Now, in all this self-emptied devotedness to God there was truly a sweet savor. A perfect Man on the earth accomplishing the will of God, even in death, was an object of amazing interest to the mind of Heaven. Who could fathom the profound depths of that devoted heart which displayed itself, under the eye of God, on the cross? Surely, none but God; for in this, as in every thing else, it holds good that "no man knoweth the Son, but the Father," and no one can know aught about Him save as the Father reveals Him. The mind of man can, in some measure, grasp any subject of knowledge "under the sun,"--human science can be laid hold of by the human intellect; but no man knoweth the Son save as the Father reveals Him, by the power of the Holy Ghost, through the written Word. The Holy Ghost delights to reveal the Son--to take of the things of Jesus and show them unto us. These things we have, in all their fullness and beauty, in the Word. There can be no new revelation, inasmuch as the Spirit brought "_all_ things" to the apostles' memory, and led them into "_all_ truth." There can be nothing beyond "all truth;" and hence, all pretension to a new revelation and the development of new truth (meaning thereby truth not contained in the sacred canon of inspiration) is an effort on man's part to add to what God calls "all truth." No doubt the Spirit may unfold and apply, with new and extraordinary power, truth contained in the Word; but this is obviously a very different thing from our traveling outside the range of divine revelation for the purpose of finding principles, ideas, or dogmas which shall command the conscience. This latter can only be regarded in the light of impious presumption.
In the gospel narrative, we have Christ presented to us in the varied phases of His character, His Person, and His work. To those precious documents the people of God in all ages have rejoiced to betake themselves, and drink in their heavenly revelations of the object of their love and confidence--the One to whom they owed every thing, for time and eternity. But very few, comparatively, have ever been led to regard the rites and ceremonies of the Levitical economy as fraught with the most minute instruction in reference to the same commanding theme. The offerings of Leviticus, for example, have been too much regarded as so many antiquated records of Jewish customs, conveying no intelligible voice to our ears--no spiritual light to our understandings. However, it must be admitted that the apparently abstruse records of Leviticus, as well as the sublime strains of Isaiah, take their place amongst the "things which were written aforetime," and they are, therefore, "for our learning." True, we shall need to study those records, as indeed all Scripture, with a humble, self-emptied spirit; with reverent dependence upon the teaching of Him who graciously penned them for us; with sedulous attention to the general scope, bearing, and analogy of the entire body of divine revelation; with an effectual curb on the imagination, that it may not take unhallowed flights; but if thus, through grace, we enter upon the study of the types of Leviticus, we shall find in them a vein of the richest and finest ore.
We shall now proceed to examine the burnt-offering, which, as we have remarked, presents Christ offering Himself without spot to God.
"If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a male, without blemish." The essential glory and dignity of Christ's Person form the basis of Christianity. He imparts that dignity and glory to every thing He does, and to every office He sustains. No office could possibly add glory to Him who is "God over all, blessed forever"--"God manifest in the flesh"--the glorious "Immanuel"--"God with us"--the Eternal Word--the Creator and Sustainer of the universe. What office could add to the dignity of such an One? In point of fact, we know that all His offices are connected with His humanity; and in assuming that humanity, He stooped from the glory which He had with the Father before the world was. He thus stooped in order to glorify God perfectly in the very midst of a scene where all was hostile to Him. He came to be "eaten up" by a holy, unquenchable zeal for the glory of God, and the effectual carrying out of His eternal counsels.