A scholar trained at the feet of Gamaliel kneels before the Father "in spirit"; a Pharisee of the strictest sect has his shrunk heart expanded into "joy in Christ Jesus"; a proud professor feels "no confidence in the flesh." "We are the circumcision," he says, after this thorough readjusting of His religious relations. He thought so, as a Jew, when there was none to dispute the claim. As a Christian, with all Jewry despising that claim, he is sure of it.
2. Now to be able to say, "We are the circumcision," to be clearly conscious of standing in the right line of spiritual descent is no mean distinction, no unproductive element in our expectations, that we should alienate it without cause.
I. THOUGHTFUL STUDENTS CAN HARDLY DOUBT THAT GOD HAS MEANT HIS CHURCH TO MAINTAIN AN HISTORIC UNITY. No bend in its growth has ever been so abrupt as to choke the sap or sever the commerce of any branch with the root. Each moral revolution no less than each theological variation proves that the essence of faith is not perishable. Something of primitive power goes into the least offshoot. The three dispensations lay their ordaining hands on its head, with patriarchal blessings, Levitical unction, and gospel baptism. Let any holy family pitch its tent where it will, it shall not be out of that Divine order; reaching backward and forward — Calvary, Sinai, Mamre.
II. BUT BLENDED WITH THIS LAW OF ITS HISTORY, THE CHURCH HAS TO RECOGNIZE ANOTHER, constantly counterbalancing the gravitation towards indolence which might accrue from the former alone, and checking its complacency. For as it advances, some unexpected crisis is always breaking up the old distribution of forces; the original Providence readjusts the lines. Dismissing former tests of legitimacy, it brings fresh affiliations into the family, showing those often to be of "the circumcision" that had before been reckoned of the alienage; and disowning sons who forfeit favour by sinning against the Holy Ghost. Men claim to be Christians by birth; offer as a spiritual qualification, not a confession of faith, but a pedigree. Something like this has always been a presumption of religious majorities. And, as if to rebuff it, the propensity to proscription is no sooner settled, than a reformation is sent to disturb it. Some , some , or some Popish lineage is always secularizing the Church, and then some impracticable Wycliffe, dissenting Baxter, or erratic Huss, sloughs the form to act out the substance. Hypocrites vitiate the succession, and heretics ennoble the new blood. When the Jews refuse the apostle of their salvation, lo! he turns to the Gentiles. As if purposely to break up confidence in mere ecclesiasticism and clear the gospel of bondage, the visible Church is scarcely at any epoch suffered to enfold the Church spiritual with a clear circumference. And the instant any majority begins to be at ease in Zion, some terrible prophet comes crying out of the wilderness, "Repent!" shows what circumcision is, and turns the world of the Rabbis upside down. But always, observe, the old faith goes into the living body.
(Bishop Huntington.)
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