^[ It is said that old Dr. Alexander, of Princeton College, when a young student used to start out to preach, always gave him a piece of advice. The old man would stand with his grey locks and his venerable face and say, " Young man, make much of the
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blood in your ministry." Now I have travelled considerably during the past few years, and never met a minister who made much of the blood and much of the atonement but God had blessed his ministry, and souls were born into the light by it. But a man who leaves it out — the moment he goes, his church falls to pieces like a rope of sand, and his preaching has been barren of good results.1
The Covenant.
1. Christ speaks here of a covenant. Most religions pre- suppose some form of covenant with the object of their worship. The idea fills and dominates the Old Testament. And thus Christ found a ready point of attachment, a foundation of rock, on which He could build up His new order of truth. A covenant is a compact, an arrangement, an agreement, a contract between two persons or two parties, involving mutual privileges, conditions, obligations, promises. The Hebrew word appears to have the idea of cutting, and hence primitive contracts or covenants were made by the shedding of blood or the sacrifice of an animal.
2. After God had brought the children of Israel out of Egypt, He entered into a covenant with them at Mount Sinai. A covenant is an agreement betwixt two, securing on a certain condition a certain advantage. The advantage under the covenant at Mount Sinai was that the Lord should be their God and they His people ; and the condition was that they should observe His Law. " And Moses came and told the people all the words of the Lord, and all the judgements : and all the people answered with one voice, and said, All the words which the Lord hath spoken will we do."
But the children of Israel proved unfaithful. In the pathetic language of Scripture, " they went a whoring after other gods, and bowed themselves down unto them : they turned aside quickly out of the way wherein their fathers walked, obeying the com- mandments of the Lord; but they did not so." And therefore the covenant was cancelled. "They rebelled, and grieved his 1 D. L. Moody, Sermons, Addresses, and Prayers, 161.
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Holy Spirit : therefore he was turned to be their enemy." He abandoned them to the lust of their hearts, and they suffered disaster after disaster till they were stricken with the final blow, the Babylonian Captivity, and laid in the very dust. But that was not the end.
What began best, can't end worst, Nor what God blessed once, prove accurst.
His heart still yearned for them. " He remembered the days of old, Moses, and his people." He could not let them go, and He turned to them in their misery. He raised up a prophet in their midst, and charged him with a message of hope. They had broken the first covenant, but He would grant them a fresh opportunity and enter into a new and better covenant with them. " Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah : not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord ; I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I write it ; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people ; and they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord : for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin will I remember no more."
1| Is it not a grand thought that between us and the infinite Divine nature there is established a firm and unmovable agree- ment ? Then He has revealed His purposes ; we are not left to grope in darkness, at the mercy of " peradventures " and " probablies " ; nor reduced to consult the ambiguous oracles of nature or of Providence, or the varying voices of our own hearts, or painfully and dubiously to construct more or less strong bases for confidence in a loving God out of such hints and fragments of revelation as these supply. He has come out of His darkness, and spoken articulate words, plain words, faithful words, which bind Him to a distinctly defined course of action. Across the great ocean of possible modes of action for a Divine nature He
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has, if I may say so, buoyed out for Himself a channel, so that we know His path, which is in the deep waters. He has limited Himself by the utterance of a faithful word, and we can now come to Him with His own promise, and cast it down before Him, and say, " Thou hast spoken, and Thou art bound to fulfil it." We have a covenant wherein God has shown us His hand, has told us what He is going to do and has thereby pledged Himself to its performance.1