that I will raise up unto David a Righteous Branch, and a King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgment and justice in the earth [or land]. 6. In his days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely; and this is his name, whereby he shall be called: Jehovah our Righteousness. that I will perform that good thing which I have promised unto the house of Israel, and to the house of Judah. 15. In those days, and at that time I will cause to grow up unto David a Branch of Righteousness, and he shall execute judgment and justice in the earth [or land]. 16. In those days Judah shall be saved, and Jerusalem shall dwell safely; she shall be called: Where the words are the same in the original of both passages, we have made them the same in the translation. On the two passages, thus collated, we remark: 1. It is obvious that the passage in the 33d chapter is simply a repetition of that in the 23d, with some addition in the former part, and the omission of one short sentence. The few verbal differences do not affect the sense. 2. The passage thus repeated is evidently a prophecy of the reign of the Messiah. The BRANCH and the KING are CHRIST; and Judah and Israel in the 23d chapter, and Judah and Jerusalem in the 33d, represent THE CHURCH; i. e. the people of God under the Christian dispensation. 3. The two passages being thus identical, it is obvious. that, if any clause in one is ambiguous, and the corresponding clause in the other unambiguous, then that which admits but one interpretation must be allowed to explain that which admits two. 4. In chapter 23: 5, in the clause "this is his name, whereby he shall be called," the pronouns his and he may grammatically relate either to the next preceding noun, Israel, or to the word Branch, or King in the preceding verse. If the same were true in 33: 16, we suppose all would agree in referring the pronouns in both passages to the Branch, as their antecedent; and so in regarding the name Jehovah our Right eousness, as applied by the prophet to Christ. But in ch. 33d the use of the feminine pronoun utterly precludes this construction, and compels us to admit that it is to Jerusalem that the name is there applied. And as the name Israel stands in precisely the same connections in the 23d chapter, as Jerusalem in the 33d, the conclusion is irresistible, that Israel, and not the Branch is the antecedent of the pronouns his and he; and that to the people of God, and not to the Messiah, the name in question is applied, as well in the 23d chapter, as the 33d. This is the prophet's own interpretation of his own words. And if commentators have not been led to this conclusion, it would seem that it must be because they have neglected carefully to collate the two passages, so as to observe their identity; for it would be strange to observe their exact correspondence in other respects, and not to infer the identity of their meaning in this also. 5. As in the name, in, the last words of the prophecy of Ezekiel, the verb is is implied - Jehovah is thereso in the name before us, Jehovah is our Righteousness.1 6. In most cases where, in Hebrew the name Jehovah is made the subject, and an abstract noun the predicate, the abstract is plainly used for the concrete; as Jehovah is my Light, i. e. my Enlightener; my Strength· -Strengthener; my Salvation Saviour. And so in the present case, almost beyond a doubt, Jehovah is our Righteousness is equivalent to Jehovah is our Justifier; and the thought intended to be conveyed by saying that Israel or Jerusalem shall be called by this name is, that, in the days of the Messiah, his people shall be distinguished as a people justified by Jehovah. This shall be their triumph and their joy. 1 Thus many Hebrew names of persons; as, Abijah, My Father [is] Jehovah; Elijah, My God [is] Jehovah; Adonijah, My Lord [is] Jehovah; Zuriel, My Rock [is] God; etc. 2 Jehovah is our Justifier. I suppose this is the rendering which any one versed in Hebrew, but not in technical theology, would at once give. A musician in the United States' Army, a Swede by birth and education, was once at my house. He had studied Hebrew as a classic, and asked to see a Hebrew Bible. I asked him if he could translate Hebrew. "Into Latin I can," he replied, "not into English." I opened the Hebrew Bible, and pointed to Jer. 23: 5, which he readily translated into Latin, rendering the name, without the least hesitation, "Jehovah Justifieator noster. 7. But does not this interpretation militate against the doctrine of Justification by Faith? Far from it. The sentiment which the name, thus interpreted, expresses, was uttered by the Apostle Paul in the exultant exclamation: "It is God that justifieth." And does that militate against the doctrine of Justification by faith? On the contrary that very doctrine is the sole ground of the apostle's triumph. Justification by Faith had been the great burden of all the preceding part of his epistle. And now to the words: "It is God that justifieth," he adds: "Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea, rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh intercession for us." Of this triumph the name before us is prophetic. "Jehovah is our Justifier." This shall be the glory of Israel. When? When Christ shall have come, and died, and risen again, and shall sit on the right hand of God to intercede for his people, that they may be justified. "It is God that justifieth." How? Through" Christ that died." "Through faith in his blood." This is the sole ground of the Christian's triumph in a justifying God. Although, therefore, he may not be able to say, that the name thus interpreted, expresses, in itself, the doctrine of Justification by faith, yet there is no room to doubt, that this ground of our triumph, no less than the triumph itself, was in the mind of the prophet, or rather of the Spirit that dictated the words of the prophet, as the reason why this should be regarded as an appropriate appellation for the Church of Christ, the true Israel of God. Christ died for us, therefore Jehovah justifies us. This is our triumph. The Prophet foretold it. "Jehovah is our Justifier." The Apostle uttered it. "It is God that justifieth." From age to age the church of the Redeemed re-echoes it. "It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died; yea rather, that is risen again; who is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh intercession for us!" 1 I use the common version. To translate all the clauses interrogatively would not change the force of the argument. ARTICLE VII. DR. GRIFFIN'S THEORY OF THE ATONEMENT. BY EDWARDS A. PARK, ABBOT PROFESSOR, ANDOVER. The personal history of Dr. Griffin gives to his Theological opinions a peculiar significance. He studied theology with Dr. Jonathan Edwards, a divine whose influence is destined to increase as the power of men to understand him increases. From the 4th of June, 1795, until the summer of 1801, Dr. Griffin was the pastor of the Congregational Church at New Hartford, Connecticut. "On the 20th of October, 1801, he was installed colleague pastor with the Rev. Dr. McWhorter [over the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, New Jersey]. The congregation over which he was placed was one of the largest and most respectable in the United States, qualified in every respect to estimate the labors of a most eloquent, gifted and devoted minister." 1 On the 28th of May, 1809, after having fulfilled there a pastorate of nearly eight years, he preached his Farewell Sermon to his church at Newark, and on the 21st of the following June he was inducted into the Bartlet Professorship of Sacred Rhetoric, at Andover Theological Seminary. The Institution was then in its infancy. Its founders, Mr. Abbot, Mr. Bartlet, Mr. Brown, were living, and were Visitors of the Seminary. Their own theological views are indicated by the exalted encomiums which they lavished upon him. His colleagues, Professors Woods and Stuart, avowed their substantial agreement with him in his theological speculations. "The stories," says Dr. Griffin, "about Dr. Pearson's abusing me, or quarrelling with me, or being unfriendly to me, are all false. He resigned on account of age Sermons by the late Rev. Edward D. Griffin, D. D.; to which is prefixed a Memoir of his Life by William B. Sprague, D. D., Minister of the Second Presbyterian Congregation in Albany. p. 53. and infirmity. He is a good man, and is still an active and very useful friend of our [Divinity] College." It is not pretended that either Professor Pearson, or the other Professors, or the founders of the Seminary sanctioned all the assertions of Dr. Griffin; they did not agree with each other or with him in all minutiae; still they were pleased with the main principles and the leanings, as then developed, both of his theology and of his philosophy. After having spent two years in the duties of his Professorship, Dr. Griffin was installed Pastor of the Park Street Church, Boston, on the 31st of July, 1811. His installation sermon was preached by Rev. Dr. Worcester, of Salem, Mass. Here he officiated as pastor until April 27, 1815, nearly four years. "Though he spent more time in several other places than in Boston," writes Rev. Dr. Humphrey, "I have always been impressed with the belief that his pre-eminent usefulness was on that ground. When he went there, the piety of the pilgrim fathers had nearly ceased to warm the bosoms of their descendants. Calvinism was a byword and reproach. Orthodoxy hardly dared to show its head in any of the Congregational pulpits. It wanted a strong arm to hold up the standard of the cross, a strong voice to cry in the ears of the people, and a bold heart to encounter the scorn and the talent that were arrayed against him. And nobly, in the fear and strength of the Lord, did he quit himself." "Nothing was more striking in his character than the high ground which he always took in exhibiting the offensive doctrines of the gospel; particularly divine sovereignty, election, the total depravity of the natural heart, and the necessity of regeneration. These doctrines he exhibited with great clearness and power, before friends and enemies. The crisis required just such a master spirit, and Boston felt his power; or, rather, felt the power of God, which I must think wrought in him mightily during his short ministry in Park Street. From the time of his going there, Orthodoxy began to revive, and we all know how many flour 1 Dr. Sprague's Memoir, p. 117. VOL. XV. No. 57. 12 |