eak of Holy Church as if there were
one visible establishment on earth which all are bound to obey, when
Christ founded only one spiritual Church, on the great truth enunciated
by Peter, that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God. From that
time forward, throughout the whole of the New Testament, no other Church
is spoken of. Churches or assemblies existed, founded by the apostles,
but they were independent of each other, and were solely united by
having one faith and one allegiance to one great head, Jesus Christ; but
in such simple forms as were introduced for the convenience of public
worship they materially differed from each other. Under the new
covenant no material temple or worldly sanctuary exists; the old
covenant had ordinances of divine service and of worldly sanctuary, but
these, the apostle tells us, have waxed old and vanished away, Christ
being come, the High Priest of good things to come, by a greater and
more perfect tabernacle not made with hands; and he assures us that the
only temple now existing is the spiritual Church of the living God.
`Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God
dwelleth in you? ye also as lively stones are built up a spiritual
house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices to God by
Jesus Christ, whose house are ye, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief
cornerstone;' and our Lord Himself tells us that where two or three are
gathered together, even there is He in their midst. The priest, the
sacrifice, the altar, and the temple of the old covenant were only types
of the good things to come under the Gospel. When Christ ascended on
high, all human priesthood was abolished; our only priestly mediator or
intercessor is Jesus Christ, the one Mediator between God and men, who
is the one righteous Advocate, the one ever-living Intercessor, and His
glory will He not give to another, He who has once suffered for sinners,
the just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. The apostles
themselves never assumed the character of priests; they pointed to the
Great High Priest, Jesus Christ the righteous, and would have looked
upon it as blasphemy for any man to presume to act as such. To our
Great High Priest alone must we confess our sins; He is faithful and
just to forgive all those their sins, who put faith in the all-cleansing
power of His blood to absolve them. He, too, is One who knows our
infirmities, and can sympathise with us, ha