Page images
PDF
EPUB

ward indeed descends, both on the banks of the river Chebar, and into the temple at Jerusalem: yet, when he views it in the opened heavens, it is impossible not to perceive, that his description, like that of Isaiah, is entirely drawn from the furniture of the tabernacle'. Now such imagery could never have been used, unless the holy of holies had been a transcript of heaven: for, on any other supposition, the use of it would have been a glaring impropriety. The same result is no less forcibly brought out by the frequent allusive phraseology of the Hebrew writers. We never familiarly allude to any matter, unless the matter itself be previously familiar. Hence, if those writers familiarly speak of heaven in language clearly allusive to the holy of holies, a firmly-rooted and well-known idea must have been present to their minds that the holy of holies was a transcript or symbol of heaven. Lord, says David, who shall abide in thy tabernacle? Who shall dwell in thy holy hill? He that walketh uprightly, and worketh righteousness, and speaketh the truth in his heart'. Are we to suppose, that the Psalmist here meant the literal tabernacle and the literal hill of Zion? If so, we pledge ourselves to believe, that every pious Israelite, while his brethren contented themselves with visiting Jerusalem at the three great festivals, actually

Ezek. i. x.

2 Psalm. xv. 1, 2,

took up his abode within the tabernacle and built his dwelling house in the precincts of the holy hill. Since then a literal interpretation of the passage involves a manifest absurdity, we may be sure that David is speaking of heaven in language familiarly allusive to the mundane tabernacle. Accordingly we find a passage in Isaiah, than which there cannot be a better commentary upon the passage before us. Look upon Zion the city of our solemnities: thine eye shall see Jerusalem a quiet habitation, a tabernacle that shall not be taken down; not one of the stakes thereof shall ever be removed, neither shall any of the cords thereof be broken'. Such characteristics of perpetuity can belong only to what St. Paul denominates a true tabernacle and to what he describes as a Jerusalem that is above. So again: He, that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High, says the Psalmist, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. There cannot be a doubt, that we have here an allusion to the holy of holies and to the shadowing pinions of the Cherubim: but did any Israelite ever literally dwell in that sacred adytum, to which the high priest alone had access, and even he but once annually? What is it then, which the holy minstrel points out in this familiar language of well understood allusion? Clearly that heaven, which the apocalyptic writer, in the usual strain

Isaiah xxxiii. 20.

2 Psalm xci, 1.

of his countrymen, describes as the temple of God in heaven'. Of an exactly similar nature is the allusion of the Prophet Isaiah. Look down from heaven, and behold from the habitation of thy holiness and of thy glory. In this passage, though. heaven itself is avowedly spoken of, yet the language is studiously borrowed from the circumstantials of the tabernacle: for the words, habitation and holiness and glory, all refer to the earthly sanctuary as a pattern of the heavenly. It were superfluous to produce any more parallel instances: they occur perpetually in the compositions of the Hebrew writers. But this perpetual occurrence could never have taken place, unless the belief, that the holy of holies was a designed image of heaven, had been quite familiar through every age to the whole Levitical

Church.

(4.) Thus I think it most abundantly clear, that the ancient Israelites well knew the holy of holies to be a designed transcript of heaven: and, as they further knew, that God was to be reconciled to man and that the injury of the serpent was to be repaired through the instrumentality of the promised Seed; I see not how they could well avoid drawing the conclusion of Philo, that the high-priest was an image of the first-begotten

1 Rev. xi. 19. See likewise Rev. iv. where heaven is plainly described by imagery borrowed from the temple. 2 Isaiah lxiii. 15.

[ocr errors]

Divine Word or Angel of Jehovah. For, if they knew the holy of holies to be a transcript of heaven, must they not have immediately perceived, that the high-priest annually performed on their behalf the identical service which they had been taught to hope that the promised Seed would perform for them? He entered the chamber which they knew to be a symbol of heaven; and there, in the immediate presence of God, he made atonement with blood for their errors and offences. This was a service totally different from every ordinary service, by which mere transgressions of the ceremonial law were expiated. Here the high-priest entered heaven alone, while every other person was excluded. But why should he thus enter it, and why should he there solemnly make atonement for the sins of the people; if this atonement was of no higher virtue and efficacy, than each ordinary atonement that was made upon earth for ceremonial transgression? Certainly, if the Israelites reasoned at all, they must have concluded, that the whole was a representation of that atonement and of that victory over the serpent which the promised Seed of the woman should at length accomplish: and under such circumstances, while it inevitably followed that the high-priest represented the promised Seed, they must have supposed that he entered into the symbolical heaven for the express purpose of securing their admission into the literal heaven. For, without this, how were

any victory achieved over the serpent? His machinations brought death into the world, and deprived man of a happy immortality. Nothing therefore could be a victory or a triumph over him, which fell short of depriving death of its sting by restoring to man a happy immortality in that heaven whither the antitype of the highpriest should enter by blood to make reconciliation with the Lord. In such a conclusion, as time rolled on, they would be the rather confirmed by the peculiar language of David. Speaking, as they well knew, of the promised Seed, he described him as being a high-priest for ever after the order of the King of righteousness. The full import of this prophecy they very probably did not understand: but they would learn enough from it to be assured, that the Messiah should be a high-priest; whence it would follow, that in his sacerdotal character he would bear a close resemblance to their own high-priest. Such being the case, they would obviously infer, that the entrance of the high-priest into the most holy place shadowed out the entrance of the Messiah into heaven, and that the pardon and reconciliation procured by the one shadowed out the pardon and reconciliation procured by the other.

That the matter was as well understood during the Levitical Dispensation as during the Christian, it would be alike absurd and unscriptural to assert. The apostle himself teaches us,

« PreviousContinue »