160 NOTE ON DR. PUSEY'S THEORY. we should seek it in the following beautiful lines from the "Christian Year:" And wilt thou seek again Thy howling waste, thy charnel-house and chain, Rather than clasp thine own Deliverer's knee? That bids thee from his healing touch withdraw, As erst, beholding, loves his wayward child; Waste their impassion'd might on dreams of earth, And on his glorious Gospel bids them look, Till by such chords as rule the choirs above, Their lawless cries are tun'd to hymns of perfect love. The lines on the first Sunday after Christmas are equally striking on the same subject— How shall we 'scape th' o'erwhelming Past? Can spirits broken, joys o'ercast, And eyes that never more may smile :- Or win us back one little day The bitterness of death to soften and beguile. Though darkly round thine anger rolls, Thy sunshine smiles beneath the gloom, All glowing with the light accepted Love imparts. C LOT The lines in the "Lyra Apostolica," (a volume of beautiful poetry lately published by Rivington) beginning," I prayed, I fasted," are also a clear and admirable assertion of the truth which I think Dr. Pusey's tract contradicts. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST. 133 the spirit of holiness and the fire of affliction. Let us see how far the rest of the history bears them out in this interpretation. Shortly after these words had been spoken, Jesus himself comes to the water, descends into it, and as he rises out of it, a voice is heard proclaiming, "This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased;" and the spirit is seen descending like a dove and resting upon him. Immediately afterwards, we are told, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil. He encounters the enemy of man in the great human temptations of appetite, worldly ambition and spiritual pride, and overcomes. Straightway, we are told, he begins to announce that the kingdom of God is at hand; and to do acts proving him the Lord of the body and spirit of man. He sends forth his ministers to proclaim the same truth and to exercise the same powers. He expounds the laws of his kingdomlaws fulfilling the principle without abolishing the words of the old dispensation-laws for the spirit as they were laws for the flesh. He unfolds the nature of his invisible kingdom over the spirits of men, through the forms of his outward kingdom of nature; the processes in the one by the processes of the other. He announces the steps to its establishment, the resistance it would meet with, the judgment on its enemies. All this time he permits his disciples to neglect many things which it befitted them as Jews to do, and to do many things (when not contrary to express commandment,) which it befitted them as Jews to omit; 134 THE PARTING COMMAND. and even, mark you, to transgress the customs observed among John's disciples, as well as the Pharisees, for the purpose, as he tells us himself, of proving that new wine could not be put into old bottles; on purpose to prove that he was come to establish a spiritual kingdom. And yet all this time his disciples, acting under his express directions, baptize-baptize while they preach this new kingdom. At length the time comes, so often foretold: never so distinctly as when the disciples had just beheld his glory on the mount of transfiguration : when the Son of God is mocked and delivered to the Gentiles and crucified and slain. Hitherto he has been doing perfect human acts, now he enters upon a series of perfect human sufferings. He is in agony, and dies, and is buried. He rises again from the dead. He meets his disciples, saying, "Peace be unto you; as the Father hath sent me, so send I you;" breathes on them, saying, "Receive the Holy Ghost;" tells them that they are to tarry at Jerusalem till they receive the promise from the Father, and concludes with the magnificent words, "All power is given me in heaven and on earth, go ye into all nations and preach the gospel to every creature, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." He ascends on high; the disciples do tarry at Jerusalem, praying and fasting; yet in the midst of the solemn and unspeakable meditations of that season, deeming it no unworthy or vulgar act to THE KINGDOM ESTABLISHED. 135 arrange a point respecting the order of the future church, to complete the apostolical college. On the day of Pentecost the promise is fulfilled; the Spirit takes possession of their faculties of understanding and speech, and proves his presence, and proves that he did come to establish a united and universal church, the opposite of the Babel polity, by making the apostles intelligible to men who speak a number of different dialects. But this marvel is only the prelude to a calm plain discourse, in which the chief of the apostles declares, that he whom the Jews had crucified was risen on high, to be a Prince and Saviour; exhorts all who heard him to acknowledge the glorified King; announces baptism as the admission to his kingdom; and promises, to all who submit to it, that they shall receive the Holy Ghost. Thus was the kingdom of which the Baptist, and Christ himself had long spoken as at hand, set up amidst signs and wonders; and yet its great privilege, that which distinguished it from the dispensation of John, was connected with the ordinance of baptism. Consider next the progress of this kingdom; how carefully for awhile, (after the principle of universality had been so distinctly asserted by the gift of tongues,) it was confined within the limits of the Jewish nation, that the universal kingdom might be seen to stand on the foundation of prophets as well as of apostles; that the church might seem to be not a new and gorgeous palace suddenly raised by the wand of an enchanter, but a temple which had been gradually rising with 136 THE ADMISSION OF THE GENTILES. out noise of axe or hammer, ever since God said “Let us make man in our own image;"—how the great apostle of the circumcision was himself selected to open the doors of this kingdom to the Gentiles;-how when these doors had been opened and the spirit himself had testified of the admission of Cornelius and his kindred, they were yet baptized, as much as ever the Jews had been at Pentecost ;-how, afterwards, (while St. Peter still continued to be a pillar of the church at Jerusalem,) another apostle was raised up to be the herald to the Gentiles, selected in a wonderful manner out of the straitest sect of the Jews,— converted from the belief that the glory of a Jew was to possess a privilege which no others possessed, into the belief that it was his glory to be an heir of the promise, "In thee and thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed;"-how this conversion was effected by a glorious manifestation which identified the glorious King whom he looked for, with the crucified man whom he despised— identified both with the divine word, by whose presence his conscience had been so often goaded,* -proved that he who had so near and intimate a a connection with Saul was united also to every one of those whom Saul was persecuting;how when he had received this faith, he was yet told to arise and be baptized, and wash away his sins; how when it had thus pleased God to reveal his son in him, as really and vitally, and * 'It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.' |