1

TWELVE DISCOURSES

ON

ESSAYS AND REVIEWS, ETC.

BY THE

REV. DR. BAYLEY.

DISCOURSE No. XII.

THE NEW CHURCH, A NEW DISPENSATION, NOT A NEW SECT.

"Thus saith the Lord, I am returned unto Zion, and will dwell in the midst of Jerusalem; and Jerusalem shall be called a city of truth; and the mountain of the Lord of Hosts: the holy mountain.” Zech. viii. 3.

THE world is on the move, is the confession of all thoughtful and observant men. The old state of society is broken down in ten thousand directions, and rapidly disappearing, while new elements are visibly presenting themselves, elements of health and strength, of hope and progress. This every one admits, in science and social changes. But it is equally obvious in social arrangements, in morals, in benevolence, and in religion.

What greater sign of progress can be afforded, than the contrast of Professor Jowett's description of Christian feeling now and the state of things even two hundred years ago, when every announcement of an opinion by either council or ecclesiastic was accompanied by an anathema against all who were of a different view. The Professor writes: "No intelligent man seriously inclines to believe that salvation is to be found only in his own denomination. Examples of this sturdy orthodoxy in our own generation rather provoke a smile than arouse serious disapproval." "Essays and Reviews," pp. 424.

B

Selfishness in the form of intolerance, and darkness under the name of mystery, are both rapidly losing hold of men's minds, and giving way to the two grand substitutes announced in our text: a city of TRUTH, and a mountain of HOLINESS.

TRUT,

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A state of society in which TRUTH shall be the element in which we breathe and by which we speak, TRUTH the law which we obey, and the light which we follow ; TRUTH our walls of defence, and the only path to every virtue; the rock on which we build, and the only means by which we communicate with all the nations of mankind, A CITY OF TRUTH. In this announcement by the have also a mountain of holiness," or in prophet, we other words, a state of things in which love to the Lord, and charity to our neighbour shall raise man up to all that is elevated in purity, love, and goodness; a mountain of holiness, lifted up above all that is mean, depraved, and common place; a mountain of holiness, raising up the soul to divine things, and on whose glorious breast the sunlight of heaven should shine for ever. Such a city, a city of God, formed of the good and the true, who in every nation love and obey the Lord Jesus Christ, is the crowning issue of all prophetic revealings.

To the believer in the New Testament, nothing can be more definitely plain than that its spiritual dispensation was altogether to supersede the Jewish. The Christian Church was the Jerusalem that was to be. Our Lord's conversation with the woman of Samaria, altogether sounded the death knell of that localized form of religion that fixed it to certain places and forms. The woman exactly described the Jewish feeling. "Ye say that at Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." (John iv. 20.) How strange it is that at this period of Christianity, there are still great numbers of those who call themselves Christians, not Jews, who are dreaming the same thing, and subscribing large sums to realize their dreams. "Ye say that at Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship." Mistaken dreamers, look inward for peace-not outward. Did not the redeeming Teacher say, "Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem worship the Father?" Did the place benefit the Jews when

they were there? Were they restrained from idolatry, and from every kind of sensual madness? Oh, when will men accept the great principle opened by the Divine Saviour, when He said: "The hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him; God is a spirit, and they that worship Him MUST Worship Him in spirit and in truth." The Jews themselves are awakening from their delusion, and large numbers are urging upon their brethren that the time has come to rise from the letter of their religion to its spirit, from a small gathering of tribes to universal brotherhood, from outward laws, respecting meats and drinks, to inward laws respecting the influences we receive on the soul; from being a small clannish section of mankind, to becoming a recognized and spiritually-minded portion of the great family of man, all contributing to the universal good, each with its variety of mind and work, but all animated by charity, ruled by justice, and taught by celestial wisdom.

"Jerusalem, which is above, is free, which is the mother of us all." (Gal. iv. 26.)

Henceforward, according to the apostle, "He is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is that circumcision which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God." "Ye are come," He said, to all true followers of the Lord Jesus, "unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels."

This, then, is the Jerusalem of our text, a city of the living God, a city of truth, in which the souls of men can live, and joyously act out their purified delights, in blessed works of good. This is the mountain of holiness, around whose sacred heights the truly sincere, who overcome their evils by strength from the Redeemer who is seen at its summit, have their spiritual abodes. This is the Jerusalem to which men are invited, now, the heavenly city, the new Jerusalem, surely coming down from God out of heaven. There is not ONE WORD, we venture to say, in the New Testament, respecting the

return of the Jews to their former land, not one word. And in the Old Testament the prophecies which speak of their restoration were uttered before the return of the captivity from Babylon, and were fulfilled in their letter by that event, which was the return to their own country of the Jews a second time. Jehovah said, He would set His hand a second time to recover the remnant of His people, which shall be left, from Assyria, and from Egypt, and from Patros, and from Cush, and from Elam (Persia), and from Shinar (Babylon), and from Hamath, and from the islands of the sea," (Isa. xi. 11.), and HE DID. There is no promise to bring them back a THIRD time.

What remains now is that they with us, and all mankind shall rise from ancient errors, and modern iniquities, and enter into those states of thorough and loving obedience to the divine commandments, into that abhorrence of all selfishness and wrong, that admiration for the good, the true, and the beautiful, in all things, which constitute a living disciple of the great Saviour Jesus Christ. In Him, there is neither Jew, nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus." (Gal. iii. 28.)

Jerusalem was constituted according to the Old Testament under David and Solomon, a true type of a Church. The name signifies a sight of peace. Its temple, its sacrifices, its ordinances, its laws were the symbols of those great principles and doctrines which do give man a sight of peace, and bring him to that Divine Saviour who is the Prince of Peace. In Him alone there is peace. (John xvi. 33.)

The spiritual meaning of the prophecies respecting Zion and Jerusalem is all that concerns us now.

The Church, then, is the spiritual Jerusalem, of which the literal Jerusalem was a type. The first literal Jerusalem was destroyed by Babylon, but afterwards a second Jerusalem was built, and the glory of the second temple was to be greater than the glory of the first. (Haggai ii. 9.) This was literally fulfilled. And the second temple and the restored city were standing when the canon of the prophetical books was closed.

According to the New Testament, the Christian Church would be a spiritual Jerusalem, it would also be destroyed

by its Babylon, a spiritual Babylon, the embodied lust of spiritual dominion (Rev. xvii. 18.); and this latter Babylon would at length be destroyed, and a new Jerusalem, a new Church, descend from heaven. Has not all this taken place?

Can any one doubt that in the career of the Christian Church a Babylonish spirit became engendered, and grew until it transformed the religion of the adorable Jesus, the very home of humility, self-denial, rectitude, and wisdom, into a tyranny the most hateful, a corruption the most impure, and into a dark ignorance as childish as that of Paganism itself? Shall not the Divine Deliverer again say, “Behold I make all things new?" Has He not done so? Look around, life is renewing itself, and freedom unfolding itself on every side. The old world, with its selfishness, mystery, and crudeness is disappearing, a new world of knowledge, light, and love is opening into view.

Here, too, one cannot but be astonished at the continued literal interpretation of the language of the Scriptures, in which the end of one dispensation, and the beginning of another, is represented by the ending, or passing away, of one heaven and earth, and the commencement of another, while the use of such language is so evidently that of figure, and the Scriptures so unceasingly teach that the Lord's kingdom on earth is to endure for ever.

No person can read the Scriptures with moderate care, but he will see that the end of a Church, or dispensation of things, is there spoken of as the end or dissolution of the earth, or of the universe; the outward is the image of the inward change.

When the Jewish Church was a moral wreck, from the iniquity which Saul, in his decline, headed, rather than checked, we find it written by David, "The earth and all the inhabitants thereof is dissolved. I bear up the pillars of it." (Ps. lxxv. 3.) What earth was then dissolved but the spiritual earth? the Church, as to its outward life and institutions. Again, "They know not, neither will they understand, they walk on in darkness; all the foundations of the earth are out of course." (Ps. lxxxii. 5.) Surely such passages speak for themselves. Not the foundations of the natural earth, but the spiritual foundations; the great principles of religion are out of course, when men