Established 1844. The Journal, 1873.

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LIVING WELL.

HE liveth long who liveth well;
All other life is short and vain :

He liveth longest who can tell

Of living most for heavenly gain.

Be wise, and use thy wisdom well;

Who wisely speaks, must live it too. He is the wisest who can tell

How first he lived, then spoke, the true. Be what thou seemest; live thy creed; Hold up to earth the torch divine ; Be what thou prayest to be made ;

Let the great Master's steps be thine. Fill up each hour with what will last ; Buy up the moments as they go ; The life above, when this is past, Is the ripe fruit of life below.

-Selected.

From The Contemporary Review, London.
PRIEST OR PROPHET.

WHEN we take up the books which the Jews called the Earlier and the Later Prophets, we find that in the history of religion there is a great conflict of ideas. On the one hand, the priest, yielding to pagan influence, presses sacrifice and exalts ritual; and, on the other hand, the prophet proclaims that what God requires is that men should reverence Him and work righteousness. "Trust in God and do good:" that is the burden of their message. It is the same conflict that we see running right through the history of religion. We are face to face with it to-day. The Sacerdotalist is exalting the sacraments ("Push the Sacraments," a late bishop is reported to have said to a curate) and enlarging the ritual while the Evangelical is teaching a life of spiritual reverence to God and righteousness towards man as the sum and substance of religion. It seems to be the place and duty of the prophet, in the history of religion, to check priestly usurpation and exalt the moral law. The modern priest exalts the Mass; the prophets exalt the living Christ.

In the Old Testament Moses is the great prophet, the father of prophecy. The religion he taught is embodied in the Commandments and in what is called

Volume LV. Number II.

the Book of the Covenant. (Exodus, xx., 23, xxxiii.) It is a simple religion: God is a holy being, and requires that His children lead a righteous life. There is no suggestion of a ritual, no mention of a temple or a priest. There were simple sacrifices among the Hebrews, as among the other Semites; but they need no priest or elaborate ceremony in this earliest code. Now, the religion of the nations with whom Israel came in contact were priestly religions, with their elaborate systems of sacrifice and ritual. When the Israelites settled in Canaan the same thing happened which happened to Christianity when it came into touch with paganism. Many of the features of modern Sacerdotalism are of pagan origin. The very name, priest, as applied to a Christian minister, as we have seen, is largely due to pagan influence. So, it seems, the conception and function of the priesthood among the Hebrews was due to the influence of Canaanite religion. The Israelites were surrounded by the priestly system of the Canaanites, and they yielded to its influence and borrowed from its practices. And soon began the great conflict, which continued right down to the Captivity, and only ended, after the Return, in the compromise of the Levitical law. The Israelites entered the Promised Land with the teaching of their great leader in their memories: Jehovah is a holy God, and demands the reverence, love and obedience of His children." He spake not unto them, nor commanded them, in the day that he brought them out of the land of Egypt, concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices; but this thing He commanded them, saying, Hearken unto my voice and I will be your God," &c. And yet there were simple sacrifices. And these rapidly grew, under Canaanite influence, into an elaborate and corrupt system.

Pass on from Moses to the next great prophet, Samuel. Listen to him: "Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams." That one sentence speaks volumes. The kingship is established, and Solomon builds a great and splendid temple. Provision is made for the worship of his foreign wives in accordance with the custom of their native religion. After Solomon's death, the kingdom is divided, and in the northern division Jeroboam sets up the golden calves, and says to the people: "These are the gods which brought you up out of the land of bondage.” bondage." Idol worship becomes the State religion, and the priests do the bidding of the king. Canaanite influence has prevailed; the ritual has become more elaborate. In the royal sanctuaries public offerings are maintained by the king and presented by the priest. The priests of these sanctuaries are among the grandees of the realm. And now we witness the degeneracy of religion, and paganism gaining the upper hand.

It did so under kings like Ahab and Manasseh. Temples were opened to the worship of Baal. Worship became a State ceremonial and shared the corruption of the State.

"The priests," as Canon Driver says, "whose duty it was to teach the people the moral precepts of God, were not the least offenders; they 'feed on the sin of my people and set their heart on their iniquity,' i.e., instead of striving to check iniquity, they long to see it abound in order that their own perquisites, derived from the people's offerings, may be the greater."

What the king desired the priest was ready, and indeed bound, to do. The word of the king even became higher than the law of God. Ceremony must be exalted even at the expense of moral truth. Under the king the priest becomes supreme. And real spirituality seldom survives the supremacy of the priest. He enlarges worship, but weakens the real authority of God. He is eager for the increase of sacrifice, but cares not that righteousness diminishes in the land. Now it is the prophet, called and inspired of God, who comes to save the religion which king and priest are depraving, and call the people back to the pure and simple religion of their fathers. We have an insight into the state of religion and the work of the prophet in the great scene on Carmel. Again and again on Carmel. Again and again prophets were raised up to breathe new life into religion, which, in the hands of the priest, had become corrupt. They were possessed by a supreme conviction. of the presence and purposes and holiness of God. They were ready to give up home and happiness and life that they might carry out the purpose and declare the truth of God.

They were not State officials, endowed soothsayers, but free speakers for God before men. They were the men who reproved, exhorted, commanded the kings, condemned their personal vices, denounced their public infidelities, demanded that the State should be so ruled as to be approved and blessed of the God who loved righteousness and hated iniquity. They were the men, too, who contended against the priests, speaking words of lofty scorn against their 'vain oblations' and their 'appointed feasts,' demanding instead that thy 'cease to do evil, learn to do well.' These Hebrew prophets stood infinitely above the kings and priests: theirs is the lofty ideal we love, that lives still and can never perish. In it there was no tyranny, no formalism, only free service and perfect righteousness."

Sacerdotalism says that sacrifice is an indispensable part of worship, and none but the priest can offer it. The priest claims to control all access to God, and to be the medium of communication between God and man. This is the text of prophecy: “Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it. Thou delight-❘ est not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, Thou wilt not despise." Listen then to the voice of the prophets. Let them speak for themselves:

"I hate, I despise your feasts, I will take no delight in your solemn assemblies. Yea, though you offer me your burnt offerings and your meat offerings I

will not accept them; neither will I regard the peace offerings of your fat beasts. But let judgment roll down as waters, and righteousness as a mighty stream. Did ye bring unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty years, O House of Israel ?" (Amos v. 21-25).

Could Jehovah's indifference to sacrifice and ritual be more plainly put ?

Hosea : “For I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." Isaiah (i. 11-17): "To what purpose is the multitude of your sacrifices unto me? saith the Lord. I delight not in the blood of bullocks. or of lambs or of he-goats. When you come to appear before me, who hath required this at your hands, to trample my court? Bring no more vain oblations, incense is an abomination unto me. . . . Cease to do evil, learn to do well; seek judgment, relieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow."

Micah: When the people ask :

"Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers of oil? shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?" the prophet's answer is:

"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God ?"

There we have a picture of earnest seekers after God, who under priestly guidance have lost their way. And the prophet leads them back to God, in words that express a beautiful ideal of religion. Jeremiah in plain words says:

Add your burnt offerings unto your sacrifices, and eat ye flesh. For I spake not with your fathers, nor commanded them in the day that I brought them out of the land of Egypt concerning burnt offerings or sacrifices but this thing I commanded them saying, hearken unto my voice, and I will be your God, and ye shall be my people" (vii. 21-23).

Thus do these great prophets of the eighth and seventh centuries B. C. make light of the religionism of ritual, and anticipate the teaching of Jesus, who made no man priest, and said nothing about the necessity of sacrifices. The prophets rebuked and condemned not only idolatry and immorality, but also the heathenish reliance on the virtue of mere sacrifice. And yet they do not demand the abolition of sacrifices. yet that day is to come.

Not

Deuteronomy is largely the product of this prophetic spirit and teaching. It was written by a prophet who interpreted and applied the teaching of Moses to the needs and conditions of the people of his own day. On this book the reformation of Josiah was based. One thing had become clear. The sacrificial worship of the local shrines in the hands of the priests had become corrupt to the core, and could never be purified by partial reforms. The priests and the people had learned and copied heathen customs from their Canaanite neighbours in the religious feasts of the village sanctuaries. The first step towards reformation must lie in the destruction of those local shrines which had become polluted with paganism. To sẹp

arate the people from these abominations, the village sanctuaries and festivals are to be abolished, and the principle is laid down that at Jerusalem is the only legitimate sanctuary. Thus Deuteronomy abolished local shrines, and associated sacrifices and ceremonials with the temple of Jerusalem. But, under the influence of the prophets, an effort was made to moralise the teaching of the ritual. As Bishop Moorhouse puts it: "If Israel was unable to rise to the lofty height of purely spiritual teaching, then the prophets would descend to the level of the popular worship, and strive to convert that into a more adequate vehicle of spiritual truth." And so there still remained the two ideals of religion, the priestly and the prophetic. There were still two conceptions of religion, one a sacrificial system, the other a conception of a righteous God who has not ordained sacrifices, though He will accept them if offered from a pure heart; but who requires. and demands that men shall reverence, love and obey Him. Josiah's reformation left many things in the temple which savoured of heathenism; and in this there was danger to pure and spiritual religion. "Little as some of us may think of these ritual reforms, they were found too violent for the people, who looked back with regret to the merry festivals and the immoral indulgences of the village sanctuaries."

When the Jews returned from captivity they revived the simple rites of olden times, but with new forms. The revival has been well compared to the Oxford Movement of this century. Now, it was in that age that the Levitical law finally took shape. Side by side with prophetism it had been growing through all the centuries since Moses. There had all along been a ritual law (Torah) in the hands of the priests. Ezekiel's ordinances are a reshaping of the priestly law, which reached the form in which we now have it in Leviticus (and partly in Exodus and Numbers) in the time between Ezekiel and Ezra.

The offerings of individuals are no longer the chief reason for which the temple exists. All weight lies on the stated service, which is, as it were, the representative service of Isral. The individual Israelite, who, in the old law, stood at the altar himself, and brought his own victim, is now separated from it, not only by a double cordon of priests and Levites, but by the fact that his personal offering is thrown into the background by the stated national service." (Robertson Smith.)

This legal ritual did not satisfy the deepest spiritual needs of the people; but it looked forward and led onward to the great sacrifice "once for all." One thing it did, however; it practically extinguished idolatry. It preserved the religion of Jehovah, as a living power in Israel, till shadow became substance in Jesus Christ.

It became the Tutor" to bring men 'o Christ. Under the influence of the prophets the Levitical law had put a new spirit into the old ritual. It was like putting new wine into old bottles. But we can now regard it as a part of God's plan of training His people and preparing them for the coming of Messiah. Now that the priest only offers sacrifice,

personal religion is separated from the temple and assumes new forms. The reading of Scriptures, free service in the synagogues (which sprang up on every hand after the return from captivity), simple worship in the family—all this was preparing the way for the New Testament. Sacrifice could only be offered in one place, and when the Jews were driven from the Temple by the downfall of Jerusalem, the sacrificial system fell, never to be restored. But meanwhile the one great sacrifice, "once for all," had been offered on Calvary. "The priestly code was meant to give expression to the demands of the prophets for spiritual service and national holiness; but the ideas of the prophets could not be realised under any ritual system, but only in a new dispensation, when priestly atonements would be no longer needed." And so when the greatest of all prophets came, He began his ministry. either by the address at Nazareth, in which, quoting from Isaiah," The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he anointed me to preach," etc., he said, to-day hath this Scripture been fulfilled in your ears; or, by the Sermon on the Mount, in which a religious communion is founded without a priesthood, without an offering, without a temple, without a ceremonial. The only worship is love; the only sanctuary is the heart. And during his ministry our Saviour more than once quoted the words of Hosea, "I. will have mercy, and not sacrifice."

The Law was a divine institution, but "essentially subsidiary, it came in to the side of a state of things already existing, a parenthesis in the divine plan.” This is from the note on Romans verse 20, by Sanday and Headlam, who quote from Chrysostom: "Why did he not say the law was given, but the law entered by the way? It was to show that the end of it was temporaary, and not absolute or claiming precedence." "It did not lie," says W. R. Smith, “in the right line of direct development, which, as the Epistle to the Hebrews. points out, leads straight from Jeremiah's conception of the new covenant to the fulfilment in Christ." The law was a paidagogos (an inferior slave, whose duty of enforcing discipline ceases when the child reaches maturity), to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But now faith is come, we are no longer under a paidagogos. Why, then, turn back again to the weak and beggarly elements, to be in bondage over again? The history of the declension from the simplicity of the spiritual religion of the Gospel, from the truth as it is in Jesus, is a sad and astounding history. The Christian minister is a prophet and not a priest. His duty is to preach and not to sacrifice. The one sacrifice for sins for ever " needs no "renewal or repetition"; it leaves no room for a sacrificing priest. Paul was charged with apostasy from Moses," an apostate from the law," the Ebionites called him. The Epistle to the Hebrews was written to show that this "apostasy from Moses" is demanded by faithfulness to Christ; but that apostasy from Christ to Moses is "not only an inexcusable. blindness, but an all-but-unpardonable crime.”

J. A. MEESON.

THE "UNDERGROUND RAILROAD."

BY EDWARD H. MAGILL, LL.D.
(Concluded from Last Week.)

I COME now to an important case with which Robert Purvis was closely identified, several details of which I had heard at different times from John S. Brown, Henry M. Twining and others. Feeling the importance of having these details properly connected, that I might present a clear statement of the whole case, I have had two very satisfactory interviews with Robert Purvis at his home in Philadelphia during the past three weeks. He is now past eighty-five years of age, and quite feeble, his memory of recent events (not of those of his earlier life) showing the effect of age. He received me most cordially, with all the grace and dignified courtesy for which he was so notably distinguished in early life, and at the close of each interview of more than hour, he dismissed me with the same dignified and gracious manner, begging me to call at any time when he could render me the least service upon any subject. In his account of the case that especially called me to his house, he fully confirmed all that my other friends had said, and added some important points. The case as he gave it to me is substantially as follows:

He said that he was living in Bensalem about the year 1838. He had then living with him a most excellent and faithful colored man named Basil Dorsey, who had been with him about two years. At this time Dorsey was visited by a brother-in-law of his wife, from the State of Maryland, whence he came. This brother-in-law, for some reason, became jealous of Dorsey in his happy home, and betrayed Dorsey and his three brothers to their master, from whom they had escaped in 1836. The master (their reputed The master (their reputed father), aided by a notorious slave-catcher, came to Philadelphia and arrested Thomas, one of the brothers, and hurried him away to slavery, from which he was soon redeemed by his friends by the payment of $1000. Soon after the arrest of Thomas these men secured the aid of a constable from Bristol, and obtained warrants from Judge Fox, of Doylestown, for the arrest of the remaining three brothers. Two escaped them, and were taken by night by Robert Purvis's brother, Joseph, to a friend's house forty miles distant, in New Jersey, whence they were forwarded to Canada. Basil alone remained, and the slave-hunters came upon him toward evening, as he was plowing at a distant point on Robert Purvis's farm.

Word came quickly to Mr. Purvis, brought by the son of a neighboring farmer, of the attempt to capture and handcuff Dorsey, and he hastened to the spot, where he learned that they had already started to Bristol with their prey. Robert immediately had his fleetest horse harnessed and made pursuit, reaching Bristol as they were locking up Dorsey in a cell where criminals were confined. He remonstrated, and addressed a crowd who assembled, telling them of the outrage, and warmly enlisting their sympathy. The master informed him that they would go to Doylestown the next morning, and bring the case before Judge Fox. In the morning, taking Dorsey's wife and

two young children, Mr. Purvis drove to Doylestown, and employed as counsel Thomas Ross, one of the ablest lawyers then at this Bar. When the case came up the judge was deeply moved-for, said Purvis récently, as he told me the story, "He was a man with human feelings, if he was a judge" and the forlorn condition of the hand-cuffed, dejected prisoner, and the tears of his young wife and their two children, moved every heart to pity; and to gain time, and make provision for the best possible defense, and for other reasons which appeared later, (but not before the court);—the lawyer for the defense succeeded in putting off the case for two weeks, and the hand-cuffed prisoner was remanded to a cell. were well used by Purvis and his friends. The colored people were thoroughly aroused, and preparations. were made for a forcible rescue if the case went against Dorsey.

!

These two weeks

As the time for trial approached, Purvis drove to Philadelphia, and called upon the best criminal lawyer at the bar in those days, David Paul Brown. He stated the case in a few words, and offered Brown a fee of $50 if he would come to Doylestown and defend Dorsey. To this Mr. Brown replied, almost indignantly, that he had never charged a dollar for defending a slave, and never would, but that he would gladly come to Doylestown and take the case as requested. At the end of two weeks the case came on here before Judge Fox, and a young and rising lawyer of this bar was the claimant's counsel. Mr. Brown was promptly on hand for the defendant. Although it was against the principle of the Abolitionists to pay for a slave, the great sympathy felt for Dorsey, and the fear of losing the case, had caused two attempts to be made to purchase him. The master asked $500; when that sum was offered by his friends he raised the price to $800; and that being also offered, he demanded $1000. "No," said Dorsey, when consulted, "Do not pay it. I am prepared to take my life in court, if the case goes against me, for I will never go back to slavery." Mr. Purvis said to me last week that he could but commend the man for his brave resolution-and the case came on. The prosecuting attorney made a clear statement of the claim, presenting the bill of sale, and the necessary evidences of the legality of the demand of the master. Robert Purvis felt, as he listened to his plea, and considered that the interpretation of the law was then almost invariably favorable to the slaveholder, that Dorsey's fate was practically sealed, unless the forcible rescue, contemplated and prepared for, was resorted to, upon which hundreds of well-prepared colored men were resolved, but which they wished only to use as a last resort.

At this moment David Paul Brown arose, and his erect and stalwart form, and dignified and earnest manner, at once arrested the attention of the crowded court. He began by admiting the force of the arguments which the claimant's counsel had adduced, saying, "Unfortunately, by the laws of this boasted land of freedom, the right of one man to claim another as his chattel slave in many of our States is unquestioned; and even in the States called free the slave owner from