes ahead of every other Divine name in Job by a large majority ; it occurs in fifty-five places, while Shaddai occvlts, in thirty- one places. Many verses consist of two parallel lines, and El is in the first line while Shaddai corresponds to it in the second line. Some examples are the following : " Doth El pervert judgment ? Or doth Shaddai pervert justice ?" (viii. 3.) " If thou wouldest seek unto El betimes, And make thy supplication to Shaddai." (viii. 5.) " Surely I would speak to Shaddai, And I desire to reason with El." (xiii. 3.) " For he stretcheth out his hand against El, And strengtheneth himself agamst Shaddai." (xv. 25.) " Who said unto El, Depart from us : And what can Shaddai do for them ?" (xxii. 17.) " For El maketh my heart soft, And Shaddai troubleth me." (xxiii. 16.) " As El liveth, who hath taken away my judgment ; And Shaddai, who hath vexed my soul." (xxvii. 2.) 19" 222 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. " This is the portion of a wicked man with £/, And the heritage of oppressors, which they shall receive of Shaddai." (xxvii. 13.) " The Spirit of El hath made me, And the breath of Shaddai will give me life." (xxxiii. 4.) There are thirteen verses of this kind in Job, each having El in one line and Shaddai in the other. They furnish a splendid testimony that El and Shaddai were the holy names among the patriarchs. The tetragrammaton was also known to Job as it was to Abraham ; it fills thirty-two places in Job ; but it is a very singular fact that in the body of the book — that is, the poetical speeches — the tetragrammaton is found only once, and this is in the twelfth chapter, the ninth verse. All the other instances of its appearance are in the historical chapters at the beginning and close of the book, and in the titles at the heads of chapters, giving the author of the next speech. Whether this proves that the histor- ical frame inclosing the poetical speeches was prepared in a later age, when the name Jehovah was in more common use than in the time when the speeches first came into existence, is probably a question which cannot be an- swered with certainty. It is certified that the tetragram- maton was known to the patriarchs Job and Abraham ; and the true view is that it took a new specific personal meaning with Moses which it never had before. Thus the holy names El and Shaddai appear with a most commanding prominence on the face of the book of Job ; and to them must be joined Eloah, a noun of the singular number, of which Elohim is the plural, and which occurs in forty-one places, while its plural form occurs in only seventeen places, and eleven of these are in the first two chapters, leaving only six for the remain- ing forty chapters. The remarkable state of things here A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 223 lies before us that El and Shaddai and Eloah are su- premely prominent in the book of Job, that they are almost banished from the books of Moses and the other parts of the Bible, — not entirely banished, and the word El maintains its ground better than the others, but, with some exception in its favor, the three are almost banished, — and Divine names of the plural form and plural import fill their places. Job is decidedly the best book of natural theology in the Bible. It introduces names of the plural number for the Deity very sparingly, and certainly does not introduce them on the ground that there is a glare of majesty in Elohim the plurality more than in Eloah the unity; it in- vests both El and Shaddai with majesty the most holy and the most brilliant ; it makes very few references to miracles ; the speakers carry on the most weighty and profound discussions in religion without references to a doctrine as certified by a miracle, or a precept as origi- nating from a miracle; and, all things considered, it is the best unitarian book in the Hebrew canon. If the wish is to find a unitarianism diametrically opposed to trini- tarianism, to find a genuine unitarian germ which grows up in an exclusive unity and which cannot have its de- velopment in the three spreading branches of trinitarian- ism, Job is the blooming field where this germ is likely to be found in preference to all other parts of the Bible. Trinitarianism would never have had any hold among Gentile nations if they had always made the man of Uz, who was one of themselves, their supreme guide, and had never turned their eyes on the man of Nazareth as if they must expect their salvation from the Jews. The characteristic and apparently anomalous feature in the book of Job is the manifest and complete failure in the answer which comes from the Lord at the close of 2 24 ^ DISSERTATION ON JOB. the book. Our minds may here revert to the time when a President of the United States died at Washington, and the funeral cortege occupied a special train of cars in conveying the remains to Springfield for interment. Behold what was solemnly moving on the iron track, the special train with the hangings of black on each car, and the heavy dark plumes, while the mourning family and the chief men of the government were the passengers within. Suppose that the mournful appearance and the slow and solemn movement had raised the question on the road, What causes yonder special train to be moving? and suppose that some one gave an elaborate and brilliant reply on the mysteries of heat, steam, and friction, point- ing particularly to the action of the heat on the boiler and pipes, the generation of the steam, the expansive power of the steam in the cylinder forcing the inclosed piston from end to end and bringing every wheel into motion, the different valves which confine the steam in the cylinder and let it escape at the right moment, the apparatus for bringing the train to a stop almost instantly, and the peculiar feathers of the ostrich which enter into the plumes, — it is clear that all this, however interesting, would still not be the proper reply to the question. This may illustrate how manifestly the answer of the Lord to Job, at the close of the book, is not the proper answer to the great question of the book. The question which runs as a thread through all the book, holding all things together, is. How could the justice of God permit such heavy afflictions to come on such a good man as Job was ? The whole answer of the Lord is the expansion of such thoughts as these : Behold my wisdom and powei displayed in the great work of creation, in the tracing of those lines according to which the earth was first formed, in the birth of the ocean, when darkness and A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 225 clouds were the garment thrown over it in the morning of its birth. Behold my power and wisdom in the floods of light that come on the earth in the morning and depart in the evening, in the mysteries of that lower world that lies beyond the gates of death, in the circle of constella- tions which the sun traverses every year, in the brilliant Orion of the winter, and the sweet Pleiades of the spring, and the stars of the north that never touch the horizon. Behold clouds, and rain, and snow, and hail, and torrents, and obedient lightnings, floods also, bursting out in the bottom of the ocean, all testifying to my power and wis- dom. The same incomprehensible power and wisdom are again revealed in the lion, in the raven, in the wild goats of the rock, in the wild deer of the forest, in the spirited wild ass, in the unicorn or rhinoceros, in the ostrich, in the war-horse, in the hawk, in the eagle, in that mighty creature found where land and sea meet, the behemoth or hippopotamus, and in that other mighty creature of the river, the leviathan or crocodile ; in the perfect independence of all help of man which most of these creatures enjoy in their self-protecting instincts, in their care or apathy towards their young, and in that wild felicity which rocks and deserts and the highest clouds cause to flow around them. Behold there my wisdom in- finite, and my power infinite ; and now let it be your feeling that your power is only weakness, and that your wisdom comes to nothing. All this is a reply of dazzling sublimity; but still not one ray of light is thrown on that dark question, why the excellent Job had been made the most miserable of all living men. Let all the stars be brought forward, let all the songs of the sons of God in the morning of creation bring their sublime sound to the ears of man, let all the movements of clouds and fires and floods appear, and let all these mentioned creatures and K* 2 26 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. all other creatures be brought forward under the strongest light, they cannot answer the question why man, though he may be a friend of God, must be a child of woe. Let it not be branded as an irreverent decision if we must decide that the answer of the Lord was a transparent failure. As well might the expansive steam, the cylinder, the valves, the powerful engine, the rolling wheels, the dark ostrich plumes, be summoned to declare why the cars were transporting the lifeless body of the nation's magis- trate, with the sorrowing company. This whole reply to Job has the appearance of a failure from the fact that it has its greatest sublimity at the beginning, and its weakness gradually and regularly in- creases to the close. It begins among the stupendous events of creation, walks among the stars and clouds, and then descends among the birds ; touches the forest and the horse in the battle, and ends with the crocodile in the sea. The goodness of God may shine in the stars and clouds, but certainly the cruel and terrible croco- dile is one of the last animals to make the impression on man that God is merciful. The argument pursues a track where it sinks continually into greater weakness. Why must good men suffer terribly ? One may give the answer, that the godly and the ungodly in this world are like wheat and chaff on the threshing-floor : both must re- ceive together the same severe knocks, so that they may be finally separated, the chaff to be cast away, and the wheat to be preserved. Another may give the answer, that a very dismal road through this world brings out the beauty of that faith which never doubts that the Lord is merciful. Another may give the answer, that afflictions are disciplinary ; they are the means of conducting men to a more spiritual and holy life in this world. Another may give the answer, that the greater the good man's loss A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 227 in this world, the richer will be his gain in the life after death. But the Lord here does not unfold either of these views, or any other view. The great question is evaded. The answer substitutes the sublimity of nature for the sublimity of such religious subjects ; and the moral sub- limity in the speeches of Job's friends disappears from it. Who has not been thrilled with the moral majesty of the last speech of Zophar, where he describes how the great- ness of the hypocrite may reach to heaven, but God will cut him down in a moment, and that the wicked man may have the most brilliant prosperity on the earth, but while he is sitting at his table with all his choice provisions before him, and all displays of wealth around him, his eyes beaming most gracefully through his golden specta- cles, suddenly the arrow of the Almighty cuts through his liver, and shows itself in his other side, where its point is dripping with his gall ? But this principle, that pros- pering wickedness must end in a terrific fall, scarcely comes to view anywhere in the Lord's reply to Job. Or who has not admired the moral pictures in the speech of Elihu, and particularly his peculiar view that terrible calamities sometimes come on a man, his flesh departs, his bones lose almost all their covering and they are thrown into excruciating pain, his mind becomes be- wildered, his conscience echoes with terrible sounds, and his life is brought into the shadow of death, but all this is only one way in which God calls the man to himself, and all ends in blessings to the sufferer because his soul is snatched from the pit ? But such an explanation of the design of calamities has no place in the Lord's reply to Job. The moral aspects of Job's case were earnestly and brilliantly discussed by the friends, but the reply of the Lord leaves these aspects out entirely. This is one of 2 28 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. the mysteries of the book : it was the moral question that was brought before the Lord to be decided. The failure is still more clearly proved when the close of the book is collated with the beginning, or when the Lord's reply is compared with the narrative at the begin- ning of the book. The Lord's reply contained no true account of the origin and cause of Job's afflictions. Ac- cording to the statement at the beginning of the book, the afflictions of Job originated in a council of the sons of God in heaven, where the charge was made against Job that his worldly prosperity filled his heart, and that all his religion was nothing better than selfishness and hypocrisy ; and then Satan went forth with a grant of full power to bring every possible calamity on Job, short of the stroke of death itself, to try the genuineness of his religion. The Lord did not explain to Job that all his afflictions came directly from the hand of a dark, malig- nant, revengeful spirit, delighting in accusations and habitually distrusting all human sincerity ; but this was the only true explanation, and the reply without this explanation must be a failure. Supposing that the failure has been clearly set forth and must be admitted, I now advance to the position that this complete failure is the essential part of the plan of the book, and the true key for unlocking the whole, and that the su- preme excellence of the book has its centre here. 1 find it to be the object of the book to set forth two great lessons: I. The first great lesson of the book is that our world is not isolated, but is closely connected with a higher world ; the human race on earth are closely con- nected with the higher world of the sons of God, so that joys and sorrows come to us from their invisible hands. The affliction of Job originated in the council of the sons of God in heaven. There was a mighty invisible agent A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 229 which controlled the fire, lightning, tornado, robbery, and bloodshed, which swept everything from Job in one day. There was an invisible agent called Satan, that touched the body of Job with the most disagreeable and sickening eruptions and poured horrors into his soul. What occurs on earth cannot be understood except in the light of what is designed in heaven. When a man sinks down to the pit, cords from heaven may be letting him down. When a man ascends towards God, cords that are held by the hands of angels may be drawing him up. Mighty wheels are now going round, only the lower part of which can be seen from the earth, while the higher part is moving among the angels and invisible to us, and the celestial hand that turns them is invisible. All the subjects of the moral government of God are not on the face of the earth ; there are other and higher worlds of them, and all these worlds are in a sympathetic and directly co-operative connection with us, and the deep mysteries of this connection cannot now be fathomed. A similar idea runs through the religions of heathenism. Homer sings how the decree of Jupiter controlled all the transactions at Troy, from the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles to the death of Hector. He exhibits the Trojan war as going forward in subordination to the counsel and control of the gods. It was often a celestial hand that saved a hero when otherwise he must instantly have perished. Every religion had its peculiar ideas of invis- ible celestial beings that directed and controlled transac- tions on earth ; and the ideas on this point indicated the purity or the degradation and superstition of each religion. 2. The second great lesson of the book is that the stupendous miracle of creation constitutes one volume, and the later miracles of God's grace constitute another volume ; and there are questions pertaining to man's 20 230 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. afflictions in this life which God himself does not answer from the first volume, but which must receive the true answer from the volume that instructs us in the miracles of grace. The human soul needs to learn in both the school of nature and the school of faith ; and the school of nature alone is utterly inadequate to educate it. A chief object of the book of Job is to illustrate the relations between these two schools, or to place the school of nature on its own proper ground and form an accurate sketch of that large and sublime field, the whole of which belongs to the school of faith. The wisdom and power of God constitute nearly the whole of the theological lesson that can be learned in the great school of nature. The sources of instruction in this school are innumerable. Behold here the wonders of the material and immaterial creation, and of growth, develop- ment, revolution, and catastrophe, through the wide realm of nature in countless ages \ and here behold the stars that have ceased to shine and the stars that now light up our sky, the stars that blaze along the sun's path through the year, and the other stars which never pause in their nightly march around their northern centre; the light of sun and moon; the rain; the snow; the hail ; the flashing clouds breaking up in thunders ; the eagle ; the lion ; the wild goat ; the unicorn ; the ostrich ; the horse; the behemoth; the crocodile; and to these may be added that darkness that has an unlimited domain beyond the gate of death : all these come to man with wonderful instructions in the school of nature, and the longer he listens to their voice the more he feels that he can never penetrate all their mysteries. But still the infinite power of God and the infinite wisdom of God are nearly all that they teach in theology. Ask them why the best men often have the greatest amount of affliction , A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 231 while the wicked live in prosperity and joy ; and they have no answer to give. Ask them why Job, the best man in the world, was plunged into the deepest suffering of both body and mind ; and the only answer that they have is the Divine power infinite and the Divine wisdom infinite. All such questions must be taken from the school of nature, and transferred to the higher school of faith. If it is the question why God permits the wicked man to prosper and wield power as if he were the best man, while the good man must live in deep sorrow as if he were the least worthy of God's notice; or if it is the question why the worst man is permitted to die in peace and honor, while the good man dies in terror and dis- honor ; or, what are the relations between mankind and a higher world of worshiping beings where there is neither sin nor death ? or, what are the relations between human souls still living in the body and the human souls that have passed beyond the gate of death ? or, what is that atonement in blood which really covers sin from the sight of God ? or, how may man attain to perfect peace with God ? or, does the gate of death open into a world of unmitigated darkness, or has a light arisen in that world ? or if the question is how man could be originally a holy being as he came from the hand of God, and then ever change into such a being as a malignant blasphemer of the holy name ; or if the simple question is how such a good man as Job could come to curse the day of his birth, — it is clear that all such questions cannot be touched in the school of nature, but must go up to the higher school of faith. The Lord himself, teaching in the school of nature, gave Job no satisfaction on any one of these questions, but from all the high and low ranges of nature, from the stars over the head and the leviathan at the feet of man, the only answer was that no one can 232 A DISSERTATION ON JOB. comprehend God's power and no one can comprehend his wisdom. The holiness of God, the principles of his moral government, his purposes presiding over the moral confusion and woes that fill the earth, and the final results of a life of religion and a life of wickedness, must be learned in the school of faith, or they must remain in confusion and uncertainty. This faith must have a special revelation from God for its foundation, otherwise it has nothing to rest on ; and hence the complete failure in the Lord's reply to Job to place the great question in a clear light was designed to exhibit the wide and tremendous vacancy which a Divine revelation comes to fill. This places the book of Job in a most interesting relation to the other books of the in- spired canon. It exhibits the yawning, terrific chasm; the other books build up the walls of eternal strength in this chasm. It exhibits the questions which the school of nature utterly fails to answer, and even fails in the name of the Lord himself to answer. The other books furnish that special infallible revelation from heaven in which the true answers to these questions are found. The three friends of Job were guilty before God because they had attempted to decide, at the presumptuous tribunal of their own reason, those questions which a supernatural revela- tion has come into the world to decide ; and they were required to offer sacrifices for their sin. Job also ab- horred himself and repented in dust and ashes, because he, though less guilty than they, had attempted to explain things beyond his reach. This book exhibits the awfulness of the darkness of nature; the other books of Holy Scripture emit the new light which is above nature. It proves how very little theological light we have if we are left to the one stu- pendous miracle of creation ; the other books make us A DISSERTATION ON JOB. 233 acquainted with the later miracles of God's grace in the lives of Abraham, Moses, and many other prophets. Job is the outer court of the Gentiles, but the other parts of the Bible are the inner courts, close to the holy temple, where the true worshipers come nearest to God. It may also be a part of the design of this book to teach us that the power of God and the wisdom of God are never to be doubted ; and so, whatever difficulties we may find in the introduction of sin into our world, and the permission of its continued existence, we must always abhor every theory which can suppose any deficiency in either the power of God, or his wisdom, or his goodness. 20* QUESTIONS DESIGNED TO ASSIST IN THE STUDY OF THE FOREGOING LETTERS. LETTER I. In what light did the Christian community appear be- fore the eyes of Maimonides ? Are Christians willing to be ranked among the heathen, without the privilege of making a defense? Does the verse (Deut. vi. 4) "Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord," pass among the Jews as the most holy and weighty in the Bible ? Is it their watchword, and is it called the Shemah Yisrael ? Mention how a rabbi in a synagogue in Jerusalem used this watchword to turn all eyes in scorn on a Chris- tian missionary who had just entered. How often does the tetragrammaton occur in this verse? As it is never read aloud by strict Jews, what is the word substituted for it ? Is Adonai, then, always heard twice in the reading of this verse ? How often is the Divine name Adonai found in all the Bible? Is it properly a noun of the plural number? Does Adon mean Lord? Does Adoni mean My Lord, as in Ps. ex. i ? 234 QUESTIONS. 235 Does Adonai, the Divine name, mean My Lords, or Lords ? Commencing our search from the beginning of the Bible, with whom do we find the Divine name Ado7iai first in use ? How often is it found as a word used by Abraham ? Is it found first in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis? How often does it occur in this chapter? Does this chapter contain the account of the covenant made with Abraham by passing between the pieces of sacrificed animals ? How did the passing between the pieces indicate the establishment of a covenant ? Did God, in that covenant, reveal his presence in three forms : first, the horrible darkness; secondly, the smoking furnace, passing between the pieces to accept the sacri- fices ; and thirdly, the burning lamp? Does the Lord dwell in the thick darkness ? Can a special signification be given to the smoking furnace ? Can a special signification be given to the burning lamp as the illuminator? What chapter of Genesis contains the third place where Adonai is found in the Bible ? When that rabbi in Jerusalem was proclaiming the Shemah Yisrael, to cause the missionary to feel ashamed, is it probable that he had the verses of the eighteenth chapter of Genesis in his mind, "And Jehovah appeared to him in the plains of Mamre : and he sat in the tent door in the heat of the day. And he lifted up his eyes, and looked, and lo, three men stood by him : and when he saw, he ran to meet them from the tent door, and bowed himself toward the ground, and said, Adonai, if now I have found favor in thine eyes;" — and that it 236 QUESTIONS. could occur to him that Adonai here stands for three persons as well as for a Unity ? Does Aben Ezra appear to take this Adonai in the secular meaning, and not in the Divine meaning ? If he does, does the Talmud agree with him ? Does Onkelos agree with him ? Does the law for the scribes of the Pentateuch agree with him ? Does the Masoretic pointing agree with him ? After Abraham had thus addressed the three as Adonai, how often did he again use this holy word in his conver- sation with them in the same afternoon ? Did Abraham ever mention Adonai except in prayer? When Lot addressed the two angels that same evening with the secular Adonai, is it still clearly of the plural number ? When Lot, the next morning, uttered the holy Adonai in prayer, was it clearly a plural word ? Does Jonathan ben Uzziel deserve censure for marring the text in making it read that Lot said to him, Adojtai, whereas the original text is that Lot said to them, Adonai? May not both the Almighty and created angels be united in the word Adonai to give it its plurality ? When Moses prayed that Adonai might go up with the people through the wilderness, had he any reference to any created angel ? When Adonai appeared in vision to Isaiah, is there any probability that any of the seraphim, or any created beings, entered into the word along with the Creator to be the foundation of its plurality? When Daniel repeated Adonai %o often in his one great prayer, is there any possibility that he found both the Creator and created beings in the word, and accepted this as the explanation of its plurality? QUESTIONS. 237 When the word occurs fourteen times in the Lamenta- tions of Jeremiah, does anything look like a union of the Creator and any created beings to account for its plurality? Does Adonai, therefore, look like a coin coming new and glittering from the mint of Abraham and stamped with a triad on its face ? What might be suspected or feared concerning an Adonai purporting to be a coin from the mint of Abra- ham, but with no trace of the triad on its face ? What has Jesus taught concerning the Shemah Yisrael, in Mark xii. 29 ? LETTER IL Having dismissed the term Adonai, when we take up the tetragrammaton are we now commencing with the terms found in the original text ? How often is the tetragrammaton found in the original text, the She?nah Yisrael ? Is the tetragrammaton ever applied to any person that is not included in the Eternal Being? If there is a plurality in it, must this plurality be within the Deity ? Is the tetragrammaton inflexibly of the singular num- ber? Is the word Jehovah ever found in the plural ? Is the phrase Holy Gods, with this singular feature, that the adjective holy is plural as well as the noun, ever an- nexed to Jehovah, to fill the place of a definition of the term ? Where does this occur ? Give an etymological analysis of the tetragrammaton. The future time, where does it stand ? The past time, where does it stand ? 238 QUESTIONS. The present time, where does it stand ? May that verse in the New Testament, " No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him," be illustrated by the present moment, which, though so transient and limited, represents all the infinite past and is equal in worth to all the past ? Does the infinite future depend on the transient present and the changeless past ? If one asks the question why four persons might not be in the Trinity as well as three, might it as well be asked why we have three times, the infinite future, the present, and the infinite past, and cannot add a fourth time ? Do the three times in the tetragrammaton furnish three personal names designating the Eternal Essence ? What separate personal name does the future tense in the tetragrammaton furnish ? To whom was the name I-will-be-that-I-will-be first made known ? Can this name be shared by any created being in con- junction with God? Does the Holy Ghost appear to have his office especially in the infinite future ? What separate personal name does the past tense in the tetragrammaton furnish ? Where is the name Jah first found in the Bible? Where is the oath involving perpetual war against Amalek mentioned as being made with the hand on the throne of Jah ? Mention some of the ways in which the great work of creation has been connected with the name Jah. In what book does the verse occur, "Extol him who rideth upon the heavens by his name JAH " ? QUESTIONS. 239 Is the essential idea-of the name Jah, God before all, or God the eternal rock of strength? What separate personal name does the present tense in the tetragrammaton furnish? Did Moses receive the tetragrammaton with a new meaning which the patriarchs had not known, though they were all acquainted with the word ? When the Lord gave his name to Moses at the rock of Horeb, after the worship of the golden 'idol, and pro- claimed '^Jehovah, Jehovah, God, merciful," etc., does it appear the most consistent interpretation that the first Jehovah was the patriarchal, and the second was the one newly revealed to Moses ? Does this new Mosaic tetragrammaton appear to hold his place in the interjacent present tense, as I-will-be-that- I-will-be has a place in the infinite future, and Jah has a place in the infinite past ? Does this newly-revealed tetragrammaton, with the I-will-be-that-I-will-be and the Jah, make the complete Trinity? Is the ineffable name uniformly translated in the Septuagint and the New Testament by the word Kurios (Lord) ? Is Jesus often called Lord {Ktirios) in the New Testa- ment? Did Jesus take to himself the name Lord? Was prayer ever made to him as being Lord ? Can you give six instances in the New Testament where Jesus is called Lord ? If the term Lord, which Jesus assumed, was the trans- lation of the ineffable name, must it be referred to the new tetragrammaton which was revealed to Moses, rather than to the patriarchal tetragrammaton ? As this new interjacent tetragrammaton was limited on 240 QUESTIONS. one hand by Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, ^nd on the other hand by Jah, is the Lord Jesus likewise limited on the one hand by the Holy Spirit, and on the other hand by the Father ? Since Pharaoh attributed the perfect knowledge of the future to the Spirit of God, does this prove that there is a special propriety in assigning the term I-will-be-that-I- will-be to the Holy Spirit ? Do the terms Jah, in Mosaic theology, and Father of the Lord Jesus, in Christian theology, appear equally to point back into the infinite past ? Is the tetragrammaton the proper name for God, and does it stand for his essence, his eternal life, and not grow out of any particular attribute or work ? Is it also proved from the time of Moses to be an appel- lative as well as a proper noun ? Does the phrase Jehovah of hosts, according to the principles of the Hebrew language, prove the appellative character of the tetragrammaton ? Why was the most holy name, the exclusive and essen- tial name of God, permitted to make a transition into the character of an appellative, and still, as an appellative, retaining all its original holiness? Did. the word lose so much as the least share of its original strength in passing into the character of an appellative ? Is the word Kurios (Lord), which translates it, clearly an appellative ? Explain how we find Kurios to be an appellative in the New Testament where it is also the Divine name. Explain how Kurios is an appellative in the first verse of the Epistle of James. If the appellative character of the tetragrammaton and the appellative character of Kurios are proved to be per- QUESTIONS. 241 fectly the same, does this raise an insurmountable diffi- culty in the way of unitarianism ? Does a truly consistent unitarianism demand that the tetragrammaton preserve its strict, substantive, individual, untransferable import, even more so than the term God Almighty, and never assume one of the features of a common noun ? Does Jehovah, as an appellative, begin to spread over the field of inspiration about the time of David, and come to abound wonderfully in the last prophets of the Jewish canon, as if it has taken the whole field? Does it bloom more thickly in Zechariah, Haggai, and Malachi than in all the earlier parts of Scripture? Are its blooms more numerous in Malachi, over the same space, than in all other parts of the Hebrew canon ? Does this increasing abundance of the tetragrammaton in its appellative character look like the morning star of a new dispensation ? LETTER III. If the appellative import of the tetragrammaton is the Upholder of the intelligent hosts of the imiverse by a constant miracle, does this likewise define the term Son of God, in the New Testament ? Does John testify that the glory of Jesus, in his life of miraculous beneficence, was the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth? Did Jesus, in the possession of a true body and a reason- able soul, exist in eternity? ' If he did not possess his human body and soul in eternity, does it follow that as the son of David he began to exist in time, like any other son of David ? Is it the orthodox Christian theology that Jesus as the 242 QUESTIONS. son of David belongs to time, but that as the only begotten of the Father he belongs to eternity? Did the Son of God, belonging to eternity, take, at a certain point in time, a true human body and a true human soul to himself in a union that should last always? Is this the orthodox doctrine? In this indissoluble union, did either humanity change into Deity or Deity change into humanity? was there any mixture of the two natures so as to affect the essential properties of either ? Would any theory involving such a mixture be counted a great error in theology ? What was the meaning when Jesus was called on in the wilderness, as the Son of God, to change the stones into bread ? Why was it suggested to him that, being the Son of God, he could not be destroyed by a fall from the pin- nacle of the temple? Did the first attack that was ever made on the Messiah- ship of Jesus consist in a doubt thrown on the title Son of God ? How did Jesus defend his right to work on the sabbath day? When he called God his Father, did the Jews under- stand him as making himself equal to God? Explain that remarkable saying, " Before Abraham was, lam." Does this remarkable saying place the Son of God where the present tense is, in the centre of the tetra- grammaton, if the saying can be proved to be truthful ? What is the highest proof that Jesus is the Son of God? If the resurrection from the dead did occur, must it have been a miracle ? QUESTIONS. 243 Was it such a miracle as only omnipotence could work? Does omnipotence ever give its hand to help anything that is not true ? Is the whole Christian faith either true or false accord- ing to the truth or want of truth in the story of the resur- rection ? Were the witnesses of the resurrection numbered by hundreds ? Did he appear to his disciples alive, at different times and in different places, after he had died on the cross? Is it possible that his resurrection was not true, and that the disciples did not know that it was not true ? Could the report of his resurrection on the third day be first started at the Pentecost seven weeks after his cruci- fixion, and then be believed by any person ? Was it possible that the disciples stole him away from the sepulchre and their tracks could not be followed ? . Was the full moon shining all the night ? How could the disciples, even if they were the most artful deceivers, hope to make an imperishable name for themselves by the possession of his dead body? Is it probable that it ever once occurred to them to re- move his body from the sepulchre? Why could not the dead body be found by either friend or foe after Sunday morning? Why did not the Pharisees exhibit the dead body before witnesses, and thus hush effectually the false story ? LETTER IV. What is the other Divine name joined with the tetra- grammaton in the text at the head of this book, the watchword of Israel ? B44 QUESTIONS. Is Elohini (God) properly of the plural number? Is Eloah the noun in the singular number of which it is the plural ? Are there a few texts in which an adjective in the plural number, or a verb in the plural number, is found agreeing with Elohim ? How many times does Elohim occur in the first chapter of Genesis ? How many times does Eloah occur in all the five books of Moses ? Is it in the same chapter, the thirty-second of Deuter- onomy, where Eloah occurs twice? Are the Divine names Eloah and El, and Shaddai ds\& El Shaddai, names concerning which there can be no question that they are of the singular number ? Are they the most suitable names to express the unita- rian idea of God ? Did Moses find these names of the singular number, as possessing a supreme lustre among the patriarchs? and did he deprive them of their supremacy and put other names of unquestionable plurality in their place? How often is Eloah found in the book of Job? How often is El found in the oracles of Balaam ? How often is _£"/ found in the book of Job? How often is Shaddai found in the book of Job? How many verses are there in Job consisting of two parallel clauses, in which one clause contains El, and the other clause Shaddai, corresponding to it ? What are the facts showing that Moses completely banished the word Shaddai from the proper Mosaic theo- logical vocabulary, and sent the word El a good part of the way along with it? Is there any term which is more decidedly a proper name for God, and more clearly expressive of liis unity, QUESTIONS. 245 and more unchangeable in its meaning, and more repug- nant to all plurality, than the term Shaddai? Would unitarianism have been more favored if Moses had retained these Divine names, and especially Shaddai, in their patriarchal popularity, and not changed them for other names of the plural number ? In those verses of Scripture where the unity and su- premacy of God are placed in the sharpest antagonism to all polytheism, are the Divine names which are made most prominent, of the plural number? In the expressions God of gods and Lord of lords, is the first word God found in the Hebrew to be plural as well as the second, and the first word Lord found to be plural as well as the second ? How will it do to compare the Divine plurality in the phraseology of Moses with the Divine plurality in the following language of John, the last prophet of the New Testament ? — " Grace be unto you, and peace, from him which is, and which was, and which is to come; and from the seven Spirits which are before his throne ; "And from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness, and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth. Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, "And hatli made us kings and priests unto God and his Father." LETTER V. May the difference between the trinitarian and the unitarian interpretation of the Shemah Yisrael be illus- trated by the difference between E pluribus unum (more making one) and Ex uno unum (one making one) ? 21* 246 QUESTIONS. Does the Trinitarian find the essential value of this text in its intrinsic truth, while the Unitarian finds its essential value in its extrinsic truth or its antagonism to idolatry ? Does the public life of Jesus commence with the Trinity- revealed at his baptism, and close with the Trinity intro- duced into the form of baptism for all nations ? Does the prophet Zechariah teach us concerning, first, the Lord who brings forth his servant the Branch; secondly, the Branch or the stone which the Lord en- graves with seven eyes, which are his own eyes ; and thirdly, the Spirit of the Lord ? Does Ezekiel teach us concerning, first, the Lord ; secondly, David, who will be the king of Israel forever ; and thirdly, the Holy Spirit ? Does Isaiah teach us concerning, first, the Lord ; secondly, the Branch of David ; and thirdly, the Spirit of the Lord, who will rest on this Branch ? What are the titles given to this Branch of David in Isaiah ix. 6, 7 ? What is the dignity of the throne of David as exhibited in this ninth chapter of Isaiah? Mention the three parts in the benediction which was given to the priests to be pronounced on the congregation of Israel. Were these three benedictions essentially one benedic- tion ? Did the one benediction separate itself into three, and did the three unite in one? May the benediction, therefore, which the people re- ceived from Aaron's sons, be called the triune benediction? Has unitarianism gone forth to the world from Arabia rather than from Judea ? Has Mohammed been the greatest prophet of unita- rianism that has ever risen in the world ? QUESTIONS. 247 Are more than one hundred millions at this day his most rigidly unitarian disciples? Is the ring of unitarianism more clear in the Koran than in either the Jewish or the Christian Scriptures ? Could the temple of Solomon ever stand more firmly on unitarian ground than the mosque of Omar has been standing for a thousand years ? If Ishmael was that son of Abraham in whom all the families of the earth were to be blessed, and if this prom- ised blessing has already come, has it come in unita- rianism ? If Isaac was that son of Abraham in whom all the fami- lies of the earth were to be blessed, and if this promised blessing has already come, must it be in trinitarianism as taught in the New Testament ? Is the mosque of Omar a heathen institution ? Does the Lord who dwelt between the cherubim recog- nize the worship in that mosque as having been appointed by himself? Is Arabia, even if all its sands were changed into gold, equal to Judea? Does the Koran teach the miraculous conception of Jesus, while it inculcates the most decided rejection of the doctrine of the Trinity ? Does it enjoin a high respect for Jesus as the son of Mary by a miracle, while it condemns in the strongest language the tenet that Jesus is the Son of God ? Do some Unitarians of our country admit that Jesus was the son of David by a miracle, while they deny the Son of God ? and ought thes6 two points always to be kept separate in the discussion of the subject, as they are kept separate in the Koran ? 248 QUEST/OXS. LETTER VI. What distinction docs Aben Ezra make between Ehyeh asher Ehyeh and Jehovah ? Repeat the admirable text which Aben Ezra supplies for a discourse on the Trinity. Why does Aben Ezra mark each of these three names as a shem hd' etsem, name of the essence, proper noun ? and what is his distinction between such a noun and an appellative? Does heathenism exhibit a characteristic consistency in transferring a trinity to the head of the serpent? What is your success in finding the biblical Trinity among the gods and goddesses of Greece ? Or in finding it in ancient Egypt? Or in finding it in the Hindoo system? Refer to some texts proving that faith finds the im- movable foundation on which it rests, in Jah. Refer to some texts proving that hope finds its guiding luminary in Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, I-will-be-that-I-will-be. Will you illustrate the dismal chasm in religion, if it consists of faith and hope, without love in the centre? How would you illustrate the chasm in Jewish theology if it holds to Jah and Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, and leaves out the Beloved from the centre ? What is taught in the Pentateuch concerning the Be- loved ? In the prophetical books? In the Hagiographa? Repeat some verses from the New Testament showing that the Father, as the foundation of faith, is the same with Jah. Repeat some verses from the New Testament showing QUESTIONS. 249 that the Holy Ghost, as the guiding luminary of our hope, is the same as Ehyeh asher Ehyeh. Repeat some verses from the New Testament confirma- tory of the view that Jesus and the Beloved of Pentateuch, prophets, and Hagiographa are the same Divine person. Is the work of the Son of God, in one sense, a finished work in the sinner's justification, while the work of the Holy Ghost lies in the future ? What are your views of that love which unites our souls to the Beloved ? How is it distinguished from all those kinds of love which belong to the ordinary development of our selfish nature ? What outward fruit does this holy love produce ? Should Christianity be condemned, because idolatry and prayers to the Virgin, and tyranny, have had a place in the Church of Rome ? LETTER VII. In the Epistle to the Hebrews is the first Divine name that occurs the Greek word Theos (God) ? Is this word of the singular number and appropriated to the one living and true God, like the word God in the English Bible ? Would its plural be as inadmissible in the first verse of this epistle as the word Gods would be in the English Bible ? Does its plural stand for false deities, very much as our God means the one living and true God, but the plural, gods, stands for false deities ? Is the second Divine name in this epistle found to be "Son of God"? 250 QUESTIONS. What are the other denominations annexed to the Son of God ? That the Messiah as the Son of God is superior to the angels as the sons of God, — does the epistle undertake to prove this point ? That the Messiah as Elohim or God is superior to the angels who also are called Elohim, — does the epistle undertake to prove this point? How many quotations from the Old Testament are wrought into the argument of the first chapter of this epistle ? How many of these seven quotations are applied to the Messiah ? How many are applied to the angels? How many are applied to God the Creator? What is the first quoted verse applied to the Messiah, and where is it found ? What is the second quoted verse applied to the Mes- siah, and where is it found ? What is the third quoted verse applied to the Messiah, and where is it found ? What is the fourth quoted verse applied to the Messiah, and where is it found ? What is the first verse which points to the place which angels fill, and where is it found ? What is the second verse which points to the place which angels fill, and where is it found ? What is the remaining quoted verse which brings to view God the Creator, and where is its place in the Old Testament? Can the idea be found in the Septuagint of the Son of God whose sonship was earlier than the womb whence the morning star has come ? Is the Messiah sometimes a complex person in the QUESTIONS. 251 Bible, standing for both the greatest one among the sons of David and other sons of David with him ? Does the Messiah present this complex form in the chapter of the second book of Samuel which contains the verse, " I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son" ? Is the serpent that received the malediction from the Lord in the garden a similar complex person ? does that malediction fall on the original and morally responsible liar and on animals nominally associated with him? Where it is said that Solomon should sit on an ever- lasting throne, does the epithet everlasting belong to it only as being the throne of the Messiah ? If Solomon is separated from the Messiah, has his throne fallen as completely as the throne of the Caesars ? Where is it declared that the throne of the Messiah will last for ever and ever ? Will the heavens themselves perish, and be rolled together like a scroll and be cast away as useless ? Will the throne of the Messiah perish, or be rolled together like a scroll and be cast away as useless ? Is the throne of the Messiah, therefore, above the heavens ? Are the four quotations referring to the Messiah the centre of the argument in this chapter? and do the two quotations referring to the angels stand on one side, and is the quotation referring to God the Father placed on the other side, to send forth light from the opposite sides on the central argument ? Is the testimony concerning the Messiah strengthened by what is said on one side concerning the angels, and by what is said on the other side concerning the Creator ? What definition is given of the baptismal order of the Trinity and the tetragrammatic order? 252 QUESTIONS. Is the Son of God the centre in each order? Give some instances in the New Testament where the order is the tetragrammatic, — that is, the Holy Ghost, Ehyeh asher Ehyeh, is placed first, the Son of God, Jehovah, fills the centre, and the Father, Jah, is placed last. Describe the impressive instance of this in the first chapter of Revelation. Describe how the tetragrammatic order is imprinted on the whole face of the Revelation : first, the Holy Ghost being prominent in the epistles to the seven churches ; secondly, the Lamb appearing at the opening of all the seven seals ; and thirdly, the angel's oath at the end of time being in the name of Him who hath created all things, and Jah being the word so prominent in the triumphing voices of the angels over the overthrow of the hosts of enemies, the smoke of whose torment ascendeth up for ever and ever. LETTER VIIL Was the Epistle to the Hebrews written while the Jew- ish worship still existed at the temple ? Does the name Son of God, in this epistle, denote an office or an honor which the Messiah has received, or does it occur as a name naturally belonging to him ? What are the two texts found in the Psalms which sup- ply the foundation for the whole epistle ? If the view of Jesus as the high priest is found correct, must the view of Jesus as the Son of God be accepted with it? If the epistle is inspired, must its view of the Son of God be received as the true view? Does it purport to be the exponent of ancient Judaism? Does it interpret that rest into which God entered at QUESTIONS. 253 the end of the six days of creation as being the same holy rest into which believers now enter ? Does a danger exist now that the oath of the Lord may shut us out of his rest ? How is Melchizedek interpreted as a type of the Mes- siah ? Does the oath of the Lord make the Messiah a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek ? Is there any event in the life of David, or in the lives of any of his sons, except the Messiah, in which the sublime oath of the Lord can be found, that he should be a priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek ? Were the priests in the tribe of Levi, and not in the tribe of Judah to which David belonged ? Does a priest established by the oath of the Lord, and according to the order of Melchizedek, evidently mean a priest of the highest dignity? Can you describe the doings of the high priest on the annual day of atonement, the only day in the year when the high priest entered into the holy of holies ? Could he enter there on that day without blood ? Was the blood of the sin-offering the only blood that could be carried into the holy of holies? Had the high priest, on this great day of atonement, one sin-offering for himself and another sin-offering for the people? Was the blood of both these sin-offerings carried into the holy of holies and sprinkled directly in front of the mercy-seat ? What was the number of the motions of the high priest's finger in sprinkling the blood of these two sin-offerings in the holy of holies? Was the same blood also sprinkled on the holy veil on the side next to the door of the tabernacle? 254 QUESTIOA^S. Was the golden altar sprinkled seven times with blood, at the same time ? Was one-half of the sin-offering for the people sent away, as a living goat, into the wilderness? What were the lines separating the sin-offering, the burnt-offering, and the peace-offering? Was the sin-offering eminently the Mosaic oblation ? Did the burnt-offering exist among the patriarchs ? Is the burnt- offering the only one mentioned in Job? How does the Christian find the sin-offering in Jesus ? How does he find the burnt-offering ? How does he find the peace-offering ? Has he one high priest in the place of the many high priests of the tribe of Levi ? Has he one oblation in the place of the many oblations on the Jewish altar ? Has he one perfect atonement in the place of the thou- sands of shadowy atonements by blood, from the time of Moses to the time of the Herods ? Does Jesus live perpetually as high priest ? Was the Messiah the heir of the Jewish church ? Has Jesus appointed his disciples the heirs of an ever- lasting kingdom ? Was there ever one year while either the tabernacle or the temple was standing, when repentance and tears, fast- ing, confession, prayer, reformation, and help for the poor made the atonement for sin without any shedding of blood ? Was it a settled principle in the Jewish church that the essence of the atonement was in the blood? Was there scarcely any remission of sin or any sin- offering without blood ? What prophet speaks of a new covenant which should QUESTIONS. 255 take the place of the old covenant that was made with the people as they were coming from Egypt ? What psalm speaks of sin-offerings and burnt-offerings as laid aside, and the execution of the will of God as sup- plying their place ? Must the sanctification of the people of God now be sought in this executed will of God by means of the body that has been prepared, rather than in the oblation of animals as sin-offerings and burnt-offerings? How is faith defined in the eleventh chapter? Are the patriarchs seen in this epistle as earnest seekers of a blessed immortality ? What is the Mount Zion of which the Christian be- lieves himself to be a citizen? What is the character of that faith which makes the restoration of the literal Jerusalem the principal object of its hopeful vision ? What is the significance of the fact that the Epistle to the Hebrews Avas written when the destruction of Jeru- salem was seen to be close at hand, yet no mention is made of a restoration ? Is the failure of the restoration a remarkable part of the history of Julian the Apostate ? Where was the epistle written ? How does its view of the Mosaic institutions differ from the elucidation of the same subject by Josephus, written in Rome several years afterwards? Is it the sublimer view of the Mosaic ritual that it was a prophecy awaiting a fulfillment in a distant age ? and is this view more likely to be the true view ? How and where is the Christian directed to find in the tabernacle of Moses an outline of good and great things to come, and in the actual worship a delineation ? 256 QUESTIONS. LETTER IX. In a general review of this discussion, what must be mentioned as the first argument ? The second argument? The third argument? The fourth argument ? The fifth argument? The sixth argument ? The seventh argument ? The eighth argument ? The ninth argument ? The tenth argument ? The eleventh argument ? The twelfth argument ? The thirteenth argument ? How is the objection met that the plural Divine names are the plurals of majesty ? Or the objection that the doctrine of the Trinity con- tradicts reason ? Or the objection that the doctrine has no analogy in nature ? Or the objection that the day is promised when Jehovah will be one and his nanie one? LETTER X. Is the Spirit of God ever found to be an agent com- pletely subduing the human spirit, subverting the wicked will of man, displacing reason and substituting a high order of insanity, compelling the tongue to utter things which the will had determined not to utter, suspending QUESTIONS. 257 the external senses and removing all consciousness of the condition of the prostrate body ? What works are ascribed to the Spirit of God ? Must the Spirit of the Lord and the word of the Lord stand as capital parts in the confession of faith for Judaism ? Must the Spirit of the Lord and the word of the Lord be united in the creed of the seed of Israel and the seed's seed of Israel, forever ? Does the Spirit of the Lord, without the word or the Scriptures, make Judaism a kind of heathenish fanaticism ? Does the written and read word of the Lord, without the Spirit, make Judaism the most grotesque rationalism ? Is the honest inquiry after Divine and holy truth im- possible except where the Spirit of God diffuses his influ- ence on the heart ? Shall tradition be substituted for the Holy Spirit as an interpreter of the Scriptures ? Shall the church be substituted for the Holy Spirit as the spiritual guide ? Shall an infallible pope be substituted for the Holy Spirit as the guide to heaven? Can human reason be permitted to occupy the place of the Holy Spirit? Are all doubters, and especially the most bewildered, encouraged to pray that the Holy Spirit may bring them a light to lead them out of darkness ? What is the name of the great prophet whose heart glowed with the wish that all the Lord's people were prophets, and " that the Lord would put his spirit upon them"? 258 QUESTIONS. APPENDIX. State some evidences of the patriarchal antiquity of the book of Job. Did the answer of the Lord to Job from the whirlwind fail to give the true reason of the afflictions of Job ? What are we especially taught by this failure ? Does the book of Job demonstrate the need of a super- natural revelation ? Might it have been added to the enumeration, as the fifteenth argument, that if the heathen had made the man of Uz their supreme and infallible guide, and his book their most holy book, in the time prior to Mohammed, they would have had the best guide to a pure unitarian religion ? and that they learned the trinitarian doctrine only by turning away from Arabia to Judea and Nazareth, and by saying to the Jews, We will follow you, for we know that God is with you ? WE PASS AWAY! It was some months after the manuscript of the pre- ceding volume had gone into the publishers' hands, when, on Saturday, July 26, 1873, ^ received the Israelite, of Cincinnati, and found the following : "Rev. Dr. Aaron Guinzburg (Guenzburg) died Saturday last, at his residence in Boston, surrounded by his family and friends. He was truly a good man. In all relations of public life, as a public man, a rabbi, a father, a spouse, or a neighbor, this one beautiful feature of genuine good- ness endeared him to everybody, and makes his loss so much more grievous to all who have known him." Accordingly, those hands are now in the grave which were supposed to be among the first that would receive this volume from the press. It is probable that if he bad seen this volume he would have wished it to be known to the public that the proposition to hold this discussion with me did not originate with him. His able articles under the title " The Morality of Christianity co?iiJ>ared with that of Judaism'' had been published. This was followed by some letters passing between us through the newspapers, without any special reference to controverted points. Finally, I proposed that each of us should write a certain number of letters on unitarianism, to be published in two prominent newspapers, one Jewish and the other Chris- tian. Whether, if he had lived to see this volume, it would have been his wish to give the public a similar volume of 259 26o (^£ PASS AWAY. letters on the other side of the question, is a question on which I am not able to form an opinion. I append two notices of his death, from Jewish papers : From ^'■The yetvish Messenger.''^ Rev. Dr. A. Guinzburg, for the last few years of Bos- ton, Mass., and lately of Rochester, N. Y., died in the former city on Sunday last, in the sixty-first year of his age. Dr. Guinzburg was a native of Prague, Bohemia, and from his earliest youth dedicated his life to the study of the Talmud and Hebrew lore, without neglecting modern sciences. After he had officiated as rabbi and preacher for some years at Libochowitz, Bohemia, he came to this country in the year 1849, ^'""^ soon after his arrival received a call as minister of a congregation at Baltimore. " He was at one time a professor in the New- ton University and Maryland Institute of Baltimore. During the war he changed his residence for Rochester, where he was highly esteemed as a minister. His last years he spent in private, not, however, without taking the liveliest interest in all Jewish affairs ; and at the time of his death he was president of the Warren Street Synagogue at Boston. Always alive to the welfare of Judaism, he used his powerful pen against any attack on his religion or nation, and was a diligent contributor to the Jewish press. Many abusers of the Jewish religion have found in him an able opponent, who would never rest when a de- fense of his principles was thought necessary. He enjoyed the highest esteem of all who knew him, and a large cir- cle of friends lament his early demise. He had also been for many years connected with the Free Masons and Odd- Fellows. Rev. Dr. Huebsch, of this city, officiated at his funeral on Tuesday last. The deceased leaves a wife and nine children. iVE PASS AlVAY. 261 From "The Hebrew Leader." ORATION DELIVERED AT THE FUNERAL OF REV. DR. GUINZ- BURG, ON JULY 2 2, BY REV. DR. FALK VIDAVER. "The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found on his lips ; he walked with me in peace and equity, and did turn away many from iniquity." Malachi ii. 6. These profound words of the Divine prophet describe vividly the character of our highly revered and esteemed rabbi and godly priest, around whose corpse we are now standing. The law of truth was in his mouth. How many are there in the United States, as well as abroad, who longed for his teachings and desired to quench their spiritual thirst for knowledge by the water of his truthful instruc- tions ! How many found a new life in the edifying words of his mouth ! What sad and sorrowful tidings will the departure of this rabbi be unto them ! Still more we, who had for so long a time enjoyed the presence of this honorable teacher and heard the law of truth from his mouth, how must our hearts break and our eyes shed tears at the loss of him ! Indeed, my hearers, the wound which has been produced among the learned men by his demise is incurable, as our sages wisely remark: "These tears shall not be mended whenever a person tears his garment in mourning for his father and mother, for a rabbi and teacher in Israel, and for the holy roll of the five books of Moses which has been consumed by fire." Truly, my hearers, the loss of them is irreparable; our broken and dejected hearts cannot be healed and re- stored to their former strength, after having lost the foun- tain of their spiritual power, the truthful instructions of our parents and rabbis. 262 IV-E PASS AJVAY. When the invisible hand of cruel death snatches away the crown of a family, the dear father or the loving mother, then the hearts of the survivors are overfilled with grief and sorrow. Yet has the providence of the Almighty created a healing balm for their pain, that is, forgetfulness ; in the course of time their sadness and grief descend into the sea of oblivion and the sun of serenity disperses the dark clouds of their affliction. But if there occurs a calamity like this, if a dear father, lov- ing husband and at the same time a rabbi and teacher in Israel is torn from the bosom of his tender wife and be- loved children and from the midst of his adherents, pupils and friends, then is there a triple loss. Although his faithful wife and children whose hearts break now to see themselves bereft of their most valuable ornament, al- though they may in the course of time be comforted and calmed, yet his children whom he educated spiritually by nourishing them with heavenly food of virtue and knowledge, — as our sages say, " The teacher may be named father, because he brings his pupil into a life of virtue and faith," — those children will never forget him. This rabbi, around whose lifeless body we are standing, was a very spiritual father ; he instilled into the hearts of many true belief in God and virtue ; he reconciled many with our heavenly Father ; he preached the words of God in many congregations and proclaimed the truth publicly. Also here in Boston, in our largest congregation, " Ohabi Shalom," he taught the holy religion and knowledge. Such a dear father cannot be forgotten ; his name is en- graved in indelible characters upon the hearts of his pupils and friends. And iniquity was not found on his lips; that, my hearers, our rabbi proved in the days of his illness. He was not irritated by his great pain and affliction; in the midst WE PASS AWAY. 263 of his sufferings and chastisements he complained not, but endured it patiently and laid the burden of his woes at the feet of our heavenly Father. He entered into the spirit of the psalmist when he says, "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me, for my soul trusteth in thee; and under the shadow of thy wings be my refuge until this calamity is overpast." Now, my hearers, let us honor the deceased rabbi by following his mode of life ; let us, too, have in our mouth only the law of truth, and iniquity shall never be found on our lips ; let us, too, live in peace and equity with each other, and by so doing we shall show respect to our rabbi and teacher. And for the welfare of his soul let us pray. O God most high, spread thy wings of love and care over the soul of our dear rabbi ; lead thou him through the gloomy night into the refulgent glory of salvation ; take him to the bosom of thy fatherly mercy, and be his shield and protection. May he enjoy heavenly delight in thy presence, and may his prayers, which he will ever pour out before thy throne for the happiness of his dear ones whom he left on earth, and to whom he is linked with inseparable chains, be heard. May the words of my mouth be acceptable before thee, O Lord. Amen.