This, however, is rather anticipating a line of argument which is yet to come before us. Let us here put another question to the reader. If any one had spoken to Moses about a body composed of Jews and Gentiles,--a body whose constituent parts had been drawn from among the seed of Abraham and the cursed race of the Canaanites,--what would he have said? May we not safely assert that his whole moral being would have shrunk with horror from the thought? What! Jews and Canaanites--the seed of Abraham and uncircumcised Gentiles--united in one body? Impossible for the lawgiver to take in such an idea. The fact is, if there was one feature which more strongly than another marked the Jewish economy, it was the rigid separation by divine appointment of Jew and Gentile. "Ye know," says Simon Peter, "how that it is an unlawful thing for a man that is a Jew to keep company, or to come unto one of another nation."
Such was the order of things under the Mosaic economy. It would have been a flagrant transgression on the part of a Jew to climb over that middle wall of partition which separated him from all the nations around; and hence the thought of a union between Jew and Gentile could not possibly have entered into any human mind; and the more faithful a man was to the existing order of things under the law, the more opposed he must have been to any such thought.
Now, in the face of all this, how can any one seek to maintain that the truth of the Church was known in Old Testament times, and that there is no difference whatever between the position of a Christian and that of an Old Testament believer? The fact is that even Simon Peter himself found it extremely difficult to take in the idea of admitting the Gentiles into the Kingdom of Heaven. Though he was entrusted with the keys of that kingdom, he was very reluctant indeed to use them for the admission of the Gentiles. He had to be expressly taught by a heavenly vision, ere he was prepared to fulfil the commission with which he was charged by his Lord in Matthew xvi.
No, reader, it is of no possible use to stand against the plain testimony of Scripture. The truth of the Church was not--could not--be known in Old Testament times. It was, as the inspired apostle tells us, "hid in God"--hid in His eternal counsels--"not made known to the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit,[3] that the Gentiles should be _fellow-heirs_, and of _the same body_, and partakers of His promise in Christ by the gospel." (Eph. iii.)
[3] The "prophets," in this passage, are those of the New Testament. This is evident from the expression, "_Now revealed_." He could not speak of a thing being "now revealed" to men who had been dead for hundreds of years. Besides, had the apostle meant Old Testament prophets, the order would assuredly have been "Prophets and apostles." We have a similar expression in Eph. ii. 20: "Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets." He does not say, "prophets and apostles." The truth is that the apostles and prophets formed the first layer of the foundation of the Church of which Jesus Christ is the chief Corner-stone; and this is an additional proof that the Church had no existence save in the secret counsels of God until our Lord Christ, having accomplished the work of redemption, ascended into the heavens, and sent down the Holy Ghost to baptize believers--Jews and Gentiles--into one body.
The reader may also refer with real profit and interest to Rom. xvi. 25, 26: "Now to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to _the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began_, but _now is made manifest_, and by the scriptures of the prophets (literally, by the prophetic writings, that is, of the New Testament), according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith."