Ten Theophanies E-Book

William M. Baker

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 335

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

The author of this book is better known by his novels than by his religious writings. If he carries his vivid and illuminating imagination into a work so different in its nature from these, as the one before us, the result is certainly to aid in the production of a more attractive and more striking presentment of his subject. The object of The Ten Theophanies is fully set forth in the remainder of the title. As according with the nine Avatars in the Brahmin theology, of which Vischnu was the ninth and most eloquent, we have here a similar presentation of Christ as he appears in the predictions and resemblances of the Old Testament. In noticing the coincidences apparent in the Biblical narrative in this direction, we cannot but be struck with their meaning, as was Dr. Baker; a meaning which he has set forth, however, in diction so varied and poetic, that the title "A Prose Poem," applied to the work, is hardly an exaggeration.

Leseprobe

Ten Theophanies

The Appearances Of Our Lord To Men Before His Birth In Bethlehem

WILLIAM M. BAKER

Ten Theophanies, W. M. Baker

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

86450 Altenmünster, Loschberg 9

Deutschland

ISBN: 9783849650315

www.jazzybee-verlag.de

[email protected]

CONTENTS:

INTRODUCTION.1

A PAUSE UPON THE THRESHOLD.8

THE TEN THEOPHANIES.13

I. CHRIST, KING AND PRIEST FOR THE  WORLD OUTSIDE THE CHURCH.13

II. CHRIST THE PERSONAL FRIEND.28

III. CHRIST COMPELLED BY PRAYER.39

IV. CHRIST UPON SINAI.48

V. CHRIST AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF.57

VI. CHRIST THE LIBERATOR.66

VII. CHRIST THE MASTER OF BRUTE FORCE.75

VIII. CHRIST THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD.88

IX. CHRIST AND THE WORLD-POWER.100

X. CHRIST THE REVEALER.113

A GLANCE BEHIND AT CLOSING.126

NOTES.138

INTRODUCTION.

THE following hymn of devout and tender enthusiasm for the Lord Jesus, translated from the Latin, may be found in numerous collections of sacred verse:

"Fairest Lord Jesus, Ruler of Nature!

Jesus, of God and of Mary the Son!

Thee will I cherish,

Thee will I honor—

Thee, my delight and my glory and crown!

"Fair are the meadows,

Fairer the woodlands,

Robed in the flowery vesture of spring:

Jesus is fairer,

Jesus is purer,

Making ray sorrowful spirit to sing.

"Fair is the moonshine,

Fairer the sunlight

Than all the stars of the heavenly host:

Jesus shines brighter,

Jesus shines purer

Than all the angels that heaven can boast!"

This is known as the Crusaders' Hymn, written in the twelfth century, and sung by the armies that sought to recover the Holy Land from the Saracens. There is also a legend that it was composed by a crusader, and was found, both words and music, in his helmet as he lay dead upon the field.

I love to believe the legend true; and as I hear it softly sung, I am carried away in imagination to the Orient, where the enthusiasts of that strange historic movement are forcing their patient way over seas and deserts toward the dishonored sepulcher of their Lord. This gallant knight has closed his castle, bidden adieu to the lady of his love, sewed the cross on his breast, and gone forth with only his trusty sword and spear and coat of mail. Under the smiting suns and through the long sieges, his flesh and his heart fail. But One Figure never fades from his dimming sight. It is always going on before him, and is the strength of his heart and the inspiration of his flagging spirit. It is the image of the "fairest Lord Jesus," his soul's "delight and glory and crown"; the real Captain of the host, the typical Crusader, after whom all loyal hearts must bear the cross; who should be holden of no sepulcher, however He might hallow it. All the desert was filled with the sweet, low music of that heavenly vision and celestial song. The wild waves of the Levant sang it, as his vessel clove the seas in the track of Paul. It sounded above the shout of captains and the roar of multitudes and the rattle of munitions of war. And by and by it formed itself into a song and a strain, which sang itself to his ear all day and in his dreams at night. It was the marching music of his life.

And one day, in the cool shadow of some rock or under the brilliant skies of some Eastern night, he penned it down, words and melody, on a stray fragment of parchment and placed it in his helmet. Next day the "wild beleaguerers " swooped down upon the faint and gallant host, and some Saracen scimitar smote out in blinding pain and darkness the earthly dream and fragmentary note of that weary head, and the empty casque rolled away to rust upon the plain. But no, not empty—for by and by some desert wanderer, stumbling upon it, discovers the bit of parch ment and the scrawled song with its music bars, and he carries the crusader's hymn to England or France or Burgundy, to testify to those at home of the dying soldier's faith, and perhaps to stir up other brave and pious hearts to seek the Holy Land.

With some such thought as this, do I take up the present volume. It is the legacy and last word to the world of as gallant and consecrated a heart as ever wore knightly armor or followed the holy cross. He was a crusader, not of the letter, but of the spirit. The fair image of the Lord Jesus was his inspiration, the more sustaining as his feet grew wearier with the march of life. It filled the chambers of his brain with a sweetness of melody and a grandeur of thought which he felt he must try to interpret to others.

Hence this book, which appears after he himself has gone from us, is, as it were, taken from his very helmet—even "the hope of salvation."

I speak of this, because otherwise the true significance of the book will not be caught. It differs from all else that Dr. Baker has written, in that it was no mere "literary"

production. He put into it the force of his fine imagination and vigorous style—he could not help doing so in whatever he wrote. But it was pre-eminently a heartbook, and can only be fairly and fully appreciated when approached as such by the critic or the reader.

It is, of course, a Biblical study, which, while some of its conclusions may not be accepted by a severe hermeneutical judgment, abounds in striking and suggestive bits of exegesis. The author's confinement to the house during its preparation put it out of his power to make as extensive a comparison of authorities as he might otherwise have done. But, after all, the comparison on which he depended was that of Scripture with Scripture. Laying his hand upon the Book of books one day, he said: "All that I want is here. No commentator can throw the light upon any passage of Scripture which is not shed even more clearly by some other passage, somewhere to be found if searched for."

Another commentary—too much ignored in Bible study —which he called to his aid, was a sanctified imagination.

"The Ten Theophanies" is essentially a prose-poem. Its glowing periods, and at times almost startling conceptions, are not to be gauged exclusively by the sharp analysis or the cold criticism of grammatical interpretation. There are paths in the records of divine wisdom where Christian faith is more clear-eyed and sure-footed than the most scholastic sight, and where—as in a palimpsest—the heat of an adoring and zealous heart will bring out a deeper spiritual truth between the lines and under the letter. The spirit in which this book was written may be gathered from the following extract: "He who tries to write these lines cannot see them for happy tears; he trembles, unable to contain yet wholly unable to express the thought—Immanuel! God with us! Only the large language used by the saints in light may express that consciousness of our ever-present Lord which ceases to be a mere belief, and, striking as into the very arteries and veins, bone and brain, becomes part of the circulation and constitution—the life—of the believer."

Dr. Baker's life was one of varied and even romantic experience, and his inner life had been of corresponding depth and incident. And all his writings were the outcome, if not the rescript, of what he had seen and felt. His father, Rev. Daniel Baker, D.D., was a native of Georgia, and was a pioneer missionary of the Presbyterian Church in Texas, then a new and unexplored Territory. He was, himself, born in Washington, D. C., in 1825, and the first forty years of his life were passed in the South, with the exception of a term of study at Princeton. His first essay at book-making was the life of his father. His earlier settlements in the ministry were at Galveston and Austin, Texas. "The New Timothy," one of. his most popular and realistic novels, is based upon his own observations and adventures as a young clergyman in those then frontier settlements. "The Virginians in Texas" utilizes the same fund of personal knowledge concerning the almost untrodden wildernesses of that region.

In his Southern experiences is also to be found the genesis of "Carter Quarterman," "Colonel Dinwoddie," and "A Year Worth Living," but especially of " Inside: A Chronicle of Secession." This latter was written during the years of the great Rebellion, while he was standing firm at his post in Austin, maintaining his own loyalty to the Union, and keeping his church to its connection with the Presbyterian General Assembly of the North.

The courage necessary to this almost unparalleled achievement can only be appreciated by those who passed through these trying times. His friend, Rev. Charles Gillette, also firm in his devotion to the Union, was silenced by his Bishop, leaving Dr. Baker alone, the only loyal clergyman in the place, in charge of a church.

One of his elders, who assisted in forming the Southern church, writes since his death:...." Both churches are debtors to his earnest, active, zealous labors in behalf of the Gospel, down to the day he transferred his ministry to another field."

The very popular and successful book, "His Majesty Myself," with other of his later novels, drew upon his recollections of Princeton and his studies of the religious and social life of the North, to which he removed in 1865, and where he was pastor of churches at Zanesville, O., Newburyport and South Boston, Mass., and Philadelphia.

The book which is herewith introduced to the reader is no less the outgrowth of its author's experience— the profounder phenomena of the inner life. His nature was deeply religious. Everything he wrote shows how inseparable religion was from all his thinking and doing.

He was not the one to rest in a mere acquiescent reception, however sincere, of the faith which came to him by inheritance and education. He must make his father's God his own God, and his Church's creed his own creed.

And there was not a truth, of all which he held so firmly, that had not been tested and affirmed by his independent investigations of Scripture, and by the response of his own hungering and thirsting heart. There was no question or speculation which had not been met by him in the way, and no struggle which he had not passed through for himself.

The problems which especially exercised his mind were those relating to the providential government of mankind, now and in all ages and in the ages to come. His mental habit, and study of men and of human life as a writer of fiction, doubtless contributed to render this class of questions peculiarly interesting as well as complex to his mind.

Often, even during the past few years, has life seemed to him a fearful and inexplicable Sphinx which made the world a desert about it, —no less an enigma, and almost a muddle, to his reason because accepted without revolt by his faith.

There were many things about God's dealings with himself which he could not understand, and ofttimes found himself struggling to submit to. This was naturally the case in the earlier stages of those physical disabilities which removed him from his beloved work as a pastor and preacher of the Gospel, and which threatened to bring to a speedy close his entire work on earth. But the very imminence and pressure of the issue hastened its complete and final settlement. He had never doubted nor rebelled.

He only wondered, and distressed his sympathetic heart, as did David when he said: "Why art thou cast down, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted within me?" And his emergence into the light, and into that large place where one gets beyond both the questionings and the need of answering them, was on the same side of the Slough of Despond as that from which David's clear and cheering voice comes down to us through the ages.

But by the broader and brighter light of Christianity he was enabled not merely to "hope in God," but to rejoice in Christ Jesus as All in all, —not only the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth, but the end of all the divine government; the key to all mysteries; the missing link in all unadjusted relations; the Lord of all life; the Alpha and Omega, and every intervening letter in the alphabet of God and man. The name of Jesus was the "open sesame " which unlocked the treasure-caves of God's providence, and caused the desert of this world, despite its staring Sphinx, to bud and blossom like the rose.

As the outward man perished, the joy of the Lord was more and more the strength of his heart. It was most affecting when his voice had grown very weak, to hear him recite as was his wont, in a sort of soliloquy, his favorite texts in honor of Christ and in remembrance of Him. One day he began thus feebly, "I know that my Redeemer liveth"; but as he spoke his whole frame seemed to glow, and his voice grew strong and full with a triumphant ring which was melody in the ears of those who heard him.

He did not cling to life for its own sake, nor even chiefly for the singularly happy and loving home-life with which he was blessed. But not being aware of the desperateness of his malady, he was long in relinquishing the hope of recovering strength to work for his Master, —that "after all he might someday be counted worthy to talk of Christ."

But it was always "God's will": in that he was perfectly acquiescent, and he often said he had no other will of his own.

One day he said: "I would be willing now to preach sitting, if only I might talk about Christ" (this notwithstanding his sensitiveness, to a painful degree, about showing in any way his increasing physical weakness). As this hope of speaking face to face with men about Christ was abandoned, he turned with eagerness to the thought of commending his Lord to them by the pen. He had, at this time, a large number of applications from periodicals for short articles, some of them specifying "something humorous." He always regarded such calls as in the way of his avocation in life, and made an effort to fulfil these.

But his heart was in other work. Every thought and feeling centered in the all-absorbing and intense desire to testify distinctively and emphatically for Christ.

It was then that he turned with ardor to the preparation of the book which is now, by other hands, laid before the reader. It was no new theme to him, but now it assumed more grandeur and significance than ever. He made a renewed study of Scripture in relation to it. He wrote and studied with the energy and enthusiasm of his healthiest and strongest days. It was an indescribable joy and consolation to be thus employed. Every part and incident of the work was of intense interest. "This," he wrote me at the time, "is the one book upon which I rest my whole heart." And again: "My entire religion is Christ. Therefore it was, and is, that this manuscript is a child of my soul beyond anything I have ever attempted.

Please God, I will make it a book which shall set forth the Master as clearly as is possible to me." Having submitted the manuscript to one who he believed would be a friendly but faithful critic, he was unable for days, in his debilitated condition, to gather "nerve " to open the letter containing his friend's opinion, "so foolishly had I set my heart upon my attempt to tell about those appearances of our Lord."

He was unspeakably relieved when that verdict was found to be favorable. (He had always the most modest and distrustful sense of his own literary capabilities and claim to success.) It was also a happy hour when he received Mr. Randolph's proposal to publish it. And he longed to see the proof-sheets, that he might embody the new suggestions which were all the while springing up in his mind.

The work was kindly hastened by the publisher, in order that he might have the pleasure of seeing it in print. But God's messengers came more swiftly, and he was first to behold the King Himself face to face.

I dwell upon these things not with any purpose of writing a biography of the author, but only, in some wise, of the book, which was truly a spiritual birth. Have I not rightly said: "This is a heart-book "? Let it be so received and judged. It will not fail to be blessed to the poor in spirit, and to them that hunger to have the secret of God revealed to them in Christ Jesus. The conditions of its appreciative and profitable reception may be best illustrated by a quotation from the book itself: "If you who read have never known of the almost infinite stringency of the world upon you, and at every step; if you have not gone to God and prayed, and prayed, and prayed only apparently to be repulsed—yes, and seemingly cruelly repulsed—you have no business with this page. It is to such as have known, long known, the agony of prayer long despised, rejected, refused, these lines are addressed."

As the time of his departure drew nigh, the "strait betwixt two " became less and less a trial of his faith, and his desire to depart and be with Christ was more in the ascendant. This blessed hope he voiced in some verses entitled "The Truce of God," mitten a Sabbath or two before he died, and published after his death in the Congregationalist. I quote the concluding stanza: "I know how very nearly I draw unto those realms.

I know that it is merely A film which overwhelms These eyes from rapturous seeing, These ears from rapturous sound, This self from God-like being, This life from broken bound.

Melt, oh thou film-flake, faster, Rend, thou thin gauze, in two, Eternal heaven, o'ermaster.

Break in effulgence through! Oh, sacred day, o'erflow thee! Rush Sabbaths into one, That earth and heaven may know the Eternal rest begun!"

When he could no longer speak, in answer to the inquiry "Is Jesus all?" he said, "AH!" This was his last distinct utterance. Shortly after, motioning for a pencil and paper, he wrote: "I have made ready." Only one thing more he wrote—a request for the utmost quiet. He asked to be laid in his swinging chair, reached up, and himself adjusted the cords which lowered it, and sweetly fell asleep.

He had entered upon his eternal rest. A new "Theophany" had dawned upon his enraptured spirit!

F. N. ZABRISKIE.

"TILL God in human flesh I see,

My thoughts no comfort find;

The sacred, just and awful Three

Are terrors to my mind.

"But when Immanuel's face appears,

My hopes, my joys begin;

His grace relieves my slavish fears,

His blood doth cleanse my sin.

"Let Jews on their own Law rely,

And Greeks of Wisdom boast,

I love the Incarnate mystery

And there I fix my trust."

OLD HYMN.

A PAUSE UPON THE THRESHOLD.

"THE highest, clearest idea I have of God," said a Unitarian minister, swept away for the moment by the irresistible fact, "is that He is an infinite Christ."

This Christ is the Supreme Object during eternity of the redeemed soul; is it not possible that before we enter upon that unending life, there may be certain aspects of this infinite Son of God, upon which, although not wholly new to us, we have never as yet sufficiently dwelt?

Strange to say there is, so far as the writer can learn, no volume as yet in any language which treats of the Ten Theophanies, or revelations of our Lord to men in Old Testament days. If the writer is correct in this, whatever else may be said of this attempt, it is at least unique.

This is all the stranger, since there are few appetites stronger among men than that which feeds itself upon narrations of remarkable events. It is not the Arabian story-teller alone, who gathers around him an audience of breathless hearers; in all lands and always, men and women become as little children again when their attention is called to tales of romance, and the folklore or fairy stories of a people have been among the most effective means of their education, —a fact recognized by our Lord to such a degree that without a parable spake He not to those about Him. Surely He had this in view in leaving upon record these ten manifestations of himself to men as God, yet man. These manifestations are as historical as any other portions of Scripture, and are as much more interesting and thrilling than many portions as the deep things of God are more so than those of men.

All Oriental religions are alive and breathing with the avatars, or comings of gods in the flesh. Homer tells us how Mars and Venus fought in the battles about " windy Troy," were wounded, and fled howling to heaven from the fight. Virgil relates how Jupiter, Mercury and Neptune, visiting Hyrieus of Tanagra in the guise of men, rewarded their host by the gift of a long-desired son. It is he, too, who narrates how Jupiter and Mercury, when insulted as strange men by an inhospitable neighborhood, were so warmly entertained by Philemon and Baucis that, while the surrounding region was turned into a lake, their humble cottage was transformed into a temple and themselves translated to the skies.

Evidently these myths of the heathen are but far off and incoherent echoes of the real events narrated in this volume. Those myths are but detached incidents, mere anecdote, floating like a chance straw or leaf upon the current, while the appearances of Christ are inseparable and essential parts of, and in closest relation and sequence to, the all-important Scripture narrative in which they are imbedded. They are not merely the more brilliantly colored bits of stone in the grand mosaic. Pluck them out, and you find that the historical picture is as much marred and made incoherent as if you had stricken out instead the calling of Abraham, the leadership of Joshua, the story of Joseph, of Daniel, of David; nay, you may almost as well omit the interview of our Lord with the woman at the well, as leave out the account of the coming of the same Christ, centuries before, to Jacob or to Gideon.

We have hailed the birth in our own day of a brand-new science, that of comparative religion. One thing which is being brought out into broad day from beneath its scalpel and microscope, is the universal, invariable fact that man as man craves with his deepest hunger, with thirst more parching than any, after his Maker. Men, it also insists, always and everywhere demand that this bread shall be given them upon the plate, this water in the cup, of some visible emblem, symbol, representation of the unseen Deity. There must be a something wherein the Almighty condenses his infinitude, in which He lodges himself, though it be but as in a tent and for the moment. The Greek glories in the ivory and gold of his Jupiter Tonans.

The Mohammedan, in the very act of demolishing every other idol, worships the Kaaba, a meteorite fallen at Mecca. The Jews made an idol of Sabbath and Temple and superbly transcribed Law. While Nero was so much of a fetish-worshipper as to put his trust in an inch or so of black bone.

"Struggling as I am," exclaims every soul that God has made, "in the roaring tide, sweeping me stunned and blinded toward the precipice of my grave, I must grasp God, though it be but in a splinter or a straw; I drown otherwise, in the abysmal depths of my hopeless ignorance."

How is it possible but that our Father should have the tenderest pity for His orphaned children? Arc they not seeking thus in their poor way after God, if haply they might feel after and find Him? God so loved the world that, kindling within us this strangest of all desires, He gives to satisfy it his only Son, and to death.

The victim upon the Jewish as upon every altar the globe around, the brazen serpent lifted up in the Hebrew camp and in the mysterious tree and serpent worship of myriads outside that camp—these are no truer shadows of Christ to come than, each in its own degree, every fetish or idol since man fell, horribly unlike Christ as they are, and much as Satan has striven to make each an end and not a mere means to an end.

""What can I know of anything unseen," exclaims the soul, " unless it be by some word, written, printed or spoken? How much more is it impossible to know the infinite Creator unless it be by the Word of God?

Nor will his mere Word suffice, although it be carved upon tables of stone, or spoken in articulate thunder from Sinai, unless there be more than that. Lo! a golden calf rears itself in the very shadow of the blazing mount! The Word must be made flesh, and dwell among us. What nation but has had its Avatar, its series of Avatars? Barbarossa groans under his German cliffs, sure to come again. The Spanish Cortez was the Montezuma of an older Mexico, come back; as was Pizarro, of the Peruvian Incas. "To me," cries every soul, " God is nothing unless I can fall at his very feet; yea, can cast my arms about Him, can press Him to my very heart."

Therefore a religion of symbols of a Christ to come, from the foundation of the world. Therefore, the Babe in the manger; the boy growing in wisdom and stature there in Nazareth; the young man beside the water, to whom the Baptist can point and say, Behold!—the teacher so seated upon the mount that all men can see, while they hear. Therefore the Friend by whom even the leper is touched, whom Bartimeus persists in crying after until he too can look upon, as well as listen to, the man whose hand lifts while his omnipotence heals.

As the keeper of Israel, God neither slumbers nor sleeps; yet must He in Christ be weary at the well, and lie unconscious in the hinder part of the boat. Infinitely independent as He is, He must come down to the asking for a cup of water from one woman, the weaving of garments from another during life, as of napkin and shroud after death. His face is that from which a world shall fly terrified, yet must it also be spit upon. Upon His shoulders rests creation; they are bared also to the scourge. His brows burn with the diadem of all empire, yet must they wear the crown of thorns, be beaded with the sweat of toil, the death-damps of Gethsemane and Golgotha. All things were made by Him, and his goings forth have been from of old, even from everlasting; yet hands and feet both must be fastened to the cross. Although as infinite in joy as in wisdom or power, yet must He suffer; the Prince of Life, He must die. He filleth all in all, yet must a stone shut and seal Him into a sepulcher. Fresh from trampling death beneath his feet, He says like any other familiar friend, " Children, have ye here any meat?" and takes a piece of a broiled fish and of a honeycomb and eats before them. "Behold," He says to his disciples, "my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have." When doubting Thomas comes in, He says, " Reach hither thy finger and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand and thrust it into my side, and be not faithless, but believing."

Believing in what? Believing at one breath in two things concerning Christ, things separated hitherto by more than the diameters of the universe. That this is a dead man risen to life? More than that.

Thomas must believe that this man, executed as a felon a few days before, is also the eternal God. "My Lord!" he gasps, "and my God!" And he does believe. Why? Because there stands the object of all adoration, looking, man to man, into the eyes of Thomas, offering His sacred person to the sight and hearing, to the very grasp wherewith Thomas would hold the hand of his bride, would lift his babe to his lips, would clasp for a blessing the knees of a venerated father.

Because such palpable presentation is essential, therefore does God take upon himself the form of a man, before his birth as afterward. The very frequency of the Theophany is because of a perpetual need of men for God, which can be satisfied in no other way.

Is it strange, then, that to men and women of Old Testament times too, this Man who is also God should step forth from the haze of Hebrew symbolism, should stand forth upon the earth we tread, seen of men, heard, held, a living person, Jesus anticipating his own birth?

"But He was not recognized as God in flesh by those to whom He thus appeared!" Why, then, in almost every instance do they shudder, the interview ended, lest having seen God they should perish? Moreover, was He known and accepted as such by those who beheld Him afterward in Bethlehem, Nazareth, Bethany, Jerusalem? Instead of this, He was rejected and slain.

The truth is, mortal flesh could not have endured to know at the time the divinity of the Son of God. Remember also, " no man knoweth who the Son is but the Father; and who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal Him."

It is well to remember that the Theophanies upon which we are about to enter have an interest and value far beyond the few moments during which, and the one or two persons with whom, they took place. For ages have they helped men, and by millions, to know that much more of Christ, even as they will help myriads more to whom they are to come. Not in this world alone.

We will conjecture nothing as to what knowledge the people of other planets and worlds may have of the Son of God; but can there be a doubt that the Scripture story will be matter of interest forever to the saints in light? If so, surely those parts of Scripture story which come like the Theophanies among the idylls, lyrics, we might almost say, will be those in which the chiefest pleasure is found. Yes, these manifestations are valuable as having not a transient but an eternal use toward that much more knowledge, in heaven as on earth, of the Son of God.

It will speedily be seen, that no learned disquisition has been attempted here upon the Elohistic or Jehovistic names of Deity. Accepting the translation of " Jehovah" by " Lord," the plain and generally accepted meaning of Scripture has been closely followed. Even if the writer possessed the ability and scholarship necessary to anything beyond this, he knows enough of the controversies involved to be aware that nothing whatever is settled by them. Cleaving, very ranch like a little child, to the inspired story, the writer is more than content with what the inspiring Spirit has caused simple believers in all ages to accept and enjoy. Beyond any other period, and in an ever-increasing degree toward the hour when every eye shall see Him, there is this marked peculiarity of our day, that men are everywhere saying, " Sir, we would see Jesus." Beyond presenting Him to the mind and heart of any who may read these lines, the writer has no intention. What other intention can there be? Since to him who sees Jesus, all else follows! There are many who will not accept what is endeavored to be set forth in the first Theophany; doubtless there are minor matters which will be held in doubt in every Theophany. Beyond this there is not a word, it is hoped, in the book to which any believer in the Divinity of Christ can object; save indeed the imperfect manner in which the work is done. Our Lord is set forth in the New Testament in his varied and manifold excellence. In these revelations of himself in the Old Testament is He also shown to us. It is by viewing Him, thus photographed as by the seven-lined pencils of light, from these two opposite points, that He stands out from the sacred page as in a stereoscope, pre-eminent in all things, our living, loving Lord.

For the easier travelling of the reader, certain hindering stones have been taken out of the way and heaped together at the end of the volume, in the precise Hebrew names for God applied in the Theophanies to the Son of God. A close examination of these will make it evident that, in these showings of himself, our Savior assumes and declares his Divinity in every possible way, and throughout. The use of these sacred names, the very variation of them, shuts and seals the question of his Supreme Godhead. It may be by reason of some radical, organic defect, and of the brain itself, which compels one to such conclusion; but if there is anything in morals or mathematics more demonstrative of the divinity of the Son of God, the writer does not know of it. In all the world there is nothing upon which the soul can rest with such absolute repose as upon certainty, thoroughly ascertained and absolute certainty. What certainty more absolute and restful than this? The entire and final satisfaction of the intellect herein is only equaled by that of the heart.

If there should be other editions of this little volume, they shall be enriched by whatever may be advanced in the way of modification, correction, suggestion. The writer has found in the preparation of these pages a pleasure beyond words, because of what he has learned in addition of Christ. How cordially then will any and every least hint be accepted if it aids toward making clearer to him, and possibly by him to others, the very face and aspect of the Lord! At least, as we have to remind ourselves all along, "No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by the Holy Ghost." That this spirit may be given to everyone who turns these pages, is the most sincere prayer of him who has written them.

BOSTON, Mass., 1883.

THE TEN THEOPHANIES.

I. CHRIST, KING AND PRIEST FOR THE WORLD OUTSIDE THE CHURCH.

 

(B. C. 1913—GEN. xiv. 18-20).

ELECTRICITY has existed in our atmosphere from the beginning. Not until to-day has it been converged into man-made suns, which abolish night. Jesus the Messiah pervades all Scripture, even as the electric influence permeates the air; let us see if He is not (may we say it?) so brought into convergence in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, that we may behold therein and therefrom a Light illumining the world such as we had not before imagined.

It is in the year 1913 before Christ. Eight years before, Abram had been led by God out of Haran.

The promise has been made to him of a home for his descendants in the land in which he now sojourns, and that his posterity is to be more in number than the dust. His nephew, Lot, has foolishly settled himself in one of the cities of the plains. A band of Asian sheiks have attacked those cities, and have departed rejoicing in their plentiful plunder and prisoners. Summoning his allies, and arming his servants, Abram has pursued after the robbers, has slain them and brought back their prey.

When, forty years after, Abraham by divine command places Isaac upon the altar, the precise mountain-top of this strikingly symbolical act of sacrifice is so carefully assigned that it cannot but be Calvary.

A like thing is ordered now. An event is about to befall, and the locality thereof is carefully given. To the Patriarch, returning from victorious war, there appears that mysterious personage whose very name has stood since then as a proverb of all perplexity.

"And Melchizedek, King of Salem, brought forth bread and wine: and he was the Priest of the most high God. And he blessed him and said, Blessed be Abram of the most high God, possessor of heaven and earth. And blessed be the most high God, which hath delivered thine enemies into thy hand. And he gave him tithes of all."

We see, from the narrative going before, that no less than twelve armed chieftains have been engaged with each other in war to the death. Suddenly there comes, and as into the center of the storm of strife, a king apart from them all, greater than all, who is distinctively Prince of Salem, —that is, of Peace. The region in which the war began is one which has sunk into such wickedness, that the hurricanes of fire are already gathering about it. So polluted is the very soil that, after being swept by the besom of wrath, it is to be buried deep down and forever under a sea of salt. The king, who so strangely shows himself, is one whose name means "the King my Righteousness,"

reminding us of that Christ whose name is " The Lord our Righteousness."

Of the twelve, there is one who is in every sense the superior of them all. It is Abram. Soon after this war, God is to enter into a special covenant with Abram, sealed by awful sacrifices, and by which he is separated and set off by himself more than ever from.

the world. Leading him out under the midnight sky, the promise of a peculiar posterity is to be sealed to him by the Almighty, who declares that the stars themselves are not more in number than that posterity shall come to be. Afterward God is to visit Abram at his tent in the appearance of a man, who eats, converses with him, and to whom Abram is to make supplication for Lot. By these acts, and circumcisions added thereto, this Patriarch and his descendants are to be set apart from all other nations. To them is to be made the only Revelation of God to man. The Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testaments are to be entrusted to them.

By and through them is to come that Messiah, who is to be the Saviour of the world; and the one temple of God on earth, the one divinely appointed priesthood and sacrifice, are to be and remain among them exclusively, as a system of symbols of this Messiah.

Here is, then, a critical moment. The torrent of human life is to flow steadily on, broadening and deepening, into the heathen nations of the world, to whom no special revelation is to be given from God. At this exact point, however, in Abram a new people is to be begun. In him and his descendants a stream of life, banked in to itself, is to flow, widening and deepening always, but always separate and distinct from the heathen peoples to the end of time. At this critical juncture it is, that this Priest-King appears. It is to Abram alone that He shows himself.

In four of the nine revelations of Himself to Abraham and his posterity, food is introduced. Now this august Person. brings in his hand no flesh of calf and kid, as afterward; it is bread and wine. He who brings it is a priest, yet here is no blazing altar, no bleeding victim. To-day Christ, our High-Priest, brings to us at each communion that which signifies in the simplest possible way his own flesh and blood, —that is, Himself, our atoning sacrifice. So was it, that day, with the father of the faithful. In him, and in his posterity, are to be seen two thousand years of types and shadows. At the hands of his Lord, Abram now eats and drinks of that which is to be signified by weary centuries of symbolism. In all lands and languages, in fact, the soul sets forth its intuition of sin and Savior by sacrifice. This is the essential meaning of it all, in its primeval as in its final simplicity. And here is Christ himself, King and Priest, the one atoning Savior of a sinful world.

As will be more fully seen in the notes at the end, in closest connection of meaning with this is (I.) The remarkable name which is here given to God.

Throughout all Scripture His name is so varied as to express in some way a relation to His covenant with Abraham and his descendants. How continually is He spoken of as the " God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!"

There is one other title, "the Most High God," which takes its remarkable significance, as distinguished from all Jewish usage, by the fact that it is upon the lips distinctively of those not Jewish.

(1) It is used by devils. "What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of the Most High God?" is the cry to Jesus of the man torn among the tombs by an unclean spirit. "These men," the possessed damsel of Philippi cries after Paul and Silas, "are the servants of the Most High God."

(2) It is the name applied to the Almighty when his dealing with the wide world apart from Judea is referred to, as when Moses says, "The Most High divided to the nations their inheritance when He separated the sons of Adam."

(3) It is used when a worship outside of and wider than that of the Jews is spoken of, as when Stephen said, "The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands."

(4) When God, apart from Church or nation as the God of nature, is meant: "The Lord thundered from heaven, and the Most High uttered his voice."