The Second Death and the Restitution of All Things. Andrew Jukes
It is not to him a living thing to teach him, but a dead thing to be dissected and criticized. He has proof that it is human; he has proof that it has grown; he has proof that death works in it, or at least touches it; he has seen its shameful members; he does not wish to lead any to despise the true teachings given by this human form; for he says it has been the channel through which he has received much blessing; he only wishes men to see that it is really human, which of course it must be, seeing it
came out of the heart of man; but consciously, or unconsciously, he is leading men, not from the letter to the spirit, which would be well,but merely to reject and judge the letter, not seeing how that letter, like Christ's flesh, is incorruptible and shall be glorified. After all, this too perhaps must be done; it was needful that Christ should sufifer and be put to death; but woe to him who rejects and slays the human form in which, for us, God's truth has been manifested. Yet for this, too, mercy is in store, for they do it ignorantly in unbelief.
The Bible then resembles, yet differs from, other books, exactly as the flesh of Christ resembles and yet differs from the flesh of other men. All the utterances of good and true men are in their measure aspects of the mystery of the Incarnation, being partial revelations in human form of God's eternal Truth and Wisdom; even as every good and true man also in his measure is another aspect of the same mystery, for God has said, “I will dwell and walk in them,” and so human forms and flesh and blood are by grace God's tabernacles. But the Incarnation and Manifestation of the Divine Word in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ was pre-eminent, and infinitely beyond what the indwelling of the Word is in other good men, though Christ took our flesh and infirmities, and we may be filled with all the fulness of God. In like manner the Incarnation and Manifestation of the Word of God in the letter of Scripture is pre-eminent, and differs from other books exactly as the flesh of Christ differs from the flesh of other men. Instead of believing therefore that, because Scripture is human, and has grown with men, and has marks of our weakness and shame and death upon it, therefore it must perish and see corruption, I believe it can never perish or see corruption. I see it is human; I see that it has grown; I see it can be judged and wounded. I believe too that it has in its composition exactly so much of perishableness as Christ's flesh had when He walked here with His apostles. But it is like Christ's body, the peculiar tabernacle of God's truth. And those who walk by it day and night know this, for they have seen, as all shall one day see, it transfigured.
I proceed to shew that like Christ's flesh, and indeed like every other revelation which God has made of Himself, the letter of Scripture is a veil quite as much as a revelation, hiding while it reveals, and yet revealing while it hides; presenting to the eye something very different from that which is within, even as the veil of the Tabernacle, with its inwoven cherubim, hid the glory within the veil, of which nevertheless it was the witness; and that therefore, as seen by sense, it is and must be apparently inconsistent and self-contradictory. Both these points are important;nfor if God's revelations of Himself are veils, even while they are also manifestations ; and if therefore they are and must be open to the charge of inconsistency and contradiction; this fact will help us to understand, not only why Scripture is what it is, but also how to interpret its varied truths and doctrines.
And here, that we may see how all God's revelations are alike, let us look for a moment at those other revelations of Himself, the books of Nature and Providence, which God has given us. Are they not both veils as well as revelations, the first sense-readings of which are never to be relied on?
First, as to Nature, which has been called God's formed word, and which beyond all question is a revelation of God. Yet how does it reveal Him? Is it not also a veil, hiding quite as much as it reveals of Him ? Is it not a fact that our sense-readings, even of the clearest physical phenomena, such as the rising and setting of the sun, are opposed to the truth, and need to be corrected by a higher faculty? Is it not further a fact that Nature hides almost more than it reveals of God our Saviour? Does it not seem even to misrepresent Him ? Does it not seem also to contradict itself, with force against force, heat against cold, darkness against light, death against life, its very elements in ceaseless strife everywhere? On one side shewing a preserver, on the other a destroyer; here boundless provision for the support of life; there death reigning. We know that this contradiction has been so strongly felt by some, that on the ground of it they have denied that the world is the work of one superintending mind, and have argued that it must be either the result of chance or the work of eternally opposing powers. Are there not here exactly the same contradictions and the same difficulties which we find in Scripture? Either therefore we must say. Nature is an inconsistent and lying book, and therefore we will not believe the testimony either of its barren rocks or smiling cornfields; or else we must confess some veil or riddle here. It is precisely the same riddle which we find in every other revelation.
For the book of Providence, which I may call God's wrought word, has the very same peculiarity. Providence surely is a revelation of God ; and yet is it not, like Nature, a veil quite as much as a revelation? Look not only at those things which David speaks of, that God's servants suffer, while the wicked are in great prosperity and not plagued like other men; but look at born cripples and idiots, the deaf and dumb and blind, who, as far as we know, cannot be suffering for their own sake; — look at the fact that in one instance crime is punished, in another unpunished, here. Is not this inconsistent? Where is the justice of it; and where, as judged by sense, is the love of sending souls into the world whose life throughout is one of suffering ? Certainly here is a text in God's providential book of rule, (which I may say answers to the books of Kings, or Rule, in Scripture,) quite as hard as any of those texts in the book of Kings, which some would cut out of Scripture, as presenting us with false and unworthy views of Him. But can these critics blot the selfsame text out of God's book of rule in Providence?
There it stands, just as it stands in the book of Nature also. Shall we therefore say that the revelation of God in Providence is an inconsistent one? No — the fact is, it is a veil as well as a revelation,
and all its apparent inconsistencies and contradictions can be cleared up, if not to sense, yet to faith, in the light of God's sanctuary.1
Even so it is with those two other revelations, which, much as they have been gainsaid, the Church has received and yet believes in, I mean the flesh of Christ and Holy Scripture. The flesh of Christ,
the Incarnate Word, is beyond all question a veil.2 How much did it hide, even while to some it revealed God. How few knew what He was; how many misunderstood Him. And how inconsistent did that feeble form appear with the truth that it was God's chosen dwelling-place. The apparent inconsistency may be gathered from the fact that those to whom He came stumbled at it. And from that day to this that human form, that birth of a woman, that growth in years and stature, those tears, that sweat, that weariness, those bitter cries, those members of shame, that dying life, all this, or part of this, has to the eye of sense seemed so inconsistent with divinity, that thousands have denied that that Form was or could be a revelation of God, even while they allow that it has done what mere humanity never did. The fact is, it was, and was intended to be, a
veil as well as a revelation; and as such there could not but be apparent contradiction. The same is true of Scripture, that is, the written word, which like Nature has gone through six days of change, and like Christ's flesh has grown in wisdom and stature here. Throughout it is a veil while it is a revelation; and therefore, like Nature, Providence, and the flesh of Christ, it is and must be open to the same reproach, not only of inconsistency, but of setting forth unworthy and even untrue statements of God. For indeed Scripture is a veil, which when taken in the letter, that is, as it appears to sense, makes out God to be just as far from what He really is as Nature and Providence seem to make Him; and yet all the while it reveals Him also, as nothing else has ever revealed Him. For though in Christ's flesh the revelation is complete spite of the veil, its very completeness and compactness keep us from seeing the various parts, which are set before us in Holy Scripture piecemeal,1 and in a way that neither Nature nor Providence at present shew Him to us. For the law and the prophets tell us more of God and of His purposes, as to the restitution of all things and the promised times of rest and sabbath, than Nature yet declares to our present understanding; though indeed Nature may be, and probably is, saying far more to us than any mere human eye or ear has yet apprehended.