The Holy Spirit has taken particular pains to lay hold of facts in the Old Testament which we should never have thought applicable in order to bring out blessed truths in the New Testament. Who would have discerned the difference between law and promise in Hagar and Ishmael striving with Sarah and Isaac? The Spirit of God not only saw it, but intended the record of the circumstances to be the beautiful foreshadowing of the two covenants: that of law, which has only a child of the flesh, and that of promise, which, on the contrary, brings forth in due time the child of the Spirit.
It clearly showed that God attached the promise not to the mere offspring of the letter, but to the children of the Spirit.
Every religious system which takes its stand upon the law invariably assumes a Jewish character. Why is it that men have magnificent buildings or the splendor of ritual in the service of God? On what model is it founded? The temple is clearly the type, and along with this goes the having a peculiar, sacred class of persons, the principle of the clergy being founded upon the notion of the Jewish priesthood. The service, where that is the case, must depend upon what would attract the senses-show of ornament, music, imposing ceremonies-everything that would strike man's mind or that would draw a multitude together, not by the truth, but by something to be seen or heard that pleases nature. It is the order of what the Word of God calls the "worldly sanctuary." [9]