LECTURE XXX. THE VICTORY. Right is might. Truth is success. The good time surely comes. "For from the rising of the sun even unto the going down of the same, my name shall be great among the Gentiles; and in every place incense shall be offered unto my name, and a pure offering: for my name shall be great among the heathen, saith the Lord of hosts.-MALACHI i. 11. THUS God extracts from the pollution which his visible Church hath fallen into at the present, a glorious prediction of those grand blessings that will abound upon it, like dew upon the mown grass, in the course of the future. He tells them, that, though they had sinned against Him, and pronounced his service to be weariness, and had polluted the table of the Lord, and pronounced it contemptible; yet glorious evidence of his inexhaustible love!-it should not lessen his love, or make his promises fail; but in spite of all, and in the midst of all, his love would develop itself, and there should be yet a pure offering, and incense given to his name, worthy of that name, and suited to all its requirements; for He says, not only in the length and breadth of Palestine-to which the blessings of the Gospel had heretofore been restricted-but over all the world-Jew and Gentile, from the remotest east to the the most distant west-there should be established a pure worship, and be presented true incense; and that name which had been despised by the Jew, should be honoured by the Gentile; and as there was one Lord and his name one, there should be of Jew and Gentile but one united and spiritual and worshipping people. I need not tell you that the verse which I have read has frequently been quoted by the members of the Church of Rome as an evidence of what is called "the sacrifice of the mass. They say that this is the prophecy of that great sacrifice which is known to be offered every day on the altars of the Church of Rome. I do not stop to show the utter inapplicability of the passage to any such corruption. It is enough to state that no evidence is adduced to show that it does describe it. To assume a prophecy, and arbitrarily to assert that this prophecy is fulfilled in a thing, and to show no evidence of similarity, is to misapply and misinterpret the prophecies of God. It is not hinted, in any page of the New Testament Scripture, that this description applies to any such thing. It is not asserted in the New Testament that any such rite as the propitiatory sacrifice alluded to exists at all. Such being the case, it is an arbitrary and gratuitous misapplication of Scripture to apply that to superstition which, as I shall show you, clearly and unequivocally relates to something very different. First of all, then, in analyzing the verse, I may notice, that it implies that there will be, in the lapse of accumulating centuries, a clearer perception and knowledge of the name of God than there has ever been before. It asserts: "My name, now obscure, will then be luminous. My name, now despised by you, will then be great; and such will be the nation's reverence for this dread name, that, everywhere smitten by its magnificence, and attracted by its glory, and rejoicing under its sunshine, there shall be presented an incense and a pure offering such as has no counterpart in your experience, or in its past history." What, I may ask, has been the history of God's past dealings with mankind, but the ceaseless revealing of 66 his name? God's name is himself. What a man's name is, that a man is, where names are realities; and in ancient times the name was always the exponent, and felt to be so, of the man. Adam meant "earth," and Eve, "the mother of all living;" Seth, substituted;" Noah, "rest;" Abraham, "the father of a multitude;" Solomon, "the king of peace;" Melchisedec, "the king of righteousness." Every name was significant; and therefore to call a person by his name was just to call him what he was. And so universal was this, that in the New Testament we find it stated that the "number of the names was so many thousand, that is, the number of the persons. And, therefore, to manifest God's name is just to manifest God; and to state that there shall be given to that name a pure offering, is to say that God shall be worshipped as a Spirit, in spirit and in truth. Now, I have said the whole history of God's past dealings with his people has been more or less a revelation of his own name, a proclamation of what He is in the hearing and to the hearts and consciences of mankind. I think I noticed, on a previous occasion, what seems so remarkable, that the names of the patriarchs, as given in the 5th chapter of Genesis, when put together exactly in the order in which they are given in that chapter, actually constitute a prediction of the Gospel, and of its distinctive truth-the death and sacrifice of the Son of God. I have an impression that all history is not simply a record of the past, but that it is a sort of foreshadow or forelight of what shall be in the future; and that we shall see in it, not what the mere historian sees in it now, a dead register of things that are gone, but a prophetic foreshadow of things that are yet to be. It has been proved, and proved in the most incontestable manner, that there is no such thing as cessation to the sound of a word that has been spoken, or to the effects of a deed that has been done. Some striking discussions upon science have shown that a word spoken at this moment never ceases. True, our dull ear can hear it only along a certain amount of the atmospheric current; but still, a word uttered here will go on reverberating for ever and for ever. And if so, how strikingly significant it may be that God will thus open our eyes and ears at a judgment day, to see and hear all that has been spoken and done in the past. The smallest particle of snow that you move instantly sets in vibration—I admit more minutely than we can perceive the whole earth itself. You cannot tread upon the globe without the reverberations of that footstep going round the earth, and that ceaselessly for generations yet to come. And it may be that the clank of the chain of the slave, that the groans of the suffering, that the reproach and calumny of the wicked, will all last while the world lasts, and the ear be made sensitive enough, and the eye sensitive enough, to hear and see them all. But the past history of God's dealings with his Church has been more or less a revelation of his name; and that history, when seen in the new light in which we shall one day see it, will then be ascertained not to be dry records of the past, but embosomed prophecies of the future. The 5th chapter of the Book of Genesis is a record of all the names of the patriarchs, beginning with Adam, then Seth, then Enos, then Cainan, then Mahalaleel, then Jared or Gared, then Enoch, then Methuselah, then Lamech, and lastly Noah. Now, it is very remarkable that these words translated are a revelation of the Gospel of Christ. Take the first, Adam means, man made in the image of God." Seth means, "substituted by." Enosh means, "human misery." Cainan means, “illuminating." Mahalaleel means, "the blessed God." Jared means, 66 "shall come down." Enoch means, "teaching." Methuselah means, "his death will send." Lamech means, "the humble.' And Noah means, "consolation." Now, put the whole Hebrew words together; and although you may say it is accidental, and although I may believe that everything that happens is 66 - preordained, yet it is very remarkable that, strung together just in the order in which they are stated, these names make the following sentence :- "To man, made originally in the image of God, substituted by man in a state of misery, full of illumination, the blessed God shall come down, instructing him, and his death shall send to the humble consolation." Well, here is the name of God, or, rather, the most remarkable feature in its history, embosomed in the names of the patriarchs. I do not assert that God has said that this is the meaning of it; I merely state the fact, and leave you to accept it or not, as you please. If we go down the tide and current of history, and ascertain what other revelations God has given of himself, we shall find a yet clearer revelation of his name in the 34th chapter of the Book of Exodus, one of the most beautiful chapters in the word of God. In the 33rd chapter, and at the 18th verse, Moses says to God: "I beseech thee, show me thy glory." What is God's glory? "And God said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee;" implying that the goodness of God and the glory of God were convertible terms. I cannot but stop to remark how precious it is that when Moses asks the sight of God's glory, God should give him a view of his goodness, as if to say, "The more I am loved, the more of my glory is seen." God's glory is what we see of God. A creature, in order to be glorified, needs to have some grand title added to his name, or to have some great deeds done by him; but in order to glorify God we need just to see Him as He is. The more clearly God is seen, the more we see of God's glory; because He is infinite in every excellence, and infinitude is glorified, not by addition, which is impossible, but by manifestation, which is just the characteristic of the Gospel. It is interesting to know that God's goodness is his greatest glory; and that when God shows his greatest mercy in the forgiveness of the greatest sinner, He manifests his greatest glory. And therefore, when I |