I will now proceed to notice a few points in the pamphlet, taking them up in the order in which they come. On page 8 you say:—
“The Lord chose Abraham and his descendants to be His peculiar people. They were such till the cross. He gave them the rite of circumcision—a circle cut in the flesh—as a sign of their separation from the rest of the human family.”
This seeming misapprehension of the nature of circumcision appears throughout your pamphlet. It seems strange that it should be so, when the apostle Paul speaks so plainly concerning it. In Romans 4:11 I read of Abraham:
“And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness of the faith which he had yet being uncircumcised; that he might be the father of all them that believe, though they be not circumcised; that righteousness might be imputed unto them also.”
The fitness of this rite as a sign of righteousness will readily appear to anybody who understands the physical evils against which circumcision is a guard. At the present time it is often performed by physicians as a preventive of physical impurity. It was practiced for this purpose by many nations of antiquity. Herodotus (2:37) says of the Egyptians: “They practice circumcision for the sake of cleanliness, considering it better to be cleanly than comely.” Professor Von Orelli, of Basel, says in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia: “The custom is also found among nations which have no traceable connection with any form of ancient civilization; as for instance, among the Congo negroes and Caffrarians in Africa, the Salivas Indians in South America, the inhabitants of Otaheite and the Fiji Islands, etc.” He adds: “The Arabs of today call the operation tutur tahir, purification.”
I think that among the Jews as a class the rite exists today only as a preventive of physical impurity. I was present when it was performed by an eminent rabbi of San Francisco, and he said that that was all it was for. In this, as in everything else, the Jews have lost all knowledge of the spiritual meaning of their ceremonies. The veil still remains over their hearts. But that cutting off of the cause of physical impurity signified the putting off of the impurity of the heart, which was accomplished by faith in Christ. See Deuteronomy 10:16, and many other texts, for proof that circumcision had from the beginning this deeper meaning.
The question will naturally arise, If circumcision was practiced by other people, why did everybody despise the Jews because of it? I answer that the hatred was due, not to the mere fact of circumcision, but to that which it signified among the pious Jews. “The wicked plotteth against the just, and gnasheth upon him with his teeth.” Psalm 37:12. “All they that will live godly in Christ Jesus shall suffer persecution.” And this is true of all time. As proof that the uncircumcised heathen hated the Jews solely on account of their righteousness, and not on account of their circumcision, we have only to note how ready they were to mingle with the Jews, whenever they could seduce them into idolatry. If the Jews would relax their strictness of living, would depart from God, and serve other gods, the heathen had no objections to mingling with them, and intermarrying with them.
And this leads to the main point, namely, that the mere act of circumcision never made the Jews God’s peculiar people. They were His peculiar people only when they had that of which circumcision was the sign, namely, righteousness. When they did not have that, they were just the same as though they had never been circumcised (Romans 2:25- 29; Philippians 3:3), and were cut off without mercy as readily as were the heathen. Circumcision was only a sign of the possession of righteousness; and when righteousness was wanting the circumcision amounted to nothing.
On page 10 I read of the Jews:—
“Then came the cross, when all their special privileges, with circumcision as their representative and sign, were swept away. They had forfeited them by disobedience and rebellion.”
On page 11 I also read of the Jew:—
“He greatly disliked to be reckoned a common sinner with the hated Gentile. He strenuously contended also for circumcision and its attendant privileges.”
But on page 37 I read:—
“The law of rites had an immense amount of these, so that they constituted a ‘yoke of bondage’ grievous to be borne, which Paul claimed had passed away.”
I cannot harmonize this last quotation with the first two. How can a “yoke of bondage” be considered as “special “circumcision and its attendant privileges,” if he felt it to be a “yoke of bondage grievous to be borne”? This is a minor matter, but consistency should appear in the details of truth. I will not at present take time to give my view of the yoke of bondage, but will consider it later.