{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_22237/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_22237","id":"gutenberg_22237","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22237","summary":null,"tags":["Bible. Hebrews -- Commentaries","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"Produced by Colin Bell, Thomas Strong and the Online\nDistributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net\n\n\n\n\n\n {Transcriber's Note: Obvious typographical errors, printing errors and\n   mis-spellings have been corrected. Any other inconsistencies remain\n   as they are in the original. Footnotes have been placed at the end of\n   the paragraph in which they appear.}\n\n\n\n      MESSAGES FROM THE EPISTLE\n           TO THE HEBREWS\n\n\n\n          MESSAGES FROM\n\n         THE EPISTLE TO\n\n           THE HEBREWS\n\n   _By_ HANDLEY C.G. MOULE, D.D.\n         BISHOP OF DURHAM\n\n\n\n      LONDON: ELLIOT STOCK\n    62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.\n              1909\n\n  THE BIBLE IS THE SKY IN WHICH\n   GOD HAS SET CHRIST THE SUN.\n\n                 JOHN KER, D.D.\n\n\n  _First Edition      May 1909_\n  _Second Impression  July 1909_\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE\n\n\nThe following chapters are the work of intervals of leisure scattered\nover a long time. The exposition had advanced some way when an\nunexpected call to new and exacting duties compelled me to put it aside\nfor several years. Accordingly a certain difference of treatment in the\nlater chapters as compared with the earlier will probably be seen by the\nreader, particularly a rather fuller detail in the exposition. But\npurpose and plan are essentially the same throughout.\n\nNo attempt whatever is made, here or in the course of the work, to deal\nwith those literary and historical problems which so conspicuously\nattach themselves to this Epistle. Who the \"Hebrews\" were is nowhere\ndiscussed. Nor is any positive answer offered to a question to which\nassuredly no such answer can be given, the question, namely, of the\nauthorship. In my opinion, in face of all that I have read to the\ncontrary, it still seems at least possible that the _ultimate_ human\nauthor was St. Paul. All, or very nearly all, the objections to his name\nwhich the phenomena of the Epistle _prima facie_ present, and some of\nwhich lie unquestionably deep, seem to be capable of a provisional\nanswer if we assume, what is so conceivable, that the Apostle committed\nhis message and its argument, on purpose, to a colleague so gifted,\nmentally and by the Spirit, that he might be trusted to cast the work\ninto his own style. The well-known remark of Origen that only God knows\nwho \"wrote\" the Epistle appears to me to point (if we look at its\ncontext) this way. Origen surely means by the \"writer\" what is meant in\nRom. xvi. 22. Only, on the hypothesis, the amanuensis of our Epistle\nwas, for a special purpose presumably, a Christian prophet in his own\nright.\n\nIn any case the author, if not an apostle, was a prophet. And he carries\nto us a prophet's \"burthen\" of unspeakable import, and in words to which\nall through the Christian ages the soul has responded as to the words of\nthe Holy Spirit.\n\n                                                  HANDLEY DUNELM.\n\n_Easter, 1909._\n\n\n\n\n  CONTENTS\n\n\n  I\n                                                           PAGE\n\n  CONSIDER HIM                                               1\n  Heb. i.-ii.\n\n  II\n\n  A HEART OF FAITH                                           8\n  Heb. iii.\n\n  III\n\n  UNTO PERFECTION                                           14\n  Heb. iv.-vi.\n\n  IV\n\n  OUR GREAT MELCHIZEDEK                                     23\n  Heb. vii.\n\n  V\n\n  THE BETTER COVENANT                                       32\n  Heb. viii.\n\n  VI\n\n  SANCTUARY AND SACRIFICE                                   42\n  Heb. ix.\n  VII\n\n  FULL, PERFECT, AND SUFFICIENT                             51\n  Heb. x.\n\n  VIII\n\n  FAITH AND ITS POWER                                       61\n  Heb. xi. (I.).\n\n  IX\n\n  FAITH AND ITS ANNALS                                      71\n  Heb. xi. (II.).\n\n  X\n\n  FOLLOWERS OF THEM                                         80\n  Heb. xii. 1-14.\n\n  XI\n\n  SINAI AND SION                                            90\n  Heb. xii. 14-28.\n\n  XII\n\n  APPEALS AND INSTRUCTIONS                                 100\n  Heb. xiii. 1-14.\n\n  XIII\n\n  LAST WORDS                                               110\n  Heb. xiii. 15-25.\n\n\n\n\nMESSAGES\n\nFROM THE\n\nEPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER I\n\nCONSIDER HIM\n\nHEB. i.-ii.\n\n\nLet us open the Epistle to the Hebrews, with an aim simple and\naltogether practical for heart and for life. Let us take it just as it\nstands, and somewhat as a whole. We will not discuss its authorship,\ninteresting and extensive as that problem is. We will not attempt,\nwithin the compass of a few short chapters, to expound continuously its\nwonderful text. Rather, we will gather up from it some of its large and\nconspicuous spiritual messages, taken as messages of the Word of God\n\"which liveth and abideth for ever.\"\n\nNo part of Holy Scripture is ever really out of date. But it is true\nmeanwhile that, as for persons so for periods, there are Scripture books\nand Scripture truths which are more than ordinarily timely. It is not\nthat others are therefore untimely, nor that only one class of book or\none aspect of truth can be eminently timely at one time. But it seems\nevident that the foreseeing Architect of the Bible has so adjusted the\nparts of His wonderful vehicle of revelation and blessing that special\nfitnesses continually emerge between our varying times and seasons on\nthe one hand and the multifold Word on the other.\n\nThe Epistle to the Hebrews is in some remarkable respects a book timely\nfor our day. It invites to itself, if I read it aright, the renewed\nattention of the thoughtful Christian, and not least of the thoughtful\nChristian of the English Church, as it brings him messages singularly in\npoint to some of the main present needs of his spiritual life and its\nsurroundings. It was written manifestly in the first instance to meet\nspecial and pressing current trials; it bears the impress of a time of\nsevere sifting, a time when foundations were challenged, and individual\nfaith put to even agonizing proofs, and the community threatened with an\nalmost dissolution. Such a writing must have a voice articulate and\nsympathetic for a period like ours.\n\nWe will take into our hands then, portion by portion, this wonderful\n\"open letter,\" and listen through it to some of the things which \"the\nSpirit saith\" to the saints and to the Church.\n\nWe now contemplate in this sense the first two chapters. We put quite\naside a host of points of profound interest in detail, and ask ourselves\nonly what is the broad surface, the drift and total, of the message\nhere. As to its climax, it is JESUS CHRIST, our \"merciful and faithful\nHigh Priest\" (ii. 17). As to the steps that lead up to the climax, they\nare a presentation of the personal glory of Jesus Christ, as God the Son\nof God, as Man the Son of Man, who for us men and our salvation came,\nsuffered, and prevailed.\n\nWho that reads the Bible with the least care has not often noted this in\nthe first passages of the Hebrews, and could not at once so state the\nmatter? What is the great truth of Hebrews i.? Jesus Christ is GOD (ver.\n8); the Son (ver. 2); absolutely _like_ the Father (ver. 3); Lord of the\nbright Company of Heaven, who in all their ranks and orders worship Him\n(ver. 6); creative Originator of the Universe (ver. 10), such that the\nstarry depths of space are but the folds of His vesture, which hereafter\nHe shall change for another (ver. 12); Himself eternal, \"the same,\"\ntranscendent above all time, yet all the while the Son begotten, the\nSon, infinitely adequate and infinitely willing to be the final Vehicle\nof the Father's voice to us (verses 1, 5, 6). What is the great truth of\nHebrews ii.? Jesus Christ is MAN. He is other than angelic, for He is\nGod. But also He is other than angelic, for He is Man (verses 5, 6, 7).\nHe is the Brother of Man as truly as He is the Son of God (ver. 11). He\nhas taken share with us in flesh and blood (ver. 14), that is to say, He\nhas assumed manhood in that state or stage in which it is capable of\ndeath, and He has done this on purpose (it is a wonderful thought) that\nHe may be capable of dying. This blessed Jesus Christ, this God and Man,\nour Saviour, was bent upon dying, and that for a reason altogether\nconnected with us and with His will to save us (ver. 15). We were\nimmeasurably dear and important to Him. And our deliverance demanded His\nidentification with us in nature, and His temptations (ver. 18), and\nfinally His mysterious suffering. So He came, He suffered, He was\n\"perfected\"--in respect of capacity to be our Redeemer--\"through\nsufferings\" (ver. 10). And now, incarnate, slain, and risen again, He,\nstill our Brother, is \"crowned with glory and honour\" (ver. 9). He is\nour Leader (ver. 10). He is our High Priest, merciful and faithful (ver.\n17).\n\nThus the Epistle, on its way to recall its readers, at a crisis of\nconfusion and temptation, to certainty, patience, and peace, leads\nthem--not last but first--to Jesus Christ. It unfolds at once to them\nHis glories of Person, His Wonder of Work and Love. It does not\nelaborately travel up to Him through general considerations. It sets out\nfrom Him. It makes Him the base and reason for all it has to say--and it\nhas to say many things. Its first theme is not the community, but the\nLord; not Church principles, not that great duty of cohesion about which\nit will speak, and speak urgently, further on, but the Lord, in His\nadorable personal greatness, in His unique and all-wonderful personal\nachievement. To that attitude of thought it recurs again and again in\nits later stages. In one way or another it is always bidding us look up\nfrom even the greatest related subjects and \"consider HIM.\"\n\nAm I not right in saying that here is a message straight to the restless\nheart of our time, and not least to the special conditions of Christian\nlife just now in our well-beloved Church? We must, of course we must,\nthink about a hundred problems presented by the circumference of the\nlife of the Christian and the life of the Church. At all times such\nproblems, asking for attention and solution, emerge to every thoughtful\ndisciple's sight. In our own time they seem to multiply upon one\nanother with an importunate demand--problems doctrinal, ritual,\ngovernmental, social; the strife of principles and tendencies within the\nChurch; all that is involved in the relations between the Church and the\nState, and again between the Church and the world, that is to say, human\nlife indifferent or opposed to the living Christian creed and the\nspiritual Christian rule.\n\nWell, for these very reasons let us make here first this brief appeal,\nprompted by the opening paragraphs of the great Epistle. If you would\ndeal aright with the circumference, earnest Christian of the English\nChurch, live at the Centre. \"Dwell deep.\" From the Church come back\nevermore to Jesus Christ, that from Jesus Christ you may the better go\nback to the Church, bearing the peace and the power of the Lord Himself\nupon you.\n\nThere is nothing that can serve as a substitute for this. The\n\"consideration\" of our blessed Redeemer and King is not merely good for\nus; it is vital. To \"behold His glory,\" deliberately, with worship, with\nworshipping love, _and seen by direct attention to the mirror of His\nWord_, can and must secure for us blessings which we shall otherwise\ninfallibly lose. This, and this alone, amidst the strife of tongues and\nall the perplexities of life, can develope in us at once the humblest\nreverence and the noblest liberty, convictions firm to resist a whole\nworld in opposition, yet the meekness and the fear which utterly exclude\ninjustice, untruth, hardness, or the bitter word. For us if for any, for\nus now if ever, this first great message of the Epistle meets a vital\nneed; \"CONSIDER HIM.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER II\n\nA HEART OF FAITH\n\nHEB. iii.\n\n\nWe have just endeavoured to find a message, \"godly and wholesome, and\nnecessary for these times,\" in the opening paragraphs in the Epistle to\nthe Hebrews. We come now to interrogate our oracle again, and we open\nthe third chapter as we do so.\n\nHere again we find the Epistle full, first, of \"Jesus Christ Himself.\"\nHe is \"the Apostle and the High Priest of our profession\" (ver. 1), or\nlet us read rather, \"our confession,\" the \"confession\" of us who are\nloyal to His Name as His disciples. We are expressly called here to do\nwhat the first two chapters implied that we must do--to \"consider Him\"\n(ver. 1), to bend upon His Person, character, and work the attention of\nthe whole heart and mind. We are pointed to His holy fidelity to His\nmission (ver. 2) in words which equally remind us of His subordination\nto the Father's will and of His absolute authority as the Father's\nperfect Representative. We are reminded (ver. 3) of that magnificent\nother side of His position, that He acts and administers in \"the house\nof God\" not as a servant but as the Father's \"own SON (ver. 6) that\nserveth Him.\" Nay, such is He that the \"house\" in which He does His\nfilial service is a building which He Himself has reared (ver. 3); He is\nits Architect and its Constructor in a sense in which none could be who\nis not Divine. Yes, He is no less than God (ver. 4); God Filial, God so\nconditioned that He is also the faithful Sent-One of the Father, but\nnone the less GOD. We saw Him already in the first chapter (ver. 10),\nplaced before us in His majesty as the Originator of the material\nUniverse, to whom the starry skies are but His robe, to be put on and\nput off in season. Here He is the doer of a yet more wonderful\nachievement; He is the Builder of the Church of the Faithful. For the\n\"house\" which He thus built is nothing else than \"we\" (ver, 6), we who\nby faith have entered into the structure of the \"living stones\" (see 1\nPet. ii. 5), and who, by \"the confidence and the rejoicing of our hope,\"\nabide within it.\n\nThus the blessed Lord is before us here again, filling our sphere of\nthought and contemplation. It is here just as it is in the Epistle to\nthe Colossians. There, as here, errors and confusions in the Church are\nin view--a subtle theosophy and also a retrograde ceremonialism,\nprobably both amalgamating into one dangerous total. And St. Paul's\nmethod of defence for his converts there--what is it? Above all, it is\nthe presentation of Jesus Christ, in the glories of His Person and His\nWork. He places HIM in the very front of thought, first as the Head,\nFounder, and Corner-stone of the Universe; then as the Head, Redeemer,\nand Life of the Church. With HIM so seen he meets the dreamy thinker and\nthe ceremonial devotee; Christ is the ultimate and only repose, alike\nfor thought and for the soul.\n\nIn this Epistle as in that we have the same phenomenon, deeply\nsuggestive and seasonable for our life to-day. In both cases, not only\nfor individuals but for the Church, there was mental and spiritual\ntrouble. Alike in Phrygian Colossae and wherever the \"Hebrews\" lived\nthere was an invasion of church difficulties and confusion. A certain\naffinity in detail links the two cases together. Colossian Christians\nand Hebrew Christians, under widely different circumstances, and no\ndoubt in very different tones, persuasive in one case, threatening in\nthe other, were pressed to _retrograde_ from the sublime simplicity and\nfulness of the truth. Their danger was what I may venture to call a\ncertain medievalism. Not Mosaism, not Prophetism, but Judaism, the\nsuccessor and distortion of the ancient revelations, invited or\ncommanded their adhesion, or, in the case of the \"Hebrews,\" their\nreturn, as to the one true faith and fold. There were great differences\nin detail. At Colossae it does not seem that the \"medievalists\" professed\nto deny Christianity; rather they professed to teach the Judaistic\nversion of it as the authentic type. Among the \"Hebrews\"\nanti-Christianity was using every effort to allure or to alarm the\ndisciples back to open Rabbinism, \"doing despite to the Son of God.\" But\nboth streams of tendency went in the same general direction so far that\nthey put into the utmost prominence aspects of religion full of a\ntraditional ceremonialism, and of the idea of human meritorious\nachievement rather than of a spiritual reliance for the salvation of the\nsoul.\n\nDeeply significant it is that in both cases we have the danger met\nthus--by the presentation of the Incarnate Redeemer Himself, in His\npersonal and official glory, to the most immediate possible view of\nevery disciple, \"nothing between.\" The Epistles, both of them, have much\nto say on deep general principles. But all this they say in vital\nconnexion with Jesus Christ; and about Him they say most of all. He is\nthe supreme Antidote. He, \"considered,\" considered fully, is not so\nmuch the clue out of the labyrinth as the great point of view from which\nthe mind and the soul can look down upon it and see how tortuous, and\nalso how limited, it is.\n\nBut the message of our chapter has not yet been fully heard. It has\nspoken to us of Christ Jesus, and of the \"consideration\" of Him to which\nwe are called. At its close it speaks to us of faith: \"Take heed, lest\nthere be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in departing from the\nliving God\" (ver. 12). \"To whom sware He that they should not enter into\nHis rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not\nenter in because of unbelief\" (verses 18, 19).\n\nThat is to say, our \"consideration\" of Jesus Christ must not be all our\naction towards Him, if we would be sure, and safe, and strong. It must\nbe but the preliminary to a \"heart of faith.\" That is to say again, we\nmust personally and practically take Him at His word, and rely upon Him,\ncommitting our souls and our all to Him, to Him directly, to Him solely.\nWe must, in the exercise of this reliance, use Him evermore as our\nProphet, Priest, and King. We must venture upon His promises, just as\nIsrael ought to have ventured upon the promises of Him who had redeemed\nthem, although He _tried_ their will and power to do so by the terrors\nof the wilderness and by the giants of Canaan.\n\nThus to rely is faith; for faith is personal confidence in the Lord in\nHis promise. And such faith is not only, as it is, the empty hand which\nreceives Divine blessings in detail. It is the empty arms which clasp\nalways that comprehensive blessing, the presence of \"the living God\" in\nChrist, so making sure of a secret of peace, of rest, of decision, of\nstrength, of deep-sighted and tranquil thought upon \"things which\ndiffer,\" which is of infinite importance at a time of confusion and\ndebate in the Christian Church.\n\nTherefore, alike for our safety and for our usefulness, let us first\nafresh \"consider Him.\" And then let us afresh \"take heed\" that with \"a\ngood heart of faith\" we draw to and abide in union with the \"considered\"\nChrist, in whom we know and possess the living God.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER III\n\nUNTO PERFECTION\n\nHEB. iv.-vi.\n\n\nOur study of the great Epistle takes here another step, covering three\nshort but pregnant chapters. So pregnant are they that it would be\naltogether vain to attempt to deal with them thus briefly were we not\nmindful of our special point of view. We are pondering the Epistle not\nfor all that it has to say, but for what it has to say of special moment\nand application for certain needs of our own time.\n\nThe outline of the portion before us must accordingly be traced. In\ndetail it presents many questions of connexion and argument, for,\nparticularly in chapter iv., the apostolic thought takes occasionally a\nparenthetical flight of large circuit. But in outline the progression\nmay be traced without serious difficulty.\n\nWe have first the appeal to exercise the promptitude and decision of\nfaith, in view of the magnificent promise of a Canaan of sacred rest\nmade to the true Israel in Christ. Even to \"seem\" (iv. 1) to fail of\nthis, even to seem to sink into a desert grave of unbelief while \"the\nrest of faith\" is waiting to be entered, is a thought to \"fear.\" Great\nindeed are the promises; \"living\" and \"energetic\" is \"the Word\" which\nconveys them.[A]\n\n[A] Ch. iv. 12, if I am right, follows in thought upon iv. 2, leaving a\nlong and deep parenthesis between.\n\nThat \"Word\" is piercing as a sword in its convictions, for it is the\nvehicle of His mind and His holiness \"with whom is concerned our\ndiscourse\" (iv. 13); while yet it is, on its other side, a \"Gospel\"\nindeed (iv. 2), the message of supreme good, if only it is met with\nfaith by the convicted soul. Yes, it is a message which tells of a land\nof \"rest,\" near and open, fairer far than the Canaan on which Caleb\nreported and from which he and his fellows brought the great clusters of\nits golden vines. Passage after passage of the old Scriptures (iv. 3-9)\nshows that _that_ Canaan was no finality, no true _terminus_ of the\npurpose of God; another \"rest,\" another \"day\" of entrance and blessing,\nwas intimated all along. Unbelief forfeited the true fruition of even\nthe old Canaan for the old Israel. And now out of that evil has sprung\nthe glorious good of a more articulate promise of the new Canaan, the\ninheritance of rest in Christ, destined for the new Israel. But as\nthen, so now, the promise, if it is to come to its effect, must be met\nand realized by obedient faith. Despite all the difficulties, in face of\nwhatever may seem the Anakim of to-day, looking to Him who is\nimmeasurably more than Moses, and who is the true and second Joshua,[B]\nwe must make haste to enter in by the way of faith. We must \"mingle the\nword with faith\" (iv. 2), into one glorious issue of attained and\nabiding rest. We must lay our hearts soft and open (iv. 7) before the\nwill of the Promiser. We must \"be in earnest\" to enter in (iv. 11).\n\n[B] The \"Jesus\" (iv. 8) of the Authorized Version.\n\nThen, at iv. 14, the appeal takes us in beautiful order more directly to\nHim who is at once the Leader and the Promised Land. And again He stands\nbefore us as a \"great High Priest.\" Our Moses, our Joshua, is also our\nmore than Aaron, combining in Himself every possible qualification to be\nour guide and preserver as we enter in. He stands before us in all the\nalluring and endearing character of mingled majesty and mercy; a High\nPriest, a great High Priest, immeasurably great; He has \"passed through\nthe heavens\" (iv. 14) to the Holiest, to the throne, the celestial\nmercy-seat (iv. 16) \"within the veil\" (vi. 19); He is the Son (v. 5); He\nis the Priest-King, the true Melchizedek; He is all this for ever (vi.\n20). But on the other hand He is the sinner's Friend, who has so\nidentified Himself in His blessed Manhood with the sinner, veritably\ntaking our veritable nature, that He is \"able to feel with our\nweaknesses\" (iv. 15); \"able to feel a sympathetic tolerance [Greek:\nmetriopathein] towards the ignorant and the wandering\" (v. 2);\nunderstanding well \"what sore temptations mean, for He has felt the\nsame\"; yea, He has known what it is to \"cry out mightily and shed tears\"\n(v. 7) in face of a horror of death; to cast Himself as a genuine\nsuppliant, in uttermost suffering, upon paternal kindness; to get to\nknow by personal experience what submission means ([Greek: emathe ten\nhypakoen], v. 8); \"not my will but Thine be done.\"\n\nSuch is the \"Leader of our faith,\" so great, so glorious, so perfect, so\ntender, so deep in fellowship with us. Shall we not follow Him into \"the\nrest,\" though a \"Jordan rolls between\" and though cities of giants seem\nto frown upon us even on the other side? Shall we not dare thither to\nfollow HIM out of the desert of our \"own works\"?\n\nMuch, says the Epistle (v. 11, etc.), is to be said about Him; the theme\nis deep, it is inexhaustible, for He is God and Man, one Christ. And the\nHebrew believers (and is it not the same with us?) are not quick to\nlearn the great lesson of His glory, and so to grow into the adult\nmanhood of grace. But let us try; let us address ourselves to \"bear\nonwards ([Greek: pherometha]) to perfection\" (vi. 1), in our thought,\nour faith, and so in our experience. The great foundation factors must\nbe for ever there, the initial acts or attitudes of repentance, and of\n\"faith towards God\"; the abandonment of the service of sin, including\nthe bondage of a would-be salvation of self by self, and the simple\nturning God-ward of a soul which has come to despair of its own\nresources--truths symbolized and sealed by the primal rites of baptism\nand blessing (vi. 2); and then the great revealed facts in prospect,\nresurrection and judgment, must be always remembered and reckoned with.\nThese however must be \"left\" (vi. 1), not in oblivion but in progress,\njust as a building \"leaves\" the level of its always necessary\nfoundation. We must \"bear onwards\" and upwards, into the upper air of\nthe fulness of the truth of the glory of our Christ. We must seek\n\"perfection,\" the profound maturity of the Christian, by a maturer and\nyet maturer insight into Him. Awful is the spiritual risk of any other\ncourse. The soul content to stand still is in peril of a tremendous\nfall. To know about salvation at all, and not to seek to develope the\nknowledge towards \"perfection,\" is to expose one's self to the terrible\npossibility of the fate reserved for those who have much light but no\nlove (vi. 4-9).[C] But this, by the grace of God, shall not be for the\nreaders of the Epistle. They have shewn living proofs of love already,\npractical and precious, for the blessed Name's sake (vi. 10). Only, let\nthem remember the spiritual law--the necessity of growth, of progress,\nof \"bearing onwards to perfection\"; the tremendous risks of a subtle\nstagnation; the looking back; the pillar of salt.\n\n[C] I make no attempt here to expound in detail the formidable words of\nvi. 4-8. But I believe that their purport is fairly described in the\nsentence above in the text. Their true scriptural illustrations are to\nbe sought in a Balaam and a Judas.\n\nIn order that full blessing may thus be theirs, let them look for it in\nthe only possible direction. Let them take again to their souls the\nmighty promise of eternal benediction (vi. 14), sealed and crowned with\nthe Promiser's gracious oath in His own Name, binding Himself to\nfidelity under the bond of His own majesty (vi. 13). Aye, and then let\nthem again \"consider\" Him in whom promise and oath are embodied and\nvivified for ever; in whom rests--nay, in whom consists--our anchor of\nan eternal hope (vi. 19); Jesus, our Man of men, our High Priest of the\neverlasting order, now entered \"within the veil,\" into the place of the\ncovenant and the glory, and \"as Forerunner on our behalf\" (vi. 20). To\nfollow Him in there, in the \"consideration\" of faith and of worshipping\nlove--this is the secret, to the end, for \"bearing onwards to\nperfection.\"\n\nOur review of the passage is thus in some sort over. Confessedly it is\nan outline; but I do not think that any vital element in the matter has\nbeen overlooked. Much of the message we are seeking has been inevitably\ngiven us by the way; we may be content now to gather up and summarize\nthe main result.\n\nThe \"Hebrews,\" then, and their special circumstances of difficulty, are\nhere in view, as everywhere else in the Epistle. Tempted to \"fall away,\"\nto give up the \"hope set before them,\" to relapse to legalism, to\nbondage, to the desert, to a famine of the soul, to barrenness and\ndeath--here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of\nthe evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus\nChrist, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His\nunfathomable human sympathy, seen in perfect harmony of light with His\neternal greatness.\n\nThe remedy is Christ; a deeper, fuller, always maturing sight of Christ.\nThe urgent necessity is first promptitude and then progress in respect\nof knowing Him.\n\nAt the risk of a charge of iteration and monotony, I reaffirm that here\nis the great antidote for the many kindred difficulties of our troubled\ntime. From how many sides comes the strain! Sometimes from that of an\nopen naturalism; sometimes from that of a partial yet far-reaching\n\"naturalism under a veil\" which some recent teachings on \"The Being of\nChristianity\" may exemplify, with principles and presuppositions which\nlargely underlie the extremer forms, certainly, of the modern critique\nof Scripture; sometimes from the opposite quarter of an ecclesiasticism\nwhich more or less exaggerates or distorts the great ideas of corporate\nlife and sacramental operation. It would be idle to ignore the subtle\n_nuances_ of difference between mind and mind, and the resultant varying\nincidence in detail of great and many-sided truths. But is it not fair\nand true to say that, on the whole, the supreme personal glory of\nChrist, as presented direct to the human soul in its august and\nineffable loveliness, in its infinite lovableness, is what alike the\nnaturalistic and the ultra-ecclesiastic theories of religion tend to\nbecloud? On the other side, accordingly, it is in the \"consideration\" of\nthat glory, in acquaintance with that wonderful Christ, that we shall\nfind the glow which can melt and overcome the cloud. We must put\nourselves continually in face of the revelation of this in the Word of\nGod. We must let that revelation so sink into the heart as to do its\nself-verifying work there thoroughly, yet with a growth never to be\nexhausted. We must \"bear onwards\" evermore \"unto perfection\"--in\n\"knowing Him.\" So we shall stand, and live, and love, and labour on.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IV\n\nOUR GREAT MELCHIZEDEK\n\nHEB. vii.\n\n\nThere is a symmetrical dignity all its own in the seventh chapter of the\nHebrews. I recollect listening, now many years ago, to a characteristic\nexposition of it by the late beloved and venerated Edward Hoare, in a\nwell-known drawing-room at Cromer--a \"Bible Reading\" full alike of\nmental stimulus and spiritual force. He remarked, among many other\nthings, that the chapter might be described as a sermon, divided under\nthree headings, on the text of Psalm cx. 4. This division and its\nsignificance he proceeded to develope. The chapter opens with a\npreamble, a statement of the unique phenomena which surround, in the\nnarrative of Genesis, the name and person of Melchizedek. Then, starting\nfrom the presupposition, to whose truth the Lord Himself is so\nabundantly a witness, that the Old Testament is alive everywhere with\nintimations of the Christ, and remembering that in the Psalm in\nquestion a mysterious import is explicitly assigned to Melchizedek, the\nWriter proceeds to his discourse. Its theme is the primacy of the\npriesthood embodied in Melchizedek over that represented by Aaron, and\nthe bearing of this on the glory of Him who is proclaimed a priest for\never after Melchizedek's order. This theme is presented under headings,\nsomewhat as follows. _First_ (verses 4-14), the one priesthood is\ngreater than the other _in order_. Abraham, bearing the whole Aaronic\nhierarchy potentially within him, defers to Melchizedek as to his\ngreater. Hence, among other inferences, the sacred Personage who is a\npriest for ever after Melchizedek's order, wholly independent of\nLevitical limits, must dominate and must supersede the order of the sons\nof Aaron with their inferior status and with their transitory lives.\n_Secondly_ (verses 15-19), the one priesthood is greater than the other\nin respect of _the finality_, the permanence, the everlastingness, of\nthe greater Priest and of His office. He is what He is \"for ever, on the\nscale of the power of indissoluble life.\"[D] As such, He is the Priest\nnot of an introductory and transient \"commandment\" but of that \"better\nhope\" which (ver. 19) has at last \"made perfect\" the purpose and the\npromise, fulfilled the intention of eternal mercy, and brought us, the\npeople of this great covenant, absolutely nigh to God. _Thirdly_ (verses\n20, 21), this second aspect of the supremacy of the greater Priesthood\nis emphasized and solemnized by one further reference to Psalm cx. 4.\nThere the Eternal, looking upon the mysterious Partner of His throne, is\nheard not to promise only but to _vow_, with an oath unalterable as\nHimself, that the Priesthood of \"His Fellow\" shall be everlasting. No\nsuch solemnity of affirmation attended Aaron's investiture. There is\nsomething greater here, and more immediately Divine. The \"covenant\"\n(ver. 22) committed to the administration of One thus sealed with the\noath of Heaven must indeed be \"better,\" and cannot but be final; the\ngoal of the eternal purpose.\n\n[D] [Greek: kata dunamin zoes akatalytou].\n\n_Then_ (verses 23-28) the discourse passes into what we may call its\nepilogue. The thought recurs to the sublime contrast between the\npathetic numerousness of the successors of Aaron, \"not suffered to\ncontinue by reason of death,\" and the singleness, the \"unsuccessional\"\nidentity for ever, of the true Melchizedek, who abides eternally. And\nthen, moving to its end, the argument glows and brightens into an\n\"application\" to the human heart. We have in JESUS (the Name has now\nalready been pronounced, ver. 22) a Friend, an Intercessor, infinitely\nand for ever competent to save us, His true Israel. We have in Him a\nHigh Priest supreme in every attribute of holiness and power, and\nqualified for His work of intercession by that sacrifice of Himself\nwhich is at once solitary and all-sufficient. Behold then the contrast\nand the conclusion. To a great Dispensation, the preparatory, succeeds a\ngreater, the greatest, the other's end and crown. To the \"weak\" mortal\npriesthood of the law, never warranted by the vow of God to abide always\nin possession, succeeds One who is Priest, and King, and SON, sealed for\nHis office by the irrevocable vow, \"consecrated for evermore.\"\n\nSuch on the whole, as I recall it, was the exposition of my venerable\nfriend, in 1887. Each new reading of the chapter seems to me to bear out\nthe substantial accuracy of it; indeed the symmetry and order of the\nchapter make it almost inevitable that some such line should be taken by\nthe explanation. Thus then it lies before us. It is filled in all its\nparts with Jesus Christ, in His character of the true Melchizedek, our\nfinal, everlasting, perfect, supreme, Divine High Priest.\n\nThis simple treatise is not the place for critical discussions. I do not\nattempt a formal vindication of the mystical and Messianic reference of\nPsalm cx. All I can do here, and perhaps all I should do, is to affirm\nsolemnly my belief in it, at the feet of Christ. I am perfectly aware\nthat now, within the Church, and by men unquestionably Christian as well\nas learned, our Lord's own interpretation of that Psalm,[E] involving as\nit does His assertion of its Davidic authorship, is treated as quite\nopen to criticism and disproof. One such scholar does not hesitate to\nsay that, if the majority of modern experts are right as to the\nnon-Davidic authorship, and he seems to think that they are, \"our Lord's\nargument breaks down.\" All I would remark upon such utterances, coming\nfrom men who all the while sincerely adore Christ as their Lord and God,\nis that they must surely open the way towards conceptions of His whole\nteaching which make for the ruin of faith. For the question is not at\nall whether our Redeemer consented to submit to limits in His conscious\nhuman knowledge; I for one hold that He assuredly did so. It is whether\nHe consented to that sort of limitation which alone, in respect of\nimperfection of knowledge, is the real peril of a teacher, and which is\nhis fatal peril--the ignorance of his own ignorance, and a consequent\nclaim to teach where he does not know. In human schools the betrayal of\n_that_ sort of ignorance is a deathblow to confidence, not only in some\nspecial utterance, but in the teacher, for it strikes at his claim not\nto knowledge so much as to wisdom, to balance and insight of thought. I\nventure to say that recent drifts of speculation shew how rapidly the\nconception of a fallible Christ developes towards that of a wholly\nimperfect and untrustworthy Christ. And, looking again at the vast\nphenomenon of the Portrait in the Gospels, I hold that the line of\nthought which offers by very far the least difficulty, not to faith only\nbut to reason, is that which relies absolutely on His affirmations\nwherever He is pleased actually to affirm.\n\n[E] Matt. xxii. 44; Luke xx. 42. Cp. Acts ii. 34.\n\nSo thinking, I take His exposition of Psalm cx. as for me final. And\nthat exposition guarantees at once a typical mystery latent in Gen. xiv.\nand the rightness of its development in the passage here before us.\n\nBut now, what \"message\" has our chapter for us, in view of the needs of\nour own time?\n\nFirst, as to its sacerdotal doctrine. It throws a broad illumination on\nthe grand finality and uniqueness of the mediatorial priesthood of our\nLord, the Son of God. It puts into the most vivid possible contrast the\nage of \"the law\" and that of Christ as to the priestly conception and\ninstitution. Somehow, under the law, there was a need for priests who\nwere \"men, having infirmity.\" For certain grave purposes (not for all,\nby any means, even in that legal period) it was the will of God that\nthey should stand between His Israel and Him. But the argument of this\nchapter, unless it elaborately veils its true self in clouds, goes\ndirectly to shew that such properly mediatorial functions, in the age of\nChrist, are for ever withdrawn from \"men, having infirmity.\" Where they\nstood of old, one after another, sacrificing, interceding, going in\nbehind the veil, permitted to draw nearer to God, in an official\nsanctity, than their brethren, there now stands Another, sublime,\nsupreme, alone. He is Man indeed, but He is not \"man having infirmity.\"\nHe is higher than the heavens, while He is one with us. And now our one\nsecret for a complete approach to God is to come to God \"through HIM.\"\nAnd this, unless the chapter is an elaborate semblance of what it is\nnot, means nothing if it does not mean that between the Church, and\nbetween the soul, and the Lord Jesus Christ, there is to come\n_absolutely nothing mediatorial_. As little as the Jew, for ceremonial\npurposes, needed an intermediary in dealing with his mortal priest so\nlittle do we, for the whole needs of our being, need an intermediary in\ndealing with our eternal Priest.\n\nIn the age of Christ, no office can for one moment put one \"man having\ninfirmity\" nearer to God than another, if this chapter means what it\nsays. Mediatorial priesthood, a very different thing from commissioned\npastorate, has no place in apostolic Christianity, with the vast\nexception of its sublime and solitary place in the Person of our most\nblessed Lord.\n\nThen further, the chapter, far from giving us merely the cold gift (as\nit would be if this were all) of a negative certainty against unlawful\nhuman claims, gives us, as its true, its inmost message, a glorious\npositive. It gives us the certainty that, for every human heart which\nasks for God, this wonderful Christ, personal, eternal, human, Divine,\nis quite immediately accessible. The hands of need and trust have but to\nbe lifted, and they hold HIM. And He is the SON. In Him we have the\nFATHER. We do indeed \"_draw nigh_ to God through Him.\"\n\nTherefore we will do it. The thousand confusions of our time shall only\nmake this Divine simplicity the more precious to us. We will at once and\ncontinually take Jesus Christ for granted in all the fulness and\nsplendour of His High-priesthood after the order of Melchizedek. That\nPriesthood is for ever what it is; it is as new and young to-day in its\nvirtue as if the oath had but to-day been spoken, and He had but to-day\nsat down at the right hand.\n\nHappy we if we use Him thus. He blesses those who do so with blessings\nwhich they cannot analyse, but which they know. Many years ago a\nChristian lady, daughter of a saintly Non-conformist pastor in the west\nof Dorset, told me how, in a then distant time, her father had striven\nto teach a sick man, a young gipsy in a wandering camp, to read, and to\ncome to Christ. The camp moved after a while, and the young man, dying\nof consumption, took a Bible with him. Time rolled on, and one day a\ngray-haired gipsy came to the minister's door; it was the youth's\nfather, with the news of his son's happy death, and with his Bible.\n\"Sir, I cannot read a word; but _he_ was always reading it, and he\nmarked what he liked with a stick from the fire. And he said you would\nfind one place marked with two lines; it was everything to my poor lad.\"\nThe leaves were turned, and the stick was found to have scored two lines\nat the side of Heb. vii. 25: \"He is able also to save them to the\nuttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing that He ever liveth to make\nintercession for them.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER V\n\nTHE BETTER COVENANT\n\nHEB. viii.\n\n\nThe Person and greatness of our High Priest are now full before the\nreaders of the Epistle. The paragraph we enter next, after one more\ndeliberate contemplation of His dignity and His qualifications, proceeds\nto expound His relation to the better and eternal Covenant. We shall\nfind here also messages appropriate to our time.\n\nThe first step then is a review, a summing up, a \"look again\" upon the\ntrue King of Righteousness and peace (verses 1, 2). \"Such a High Priest\n_we have_.\" It is a wonderful affirmation, not only of His existence but\nof His relation to \"us,\" His people. \"_We have_\" Him. He has taken His\nseat indeed \"at the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the\nheavens.\" But this great exaltation has not removed Him for a moment out\nof our possession; we have Him. He is now the great Minister, the\nsupreme sacerdotal Functionary, of the heavenly sanctuary, \"the true\ntabernacle,\" [Greek: tes skenes tes alethines], the non-figurative\nreality of which the Mosaic structure was only the shadow; the true\nscene of unveiled Presence and immortal worship, \"pitched\" by Him whose\nface makes Heaven, and makes it all one temple. But this sublimity of\nour Priest's place and power does not make Him in the least less ours;\nwe have Him.\n\nThe words invite us to a new and deliberate look upward, and then to a\nrecollection deeper than ever that He is held spiritually in our very\nhands; that He is a possession, nearer to us than any other.\n\nThen (verses 3 and following) the thought moves towards the sacrificial\nand offertorial qualifications of this great and most sacred Person. He\nis what He is, our High Priest, our Minister of the sanctuary above, on\nperfectly valid grounds. For He is, what every sacerdotal minister must\nbe, an Offerer. And He is this in a sense, in a way, congruous to His\nheavenly position. He has no blood of goats and calves to present, like\nthe priests on earth. Indeed, were He \"on earth\" (ver. 4), this greatest\nof all High Priests \"would not even be a priest\" ([Greek: oud an en\nhiereus]), an ordinary priest. For that function, says the Writer, is\nalready filled, \"according to the law,\" by the Aaronic order, to which\nHe never belonged and never could belong (see vii. 13, 14). It is in\ncharge of the sacred servants ([Greek: latreuousin]) of the earthly\nsanctuary, the God-given type and shadow (ver. 5) of the realities of\nHeaven, but no more than their type and shadow, partial and transient.\nNo, His sacerdotal qualification is of another sort and a greater. What\nit is which \"He hath to offer\" in the celestial Holiest is not yet\nexplicitly said; that is reserved for the ninth chapter, to which this\nis but the vestibule. But already the Epistle emphasizes the truth that\n\"He _hath somewhat_ to offer,\" so that we may fully realize the\ncompleteness of His high-priestly power.\n\nIt may be well to pause here, and to ask whether this passage reveals\nthat our Lord Jesus Christ is at this moment \"offering\" for us, in His\nheavenly life. We are all aware that this has been widely held and\nearnestly pressed, sometimes into inferences which, as far as I can see,\ncannot at all be borne even by the doctrine that He _is_ offering for us\nnow. In particular it is said that, if He in glory is offering for His\nChurch, then His Church must, in some sense, as in a counterpart, be\noffering here on earth, in union with Him. In short, there must still be\npriests on earth who are ministers of \"the example and shadow of\nheavenly things.\" But surely, if this Epistle makes anything clear, it\nmakes it clear that our great Priest is the superseding fulfilment of\nall such ministrations done by \"men having infirmity.\" It is His glory,\nand it is ours, that He is known by us as our one and all-sufficient\nOfferer and Mediator. It is precisely as such that \"we have Him,\" in a\nway to distinguish our position and privilege in a magnificent sense\nfrom that of those who needed the sacerdotal aid of their mortal\nbrethren.\n\nBut then further, does this passage really intimate at all that He is\noffering now? The thought appears to be decisively negatived by the\ngrandeur of the terms of the first verse of this chapter. Where, in the\nheavenly sanctuary, is our High Priest now? He has \"taken His seat on\nthe right hand of the throne of the majesty.\" But enthronement is a\nthought out of line with the act and attitude of oblation. The offerer\nstands before the Power he approaches. Our Priest is seated--where Deity\nalone can sit.\n\nDoes not this tell us that the words (ver. 3), \"It is necessary that He\ntoo should have something to offer,\" are to be explained not of a\ncontinuous historical procedure (to which idea, by the way, the aorist\nverb [Greek: prosenenke] would hardly be appropriate), but as the\nstatement of a principle in terms of time? The \"necessity\" is, not that\nHe should have something to offer now, and to-morrow, and always, but\nthat the matter and act of offering should belong to Him. And they do so\nbelong, in principle and effect, for priestly purposes, by having been\nonce and for ever handled and performed by Him. His \"need\" is, not to be\nalways offering, but to be always an Offerer. He meets that need by\nbeing for ever the Priest who had Himself to offer, and who offered\nHimself, and who now dispenses from His sacerdotal seat the benedictions\nbased upon the sacrifice of which He is for ever the once accepted\nOfferer.\n\nOnly thus viewed, I venture to say, can this phrase be read in its full\nharmony with the whole Epistle. \"He hath somewhat to offer,\" in the\nsense that He has for ever the grand sacerdotal qualification of being\nan Offerer who, having executed that function, now bears to all eternity\nits _character_. But He is not therefore always executing the function.\nOtherwise He must descend from His throne. But His enthronement, His\nsession, is a fact of His present position as important and\ncharacteristic as possible in this whole Epistle.\n\nAaron was not always offering. But he was always an offerer. On the\nmorrow of the Atonement Day he was as much an offerer as on the day\nitself. All through the year, even until the next Atonement, he was\nstill an offerer. He exercised his priestly functions at all times\nbecause, in principle, he \"had somewhat to offer\" in its proper time.\n_Our_ High Priest knows only one Atonement Day, and it is over for ever.\nAnd His Israel have it for their privilege and glory not to be \"serving\nunto an example and shadow\" of even His work and office, but to be going\nalways, daily and hourly, direct to Him in His perfect Priesthood, in\nwhich they always \"have\" Him, and to be always abiding, in virtue of\nHim, \"boldly,\" \"with confidence,\" in the very presence of the Lord.\n\nThen the chapter moves forward (verses 6 and following) to consider the\nrelation between our High Priest and _the Covenant_ of which He is the\nMediator. Here begins one of the great themes of the Epistle. It will\nrecur again and again, till at last we read (xiii. 20) of \"the blood of\nthe Covenant eternal.\"\n\nThis pregnant subject is introduced by a solemn reference to the\n\"promises upon which has been legislated,\" legally instituted, [Greek:\nnenomothetetai], this new compact between God and man. The reference is\nto the thirtieth chapter of Jeremiah, from which an extract is here made\nat length. There the prophet, in the name of his God, explicitly\nforetells the advent of what we may reverently call a new departure in\nthe revealed relations between Jehovah and His people. At Sinai He had\nengaged to bless them, yet under conditions which left them to discover\nthe total inability of their own sin-stricken wills to meet His holy\nwhile benignant will. They failed, they broke the pact, and judgment\nfollowed them of course. But now another order is to be taken. Their\nKing and Lawgiver, without for one moment ceasing to be such, will also\nundertake another function, wholly new, as regards the method of\ncovenant. He will place Himself so upon their side as Himself to\nreadjust and empower their affections and their wills. He \"will put His\nlaws into their mind and write them upon their hearts,\" and \"they shall\nall know Him,\" with the knowledge which is life eternal. And further, as\nthe antecedent to all this, in order to open the path to it, to place\nthem where this wonderful blessing can rightly reach and fill them,\ntheir King and Lawgiver pledges Himself to a _previous_ pardon, full and\nunreserved; \"Their sins and their iniquities I will remember no more.\"\nThey shall be set before Him in an acceptance as full as if they had\nnever fallen. And then, not as the condition to this but as the sequel\nto it, He will so deal with them, internally and spiritually, that they\nshall will His will and live His law. There shall be no mechanical\ncompulsion; \"their mind,\" \"their hearts,\" full as ever of personality\nand volition, shall be the matter acted upon. But there shall be a\ngracious and prevailing influence, deciding their spiritual action along\nits one true line; \"I will put,\" \"I will write.\"\n\nThis is the new, the better, the everlasting Covenant. It is placed here\nin the largest and most decisive contrast over against the old covenant,\nthe compact of Sinai, \"written and engraven in stones\" (2 Cor. iii. 7).\nThat compact had done its mysterious work, in convincing man of his\nsinful incapacity to meet the will of God. Now emerges its wonderful\nantithesis, in which man is first entirely pardoned, with a pardon which\nmeans acceptance, peace, re-instatement into the home and family of God,\nand then and therefore is internally transfigured by his Father's power\ninto a being who loves his Father's law.\n\nWhat the prophet foretold was claimed by the Lord Christ Himself, as\nfulfilled in His Person and His work, when He took the cup of blessing,\nat the feast of the new Passover of the new Israel, and said, \"This cup\nis the new covenant in my blood.\" And what He so claimed His great\napostle rejoiced in, when he wrote to Corinth (2 iii. 6, etc.) of the\n\"ministry of the new covenant,\" the covenant of the Spirit, of life, of\nglory. And here the same truth is stated again, and in strong connexion\nagain with Him who is at once its Sacrifice, its Surety, its Mediator;\nthe Cause, and Guardian, and Giver of all its blessings. He is such that\nit is such; ours is \"_so great_ a salvation,\" because of so great and\nwonderful a High Priest, the possessor in very deed of \"somewhat to\noffer,\" and now, with hands full of the fruits of that offering,\n\"seated\" for us \"on the right hand of the throne of the majesty in the\nheavens.\"\n\nHere is a message for our times, in a sense which seems to me special,\npressing, and deeply beneficent. For the terms of that new covenant are\nnothing less than the glorious essence, the Divine peculiarity, of the\nGospel of the grace of God. This forgiveness, this most sincere and\nentirely unearned amnesty, this oblivion of the sins of the people of\nGod--do we hear very much about it now, even where by tradition it might\nbe most expected? But do we not need it now? Was there ever a time when\nhuman hearts would be more settled and more energized than now, amidst\ntheir moral restlessness, by a wise, thoughtful, but perfectly\nunmistakable reaffirmation of the sublime fulness of Divine forgiveness\nin Christ? Men may think that they can do without that message. They may\nbid us throw the whole weight of preaching upon self-sacrifice, upon\nsocial service, upon conduct at large. But the fully wakeful soul knows\nthat it is only then capacitated for self-sacrifice in the Lord's\nfootsteps when it has received the warrant of forgiveness, written large\nin His sacred blood, finding pardon and peace at the foot of His\nsacrificial Cross. Then turn to the second limb of the covenant, a limb\ngreater even than the first, inasmuch as for it the first is provided\nand guaranteed. Do we hear too much about this covenant blessing now? Do\nour pulpits too frequently and too fully give out the affirmation that\nGod in Christ stands pledged and covenanted to work the moral\ntransfiguration of His believing Israel, to act so on \"the first springs\nof thought and will\" that our being shall freely respond to His free\naction upon it, and will His will, and live His law? But was there ever\ngreater need for such an affirmation than in our time, so restless, so\nunsatisfied, and, deep below all its superficial arrogance, so\ndisappointed, so discouraged?\n\nLet us return upon the rich treasures of this great Compact of God in\nChrist. The Covenant is ever new, for it is eternal. And it lies safe in\nthe ministering hands of Him who died to inaugurate it and make it good,\nand who lives to shower its blessings down. He is on the right hand of\nthe throne of the majesty in the heavens. And \"_we have_\" Him.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VI\n\nSANCTUARY AND SACRIFICE\n\nHEB. ix.\n\n\nThe Epistle has exhibited to us the glory of the eternal Priest and the\nwealth and grandeur of the new Covenant. It advances now towards the\nSanctuary and the Sacrifice wherein we see that covenant sanctified and\nsealed, under the auspices of our great \"Priest upon His throne.\"\n\nThe Teacher first dilates to the Hebrews upon the outstanding features\nof the type. He enumerates the main features of that \"sanctuary, adapted\nto this (visible) world\" ([Greek: to hagion, kosmikon]), which was\nattached to the first covenant (ver. 1).[F] Particularly, he emphasizes\nits double structure, which presented first a consecrated chamber, holy\nbut not holiest, the depository of lamp and table, but then beyond it,\nparted from it by the inner curtain, the _adylum_ itself, the Holiest\nPlace, where lay ready for use \"a golden censer,\" the vessel needful\nfor the making of the incense-cloud which should veil the glory, and,\nabove all, the Ark of that first covenant of which so much has now been\nsaid. There it lay, with the manna and the budding rod, symbols of\nMosaic and Aaronic power and function; and the tablets of that law which\nwas written not on the heart but on the stone; and the mercy-seat above\nthem, and the cherubic bearers of the Shechinah above the mercy-seat;\nsymbols of a reconciliation and an access yet to be revealed (verses\n2-5).\n\n[F] Assuredly we must delete [Greek: skene] from the text in this verse,\nand understand [Greek: diatheke] (see viii. 13) after [Greek: he prote].\n\nSuch was the sanctuary, as depicted to the mind of the believing Hebrew\nin the books which he almost worshipped as the oracles of God. That\ntabernacle he had never seen; that ark he knew had long vanished out of\nsight. The temple of Herod, with its vacant Holiest, was the sanctuary\nof his generation. But the Mosaic picture of the Tent and of the Ark was\nfor him the abiding standard, the Divine ideal, the pattern of the\nrealities in the heavens; and to it accordingly the Epistle directs his\nthought, as it prepares to display those realities before him.[G]\n\n[G] I do not attempt in these papers to do more than allude to the\ncontroversy of our time over the historical character of the Mosaic\nbooks. But I must allude in passing to a noteworthy German critique of\nthe Wellhausen theory, \"by a former adherent,\" W. Moeller: _Bedenken\ngegen die Graf-Wellhausensche Hypothese, von einem frueheren Anhaenger_\n(Guetersloh, 1899). The writer, a young and vigorous student and thinker,\nexplains with remarkable force the immense difficulties from the purely\ncritical point of view in the way of the theory that the account of the\nTabernacle was invented by \"Levitistic\" leaders of the time of the\nCaptivity. The work has been translated into English, and published by\nthe Religious Tract Society \"_Are the Critics right?_\"\n\nThen it proceeds to a similar presentation of one great feature in the\nritual, the \"praxis,\" connected with this Tent of Sanctuaries. It takes\nthe reader to his Book of Leviticus, and to its order of Atonement.\nThere (ch. xvi.) a profound emphasis is laid upon both the secluded\nsanctity of the inner shrine, the place of the Presence, and the\nsacrificial process by which alone the rare privilege of entrance into\nit could be obtained. The outer chamber was the daily scene of priestly\nministration. But the inner was, officially at least, entered once only\nin the year, and by the High Priest alone, in the solitary dignity of\nhis office. And even he went in there only as bearing in his very hands\nthe blood of immolated victims, blood which he offered, presented, in\nthe Holiest, with an express view to the Divine amnesty for another\nyear's tale of \"ignorances\" ([Greek: agnoemata], ver. 7), his own and\nthe people's.\n\nSuch was the sanctuary, such the atoning ritual, attached to the first\ncovenant. All was \"mysteriously meant,\" with a significance infinitely\ndeeper than what any thought of Moses, or of Ezra, could of itself have\ngiven it. \"The Holy Ghost intimated\" (ver. 8), through that guarded\nshrine and those solitary, seldom-granted, death-conditioned entrances\ninto it, things of uttermost moment for the soul of man. There stood the\nTent, there went in the lonely Priest, with the blood of bull and goat,\nas \"a parable for the period now present,\"[H] the time of the Writer and\nhis readers, in which a ritual of offering was still maintained whose\nannual recurrence proved its inadequacy, its non-finality. Yes, this\nmajestic but sombre system pictured a state of jealous reserve between\nthe worshippers and their God. Its propitiations were of a kind which,\nin the nature of things, could not properly and in the way of virtual\nforce set the conscience free from the sense of guilt, \"perfecting the\nworshipper conscience-wise.\" They could only \"sanctify with a view to\nthe purity of the flesh\" (ver. 13), satisfying the conditions of a\nnational and temporal acceptance. Its holiest place was indeed\napproachable, once annually, by one representative person; enough to\nillustrate and to seal a hope; but otherwise, and far more deeply, the\nconditions symbolized separation and a Divine reserve. But \"the good\nthings to come\"[I] were in the Divine view all along. The \"time of\nreformation\" (ver. 10), of the rectification of the failures suffered\nunder the first covenant, drew near. Behold Messiah steps upon the\nscene, the true High Priest (ver. 11). Victim and Sacrificer at once, He\nsheds His own sacrificial blood (ver. 12) on the altar of Golgotha, to\nbe His means ([Greek: dia] _c. gen._) of acceptable approach. And then\nHe passes, through the avenue of a sanctuary \"not made with hands\" (ver.\n11), even the heavenly world itself (cp. [Greek: dielelythota tous\nouranous], iv. 14), into the Holiest Place of the eternal Presence on\nthe throne. He goes in thither, there to be, and there to do, all that\nwe know of from the long context previous to this chapter, even to sit\ndown accepted at the right hand of the majesty on high, King of\nRighteousness and Peace. And this action and entrance is, in its very\nnature, a thing done once and for ever. The true High Priest, being what\nHe is, doing what He has done, has indeed \"found _eternal_ redemption\nfor us\" (ver. 12). It is infinitely unnecessary now to imagine a\n_repetition_ of sacrifice, entrance, offering, acceptance, for Him, and\nfor us in Him. Such an Oblation, the self-offering of the Incarnate Son\nin the power of the Eternal Spirit (ver. 14), what can it not do for the\nbelieving worshipper's welcome in, and his perfect peace in the\nassurance of the covenanted love of God? Is it not adequate to \"purge\nthe conscience from dead works,\" to lift from it, that is to say, the\ndeath-load of unforgiven transgressions, and to lead the Christian in,\nas one with his atoning Lord, \"to serve a living God,\" with the happy\nservice of a worshipper ([Greek: latreuein]) who need \"go no more out\"\nfrom the Holy Place of peace?\n\n[H] I think the Revisers are right in giving \"_now_ present\" instead of\n\"_then_ present\" as the rendering for [Greek: ton enestekota] (ver. 9).\nThe Epistle alludes, so I should conjecture, to the period of its\nwriting as a time when the sacrifices were still going on, albeit on the\neve of cessation.--It seems best to read [Greek: kath' hen], not [Greek:\nkath' hon], in ver. 9; \"in accordance with which _parable_.\"\n\n[I] Possibly we should read [Greek: ton genomenon agathon], \"the good\nthings that are come\" (R.V. marg.). But the practical difference is not\ngreat.\n\nBut the Teacher has not yet done with the wealth of the Mosaic types of\nour full salvation. He has more to say about the profound truth that the\nNew Covenant needed for its Mediator, its Herald, its Guarantor and\nConveyer of blessing, not a Moses but a Messiah, who could both die and\nreign, could at once be Sacrifice and Priest. Covenants, in the normal\norder of God's will in Scripture, demanded death for their ratification.\n\"Where covenant is, there must be brought in the death of the\ncovenant-victim.\"[J] So it was with the old covenant (verses 18-21) in\nthe narrative of Exodus xxiv. So, throughout the Mosaic rules, we find\n\"remission,\" practically always, conditioned by \"blood-shedding\" (ver.\n22). Peace with violated holiness was to be attained only by means of\nsacrificial death. The terrestrial sanctuary, viewed as polluted by the\ntransgressions of the worshippers who sought its benefits, required\nsacrificial death, the blood of bulls and goats, so to \"cleanse\" it that\nGod could meet Israel there in peace (ver. 23). Even so, only after a\nhigher and holier order, must it be with the better covenant and that\ninvisible sanctuary where a reconciled God may for ever meet in peace\nHis spiritual Israel. There must be priestly immolation and an offered\nsacrifice; there must be peace conditioned by life-blood shed. And such\nis the work of our Messiah-Priest. He has \"borne the sins of many\" (ver.\n28). Presenting Himself (ver. 6) as the Atonement Victim, in the\nheavenly Holiest, He has thereby \"borne,\" uplifted ([Greek:\nanenenkein]), in that Presence, for pardon and peace, the sins of the\nnew Israel. And so \"the heavenly things\" are, relatively to that Israel,\n\"cleansed\"; their God can meet them in that sanctuary with an intimacy\nand access free and perfect, because their High Priest and Mediator has\ndone His work for them. For ever and ever now they need no new\n_sacrifice_; His blood, once shed, is eternally sufficient. Aye, and\nthey need now for ever no repeated _offering_ (ver. 25) of sacrifice, no\nnew _presentation_ of His blood before the throne, since once He has\ntaken His place upon it. To offer again He must suffer again (ver. 26).\nFor it is the law of His office first to offer--_and then to take His\nplace at the right hand_. He must leave that place, He must descend\nagain to a cross, if He is to take again the attitude of presentation.\n\"Henceforth\" He sits, \"expecting\" (see below, x. 13), \"till His enemies\nbe made His footstool.\" And His Israel on their part wait (ver. 28),\n\"expecting,\" till in that bright promised day \"He appears, the second\ntime, without sin,\" unencumbered by the burthen He once carried for\nthem, \"unto salvation,\" the salvation which means the final glory.\n\"Once, only once\"--this is the sublime law of that Sacrifice and that\nOffering. As death for us men comes \"once,\" and then there follows\n\"judgment,\" so the death of Christ, the \"offering\" of Christ, comes\n\"once,\" and then comes, in a wonderful paradox, not judgment but\n\"salvation,\" for them that are found in Him.\n\n[J] So, with the late Professor Scholefield (_Hints on a New\nTranslation_) I venture to render [Greek: tou diathemenou]. I am\nconvinced that this rendering, though it has the serious difficulty of\nlacking any clear parallel to certify the application of [Greek:\ndiathemenou], is necessitated by the connexion.\n\nThe messages of this chapter for our time are equally manifest and\nweighty. It closes with the assertion of a principle which should be for\nall time decisive against all sorts and forms of \"re-presentation\" of\nthe Lord our Sacrifice. He has \"offered\" Himself once and for ever, and\nis now, on our behalf, not in the Presence only but upon the Throne. Yet\nmore urgent, more vital, if possible, is the affirmation here of the\nneed and of the virtue of His vicarious death. The chapter puts His\nblood-shedding before us in a way as remote as possible from a mere\nexample, or from a suffering meant to do its work mainly by a mysterious\nimpartation to us of the power to suffer. He dies \"for the redemption of\nthe transgressions under the first covenant\"--in other words, for the\nwelcome back to God of those who had sinned against His awful Law. He\ndies that we, \"the called,\" \"might receive the promise of an eternal\ninheritance.\" He dies, He offers, that we, wholly and solely because He\nhas done so, may find the heavenly, invisible, spiritual Holiest a place\nof perfect peace with God, dwelling in it as in our spirits' home.\n\nAre these the characteristic accents of the voice of the modern Church?\nHave we not need to listen again, reverent and believing, to the ninth\nchapter of the Hebrews, as it discourses about sanctuary, and sacrifice,\nand offering, and peace?\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VII\n\nFULL, PERFECT, AND SUFFICIENT\n\nHEB. x.\n\n\nThe heaven-taught Teacher has led us now along the avenue of the\nLevitical fore-shadowings, through the prophetic symbolism of the old\nhigh-priesthood, through the holy place and the holiest. The pathway,\nmarked by the blood of animal sacrifices, hallowing the awful terms of\nthe covenant of works, has brought us to the true Tabernacle and true\nSacrifice, to the better and final Covenant, to the supreme High Priest.\nThe teaching has left us, as the ninth chapter closes, \"looking up\nsteadfastly into heaven,\" recollecting where the Lord is and why He is\nthere; thinking how we, His Israel, \"have Him\" for our Representative\nand Mediator as He \"appears in the presence of God for us,\" and\nexpecting the hour of joy and glory when He will put aside the curtains\nof that tabernacle, and come forth to crown us with the final\nbenediction, receiving us \"unto the salvation\" of eternity (ix. 27,\n28).\n\nIt is a solemn but a happy attitude. It can be taken by those only who\nhave \"fled for refuge to the hope set before them.\" But they are to take\nit, as those who feel beneath their feet the rock of an assured\nsalvation and know their open way to the heart of God.\n\nThe argument now proceeds in living continuity. Its business now is to\naccentuate and develope the supremacy, the ultimacy--if the word may be\nallowed--of the finished work of the true High Priest, in contrast to\nthe provisional and preparatory \"law.\" The Writer has said much to us in\nthis way before, particularly in the preceding three chapters of the\nEpistle. But he must emphasize it again, for it is the inmost purport of\nhis whole discourse. And he must do it now with the urgency of one who\nhas in view a real peril of apostasy. His readers are hard pressed, by\npersuasions and by terrors, to turn back from Christ to the Judaistic\ntravesty of the message of the Law. He must tell them not only of the\nsplendour of Messiah's work but of the absolute finality of it for man's\nsalvation. To forsake it is to \"forsake their own mercy,\" to \"turn back\ninto perdition.\"\n\nSo he begins with a reminder of the incapacity of the Law to save, by\npointing to the ceaseless _repetition_ of the sacrificial acts. Year by\nyear, on one Atonement Day after another, the blood-shedding, the\nblood-sprinkling, the propitiation, had to be done again. Year by year\naccordingly the worshippers were treated as \"not perfect\" (ver. 1); that\nis to say, in the clear light of the context, they were not perfect as\nto reconciliation, they were loaded still with the burthen of guilt. The\n\"conscience of sins\" (ver. 2) haunted them still, that is to say, the\nweary sense of an unsettled score of offences, a position precarious and\nunassured before the Judge.\n\nWe believe--nay, with the Psalms in our hands, such Psalms as xxiii.,\nand xxxii., and ciii., we know--that for the really contrite and loyal\nheart, even under the Law, there were large experiences of peace and\njoy. But these blessings were not due to the sacrifices of the\ntabernacle or the temple, however divinely ordered. They were due to\nrevelations from many quarters of the character of the Lord Jehovah, and\nnot least, assuredly, to the conviction--how could the more deeply\ntaught souls have helped it?--that this vast and death-dealing\nceremonial had _a goal_ which alone could explain it, in some\ntranscendent climax of remission. But in itself the ritual emphasized\nnot gladness but judgment, not love but the dread fact of guilt. And the\nblood of goats could not for a moment be thought of (ver. 4) as _by\nitself_ able to make peace with God. At best it laid stress on the need\nof something which, while analogous to it on one side, should be\ntranscendently different and greater on the other.\n\nThe priests daily (ver. 11), the high priest yearly, as they slew and\nburnt the victims, and sprinkled blood, and wafted incense, in view of\nIsrael's tale of offences against his King, were all, by their every\naction, prophets of that mysterious something yet to come. They \"made\nremembrance of sins\" (ver. 3), writing always anew upon the conscience\nof the worshipper the certainty that sin, in its form of guilt, is a\ntremendous reality in the court of God, that it calls importunately for\npropitiation, while yet animal propitiations can never, by their very\nnature, be really propitiatory of themselves. Yet the God of Israel had\ncommanded them; they could not be _mere_ forms therefore. What could\nthey be then but types and suggestions of a reality which should at last\njustify the symbolism by a victorious fulfilment? Thus was an oracle\nlike Isa. liii. made possible. And thus, as we are taught expressly here\n(verses 5-7), the oracle of Psalm xl. was made possible, in which\n\"sacrifices and offerings,\" though prescribed to Israel by his King,\nwere not \"delighted in\" by Him, not \"willed\" by Him for their own sake\nat all, but in which One speaks to the Eternal about another and\nsupreme immolation, for which He who speaks \"has come\" to present\nHIMSELF. \"Ears hast Thou opened for me,\" runs the Hebrew (Ps. xl. 6). \"A\nbody hast Thou adjusted for me,\" was the Greek paraphrase of the\nSeventy, followed by the holy Writer here. It was as if the paraphrasts,\nlooking onward to the Hope of Israel, would interpret and expand the\nthought of an uttermost _obedience_, signified by the _ear_, into the\ncompleter thought of the _body_ of which the listening ear was part, and\nwhich should be given up wholly in sacrifice to God.[K]\n\n[K] So Kay, on this passage, in the _Speaker's Commentary_.\n\nIf this is at all the course of the Writer's exposition, there is\nnothing arbitrary in the sequel to it. He explains the enigmatic Psalm\nby finding in it the crucified and self-offering High Priest of our\nprofession. Of Him \"the roll of the book\" had spoken, as the supreme\ndoer and bearer for us of the will of God. His sacred Body was the Thing\nindicated by the prophetic altars of Aaron. When He \"offered\" it,\npresenting it to the eternal Holiness on our behalf, when He let it be\ndone to death because we had sinned, so that we might be accepted\nbecause it, because He, had suffered--then did He \"fill\" the types\n\"full\" of their true meaning, and so close their work for ever.\n\nYes, that work was now _for ever_ closed by the attainment of its goal.\nMoreover, _His_ work of sacrifice and of offering, of suffering and of\npresentation, was for ever finished also. This is the burthen and\nmessage of the whole passage (verses 11-18). \"Once for all\" ([Greek:\nephapax]), \"once for ever,\" the holy Body has been offered (ver. 10).\n\"He offered one sacrifice for sins in perpetuity,\" [Greek: eis to\ndienekes] (ver. 12). And therefore, not only for the priests of the old\nrite but for the High Priest of the heavenly order, \"there is no more\noffering for sin\" (ver. 18).\n\nAnd why? Because, for the new Israel, for the chosen people of faith\n(ver. 39), the supreme sacrifice and offering has done its work. It has\n\"sanctified\" them (verses 10, 29); that is to say, it has hallowed them\ninto God's accepted possession by its reconciling and redeeming\nefficacy. For its virtue does much more than rescue; it annexes and\nappropriates what it saves. It has \"perfected\" them (ver. 14); that is\nto say, it has placed them effectually in that position of complete\n\"peace with God\" which guilt while still unsettled makes impossible. It\nhas \"put them among the children,\" within the home circle of Divine\nlove. It has done this \"in perpetuity,\" [Greek: eis to dienekes] (ver.\n14); that is to say, they will never to the very last need anything but\nthat sacrifice and offering to be the cause and the warrant of their\nplace within that home. \"Their sins and their iniquities\" their\nreconciled Father \"will never remember any more\" against them (ver. 17),\nin the sense that the sacrifice once presented on their behalf will be\nbefore Him every moment in the person of the Self-Sacrificer, who sits\nbeside Him, \"appearing for us.\" They are the Israel of the great New\nCovenant. And that covenant, as we have already remembered (viii. 7-13),\nprovides for the spiritual transformation of the wills of the\ncovenanters; the law of their God shall be \"written on\" their very\nminds; that is to say, they shall will His will as their own. But such a\n\"writing\" demands, by the very nature of things, that _first, not last_,\nthere should be an absolute remission. For without remission there could\nnot be inward peace, nor therefore filial and paternal harmony. So, for\nthis deep mass of reasons, the new Israelites are _first_ wholly\naccepted for the sake of their self-offered High Priest, that _then_\nthey may be wholly transformed by His power, working through His peace,\nwithin themselves.\n\nThe great closing paragraphs of the chapter (verses 19-39) are one long\napplication of this sublime finality of the one Offering and this\npresentness of our complete acceptance. First, the new Israelite, his\n\"heart sprinkled from an evil conscience\" (ver. 22), released, that is\nto say, by the applied Sacrifice from the haunting sense of guilt, and\nhaving his \"body washed with pure water,\" the baptismal sign and seal of\nthe covenant blessing, is _to behave as what he is_--the child at home.\nThat home is the Holy Place; it is the very Presence of his God; but _it\nis home_. He is to pass into that sanctuary, along the pathway traced by\nthe blessed blood, not hesitating, but with the \"boldness\" of an\nabsolute reliance, perfectly free while perfectly and wonderingly\nhumbled; \"with a true heart, in fulness, in full assurance, of faith\"\n(ver. 22). He is to hold fast his avowal of assurance, and meanwhile he\nis to animate the brethren round him to a holy rivalry (ver. 24) of love\nand zeal. He is to maintain all possible worshipping union with them, in\nthe dawning light of the promised return of the now enthroned High\nPriest (ver. 25).\n\nThen, further, the new Israelite is to cherish the grace of godly fear.\nThe \"boldness\" of the loyal child is to go along with the clear\nrecollection that outside the holy home there lies only \"a wilderness of\nwoe.\" To leave it, to turn back from it, to be a renegade from covenant\njoys, is no mere exchange of the best for the less good. It means\nmultiplied and capital rebellion. No legal shadow-sacrifices will\nshelter now the soul that forsakes the eternal High Priest and casts His\nSelf-Sacrifice aside. To do that is to set out towards a hopeless\nretribution, towards the fire of judgment, the vengeance of the living\nGod (verses 26-31).\n\nWith tender urgency he pleads for fresh memories and fresh resolves\n(verses 32-35). He recalls to them days, not long ago, when they had\nborne shame and loss, \"a conflict of sufferings,\" fellowship with\noutcast and imprisoned saints, spoiling of their own possessions--all\nmade more than bearable by the joy of their wonderful \"enlightenment\"\n(ver. 32). Let them do so still, in full view of the coming crown. Let\nthem grasp afresh the glorious privilege of \"boldness\" (ver. 35),\nreaffirming to themselves with strong assurance that they are\n\"sanctified,\" \"perfected,\" at home with God in Christ. Let them rise up\nand go on in that noble \"patience\" (ver. 36) which \"suffers and is\nstrong.\" It is only \"a very little while\" before the High Priest will\nreappear. And the \"faith\" which takes Him at His word will, as the\nprophet witnesses (Hab. ii. 4), bridge that little while with a \"life\"\nwhich cannot die. To \"shrink back,\" as the same seer in the same breath\nwarns us, is to lose the smile of God in a final ruin. But that, for us,\ncannot be; we, in His mercy, relying upon the faithful Promiser, attain\n\"the saving of the soul.\"\n\nNow, as then, the tenth chapter of the Hebrews points with a golden rod\nto the one path of life, and peace, and perseverance to the end.\n\"Rejoice in the Lord; _for you it is safe_\" (Phil. iii. 1). The\n\"boldness\" of a humble assurance of a present and a great salvation\ntraces the way for us, as it traced the way of old, through holiness to\nHeaven.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER VIII\n\nFAITH AND ITS POWER\n\nHEB. xi. (I.)\n\n\nThe eleventh chapter of the Hebrews is a pre-eminent Scripture. With the\nfullest recognition of the Divine greatness of the whole Bible, never\nforgetting that \"every scripture hath in it the Spirit of God\" (2 Tim.\niii. 16), we are yet aware as we read that some volumes in the inspired\nLibrary are more pregnant than others, some structures in the sacred\ncity of the Bible more impressive than others, more rich in interest,\nmore responsive to repeated visits. Such a scripture among books is this\nEpistle, and such a scripture among chapters is that on which we enter\nnow.\n\nIt is impressive by the majestic singleness of its theme; Faith, from\nfirst to last, is its matter and its burthen. Further, it carries one\nlong appeal to the heart by its method; almost from the exordium to the\nvery close it deals with its theme not by abstract reasoning, nor even\nby a citation of inspired utterances only. It works out its message by\na display, in long and living procession, of inspired human experiences.\nIt is to an extraordinary degree human, dealing all along with names as\nfamiliar to us as any in any history can be; with characters which are\nperfectly individual; with lives lived in the face of difficulty,\ndanger, trial, sorrow, as concrete as possible; with deaths met and\novercome under conditions of mystery, suspense, trial to courage and to\ntrust, which for all time the heart of man can apprehend in their\nsolemnity. Meanwhile, as a matter of diction and eloquence, the chapter\ncarries in it that peculiar charm which comes always with a stately\nenumeration. It has often been remarked that there is a spell in the\nmere recitation of names by a master of verse:\n\n  \"Lancelot, and Pelleas, and Pellenore.\"\n\nOr take that great scene in _Marmion_, where the spectral summons is\npealed from Edinburgh Cross:\n\n  \"Then thunder'd forth a roll of names;\n   The first was thine, unhappy James!\n      Then all thy nobles came;\n   Crawford, Glencairn, Montrose, Argyle,\n   Ross, Bothwell, Forbes, Lennox, Lyle,\n      Each chief of birth and fame.\"\n\nAnd the consummate prose of this our chapter moves us with the like\nrhythmical power upon the spirit, while from Abel and Enoch onwards we\nhear recited, name by name, the ancestors of the undying family of\nfaith. No wonder that the chapter should have inspired to utterances\nformed in its own style the Christian eloquence of later days, as in\nthat noble closing passage of Julius Hare's _Victory of Faith_, where he\ncarries on the record through the apostolic age, and the early\npersecutions, and the times of the Fathers, to Wilfrid and Bernard, the\nWaldenses, Wiclif, Luther, Latimer, down to Oberlin, and Simeon, \"and\nHoward, and Neff, and Henry Martyn.\"\n\nSo we approach the chapter, familiar as it is (and it is so familiar\nbecause it is so great), with a peculiar and reverent expectation. We\nlook forward to another visit to this great gallery of \"the portraits of\nthe family of God\" with a pleasure as natural as it is reverent and\nbelieving. True to our plan in these expositions, however, we shall not\nattempt to comment upon it in the least degree fully or in detail. Our\naim will be rather to collect and focus together some main elements of\nits teaching, particularly in regard of their applicability to our own\ndays.\n\nThe first question suggested as we read is, what is the connexion of the\nchapter? Why does the Writer spend all this wealth of example and\napplication upon the one word Faith?\n\nThe reason is not far to seek. The tenth chapter closes with that word,\nor rather with that truth: \"My righteous man shall live by faith\"; \"we\nare of them that have faith, unto the saving of the soul.\" And this\nclose is only the issue of a strain of previous teachings, going far\nback towards the opening of the Epistle. \"The evil heart of unbelief,\"\nof \"unfaith,\" if the word may be used, is the theme of warning in iii.\n12: \"They could not enter in because of unbelief\" (iii. 19). \"The word\nof hearing did not profit them\" because of their lack of faith (iv. 2).\nIt is \"we who have believed\" who \"enter into God's rest\" (iv. 3).\nLooking to our great High Priest and His finished work, we are to \"draw\nnear with a true heart, in fulness of faith\" (x. 22), for the\nall-sufficient reason that such trust meets and appropriates eternal\ntruth: \"He is faithful that promised\" (x. 23).\n\nThese explicit occasional _mentions_ of faith are, however, as we might\nexpect, only a part of the phenomenon of the great place which _the\nidea_ of faith holds in the Epistle. When we come to reflect upon it,\nthe precise position of the Hebrew Christians was that of men seriously,\neven tremendously, tempted to walk by sight, not by faith. The Gospel\ncalled them to venture their all, for time and eternity, upon an\ninvisible Person, an invisible order, a mediation carried on above the\nskies, a presentation of sacrifice made in a temple infinitely other\nthan that of Mount Moriah, and a kingdom which, as to all outward\nappearance, belonged to a future quite isolated from the present. On the\nother hand, so they were told by their friends, and so it was perfectly\nnatural to them to think, the vast visible institutions of the Law were\nthe very truth of God for their salvation, and those institutions\nappealed to them through every sense. Why should they forsake a creed\nwhich unquestionably connected itself with Divine action and revelation\nin the past, and which presented itself actually to them under the\nembodiment of a widespread but coherent nation, all descended from\nAbraham and Israel, and of a glorious \"city of solemnities,\" and of a\ntemple which was itself a wonder of the world, and of which every detail\nwas \"according to a pattern\" of Divine purpose, and in which all the\nworship, all the ritual, done at the altars and within the veil, was\ngreat with the majesty of Divine prescription? There the pious Israelite\ncould behold one vast sacramental symbol of JEHOVAH'S life, glory, and\nfaithfulness. And the living priesthood that ministered there, in all\nits courses and orders, was one large, accessible organ of personal\nwitness to the blessings assured to the faithful \"child of the Law.\"\n\nIt demands an effort--and it well deserves an effort--to realize in some\nmeasure what the trial must have been for the sensitive mind of many a\nJewish convert to look thus from the Gospel to the Law as both shewed\nthemselves to him then. Even now the earnest and religious Jew, invited\nto accept the faith of Jesus, has his tremendous difficulties of\nthought, as we well know, although for so many ages Jerusalem has been\n\"trodden down,\" and the priesthood and sacrifices have become very\nancient history. But when our Epistle was written it was far otherwise.\nTrue, the great ruin of the old order was very near at hand, but not to\nthe common eye and mind. It may be--for all things are possible--that\nthe Papal system may be near its period; but certainly there is little\nlook of it to the traveller who visits Rome and contemplates St. Peter's\nand the Vatican. As little did the end of the Mosaic age present itself\nas probable, judging by externals, to the pilgrim to Jerusalem then,\nwhen, for example, the innumerable hosts of Passover-keepers filled the\nwhole environs of the city, and moved incessantly through the vast\ncourts around the sacred space where the great altar sent up its smoke\nmorning and evening, and where the wonderful House stood intact, \"a\nmountain of snow pinnacled with gold.\"\n\nThink of the contrast between such historic invitations to \"walk by\nsight\" towards the bosom of Abraham, and the call to \"come out and be\nseparate\" in some Christian upper-room, devoid of every semblance of\ndecorative art and dignified proportion, only to listen to the Word, to\npray and praise in the name of the Crucified, and to eat and drink at\nthe simple Eucharist, the rite of Thanksgiving for--the Master's awful\ndeath!\n\nRecollecting these facts of the position, it is no wonder that the\nWriter emphasizes the greatness and glory of faith, and that now he\ndevotes this whole noble and extended chapter to illustrate that glory.\n\nWe come thus to the opening words of the passage, and listen to him as\nhe takes the word \"faith\" up, and sets it apart, to look afresh at its\nsignificance and to describe its potency, before he proceeds, with the\ntact and skill of sympathy, to illustrate his account of it from the\nhistory so deeply sacred to the tried Hebrew Christian's heart.\n\n\"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things\nnot seen.\" So the Revisers translate the first verse. They place in\ntheir margin, as an alternative, a rendering which makes faith to be\n\"the giving substance to things hoped for, the test of things not seen.\"\nI presume to think that the margin is preferable as a representation of\nthe first clause in the Greek, and the text as a representation of the\nsecond. So I would render (with the one further variation, in view of\nthe Greek, that I dispense with the definite article): \"Now faith is a\ngiving of substance to things hoped for, a demonstration of things not\nseen.\" And we may paraphrase this rendering somewhat thus: \"Faith is\nthat by which the hoped-for becomes to us as if visible and tangible,\nand by which the unseen is taken and treated as proven in its\nverity.\"[L]\n\n[L] A friend has pointed out to me that in the recently discovered\npapyri, which, although a relatively small part of them only has been\nread as yet, have thrown much deeply interesting light on the character\nand vocabulary of Greek as used by the New Testament writers, the word\n[Greek: hypostasis] is found with the meaning of \"title-deeds.\" On the\nhypothesis of such a meaning here (we can only speak with reserve), we\nmay paraphrase: \"Faith enables us to treat things hoped for as a\nproperty of which we hold the deeds.\"\n\nIn the light of what we have recalled regarding the position of the\nfirst readers of the words, we have only to render them thus to see\ntheir perfect appropriateness, their adjustment to an \"exceeding need.\"\nThe Gospel led its disciple supremely and ultimately always towards the\nhoped-for and the unseen. True, it had a reference of untold value and\npower to the seen and present. There was then, as there is in our day,\nnothing like the Gospel to transfigure character, on the spot, here and\nnow, and thus to transfigure the scene and the persons around the man,\nbefore his eyes, within reach of his hands, in the whole intercourse of\nhis life, by giving them all a new and wonderful yet most practical\nimportance through the Lord's relation to them and to him. But it does\nthis always and inevitably in the power and in the light of facts which\nare out of sight now, and of prospects essentially bound up with \"the\nlife of the world to come.\" The most diligent and sensible worker in\nChristian philanthropy, _if he is fully Christian_ in his idea and\naction, does what he does so well for the relief of the oppressed, or\nfor the civilization of the degraded, because at the heart of his useful\nlife he spiritually knows \"Him that is invisible,\" and is animated by\nthe thought that he works for beings capable, after this life's\ndiscipline, of \"enjoying Him fully for ever.\" He labours for man, man on\nearth, because he loves God in heaven, and because he believes that God\nmade man and redeemed man for an immortality to which time is only the\nshort while all-important avenue. In the calmest and most normal\nChristian periods, accordingly, for the least perilous and heroic forms\nof faithful Christian service, it is vital to remember that attitude and\naction of the soul which we call faith. For faith is essential both to\nthe victories and the utilities of the Christian life, just so far as\nthat life touches always at its living spring \"things hoped for,\"\n\"things not seen.\" And at a time like that of the first readers of the\nEpistle every such necessity was enhanced indefinitely, both by the\nperils and threatenings which they had to face and by the majestic\nillusion to which they were continually exposed--the illusion under\nwhich the order of the Law, because it was Divine in origin and\nmagnificent in its visible embodiment, looked as if it must be the\npermanent, the final, phase of sacred truth and life on earth.\n\nIn our next chapter we will consider both the account of faith here\ngiven and some main points in the illustration of it by examples.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER IX\n\nFAITH AND ITS ANNALS\n\nHEB. xi. (II.)\n\n\nWe considered in the last chapter the account of Faith with which the\napostolic Writer opens this great recital of the \"life, work, and\ntriumph of faith\" in holy human lives. His words, as we found, lend\nthemselves to some variety of explanation in detail: the term [Greek:\nhypostasis] alone may be interpreted in at least three ways. But I do\nnot think that this need disturb us as to the essential meaning of the\ndescription. Each and all of the renderings leave us with the thought\nthat faith has a power in it to make the thing hoped-for act upon us as\nif it were attained, and the invisible as if it were before our eyes.\n\nWe may pause so far further over the description of faith here as to\npoint out that it is precisely this, a description, not a definition. To\nquote Heb. xi. 1 as a good definition of faith is to mistake its import\naltogether. I have often recalled, in speech or writing, a story told\nme forty years ago by an Oxford friend when we were masters together at\na public school. He had attended a Greek Testament lecture at his\ncollege a few years before, and the lecturer one day asked the class for\na definition of faith. Some one quoted Heb. xi. 1, and the lecturer's\nanswer was, \"You could not have given a worse definition.\" My old\nfriend, a \"broad\" but most reverent Churchman, referred to this as an\ninstance of painful flippancy. It may have been so. But I am prepared to\nthink that the lecturer may not have meant it so at all. He may only\nhave expressed rather crudely his view, the right view, to my mind, that\nwe have here not a definition of faith at all but a description of faith\nas an operative force, an account of what faith looks like when it is at\nwork; and this is a very different matter.\n\nWhat is a definition? A precise and exclusive statement of the\nessentials of a thing, such that it will fit no other thing. A\ndescription may be something altogether different from this. It may so\nhandle the object that the terms are not exclusive at all, but are\nequally applicable to something else; as here for example, where the\nphraseology would equally well describe imagination in its more vivid\nforms--a thing as different as possible from faith. To be quite\npractical, we have here, if we read this first verse in the light of\nthe whole subsequent development of the chapter, a description of faith\nat work, of the potency and victories of faith, rather than a definition\nof faith in its distinctive essence. A true parallel to this passage is\nthe familiar sentence, \"Knowledge is power.\" Those words do not define\nknowledge, obviously; to do that would demand a totally different\nphrase. What the words do is to give us one great resultant of\nknowledge; to tell us that the possession and use of knowledge endows\nthe man who knows with a force and efficiency which he would lack\nwithout it. Few words are more elastic and adaptable than the verb\nsubstantive. \"_Is_\" can denote a wide variety of ideas, from that of\npersonal identity, as when I see that yonder distant figure _is_ my\nbrother; to that of equivalence, as when a stamped and signed piece of\nthin paper called a bank-note _is_ five pounds of gold; or to that of\nmere representation, as when another piece of paper, or a sheet of\ncanvas, duly lined and coloured by the artist to show the semblance of a\nhuman face, _is_ the King, or _is_ my father; or to that of result and\neffect, as when we say that knowledge _is_ power, or that seeing _is_\nbelieving.[M]\n\n[M] It is obvious that these elementary reflections have everything to\ndo with the need of caution in explaining those most sacred words, \"This\n_is_ my body which is given for you.\"\n\nHere we have precisely that last application of the verb substantive,\nonly in an exact and most noble antithesis. \"Seeing is believing,\" says\nthe familiar proverb. \"Believing is seeing,\" says the Divine word here.\nThat is to say, when the human soul so relies upon God that His word is\nabsolute and sufficient for its certainties, this reliance, this faith,\nhas in it the potency of sight. It is as sure of the promised blessing\nas if it were a present possession. It is as ready to act upon \"the\nthings not seen as yet,\" the laws, powers, hopes beyond the veil, as if\nall was in open view to the eyes of the body.\n\nThe whole course of the chapter, when it comes down to particulars and\npersons, bears this out. From first to last the message carried to us by\nthe lives and actions of the faithful is this, that they took their Lord\nat His word, simply as His word, and in the power of that reliance found\nthemselves able to act as if the unseen were seen and the hoped-for were\npresent. \"The elders\" (ver. 2) are in view from the first--that is to\nsay, the pre-Christian saints, who were in _that_ sense distinctively\nmen who proved the power of faith, that they all lived and died before\nthe visible fulfilment of the great promise of salvation. To them, to be\nsure, or rather to many of them, not to all, merciful helps were\ngranted. The unseen and the hoped-for was sometimes, not always, made\nmore tangible to them by the grant of some sign and token, some portent\nor miracle, by the way. But the careful Bible-reader knows how very\nlittle such things are represented in the holy histories as being the\n\"daily bread\" of the life of the old believers. Even in the lives where\nthey occur most often they come at long and difficult intervals, and in\nsome lives not at all, or hardly at all. And assuredly we gather here\nthat, to the mind of the apostolic Writer, no experience of miracles, no\npermission even to hold direct colloquy with the Eternal, ever made up\nfor that immeasurable \"aid to faith\" which we enjoy who know the\nIncarnate Son as fact, and walk on an earth which has seen the God-Man\ntraverse it, and die upon it, and rise again.\n\nThese \"elders\" were men called to live, in an eminent and most trying\ndegree, not by sight but by faith, by mere reliance upon a Promiser.\nTherefore their living witness to the capacity of faith to make the\nunseen visible and the hoped-for present is the more precious to us. We,\nwith the Christ of God manifested to us, displayed in history,\nexperienced in the heart--what are not we to find the power of faith to\nbe in our lives, having, for our supreme seal upon faith, the promise\nfulfilled, the Image of the Invisible God, made one with our nature and\ndwelling in our hearts?\n\nOne partial exception, and only one, to this great ruling lesson of the\nchapter is to be noted; it occurs in the second verse. There \"by faith\nwe perceive that the worlds,\" the _aeons_, the dispensations and\nevolutions of created being, \"have been framed,\" perfected, adjusted to\none another, \"by the Word of God, so that not from things which appear\nhas that which is seen originated.\" These words appear to be inserted\nwhere they stand in order, so to speak, to carry the sequence of the\nreferences to the Old Testament down from its very first page. The work\nof faith has exercise in face of the mysterious narrative of Creation,\nand in this one instance the exercise is quoted as what concerns us now\nquite as much as \"the elders.\" They like us, we like them, get our\nguarantee as to the facts of the primal past not by sight but by faith,\nby taking God at His word. He, in His revelation, tells us that \"in the\nbeginning\"--the beginning of whatever existence is other than\neternal--\"God created.\" Things finite, things visible, came into\noriginal being not as evolved from previous similar material, but as of\nHis will.\n\nBut when that pregnant side-word has once been said, the argument\nsettles itself forthwith upon the recorded examples of the potency of\nfaith as \"the elders\" exercised it. We see man after man enabled to\ntreat the invisible as visible, the promised as present, by reliant rest\nupon the word of God, however conveyed. To Abel, we know not how, it was\ndivinely said that the sacrificed \"firstling\" was the acceptable\noffering, and, antecedent to any possible experience, he offered it. To\nEnoch, we know not how, it was made known that the Eternal, as invisible\nto him as to us, cared for man's worshipping company, and he addressed\nhimself through his age-long life to \"walk with God.\" Noah was apprised,\nfor the first time in man's known history, of an approaching cataclysm\nand of the way of escape; the promise came to him wrapped in the cloud\nof an awful warning, and it was long delayed, but he acted upon it in\nthe steady energy of faith. Abraham was \"called,\" we know not precisely\nhow, but in some way which tested his reliance on things \"not seen as\nyet,\" and he set out on that wonderful life of a hundred years of faith.\nHe renounced the settled habits and old civilization of Chaldea for the\nnew life of a Syrian nomad, \"settling permanently in tents\" ([Greek: en\nskenais katoikesas]), he and his son and his grandson after him, all in\nview of an invisible future made visible by the trusted promise, a\nfuture culminating at last to his \"eye of faith,\" so here we are\nsolemnly assured, in the city of the saints, in the Canaan of the\nheavens. The same reliance on the sheer word of promise nerved him to\nthe awful ordeal of the all-but immolation of his son. And that son in\nhis turn, against all appearances, and rather bowing to the Word of God\nthan embracing it, blessed _his_ least-loved son above his dearest; and\nthat son in his turn, and his son in his turn, carried the process on,\ntreating the greatness of Ephraim and the deliverance from Egypt as\nthings seen and present, because God had so spoken. The parents of\nMoses, and then Moses himself, in his strange life of disappointments\nand wonders, deal likewise with the future, the unseen, the seemingly\nimpossible, on the warrant of a promise. Figures as little heroic in\nnatural character as Sarah, as little noble in life as Rahab, take place\nin the long procession, as those who treat the invisible as visible by\nfaith. So do the thronging \"elders\" of ver. 32--a group singularly\ndiverse in everything but this victory over the seen and present by\nfaith in the promise. So do the unnamed confessors and martyrs of the\nclosing paragraph, the heartbroken, the tortured, the wanderers of the\ndens and caves, who all alike, amidst a thousand differences of\ncondition and of character, \"obtained a good report through faith\"; and\nall won through faith that victory, so great when we reflect upon\nit--that they died \"not having received the promise.\" They trusted _to\nthe very end_. When they sank down in death upon their shadowy path of\npilgrimage, \"the promise,\" the promised Christ, had not yet come.\nNevertheless they treated the hope of Him as fact, and they won their\nvictory by faith.\n\nAnd now they are parts and members of the \"great cloud\" who watch us in\nour turn--us, with things unseen and hoped-for still in front, but with\nJESUS at our side.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER X\n\nFOLLOWERS OF THEM\n\nHEB. xii. 1-14\n\n\nThe Epistle approaches its close. The Writer has much yet to say to the\ndisciples upon many things, all connected with that main interest of\ntheir lives, a resolute fidelity to the Lord, to the Gospel, and to one\nanother. But he has not yet quite done with that side of their\n\"exceeding need\" to which the antidote is _the faith_ which can deal\nwith the future as the present, with the unseen as the seen. Upon this\ntheme, from one aspect or another, is spent the passage now before us.\n\nFirst, the appeal is to the recollection that the combat, the race, the\nvictory of faith, as it was for the Hebrew believers, \"the contest set\nbefore _us_\" (ver. 1), not only had been fought and won before them by\nthe saints of the old time, but that those saints were now, from their\nblessed rest, as \"spirits of the just made perfect\" (ver. 23), watchers\nand witnesses of their successors' course. \"We have, lying around us,\nso great a cloud of witnesses\" (ver. 1). \"We\" are running, like the\ncompetitors in the Hellenic stadium, in the public view of a mighty\nconcourse, so vast, so aggregated, so placed aloft, that no word less\ngreat than \"cloud\" occurs as its designation: that \"long cloud\" as it is\nfinely called in Isaac Watts' noble hymn, \"Give me the wings of faith.\"\nTrue, the multitudinous watchers are unseen, but this only gives faith\nanother opportunity of exercise; we are to treat the Blessed as seen,\nfor we know that they are there, living to God, one with us, fellows of\nour life and love. So let us address ourselves afresh to the spiritual\nrace, the course of faith. Let us, as athletes of the soul, strip all\nencumbrance off, \"every weight\" of allowed wrong, all guilty links with\nthe world of rebellion and self-love; \"the sin which doth so easily\nbeset us,\" clinging so soon around the feet, like a net of fine but\nstubborn meshes, till the runner gives up the hopeless effort and is\nlost.[N]\n\n[N] I cannot think possible the alternative (marginal) rendering of\n[Greek: euperistaton] in the Revised Version--\"_admired by many_.\" There\nis example for the meaning in classical Greek, but the _idea_ is totally\nout of keeping with the spirit of this passage.\n\nI thus explain the \"witnesses\" to mean spectators, watchers, not\ntestifiers. The context seems to me to decide somewhat positively for\nthis explanation. It is an altogether pictorial context; the imagery of\nthe foot-race comes suddenly up, and in a moment raises before us the\nvision of the stadium and its surroundings. The reader cannot see the\ncourse with his inner eyes without also seeing those hosts of eager\nlookers-on which made, on every such occasion, in the old world as now,\nthe life of the hour. In such a context nothing but explicit and\npositive reasons to the contrary could give to the word \"witnesses,\" and\nto the word \"cloud\" in connexion with it, any other allusion. True,\nthese watchers are all, as a fact, evidential \"witnesses\" also,\ntestifiers to the infinite benefit and success of the race of faith. But\nthat thought lies almost hidden behind the other. It is as loving,\nsympathetic, inspiring lookers-on that the old saints, from Abel\nonwards, are here seen gathered, thronging and intent, around us as we\nrun.\n\nThe conception runs off of course into mystery, as every possible\nconception about the unseen does, even when Scripture is most explicit\nabout unseen facts. We ask, and ask in vain, what is the medium through\nwhich these observers watch us, the air and light, as it were, in which\ntheir vision acts; what is their proximity to us all the while; to what\nextent they are able to know the entire conditions of our race. But all\nthis leaves faith in peaceful possession of a fact of unspeakable\nanimation. It tells the discouraged or tired Christian, tempted to think\nof the unseen as a dark void, that it is rather a bright and populous\nworld, in mysterious touch and continuity with this, and that our\nforerunners, from those of the remotest past down to the last-called\nbeloved one who has passed out of our sight, know enough about us to\nmark our advance and to prepare their welcome at the goal.\n\nIn that rich treasury of sacred song, _Hymns from the Land of Luther_,\nis included the translation of a noble hymn by Simon Dach, _O wie selig\nseid ihr doch, ihr Frommen_, \"O how happy are ye, saints forgiven.\" That\nhymn beautifully illustrates this verse. It is written responsively all\nthrough. One stanza, sung upward, is the utterance from below of the\npilgrim Church, longing for her rest. The next, sung from above, is the\nanswer of the Blessed, telling of their love and sympathy, taught them\nby their own similar sufferings, of their bright foreview of the\ncelestial crown reserved for their still toiling brethren. So the two\nchoirs answer each other, turn by turn, till at last both join in a\nglorious concert of blended song, a closing strain of faith and praise.\nLet us listen often for those answers from above.\n\nBut the holy Writer has more to say yet about the motives to faith. He\npoints the weary saints upward, even beyond the \"cloud,\" to a Form\nradiant and supreme. They are to run, conscious of the witnesses, but\nyet more intently \"looking off ([Greek: aphorontes]) unto JESUS, the\nsupreme Leader ([Greek: archegon]) and Perfecter of faith\"; that is to\nsay, the Lord of the whole host of the believing, and Himself the\nconsummate Worker in the field of faith, who, for a joy promised _but\nnot seen_, \"endured the Cross,\" when its immediate aspect was an\ninexpressible outrage and disgrace; reaching the throne of all\nexistence, as Son of Man, in spite of every possible appearance to the\ncontrary (ver. 2). Yes, and not only was that final victory thus won by\nHim, but He arrived at it by a path full of the conflicts which threaten\nfaith. He \"endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself\" (ver.\n3). Year by year, day by day, from the Pharisee, from the worldling,\nfrom the leaders of religion, from the inconstant crowd, He had\n\"contradiction\" to endure--sometimes even from \"the men of His own\nhousehold.\" He was challenged to prove His claims; He was insulted over\nHis assertion of them, or over His silence about them. In every way, at\nevery turn, they spoke against Him to His face, as He slowly advanced,\nthrough a life of love and suffering, to the Agony and the Crucifixion.\n\nLet us not think that all this put no strain, even in the King Messiah,\nupon faith. It may seem scarcely reverent (I know devout and thoughtful\nChristians who have felt it to be so) to speak of our blessed Lord as\nexercising faith, as being the supreme Believer. But we need not shrink\nfrom the thought. It is no more irreverent, surely, than to accept the\nevidence of the Gospels to His perfect human capacity to be weary, to be\nsurprised, to be specially moved to compassion by _the sight_ of\nsuffering. In His sinless conformity \"in all things to His brethren\"\nthere was never for one moment room in Him--of this we may be amply\nsure--for error of thought or of word, as He acted as the supreme and\nabsolute Prophet of His Church. But there was room, so we are expressly\ntold, on one tremendous occasion at least (Matt. xxvi. 37), for a\nmysterious \"bewilderment\" ([Greek: ademonein]) of His blessed human\nsoul. Can we doubt that the victory won in the Garden, after which He\nwent with profound calmness to the unjust priest, and Pilate, and the\nCross, was of the nature of a victory of faith? Did He not then treat\nthe coming \"joy\" as a reality although, in so awful a sense and measure\nHe did not \"feel\" it then? The \"bewilderment\" did not drive Him back\nfrom our redemption; and why? Because \"He TRUSTED in GOD that He would\ndeliver Him\" (Ps. xxii. 9; Matt. xxvii. 42), whatever should be the\ncontents of \"the cup\" from which His whole humanity turned away as\n_almost_ impossible to drink.\n\nAnd may we not be sure that on many a previous occasion of minor and yet\nbitter trial, when evil men gathered round Him with cynical objections\nand ruthless denials of His claims, the victory was akin to the victory\nof Gethsemane? Often, surely, a strange \"bewilderment\" must have beset\nthe Redeemer's soul, of which the external token was the sigh, the\ngroan, the tears, which shewed Him to be so truly Man.\n\nWe all hold, in full doctrinal orthodoxy, that the Lord's sufferings,\nboth of soul and body, were no \"docetic\" semblance but a deep and\ninfinitely pathetic reality. But we need at times to think somewhat\ndeliberately in order to receive the full impression of that truth upon\nthe heart. And then surely we are constrained to see in Him, who thus\nreally suffered and really \"endured,\" the supreme Exemplar of the\nvictory of faith, the perfect Sympathizer with the tried believer.\n\nFrom this pregnant thought, of the faith exercised by JESUS, the\ndisciple is directly led in the remainder of our passage to the\npractical inferences for himself. The days, for those first readers of\nthe Epistle, were indeed evil. Though not yet called to martyrdom (ver.\n4), they were hard beset, not only by importunate reasonings and appeals\nwhich, as we have seen all along, were straining their spiritual\nallegiance, but by actual outrages (see _e.g._ x. 34), by the\n\"scourging\" (ver. 6) of bitter social persecution. Well, \"looking off\nunto\" Him who had so greatly endured, they were, in these things also,\nto see the unseen and to presentiate the future. From the Proverbs (iii.\n11, 12), that book where the apostolic insight so often finds the purest\nspiritual messages,[O] he quotes (verses 5, 6) the tender words which\nbid the chastened child see in his chastening the assurance (ver. 8) of\nhis happy, holy sonship in the home of a Father, \"the Father of our\nspirits,\" who, unlike our earthly fathers even at their best (and that\nwas a noble best indeed), not only chastens, but chastens with an\nunerring result of holiness in the submissive child--yea, a holiness\nwhich is one with His own (ver. 10), His Spirit in our wills.\n\n[O] It was evidently a book dear to St. Peter's mind, as his First\nEpistle shews.\n\nBeautiful is _the sympathy_ of this appeal to live, by faith, the life\nof victorious patience. \"All chastening, for the present, seems not to\nbelong to joy but grief\" (ver. 11). Yes, the immediate pain is here\nfully recognized, not ignored. It is not spoken of as if, in view of its\nsequel, it did not matter. \"It belongs to grief.\" Scripture is full of\nthis tender insight into the bitterness of even our salutary sorrows,\nand its appeals to patience are all the more potent for that insight.\n\"Nevertheless, afterward, it produces the peace-bringing fruit of\nrighteousness,\" the sense of a profound inward rest, found in conformity\nto the \"sweet, beloved will of God,\" in living correspondence to the\nFather's rule, \"for those who have been exercised, as in a spiritual\n_gymnasium_ ([Greek: gegymnasmenois]), thereby.\" That \"exercise\" was to\ntell at once, as they surrendered their wills to it in faith, in a\npresent sense of the certainty of future blessing. \"Brace the slack\nhands\" to toil, \"and the unstrung knees\" to march (ver. 12), \"and make\nstraight paths for your feet,\" using your will, faith-strengthened, to\nchoose the line of the will of God, and that alone. So should \"the lame\nthing\" be \"healed\" rather than \"turned aside.\" The walk, feeble and\nhalting always when the will is divided, should be restored to firmness\nand certainty again.\n\n\"Nevertheless, afterward.\" That is the watchword of the whole pregnant\npassage. Nature, shortsighted and impatient, can deal with the seen and\nthe present only. Grace, in its victorious form of patient faith,\nalready takes hold upon the \"afterward,\" and works on, and walks on, \"as\nseeing Him that is invisible.\"\n\nWith the thought of the witness-cloud around us, and \"looking off\" to\nthe Prince of Faith, ascended, yet present with us, and sure of the\nultimate and eternal \"fruit of righteousness\" which lies hidden in the\nchastening of the Father of our spirits--we too will live by faith,\ntaking God at His word, and saying Amen to His will, even to the end.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XI\n\nSINAI AND SION\n\nHEB. xii. 14-28\n\n\nThe paragraph before us is largely concerned with the inner life of the\nbelieving community, its cohesion member with member, and the call to\neach member and to all to \"walk warily in dangerous days,\" in the path\nof evangelical holiness. The Writer lays it upon them (ver. 14) to\n\"pursue peace with all,\" such peace as always _tends_, even in bad\ntimes, to reward the \"sons of peace,\" while they so behave themselves as\nnever on their own part to contribute a factor to avoidable strife, and\nwhile the influence of their meek consistency leavens in some measure\nthe mass around them. With equal and concurrent care they are to \"pursue\nsanctification.\" It is to be their strong ambition to develope and\ndeepen incessantly that dedication of themselves to the Holy One which\nwill give them at once the standard and the secret of holiness, by\nbringing them into immediate contact with Him who is at once their law\nand their life. They are to \"live out,\" in the spirit of a resolute\nquest after fuller and yet fuller attainment, the fact that He has\nredeemed them to be \"a people of His own possession\"; remembering, with\na solemn simplicity of conviction, that only \"the pure in heart\" shall\never be able to \"see God.\" For the spirit which refuses to come into a\nsurrendered harmony with His Spirit might be set in the midst of heaven\nitself, yet it would be blind, it would be blinded--by that _alien_\nglory. They are to keep watch and oversight upon one another (ver. 15),\nmutually observant all round, to see that the life of faith and love is\nalive indeed. Does any one find his fellow-believer \"falling short of\nthe grace of God,\" sinking into conduct no better than the world's? This\nmust at once disquiet the observer, and call out his loving warnings, or\nat least his anxious intercessions; for the declining convert inevitably\nextends an influence of decline around him, and the issue will be, in\nthe end, a declining Church. Is \"any root of bitterness growing up\"? Is\nthere (see Deut. xxix. 18) any Christian in the company so fallen, so\n\"embittered\" by alienation from his Lord, as to be a cause around him of\n\"defilement,\" so as to stain ultimately large circles ([Greek: hoi\npolloi]) with the deep pollution of a practical apostasy from holiness?\nIs there here and there a personal example of spiritual infidelity\n([Greek: pornos]) to the Lord, of that radically \"secular\" ([Greek:\nbebelos]) spirit (ver. 16) of which Esau is the type, to which some\n\"mess of meat,\" some material advantage, proves overwhelmingly more\nmomentous than the unworldly \"birthright\" given by the promise of God?\nLet them all watch as for their life against such symptoms. It is a\nmatter of eternal import. The ancient Esau found too late that he was an\noutcast, irrevocably, from the great blessing, though then he cried for\nit with a cry great and bitter. In vain he asked his father to reverse\nthe destiny; there was no \"place of repentance\" in Isaac's will, for\nIsaac knew that he had but carried out, blind as he was, the will of\nGod.\n\nThen follows (verses 18-24) that sublime antithesis of Sinai and Sion\nwhich forms one of the greatest examples of rhythmical, of almost\nlyrical, eloquence in the whole New Testament. On the one hand looms on\nthe view the Thing,[P] material, tangible ([Greek: pselaphomeno]), all\non fire, black with tempestuous cloud, its echoes pealing (ver. 19) to a\ntremendous trumpet-blast and then to a yet more awful \"voice of words.\"\nAt its base cowers an awe-struck, horror-struck, host of men,\nshuddering at the warning (ver. 20) not to touch the fatal rocks,\ncrowding for refuge round a leader who himself owns (ver. 21) to\nheart-shaking fears.[Q] On the other hand, as the eyes of faith are\nlifted, there shines into view, and in the closest spiritual proximity\n(for the believing company has actually \"come unto it,\" ver. 22), the\nhill eternal, the true Mount Sion, where shines the city of the living\nGod, the Jerusalem of heaven. No barren rocks are there, nor do menaces\nof articulate thunder sound from and around that height. All is light,\nand all is life. Yes, above all things all is life. Behold the countless\nthousands ([Greek: myriasin]) of radiant denizens, the angelic friends\nof man; and then beatified men besides (ver. 23), \"festal, assembly and\nchurch of the first-born, enrolled in heaven\"; the Blessed gone before,\nthe \"great cloud,\" seen now in their other character, as the triumphant\nthrong of a celestial Passover, or of a Tabernacle-feast of palms, kept\nin the better Canaan to commemorate the mercies of the mortal\nwilderness. And there, centre and sun of the wonderful scene, is the\nglory of the \"Judge of all,\" Vindicator (so we read the meaning of the\nword [Greek: krites] here) of His afflicted ones, treading down their\nenemies and presiding in majesty over their happy estate. Around Him\nrest and rejoice the pure \"spirits of the just made perfect,\" the dear\nand holy who have lately passed through death, \"perfected\" already, even\nbefore their resurrection, in respect of the course finished, the fight\nfought, the faith kept, the trial for ever over. Lastly (ver. 24), the\nform is seen of the more than Moses of this better Mount of God. Behold\nthe Mediator, not of the old covenant but of the new, the Covenant of\nthe Eternal Spirit. Behold the Surety of the promise of the purified\nheart, the promise sealed with that sprinkled blood of the Incarnate\nLamb which, in Divine antithesis to the call for vengeance on the\nfratricide which went up from Abel's death, claims for the \"brethren\"\nwho once slew their Deliverer not remission only but holiness and\nheaven.\n\n[P] The word [Greek: orei] is certainly absent from the true text. We\nare left as in presence of a mysterious _somewhat_, a mighty mass,\nmantled in terror and without form or name.\n\n[Q] A traditional utterance must be referred to. But the whole narrative\nin Exodus and in Deuteronomy supports it.\n\nIt is a wonderful picture, the hill of the awful Law confronted by the\n\"hill whence cometh our help.\" And we ask ourselves why, just here in\nthe Epistle, it is painted for us and left upon our spirit's eyes for\never. Surely it is that the Hebrew disciple (and we in our turn to-day)\nmay be quickened in watching and in walking alike by an immense\nencouragement and a warning of corresponding power. The call has just\nbeen made, all through the twelfth chapter up to this point, to endure,\nto watch, to warn each other, to pursue to the uttermost the ambition of\nholiness. Let this be done as by those whose pilgrim tents are pitched\nas it were in a valley between those two mountains of God. Let the true\nIsraelite turn his eyes sometimes upon Sinai, to learn again from its\nshadows and its thunders the infinite importance of the eternal Will,\nthe awfulness of transgression, the terrors of the Law when its demand\nis met only by the miserable failures of the sinner. Then, humbled lower\nthan the dust, let him turn towards the eternal Sion, and not only turn\ntowards it but recollect that in the Spirit, and in the Son, he has\n\"_come unto it_.\" In the Lord Christ, his better Moses, his saving\nMediator, he has already arrived beside it and rests upon it. No voice\nof thunder bids him not to touch it \"lest he be thrust through.\" He is\ncommanded to come as near to it as it is possible to be, because he is\nto come to \"the Lord of the Hill\" Himself, in the absolute proximity of\nfaith, love, and life. He is welcomed to its recesses, and to its\nheights. The first-born are his brethren; the just made perfect are his\nown beloved; every angel of all the host is his friend; the supreme\nJudge is his omnipotent Protector; Jesus is his Peace, through the blood\nof His Cross. \"Blest inhabitant of Sion, washed in the Redeemer's\nblood!\" Shall he not address himself to the path and pursuit of\nholiness with a heart beating with an inexhaustible hope, and with a\nlife present while eternal?\n\nThen, as the great paragraph approaches its climax, the note of warning\nsounds again (ver. 25). The convert, fresh from the reminder of the\n\"voice\" of the sprinkled blood of the better covenant, is cautioned not\nto \"refuse\" it, not to \"decline\" it ([Greek: me paraitesesthe]). The\nprimary reference is manifestly to that perpetual danger of the Hebrews,\nthe temptation to turn back from the Gospel, with its spiritual order\nand its hopes of things not yet seen, to the outworn Dispensation, with\nits externally majestic circumstances of glorious ritual and imposing\nshows of polity and power. They would need again and again to open the\nsoul's ears and eyes, and steadfastly to recollect, against all\nappearances, that we \"_are come unto_ the Mount Sion,\" if they were to\nresist the magnetic forces which drew them back towards Sinai--and\ntowards death. So they were to hear the sweet voices of heavenly love,\nand festal life, and blood-bought covenanted peace, sounding from the\ntrue Sion, with joy indeed but also with holy dread. They were to _fear_\nlest they should \"decline\" them, lest sense should conquer faith and the\nsoul be lost under the mountain of condemnation after all. \"For if they\ndid not escape who on earth declined Him who spoke oraculous warning\n([Greek: chrematizonta]), much more shall we not escape, turning from\nHim who warns from heaven\" (ver. 25). The contemner of the ban of Sinai\nfell \"stricken through\" the body. The \"decliner\" of the admonition to\nturn no more to the hill of doom, but boldly to climb the hill of peace,\nwill fall stricken through the soul. That warning voice, which once\nshook the desert, has now promised (ver. 26)--for a promise, the promise\nof an eternal redemption, lies deep in that threatening (Hag. ii.\n6)--that not earth only but heaven is yet to feel His shaking, and once\nfor ever when it comes. He, \"yet once more,\" shall work one vast\n\"removing\"; and then (ver. 27) a stability irremovable shall finally\ncome in. \"The things that have been made,\" the terrestrial and material\n\"figures of the real\" (ix. 24), are to pass away, never to return, in\norder that \"the things incapable of disturbance\" ([Greek: ta me\nsaleuomena]) \"may remain.\" And what are these things? Nothing less than\nthe spiritual, ultimate, all-fulfilling truths and glories to which the\n\"things made\" served as preparation, type, and foil, but which\nthemselves to all eternity shall know no successors, no \"new order\"\nthrough which God shall otherwise \"fulfil Himself.\" For what are they,\nin their inmost essence? They are the truths which spring always from\nthe Incarnate Son, and return always into Him; \"the redemption that is\nin Christ Jesus, with eternal glory.\"\n\nSo let the disciples clasp their sublime privileges, and greatly\nrejoice--and also greatly fear to \"decline\" them, to surrender them, to\ntreat them lightly. They \"are in receipt ([Greek: paralambanoutes]) of a\nkingdom unshakable,\" for they have become the willing vassals of the\neternal David of the true Israel, in whose kingship they too are kings,\nreigning over \"all the power of the enemy.\" But, for the very reason\nthat they hold a royalty, and such a royalty, let them address\nthemselves to a life of adoration, and reverence, and awe, deep as that\nof the holy ones who, close to the throne above, veil their faces and\ntheir feet evermore with their wings, not in terror but in a joy full of\nwonder and of worship. \"Let us have grace,\" let us _take and use_ the\ngrace which in the covenant is ours,[R] and in it let us live this life.\nFor it is to be a life all the while not of alarm and doubting, but _of\ngrace_. Only it is to be lived as before Him who is (ver. 29) \"consuming\nfire, a jealous God\" (Deut. iv. 24), \"jealous\" against all \"forsakers of\ntheir own mercy\" (Jonah ii. 8), rejectors of His Son, even when they\nseem to fly for refuge to His Law.\n\n[R] For this use of [Greek: echomen] compare Rom. v. 1, where the best\nsupported reading gives [Greek: echomen eirenen].\n\nThus the great concatenated passage concludes with one of the most\nformidable of Scripture utterances. But let us boldly gather peace and\nhope even from this word of fire. For what is the true message of the\nverses we have traversed, when we look back and sum them up? It is the\nglory, the fulness, the living richness, the abundant lovingkindness,\nthe supreme and absolute finality, of the Gospel of our Lord Jesus\nChrist. It is our Lord Himself, the perfect and ultimate revelation of\nthe grace and peace of God. And the fiery jealousy of the close, the\nwarning that we shall lose our souls if we \"decline\" the blessed Son,\nwhat does it mean as to His Father's heart? That He so loves the Son,\nand so loves us, that He adjures us by all His terrors as well as all\nHis mercies never to turn for refuge for one hour away from the\nall-perfect Christ.\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XII\n\nAPPEALS AND INSTRUCTIONS\n\nHEB. xiii. 1-14\n\n\nThe last chapter of the Epistle has a character quite of its own. Unlike\nmany of those often arbitrary divisions of the New Testament books which\nwe know as chapters, it is a naturally separate section. The long and\nsustained arguments are over. The Writer's thoughts, gravitating to a\nclose, and occupied naturally as they do so with the personal conditions\nof his Hebrew brethren, attach themselves now to one now to another side\nof their duties, their difficulties, their more particular and detailed\nneeds, practical and spiritual. As he touches upon these, sentence by\nsentence, we often see at a glance the probable occasion of the words,\nbut often again we are left in the dark about it. Who shall say\nprecisely why he insists (ver. 2) upon the exercise of hospitality? or\nwho were \"the prisoners\" (ver. 3) whom he bids them remember? Who shall\ntell what in this particular community was the occasion for a solemn\nemphasis (ver. 4) upon the holiness of marriage, or why again, just for\nthem, it was well to speak in warning (ver. 5) about the love of money\nand the temptation to discontent? Nor can we be certain who were those\ndeparted \"leaders,\" \"guides,\" of ver. 7, whose \"faith\" the disciples\nwere to \"imitate,\" whose blessed \"exit from their walk of life\" they\nwere to \"contemplate.\"\n\nAll we can say of these opening topics of the chapter is that, whatever\nthe occasions were, the words occasioned are for us inestimably\nprecious. Dear to the heart of the believing Church for ages have been\nthese precepts to love the brethren ([Greek: philadelphia]), to love the\nstranger ([Greek: philoxenia]), to remember Abraham at Mamre and Gideon\nat Ophrah with their angel-guests, and to see a possible angel-visitor\nin every needing stranger at the door. The call (ver. 2) to remember the\ncaptive, and the sufferer of every sort, comes with solemn power from\nthis paragraph, as it presses home the law of sympathetic fellowship,\nand in one passing phrase (\"_as being in the body_\") reminds us that,\nfor the Christian, all sufferings, all burthens of pain and care, cease\nfor ever when once he is \"out of the body.\" Sacred is the witness borne\nhere to the pure dignity of wedlock (ver. 4): \"Be[S] marriage\nhonourable in all things, and the bed unspotted; for fornicators and\nadulterers\"--not only adulterers, but those also who sin that other sin\nwhich the world so easily and so blindly condones--\"God will judge.\" And\nwhen the Christian is warned (ver. 5) against the greed of gain, the\nquoted words of the Old Testament make, by the use they are put to, a\npossession for ever valuable to the believing reader of the Scriptures.\nFor not only are they in themselves wonderful in their emphasis: \"I will\nnever give thee up; I will never, never desert thee.\" They are\ninestimable as an example of the sort of use which this New Testament\nprophet could make of the spiritual riches of the Old Testament. For\nhere he sees a Divine watchword for the new life, not only in the\nglorious outburst of faith (ver. 6) in Psalm cxviii., the _Hallel_ of\nthe Passover. In the words spoken to Joshua, and to all appearance\nspoken _to him personally and alone_ (ver. 5: see Josh. i. 5), we are\nled equally to see a message from the heart of God straight to every\nChristian soul. Seldom, if ever, are we more powerfully and tenderly\nencouraged than we are here to use with confidence that old-fashioned\nand now often disparaged sort of Bible study, the collection of eternal\nand universal principles of spiritual life out of an \"isolated text.\"\n\n[S] The sentence demands an understood _imperative_ verb, without which\nthe \"_for_\" which (in the true reading) introduces the second clause is\nout of place.\n\nThen comes the passage where the departed \"guides\" are commemorated.\nWhoever they were, were they a Stephen and a James, or saints utterly\nunknown to us, that passage is precious in its principles, true for all\ntime, of remembrance and appeal. It consecrates the fidelity of the\nChristian memory. It assures us that to cherish the names, the words,\nthe conduct, the holy lives, the blessed deaths, of our teachers of days\nlong done is no mere indulgence of unfruitful sentiment. It is natural\nto the Gospel, which, just because it is the message of an unspeakably\nhappy future, also sanctifies the past which is the living antecedent to\nit. Just because we look with the love of hope towards \"our gathering\ntogether unto Him,\" we are to turn with the love of memory towards all\nthe gifts of God given to us through the holy ones with whom we look to\nbe \"gathered together.\" \"The exit of their walk of life\" (ver. 7) is to\nbe our study, our meditation. We are to \"look it up and down\" ([Greek:\nanatheorountes]) as we would some great monument of victory, and from\nthat contemplation we are to go back into life, to \"imitate their\nfaith,\" to do just what they did, treating (xi. 1) the unseen as\nvisible, the hoped-for as present and within our embrace. Thank God for\nthis authorization and hallowing of our recollections. Precious indeed\nis its assurance that the sweetness of them (for all its ineffable\nelement of sadness, as eyes and ears are hungry for the faces and the\nvoices gone, for the look and tone of the preacher, the teacher, through\nwhom we first knew the Lord, or knew Him better) is no half-forbidden\nluxury of the soul but a means of victorious grace.\n\nBut now comes in a passage of the chapter which more obviously tells its\nown story of occasion and aim. The Writer recurs to the supreme theme of\nthe Epistle, the antithesis between the Lord Jesus, with His finished\nwork and absolute permanence, and the transitory antecedents of the\nolder dispensation. Once more the Hebrews are to remember His eternity,\nHis eternal personal identity, unbeginning and without end (ver. 8); He\nis \"the same, yesterday, and to-day, and unto the ages.\" Before all\ntypes and preparations, before law, and ritual, and prophecy, He is.\nWhen, having done their long work, they cease, He still is. Over the\nglory of His being and character passes no \"shadow of turning.\" Never to\nthe endless ages shall He need to be other than He is, or to be\nsucceeded by a greater. \"JESUS, MESSIAH\"; He is Alpha; He is also\nOmega. The whole alphabet of revelation between the first letter and\nthe last does but spell out the golden legend of His unalterable glory.\n\nIn contrast to Him, thus unchangeably Himself, place the \"teachings\nvariegated and alien\" (ver. 9) which would draw you from beside Him\n([Greek: parapheresthe]) back to an outworn ceremonial distorted from\nits true purpose. \"Looking unto Jesus,\" stay still and be at rest in\nHim. The ritual law of \"food\" ([Greek: bromata]) had its perfectly\nbefitting place in the age of elementary preparation. But to make it now\na rival to the message of that \"grace\" which means a life lived by faith\nin the Son of God, is to defraud \"the heart\" of that which alone can\n\"establish\" it in peace, holiness, and hope. To walk in Him is to go\nfrom strength to strength. To \"walk in them\" ([Greek: hoi\nperipatountes]) is to miss the very \"benefit\" you seek. It is to move\naway from the light, backward, into spiritual death.\n\nHere follows in close sequence a passage of pregnant significance. It\nbegins with ver. 10, and the connexion is not finally broken till ver.\n16. The Writer, prompted perhaps by the allusion to a ceremonial law of\n\"meats,\" turns abruptly to the still existing ritual of the Law,\nfamiliar to his Hebrew readers as to himself. From it he leads their\nthoughts once more to the profound import and ultimate efficacy of the\nsupreme atoning Sacrifice, in all its shame and all its glory, and to\nthe call which that great fact conveys to the believer to break for\never, at whatever cost, from the old order, _considered as a rival to\nthe Cross_. Such is the true bearing of this often debated passage, if I\nam not greatly mistaken. The \"altar\" which \"we have\" (ver. 10) is not,\nif I read the argumentative context rightly, either the atoning Cross,\nat least as to any direct reference of the word, or the Table of the\nChristian Eucharist. As to this latter conjecture indeed the reference\nis totally unsupported by any really primeval parallel.[T] And _in this\nEpistle_ it is scarcely conceivable that, if that were the meaning, if\nwe were to be abruptly informed here that we Christians have in the Holy\nTable a sacrificial altar, no allusion, however slight, should intimate\nthat the Christian minister is not a \"leader\" only but a sacrificing\npriest. The whole Epistle may be said to circle round the great topic of\nPriesthood. From various points of view, and with purposes as practical\nas possible in regard of faith, hope, and life, that topic has been\nhandled. But is it too much to say that, for the Writer, the one\nChristian priesthood which is analogous to the Levitical priesthood, as\na sacrificial and mediatorial function on behalf of the Church, is the\nHigh Priesthood of the Son of God? The Christian Ministry indeed hardly,\nif at all, comes into view throughout the argument. We find it at length\nin this chapter, the chapter which tells the readers that they \"have an\naltar.\" Twice over the pastors of the Church are mentioned here (verses\n7, 17); but how? As \"leaders,\" \"guides,\" [Greek: hegoumenoi]: as those\nwho \"speak the word of God,\" as those whose vigilance over the souls of\nthe flock claims a loving and grateful loyalty. That is to say, the\nChristian Ministry is above all things a pastorate. To a sacerdotal\naspect of its special functions no reference appears. And that is\nnoteworthy just because of the profound sacerdotalism of the whole\ncontext of the Epistle.\n\n[T] Lightfoot (on Ign. _ad Eph. v., et alibi_) has clearly shewn that\nIgnatius' use of [Greek: thysiasterion] is altogether mystical. He means\nnot the Holy Table but (among other references) the Church of Christ as\nthe sphere or place of spiritual sacrifice.\n\nOn a careful review of the words before us (verses 10-16), we are\njustified in the conclusion that the reference is, not to a Christian\ninstitution at all but precisely to the Hebrew ritual, in which Writer\nand readers still had part as members of _the nation_. The thing in view\nis an altar whose law was such that the sacerdotal \"ministers ([Greek:\nhoi latreuontes]) of the Tabernacle\" might not use its sacrifices for\nfood. But why? Not of course because they were not Christians, but\nbecause the sacrifices in question presented there were to be wholly\n\"burned,\" \"burned without the camp.\" The entire thought moves within the\nlimits of the typical ceremonial. It deals with the holocaust which even\nthe sacrificer might handle only to commit it to the fire; the victim\nwhose destiny was to be--not eaten by the priestly family but carried\noutside the camp as wholly devoted for the people's sins.\n\nIt is possible, within the lines of the Levitical ritual, to interpret\nin more ways than one the \"altar\" in question. It may be the great\naltar, regarded in its special use on the Atonement Day (Lev. xvi); not\nanother structure than that used for other sacrifices, but that same\naltar regarded, for the moment, as if separated and alone, because of\nthe awful speciality of the stern while merciful ritual of that great\nday. Or again, as it has been argued with learning and force[U], the\nreference may be to the altar of incense, the golden altar of the\nHoliest, on which the blood not only of the atonement victims but of all\nsin-offerings was sprinkled; and every sacrifice so treated was regarded\nas a holocaust; no part of it was reserved for food. But in either case\nthe altar in question is not of the Church but of the Tabernacle. The\n\"we\" of ver. 10 is the community in its Hebrew rather than in its\nChristian character.\n\n[U] By the Rev. James Burkitt, in _The Golden Altar: an Exposition of\nHebrews xiii. 10, 11_.\n\nSo the whole thought centres itself in the supreme Sacrifice, as\nAntitype answering to type. Jesus is our holocaust, wholly sacrificed\nfor our sins. His sacrifice involved in its awful ritual the shame and\nagony of rejection by His own, excommunication from \"the camp\" of the\nchosen. Then let the Hebrew believer, \"receiving that inestimable\nbenefit,\" be ready also to follow his Redeemer's steps in rejection and\nin shame. Let him also be prepared for casting out by priest and scribe.\nLet his yearning heart, with whatever anguish, inure itself to the\nthought that the beloved \"city of his solemnities\" is not the final and\nenduring Jerusalem. Let his \"thoughts to heaven the steadier rise,\" as\nhe looks, like Abraham before him, to \"God's great town in the unknown\nland,\" where sits on high the Mediator of the New Covenant, the \"Priest\nupon His throne.\"\n\n\n\n\nCHAPTER XIII\n\nLAST WORDS\n\nHEB. xiii. 15-25\n\n\nThe connexion of ver. 15 with the antecedent context is suggestive. We\nhave been led to a contemplation of the Lord Jesus in His character as\nAntitype and Fulfilment of the holocaust of the Levitical atonement.\nEven as the chief animal victim of the old covenant, the symbolical\nbearer of the sins of Israel, was carried \"outside the camp\" to be\nconsumed, so our Victim was led \"outside the gate\" of the city to His\ndeath, that there, by His blood-shedding, by His absolute and perfect\nself-immolation in our stead, He might \"hallow His people,\" bringing\nthem forgiven and welcomed back to God. The point of the dread ritual of\nCalvary here specially emphasized is just this, that He \"suffered\noutside the gate.\" The old Israel, guiltily unknowing, fulfilled the\ntype in the Antitype by refusing Him place even to die within the sacred\ncity. He, in His love for the new Israel, that He might in every\nparticular be and do what was foreshadowed for Him, refused not to\nsubmit to that supreme rejection.\n\nFrom this the apostolic Writer draws two messages for his readers. First\n(ver. 13) they are to follow the Lord outside, willing to be rejected\nlike Him and because of Him. They are to be patient, for His sake, when\nthey are \"put out of the synagogues\" and reproached as traitors to\nMoses. They are by faith to conquer the cry of their human hearts as\nthey crave perpetuity for the beloved past; they are to remember (ver.\n14), as they issue from the old covenant's gate into what seems the\nwild, that \"Jerusalem that now is\" was built for time only, and that\nthey belong to the city of eternity, where their High Priest sits on His\nthrone to bless them now and welcome them hereafter. Then, secondly and\ntherefore (ver. 15), they are to use Him now and for ever as their one\nsacerdotal Mediator. By Him, not by the Aaronic ministry, they are to\nbring their sacrifices to God. They are to accept exclusion and to turn\nit into inclusion, into a shutting-up of all their hopes and all their\nworship into their glorious Christ. And what now is their altar-ritual\nto be? It is to be twofold; the offering of praise, \"the fruit of lips\nthat confess\" the glory of \"His Name,\" and then the sacrifice of self\nand its possessions for others for His sake (ver. 16); \"doing good, and\ncommunicating\" blessings; for these are \"altar-sacrifices ([Greek:\nthysiai]) with which God is well pleased.\"\n\nSuch, if we are right, is the connexion. The Lord, rejected, that He\nmight die for us after a manner faithful to the prophetic type, is to be\nthe Hebrew disciple's example of patience when he too is rejected. Such\nrejection is only to unite him the more closely to the Christ as his way\nto God, his Mediator for all the praise and all the unselfish service\nwhich is to fill his dedicated life.\n\nThe lesson was special for the believing Hebrew then. But it has its\nmeaning for all time. In one way or another the true follower of the\ncrucified and rejected Redeemer must _stand ready_ for cross and for\nexclusion, so far as he is called upon by his faith to break with all\nultimate and absolute allegiance save to \"Jesus Christ and Him\ncrucified.\" He has to recollect, on one account or another, that he too\nbelongs to the invisible order, to the \"citizenship that is in heaven,\"\nand not to any visible polity as if it were final, as if it were his\nspirit's goal. But then he too is to make this detachment and separation\nonly a fresh means to unite him to his great High Priest for a\nself-sacrificial life in Him. He is to be no frowning sectary, saying,\n\"I am holier than thou.\" He is to be simply a Christian, to whom,\nwhatever the world may say, or the world-element in the Church, Christ\nthe crucified is Lord indeed.\n\nFollowing these appeals, in a connexion which we can trace, the thought\npasses (ver. 17) to the Christian Ministry. \"Outside the gate\" of the\nold order, the disciple finds himself at once not an isolated unit but\nincluded in _a new order_. He is one of a spiritual community, which has\nof course its system, for it has to cohere and to operate. It has amidst\nit its \"leaders,\" its [Greek: hegoumenoi], its pastoral guides and\nwatchmen, a recognized institution, which always as such (though always\nthe more as it is more true to its ideal) claims the obedience, the\nloyalty, the subordination, of the multitude who are not \"leaders.\"\nThese \"leaders\" are set before us as bearing a Divine commission, for we\nread that they \"must _give account_.\" So qualified, not as assertors of\nthemselves but as servants and agents of God, they watch for souls, with\na vigilance loving and tender, asking for response.\n\nSuch an ideal of the Christian Ministry is as remote as possible from\nthat of a sacerdotal caste, or indeed of anything that has to do with a\nharsh and perfunctory officialism. Its position is totally different\nfrom that of an agency of mediation between man and God, between the\nChurch and her Lord. We have one passing note of this in the fact,\npresent in other Epistles as in this, that the Ministry is addressed and\ngreeted through the Church rather than the Church through the Ministry.\nSee below, ver. 24: \"Salute your leaders.\" If we may put it so, the\nChristian clergy are so far from being the sole deliverers of the\napostolic writings to the people that the people rather have to deliver\nsuch messages to the clergy.\n\nYet on the other hand this passage is one of the many which set the\nChristian Ministry before us as a vital factor in the life of the\nChurch, an institution which has its life from above, not from the will\nof the community but from the gift of God. In their anxiety to avoid\ndistortions and exaggerations of the ministerial idea many Christians\nhave failed to give adequate place in thought to its essentially Divine\norigin and commission. A passage like this should correct such a\nreaction. There is in the Church, by the will of God, a \"leadership,\"\nrecognizable, authentic, not arbitrary yet authoritative, not\nmediatorial yet pastoral. It is never designed indeed to come really\nbetween the believing soul and the ever-present Lord. Yet it is\nappointed as the norm a human agency by which He works for the soul, not\nonly in the solemn ministration of His great ordinances of blessing but\nin spiritual assistance and guidance as well. It will be the pastor's\nfolly if he so insists upon the imagery of shepherding as to forget for\none moment that the \"sheep\" are also, and in a larger aspect, his equal\nbrethren and sisters, \"the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.\" It\nwill be his folly, and the ruin of his true authority, if he forgets in\nany part of his service that he is not the master but the servant of the\nChurch. If in his \"guidance\" he dares to domineer, and if in his\nteaching he takes the tone of one who can _dictate_ any point of faith\nor duty, on his own authority, apart from the Word of God, he is fatally\nmistaking his whole function. Nevertheless he is called to be a\n\"leader,\" with the responsibilities and duties of a leader. This thought\nis to keep him always humble, and always intently on the watch over his\nown life. But it is to be present also to the members of the Church, to\nremind them always to _tend towards_ that generous \"obedience\" with\nwhich Christian freedom safeguards Christian order. The Church is never\nto forget the responsibility of the Ministry; it is to assist the\nMinistry in its true discharge. For in this also \"we are members one of\nanother.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nThe closing sentences of the great Letter (ver. 18 and onwards) call for\nlittle detailed explanation, with one great exception. The Writer asks\nfor intercessory prayer for himself and his colleagues, in the accent of\none who knows his own unreserved desire (ver. 18) to keep his whole\n\"life-walk honourable,\" [Greek: kalos anastrephesthai]. He asks\nspecially for this help, with a view to his own speedier return to his\ndisciples (ver. 19), an allusion which we cannot now explain for\ncertain. At the very end (verses 22-25), with a noble modesty, in the\ntone of the true Christian leader, drawing, not driving, he asks for\n\"patience\" over his \"appeal\" ([Greek: paraklesis]), his solemn call for\nloyalty to the Christ of God under all the trials of the time.\n\nHe has \"used brevity\" ([Greek: dia bracheon]) in writing; he might have\nexpanded the vast theme indefinitely; he has only given them its\nessentials. Then he makes his one personal reference, abruptly, as if\nspeaking about well-known circumstances; Timotheus (ver. 23) has been\nreleased from prison, and is on his way to join the Writer, and the two\nmay hope to visit the Hebrews together again. Then follows the greeting\nto the pastors through the Church; and then a message of love sent by\n\"those from Italy,\" that is to say, as the familiar idiom suggests,\nbrethren resident in Italy who send their greeting from it; an allusion\nover which endless conjectures may gather but which must always remain\nuncertain. The last word is the blessing of grace. \"Grace\"--the holy\neffect upon the Church, and upon the saint, of \"God for us\" and \"God in\nus\"--\"be with you all.\"\n\n       *       *       *       *       *\n\nWe have thus followed this final passage to its end, but making, as the\nreader will have seen, one great omission. The twentieth and\ntwenty-first verses stand by themselves, with such an elevation of their\nown, with such a tranquil majesty of diction, with such a pregnant depth\nof import, that I could not but reserve my brief comment on them to the\nvery last in these attempts to carry \"Messages from the Epistle to the\nHebrews.\"\n\n\"Now the God of peace, who hath brought again from the dead the Shepherd\nof the sheep, that great Shepherd, with blood of covenant eternal, even\nour Lord Jesus--may He perfect you in all good unto the doing of His\nwill, doing in you that which is acceptable before Him, by means of\nJesus Christ; to whom be the glory to the ages of the ages. Amen.\"\n\nHere is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, of the benedictory\nprayers of the Bible. At every turn it sets before us truths of the\nfirst order, woven into one wonderful texture. It presents to us our God\nas \"the God of peace,\" the God who has welcomed us to reconciliation and\nis now and for ever reconciled; at peace with us and we with Him. It\nsets full in view the supreme fact upon which that certainty reposes,\nthe Resurrection of His Christ, recorded here and only here in the long\nEpistle, as the act and deed by which the Father sealed before the\nuniverse His acceptance of the Son for us. It connects that Resurrection\nwith its mighty antecedent, the atoning Death, in words pregnant with\nthe truths characteristic of the Epistle; the Lord, the great Shepherd,\nwas \"brought again from the dead\" (the phrase is reminiscent of Isa.\nlxiii. 11, with its memories of Moses and the ascent of Israel from the\nparted waters), \"in the blood\" (as it were attended, authenticated,\nentitled, by the blood) \"of covenant eternal,\" that supreme Compact of\nDivine love of which twice over (chapters viii., x.) the Epistle has\nspoken; under which, for the slain Mediator's sake, God both forgives\niniquity and transfigures the will of the forgiven. Then the prayer\nfollows upon these mighty premisses. The Teacher asks, with the\nauthority of an inspired benediction, that this God of peace, of\ncovenant, of the crucified and risen Lord Jesus, would carry out the\ncovenant-promise in His new Israel to the full. May He \"perfect\" them,\nthat is to say, equip them on every side with every requisite of grace,\nfor the supreme purpose of their existence, the doing of His will in\neverything. May He so inhabit and inform them, through His Son, by His\nSpirit, that He shall be the will within their will, the force beneath\ntheir weakness, \"working in them to will and to do for His good\npleasure's sake\" (Phil. ii. 13). To Him, the Father, be glory for ever.\nTo Him, the Son, be glory for ever. Who shall decide, and who need\ndecide, to which Divine Person the relative pronoun [Greek: ho]\nprecisely attaches? The glory is to the Father in the Son, to the Son in\nthe Father.\n\nOne closing word remains. Observe this designation just here applied to\nthe Lord Jesus Christ; \"the Shepherd, the great Shepherd, of the sheep.\"\nIt is noteworthy, because in our Epistle it stands here quite alone. We\nhave had the Christ of God presented to us throughout under the totally\ndifferent character of the High Priest, the great Self-Immolator of the\nCross, now exalted in the glory of His High Priesthood to be the Giver\nof blessing from the Throne. To Him in that sublime aspect the thought\nof the Hebrew believer, so sorely tempted to look away from Him, to look\nbackward to the old and ended order, has been steadily directed, for\nspiritual rest of conscience and for loyalty of will. But here, true to\nthat _habit_ of the Bible, if the word may be used, with which it\naccumulates on Him the most diverse titles in the effort to set forth\nHis fulness, the Writer exchanges all this range of thought for the one\nendearing designation of the SHEPHERD of the sheep. It was as such that\nHe went down to death, giving for the flock His life. It was as such\nthat He is \"brought again,\" to rescue, to watch, to feed, to guide His\nbeloved charge, \"in the power of life indissoluble.\"\n\nNot without purpose surely was the Lord left pictured thus in the view\nof His tried and tempted followers. In the region of conviction and\ncontemplation He was to shine always before them as the High Priest upon\nHis throne, the more than fulfilment of every type and shadow, the goal\nof Prophecy, \"the end of the Law.\" But He was to be all this as being\nalso, close beside them, their Shepherd, great and good. He was to be\nwith them in the pasture, and in the desert, and in the valley of the\nshadow of death. They had followed Him indeed as their Sacrifice without\nthe gate. But precisely there He took to Himself His resurrection-life,\nto be their Companion and their Watcher for evermore. The Lord was their\nShepherd, and He is ours; they should not, and we shall not, want.","title":"Messages from the Epistle to the Hebrews","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":26770}