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Ideas worth considering
Among my books there
are several by Rev. Dr. Adolph Saphir: The Hidden Life
(Thoughts on Communion with God), Christ
and the Scriptures, Expository Lectures to the Epistle
to the Hebrews and The Divine Unity of Scripture.
They are doubly treasured, for the gracious wisdom and understanding of
their content and for the way that God brought his life and light to
their author.
In the 19th century, as a
result of a remarkable chain of providences, the Church of Scotland
sent a mission team to Pesth to work among the Jews. The best known of
these missionaries was John Duncan, later Professor of Hebrew and Old
Testament Exegesis in the Free Church of Scotland College in Edinburgh.
One of the families contacted by the missionaries was the Saphir
family. The father was a very highly respected leader in the Jewish
community who eventually became a believer in Jesus as the Messiah. His
love for his son, Adolph, showed itself in a remarkable way and he
entrusted the one for whom he had a special love to those who had
brought the light of the Messiah into his life. Adolph went to Scotland
where he completed his academic studies and prepared himself for the
Christian ministry.
While studying at the Free
Church College in Edinburgh, Adolph wrote to Rev. Charles Kingsley, the
novelist and Christian Socialist, to thank him for his writings and
sending him a short biography of his brother who had died very young.
Among other things, he said, “It has pleased God to let me see Christ,
the perfect God Man, who alone draws us unto God’s communion, and makes
us true, real men; the dark riddles that had perplexed me began to be
solved.”
The response from Charles
Kingsley would be worth including in its entirety for its affection and
its discernment. Its length forbids it, but some extracts will indicate
its quality.
“If I am surprised at your
writing to me, it is the surprise of delight at finding that my
writings have been of use to any man, and above all to a Jew. For your
nation I have a very deep love, first, because so many intimate friends
of mine are Jews; and next, because I believe that you are still ‘The
Nation’ and that you have a glorious part to play in the history of the
race. Moreover, I owe all I have ever said or thought about
Christianity to the study of the Old Testament, without which the New
is to me unintelligible; and I cannot love the Hebrew books without
loving the men who wrote them; and therefore I love your David, and
Jeremiah, and Isaiah, as men of like passions with myself – men who
struggled, and doubted, and suffered, that I might learn from them; and
loving them, how can I but love their children, and yearn over them
with unspeakable pity.
“It is my belief that the
Christian Jew is the man who can interpret the New and Old Testament
both, because he alone can place himself in the position of the men who
wrote them, as far as national sympathies, sorrows, and hopes are
concerned.
“I would therefore entreat
you, and every other converted Jew, not to sink your nationality
because you have become a member of the Universal Church, but to
believe with the old converts at Jerusalem that you are a true Jew
because you are a Christian; that as a Jew you have your special office
in the perfecting of the faith and practice of the Church, but try to
see all heaven and earth with the eyes of Abraham, David and St. Paul.”
Today we need that
discernment and that yearning.
William
MacKay
The
Rev D William Mackay is the Chairman of the International Missions
Board of the Free Church of Scotland and a member of the CWI Council of
Management.
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