COVENANT OF CIRCUMCISION.

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Abraham exercised, what the meaning of the covenant was, and it being as much theirs as it was his, they yet went about to establish their own righteousness, and would not take the blessing of that righteousness of God, which by this sacrament he so freely assured to them.

Here we have a full recognition by the apostle, of the principle, that the circumcised nation, as such, was as it is always described in Scripture, a righteous and a holy nation; and that the wickedness of the members of that nation consisted in this, that they would not avail themselves of their inestimable privilege, that they would not act, as if they were righteous persons, by virtue of the covenant into which they had been brought with a righteous God. Now, if you consider the nature and object of circumcision, as they are developed in Holy Scripture, you will see that it was a perpetual witness that the nature of man, that to which he would be in subjection, if he were not brought into subjection to, and union with God,-was an evil and a cursed thing, something in which he could have no confidence, something which he must account as separate and cut off from himself, that he might enjoy personal union with his unseen Lord and Friend. Such was the Jewish dispensation. The mass of men are looked upon, as in that condition which is the natural condition of every man, to which man, by sin, has reduced himself:-one nation is called out, to be a witness for the true state of man, as raised above his flesh and united to God.

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FULFILMENT OF ITS MEANING.

They are taught that this is the only condition in which they can be a nation, for that all national order, and life, and law are destroyed by those selfish lusts which lead a man to regard himself and his fellow men alike on a level with the brutes.

This truth God himself teaches to the chosen people; and every fact in their history, down to their captivity in Babylon, illustrates and expounds it. After that time, he ordains that other nations also, before the coming of Christ in the flesh, shall realize a portion of this truth; and, though ignorant of the true character of God, shall nevertheless believe that there are beings upholding them against the tendencies of their nature, and that the acknowledgment of such beings is the only bond of national life, the only security for the distinction between a civilized polity and a barbarous horde.

At length the Son of God comes in the flesh,comes to fulfil all the promises made to the fathers, that the Lord of righteousness, whom they had honoured as the king of their nation, with whom they had had communion in their secret hearts, should one day manifest himself, and should be the founder of an universal and everlasting kingdom. His forerunner is heard in the wilderness, proclaiming that that kingdom is at hand; calling men by his words, not more than by his example, to turn from all the fleshly delights to which they had given up their spirits to their unseen King, confessing their wanderings from Him; that when

THE BAPTISM OF JOHN.

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He should manifest himself to them they might know Him and receive Him. He came to bear witness of the light which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world; of him from whose fulness he and all the foregone prophets had received, and grace for grace. He came baptizing with water. I do not enter into the long question whether this was the ordinary mode of initiating Gentiles into the Jewish covenant. The scholars

who maintain that opinion are, I conceive, quite as numerous and respectable as those who oppose it; and you may think it would be in favour of my argument to assume this point, for then the very act would say to every Jew, "you have a carnal nature as much as the Gentiles; your covenant of circumcision, if you have entered into its meaning, must have taught you that you have such a nature, it must have taught you that you are better than they, not in virtue of an hereditary privilege, but because you are admitted into a relationship with God; because, by union with him, you are able to subdue your nature. Come, therefore, and take your standing upon this ground; claim union with God-confess how you have renounced that privilege- and receive this token, that he remits your past sins and receives you still as his people. And do this especially now, because a kingdom is about to be set up in which all men will be treated on the same footing, in which all will be dealt with as spiritual creatures, united to a spiritual head, and

132

QUAKER ARGUMENT.

expected as such to subdue their flesh, and to act as if they were in fellowship with a Righteous Being.'

If Gentiles were admitted by this rite into the Jewish covenant, I say this must have seemed to any reflective Jew to be the meaning of calling upon them, the circumcised people, to be baptized. But without that supposition John's own words are strong enough. "Think not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our father; for I say unto you, that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham. And now, also, the axe is laid to the root of the tree, every tree therefore that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire." So far I and your friends, shall probably be agreed; that Christ came as the Lord of men's spirits; that he came to deal with the inner man, the root of the man; and only with his carnal nature as shortly to be set aside and condemned; and that this was the grand distinction between his covenant and that which it superseded. But now comes the passage on which all the controversy between us turns. "I, indeed," saith John, "baptize you with water unto repentance, but one standeth in the midst of you who is mightier than I. He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." Hear -your friends exclaim, how clear, how express these words are! John, indeed, baptized with water, but when Christ comes, no more water! Then begins a new kind of baptism, with

EPISTLE TO THE GALATIANS.

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lake that burneth could never strike into him; such a hope of deliverance as could not to be exceeded, if he heard his Lord say with his own voice, Thy sins be forgiven thee; Arise and walk?'

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Again, when St. Paul plainly tells the Galatians that it was a fall from grace to submit to circumcision, because it was returning again to the law, and giving up the Gospel privileges of adoption and sonship; is it better to suppose that he meant to censure them,―all, every one,-for not considering themselves as sons; for not acting as adopted children; or that he considered it was right in a few to think that they had those titles, and a solemn duty in the rest, to feel that they were not, at any rate as yet, theirs? When, in the Ephesians, he speaks without any distinction of their being chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world, that they might be holy, and without blame before him in love;'—is it better to suppose that he had a few picked persons in his eye; or that this declaration is connected with what he says afterwards of a mystery, which in other ages was not made known, as it is revealed now to his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit? —his own commission being, 'To make all men see what is the fellowship of this mystery, which from the beginning of the world, hath been hid in God, who created all things by Jesus Christ;' and that he is, in this magnificent Epistle, setting forth a constitution in Christ, to which, because it is for men, Gentiles as well as Jews were admitted, and into which it was the inconceivable