RELIGIOUS ORDINANCES.

LESSON XCVI

"Even from the days of your fathers ye are gone away from mine ordinances, and have not kept them. Return unto me, and I will return unto you, saith the Lord of Hosts," -Mal. 3: 7.

1. Religious ordinances are designed for illustrative sermons. The calls for them are various. Some have their origin in the wants of man's physical nature. Such wants, being universal, and the least likely to change, call for ordinances adapted to, and obligatory upon all. Such ordinances, in substance, survive the changes of all dispensations.

2. The weekly sabbath is a good illustration of those designed to meet man's physical wants. No dispensation has essentially changed it. It began with man; it will accompany the race to the end of its earthly pilgrimage.

3. Ordinances have been mercifully given to man for his advancement in the knowledge of God. Their primary utility cannot be retained to those who have lost sight of the design. This would be the more manifest, in those which pertain more especially to the intellect and conscience.

4. Even those given to meet man's physical wants, are not devoid of high moral and intellectual considerations. Losing sight of these, the Pharisees perverted the Sabbath, and mocked and "robbed God in tithes and offerings."

5. While God was displeased with a sacrifice. which cost nothing, he rejected all such as contained only the idea of value. Subjective principles, and not sacrifice, were the ultimate designs of worship.

6. Some dispensations required more illustrations than others. The national religion of the Jews, including the covenant of pedigree, was committed to angels, and required many ordinances as vehicles of communication to the Jews. 7. Their times present us with a condition of the world, wherein man was dependent upon ordinances for his teaching, and these were ordained in the hands of angels.

8. In process of years they became perverted, as in Ezekiel's time, or neglected, as in Malachi's time. God then sent his prophets to reinstate them with promise. So far had they become perverted in the latter years of their national

gatherings, that Christ was charged with the mission of breaking them down, as middle-wall partitions between them and other nations. 9. Bad as were these results, still they were better than those which must have followed the leaving of Jacob s descendants to follow the false religions of the age.

10, Although a merely illustrated truth must ever be inferior to the abstract concéptiou of the same, yet such has ever been the mind of man, that he must, to some extent, lean upon the illustration for any just conception of the ideal and abstract.

11. The tendencies of Christ's teaching was not only calculated to correct the perversions made, but to supplant such rites, as were typical of him. The gospel being the antetype of most Jewish ordinances, they naturally expired when he brought in the New covenant. Hence, the apostle argues that he nailed these ordinances to the cross.

12. Christ did not leave the world without ordinances under the New covenant. Two, viz: Marriage and the Sabbath, pertained to wants not at all changed by the new order of things. Two more, viz: Baptism and the Lord's Supper, were instituted to illustrate the principles of the Gospel, and their manner of reception to the human heart.

13. Man should be honored for every effort to

know God, and obey his commandments. He should not be content with the opinion of another nor calculate that his own opinion has anything to do with questions of fact; "to the word and to the testimony."

14. On the other hand, ordinances of any kind become loathsome, when, forgetting the design of heaven in their institution, man uses them as a passport to social, moral, or political position ; or looks to them for the inherent good contained within themselves.

QUESTIONS.

1. For what are religious ordinances designed ? What is said of the wants to be met by them? What are some of these wants?

What is farther said of them?

What is said of the ordinances which meet these wants?

2. Give a sample of a perpetual ordinance? When did the weekly Sabbath begin?

When will it end?

3. To what should we be approaching through ordinances?

Who will fail to reap their primary benefit ? Of which class may this be especially said?

4. What may be said of the other class?

How did the Pharisees lose the benefit of the Sabbath? Mark, 22: 24, 27.

How were their tithes and offerings regarded? Matt. 23: 23.

5. How did God regard second-hand offerings? How did he regard the compensation question? What was the ultimate of worship?* Ps. 40: 5-8.

6.

How is this expressed in Isaiah 58: 5-8.

What is said of some dispensations?

To whom was the national religion of the Jews

committed as a dispensation?

What covenant did this include?

What was the origin of this ?*

What did this dispensation require? 7. What may be said of their times?

Who were the messengers to order the law covenant?* Gal. 3: 19.

8. How had sacrifices become perverted? Ezek. 20:28, 31.

With what were the Jews charged in Malachi's time? Mal. 3:8—10.

What important mediation did Christ bear between the Jews and other nations? Eph. 2: 14, 15.

9. What may be said of these results?

Could the nation of the Jews have been kept from the grossest idolatry except through ceremonies ?*

10. Is the illustration of a truth as good as the abstract conception?

Why not teach by abstract truths alone?