41 LECTURE III. The Tree after its kind.--THE CHRISTIAN PRINCIPLE DISTINGUISHED FROM "God is a Spirit: and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth."-St. John iv. 24. I should not be doing justice to these words of our blessed Lord, unless I submitted the principle of "agreement," already announced, to the light which they shed. Nor, on the other hand, should I be doing justice to the principle in question, unless I showed its superiority to that which characterises the Mosaic Worship, which worship, you remember, was also a Divine Institution. These objects, it will be found, bear mutually upon one another. The spirituality of the Church is its superiority to the Temple. The worship that God instituted by the hands of Moses, was, as we are all aware, a centralizing worship. There was but one place where it could, in its highest sense, take place. This spot was represented during the wanderings of the children of Israel, by the Tabernacle which contained the Ark of the Covenant, Ex. xxv. 8, &c. Ex. xxx. 6. Ps. lxxx. 1. called sometimes "the testimony of Israel." On the Ark were the Cherubim overshadowing the mercy seat where appeared, at times, the "Shekinah," or visible presence of God, and where the Israelites found, in effect, their "Throne of Grace."* Afterwards, when the nation became fixed in the Land of Promise, the 1 Sam. i. 3; Ark abode for awhile at Shiloh, and then, after some iv. 3. Ps. lxxviii. 60 strange vicissitudes, was brought to Jerusalem by 2 Sam. vi. 12 David, and presently found a resting place in the 1 Kings viii. glorious Sanctuary which Solomon had provided for it. 4, &c. Thenceforth, Jerusalem became the religious local centre of the nation, the "place where the Lord God had chosen to put His name there," and no worship in the highest sense, no sacrificial worship, could properly take place except in the Temple at Jerusalem. Deut. xiii. 13, 14, 21. Deut. xvi. 16 At the three annual feasts, all the males of the nation were required to go up to Jerusalem to worship. The Ex. xxix. 42-6 institution of the Priests and Levites had direct reference to this principle of concentration which it was their duty to illustrate and maintain. To worship 1 Kings viii. towards the Temple at Jerusalem became a practice of 29. 2 Chron. vi. religious importance. 20-40. Solomon mentioned it as a * Yet God was always regarded as having His true habitation in Heaven. Ps. lxxx. compare 1 and 14. Lam. iii. 41. I Kings viii. 27. Acts vii. 48, 49. 2. Ps. cxxii. 1, 2, necessary element of all prayer. David took delight in Ps.v.7; xxviii. it. Daniel, amongst the idolatries of Babylon, valued it Dan. vi. 10. more than life itself. The 122nd Psalm beautifully expresses the predominance of this leading feature of Israelitish worship. "I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go into the house of the Lord. Our feet shall stand within thy gates, O Jerusalem." "Whither the tribes go up, the tribes of the Lord, unto the testimony of Israel, to give thanks unto the name of the Lord."* The purpose of this centralising arrangement of 4. worship was manifestly to separate the children of Deut. xii. 2-5. Israel from the Idolaters around them and to keep them together as a religious community worshipping the one true God. It was intended, if I may so speak, in the absence of a fuller revelation of God, for which the time was not ripe, to impress a kind of rough unanimity upon them, to bring them by the force of a peculiar Institution into necessary harmony in matters of Faith, and link them to truth, by the attractive power of common associations. Now let us examine the case of the Samaritans, one of whom our Lord was addressing, and to whom He John iv. 5, &c. *This is one of the Psalms called Songs of Degrees, or Pilgrimage Songs. They seem to have been sung by parties coming to the feasts, as they approached Jerusalem. 2 Kings xvii. 24. Ezra iv. 2-10. referred as well as to the Jews when He uttered the words of the text. The Samaritans, as you know, were colonists upon the territory of Israel, and rivals of the Jews in religion. But yet the principle of their worship was, in theory, precisely the same as that of the Jews. They too had their place," this mountain "-Mount Gerizim,--where they thought they ought to worship. There they built a Temple and instituted a Priesthood and sacrifices, founding their observances upon the Pentateuch, or law of Moses. Like most separatists, neglecting higher principles, they paid all the more scrupulous attention to the one they retained. It is marvellous what the Dr. Thompson principle of concentration in worship has done for them. "The Land & the Book," To this day the Samaritans remain gathered round their vol. ii. 215. Verse 22. ancient shrine. And yet in them, is also manifest, how utterly that principle has ceased to be living. The husk or bark remains; the heart of the tree is gone. Observe our Lord's decision between the two rival worships. "Ye worship," He said, "ye know not what. We know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews." As a matter of fact, there could be but one true system of concentration; there could not be two plants of that growth in the world at once. The Jewish system was the true one having the promise and presence of God. Verse 21. But then our blessed Lord went on to say that even as to the manner and principle of worship, whether at Jerusalem or on Gerizim a great change was just about to take place. "Believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain nor yet at Jerusalem," that is, neither in the one place nor the other on the exclusive centralising principle "worship the Father." "The hour cometh and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Verse 23-4. Father seeketh such to worship Him. God is a Spirit and they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." Nothing can be plainer here than that our Lord pronounces the doom of the principle of concentrationwhich centralised worship in one place--and throws out the hope of the immediate establishment of another kind of worship, which as being nearer the spiritual character of the God who was worshipped, He calls "worship in spirit and in truth." What was that new kind of worship? One thing is obvious it was "worship in spirit and in truth:" to that requirement all its rules and principles would : |