VOL. III.] MARCH, 1887. [No. 3. NOTICE. Any of our subscribers who have sent us money in letters, and who have not received a postal card receipt for the same, are requested to inform us of the fact. It is our custom to immediately send such receipts. It is always safer to send Money Orders, or even postal notes. THE LAW OF THE FIRST-BORN. Much light upon the doctrines of retribution and redemption may yet come to us by the careful study from Scripture of the law of the first-born. Theology has given prominence to the individual relations which men hold to God and to one another, to the neglect of the organic relations they sustain to Him as members of one race and as united in families. In the economy of God and of nature there is a race life, a race redemption, and a race accountability. We hear nowadays much about the law of heredity. This law shows how the ancestral life lives in the descendant, how it moulds form and feature, and weaves itself into nerve-fibre and brain-tissue, and into the finer fabric of the, soul. The blood that flows in the veins of each living man has been distilled in the veins of many generations behind him. Each man has to fight over again the battles with temptation in which his fathers fought. He inherits the vices of his lineage, its weaknesses and passions. Perhaps, as the penalties he incurs are those of his race, the victories he wins may also be won for them. It was an instinct of the Jewish family to look for a saviour in its own line. The law of heredity thus connects itself with the law of penalty, the law of vicarious sacrifice, and the law of redemption. All this comes out in the Scripture teaching concerning the law of the first-born. It views the firstborn as the eminent depositary and representative of race and family life, weighted with its penalties, incurring its responsibilities, and charged with the privilege and duty of its redemption. But he 1. The penalty of sin is corruption of life and consequent death. Cain was not the first to die of Adam's seed, but he was the most deeply infected with the taint which had come into the race-life. Eve fondly hoped that he would prove to be the promised deliverer. She said, 'I have gotten a man from the Lord." proved to be a murderer. He was eminently, indeed, the man of nature. "Howbeit, that which is first is natural." He was the first to cultivate and subdue the earth, the first city-builder, the ancestor of the first great leaders in the world's civilization, of those who first taught men the mechanic arts and the fine arts. But he was also the first man of pride, and greed, and envy. And the way of Cain proved to be, to that antediluvian world, the way of death. Subsequent examples of firstborn sons who were a disappointment, and whose eminence was along this line of natural evil which ends in death, are numerous. Especially is this fact apparent in the line of the chosen people. Ishmael was Abraham's first-born" after the flesh." But he was set aside in favor of Isaac "born after the Spirit." Esau was hated and Jacob loved. Reuben defiled his father's bed, and Judah was set above him. "Er, Judah's first-born, was wicked in the sight of the Lord; and the Lord slew him." (Gen. xxxviii. 7). Ephraim was placed before Manasseh. Nadab, Aaron's first-born, offered strange fire and died before the Lord. Korah, the leader of the rebellion against Moses and Aaron, was a first-born son. Not to multiply instances, the fact is apparent from Scripture that the first-born were viewed as specially inheritors of the curse that had come upon the race, and therefore foremost in incurring the penalty of sin which is death. The first-born of every household in the land of Egypt were stricken down by the angel of death in a single night. And even the first-born of Israel were regarded as devoted to death," and as needing to be redeemed from it. (Ex. xiii. 15; Numbers viii. 16, 17). The worshippers of Moloch, who offered their first-born, "the fruit of the body for the sin of the soul" did so through a perverted recognition of this law of the race-life, that the "sons of their strength," were under a special obligation to pay down the wages of its sin, which is death. They knew nothing, however, of God's purposes of redemption. These He taught to Israel. The forfeited lives of their firstborn were redeemed by the offered lives of the lambs slain at the passover. Thus were the first-born viewed as first-bearers of the penalty. 2. But they had also special privileges and responsibilities. They were the natural elders and princes of the people. They were the first in the line of inheritance. They received a double portion (Deut. xx. 7). And they were also priests. God says of Israel, whom He sanctified unto Himself as a "kingdom of priests," (Ex. xix. 6), "Israel is my son, my first-born" (iv. 22). The first-born of that nation, however, might be redeemed from the obligations of the priestly office. The tribe of Levi was set apart in lieu of all the first-born. And the number of them in excess of the males of that tribe were redeemed by a money payment of five shekels apiece (Numbers iii. 44-51). 3. A duty of vicarious sacrifice for the family was put upon the first-born. Their devotion to death seemed measurably to answer the claim of death upon the rest of the household, and to bring them temporary and typical exemption. The death of Egypt's first-born sufficed to the sparing of the rest. And their death was deliverThe rod with which the ance to Israel (Ex. xii. 27). Lord punished David for his sin smote first Amnon, his first-born. And Absalom, the first-born of another wife, after bringing untold shame and sorrow on his father, met an untimely death. Bathsheba's first-born son must die, but a younger son, Solomon, came to the throne. The first-born were thus appointed to bear the brunt of the family curse to the partial relief of the rest. But it was as priests, rather than victims, that their standing for the family was most apparent. We have seen, however, that they might be redeemed from the obligation to devote themselves to priestly functions. And this leads us to observe, 4. That these prerogatives and functions of the natural first-born could not be worthily discharged by them, and so God has selected and qualified a spiritual seed, to take the place of the first-born in a higher order of life than the natural, and who become, therefore, a royal priesthood forever. This was foreshown all along the line of human history. Cain and his offering were rejected. Abel became the true priest, offering unto God a more acceptable sacrifice. Ishmael, born after the flesh, was cast out and Isaac, "born after the Spirit," became the heir and channel of blessing. David inherits before Eliab, and Solomon comes into the place of Amnon. The same truth was taught in the consecration of a special tribe to serve as priests in place of the first-born of all Israel. This priestly class must come into the special place of self-devotion. Their natural rights must be surrendered in service and sacrifice. They had no inheritance among their brethren. The Old Testament economy, however, could not develop in its completeness this spiritual seed. It only prepared the way for the coming of Him who was the true First-Born of the sons of men, both in the order of creation and redemption (Col. i. 15-20). The only begotten Son of God, He is also preeminently the Son of man, summing up in Himself all man's prerogatives, assuming all his responsibilities, bearing all his curse, devoted to service, to sacrifice and to death, and now standing before God in the power of an endless life, our High Priest forever after the order of Melchizedec. But He is also the Head of a body, a spiritual seed chosen from mankind, who are a church of the first-born, a royal priesthood, the first fruits of God's creatures. They, under Him, as members of His body, constitute that anointed seed of the human race who are called into the place of the first-born, with its |