The Rent Veil
Horatius Bonar
1808-1889
Chapter 1 Open Intercourse with God
Chapter 2 How There Came to be a Veil
Chapter 3 The Symbolic Veil
Chapter 4 The True Veil
Chapter 5 The Rending of the Veil
Chapter 6 The Removal of the First
Sacrifice and the Establishment of the Second
Chapter 7 Messiah within the Veil
Chapter 8 The Blood within the Veil
Chapter 9 God Seeking Worshippers
Chapter 10 God Seeking Temples
Chapter 11 God Seeking Priests
Chapter 12 God Seeking Kings
Preface to The
Rent Veil
The Epistle to the Hebrews
was written by the eternal Spirit for the whole Church of God in all ages.
It shows us on what footing we are to stand before God as sinners; and in
what way we are to draw near as worshippers.
It assumes throughout, that the present condition of
the Church on earth is one continually requiring the application of the
great sacrifice for cleansing. The theory of personal sinlessness has no
place in it. Continual evil, failure, imperfection, are assumed as the
condition of God’s worshippers on earth, during this dispensation. Personal
imperfection on the one hand, and vicarious perfection on the other, are
the solemn truths which pervade the whole. There is no day nor hour in which
evil is not coming forth from us, and in which the great bloodshedding is
not needed to wash it away. This epistle is manifestly meant for the whole
life of the saint, and for the whole history of the Church. God’s purpose is
that we should never, while here, get beyond the need of expiation and
purging; and though vain man may think that he would better glorify God by
sinlessness, yet the Holy Spirit in this epistle shows us that we are
called to glorify God by our perpetual need of the precious bloodshedding
upon the cross. No need of washing, may be the watchword of some; they are
beyond all that! But they who, whether conscious or unconscious of sin, will
take this epistle as the declaration of God’s mind as to the imperfection of
the believing man on earth, will be constrained to acknowledge that the
bloodshedding must be in constant requisition, not (as some say) to keep the
believer in a sinless state, but to cleanse him from his hourly sinfulness.(1)
Boldness to enter into the holiest is a condition of
the soul which can only be maintained by continual recourse to the blood of
sprinkling, alike for conscious and for unconscious sin: the latter of these
being by far the most subtle and the most terrible,—that for which the
sin-offering required to be brought.
“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us.” The presence of sin in us is the only thing
which makes such epistles as that to the Hebrews at all intelligible. When,
by some instantaneous act of faith, we soar above sin, (as some think they
do) we also bid farewell to the no longer needed blood, and to the no longer
needed Epistle to the Hebrews.
“Through the veil, which is His flesh,” is our one
access to God; not merely at first when we believed, but day by day, to the
last. The blood-dropped pavement is that one which we tread, and the
blood-stained mercy-seat is that before which we bow. In letters of blood
there is written on that veil, and that mercy-seat, “I am the way, the
truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by me”: and, again,
“Through Him we have access, by one Spirit, unto the Father.”
Every thing connected with the sanctuary, outer and
inner, is, in God’s sight, excellent and precious. As of the altar, so of
every other part of it, we may say, “Whatsoever toucheth it shall be holy”
(Ex. 29:37). Or, as the Apostle Peter puts it, “To you who believe this
preciousness belongs” (1 Peter 2:7, i.e., all the preciousness of the
“precious stone”).
Men may ask, May we not be allowed to differ in
opinion from God about this preciousness? Why should our estimate of the
altar, or the blood, or the veil, if not according to God’s, be so fatal to
us as to shut us out of the kingdom? And why should our acceptance of God’s
estimate make us heirs of salvation? I answer, such is the mind of God, and
such is the divine statute concerning admission and exclusion.
You may try the experiment of differing from Him as to
other things, but beware of differing from Him as to this. Remember that He
has said, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” Say what you
like, He is a jealous God, and will avenge all disparagement of His
sanctuary, or dishonour of His Son. Contend with Him, if you will try the
strife, about other things. It may not cost you your soul. Dispute His
estimate of the works of His hand in heaven and earth; say that they are not
altogether “good,” and that you could have improved them, had you been
consulted. It may not forfeit your crown. Tell Him that His light is not so
glorious as He thinks it is, nor His stars so brilliant as He declares they
are. He may bear with this thy underrating of His material handiwork, and
treat thee as a foolish child that speaks of what he knows not.
But touch His great work, His work of works,—the
person and propitiation of His only-begotten Son, and He will bear with thee
no more. Differ from Him in His estimate of the great bloodshedding, and he
will withstand thee to the face. Tell Him that the blood of Golgotha could
no more expiate sin than the blood of bulls and of goats, and He will resent
it to the uttermost. Depreciate anything, everything that He has made; He
may smile at thy presumption. But depreciate not the cross. Underrate not
the sacrifice of the great altar. It will cost thee thy soul. It will shut
thee out of the kingdom. It will darken thy eternity.
The Grange,
Edinburgh, October 1874
ENDNOTES:
1. I intended to have
said something more upon this point; but room fails me. I meant to have
noticed the Seventh of the Romans in connection with some recent opinions.
But I content myself with the following letter, which appeared in the London
Record of October 19th, to show the extreme lengths to which some are
prepared to go in advocating their tenets. Rather than reconsider their own
opinions, they will affirm that the Apostle Paul fell from grace, went into
heresy, and that the Seventh of the Romans is the confession of his fall and
heresy. An English Clergyman thus writes to the London Record:—
“I am surprised that in dealing with Mr. Pearsall
Smith’s errors, no one, so far as I know, has yet called attention to his
tract, ‘Bondage and Liberty,’ on the Seventh of Romans.”
“He asserts that St. Paul ‘fell from grace,’ and
became entangled in the Galatian heresy! That there may be no kind of
mistake, I give his own words:—”
“‘But having begun in the Spirit, he had sought to be
made perfect by the activities of the flesh, the consequences of which were
that sin revived and “he died,” or lost his full communion with Christ, and
victory through faith over sin.’”
“‘You have had now to travel along with Paul in the
Seventh of Romans, in this passage which is manifestly the experience of a
Christian, though not a true Christian experience. After having once
exclaimed, “How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?” you
have been deceived, mistaking your own efforts to keep God’s law for the
walk of faith; and the result has been that sin has been—not conquered, but
to a sad extent manifested.’”
“‘It is this agonizing experience of yours of failure
in your inward and outward walk that was shared by Paul in this
parenthesis—following his declaration of the death of believers to sin and
to the law—to which he here limits the pronoun “I,” as the acknowledgment of
how a Christian may fail, rather than as belonging to the proper experience
of a Christian. It was this experience that made him so zealous in warning
the Galatians against legalism in their walk. It was the agony of this
“falling from grace” and coming “under law” in his practical ways that
brought out the cry of despair, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver
me from the body of this death?”’”
“‘But, brother Paul, thy agony is ended when, as in a
moment, and with a sudden joy that precludes explanation, thou again
beholdest Jesus dawning on thy soul as a Deliverer, not only from wrath, but
from sinning. “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”’”
“As may be supposed, there is much nonsense and
confusion in the little book from which the above is taken, but I submit
whether there is not something worse, and which calls for vigorous treatment
at the hands of faithful, sensible, Evangelical men?”
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