mine eyes fail:"" They gave me also gall for my meat, and in my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink." Is. 53, Psalms 23 and 69.) It is difficult to conceive what these sufferings can mean, if they do not represent death by the cross. To these prophetic descriptions we may add the significance of the types, the serpent of brass "lifted up" in the wilderness, the paschal lamb, of which it was commanded, "neither shall ye break a bone thereof;" and further, the express declarations of the Lord Himself," The Son of Man must be crucified." A second consideration is, the singular conjunction of circumstances whereby it was brought about that He should suffer by this, and by no other mode. The life of the Redeemer was, humanly speaking, four times endangered in other ways,-by the sword of Herod at Bethlehem, by threatened precipitation at Nazareth, by the perilous storm on the Galilean lake, by attempted stoning in Jerusalem. Moreover, crucifixion was no Jewish punishment. A chance quarrel between Herod and the vizier of the King of Arabia, arising out of the refusal of the former to give his sister Salome in marriage to the latter, and the false representations about Herod made by the vizier at the court of Rome so incensed Augustus, that he wrote to the Judean king, "that he should no longer treat him as a friend, but as a subject;" and not long after Judea was made a Roman province. Thus, about eight years before the birth of Christ, the power of life and death was taken out of the hands of the Jews, and consequently the Roman method of execution became the only legal one. Had this Arabian never desired to make Salome his wife, or had he failed to gain the car of the Emperor for his revengeful slanders, the estrangement which brought about this result might never have occurred. But further, it is noteworthy that in spite of this legal change, the New Testament martyrs, John the Baptist, Stephen and James, met their deaths without the intervention of the Roman power, and by Jewish modes of execution, the royal prerogative, or, in the case of Stephen, an outbreak of popular passion contravening the law which made it "unlawful for the Jews to put any man to death." Thus the Divine Providence brought about that stoning, the national form of capital punishment, should be abolished by a nation using the cross, and that passion should not, by taking the law into its own hands, prevent our Lord's suffering by the death hinted at in prophecy, a manner of death till then wellnigh unknown in Judea. Once more we are led to attach importance to the mode of Christ's death from the prominence given to that mode in the Apostolic discourses and epistles. That shame of the cross which Christ "despised," was undoubtedly a stumbling block, both to Jew and Gentile, in the way of the reception of the gospel. Nevertheless, the Apostles preached not simply a slain, but a crucified Saviour. They did not keep the shameful mode in the background, either by using any eupheuism, such as lifting up from the earth," or by speaking of the death in general terms. Their preaching they call "the preaching of the cross;" their Christ is Christ crucified;" they glory in nothing "save in the cross of Jesus Christ their Lord." Alike then from prophecy, from providential developments in his tory, and from Apostolic teaching, we are led to the conclusion that the mode of Christ's death was important and significant. Into its significance we now proceed to enquire. That significance is both doctrinal and practical. We shall first consider : I. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODE OF CHRIST'S DEATH IN RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. The remark has been already ventured, that this peculiar form of death was in no sense necessary to Christ's work. It is no essential part of sin's penalty. It teaches us no truth which would have remained untaught had He died the death of the Forerunner, or that of the Proto-martyr. But there is a truth more fully brought out, more wonderfully illustrated by crucifixion than by any other mode. That truth is the doctrine of vicarious suffering, of substitution, the essence and ground of atonement. As we see the Holy One upon cross, we recognize that on Him were laid the iniquities of us all. For, first,-CRUCIFIXION WAS THE DEATH OF SLAVES. the The Roman law forbade the cross to citizens. Roman historians and poets speak of it as "the slaves' punishment." ("Servile supplicium," Tacitus, Horace, Juvenal.) "Cross-bearer" is the classic dramatists' nickname for a slave ("furcifer," Plautus, &c.) Our Substitute was treated as a slave, that we might be made free indeed. Do we say in our pride, we were never in bondage to any man?" Christ replies, "Who so commitWho so committeth sin is the slave of sin." In Christ we are delivered from a worse than Egyptian bondage. The Truth hath made us free. And that He might be the Truth, He was also the Way. He was made a "cross-bearer" for us. For us He endured the "servile punishment." He who "was in the form of God, took upon Him the form of a slave, by becoming obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Again, CRUCIFIXION WAS THE PunISHMENT OF THE WORST MALEFACTORS. Even freemen might incur the penalty of the cross if guilty of the gravest crimes. Slaves, when executed, were not always crucified. For minor offences they died by the sword, the cross being reserved for the perpetrators of crimes esteemed the worst, as murder, treason, robbery, perjury. Our Substitute took the place of the chief of sinners, that the chief of sinners might take the place of the most holy, even be "glorified together" with the Holy One of God. He humbled Himself to be numbered with transgressors, malefactors, felons, when He "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." Again, CRUCIFIXION WAS THE ACCURSED DEATH. "He that is hanged is accursed of God," pronounced the law of Moses. The word in the original Hebrew was used to translate "crucified," in later times. Its Greek equivalent, the word used in the Septuagint version of the law, is used by Luke and Peter in this sense. ("One of the malefactors which were hanged," "Whom ye slew and hanged on a tree.") Early Jewish opponents of Christianity spoke of Christ as "the hanged one," and quoted the ancient curse as incurred by Him. (Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, about A.D. 150.) Our Substitute was treated as one accursed, that we might be blessed. Since we have failed to "continue in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them," we are under a curse. But "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us." Not that He was ever in fact accursed or forsaken, but the Father placed upon Him in whom he was ever well pleased, "the chastisement of our peace," and He delighted to bear it. Yet, out of the depths of that soul which was made an offering for sin, the cry went up, “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani." Thus was he "made a curse for us" when he" became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross." We pass now to consider : II. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE MODE OF CHRIST'S DEATH IN RELATION TO THE CHRISTIAN HEART AND THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. In the lessons of the cross, doctrine and practice are, indeed, united. Right thoughts about Christ will ever lead us both to love and to serve Him. There are some aspects of the cross, however, not so distinctively doctrinal as those considered above. CRUCIFIXION WAS A PROVERBIAL EXPRESSION FOR SUFFERING. Words similar to our English "excruciating," were to be found before the Christian era in the classic and other languages. When our Lord spoke of the necessity of his disciples "taking up the cross," he used an expression which was familiar to them, as it is to us. Hence, on account of this usage of words, the variety of Christ's sufferings is suggested when we speak of his enduring the cross. Not only when we dwell on the bodily tortures which He experienced on Calvary, but when He "suffered being tempted" in the Jordan wilderness, or in Gethsemane, when he was betrayed, denied, forsaken,-in a word, whenever His "soul," as well as his body, was also the practical exhortations which call us to "crucify the flesh, with its passions and lusts," to "take up our cross daily," &c., come home to us with more power than could otherwise have been the case. We seem to ourselves more completely sharers with Christ, in times of conflict with sin and evil, in times of self-denial and resignation to sorrow, and both the Life of Christ and the Christian life appear nearer to us, when we can speak of ourselves as also crossbearers, "the world crucified to us, and we unto the world." Again, CRUCIFIXION WAS A DEATH OF EXQUISITE TORTURE. Its accompanying indignities, the sensitiveness of the lacerated parts, the burning fever which throbs in every vein of the crucified, the protracted character of the suffering, combined to make it what Cicero declares it to be, "the most cruel of punishments." Its barbarity has long since banished this form of death from the civilized world, though other modes of death by torture, such as the stake, have been used in modern times. How should the love shown by the free choice of such a death attract the hearts of disciples to love Him who has so loved us? "Greater love hath no man than this!" "I," said He, "if I be lifted up from from the earth, will draw all men unto me." Finally CRUCIFIXION, BY THE VERY POSTURE OF THE SUFFERER REPRESENTS THE POSITION AND OFFICE OF THE SAVIOUR. Does this appear too fanciful ? Is it not, however, a fancy which has mingled in the thoughts of Christians of all ages, the imagination therein assisting the reason and the heart? No other mode of we death could have become so sacred. A strange dignity has taken the place of that shame which once made an offering for sin". can think and speak of him as bearing the cross for us. Hence DESTINY OF THE HUMAN RACE. constituted "the offence of the cross." As once on Calvary, so ever in the memory of the Church, the form of Him whose "visage was more marred than any man,' rises exalted between earth and heaven, near to us yet above us, and, as we stand beholding, the notes of another song than that of Calvary strike on the ear, "Wherefore God hath highly exalted Him, and given him a name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee -- THE DESTINY OF THE HUMAN RACE. BY THE REV J. H. HINTON, M.A. A PRINCIPAL stone in the author's fabric, and one on which he lays much stress, is the celebrated passage in the Acts, announcing, as is supposed, "times of restitution": "That a time or times of restitution (whatever that term may precisely mean) is in reserve for our ruined and fallen world, was one of the earliest announcements of the apostles after the ascension of their Lord. Nothing can be more explicit than the declaration of St. Peter to the Jews, that the same Jesus Christ, whom they had crucified, should come again; that heaven (so to speak) concealed Him only until the times of restitution of all things (Acts iii. 21; comp. Acts i. 6 and 11); and that these times were the same times of which God had spoken by the mouth of all His prophets since the world began; the times when, in accordance with ancient prophecy, the lion should lie down with the lamb, and 'the knowledge of the Lord cover the earth as the waters cover the sea."-Pp. 202, 203. The scripture to which the author here refers is, in extenso, as follows. "Repent ye, therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out when the times of refreshing shall come from the presence of the Lord; and he shall send Jesus Christ, which before was preached unto you; whom the heaven must receive until the times of restitution of all things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began." (Acts iii. 19, 21). The meaning of the phrase on which so much stress is laid depends on the translation of the Greek word, ἀποκαστάσις, by our translators rendered "restitution." This translation, however, is open to objection; and to give the reader some idea of the critical authority which bears upon this point, we shall insert a quotation from Bloomfield's "Critical Digest," in loc:· " By ἀποκατάστασις is meant the restora tion, restitution to a former state, reformation, or change for the better; as in Joseph. Ant. 11. 3, 8. ἀποκατάστασις των Ιουδαίων, & 4, 6, τῶν Ἱεροσολύμων ἀποκατάστασις. Philo 767 Β, των κληρουχῶν ἀποκατάστασις εἰς τοὺς ἐξ ἀρχῆς λαχόντας οἶκους. This notion, however, is little suitable to the present passage, the subject of which is the event of prophecies. Now it also denotes perfection, accomplishment of anything, consummation; a signification very suitable to the context, and which is found in Philo, 522 c. τελεία, ἀποκαταστάσις .. Thus Hesychius and Phavorinus explain it isiweis, and the Schol. Mosq. here interprets it ἐκβάσεως. And thus the νετὸ ἀποκαθιστάνειν signifies to perfect, bring to end, in Job 8, 6." (Sept.) That this translation had been proposed our author was aware; but he simply quotes in a note the observation of Dean Alford, that "to render ảπоKaσтáσw fulfilment is against all precedent; " an observation which certainly does little credit to the critical reading of the Dean himself. Even if the classical authority were less strong, however, the structure of the passage will not allow the use of the word "restitution." Our author, indeed, understands Peter to say that "the times of restitution" had been spoken of "by all the prophets since the world began;" but let any school-boy translate the following Greek sentence : Ὃν δεῖ οὐρανὸν μὲν δέξασθαι ἄχρι χρόνων ἀποκαταστάσεως πάντων ὧν ἐλάλησεν ὁ Θεὸς διὰ στόματος πάντων ἁγίων αὑτοῦ προφητῶν ἀπ' αἰῶ‐ νος. We translate as follows: "Whom the heaven must receive until the times of the fulfilment of all the things which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began." We do not think the sense that "the prophets have spoken" of "the times of restitution" can be grammatically made out from the words. We think that TávTwv, which is certainly the immediate, is also the natural and necessary antecedent of the verb exaλnoev; and that it is not "all things," but "all the things which the prophets have spoken," which are to experience an arокаoтáσis To go back beyond Távrov and to take xpóvov for the antecedent of áλnoev, is, we think, a grammatical blunder, and utterly inadmissible. Now, if this be so, the VOL. LVI. word "restitution" becomes altogether unsuitable to the connection, since no one, we suppose, expects a restoration of the entire contents of the prophetical writings. A fulfilment of them is possible, and is a glorious object of Christian hope.* We are willing, however, to take the author on his own ground. For the sake of argument, we will admit that there is to be a "time of restitution" of all things, until the arrival of which "the heavens must receive," and retain, the person of Jesus Christ. We then ask, when is this "time of restitution" to arrive? His reply is, THE DAY OF THE RESURRECTION is the great day of restitution (p. 454). It follows, then, if we can see clearly, that the second advent of Christ cannot take place till the resurrection; our author, however, teaches us that it takes place at the commencement of the millennium! (See p. 386, seg.) We cannot help asking ourselves how it is possible to account for such a manifest piece of inconsistency as this; and we can solve the mystery only by recurring to the fact that the work before us was not written as a whole, but that it is a republication, in two volumes, of papers inserted in a monthly periodical-the Interpreter -now completed. This fact accounts for the want of continuity in the successive chapters which cannot but be apparent to an attentive reader, and permits the writer, not having his whole subject before him at once, in successive papers to differ from himself. That such an infelicity has attended the production of the work is certain; whether it may explain the mystery to which we have * Mr. Faber, in his Sacred Calendar of Prophecy, concurs in this view. 7 |
