Letter from M. R. Miller to Isaac Leeser;January 15, 1851
- Title
- Letter from M. R. Miller to Isaac Leeser;January 15, 1851
- Author
- M. R. Miller
- Contributor
- Isaac Leeser
- Date Created
- 15 January 1851
- Format
- Letter. 4 page(s) on 2 sheet(s).
- Legal
- Type
- Letter
- Language(s)
- English
- Has Format
- https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/items/ark:/81431/p3kk94z8m/manifest.json
- Link to Colenda
- https://colenda.library.upenn.edu/catalog/81431-p3kk94z8m
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acceptable penitent; and, thirdly, the improbability that the law will free the transgressor from its curse merely on the ground that he has repented. The inquiry now is What is the round of merit or of satisfaction, on which according to the Sacred Scriptures God pardons sin? If the threatened penalty cannot be dispensed with, either we must suffer it ourselves or some other must suffer in our place. If the first threatening that in the day of the eating of the forbidden fruit Adam should die, exhibits the standard measure of all the penalties of disobedience, or if we may discover the common measure in the appointment that the man who should eat the for=bidden bread during the Passover should be cut off from the con=gregation of Israel, or if the penalty of each of the ten command=ments is death, we cannot suffer for ourselves the penalty, except in our hopeless death or moral ruin. The cup of the wrath of God is not to be exhausted by our sinful lips. It is the challenge of God to every impenitent sinner: “Can thine heart endure, or can thine hands be strong, in the days that I will deal with thee?” Ezek. 22:14. The higher our views of the justice holiness and truth of God, the deeper and despair in view of our own sin. Can any one then take our place and die for us? The substitute must himself be without sin, and under no obligation to suffer for himself. Further, God would not accept a substitute who is unable for our place, who, in suffering for us, would himself be ruined. A suitable substitute must have power to lay down his life and to take it again. This power, Jesus claimed.
The Hebrew Scriptures give us many solemn lessons on atonement by death. The blood was sacredly set apart and forbid=den in common use, it being that part of the living system through which an atonement for the soul was made upon the altar. Hence it is a saying of the Rabbies, Hebrew the essential matter of atonement is in the blood. This doctrine never became obsolete among the prophets; on the contrary, it grew and ripened. It is in the last prophecies “Seventy weeks are deter=mined„ upon thy people, and upon thy holy city”—so we read in Dan=iel,— “to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, and to make atonement for iniquity, and to bring in everlas=ting righteousness, and to seal up the vision and prophecy, and to anoint a holy of holies.” Hebrew and Christian commentators agree that here a period of years is designated which must have come to an end in the first century of the Christian Era. But, notwithstanding this agreement, there is a wide difference in the interpretations. The Christian beholds in these events predicted by Daniel, the expiatory and all-sufficient sufferings of his Messiah, the everlasting righteousness in which the sinner may be accepted, the restraint laid on the condemning power of sin, the grand fulfilment of visions and prophecies, and the spiritual consecration of a new sanctuary and commu=nity of worshipers. The Christian finds this prophecy full of consolation: on the contrary, in the Jewish interpretation,
it loses all its features of promise. This finishing of trans=gression is the full preparation through hardness of heart un=belief and immorality, for the captivity of the last eighteen hun=dred years; this end of sins is the swelling of the flood of sin to the highest measure; this atonement for iniquity commen=ces and continues in the captivity which still exists; the bringing in of everlasting righteousness may be either the process of becom=ing externally righteous through the present captivity, or the sup=pression of the righteousness of the fathers and prophets; the seal=ing up of the visions of prophets is a lamentable termination, not a grand consummation; the anointing of a holy of holies is the shutting up of the temple by the anointed. When Ezra is the com=mentator whom I here have before me. How bright and com=forting this passage to the Christian! How dark to the Jew. it is like the cloud that gave light to the Israelites, and was darkness to the Egyptians.
According to the preceding views, the transgressor needs a more holy nature that he may be capable of repenting, and an atone=ment by blood that he may be delivered from the curse. The gos=pel meets the first need in the sanctification which the Holy Spirit works, and the second need in the atonement of Christ It appears to us that if ever an anxious self-condemned despair=ing Jew derived consolation from the fact that the blood of his victim on the altar was appointed his atonement, we may derive still greater consolation from the atonement of Christ. No wonder, however, that the latter is foolishness to those who feel that they stand in no need of an atonement.
In conclusion, let one attend to your appeal to remove some difficulties.
On 1 John 5:7, I have no desire to enter into any discussion. You may decide as you please on the genuineness.—Unless you force into the following passage a change of the speaker, it is as clear on the doctrine of the Trinity as the above disputed verse. Is. 48:15.16. “I, even I, have spoken; yea, I have called him; I have brought him, and he shall make his way prosperous. Come near unto me, hear ye this; I have not spoken in secret from the beginning; from the time that it was, there am I: and now the Lord God hath sent me and his Spirit.
You find a difficulty in the verse: “And when all things shall be subdued unto him, then shall the Son also himself be subject unto him that put all things under him, that God may be all in all.” We do not contend that Christ will continue eternally in his office of high-priest and intercessor. He represents himself as the way to the Father, but this way will be eventually closed; and then woe to those who have despised the last and only means of reconciliation to God.
The opposition to Christianity and its abuse have fulfilled the prediction of the sending of the sword among men. Jesus never
intimated that if all men would become his true followers, they could not live together without the sword.
From my childhood my impression has always been that Mat-thew and Luke tell different parts of one consistent narrative in relation to the end of Judas. He first strangled or hanged him=self: in this condition he fell and was crushed, as Luke describes. Where is the contradiction?
Detestable Presbyterianism! “A distinguished Presbyterian divine has said “Hell is paved with the skulls of infants.” Pos=sibly you were never more surprised in your life than you will be when you see it here asserted that we Presbyterians do not hold every thing which our ministers say, as proceeding from di=vine inspiration. There is, however, one sentence which we hold to be inspired: please direct your next attack against it. “Suffer little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
It is a mystery why you propose difficulties which a child can answer. I once put the question to an Israelite, if he would not be willing to sacrifice all that he has, even his own life, to know the truth of Christianity, it is true. He gave me a very evasive answer: his conscience appeared to whisper that he knew himself not to be anxious on the point, and that he had best not dissemble.—Prejudice makes us blind. In our prejudice we are not true to our own highest interests.
Yours most respectfully,
M. R. Miller
New York Jan. 16, 1851.
Mr. Leeser
I send you the following subscribers for the next volume of the Occident. *They are good pay.
Mr Gains Fenn New Haven. Connecticut.
Rev. H. M. Willson 251 Elizabeth st. N. Y.
Rev. David M. Holliday Peckskill N. Y.
I shall try to get you more subscribers as I have opportunity, and I will be a subscriber for your daily paper weekly paper.
In relation to your notes on my last. I suppose I need not inform you of the extreme difficulty in persuading Christians that our Heavenly Father makes such a difference between Jews and Christians that what would be idolatry to the former is allowable to the latter. The Christian will not cease to think that if he has the same light which the Jew has, he is under the same obligations of obedience and reverence to our common Father. And why should it not be so? God may say to the Jews, Let other nations go after their gods, but do you follow me, just as a father may say to one of his sons. Let the other children go on, but do you obey me,—this however would signify no approval of the disobedient.
You understand this as a private remark, not intended for any public notice.
Your friend truly
M. R. Miller.
Rev. Isaac Leeser.
* To commence with the April No. - Identifier
- LSDCBx9FF14_8
- Date
- 1851-01-15
Part of Letter from M. R. Miller to Isaac Leeser;January 15, 1851
M. R. Miller, “Letter from M. R. Miller to Isaac Leeser;January 15, 1851”, 1851-01-15, Isaac Leeser Digital Repository, accessed September 7, 2024, https://judaicadhpenn.org/legacyprojects/s/leeser/item/66788