The Pulpit Commentary — Leviticus — Section 441

No nation now can expect to enjoy such an institution as this; we must learn to dispense with such miraculous arrangements as that which ma,le the year of jubilee a possible thing to Israel (vers. 20-22). It is our national wisdom to bring about, by (1) wise and equal laws, and by (2) virtuous and godly lives, the happy estate in which the people of God found themselves when the trumpets or jubilee annow:.ced that a new era of liberty, sufficiency, piety, prosperity, had begun. A nation may truly rejoice, end may feel that its jubilee is approaching, when it is attaining to: 1. Freedom from degrading poverty; the community not being constituted of a few wealthy meu and a multitude of paupers, but being composed of thos9 who earn an honourable livelihood by self-respectful industry, there being general, wide- spread prosperity. 2. The possession of liberty-individual and national, civil and religious; every cruel, degrading, injurious bond being broken, and all men being free to exercise their God-given faculties without hindrance or restraint. 8. Domestic well- being; purity, love, order in the household. 4. Piety; the recognition of indebtedness to God, and a full and deep understanding that we are, above all things, his servants. 5. Charity; a kind and generous regard to those who are "waxen poor and fallen into decay;" a ready hand to help the needy, and give them a new start in the race of life. Let a nation only be advancing in these elements of goodness and prosperity, and it may rejoice greatly in its inheritance, for then" God, even our own God, will bless it; n and though no trumpet sound the note of jubilee, then shall its "light break forth as the morning ... and its righteousness shall go before it; and the glory of the Lord shall be its rereward" (Isa. !viii. 8).--C. Vere. ~55.-Year of jubilee: II. The world's redemption. The whole Christian era. is one long year of jubilee. It is "the acceptable year of the Lord" (Luke iv. 19). That" acceptable year," the fiftieth year in the Jewish calendar, was a year of (1) emancipation (ver. 10); (2) readjustment or social relations (vers. 10, 39-41, 43, 54); (3) national regeneration (vers. 10, 13). The land rested a second year, and recovered any virtue it may have lost, and the old patrimonies reverted to the heirs of the original ,owners; (4) rest from cultivation (ver. 11); (6) abounding joy. These, in a deeper, a spiritual sense, are the characteristics of the Christian era: 1. It is a time of ,piritual emancipation. Sin is the slavery of the soul; "men are "holden with the cords of their sins" (Prov. v. 22). They are in the bondage of selfishness, or of worldliness, or of one or other (or more than one) of the vices, or of the fear of man, or of a foolish and frivolous procrastination. To accept Jesus Christ as Saviour of the soul and Lord of the life is to be released from these spiritual fetters. 2. Social readjustment. Christianity, indeed, effects no immediate revolution in the forms of social life. It does not say to the slave, "Escape from thy master" (1 Cor. vii. 20); it does not give directions as to the way in which human relations are to bo organized. But it infuse, a new spirit int:o the minds of men; it introduces those prin- dples of righteousness and those feelings of considerateness which silently, but most effectually, "make all things new." It drops the seed of "charity" in the soil of human nature, and behold a goodly tree springs therefrom, the leaves of which are for the healing of the social sores of all the nations. 3. Indi1Jidool and national regenera,- tion. The soul that receives Jesus Christ as its Lord, and the nation that surrenders itself to his holy and beneficent rule, make an entirely new departure in their course. So great and radical is the change which is thereby effected, that the Truth himself speaks of it as a" regeneration" (John iii.), In Christ we are born again, or born from .above. We enter on a new life, the life of faith, love, humility, zeal, holy service, godliness, anticipation of future blessedness. 4. Rest of soul. 'l'he rest of body eujoyed in the year of jubilee has its analogue in the rest of soul which we enjoy in the acceptable year of the Lord-rest from (1) a burdensome sense of condemnation; (2) self-reproach, remorse; (3) spiritual struggle and disquietude; (4) anxious, torturing fears. 5. Joy in God. In this "acceptable time" we have not only peace, but we also "joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Rom. v. 11). We are bidden to" rejoice in the Lord alway" (Phil. iv. 4); and though there may be found in the sorrows of others as well as in our own and in the difficulties and depressions that attend us here too much of cloud and shadow to feel that it is always jubilee-time with us in our home- ward journey, yet the felt presence of our Saviour, his unchanging friendship, the OIL ll.V, 1-55.] THE DOOK OF LEVITICUS.