ANALECTA EPISTOLARIA.
NO. 1.
LETTER FROM THE ANTIPODES.
Dear Brother: —Of the numbers of the Herald for 1853, only three have as yet reached me. There are other two in the Melbourne office which I expect to receive, but the rest are, I fear, entirely lost. I much regret this, particularly at the present time, when the Sin-power is so rapidly approaching the crisis of its fate. To no one, I should imagine, can the events now transpiring on the Continent, and in the East, be more deeply interesting than to yourself, who have done so much to render the signs of the times intelligible.
In a letter I wrote to you in December, 1852, I asked you for an explanation of some passages in the testimony of John, which seemed rather obscure. If they have not been already noticed in The Herald, you will much oblige by answering them at your earliest convenience.
You will be pleased to hear that, even in this remote corner of the earth, your Elpis Israel is known and appreciated by a few. I brought some copies of that invaluable work out with me from England, but found, on arrival, that it was here before me. All who read, however, and profess to believe, unfortunately, do not obey. I have, as yet, only met with two believers in "the Gospel of the Kingdom" since I arrived here; both are at present unbaptised, but they only wait an opportunity. I hope to have the pleasure of immersing them shortly. Though Mr.------- is an uneducated man, he is considerably skilled in the word of righteousness, and has suffered much persecution through his contention for the faith. He has read Elpis Israel, and is quite delighted with it. I think I could find sale for a dozen copies if I had them here. Perhaps you would allow Mr. Robertson to send me out that number, if you can spare them, and I will be answerable for them. Should you issue a reprint of your pamphlet entitled "The Wisdom of the Clergy proved to be Folly," I would take 100 copies. I had an idea of republishing it here; but found, on inquiry, that the cost would be not less than £10 per 100. Printing, like every thing else, is expensive in this part of the world.
In a letter recently received from England, I see that you think I had no business on this side the earth, and that you wish I was in New York. I can assure you that I did not cross the broad ocean from choice, having previously had more than enough of blue water. I was in hopes that, by emigrating to this colony, I should not be altogether dependent on the practice of physic, which I would willingly "throw to the dogs," if I could. But what could I do in New York? I should very much like to be near you, especially for the Gospel’s sake you have done so much to make plain. I shall always feel much indebted to you. I am endeavouring to do what I can here for the truth. A periodical, published twice a month, and called the "Christian Advocate," has recently made its appearance here, to which I have contributed some articles. My last, however, was declined; and, I believe, I may consider myself kicked out as "a pestilent fellow." I got into a controversy with the editor, and some one signing himself "H," on the subject of Charity and Unity in the Christian Church. I endeavoured to show the absurdity of the dogmas put forth, for which I was stigmatised as "a modern Hildebrand." In the course of his philippic against me the editor made the following extraordinary statement: —"Even in Heaven," said he, "we have the burning ones as distinguished from the loving ones, and so on to an indefinite extent without doubt." I have thrice sought for an explanation of this, but in vain. The editor has proved himself a dumb dog that cannot bark. He and "H," I understand, are both Presbyterian "Divines." I want chapter and verse for this statement. Did you ever read of such a distinction obtaining in the kingdom of God? I have been very uncourteously treated in the affair, and am left without the opportunity of defence in the pages of this so-called "Christian Advocate."
I have distributed a few of "The Wisdom of the Clergy proved to be Folly," and would circulate more if I had them. Our Wesleyans here are very wroth with them, and will not read Elpis Israel, though I sent them out a copy long before I arrived here myself, with a particular request so to do. Wesleyans are the most determined opponents of the truth I have yet met with; they seem to be little better than Papists in disguise.
I wish you would be kind enough to explain more particularly what you mean by saying that the 144,000 is the representative number of the saved. This does not appear clear to me. Does this number include Gentiles as well as Jews? And does the "great multitude," in Revelation 7: 9, belong to the first or second resurrection? "After this," says John; but, how long after? Is there an interval of a thousand years here?
In a conversation I had lately with a Wesleyan minister, I was asked, "Is matter eternal? Is mind eternal?" Questions which, I confess, rather puzzled me to answer. This gentleman says that the Deity is "an infinite mind." I cannot conceive of mind apart from matter. I asked him to define what he meant by "infinite mind;" but could get nothing satisfactory in reply. I am aware that the Uncreated One has not been pleased to reveal the mode of His existence; yet one can hardly help forming some opinion upon the subject.
In your admirable articles on "Odology" there is a statement which struck me as remarkable. Speaking of the Almighty, you say, "every atom is, as it were, condensed lightning." What is condensed lightning? Will you have the kindness to explain this also?
In the case of the death of a believer, what do you consider the proper way of consigning the body to the grave with decency? Do you think that any thing should be said, or read, at the grave, or at the house of the deceased previously, and what? I do not recollect that any thing is said on the subject in the New Testament.
I often wish it were in my power to render you efficient assistance in the good cause in which you are embarked; but alas! it is not. I do not think the gospel, in its entirety, has ever been preached in this part of the world. I should esteem it a great honour to be able to supply such a deficiency; but at present, certainly, I do not feel sufficiently strong, nor sufficiently clear on all points, to venture to appear in public. Should "a mouth and wisdom" ever be accorded me, I trust I should not shrink from the enterprise.
Yours in the One Hope,
SAMUEL GEORGE HAYES.
Port Wellington, New Zealand,
Australasia, May 20, 1854.
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The "rather obscure" passages to which our beloved antipodean refers are, John 3: 13; 16: 27 (last clause), 28; also, Matthew 12: 43, 45; Luke 11: 24, 26.
ONE ONLY HAS ASCENDED TO THE HEAVEN.
The first text in the Common Version reads thus; —"No man hath ascended up to Heaven but he that came down from Heaven, even the Son of Man, which is in Heaven." This affirms the ascent and descent of the Son of Man, who is now in heaven; not the descent of the word to become flesh, and the subsequent ascent of that flesh, when resurrected. The following literal translation appears to me more plain than the above: —
"No one hath ascended into the heaven, except he having descended from the heaven, the Son of Man, he being in the heaven." The heaven indicated here is called elsewhere "the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heaven." The scriptures declare that Enoch, Elijah, and Moses ascended to heaven; but these words of Jesus, show that they did not ascend to "the heaven" where he is.
Again, "he having descended," the translation of ho katabas, is the second aorist participle, which affirms the action as passed at some time or other. If it had been the perfect, it would have affirmed the descent as passed at the time Jesus spoke; but being aorist, or indefinite, it affirms a past action, but without fixing the time.
But Jesus gave his hearers a datum by which they might know that it was to be a future past action. This datum is expressed in the phrase "He being in the heaven." When he spoke these words he was in Palestine—not in heaven. They would, therefore, understand him to mean, that he was first to ascend to the heaven, and being there, where no man had been before him, he was to descend to earth again; so that his descent would be a past action at some time future to his "being in heaven."
THE PROCESSION OF THE SON.
The next passage reads, "Ye have believed that I came out from God. I came forth from the Father, and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father."
The former text treats of the ascent and future descent of the Son of Man; the latter, of the procession of that which spake and worked through the Son of Man. "I am," said he "in the Father, and the Father in me. The words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself; but the Father that dwelleth in me, He doeth the works." This mutual indwelling, dated from "THE ANOINTING," and was suspended "about the ninth hour" of the crucifixion, when the Father forsook the Son of Man. He continued, however, to live after the Father had forsaken him; for after he proclaimed his abandonment, he said, "I thirst." Vinegar was then given to him, which he received. He then cried again, with a loud voice, "It is finished." And after this he cried, "Father, into thy hands I deliver my life; and, having said thus, he bowed his head, and yielded up the life." "I have power," said he, "to lay down my life, and power to take it up again;" and after this manner he delivered it.
From this testimony it is evident, that when the Son spoke of his procession from the Father, he was not alluding to his natural birth, but to his anointing with the Spirit of the Father, and to his mission. Peter says, that "God sent word to the of Israel by Jesus the anointed;" and having come into the world—the Jewish world, into which only he was sent—he declared that he was anointed to preach the Gospel of the Kingdom. He "came out from God" to do this by that which "came forth from the Father"—by the Spirit with which the Father had sealed him, and which was bestowed upon him without measure.
When men heard the doctrine and saw the miracles, they perceived the Father; but when they saw Jesus between the ninth hour of the crucifixion and the bowing of his head, they did not see the Father, but Jesus, forsaken of the Spirit.
"AN UNCLEAN SPIRIT."
Matthew 12: 43-45, is a parable illustrative of the moral condition of the generation of Judah contemporary with Jesus and the apostles. The wickedness of the generation is personified, even as Paul personifies "sin" in Romans 7: 13, as kath huperbolen hamartoolos, "an exceedingly great sinner." Wickedness is "an unclean spirit;" and "seven other spirits more wicked than itself," is the superlative of wickedness. "The man" and "my house" are expressive of the generation. By the preaching of John, Jesus, and the apostles, before the crucifixion, wickedness in the positive degree was greatly restrained in Judah; for "Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round about Jordan, were baptised of John in Jordan, confessing their sins;" and "great multitudes of the people followed Jesus:" but, after seven years from the beginning of John’s preaching, reaction set in, and the generation became superlatively wicked, filling up the measure of their fathers in killing Jesus, persecuting his disciples, and rejecting the Gospel of the Kingdom in his name.
THE 144,000 SEALED.
In regard to the 144,000, I would submit the following, in explanation of the difficulties in the way: —
The 144,000 is the representative number of the symbolical Israel. The symbolical, or apocalyptic Israel, is representative of all, both Jews and Gentiles, sealed of God in their foreheads between the closing of the Sixth Seal and the sounding of the First Trumpet. If it were a sealing from the literal tribes exclusively, the tribe of Dan would not have been omitted. The "angel ascending from the East, having the seal of the living God" represents a class of persons engaged in the sealing; for he cried with a loud voice to the wind-trumpet angels, "Hurt not the earth, neither the sea, nor the trees, till we have sealed the servants of our God in their foreheads."
The closing of the Sixth Seal brought peace to the Roman Empire, which continued comparatively tranquil till the "hail and fire, mingled with blood, were cast upon the earth; and the third part of the trees was burned up" under the First Trumpet, which summoned Alaric, A.D. 395, to the invasion of Greece. During this period of seventy years, the Gospel of the Kingdom was very efficiently proclaimed, not only to the sealing of the servants of God, but to the destruction of the Pagan religion, its prohibition, and what Gibbon styles "the conversion of Rome," which was effected by the paganising of Christianity by its worldly professors.
"After this" sealing was accomplished, the trumpets began their devastations of the west. The "great multitude" John beheld, "which no man could number," is representative of those who are sealed from among the generations of the nations during the sounding of the Seven Trumpets; that is, from A.D. 395 to the setting up of the throne at the appearing of Christ. This is the period of "the great tribulation," during which the Gentile powers make war upon them, and prevail against them; and as "the Holy City" of the Apocalypse, chapter 11: 2, "tread them under foot for forty and two months," or 1260 years, which terminated at the Resurrection of the First-Fruits, of which they are part; for they have "palms in their hands," in token of victory over all their enemies.
GOD IS SPIRIT.
I pretend not to define the primitive essence of God’s nature, for he has not revealed it, but his character only. I used the phrase "condensed lightning" illustratively. Lightning, which we also style electricity, I take to be the Spirit of God in physical manifestation. It is omnipotent, light, and a consuming fire, which are qualities predicable absolutely of God alone, and applied to him in the Scriptures. The atoms of all bodies, from the sun to a grain of sand, and from the highest intelligence in the universe to the minutest insect, are electrical in some sense; therefore God, by his Spirit, pervades every thing. Now "God is Spirit," and from him this omnipotent principle proceeds. It may be said to irradiate from his substance as light from his sun. He is "a consuming fire, dwelling in unapproachable light." This is Paul’s statement. Hence, the most tangible idea I can form of his physical constitution is, that it is the focal condensation of Spirit, which, having length, breadth, and thickness, impenetrability, &c., we call matter, or substance, as distinct from radiant matter, or "free spirit." This is what I mean by "every atom, as it were, being condensed lightning."
BURIAL OF THE DEAD.
As to the burial of dead bodies, a few words only are necessary. The Bible makes but little account of them or their burial; superstition, much of both. With this, the burial of the dead is a religious institution; and in proportion as the mind is spoiled by it so will it ceremonialise their obsequies.
The Lord Jesus Christ never officiated in burial services, or "funerals," as they are called, and discouraged the practice in his disciples. When he visited dead bodies, it was to raise them, and on those occasions he very unceremoniously put out the performers of funeral decencies. "Follow me!" said he to one of his disciples. "But he said, ‘Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my father.’" To a stickler for "the decencies of society" this would be regarded as a very reasonable request, and the teacher of religion that would refuse to allow it would be considered, by "the pious" of this "enlightened generation," as an unfeeling and unchristian character. But there is no accord between the thinking of the flesh and the thinking of the spirit. What pietists approve, Jesus refused to allow. "Let the dead bury their dead," said he; "but go thou and preach the kingdom of God."
This reply, however, does not meet Brother Hayes’ inquiry. It only commands a disciple of Christ to leave the burying of those who have died in their sins to the attention of the living, who are "dead in trespasses and sins." A Christian of the Bible order is not to concern himself with the burial of sinners—let sinners bury their own dead. But who shall bury the saints? The saints and their friends. And with what ceremonies? Consider the burial of the King of Saints. Who buried him? And with what formalities? Joseph and Nicodemus, men waiting for the kingdom of God, obtained the body, and wound it in linen, with spices, and laid it in a cave. There was no verbal ceremony, but a quiet and affectionate putting out of sight of the body in the usual way. I should prefer to bury my own, and be buried after this simple and unobtrusive example.
December 4, 1854. EDITOR.
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