(Lev. 27:)

Our Lord's words in the Sermon on the Mount are illustrative and illuminative of the law of vows given in the final chapter of Leviticus-a chapter of the greatest importance to the book it closes, in which the great lesson is that of sanctification. The special or "singular" vow of this chapter is just the "sanctification," whether of person or thing, to Jehovah; but a sanctification which goes beyond what is demanded by the law-a voluntary undertaking, though it may be the result of the pressure of circumstances, as for instance in the case of Jephthah.

The words of the Sermon on the Mount seem at first sight rather to prohibit explanation than to explain. They do, in fact, for Christians, set aside any law of vows by the prohibition of vows :" Again, ye have heard it said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform unto the Lord thine oaths :but I say unto you, Swear not at all; neither by heaven, for it is God's throne ; nor by the earth, for it is His footstool; neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King ; neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black." Thus, plainly, what the law had permitted was now revoked :yet not as if the law had failed,-let not that be imagined. Jesus was Himself the Giver of that law ; and He has but a little before declared of it that " not one jot or tittle should pass from the law till all be fulfilled." Far from failing, it had done its work well; and it is because of this that the new commandment is now issued. For the law was intended to convince men of that moral weakness, and it is because of this weakness, which has been demonstrated by the law that the vow is now prohibited.

But the legal covenant itself, as Israel entered into it, was itself such a "singular vow." They therein dedicated themselves to Jehovah with the affirmation, "All that the Lord hath spoken we will do, and be obedient." It may be asked, indeed, Was this a voluntary undertaking? had not the Lord invited them to make such an engagement? It is true He had said, "If ye will obey My voice, and keep My covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all nations." It was of Him that they should be tested, just because man, in his self-confidence, alas! welcomes the test. Nothing but the experiment will convince him of his impotence. But it was open for them to deprecate a conditional footing of this kind, and to cast themselves upon divine mercy as their only hope. On the contrary, they readily and voluntarily accepted it, and thus dedicated themselves to the Lord by a "singular vow."

The first eight verses of the chapter speaks of this dedication of persons ; and in this case, the Lord Himself, by the priest, estimates the value of the service to be rendered to Him. No one could be allowed to do this for himself:it must be done for him ; and here every one was valued according to his age, strange valuation as it might seem, – disregarding the manifest inequality between man and man, every man at the same age valued at exactly the same rate, which, physical absurdity as it might seem, only shows that we have here typically a moral standard, which is necessarily the same for every one, though admitting a certain difference in duties also, as for man, woman, child, etc. The ten commandments were thus the perfect appraisal on God's part of man's self-dedication. Yet if he were poorer than this estimation, as man is confessedly unable to pay full value according to the perfect standard, then the priest was permitted to value him according to his ability, so that he could no longer, in that sense, plead his poverty. And just so we find that while the law in the ten commandments was a perfect rule, in practice, something had to be abated. Thus, of the law of divorce the Lord had to say, " Moses for the hardness of your hearts gave you this precept." And in a similar way He revealed Himself as " forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin " at the second giving of the law, after the sin of the golden calf had shown Israel's deep poverty.

Yet law, however modified, is still a ministration of death and of condemnation ; and this is, in fact, said of the law as given the second time-not the first (2 Cor. 3:). Thus the " singular vow " fails, utterly. Only grace could say of any, "She hath done what she could." The Lord therefore, in mercy and justice-both, prohibits it. Man must own himself lost if it be a question of responsibility. He needs not any modification of the law, but grace and salvation.

How blessed, then, to find, in the very next place to the law of the personal vow, the law of the vowed "beast, whereof men bring an offering unto the Lord " ! If man has failed, and at his best, when he has vowed and attempted to devote himself, thank God, there is a life that can be devoted for him, though in death, and which the Lord accepts ! Here, let us note, there is no valuation, and no possibility of exchange or release. Who can value the inestimable, or change places with this precious Substitute for sinners ? An unclean beast may be redeemed, though, as we are made to know here, by what is of more value than itself ; a fifth part more must be added in this case to the priest's valuation. But the beast clean for an offering,-and there is but One whom this could represent,-for it there is no ransom. No, "the Son of Man must be lifted up." There was no other way, or would it not have been taken ? could the Son of God suffer needlessly ? Impossible. " Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground, and die, it abideth alone ; but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." No saved soul but is the fruit of that precious death.

He indeed could be the subject of a singular vow. He alone could say, without a shadow of misgiving, " I will pay my vows before them that fear Him." (Ps. 22:) Power was with Him. though in weakness ; and on the awful tree where He bare our sins God Himself could turn away His face, and let Him bear the undiminished burden. Yes, the singular vow was His ; and that which mercy prohibits to others it appointed to Him. Here alone in all man's history the law of the vow becomes a law of salvation and blessing.

And next, therefore, we come in this chapter to the sanctification of the house. "And when a man shall sanctify his house to be holy unto the Lord, then the priest shall estimate it, whether it be good or bad :as the priest shall estimate it, so it shall stand. And if he that sanctified it will redeem his house, then he shall add the fifth part of the money of thy estimation unto it, and it shall be his."

This is in regular and beautiful order. Not until He has a redeemed people does God speak of having a house among men. Israel had such a house, a " holy arid beautiful house," devoted to Him, yet theirs :for to de-vote what is ours to God does not make it the less but more our own ; and what house was there in Israel that was so truly theirs as God's house was? "And let them make Me a sanctuary," He says, " that I may dwell among them." This is the object of His heart which in Immanuel has been revealed to us, to bring His people near to Himself, and to abide among them. Bat for Israel's house to be theirs, it must be redeemed, and so the first house passed away from them because redemption had not given it perpetuity. They knew not, know not yet, bring not, as it were, to God the ransom-price. Hence the house is gone from them, and will not return until the glorious sixty-eighth psalm becomes the language of their hearts :" Thou hast ascended on high, Thou hast led captivity captive; Thou hast received gifts for men ; yea, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them."
This truth in a still more blessed way is ours to-day, and after a twofold manner. For to us as redeemed, not a typical house, made with hands, but the heavenly sanctuary itself, is opened ; the vail rent, as Israel never knew it, and we are encouraged with the wondrous words, " Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus,-by a new and living way, which He hath consecrated for us through the vail, that is to say, His flesh ; and having a High-Priest Over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." (Heb. 10:19-22.)

This is what God's heart yearns that we may know, and this is what the person of Christ (God and man in-one) implies for us, and this is what His work has made fully ours. O to know it better, refuge and rest and sanctuary as it is, the place where God dwells ! This is our one escape from the world, from the burden of care, from the sin that assails us. Nowhere else is there a clean spot, nowhere else a place of security:" Thou shall hide them in the secret of Thy presence from the pride of man :Thou shall keep them secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues." (Ps. 31:20.) Yes, here man's pride is rebuked, his haughtiness is brought down, distraction ceases, the mind is cleared, the heart rests. " The name of the Lord is a strong lower :the righteous runneth into it and is safe."

But we can add more :for His " house are we " (Heb. 3:6). The words are fulfilled to us "I will dwell in them and walk in them." (2 Cor. 6:16.) The Spirit of God already dwells in us in virtue of redemption, and our "bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost." (i Cor. 6:19.) An amazing thought, which we realize how little ! And the Church also is His temple. How God presses upon us this nearness that we have to Him, the nearness in which He is to us ! Simplicity of faith in this, what would it not do for us!

But we must go on to the sanctification of the field; and here, if we think of Israel and her land, we have what is of the greatest interest. In Israel, the year of jubilee (which began on the day of atonement, after their sins had been taken away by the scape-goat into a land of forget-fulness,) restored to every one whatever he had lost of his original inheritance. If a man had devoted a field to the Lord, this became his own again in the year of jubilee. But there was an exception :" If he will not redeem the field "-before the jubilee-" or if he has sold the field to another man, it shall not be redeemed any more ; but the field, when it goeth out in the jubilee, shall be holy unto the Lord as a field devoted ; the possession thereof shall be the priest's." Now Israel's land had been thus devoted to the Lord, and has not been redeemed ; that is, the value of it has not been paid to Him, but it has, alas! been sold to the stranger, as we are all to-day witnesses. Consequently, when the time of blessing for the earth comes at the appearing of the Lord, divine grace will take out of their keeping what they have shown themselves to have so little power to keep. It shall be the priest's, Immanuel's land, forever secure from alienation, and Israel shall inherit with Him who says, "The land shall not be sold forever ; for the land is Mine :for ye are strangers and sojourners with Me."

And we too, in a higher and wider sphere, heirs of God, are joint-heirs with Christ. Our inheritance is secured also by the same strong hand. Grace has omitted nothing that is needful to eternal security; and in the Father's house the first-born children of the Father shall be at home to go no more out forever.

Thus ends really the law of vows ; but the chapter is not yet closed :we have had four divisions of a septenary series, and as in perhaps all such, we have in the last three a change of subject, though of course connected also with the preceding ones. They give us, in fact, distinctly specified as such, what cannot be the subject of vows, and that because they already belong to the Lord. What He claims as His depends not on man's feeble will or effort to make good as His. The vow as to these is necessarily therefore set aside.

And here as the first class of these we have the firstborn of beasts. Spared in Israel at the time when those of the Egyptians fell under the divine hand, God claimed them as His own. It was not left therefore to man's option whether they were to be His. Man's vow was here needless, and nothing left to his will in the matter. He claimed who had title and power to make good His claim.

And is not this too, in view of our own responsibility, and in the consciousness of the weakness of our human wills to yield themselves to Him, that which gives us rest, and animates us in the inevitable conflict, that our sanctification to God is secured by redemption and by birth ? Formed for His service as the beast for man's, claimed by Him who will not suffer aught to defraud Him of His claim, we are His, then, not in the weakness of our poor human wills, but in the might of His will for us. And therefore we are exhorted to " work out our own salvation with fear and trembling, because it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure " (Phil. 2:12, 13), " created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them." (Eph. 2:10.)

But there is a second class of things or of persons that is equally His, and holy to Him in a strange and solemn way. These are the subjects of the ban, devoted to death as evil, and sanctified to God in the only way in which that which resists sanctification can be-by its destruction. Here ransom could not be, nor was it to be left to man's will what should be done in the matter. The Lord knoweth how to deliver the godly out of temptations, and to reserve the unjust unto the day of judgment to be punished." (2 Pet. 2:9.) They are His too by title, as are the righteous, and " God will be sanctified in judgment," demonstrated as against the evil and Master of it in the day of manifestation that is drawing nigh.

One thing alone remains to complete this picture. The tithe in Israel was the recognition of the sovereign rights of God over all their possessions. For God to have His own means fullness of blessing for all by whom it is yielded. If God has His place with us, every thing else has its place. When this shall be at last, then will have come the full eternal blessing :"God shall be all in all,"-the definition of the eternal state in the last book of Scripture.

And this, blessed be God, depends not upon man's feeble will for its accomplishment. The whole lesson of the ages from the first sin in Eden to the apostasy after the thousand years itself is but the reiteration of that word, "Cease ye from man." But God will only in this the more be glorified, when the creature being proved to derive all its stability from Him shall rest at last in Himself alone. The first man's vow ended in ruin, and his forfeiture is made up and more than this by the substitution of the Second ; in Him all the glory of God is fully and finally displayed; in Him too God and man at one forever, and united in His person, united by His precious work, now at last full satisfaction of heart is come, and this rest shall be eternal.