CHAPTER XXIII.-THE MALE ELEMENT IN SACRIFICE. THE HE form of individual approach was prescribed: it was not left to taste or inclination. A man disposed to bring an offering would be in the mood to ask, "What shall I offer?" just as a person inclined to make a present would ask, "What shall I give?” A person wishing to make a present would desire to offer what would be acceptable. In the case of a human being, it would not matter much, because a gift of any kind would be likely to be in some degree acceptable but in the case of a human being approaching God, it is different-the relation of the parties being so different. The difference is in some degree illustrated by the difference between a common neighbour and a royal personage. Anything might do to give to the former, but only what court etiquette would allow would be permissible for the latter. If so with a human dignity, how much more with God, the Creator, the Holy, and the sinned against? "If any man of you would bring an offering to the Lord, ye shall bring "thus and so not anything that might occur to the offerer, but that which is required. Cain brought of the fruits of the ground: Abel brought of the firstlings of his flock: God accepted the latter, but not the former (Gen. iv. 3-5). It is probable that Abel's offering was a conformity to revealed requirement, while Cain's would be in accordance with his own ideas of what was suitable. If it was by faith" that "Abel offered unto God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain " (Heb. xi. 4) we have to remember that faith acts upon revealed requirements. : The Israelite desiring to make an offering to the Lord was to bring it "of the cattle, of the herd, and of the flock" (Lev. i. 2). It must be a living creature put to death in the act of offering, with the blood poured out at the altar foot. The explanation was given afterwards: "It is the blood that maketh atonement for the soul"-" for the life of the flesh is in the blood and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls" (Lev. xvii. 11). The pouring out of the blood was the pouring out of the life, and therefore an acknowledgment on the part of the offerer that he was worthy to die. It was a typical declaration of that righteousness of God which was proclaimed in Christ in the one great offering as the basis of forgiveness (Rom. iii. 25-26). "If his offering be a burnt sacrifice of the herd, let him offer a MALE WITHOUT BLEMISH (Lev. i. 3). The sex-feature is prominent in all the appointments of the law. The numbering of Israel applied to males only (Num. i.). So with the law of the first-born (Ex. xiii. 12), every male shall be the Lord's." So with the three annual feasts: "three times a year shall all your males appear before the Lord (Ex. xxiii. 17; Deut. xvi. 16). The seal of the covenant was imprinted in the flesh of the males only (Gen. xvii. 10). On the other hand, the female, in cases of vow, was to be assessed at a smaller value than the male (Lev. xxvii. 4-7), and in the case of the birth of a daughter, the mother was to be a longer time in purification (Lev. xii. 7). A female animal could not be used for sacrifice except for peace-offering (Lev. iii. 1, 6); or for the sin of one of the common people (iv. 28, 32; v. 6). As all these things have an allegorical significance, we naturally desire to penetrate the meaning. Where shall we find it? We are probably not far away from it when we read "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection for Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression (1 Tim. ii. 11-14). "The man is the image and the glory of God, but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman, but the woman (taken out) of the man. Neither was the man created for the woman, but the woman for the man (1 Cor. xi. 7-9). Here are historical facts and moral responsibilities at the beginning of human history that in-weave themselves with the whole work of God with the race. Of course, the modern school, with their " new woman racing hither and thither and posing in attitudes and relations for which she is unfitted by nature, will rebel against these divine appointments, Mosaically recorded. They might as well fight against gravitation. Woman was secondary in the purpose for which she was formed, and she was influential in deflecting man from the path of obedience which he probably would have observed if left to himself. If God has chosen to preserve the memorial of these facts in the constitution of things He has established among men, who can make demur? Man has the first place all the way through, especially in the one great institution that brings man back to God in reconciliation. It was to be in a man and not in a woman that the righteousness of God was to be declared for the putting away of sin by forgiveness. It was to be by the obedience of one man that justification was to be provided for believing and obedient sinners, and not by the obedience of one man and woman, although it was by the disobedience of one man and woman that death entered the world-not that the law was : laid down to Eve:-it was to Adam the command was addressed: "Thou shalt not eat" but Eve considered herself included (Gen. iii. 2), and was, in fact, included as one flesh with Adam (ii. 23). So in the case of the last Adam--the remover of sin : his bride, the Lamb's wife, shares the victory achieved by him when it has been decided at the judgment-seat who constitute such. In both cases, it is the male that is the subject of direct operation. Though there is neither male nor female in Christ Jesus, it is by a man and not by a woman that life has come, though she is instrumentally contributory: for as she was the beguiler of Adam, to the death and ruin of both of them, so she is made his rescuer, in being made use of in a virgin descendant of the House of David to bring the Saviour into the world. Male and female are thus co-ordinate in the scheme without interfering with the headship appointed in the beginning. As Paul beautifully expresses it in his letter to the Corinthians : "Nevertheless, neither is the man without the woman nor the woman without the man in the Lord. For as the woman is of the man, even so is the man also by the woman, but all things of God" (xi. 11). There is congruity in all the ways of God when the relations established by His law are observed. Man is the head, but only for nurture and protection and honour of the woman. Woman is man's equal fellowheir of the salvation that is offered in Christ, but not to usurp the position that belongs to man both by natural constitution and divine appointment. Man is for strength, judgment, and achievement. Woman is for grace, sympathy, and ministration. Between them, they form a beautiful unit-"heirs together of the grace of life." Modern theories are the mere thoughts of a naturalism that rejects the law of God, and as such can find no sympathy with those who stand in the faith of Christ. Though inspired by naturalism, they are contrary to nature--which is an intelligible anomaly. Naturalism is the system of sentiment and opinion formulated by the brain of man unenlightened by the knowledge of divine ways. Nature is the constitution imparted to creation by divine wisdom and power in the beginning. Divine law is in harmony with the latter, but is at the antipodes of the other. We have to realise that there is such a thing as folly in the thoughts of man-due to the fact that man is by nature ignorant of all things and has to learn. Wisdom belongs to the mind of God alone. Recognizing this, we are prepared to look round and ask-which is which? Human folly on the subject of sex has extended even to the subject of God. It has recently evolved the idea of "the divine feminine (Scientific Religion). The idea is that there is in God a female element of which woman is the expression; and that as this element is in God fused with the masculine element and forming a harmonious unity, so it ought to be and was originally with man before woman was “taken out of" him the thought is that he was man and woman in one person, and that he became harsh as the result of abstraction of the feminine, and she became effeminate through the abstraction of the masculine! What shall we say? That such an idea is the offspring of speculative presumption. There are things quite too high for the human intellect; and the constitution of the God-head is certainly one of them, and for the matter of that, so is the constitutional differentiation of the sexes, or of species. What in the abstract constitutes the difference between one creature and another? Facts only we can note. Their origin or subsistence in the metaphysical sense is beyond the human intellect. One fact is plain to natural observation-that all creation is one stuff in different order (in harmony with Bible revelation that all things are of one spirit, which is one God, with detailed aspects revealed). The natural fact is obvious in the case of a zoological collection, which might be started with the very young of each species. There might be 500 creatures-great and small, and of every variety-from the elephant to the dormouse: from the hippopotamus to the tadpole : from the albatross to the humming bird: from the whale to the stickleback. Let the specimens be all at the infant stage of each species, and let a few human babies be included. They are all fed from without with the same food (in the main) and the same water. If they are not fed, they die, and you will have a collection of dead little things that will soon disappear in dust. But you feed them, and they grow, and at the end of a certain length of time, you have big creatures of all sorts-the elephant weighing tons, the lions and tigers hundred weights, the birds and monkeys pounds. Where has all this living stuff come from? It is the straw and the oats and the butcher's meat and the water that you have brought from the outside, turned into hippopotamus, giraffe, crocodile, as the case may be. These food stuffs have turned into different creatures according to the mouths into which you have placed them to be ground up. What you put into the mouth of a lion has turned into lion: what you put into the mouth of a monkey has turned into monkey what you put into the mouth of an emu has turned into emu, and so on. Go back to the beginning of the process, and you had a mountain of food-stuff and a congregation of tiny mites of creatures (which a little way back were no creatures at all). At the end of the process, your mountain of food-stuff is gone, and you have this variety of creatures, great and small. This may seem irrelevant to the subject. It is by no means so. The same stuff differently organised makes different creatures. Woman is different from man only on this same principle: the same stuff in a different order. A boy-baby and a girl-baby brought up together in the same house and fed on the same food will, by-and-bye, be fullgrown man and woman--both made out of the same stuff, and yet differing by reason of the differing constitution imparted by the organic law at the bottom of things. The same soil, rain, and sunshine in the garden will produce roses and cabbages side by side-for the same reason. They are the same stuff-the same material -the same forces differently ordered or arranged by the organic stamp, bent, or bias, appertaining respectively to each. The comparisons may seem degrading, but they belong to truth. When men have accounted for the organic impress stamped on seed of all kinds in man and beast, they touch the root of the phenomenon, and will touch God. But they are held off. We cannot by searching find out God. We see He is there, but only as a mystery. He has to reveal Himself, and He has done so. All we have to do is to accept the revelation, and not go speculating about divine feminines to account for woman, like the heathen who invented a god of war to account for war; a god of love to account for love! and so on-professing themselves wise, thus becoming fools. We might as well, like the Egyptians, speculate about the divine feline to account for cats; the divine ape-ine to account for monkeys, &c. God is one, and He has no peer: as He says, “There is no god with me: I lift up my hand to heaven and say, "I live for ever." He has no divine feminine with him. But He is all we could wish Him to be. What of loveliness we may conceive as appertaining to the feminine, dwells in Him: for He created the feminine. The fountain of it is in Himself. It is His invention. He is love and pity infinite, but also wisdom unerring; constructiveness, superb: and executiveness, terrible to the point of being "a consuming fire"; vast and sublime in all His ways and all His thoughts: as much above the thoughts and ways of man as heaven is above the earth. 'He is a great King": not a queen-but more lovely than any queen we ever imagined. He is the perfect masculine of which man in his best form is a poor reflex ;—and no reflex at all, when he is harsh, and churlish, and rude, and selfish. Because God, as the eternal masculine, 66 |