Читать книгу The Wisdom of Alfred Edersheim - David Mishkin - Страница 10

Abraham

With Abraham an entirely new period may be said to begin. He was to be the ancestor of a new race in whom the Divine promises were to be preserved, and through whom they would finally be realized.1

Abrahamic Covenant

For the terms of this promise were not made void by the seventy years which Judah spent in the captivity of Babylon, nor yet are they annulled by the eighteen centuries of Israel’s present unbelief and dispersion. The promise of the land is Abram’s “seed for ever.” 2

There is nothing narrow or particularistic, but a grand universalism, even about this presentation of the promise in concrete form.3

The great promise connected first with the patriarchs as God’s anointed, and then with Israel as a royal nation, now attached itself to Israel’s king, and became, so to speak, individualized in David and his seed.4

For when God bound up the future of all nations in the history of Abraham and his seed (Gen. 12:3), He made that history prophetic; and each event and every rite became, as it were, a bud, destined to open in blossom and ripen into fruit on that tree under the shadow of which all nations were to be gathered.5

Affliction

And when troubles are around, and we see no way of escape, when our consciences condemn us for backsliding from the Lord, what comfort to discover that the precious Word of God is still near us, with its message of pity and forgiveness, ever meeting our wants.6

God’s people are not preserved from the common evils of this world. They are sustained and helped in them.7

Even a heathen poet speaks of the pleasure of looking back upon past trials. Yet, would we rather look upon a present Saviour than a past affliction.8

Little do they know, who wonder at the afflictions of God’s people, what precious lessons have been learned, what mighty sermons have been preached in sick rooms and on death-beds. The letting down through the roof of the bed which bore the poor paralytic, laying him at the feet of Jesus, was itself a testimony more powerful than many a long life.9

Agnostics

I believe in a personal God; I also believe in a personal Satan. Agnosticism on the latter point seems to me to lay us open to the most serious practical dangers.10

Alexandrian Judaism

Separated from their brethren of Palestine, they constituted an almost independent sect, having their rival high-priest and temple. Left to themselves, and set free from those elements which led to the development of Rabbinism in the mother country, the Alexandrian Jews pursued a different direction. They had to defend their faith from the attacks of a philosophical system apparently related to it, but claiming for those initiated in its mysteries a higher spirituality and a loftier elevation.11

There can be no doubt that, in the providence of God, the location of so many Jews in Alexandria, and the mental influence which they acquired, were designed to have an important bearing on the later spread of the Gospel of Christ among the Greek-speaking and Grecian-thinking educated world.12

Angels

The ministry of His angels will only be fully understood when our eyes shall have been opened, and when we shall hold personal converse with them in another state of existence.13

The angels whom God sends are all good, though their commission may be judgment to bring evil upon us. As one has rightly remarked, “God sends good angels to punish evil men, while to chastise good men, evil angels claim the power.”14

Anthropology

As in the soul of man we see the ruins of what he had been before the fall, so in the legends and traditions of the various religions of antiquity we recognize the echoes of what men had originally heard from the mouth of God.15

Has the great maker of the machinery, to us incomprehensible in its magnitude and complication, left it to the operation of those laws which has put within its every part to regulate and check its working? If so, what of the intellectual and moral aspirations within us, of that which constitutes equally the real being of man and his dignity? What of those thoughts and hopes which we instinctively feel to be heaven-born, since we know them not to have been earth-sprung? What of high moral motives, the noble inward struggles and victories, the self-devotion and self sacrifice, the patient bearing, the trustful waiting, and holy living? Truly, we cannot believe in man without believing in God.16

Anti-Semitism

To me, indeed, it is difficult to associate the so-called Anti-Semitic movement with any but the lowest causes; envy, jealousy, and cupidity on the one hand; or, on the other, ignorance, prejudice, bigotry and hatred of race.17

As they had been oppressed by Caligula, by Nero, by Domitian, and by the whole line of pagan monarchs; so were they persecuted by a Eugenius, by a Paul, by a Caraffa, and more or less by the whole line of Popes, - by the very men who owed all their idolatrous glory to the fact that they assume to be the spiritual descendants of a Hebrew fisherman! Nay, the Christian Bishops of Rome even exceeded the heathen Caesars in their cruelty and inhumanity towards this people.18

I feel convinced that the real root of anti-Semitism is depreciation of the Old Testament. If we have low opinions of the Old Testament we shall come to despise and to hate the Jews, and perhaps not unreasonably so. Love for the Old Testament leads to love for Israel.19

Anxiety

There is no anxious, nor nervous seeking of deliverance when faith has made its confessions to God. All that is left is to anticipate victory.20

An anxious mind is an unbelieving mind. Full of cares is full of self.21

Apocrypha

The silence of the Apocrypha about the person of the Messiah is so strange, as to be scarcely explained by the consideration, that those books were composed when the need of a Messiah for the deliverance of Israel was not painfully felt.22

The hope of the Old Testament centered in the person of the Messiah; that of the Apocrypha, in the nation of the Jews.23

It is true that the Apocrypha preserve silence about the person of the Messiah. But this, not because the Messiah was ignored, but because it was apprehended and presented in another form. It was no longer the person of the Messiah, but the Messianic times, which engaged the expectancy of the people.24

Apologetics

The chief use of apologetics is to answer a fool according to his folly; that is, to silence him.25

Apostles

Too often we commit in our estimate the error of thinking of them exclusively as Apostles, not as disciples; as our teachers, not as His learners, with all the failings of men, the prejudice of Jews, and the unbelief natural to us, but assuming in each individual special forms, and appearing as characteristic weaknesses.26

Art

For, art is God-given, and what is God-given must be capable of being in turn devoted to God. But how can this be done? The consecration of art, which is the highest expression of mind, is itself an act of homage.27

Not to produce religious feelings, but to express it, is the province of true art. Again, art calms and elevates the mind, and, if it takes us to its own high altitude, that there we may pray and worship, another of its objects is fulfilled.

Poetry and music have always been favorite engagements with Israel, and originality peculiarly their own, and peculiarly expressive of their national mental characteristics.28

Speaking as one who has no claim to knowledge of art, only one picture of Christ ever really impressed me. It was that of an ‘Ecce Homo,’ by Carlo Dolei, in the Pitti Gallery at Florence.29

Art, like Scripture, has this for its object: to make us see, through the actual and outward, the spiritual and therefore the truly real. It presents reality, but as that through which we look far away into the ideal, which underlies all, surrounds all, and gives meaning to all.30

Atheism

Self indulgence and covetousness are practical atheism.31

At the root of all evil, deep in our hearts, is atheism.32

It deserves more than passing notice, that the modern denial of God may be reduced to the same ultimate principle as the worship of Baal. For, if the great First Cause – God – God as the Creator – be denied, then the only mode of accounting for the origin of all things is to trace it to the operation of forces in matter. And what really is this but a deification of nature.33

For, we confidently assert and challenge experiment of it, that disbelief in a God, or materialism, involves infinitely more difficulties, and that at every step and in regard to all things, than the faith of the Christian.34

For myself, I cannot understand the rascaldom which underlies writings and lectures intended to make men atheists. If everything is only mud – including, of course, such writings and arguments – what can be the purpose of them? Only that of self-display, and, for myself, I do not admire even the largest accumulation of mud standing out from circumnatant [sic] mud.35

Atonement

On the shedding of blood, which was of the greatest importance – since, according to the Talmud, ‘whenever the blood touches the altar the offerer is atoned for’ – followed the ‘flaying’ of the sacrifice and the ‘cutting up into his pieces.’ All this had to be done in an orderly manner, and according to certain rules, the apostle adopting the sacrificial term when he speaks of ‘rightly dividing the word of truth’ (2 Timothy 2:15).36

But even the need of such a Day of Atonement, after the daily offerings, the various festive offerings, and the private and public sin-offerings all the year round, showed the insufficiency of all such sacrifices, while the very offerings of the Day of Atonement proclaimed themselves to be only temporary and provisional, ‘imposed until the time of reformation.’37

The sin-offering – This is the most important of all sacrifices. It made atonement for the person of the offender, whereas the trespass-offering only atoned for one special offence . . . However, in reference to [both of them], the Rabbinical principle must be kept in view – that they only atoned in case of real repentance.38

Babylonian Exile

It were a one sided view to regard the Babylonish exile as only punishment for Israel’s sin. There is, in truth, nothing in all God’s dealings in history exclusively punitive. That were a merely negative element. But there is always a positive element also of actual progress; a step forward, even though in the taking of it something should have to be crushed. And this step forward was the development of the Kingdom of God in its relation to the world.39

Bar Kochba

His designation as Bar Cochab (the son of a star) dates from his claims to be the long-promised Messiah, and the application to him of the prophetic passage in Numbers 24:17 . . . It is indeed indescribably sad to see a man, weighed down under the burden of years, and endowed with the earnestness, enthusiasm, and generosity of an Akiba, support the claims of so vulgar and clumsy an imposter as Bar Cochab, or Bar Cosab (the son of a lie), as his disappointed followers called him at a later period.40

Such was the Messiah of Israel’s choice, whom they now prepared to support. Only one party in the land opposed a passive resistance to the “son of a lie.” It is touching to have again and again to chronicle the trials, the patience, and the faith of the Jewish Christians. This small and despised number of disciples neither could nor would own the deceiver’s claims.41

Belief

There is not a more common, nor can there be a more fatal mistake in religion or religious movements than to put confidence in mere negations, or to expect from them lasting results for good. A negation without a corresponding affirmation – indeed, if it is not the outcome of it – is of no avail for spiritual purposes. We must speak, because we believe; we deny that which is false only because we affirm and cherish the opposite truth.42

Belonging to God

We are God’s property: blood-bought, love-sought, and Spirit-brought.43

The meanest of God’s saints is one of God’s saints.44

I must remember that holiness is the badge of adoption. God not only takes us to be His children, but makes us to be His children.45

The Lord gives us not only adoption, but ‘the spirit of adoption,’ the family likeness with the family privileges, and not merely the name but the character of children.46

If we regard anything as our own, then surely all is still our own, and we are not His who bought us with His precious blood.47

There is infinite comfort and hope even in the fact of being God’s creature – the work of His Hand.48

Bethlehem

Sheltered from scenes of strife and semi-heathenism, the little village of Bethlehem had retained among its inhabitants the purity of their ancestral faith and the simplicity of primitive matters. Here, embosomed amidst the hills of Judah, where afterwards David pastured his father’s flocks, and where shepherds heard angels hail the birth of “David’s greater Son,” we seem to feel once again the healthful breath of Israel’s spirit, and we see what moral life it was capable of fostering alike in the individual and in the family.49

Binding of Isaac (Genesis 22)

As we remember that on this mountain-top the temple of the Lord afterwards stood, and that from it rose the smoke of accepted sacrifices, we can understand all the better what the inspired writer adds by way of explanation: As it is said to this day, “In the mount where Jehovah is seen,” – where he seeth and is seen, - whence also the name of Moriah is derived.50

Upon Isaac, also, the event had a most important bearing. For when he resisted not his father, and allowed himself to be bound and laid on the altar, he entered into the spirit of Abraham, he took upon himself his faith, and thus showed himself truly the heir to the promises.51

Blessings

And the experience of mercy received in the past is pledge of mercies to be received in the future . . . a prayer heard in the past is pledge of prayers to be heard in the future. Each blessing we receive is but one link; a link fastened on to other links, the whole forming the chain of sovereign love by which Christ binds a soul unto Himself.52

We are neither to be indifferent to earthly blessings, nor to be dependent upon them for our happiness. But we are to trust our Father, alike when He gives and when He withholds, and still to rejoice in Him.53

But the interposition of God, although direct, is not of the nature of magic. If any success granted by Him is to be complete, it implies moral conditions on our part. To put it otherwise: the full reception of God’s benefits has for its condition full receptivity on the part of man.54

Blood Atonement

In accordance with this [Leviticus 17:11] we quote the following Jewish interpreters. Rashi says: ‘The soul of every creature is bound up in its blood; therefore I gave it to atone for the soul of man – that one should come and atone for the other.’ Similarly, Iben Ezra writes: ‘One soul is a substitute for the other.’ And Moses Ben Nachmann: “I gave the soul for you on the altar, that the soul of the animal should be an atonement for the soul of the man.’55

Burdens

It is not the burden which weighs us down; it is when we have to bear it alone, and so long as we bear it alone.56

To lay our case before Him is to be already relieved. The burden which I have rolled upon Him can no longer bear me down; it has ceased to be my burden.57

And, in truth, there is only one burden which is really heavy to bear – that of sin. Every other burden – that of sorrow, of want, or of difficulty – drives us straight to God. This alone seems to keep us from God.58

A man from whom a burden has been lifted feels happier even then he who has never known its weight.59

There is something wonderfully soothing in telling our cares and sorrows to another. The burden often loses half its weight at least when it is shared by another. But when that other, whom we trust and love, continues firm and hopeful, the whole aspect of matters seem at once changed. What formerly appeared surrounded by unknown terrors is now seen its true proportions and real light. We are inspired with fresh courage to do battle with difficulties.60

Canaanites

Moreover, it is very remarkable that we perceive in the Canaanite race those very things which afterwards formed the characteristics of heathenism, as we find it among the most advanced nations of antiquity, such as Greece and Rome.61

Very much in the mythology, and almost all the vileness of Greek and Roman heathenism is undoubtedly of Canaanitish origin. Indeed, we may designate the latter as the only real missionary heathenism at the time in the world.62

“Christian” Anti-Semitism

A great crime is being enacted over the world, which cries to heaven for vengeance, and to the Church for testimony and self-vindication. While we speak of that salvation which is of the Jews, and of the joyous fulfillment of all promises in Christ, other thoughts obtrude themselves, and, like heavy rain clouds, crowd our horizon, and darken out the light of our gladness. For once more has the wild howl of unchained passion against Israel risen above the sweet music of the dying Saviour’s last prayer: ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.’ Once more has the blood-stained hand of rapine, lust, and murder sought to shake from out the jeweled memorial cup, in which the Church had gathered and held up in a constant Prayer of Intercession, the tears which Jesus had shed over the Jerusalem that would not receive Him – tears, that can never be dried up. And once more has the white raiment of the Church been fouled with blood; her fair name been a byword, and her hymn of charity drown by wild orgies. The hand raised to point to the cross drops in anguish.63

The Church veils her face in mourning; a thrill of horror, a pang of anguish, a cry of indignation pass through universal humanity. Whether and what in the wonder-working Providence of Him who brings good out of evil may be the outcome of this to Israel, we cannot say. But in the name of God, let us clear ourselves of all complicity in this sin and shame. We who do believe in Christ, and because we believe in Him, as the true Messiah – we protest with one heart and mind against this and all like movements! In the name of Christianity, in the name of our Church, in the name of this land of liberty and light, in the name of universal humanity, we abhor it, we denounce it, we protest against it.64

Christianity

It is the New Testament which represents our Christianity, not the eccentricities nor the supposed narrow-mindedness of its pretending or even real professors.65

On which side does progress in science and literature lie – on the Christian or the heathen? Where is moral grandeur exhibited – among the pagans, or by earnest believers? And what remedy would you propose to apply to the world’s ills, what comfort to its sorrows, and what satisfaction for its cravings?66

Christianity addresses itself to the inner man; the outer man, and the changes and appearances observable in it, are only the spontaneous consequences of the great change wrought within. It is indeed true, that the Gospel brings before us not only those great truths which are to make us wise unto salvation, but also the great principles of right, of virtue, and of holiness.67

The fundamental ideas of the Christian life may, we conceive, be summed up in the two words, spiritual liberty.68

It is a remarkable fact, that in measure as less of spiritual attachment to Christianity is displayed, the intolerance which all other forms of religion are treated, becomes more bitter.69

To put it more precisely: we hold that Christianity in its origin appealed to an existing state of expectancy, which was the outcome of a previous development; and further, that those ideas and hopes of which it professed to be the fulfillment had not first sprung up in the immediately preceding period – that is, in the centuries between the return from the Babylonish exile and the Birth of Christ – but stretched back through the whole course of Old Testament teaching.70

But liable as, in our present state, we are to continual error, and to none more readily than to falling into extremes, we are prone either to disassociate the element of faith from the Christian life, or the Christian life from the impelling power of a living faith. Either of these extremes leads to doctrinal error, and to practical mistakes. A genuine Christianity has to present the Christian life as based upon, derived from, and pervaded by faith – the leaven of the gospel leavening the whole lump, and Christian faith as a matter of not only intellect, but of the heart and life also.71

Christianity is a constant negation. Its teaching is a negation of what naturally comes to the mind; its practice a negation of what naturally presents itself to the imagination and the heart. Practical Christianity is a constant saying: ‘No! no! no!’ to all around – the world, the flesh, the devil – and, not unfrequently, to the so-called Church too.72

Christianity is always new: it has something new to say to every generation, though the new be always the old truth. And therein lies its appeal to our times.73

The Church

On earth, and in the present dispensation, let us not look for the one and undivided Church of Christ. Thoughts of it are like the chimes of distant bells, borne upon the breeze to the ear of the weary pilgrim. Man speaks of Churches; Christ has one Church; and when He cometh, he will not only manifest His own and His Father’s glory, but also the beauty and unity of His Church.74

I may love my own church very much, but I love Christ and His church – the Church – still better.75

Generally speaking, the eternal history of every church passes through three phases. In the first or constituent period, principles are laid down and landmarks set; in the second or formative period, these principles are developed into rules, being extended or modified, as the case may be; in the third or discriminative period, all internal questions are settled, and the outward relations of the church, and with them her aims and positions, finally fixed.76

Circumcision