k Deut. xxvii. 26. Gal. iii. 10.
make void the law, but establishes the law1:" and has no hope of salvation in anyway, but such as "magnifies the law and makes it honourable"1 ;" and it is his earnest desire that you should agree with him in this matter; because he is sure, that, when once you come to understand your own law, and see how " Christ was the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth," your difficulties will all vanish as the morning dew before the rising sun.
With respect to the ceremonial law, we do indeed call you from the observance of that ; and we have good reason so to do ; for you yourselves know, that all the essential part of your religion existed before the ceremonial law was given ; and that Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, who lived hundreds of years before the ceremonial law was given, were saved simply and entirely by faith in that promised " Seed, in whom all the nations of the earth are blessed." By faith then in this promised Seed must you be saved : every child of Abraham must seek for ac- ceptance in the way that Abraham did. If you ask, Why then was the ceremonial law given ? I answer, To shadow forth your Messiah, and to lead you to him : and when he should come and fulfil it in all its parts, it was then to cease ; and you yourselves know that it was intended by God himself to cease at that appointed time. Do you not know that your Messiah was to come out of the loins of David ; and that he was also to be a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec ? But if there was to be a new priesthood after the order of Melchizedec, the priesthood of Aaron must cease : and if the new priest was to spring from David, who was of the tribe of Judah, and not from Levi to whose descen- dants the priesthood was confined, then it is clear from this also that the Aaronic priesthood must cease : and if that be changed, then must there of necessity be a change of the law also" : so that you yourselves know that the ceremonial law was never intended to continue any longer than the time fixed
1 Rom. iii. 31. m Isai. xlii. 21. n Heb. vii. 11, 12.
206.1 THE jews' LEADING OBJECTION TO CHRIST. 355
for its completion in the predicted Messiah. If then we call you from the outward observances of that law, it is not from disrespect to that law, but from a conviction that it has been fulfilled and abrogated by the Lord Jesus. We call you only from shadows to the substance. We call you to Christ as uniting in himself all that the ceremonial law was intended to shadow forth. He is the true tabernacle, in whom dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. He is the true " Lamb slain from the foundation of the world," even that " Lamb of God which, as John the Baptist testified, taketh away the sins of the world." He is the great High-Priest, who, having " through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God," is now " entered into the holy place with his own blood," and there " ever liveth to make intercession for us ;" and is to come forth from thence once more to bless in his Father's name his waiting people. I wish then, my Jewish brethren, that you would particularly bear this in mind. We honour the ceremonial law as admirably calculated to pre- pare your minds for the Gospel ; not only because it exhibited so fully and so minutely every part of the mediatorial office which our Lord was to sustain, but because by the burthensomeness of its rites it tended to break your spirit, and to make you sigh for deli- verance. And methinks, it should be no grievance to you to be called from those observances, because you neither do, nor can, continue them : the destruction of your city and temple, and your whole ecclesiastical and civil polity, have rendered it impossible for you to comply with them, and have thus shut you up to the faith of Abraham, which is the faith of the Gospel.