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Title: The Way Into the Holiest
Creator(s): Meyer, F.B. (1847-1929)

LC Subjects:

The Bible

New Testament

Special parts of the New Testament
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THE WAY INTO THE HOLIEST:

EXPOSITIONS OF THE EPISTLE TO THE

HEBREWS.

F.B. Meyers B.A.,

Author of:

“Tried by fire”; “The Life and Light of Men”;

“The Psalms: Notes on Readings”;

etc., etc.

Baker Book House

Grand Rapids Mich.

1951

Edited by Larry Hendrickson

P.O. box 295 Lowell, OR 97452
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PREFACE.

This Epistle bears no name of author, or designationof church. But it
needs neither. In every sentence we can detect the Authorshipof the
Holy Ghost: and feel that it has a message not to one age, but to all;
not to one community, but to the universal Church.

We do not therefore discuss questions which are amply treated in every
commentary; but set ourselves at once to derive those great spiritual
lessons which are enshrined in these sublime words.

And probably there is no better way of vindicating the authority of the
Pentateuch than by showing that it lay at the basis of the teaching of
the early Church; and that especially the Book of Leviticus was the
seed-plot of New Testament Theology.

There are two strong tendencies flowing around us in the present day:
the one, to minimize the substitutionary aspect of the death of Christ;
the other, to exaggerate the importance of mere outward rite. To each
of these the study of this great Epistle is corrective. We are taught
that our Lord’s death was a Sacrifice. We are taught also that we have
passed from the realm of shadows into that of realities.

These chapters are altogether inadequate for the treatment of so vast a
theme; but such as they are, they are sent forth,in dependence on the
Divine Blessing, in the fervent hope that they may serve to make more
clear and plain to those who would find and enter it,the Way into the
Holiest of all.

F.B. MEYER.

Editors note.

I have endeavored to remain true to the original manuscript as was
delivered to me. I did, however, make some punctuation correction so
as to make it more readable to the computer audience. Namely, I
replaced a few hyphens where I saw them confusing the text. I also
corrected a couple of obvious errors found in the original printing. If
these changes cause any confusion I, alone, take full responsibility;
please e-mail me at [1]rlarryh@teleport.com and I will make any
corrections necessary.

Larry Hendrickson
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I. THE WORD OF GOD.

“GOD–who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the
fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.”
HEBREWS i. 1,2.

GOD.” What word could more fittingly stand at the head of the first
line of the first paragraph in this noble epistle! Each structure must
rest on him as foundation; each tree must spring from him as root; each
design and enterprise must originate in him as source. “IN THE
BEGINNING-GOD,” is a worthy motto to inscribe at the commencement of
every treatise, be it the ponderous volume or the ephemeral tract. And
with that name we commence our attempt to gather up some of the glowing
lessons which were first addressed to the persecuted and wavering
Hebrews in the primitive age, but have ever been most highly prized by
believing Gentiles throughout the universal Church. The feast was
originally spread for the children of the race of Abraham; but who
shall challenge our right to the crumbs? In our endeavor to gather
them, be thou, God, Alpha and Omega, First and Last. In the original
Greek, the word “God”is preceded by two other words, which describe the
variety and multitudinousness of his revelation to man. And the whole
verse is full of interest as detailing the origin and authority of the
Word of God, and as illustrating the great law which appears in so many
parts of the works of God, and has been fitly called the law of VARIETY
IN UNITY.

That law operates in Nature. The earliest book of God. No thoughtful
man can look around him without being arrested by the infinite variety
that meets him on every side. “All flesh is not the same flesh; . . .
there are celestial bodies, and bodies terrestrial: but the glory of
the celestial is one; and the glory of the terrestrial is another. . .
. One star differeth from another star in glory.” You cannot match two
faces in a crowd; two leaves in a forest; or two flowers in the
woodlands of spring. It w~ld seem as if the molds in which natural
products are being shaped are broken up and cast aside as soon as one
result has been attained. And it is this which affords such an infinite
field for investigation and enjoyment, forbidding all fear of monotony
or weariness of soul.

And yet, amid all natural variety, there is a marvelous unity. Every
part of the universe interlocks by subtle and delicate links with every
other part. You cannot disturb the balance anywhere without sending a
shock of disturbance through the whole system. Just as in some majestic
Gothic minster the same idea repeats itself in bolder or slighter
forms, so do the same great thoughts recur in tree and flower, in
molecule and planet, in diatom and man. And all this because, if you
penetrate to Nature’s heart, you meet God. “Of him, and through him,
and to him, are all things.” “There are diversities of operations; but
it is the same God which worketh all in all.” The unity that pervades
Nature’s temple is the result of its having originated from one mind,
and having been effected by one hand, the mind and hand of God.

That law also operates throughout the Scriptures. There is as great
variety there as in Nature. They were written in different ages. some
in the days of “the fathers”; others at “the end of these days” for us.
In the opening chapters, under the guidance of the Spirit of God, Moses
has embodied fragments of hallowed tradition, which passed from lip to
lip in the tents of the patriarchs; and its later chapters were written
when the holy city, Jerusalem, had already been smitten to the ground
by the mailed hand of Titus.

They were written in different countries: these in the deserts of
Arabia; those under the shadow of the pyramids; and others amid the
tides of life that swept through the greatest cities of Greece and
Rome. You can detect in some the simple pastoral life of Palestine; in
others the magnificence of Nebuchadnezzar’s empire. In one there is the
murmur of the blue Aegean; and in several the clank of the fetter in
the Roman prison-cell.

They were written by men belonging to various ranks, occupations, and
methods of thought.. shepherds and fishermen, warriors and kings; the
psalmist, the prophet, and the priest; some employing the stately
religious Hebrew, others the Chaldaic patois, others the polished
Greek-every variety of style, from the friendly letter, or sententious
proverb, to the national history, or the carefully prepared treatise,
in which thought and expression glow as in the fires–but all
contributing their quota to the symmetry and beauty of the whole.

And yet, throughout the Bible, there is an indubitable unity. What else
could have led mankind to look upon these sixty-six tractlets as being
so unmistakably related to each other that they must be bound up
together under a common cover? There has been something so unique in
these books that they have always stood and fallen together. To
disintegrate one has been to loose them all. Belief in one has led to
belief in all. Their hands are linked and locked so tightly that where
one goes all must follow. And though wise and clever men have tried
their best, they have never been able to produce a single treatise
containing that undefinable quality which gives these their mysterious
oneness; and to lack which is fatal to the claims of any book to be
included with them, or to demand the special veneration and homage of
mankind.

The world is full of religious books; but the man who has fed his
religious life upon the Bible will tell in a moment the difference
between them and the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. The eye
can instantly detect the absence of life in the artificial flower; the
tongue can immediately and certainly detect the absence or presence of
a certain flavor submitted to the taste; and the heart of man, his
moral sense, is quick to detect the absence in all other religious
books of a certain savor which pervades the Bible, from Genesis, the
book of beginnings, to the Apocalyptic announcements of the quick
coming of the King.

And in the possession of this mysterious attribute, the Old and new
Testaments are one. You cannot say there is more of it in the glowing
paragraphs of the Apostle Paul than in the splendid prophecies and
appeals of the great evangelic prophet, Isaiah. It is certainly in the
Gospels; but it is not less in the story of the Exodus. Throughout,
there is silence on topics which merely gratify curiosity, but on which
other professed revelations have been copiously full. Throughout, there
is no attempt to give instruction on science or nature; but to bend all
energy in discussing the claims of God on men. Throughout, the crimson
cord of sacrifice is clearly manifest, on which the books are strung
together as beads upon a thread. And throughout, there is ever the
subtle, mysterious, ineffable quality called Inspiration: a term which
is explained by the majestic words of this opening verse, “God, having
spoken of old to the fathers, hath at the end of these days spoken to
us.”

Scripture is the speech of God to man. It is this which gives it its
unity. “The Lord, the mighty God, hath spoken, and called the earth.”
The amanuenses may differ; but the inspiring mind is the same. The
instruments may vary; but in every case the same theme is being played
by the same master-hand. We should read the Bible as those who listen
to the very speech of God. Well may it be called “the Word of God.”

But the Scripture is God’s speech in man. The heavenly treasure is in
vessels of earth. “He spake unto the fathers in the prophets. . . He
hath spoken unto us in his Son.” It is very remarkable to study the
life of Jesus, and to listen to his constant statements as to the
source of his marvelous words. So utterly had he emptied himself, that
he originated nothing from himself; but lived by the Father, in the
same way as we are to live by him. He distinctly declared that the
words he spake, he spake not of himself; but that words and works alike
were the outcome of the Father, who dwelt within. Through those lips of
clay the eternal God was speaking. Well might he also be called “the
Word of God”!

And here the words of the prophets in the Old Testament are leveled up
to the plane of the words of Jesus in the New. Without staying to make
the least distinction, our writer tell us, beneath the teaching of the
Spirit, that he who spake in the one spake also in the others. Let us
then think with equal reverence of the Old Testament as of the New. It
was our Saviour’s Bible. It was the food which Jesus loved, and lived
upon. He was content to fast from all other food, if only he might have
this. It was his one supreme appeal in conflict with the devil, and in
the clinching of his arguments and exhortations with men. And here we
discover the reason. The voice of God spake in the prophets, whose very
name likens them to the up-rush of the geyser from its hidden source.

As God spake in men, it is clear that he left them to express his
thoughts in the language, and after the method, most familiar to them.
They will speak of Nature just as they have been accustomed to find
her. They will use the mode of speech whether poem or prose which is
most habitual to their cast of thought. They will make allusions to the
events transpiring around them, so as to be easily understood by their
fellows. But, whilst thus left to express God’s thoughts in their own
way, yet most certainly the divine Spirit must have carefully
superintended their utterances, so that their words should accurately
convey his messages to men.

In many parts of the Bible there is absolute dictation, word for word.
In others, there is divine superintendence guarding from error, and
guiding in the selection and arrangement of materials: as when Daniel
quotes from historic records; and Moses embodies the sacred stories
which his mother had taught him beside the flowing Nile. In all, there
is the full inspiration of the Spirit of God, by whom all Scripture has
been given. Holy men spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, . . .
searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ which was
in them did signify” (2 Tim. iii. i6 ; 2 Pet. i. 20, 21 ; 1 Pet. i.
ii).

We need not deny that other men have been illuminated; but the
difference between illumination and inspiration is as far as the east
is from the west. Nor do we say that God has not spoken in other men,
or in these men at other times; but we do say that only in the Bible
has God given the supreme revelation of his will, and the authoritative
rule of our faith and practice. The heart of man bears witness to this.
We know that there is a tone in these words which is heard in no other
voice. The upper chords of this instrument give it a timbre which none
other can rival.

The revelation in the Old Testament was given in fragments (or
portions). This is the meaning of the word rendered in the Old Version
sundry times, and in the Revised divers portions. It refers, not to the
successive ages over which it was spread, but to the numerous
“portions” into which it was broken up. No one prophet could speak out
all the truth. Each was intrusted with one or two syllables in the
mighty sentences of God’s speech. At the best the view caught of God,
and given to men through the prophets, though true, was partial and
limited.

But in Jesus there is nothing of this piecemeal revelation. “In him
dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” He hath revealed the
Father. Whosoever hath seen him hath seen God; and to hear his words is
to get the full-orbed revelation of the Infinite.

The earlier revelation was in many forms. The earthquake, the fire,
the tempest, and the still small voice-each had its ministry. Symbol
and parable, vision and metaphor, type and historic foreshadowing, all
in turn served the divine end; like the ray which is broken into many
prismatic hues. But in Jesus there is the steady shining of the pure
ray of his glory, one uniform and invariable method of revelation.

Oh the matchless and glorious Book, the Word of God to men-to us;
revealing not only God, but ourselves; explaining moods for which we
had no cipher; touching us as no other book can, and in moments when
all voices beside wax faint and still; telling facts which we have not
been able to discover, but which we instantly recognize as truth; the
bread of the soul; the key of life; disclosing more depths as we climb
higher in Christian experience: we have tested thee too long to doubt
that thou art what Jesus said thou wast, the indispensable and precious
gift of God.
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II. THE DIGNITY OF CHRIST

“Who being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person,
and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself
purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. Being
made so much better than the angels.” HEBREWS i. 3, 4.

In

SON.-” He hath spoken unto us in his Son.” God has many sons, but only
one Son. When, on the morning of his resurrection, our Lord met the
frightened women, he said, “I ascend unto my Father and your Father,
and my God and your God.” But, as he used the words, they meant
infinitely more of himself than they could ever mean of man, however
saintly or childlike. No creature-wing shall ever avail to carry us
across the abyss which separates all created from all uncreated life.
But we may reverently accept the fact, so repeatedly emphasized, that
Jesus is “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father”
(John i. i8). He is Son in a sense altogether unique.

This term, as used by our Lord, and as understood by the Jews, not only
signified divine relationship, but divine equality. Hence, on one
occasion, the Jews sought to kill him, because he said that God was his
Father, making himself equal with God (John v. i8). And he, so far from
correcting the opinion-as he must have done instantly, had it been
erroneous, went on to confirm it and to substantiate its truthfulness.
The impression which Jesus of Nazareth left on all who knew him was
that of his extreme humility; but here was a point in which he could
not abate one jot or tittle of his claims, lest he should be false to
his knowledge of himself, and to the repeated voice of God. And so he
died, because he affirmed, amid the assumed horror of his judges, that
he was the Christ, the Son of God. “He counted it not a prize to be on
an equality with God.” It was his right.

His dignity is still further elaborated in the words which follow. He
is THE BEAM OF THE DIVINE GLORY, for so might the word translated
effulgence be rendered. We have never seen the sun, but only its
far-traveled ray, which left its surface some few minutes before. But
the ray is of the same constitution as the orb from which it comes; if
you unravel its texture, you will learn something of the very nature of
the sun; they live in perpetual and glorious unity. And as we consider
the intimacy of that union, we are reminded of those familiar words,
which tell us that though no man hath seen God at any time, yet he has
been revealed in the Word made flesh. We hear our Master saying again
the old, deep, mysterious words: “I and my Father are one. We will come
and make our abode.” And we can sympathize with the evening hymn of the
early Church, sung around the shores of the Bosphorus:

“Hail! gladdening Light, of his pure glory poured,

Who is the Immortal Father, Heavenly, Blest.”

He is also THE IMPRESS OF THE DIVINE NATURE. The allusion here is to
the impression made by a seal on molten wax; and as the image made on
the wax is the exact resemblance, though on another substance, of the
die, so is Christ the exact resemblance of the Father in our human
flesh. And thus he was able to say, “He that bath seen me hath seen the
Father.” The Life of Jesus is the Life of God rendered into the terms
of our human life; so that we may understand the very being and nature
of God by seeing it reproduced before us, so far as it is possible, in
the character and life of Jesus. These two images complete each other.
You might argue from the first, that as the ray is only part of the
sun, so Christ is only part of God; but this mistake is corrected by
the second, for an impression must be coextensive with the seal. You
might argue from the second, that as the impression might be made on a
very inferior material, so Christ’s nature was a very unworthy vehicle
of the divine glory; but this mistake is corrected by the first, for a
beam is of the same texture as the sun. Coextensive with God, of the
same nature as God; thus is Jesus Christ.

He is, therefore, superior to angels (ver. 4).-Lofty as was the esteem
in which Hebrew believers had been wont to hold those bright and
blessed spirits, they were not for a moment to be compared with him
whose majestic claims are the theme of these glowing words.

He surpasses them in the glory of Divine Nature. Turn to Psalm ii. -one
of the grandest miniature dramas in all literature. Probably composed
on some marked episode in the reign of David, there is a glow, a
sublimity, in the diction which no earthly monarch could exhaust. We
are not, therefore, surprised to find the early Church applying it to
Christ (Acts iv. 25). In reading it, we first hear the roar of the mob
and the calm decision of the throne; and then our attention is centered
on him who comes forward, bearing the divine autograph to the decree
which declares him Son. Nothing like this was ever said to angel,
how-ever exalted in character or devoted in service. It is only
befitting, then, that the unsinning sons of light should worship him;
and as we hear the command issued, “Let all the angels of God worship
him,” we are still further impressed by the immense distance between
their nature and his.

Do we worship him enough? During his earthly life he was constantly
met by expressive acts of homage, which, unlike Peter in the house of
Cornelius, he did not repress. The almost instinctive act of the little
group, from which he was parted on the Mount of Olives in his
ascension, was to worship him (Luke xxiv. 52). And no sooner had he
passed to his home than there burst from the Church a tide of adoration
which has only become wider and deeper with the ages. The Epistles, and
especially the Book of Revelation, teem with expressions of worship to
Christ. And the death-cries of martyrs must have familiarized the
heathen mind with the homage paid to Christ by Christians. Of the
worship offered him in catacombs, or in their secret meetings, amongst
dens and caves, paganism was necessarily ignorant. But the behavior and
exclamations of the servants of Jesus, arraigned before heathen
tribunals, and exposed to the most agonizing deaths, were matters of
public notoriety.

Some years ago, beneath the ruins of the Palatine palace, was
discovered a rough sketch, traced in all probability by the hand of a
pagan slave in the second century. A human figure, with the head of an
ass, is represented as fixed to the cross; while another figure, in a
tunic, stands on one side, making a gesture which was the customary
pagan expression of adoration. Underneath this caricature ran the
inscription, rudely written, Alexamenos adores his God. But what a
tribute to the worship paid in those early days to our Saviour, amidst
gibes and taunts and persecution!

The hymns which have come down to us ring with the same spirit. Pliny
writes to tell the Emperor that the Christians of Asia Minor were
accustomed to meet to sing praise to Christ as God. As each morning
broke, the believer of those primitive days repeated in private the
Gloria in Excelsis, as his hymn of supplication and praise: “Thou only
art holy; thou only art the Lord; thou only, O Christ, with the Holy
Ghost, art most high in the glory of God the Father.” The early Church
did not simply admire Christ, it adored him.

Is not this a great lack in our private devotions? We are so apt to
concentrate our thoughts on ourselves; and to thank for what we have
received. We do not sufficiently often forget our own petty wants and
anxieties, and launch down our tiny rivulet, until we are borne out
into the great ocean of praise, which is ever breaking in music around
the person of Jesus. Praise is one of the greatest acts of which we are
capable; and it is most like the service of heaven. There they ask for
naught, for they have all and abound; but throughout the cycles of
glory the denizens of those bright worlds fill them with praise. And
why should not earthly tasks be wrought to the same music? We are the
priests of creation; it becomes us to gather up and express the
sentiments which are mutely dumb, but which await our offering at the
altar of God.

Let a part of our private and public devotion be ever dedicated to the
praise of Jesus; when we shall break forth into some hymn, or psalm, or
spiritual song, singing and praising Christ with angels and archangels
and all the hosts of the redeemed. On that brow, once thorn-crowned,
let us entwine our laurels. Upon that ear, once familiarized with
threats and scorn, let us pour the fullness of our adoring devotion. So
shall we gain and give new thoughts of the supreme dignity of the Lord
Jesus. “Thou art worthy to receive…honor.”
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III THE GLORY OF CHRIST’S OFFICE

“He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name.” Hebrews i. 4.

APART from Scripture, we should have been disposed to infer the
existence of other orders of intelligent and spiritual beings besides
man. As the order of creation climbs up to man from the lowest living
organism through many various stages of existence, so surely the series
must be continued beyond man, through rank on rank of spiritual
existence up to the very steps of the eternal throne. The divine mind
must be as prolific in spiritual as it has been in natural forms of
life.

But we are not left to conjecture. From every part of Scripture come
testimonies to the existence of angels. They rejoiced when the world
was made, and they are depicted as ushering in with songs that new
creation for which we long. They stood sentries at the gate of a lost
paradise; and at each of the twelve gates of the New Jerusalem an angel
stands (Rev. xxi. 12). They trod the plains of Mamre, and sang over the
fields of Bethlehem. One prepared the meal on the desert sands for
Elijah; another led Peter out of gaol and a third flashed through the
storm to stand by the hammock where the Apostle Paul was sleeping (Acts
xxvii. 23,24).

But in the mind of the pious Hebrew the greatest work which the angels
ever wrought was in connection with the giving of the law. The children
of Israel received the law “as it was ordained by angels” (Acts vii.
53, R.v.). It was necessary, therefore, in showing the superiority of
the Gospel to the Law, to begin by showing the superiority of him
through whom the Gospel was given, over all orders of bright and
blessed spirits, which, in their shining ranks and their twenty
thousand chariots, went and came during the giving of the decalogue
from the brow of Sinai (Psalm lxviii. 17).

It is not difficult to prove the Lord’s superiority to angels. It is
twofold: in Nature and in Office.

In Nature. “He hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name
than they” (ver. 4). In verse 7, quoted from Psalm civ. 4 (R.v. marg.),
where they are distinctly spoken of as messengers and ministers, they
are compared to winds and flames.-winds, for their swiftness and
invisibility; flames, because of their ardent love. But how great the
gulf between their nature, which may thus be compared to the elements
of creation, and the nature of that glorious Being whom they are bidden
to worship, and who is addressed in the sublime title of Son! (Heb.i.6;
Psalm xcvii. 7.)

In Offce. In verse 14 they are spoken of as ministering spirits, “sent
forth to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salvation”
(R.v.). This liturgy of service is a literal fact. When struggling
against overwhelming difficulties; when walking the dark, wild
mountain-pass alone; when in peril or urgent need-we are surrounded by
invisible forms, like those which accompanied the path of Jesus,
ministering to him in the desert, strengthening him in the garden,
hovering around his cross, watching his grave and accompanying him to
his home. They keep pace with the swiftest trains in which we travel.
They come unsoiled through the murkiest air. They smooth away the
heaviest difficulties. They garrison with light the darkest sepulchers.
They bear us up in their hands, lest we should strike our foot against
a stone. Many an escape from imminent peril; many an unexpected
assistance; many a bright and holy thought whispered in the ear, we
know not whence or how-is due to those bright and loving spirits. “The
good Lord forgive me,” says Bishop Hall, “for that, amongst my other
offenses, I have suffered myself so much to forget the presence of his
holy angels.” But valuable as their office is, it is not to be
mentioned in the same breath as Christ’s, which is set down for us in
this chapter.

He Is The Organ of Creation. “By whom also he made the worlds.” To
make that which is seen out of nothing, that is creation: it is a
divine work; and creation is attributed to Christ. “By him were all
things created that are in heaven and that are in earth.” “All things
were made by him; and without him was not anything made that was made”
(Col. i. 16; John i. 3). But the word here and in xi. 3 translated
worlds means ages. Not only was the material universe made by him, but
each of the great ages of the world’s story has been instituted by
Jesus Christ.

When genius aspires to immortality, it leaves the artist’s name
inscribed on stone or canvas: and so Inspiration, “dipping her pen in
indelible truth, inscribes the name of Jesus on all we see-on sun and
stars, flower and tree, rock and mountain, the unstable waters and the
firm land; and also on what we do not see, nor shall, until death has
removed the veil-on angels and spirits, on the city and heavens of the
eternal world.”

This thought comes out clearly in the sublime quotation made in verse
10 from Psalm cii. That inspired poem is obviously inscribed to
Jehovah: “Thou, Jehovah, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of
the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands.” But here,
without the least apology, or hint of accommodating the words to an
inferior use, it is applied directly to Christ. Mark the certainty of
this inspired man that Jesus is Jehovah! How sure of the Deity of his
Lord! And what a splendid tribute to his immutability!

Mark how the Epistle rings with the unchangeableness of Jesus, in his
human love (xiii. 8), in his priesthood (vii. 24), and here in his
divine nature (vv. 10-12). We live in a world of change. The earth is
not the same today as it was ages ago, or as it will be ages on. The
sun is radiating off its heat. The moon no longer as of yore burns and
glows; she is but an immense opaque cinder, reflecting the sunlight
from her disk. Stars have burnt out, and will. The universe is waxing
old, as garments which from perpetual use become threadbare. But the
wearing out of the garment is no proof of the waning strength or
slackening energy of the wearer. Nay, when garments wear out quickest,
it is generally the time of robustest youth or manhood. You wrap up and
lay aside your clothes when they have served their purpose; but you are
the same in the new suit as in the old. Creation is the vesture of
Christ. He wraps himself about in its ample folds. Its decay affects
him not. And, when he shall have laid it all aside, and replaced it by
the new heavens and the new earth, he will be the same forevermore.

With what new interest may we not now turn to the archaic record, which
tells how God created the heavens and the earth. Those sublime
syllables, “Light, be!” were spoken by the voice that trembled in dying
anguish on the cross. Rolling rivers, swelling seas, waving woods,
bursting flowers, caroling birds, innumerable beasts, stars sparkling
like diamonds on the pavilion of night-all newly made; all throbbing
with God’s own life; and all very good: but, mainly and gloriously, all
the work of those hands which were nailed helplessly to the cross,
which itself, as well as the iron that pierced him, was the result of
his creative will.

He Is The God of Providence. “Upholding all things by the word of his
power” (ver. 3). He is the prop which underpins creation. Christ, and
not fate. Christ, and not nature. Christ, and not abstract impersonal
law. Law is but the invariable method of his working. “In him all
things live, and move, and have their being.” “By him all things
consist.” He is ever at work repeating on the large scale of creation
the deeds of his earthly life. And if he did not do them, they must be
forever undone. At his word rainwater and dew become grape-juice; tiny
handfuls of grain fill the autumn barns; storms die away into calm;
fish are led through the paths of the sea; rills are sent among the
mountains; and stars are maintained in their courses, so that “not one
faileth.”

All power is given unto him in heaven and on earth. Why, then, art thou
so sad? Thy best Friend is the Lord of Providence. Thy Brother is Prime
Minister of the universe, and holds the keys of the divine
commissariat. Go to him with the empty sacks of thy need; he will not
only fill them, but fill them freely, without money and without price;
as Joseph did in the old story of the days of the Pharaohs.

He Is The Saviour of Sinners. “He purged our sins.” We shall have
many opportunities of dwelling on this glorious fact. Jesus is Saviour,
Redeemer, and the High-Priest. This is his proudest title; in this work
no angel or created spirit can bear him rivalry. In the work of
salvation he is alone. No angel could atone for sin, or plead our
cause, or emancipate us from the thrall of evil.

But notice the finality of this act. “He made purging of sins ” (see
Greek). It is finished; forever complete; done irrevocably and finally.
If only we are one with him by a living faith, our sins, which were
many, are washed out; as an inscription from a slate, as a stain from a
robe, as a cloud from the azure of heaven. Gone-as a stone into the
bottomless abyss! Gone-never to confront us here or hereafter! “Who is
he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
again; who is even at the right hand of God; who also maketh
intercession for us” (Rom. viii. 34).

He Is Also King. And on what does his kingdom rest? What is the
basis of that Royalty of which we constantly sing, in the noble words
of the primitive Church? “Thou art the King of Glory, Christ.” It is
a double basis.

He is King by right of his divine nature. “Thy throne, O God, is
forever and ever.” Well might Psalm xlv. be entitled the poem of the
lilies, as if to denote its pure and choice and matchless beauties. It
celebrated the marriage of Solomon: but, after the manner of those
inspired singers, its authors soon passed from the earthly to the
heavenly; from the transient type of the earthly realm to the eternal
and imperishable realities of the divine royalty of Christ.

He is also King as the reward of his obedience unto death. “He became
obedient unto death, even the death of the cross: wherefore, God also
hath highly exalted him” (Phil. ii. 8,9). Satan offered him sovereignty
in return for one act of homage, and Christ refused, and descended the
mountain to poverty and shame and death; but through these things he
has won for himself a Kingdom which is yet in its infancy, but is
destined to stand when all the kingdoms of this world have crumbled to
dust.

As Christ emerged from the cross and the grave, where he had purged our
sins, it seemed as if words were addressed to him which David had
caught ages before: “The LORD said unto my Lord, Sit on my right hand,
until I make thine enemies thy footstool” (ver. 13; Psalm cx. I). This
is the interpretation which the Apostle Peter, in the flush of
Pentecostal inspiration, put upon these words (Acts ii. 34). And,
accordingly, we are told, “He was received up into heaven, and sat on
the right hand of God ” (Mark xvi. 19). “He sat down on the right hand
of the Majesty on high” (ver. 3).

“He sat down.” Love is regnant. The Lamb is in the midst of the
Throne. Behold his majesty, and worship him with angels and archangels,
and all the throng of the redeemed. Prostrate yourself at his feet,
consecrating to him all you are and all you have. Comfort yourself also
by remembering that he would not sit to rest from his labors in
redemption, and in the purging away of sins, unless they were so
completely finished that there was nothing more to do. It is all
accomplished; and it is all very good. He has ceased from his works,
because they are done; and therefore he is entered into his rest. And
that word “until” is full of hope. God speaks it, and encourages us to
expect the time when he shall have put down all rule and all authority
and power; and when death itself, the last enemy, shall be destroyed (1
Cor. xv. 24-26).
__________________________________________________________________

IV. DRIFTING

“We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard,
lest at any time we should let them slip.”-HEBREWS ii. 1

SALVATION is a great word; and it is one of the keywords of this
Epistle. Heirs of salvation (i.14); so great salvation (ii. 3); Captain
of salvation (ii. 10); eternal salvation (v. 9); things that accompany
salvation (vi.9); salvation to the uttermost (vii. 25); and his
appearance the second time without sin unto salvation (ix. 28).

Sometimes it is salvation from the penalty of sin that is spoken of.
The past tense is then used, of that final and blessed act by which,
through faith in the blood of Jesus, we are forever placed beyond fear
of judgment and punishment; so that we are to the windward of the
storm, which spent itself on the head of our Substitute and
representative on Calvary, and can therefore never break on us. “By
grace have ye been saved through faith” (Eph. ii. 8, R.v.).

Sometimes it is salvation from the power of sin. The present tense is
then employed, of the long and gradual process by which we are set free
from evil, which has worked itself so deeply into our system. “Unto us
which are being saved the word of the cross is the power of God” (1
Cor. i. i8, R.v.). Sometimes salvation from all physical and other
evils is implied. The future tense is then summoned into requisition,
painting its splendid frescoes on the mists that hang so densely before
our view, and telling us of resurrection in our Saviour’s likeness and
presentation in his home, faultless, with exceeding joy. “We know that
when he shall appear we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he
is” (i John iii. 2). “Now is our salvation nearer than when we
believed: the night is far spent; the day is at hand” (Rom. xlii. 11,
12).

In the above passage the word “salvation”includes the entire process,
from its beginning to its end; though perhaps it is especially
tinctured with the first thought mentioned above. And if we follow out
the figure suggested by the rendering of the first verse of this
chapter in the Revised Version, we may compare salvation to a great
harbor, past: which we are in danger of drifting through culpable
neglect. “We ought to give the more earnest heed to the things that
were heard, lest haply we drift away from them.” “How shall we escape
if we neglect so great salvation!”

CONSIDER GOD’S SCHEME OF SALVATION AS A GREAT HARBOR.-After a wild
night, we have gone down to the harbor, over whose arms the angry waves
have been dashing with boom of thunder and in clouds of spray. Outside,
the sea has been tossing and churning; the cloudrack driving hurriedly
across the sky; the winds howling like the furies of olden fable. But
within those glorious walls, the barks which had put in during the
night were riding in safety; the sailors resting, or repairing rents in
sail and tackle, whilst the waters were unstirred by the storm raging
without. Such a refuge or harbor is a fit emblem of salvation, where
tempest-driven souls find shelter and peace.

It is great in its sweep. Sufficient to embrace a ruined world. Room
in it for whole navies of souls to ride at anchor. Space enough for
every ship of Adam’s race launched from the shores of time. He is the
propitiation for the whole world.” “Whosoever will.” Already it is
becoming filled. There a vessel once manned by seven devils, a pirate
ship, but captured by our Emmanuel; and at her stem the name, Mary of
Magdala. And here one dismasted, and almost shattered, rescued from the
fury of the maelstrom at the last hour; on her stem the words, The
Dying Thief And there another, long employed in efforts to sap the very
walls of the harbor, and now flying a pennon from the masthead, Chief
of Sinners and Least of Saints. And all around a forest of masts, “a
multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and
peoples, and tongues.”

It is great in its foundations. The chief requisite in constructing a
sea-wall is to get a foundation which can stand unmoved amid the
heaviest seas. The shifting sand must be pierced down to the granite
rock. But this harbor has foundations mighty enough to inspire strong
consolation in those who have fled to it for refuge; the promise, and
as if that were not enough, the oath, of God (Heb. vi. 17, 18). Hark,
how the storm of judgment is rising out there at sea! “If the
foundations be destroyed, what shall the righteous do?” Fear not! there
is no room for alarm. The waves may wash off some mussel-shells, or
tear away the green sea-lichen which has incrusted the moldings on the
walls; but it would be easier to dig out the everlasting hills from
their base than make one stone in those foundations start.

It was great in its cost. By the tubular bridge over the Menai
Straits stands a column, which records the names of those who perished
during the construction of that great triumph of engineering skill.
Nothing is said of the money spent, only of the lives sacrificed. And
so, beside the harbor of our salvation, near to its mouth, so as to be
read by every ship entering its inclosure, rises another column, with
this as its inscription: “Sacred to the memory of the Son of God, who
gave his life a sacrifice for the sin of the world.” It seems an easy
thing to be saved: “Look unto me, and be ye saved.” But we do not
always remember how much happened before it became so easy-the agony
and bloody sweat; the cross and passion; the precious death and burial.

It has been great in its announcement. The Jews thought much of their
Law, because of the majesty of its proclamation. Spoken from the
inaccessible cliffs of Sinai, with its beetling crags, its red
sandstone peaks bathed in fire; while thunders and lightnings, thick
clouds and trumpet-notes, were the sublime accessories of the scene. It
was the authorized belief also that the Law was given through angels
(Deut. xxxiii. 2 ; Acts vii. 53; Gal. iii. 19 ; Heb. ii. 2). And the
thought that these strong and sinless beings were the medium of the
Almighty’s will served, in the eyes of all devout Hebrews, to enhance
the sanctity and glory of the Law.

Compared with this, how simple the accessories of the words of Jesus!
Spoken in sweet and gentle tones, falling as the soft showers on the
tender grass, and distilling quietly as the dew; not frightening the
most sinful, nor startling little babes, they stole as the melody from
silver bells, borne on a summer wind into the ears of men. The boat or
hill-slope his pulpit; the poor his audience; the common incidents of
nature or life his text.

But in reality there was a vast difference. The announcement of the Law
was by angels. The announcement of the Gospel was by the Son. If the
one were august, what must not the other have been! If the one were
made sure by the most tremendous sanctions, what should not be said of
the other! Proclaimed by the Lord; confirmed by Apostles and
eye-witnesses; testified to by the Almighty himself, in signs and
wonders, and gifts of the Holy Ghost how dare we treat it with
contumely or neglect? Or, if we do, shall not our penalty be in
proportion to the magnitude of our offense? “If the word spoken through
angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience
received a just recompense of reward; how shall we escape, if we
neglect so great salvation?” “Therefore we ought to give the more
earnest heed to the things that were heard, lest haply we drift away
from them.”

It will be great in its penalties. The tendency of our age is to
minimize God’s righteous judgment on sin. It seems to be prevalently
thought that, because our dispensation is one of love and mercy,
therefore there is the less need to dread the results of sin. But the
inspired writer here argues in a precisely contrary sense. Just because
this age is one of such tender mercy, therefore sins against its King
are more deadly, and the penalties heavier. In the old days no
transgression, positive, and no disobedience, negative, escaped its
just recompense of reward; and in these days there is even less
likelihood of their doing so. The word spoken by the Son is even more
steadfast (i.e., effective to secure the infliction of the punishment
it announces) than the word of angels. My readers, beware! “He that
despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses; of
how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy who hath trodden
under foot the Son of God!” (x. 28, 29.)

THE DANGER TO WHICH WE ARE MOST EXPOSED.-“Lest haply we drift away”
(ii. 2, R.v.). For every one that definitely turns his back on Christ,
there are hundreds who drift from him. Life’s ocean is full of
currents, any one of which will sweep us past the harbor-mouth even
when we seem nearest to it, and carry us far out to sea.

It is the drift that ruins men. The drift of the religious world. The
drift of old habits and associations; which, in the case of these
Hebrew Christians, was setting so strongly toward Judaism, bearing them
back to the religious system from which they had come out. The drift of
one’s own evil nature, always chafing to bear us from God to that which
is earthly and sensuous. The drift of the pressure of temptation.

The young man coming from a pious home does not distinctly and
deliberately say, “I renounce my father’s God.” But he finds himself in
a set of business associates who have no care for religion; and, after
a brief struggle, he relaxes his efforts and begins to drift, until the
coastline of heaven recedes so far into the dim distance that he is
doubtful if he ever really saw it.

The business man who now shamelessly follows the lowest maxims of his
trade was once upright and high-minded. He would have blushed to think
it possible for such things to be done by him. But he began by yielding
in very trivial points to the strong pressure of competition; and when
once he had allowed himself to be caught by the tide, it bore him far
beyond his first intention.

The professing Christian who now scarcely pretends to open the Bible or
pray came to so terrible a position, not at a single leap, but by
yielding to the pressure of the constant waywardness of the old nature,
and thus drifted into an arctic region, where he is likely to perish,
benumbed and frozen, unless rescued, and launched on the warm
gulf-stream of the love of God.

It is so easy, and so much pleasanter, to drift. Just to lie back, and
renounce effort, and let yourself go whither the waters will, as they
break musically on the sides of the rocking boat. But, ah, how
ineffable the remorse, how disastrous the result!

Are you drifting? You can easily tell. Are you conscious of effort, of
daily, hourly resistance to the stream around you, and within? Do the
things of God and heaven loom more clearly on your vision? Do the
waters foam angrily at your prow as you force your way through them? If
so, rejoice! but remember that only divine strength can suffice to
maintain the conflict, and keep the boat’s head against the stream. If
not, you are drifting. Hail the strong Son of God! Ask him to come on
board, and stay you, and bring you into port.

AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION. “How shall we escape, if we neglect?” The
sailor who refuses lifeboat and harbor does not escape. The
self-murderer who tears the bandages from his wounds does not escape.
The physician who ridicules ordinary precautions against plague does
not escape. “How then shall we escape?”

Did the Israelite escape who refused to sprinkle the blood upon the
doorposts of his house? Did the man who gathered sticks on the
Sabbath-day escape, although he might have pleaded that it was the
first offense? Did the prince who had taken the Moabitess to wife
escape, though he bore a high rank? Did Moses and Aaron escape, though
they were the leaders of the people? No! None of these escaped. “Every
transgression and disobedience received its just recompense of reward.”
“How then shall we escape?”

Is it likely that we should escape? We have neglected the only Name
given under heaven among men by which we can be saved. We have added
contumely to neglect in refusing that which it has cost God so much to
give. We have flouted his only Son, our Lord; and our disrespect to him
cannot be a small crime in the eye of the Infinite Father. “How shall
we escape?”

No, if you neglect (and notice, that to neglect is to reject), there is
no escape. You shall not escape the storms of sorrow, of temptation, or
of the righteous judgment of God. You shall not escape the deserved and
necessary punishment of your sins. You shall not escape the worm which
never dies, nor the fire which is never quenched. Out there,
shelterless amid the rage of the sea; or yonder, driven to pieces on
the rocks: you shall be wrecked, and go down with all hands on board,
never sighted by the heavenly watchers, nor welcomed into the harbor of
the saints’ everlasting rest.
__________________________________________________________________

V. “WHAT IS MAN?”

“We see Jesus,…crowned with glory and honor.” {HEBREWS ii. 5-9.

IN the first great division of this treatise, we have seen the
incomparable superiority of the Lord Jesus to angels, and archangels,
and all the heavenly host. But now there arises an objection which was
very keenly realized by these Hebrew Christians; and which, to a
certain extent, presses upon us all; Why did the Son of God become man?
How are the sorrows, sufferings, and death of the Man of Nazareth
consistent with the sublime glories of the Son of God, the equal and
fellow of the Eternal?

These questions are answered during the remainder of the chapter, and
may be gathered up into a single sentence: he who was above all angels
became lower than the angels for a little time; that he might lift men
from their abasement, and set them on his own glorious level in his
heavenly Father’s kingdom; and that he might be a faithful and merciful
High Priest for the sorrowful and tempted and dying. Here is an act
worthy of a God Here are reasons which are more than sufficient to
answer the old question, for which Anselm prepared so elaborate a reply
in his book, “Cur Deus Homo?”

“What is man?” Those three words in verse 6 are the fit starting point
of the argument. We need not only a true philosophy of God, but a true
philosophy of man, in order to right thinking on the Gospel. The
idolater thinks man inferior to birds and beasts and creeping things,
before which he prostrates himself. The materialist reckons him to be
the chance product of natural forces which have evolved him; and before
which he is therefore likely to pass away. The pseudo-science of the
time makes him of one blood with ape and gorilla, and assigns him a
common origin with the beasts. See what gigantic systems of error have
developed from mistaken conceptions of the true nature and dignity of
man!

From all such we turn to that noble ideal of man’s essential dignity,
given in this sublime paragraph, which corrects our mistaken notions;
and, whilst giving us an explanation that harmonizes with all our
experience and observation, opens up to us vistas of thought worthy of
God.

MAN AS GOD MADE HIM. The description given here of the origin and
dignity of man is taken from Psalm viii., which is doubtless a
reminiscence of the days when David kept his father’s sheep; even if it
were not composed on that very spot over which in after-years the
heavenly choirs broke upon the astonished shepherds “abiding in the
field, keeping watch over their flock by night.”

Turn to that Psalm, and see how well it expresses the emotions which
must well up in devout hearts to God as we consider the midnight
heavens, the tapestry work of his fingers, and the spheres lit by the
moon and stars, which he has ordained. How impossible it is for those
who are given to devout reflection to come in contact with any of the
grander forms of natural beauty, the far-spread expanse of ocean, the
outlines of the mountains, the changing pomp of the skies without
turning from the handiwork to the great Artisan, with some such
expression as the apostrophe with which the Psalm opens and closes: ”
LORD, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth 1″

At first sight, man is utterly unworthy to be compared with those vast
and wondrous spectacles revealed to us by the veiling of the sun. His
life is but as a breath; as a shadow careering over the mountain-side;
as the existence of the aphides on a leaf in the vast forests of being.
What can be said of his character, sin-stained and befouled, in
contrast with peaks whose virgin snows have never been defiled; with
sylvan scenes, whose peace has never been ruffled; with silvery
spheres, whose chimes of perfect harmony have never been broken by
discord? Four times over is the question asked upon the pages of
Scripture, “What is man, that thou art mindful of him?” (Psalm cxliv.
3; Job vii. 17, 20; Psalm viii. 4; Heb. ii. 6.)

Yet it is an undeniable fact that God is mindful of man, and that he
does visit him. “Mindful!” There is not a moment in God’s existence in
which he is not as mindful of this world of men as the mother of the
babe whom she has left for a moment in the next room, but whose
slightest cry or moan she is quick to catch. “I am poor and needy; yet
the Lord thinketh upon me.” “How precious are thy thoughts unto me,
God!” “Visiting!” No cot is so lowly, no heart so wayward, no life so
solitary, but God visits it. No one shall read these lines, the path
around whose heart-door is not trodden hard by the feet of him who
often comes and stands and knocks. We speak as if only our sorrows were
divine visitations. Alas for us, if it were only so! Every throb of
holy desire, every gentle mercy, every gift of Providence, is a
visitation of God.

But there must be some great and sufficient reason why the Maker of the
universe should take so much interest in man. Evidently bigness is not
greatness; a tiny babe is worth more than the tallest mountain; and an
empress-mother will linger in the one room where her child is ill,
though she forsake the remainder of her almost illimitable domain. What
if earth shall turn out to be the nursery of the universe! The true
clew, however, to all speculation is to be found in the declaration by
the Psalmist of God’s original design in making man: “Thou crownedst
him. …Thou madest him to have dominion. . . . Thou hast put all
things under his feet ” (Psalm viii. 5, 6, R.v.). Nor was this lofty
ideal first given to the Psalmist’s poetic vision. It had an earlier
origin. It is a fragment of the great charta of humanity, which God
gave to our first parents in Paradise.

Turn to that noble archaic record, Gen. i. 26-28, which transcends the
imaginings of modern science as far as it does those legends of
creation which make the heathen literature with which they are
incorporated incredible. Its simplicity, its sublimity, its fitness,
attest its origin and authority to be divine. We are prepared to admit
that God’s work in creation was symmetrical and orderly, and that he
worked out his design according to an ever-unfolding plan. But science
has discovered nothing as yet to contradict the express statements of
Scripture, that the first man was not at all inferior to ourselves in
those intellectual and moral faculties which are the noblest heritage
of mankind.

“God created man in his own image” (Gen. i. 27). -There we have the
divine likeness. Our mental and moral nature is made on the same plan
as God’s: the divine in miniature. Truth, love, and purity, like the
principles of mathematics, are the same in us as in him. If it were not
so, we could not know or understand him. But since it is so, it has
been possible for him to take on himself our nature-possible also that
we shall be one day transformed to the perfect image of his beauty.

“And God said, Have dominion” (Gen. i. 28). -There you have royal
supremacy. Man was intended to be God’s viceregent and representative.
King in a palace stored with all to please him: monarch and sovereign
of all the lower orders of creation. The sun to labor for him as a very
Hercules; the moon to light his nights, or lead the waters round the
earth in tides, cleansing his coasts; elements of nature to be his
slaves and messengers; flowers to scent his path; fruits to please his
taste; birds to sing for him; fish to feed him; beasts to toil for him
and carry him. Not a cringing slave, but a king crowned with the glory
of rule, and with the honor of universal supremacy. Only a little lower
than angels; because they are not, like him, encumbered with flesh and
blood. This is man as God made him to be.

MAN AS SIN HAS MADE HIM. “We see not yet all things subjected to him”
(Heb. ii. 8, R.v.). His crown is rolled in the dust, his honor
tarnished and stained. His sovereignty is strongly disputed by the
lower orders of creation. If trees nourish him, it is after strenuous
care, and they often disappoint. If the earth supplies him with food,
it is in tardy response to exhausting toil If the beasts serve him, it
is because they have been laboriously tamed and trained; whilst vast
numbers roam the forest glades, setting him at defiance. If he catch
the fish of the sea, or the bird of the air, he must wait long in
cunning concealment.

Some traces of the old lordship are still apparent in the terror which
the sound of the human voice and the glance of the eye still inspire in
the lower creatures, as in the feats of lion-tamer or snake-charmer.
But for the most part anarchy and rebellion have laid waste man’s fair
realm.

So degraded has he become, that he has bowed before the objects that he
was to command; and has prostrated his royal form in shrines dedicated
to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. It is the
fashion nowadays to extol heathen philosophy; but how can we compare it
for a moment with the religion of the Bible, when its pyramids are
filled with mummies of deified animals, and its temples with the sacred
bull!

Where is the supremacy of man? Not in the savage cowering before the
beasts of the forest; nor in the civilized races that are the slaves of
lust and sensuality and swinish indulgence; nor in those who, refusing
to recognize the authority of God, fail to exercise any authority
themselves. “Sin hath reigned,” as the Apostle says most truly (Rom.
v.21). And all who bow their necks beneath its yoke are slaves and
menials and cowering subjects, in comparison with what God made and
meant them to be.

Do not point to the wretched groups surrounding the doors of the
gin-palaces in the metropolis of the most Christian people of the
world, and regard their condition as a stain on the love or power of
God. This is not his work. These are the products of sin. An enemy hath
done this. Would you see man as God intended him to be, you must go
back to Eden, or forward to the New Jerusalem. Sin defiles, debases,
disfigures, and blasts all it touches. And we may shudder to think that
its virus is working through our frame, as we discover the results of
its ravages upon myriads around.

MAN AS CHRIST CAN MAKE HIM. ” We behold Jesus crowned with glory and
honor” (ver. 9). “What help is that?” cries an objector; “of course he
is crowned with glory and honor, since he is the Son of God.” But
notice, the glory and honor mentioned here are altogether different
from the glory of Heb. i. 3. That was the incommunicable glory of his
deity. This is the acquired glory of his humanity.

In John xvii. our Lord himself distinguishes between the two. In verse
5, the glory which he had with the Father as his right before all
worlds. In verse 24, the glory given as the reward for his sufferings,
which he could not have had unless he had taken upon himself the form
of a servant, and had been made in the fashion of man, humbling
himself, and becoming obedient to the death of the cross, “made a
little lower than the angels, because of the suffering of death;
crowned with glory and honor: that he, by the grace of God, should
taste death for every man” (Phil ii. 7, 8; Heb. ii. 10).

This is the crown wherewith his Father crowned him in the day of the
gladness of his heart, when, as man, he came forth victorious from the
last wrestle with the Prince of hell. All through his earthly life he
fulfilled the ancient ideal of man. He was God’s image; and those who
saw him saw the Father. He was Sovereign in his commands. Winds and
waves did his bidding. Trees withered at his touch. Fish in shoals
obeyed his will. Droves of cattle fled before his scourge of small
cords. Disease and death and devils owned his sway. But all was more
fully realized when he was about to return to his Father, and said, in
a noble outburst of conscious supremacy, “All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth.”

“We behold him.” Behold him, Christian reader! The wreaths of empire
are on his brow. The keys of death and Hades swing at his girdle. The
mysterious living creatures, representatives of redeemed creation,
attest that he is worthy. All things in heaven and earth, and under the
earth, and in the seas, worship him; so do the bands of angels, beneath
whom he stooped for a little season, on our behalf.

And as he is, we too shall be. He is there as the type and specimen
and representative of redeemed men. We are linked with him in
indissoluble union. Through him we shall get back our lost empire. We
too shall be crowned with glory and honor. The day is not far distant
when we shall sit at his side-joint-heirs in his empire; comrades in
his glory, as we have been comrades in his sorrows; beneath our feet
all things visible and invisible, thrones and principalities and
powers; whilst above us shall be the unclouded empyrean of our Father’s
love, forever and forever. Oh, destiny of surpassing bliss! Oh, rapture
of saintly hearts! Oh, miracle of divine omnipotence!

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VI. “Perfect through sufferings

“It became him, for whom are all things, and by whom are all things, in
bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation
perfect through sufferings.”

HEBREWS ii. 10.

THERE is no book which can stand the test of sorrow and suffering as
the Bible can. Other books may delight us in sunny hours, when the
heart is gay; but in dark and overcast days we fling them aside, and
eagerly betake ourselves to our Bibles. And the reason for this is in
the fact that this Book was born in the fires. It is soaked with the
tears, either of those who wrote or of those addressed.

Take, for instance, this Epistle. It was intended to solace the bitter
anguish of these Hebrew Christians, who were exposed to the double fury
of the storm. In the first place, there was the inevitable opposition
and persecution to be encountered by all followers of the Nazarene; not
only from the Gentiles, but specially from their fellow-countrymen, who
accounted them apostates.

Next, there was the pain of excommunication from the splendid rites of
the Temple, with its daily service, its solemn feasts, its magnificent
ceremonial. Only those amongst our-selves who from childhood have been
wont to worship in some splendid minster, with its pealing organ,
full-voiced choir, and mystery of architecture, arresting and
enchaining every sense of beauty, but who have felt constrained to join
the worship of an obscure handful in some plain meetinghouse, can
realize how painfully those who were addressed in these words missed
the religious associations of their early days.

And then this suffering, thorn-crowned, dying Messiah! It seemed almost
impossible to realize that he was the Christ of national desire. The
objections that baffled the faith of the two travelers to Emmaus arose
in almost irresistible force: “The chief priests and our rulers have
crucified him; but we trusted that it had been he which should have
redeemed Israel” (Luke xxiv. 20).

No attempt is made in these words to minimize the sufferings of Christ.
That were impossible and superfluous. He is King in the realm of
sorrow; peerless in his pain; supreme in his distress. Though earth be
full of sufferers, none can vie with our Lord in his. Human nature is
limited. The confines of its joys or sorrows are soon touched. The
pendulum swings only hither and thither. But who shall estimate the
capacity of Christ’s nature? And because of it, he could taste the
sweets of a joy beyond his fellows, and of sorrow so excessive as to
warrant the challenge: “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like
unto my sorrow, wherewith the Lord hath afflicted me in the day of his
fierce anger.” If it be true, as Carlyle says, that our sorrow is the
inverted image of our nobility, how deep must the sorrow have been of
the noblest of our race! Well may the Greek liturgy, with infinite
pathos, speak of his “unknown sorrows.”

Shall the sufferings of Christ cause us to reject Christ? Ah, strange
infatuation! As well reject the heaven because of its sun, or night
because of the queenly moon; or a diadem because of its regal gem; or
home because of mother. The sufferings of Christ are the proudest boast
of the Gospel. He himself wears the insignia of them in heaven; as a
general, on the day of triumph, chooses his choicest order to wear upon
his breast. Yes, and it was the deliberate choice of him, “for whom are
all things, and by whom are all things “-and who must, therefore, have
had every expedient at his command-that the path of suffering should be
his Son’s way through our world. Every track through creation is as
familiar to Omniscience as the tracks across the hills to the
gray-haired, plaided shepherd. Had he wished, the Father might have
conducted the Son to glory by another route than the thorny, flint-set
path of suffering. But the reasons for this experience were so
overwhelming that he could not evade them. Nothing else had been
becoming. Those reasons may be stated almost in a sentence.

Our Father has on hand a work greater than his original creation. He is
“bringing many sons unto glory.” The way may be rugged and tedious; but
its end is glory. And it is the way along which our Father is bringing
us; for, since we believe on the Son, we have the right to call
ourselves sons (John i. 12). And there are many of us. Many sons,
though only one Son. We do not go solitarily along the narrow way. We
are but part of a multitude which no man can number. The glory of which
we have already spoken, and into which Jesus has entered, is not for
him alone, but for us also. “Many sons” are to be his joint-heirs;
reigning with him on his throne, sharing his unsearchable riches and
his everlasting reign.

But all these sons must tread the path of sufering. Since the first sin
brought suffering to our first parents, and bloodshed into the first
home, there has been but one lot for those who will live Godly. Their
road leads to glory; but every inch of it is stained with their blood
and watered by their tears. It climbs to Hermon’s summit; but it
descends immediately into somber and devil-haunted plains. It conducts
to the Mount of Olives, with its ascension light; but it first
traverses the glades of Gethsemane, the wine-press of Golgotha, the
solitude and darkness of the grave.

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

What true soul has not its wilderness of temptation; its conflicts with
Sadducees and Scribes; its hour of weariness and watching; its tears
over cities full of rebellious men; its disappointments from friends;
its persecutions from foes; rejection, agony, friendlessness,
loneliness, denials, trial, treacheries, deaths, and burials? Such is
the draught which the noblest and saintliest have drunk from the golden
chalice of life.

Foreseeing our needs, our Father has provided for us a Leader. It is a
great boon for a company of pilgrims to have a Great-heart; for an army
to have a captain; for an exodus to have a Moses. Courageous,
sagacious, and strong leaders are God’s good gifts to men. And it is
only what we might have expected that God has placed such a One as the
efficient Leader at the head of the long line of pilgrims, whom he is
engaged in bringing to glory. The toils seem lighter and the distance
shorter; laggards quicken their pace; wandering ones are recalled from
by-paths by the presence and voice of the Leader, who marches,
efficient, royal, and divine, in the van. heirs of glory, weary of the
long and toilsome march, remember that ye are part of a great host: and
that the Prince, at the head of the column, has long since entered the
city; though he is back again, passing as an inspiration along the
ranks as they are toiling on.

Our Leader is perfect. Of course this does not refer to his moral or
spiritual attributes. In these he is possessed of the stature of the
perfect Man, and has filled out, in every detail, God’s ideal of
manhood. But he might have been all this without being perfectly
adapted to the work of leading many sons through suffering to glory. He
might have been perfect in character, and desirous to help us; but, if
he had never tasted death, how could he allay our fears as we tread the
verge of Jordan? If he had never been tempted, how could he succor
those who are tempted? If he had never wept, how could he stanch our
tears? If he had never suffered, hungered, wearied on the hill of
difficulty, or threaded his way through the quagmires of grief, how
could he have been a merciful and faithful High-Priest, having
compassion on the ignorant and wayward? But, thank God, our Leader is a
perfect one. He is perfectly adapted to his task. His certificate,
countersigned by the voice of inspiration, declares him fully
qualified.

But this perfect efficiency, as we have seen, is the result of
suffering. In no other conceivable way could he have been so
effectively qualified to be our Leader as he has been by the ordeal of
suffering. Every pang, every tear, every thrill, all were needed to
complete his equipment to help us. And from this we may infer that
suffering is sometimes permitted to befall us in order to qualify us to
be, in our poor measure, the leaders and comforters of our brethren,
who are faltering in the march. When next we suffer, let us believe
that it is not the result of chance, or fate, or man’s carelessness, or
hell’s malevolence; but that perhaps God is perfecting our adaptability
to comfort and succor others.

Are there not some in your circle to whom you naturally betake yourself
in times of trial and sorrow? They always seem to speak the right word,
to give the very counsel you are longing for; you do not realize,
however, the cost which they had to pay ere they became so skillful in
binding up gaping wounds and drying tears. But if you were to
investigate their past history you would find that they have suffered
more than most. They have watched the slow untwisting of some silver
cord on which the lamp of life hung. They have seen the golden bowl of
joy dashed to their feet, and its contents spilt. They have stood by
ebbing tides, and drooping gourds, and noon sunsets; but all this has
been necessary to make them the nurses, the physicians, the priests of
men. The boxes that come from foreign climes are clumsy enough; but
they contain spices which scent the air with the fragrance of the
Orient. So suffering is rough and hard to bear; but it hides beneath it
discipline, education, possibilities, which not only leave us nobler,
but perfect us to help others. Do not fret, or set your teeth, or wait
doggedly for the suffering to pass; but get out of it all you can, both
for yourself and for your service to your generation, according to the
will of God.

Suffering educates sympathy; it softens the spirit, lightens the touch,
hushes the tread; it accustoms the spirit to read from afar the
symptoms of an unspoken grief; it teaches the soul to tell the number
of the promises, which, like the constellations of the arctic circle,
shine most brilliantly through the wintry night; it gives to the spirit
a depth, a delicacy, a wealth of which it cannot otherwise possess
itself. Through suffering he has become perfected.

His sufferings have purchased our pardon. He tasted death for every
man. But his sufferings have done more in enabling him to understand
experimentally, and to allay, with the tenderness of one who has
suffered, all the griefs and sorrows that are experienced by the
weakest and weariest of the great family of God.

So far, then, from rejecting him because of his sorrows, this shall
attract us the more quickly to his side. And, amid our glad songs, this
note shall predominate: “It behoved Christ to suffer.” “In the midst of
the throne, a Lamb as it had been slain.”

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VII THE DEATH OF DEATH

“Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also
himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy
him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them, who
through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage.” HEBREWS
ii. 14, 15.

WE fear death with a double fear. There is, first, the instinctive fear
shared also by the animal creation; for the very brutes tremble as the
moment of death draws near. Surely this fear is not wrong. It is often
congenital and involuntary, and afflicts some of God’s noblest saints:
though doubtless these will some day confess that it was most
unwarrantable, and that the moment of dissolution was calm and sweet
and blessed.

It is a growing opinion among thoughtful men that the moment of death,
when the spirit passes from its earthly tabernacle, is probably the
most painless and the happiest moment of its whole earthly story. And
if this be so generally, how much more must it be the case with those
on whose sight are breaking the glories of Paradise! The child whose
eyes feast upon a glowing vista of flower and fruit, beckoning it
through the garden-gate, hardly notices the rough woodwork of the gate
itself as it bounds through; and probably the soul, becoming aware of
the beauty of the King and the glories of its home, is too absorbed to
notice the act of death, till it suddenly finds itself free to mount
and soar and revel in the dawning light.

But there is another fear of death, which is spiritual. dread its
mystery. What is it? Whither does it lead? Why does it come just now?
What is the nature of the life beyond? We see the movements on the
other side of the thick curtain which sways to and fro; but we can
distinguish no form. The dying ones are conscious of sights and sounds
for which we strain eye and ear in vain.

We dread its leave-taking. The heathen poet sang sadly of leaving earth
and home and family. Long habit endears the homeliest lot and the
roughest comrades: how much more the true-hearted and congenial-it is
hard to part from them. If only we could all go together, there would
be nothing in it. But this separate dropping-off, this departing one by
one, this drift from the anchorage alone! Who can deny that it is a
lonesome thing?

Men dread the after-death. ” The sting of death is sin.” The sinner
dreads to die, because he knows that, on the other side of death, he
must meet the God against whom he has sinned, and stand at his bar to
give an account and receive the due reward of his deeds. How can he
face that burning glory? How can he answer for one of a thousand? How
can mortal man be just with God? How can he escape hell, and find his
place amid the happy festal throngs of the Golden City?

Many of man’s fears were known to Christ. And he knew that they would
be felt by many who were to be closely related to him as brethren. If,
then, he was prompted by ordinary feelings of compassion to the great
masses of mankind, he would be especially moved to relieve those with
whom he had so close an affinity, as these marvelous verses unfold. He
and they are all of one (ver. 11). He calls them brethren through the
lips of psalmist and prophet (ver. 12). He takes his stand in the
assembled Church, and sings his Father’s praise in its company (ver. I
2). He even associates himself with them in their humble childlike
trust (ver. 13). He dares to accost the gaze of all worlds, as he comes
forward leading them by the hand (ver. 13). Oh, marvelous
identification! Oh, rapturous association! More wondrous far than if a
seraph should cherish friendship with a worm! But the preciousness of
this relationship lies in the fact that Jesus will do all he can to
alleviate that fear of death, which is more or less common to us all.

But in order to do it, he must die. He could not be the death of death
unless he had personally tasted death. He needed to fulfill the law of
death by dying, before he could abolish death. Our David must go into
the valley of Elah, and grapple with our giant foe, and wrest from him
his power, and slay him with his own sword. As in the old fable
Prometheus could not slay the Minotaur unless he accompanied the yearly
freight of victims, so must Jesus go with the myriads of our race into
the dark confines of the tomb, that death might do its worst in vain;
that the grave might lose its victory; and that the grim gaoler might
be shown powerless to hold the Resurrection and the Life. Had Christ
not died, it might have been affirmed that, in one place at least,
death and sin, chaos and darkness, were supreme. “It behooved him,
therefore, to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” And,
like another Samson, carrying the gates of his prison-house, he came
forth, demonstrating forever that light is stronger than darkness,
salvation than sin, life than death. Hear his triumphant cry, as thrice
the risen and ascended Master exclaims, “I died, and lo, I am alive
forevermore, and have the keys of Hades and of death.” Death and hell
chose their own battleground, their strongest; and there, in the hour
of his weakness, our King defeated them, and now carries the trophy of
victory at his girdle forevermore. Hallelujah!

But he could only have died by becoming man. Perhaps there is no race
in the universe that can die but our own. So there may be no other spot
in the wide universe of God seamed with graves, shadowed by the
outspread wings of the angel of death, or marked by the plague-spot of
sin. “Sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed
upon all.” In order then to die, Christ must take on himself our human
nature. Others die because they are born; Christ was born that he might
die. It is as if he said: “Of thee, human mother, must I be born; and I
must suffer the aches and pains and sorrows of mortal life; and I must
hasten quickly to the destined goal of human life; I have come into the
world to die.” “Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and
blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same, in order that
through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that
is, the devil: and deliver them, who through fear of death were all
their lifetime subject to bondage.”

BY DEATH CHRIST DESTROYED HIM THAT HAD THE POWER OF DEATH. Scripture
has no doubt as to the existence of the devil. And those who know much
of their own inner life, and of the sudden assaults of evil to which we
are liable, cannot but realize his terrible power. And from this
passage we infer that that power was even greater before Jesus died.
“He had the power of death.” It was a chief weapon in his infernal
armory. The dread of it was so great as to drive men to yield to any
demands made by the priests of false religions, with their dark
impurities and hideous rites. Thus timid sheep are scared by horrid
shouts and blows into the butcher’s shambles.

But since Jesus died, the devil and his power are destroyed. Brought to
naught, not made extinct. Still he assails the Christian warrior,
though armed from head to foot; and goes about seeking whom he may
devour, and deceives men to ruin. Satan is not impotent though chained.
He has received the wound which annuls his power, but it has not yet
been effectual to destroy him.

His power was broken at the cross and grave of Jesus. The hour of
Gethsemane was the hour and power of darkness. And Satan must have seen
the Resurrection in despair. It was the knell of his destiny. It sealed
his doom. The prince of this world was judged and cast out from the
seat of power (John xii. 31 ; xvi. ii). The serpent’s head was bruised
beyond remedy.

Fear not the devil, child of God; nor death! These make much noise, but
they have no power. The Breaker has gone before thee, clearing thy way.
Only keep close behind him. Hark ! He gives thee power over all the
power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt thee (Luke x.
9). No robber shall pluck thee from thy Shepherd’s hand.

By DEATH CHRIST DELIVERS FROM THE FEAR OF DEATH. A child was in the
habit of playing in a large and beautiful garden, with sunny lawns; but
there was one part of it, a long and winding path, down which he never
ventured; indeed, he dreaded to go near it, because some silly nurse
had told him that ogres and goblins dwelt within its darksome gloom. At
last his eldest brother heard of his fear, and, after playing one day
with him, took him to the embowered entrance of the grove, and, leaving
him there terror-stricken, went singing through its length, and
returned, and reasoned with the child, proving that his fears were
groundless. At last he took the lad’s hand, and they went through it
together, and from that moment the fear which had haunted the place
fled. And the memory of that brother’s presence took its place. So has
Jesus done for us!

Fear not the mystery Of death! Jesus has died, and has shown us that it
is the gateway into another life, more fair and blessed than this-a
life in which human words are understood, and human faces smile, and
human affections linger still. The forty days of his resurrection life
have solved many of the problems, and illumined most of the mystery. To
die is to go at once to be with him. No chasm, no interval, no weary
delay in purgatory. Absent from the body, present with the Lord, One
moment here in conditions of mortality; the next beyond the stars.

Fear not the loneliness of death! The soul in the dark valley becomes
aware of another at its side, “Thou art with me.” Death cannot separate
us, even for a moment, from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus
our Lord. In the hour of death Jesus fulfills his own promise, “I will
come again and take you unto myself.” And on the other side we step
into a vast circle of loving spirits, who welcome the new-comer with
festal songs (2 Peter i. 11)

Fear not the after-death! The curse and penalty of sin have been borne
by him. Death, the supreme sentence on sinners, has been suffered for
us by our Substitute. In him we have indeed passed on to the other side
of the doom, which is justly ours, as members of a sinful race. Who is
he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea, rather, that is risen
again.”

Death! How shall they die who have already died in Christ? That which
others call death, we call sleep. We dread it no more than sleep. Our
bodies lie down exhausted with the long working-day, to awake in the
fresh energy of the eternal morning; but in the meanwhile the spirit is
presented faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding
joy.

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VIII. CHRIST’S MERCIFUL AND FAITHFUL HELP

” merciful and faithful high-priest in things pertaining to God.” HEBREWS
ii. 17.

DOST thou wonder that thy Lord was tempted and sorrowful? It is indeed
the marvel of eternity; and yet not so marvelous, when we consider the
beings whom he elected to succor, help, and save, and of whom each of
us is one.

Had he chosen to lay hold of fallen angels, with a view of raising them
from their lost estate, he would without doubt have taken upon himself
their nature, and descended into the pit; identifying himself with
their miseries, and paving, by his sufferings, a pathway across the
great fixed gulf which intervenes between their lost estate and
Paradise. But verily he took not hold of angels, but of the seed of
Abraham; and had no alternative therefore but to assimilate himself in
all points to the nature of those whom, in infinite mercy and grace, he
brothered.

There are two things thou needest, reader; and not thou only, but all
men, reconciliation, and succor in the hour of temptation. These
instinctive cravings of the soul are as mighty and as irrepressible as
the craving of the body for sleep or food; and they are as evident amid
our luxury and refinement as in primeval forests, or beside the
historic rivers of antiquity-the Nile, the Indus, the Euphrates.

To meet these two needs, men have constituted one of their number a
priest. That word has an ominous sound to our ears, because it has been
associated with immoralities and cruelty. The world has never seen more
unscrupulous or rapacious tyrants than its priests, whether of Baal or
Moloch, of Judaism or the Papacy. All through the ages it has seemed
impossible for men to receive power in the spiritual realm without
abusing it to the injury of those who sought their help. Study the
history of the priesthood, which murdered Christ because he threw too
strong a light upon its hypocrisies and villainies, and you have the
history of every priestcraft which has darkened the world with crime,
and saturated its soil with the blood of the noblest and saintliest of
men.

And yet the idea of the priest is a natural and a beautiful one. It is
natural for men who are conscious of sin barring their access into the
presence of a holy God, and demanding sacrifice in order to peace, to
say to one of their fellows, “Our hands are stained with blood, and
grimed with toil; our garments spotted with pollution and dust; our
lives too busy for us to spare time for those rites which alone can fit
the sinner to stand before the eye of God: do for us what we cannot do
for ourselves; prepare thyself by holy rite and vigil and fasting from
sin, so as to be able to stand in the presence-chamber of the All-Holy;
and when thou hast acquired the right of audience with him, speak for
us, atone for us, make reconciliation for our sins; and then come forth
to us, succoring and blessing those who cannot attain to thy position,
but must ever struggle as best they may with the strong, rough, bad
world in which they are doomed to live.”

This seems the underlying thought of the vast system which has built
temples in every land, reared altars on every soil, and constituted a
priesthood amid the most degraded as well as the most civilized races
of mankind.

And there is great beauty in the work and ministry of a true priest.
Not always engaged in the darker work of sacrificing flocks of fleecy
sheep, by which alone, in those rude days, the cost of sin could be
computed; the true priest would have other, and, perhaps, more
congenial work. He would be the shepherd of the timid souls around him;
listening to confessions whispered over the heads of the dumb victims;
feeling compassion for erring and wayward ones; comforting those who
were passing through scenes of sorrow, till faces shadowed with tears
began to gleam with holy light; arresting the proud hand of the
oppressor, as Ambrose did in lawless days, to rescue the poor from the
mailed blow. Never studying self-interest; never consuting ease or
pleasure or gain; never resting while one poor wanderer was away in the
snowdrift or on the wild. Yes, and more: he would be the spokesman of
souls, praying for those who did not pray for themselves; praying for
those who knew not what or how to ask; interceding for the whole race
of man. Ah! how often must such a one have been compelled by the
pressure of the burden to go apart from the busy crowds to some lone
spot, that he might pour out before God the long litany of need and
sorrow and temptation which had been poured into his heart. Lovely
ideal; ah, how seldom realized!

All this is Jesus Christ, and more. Words fail indeed to say all that
he is in himself, or all that he can be to those that trust him. And it
is because of this that he is able to give such blessed help to all who
need it. Let us consider that help.

IT Is SOVEREIGN AND UNEXPECTED HELP. Angels fell. Once they were the
peers of heaven. They sang its songs, plucked its flowers of amaranth,
and drank its tranquil bliss. They loved its King, and served him, like
the sunbeam, with unpolluted brightness and unswerving direction. But,
alas! they fell from heaven to hell. And for them there is no help, so
far as we can learn. “God taketh not hold of angels.”

But he has set his heart upon us, the poor children of dust, the
creatures of the transient moments of time, who had fallen by the same
sin of self-will. Here is a theme for meditation! We cannot pierce the
mystery, or understand its full import. But we may, with wondering
faith and joy, accept the chalice, brimming with unmerited, unexpected,
undeserved grace, and drain its draughts of bliss.

IT IS HUMAN HELP. ” Made like unto his brethren.” The peculiarity of
this phrase testifies to Christ’s pre-existence and glory, and
indicates how great a stoop on his part it involved ere he could be
like man. He had to be made like man, i.e., he was not like man in the
original constitution of his being. We cannot solve the mystery of the
holy incarnation. And yet the thought of it has never been quite
foreign to the heart of man. Many a Greek and Hindu myth rested on an
instinctive craving for the presence of God in human flesh, which
became parent to the belief that such a thing had been, and might be
again. Even in the highlands of Galatia, the most ready explanation of
the miracles of Paul was that the gods had come down in the likeness of
men.

But though there be such a profound mystery resting on this subject,
yet the union of the Almighty with a human life is at least not more
incomprehensible than the union of a spiritual, unmaterial principle,
as the soul, with a material organism, as the human body. When the
secrets of our own nature have been unraveled, it will be time enough
for us to demand of the Almighty that, when he assumes our nature, lie
should disrobe himself of all mystery. How exquisite is the arrangement
that God’s help should come to us through the Son of Man; that our
Helper should shed true human tears, and feel true human pity Jew
though he was, child of the most exclusive and intolerant of peoples,
yet the humanity which is greater than Judaism makes us oblivious to
all else than that lie is our Brother.

IT IS HIGH-PRIESTLY HELP. The full meaning of this phrase will appear
as we proceed. It is sufficient to say here, that all that men have
sought to realize in human priesthoods, but in vain, is realized with
transcendent beauty in him. Nor is there any way of weaning men from
the human priesthoods which deceive, but to present to them the
all-glorious, immaculate priesthood of Christ.

It is of little use only to denounce the priests that are coming back
to Protestant England through a thousand covert channels, or the people
who go to them. There is a craving in their heart which impels them. It
is of no use to fight against nature. But satisfy it; give it its true
nutriment; supply its wants with reality; and it will be content to
drop the false for the true, the paste diamond for the Golconda
pebbles, the human for the divine. Men must have a priest; and they are
going back to the mummeries of Rome, because there has been too scanty
a presentation in our pulpits of the priesthood of Jesus.

IT IS MERCIFUL AND FAITHFUL HELP. When we are in need, we want help
wedded with mercy. The patient in the infirmary does not like to be
treated as a broken watch. Oh that he were at home again, to be nursed
by the soft hands of his mother, which ever feel so skillful and gentle
and soft! We need merciful help, which does not upbraid, is not in too
great a hurry to listen, and gladly takes all extenuating circumstances
into account. Such mercy is in the heart of Jesus. And his help is ever
faithful, too. This word has a fine tint of meaning, almost lost in our
translation, giving the idea of one who runs up at the first cry of
distress. He neither slumbers nor sleeps. He watches us with a gaze
which is not for a moment diverted from us. He sees us through the
storm. He sits beside the molten metal. He will help us right early
-i.e., when the day breaks. You may be bereft of all power of
consecutive thought, unable to utter a single intelligible sentence,
frantic with agony and remorse; but if you can only moan, he will
instantly respond. “He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice of
thy cry.”

IT IS HELP BASED ON RECONCILIATION FOR SIN. Sin is one of the greatest
facts in our history. It is impossible to ignore it. You cannot explain
man unless you take it into account. For this the world has been
covered with the apparatus of sacrifice; and the cry has rung in a
monotone of despair, “How shall man be just with God?”

But Jesus met the demands of conscience, echoing those of a broken law,
when on Calvary, as High-Priest, he offered himself as victim, and made
an all-sufficient, satisfactory, and complete sacrifice for the sin of
the world.

Burdened one, groaning under the load of sin, remember that he bare thy
sins in his own body on the tree. Approach the holy God, reminding him
of that fact, and daring on account of it to stand unabashed and
accepted in his sight.

IT IS SYMPATHETIC HELP FOR THE TEMPTED. ” Them that are tempted.”
Within that circle we all stand. Each is tempted in subtler, if not in
grosser, forms; in extraordinary, if not in ordinary, ways. You have
been trying, oh, so hard, to be good; but have met with some sudden
gust, and been overcome. Tempted to despair! Tempted to yield to
Potiphar’s wife! Tempted to become a brute! No lawn without the
fowler’s snare! No day without its sorrow! No night without its noisome
pestilence! No rose without its thorn!

Do we not need succor? Certainly; and he is able to succor the tempted,
because he has suffered the very worst that temptation can do. Not that
there was ever one symptom or thought of yielding; yet suffering to the
point of extreme anguish, beneath the test.

O sufferers, tempted ones, desolate and not comforted, lean your heads
against the breast of the God-Man, whose feet have trodden each inch of
your thorny path; and whose experiences of the power of evil well
qualify him to strengthen you to stand, to lift you up if you have
fallen, to speak such words as will heal the ache of the freshly gaping
wound. If he were impassive, and had never wept or fought in the Garden
shadows, or cried out forsaken on the cross, we had not felt him so
near as we can do now in all hours of bitter grief.

O matchless Saviour, on whom God our Father has laid our help, we can
dispense with human sympathy, with priestly help, with the solace and
stay of many a holy service; but thou art indispensable to us, in thy
life, and death, and resurrection, and brotherhood, and sympathizing
intercession at the throne of God!
__________________________________________________________________

IX. A WARNING AGAINST UNBELIEF

“Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief,
in departing from the living God.” -HEBREWS iii. 12.

THE contrast between the third and fourth chapters of this epistle is
very marked. The former is like a drear November day, when all the
landscape is drenched by sweeping rain, and the rotting leaves fall in
showers to find a grave upon the damp and muddy soil. The latter is
like a still clear day in midsummer, when nature revels in reposeful
bliss beneath the unstinted caresses of the sun. There is as much
difference between them as between the seventh and eighth chapters of
the Epistle to the Romans.

But each chapter represents an experience of the inner Christian life.
Perhaps the majority of Christians live and die in the third chapter,
to their infinite loss. Comparatively few pass over into the fourth.
Yet why, reader, should you not pass the boundary line today, and leave
behind forever the bitter, unsatisfactory experiences which have become
the normal rule of your existence? Come up out of the wilderness, in
which you have wandered so long. Your sojourn there has been due, not
to any desire on the part of God, or to any arbitrary appointment of
his, or to any natural disability of your temperament; but to certain
grave failures on your part, in the regimen of the inner life.

The antipodes of your hitherto dreary experiences is Christ, the
unsearchable riches of Christ; to be made a partaker of Christ: for
Christ is the Promised Land that flows with milk and honey, in which we
eat bread without scarceness, and gather the grapes and pomegranates
and olives of rare spiritual blessedness.

WILDERNESS EXPERIENCES. Never did a nation occupy a prouder position
than the children of Israel on the morning when they stood victorious
on the shores of the Red Sea. The power of the tyrant had been broken
by a series of marvelous miracles. The chivalry of Egypt had sunk as
lead in the mighty waters of death. And as the sun rose behind the
mountains of Edom, and struck a flashing pathway across the burnished
mirror of the sea, it revealed long lines of corpses washed up to the
water’s edge. Behind, Egypt left forever. Above, the fleecy cloud,
chariot of God, tabernacle for his presence. Before, the Land of
Promise. Many a man was already dreaming of vineyards and olive yards,
and a settled home, all of which lay within two or three months’ easy
march.

But of those six hundred thousand men, flushed with victory and hope,
two only were destined to see the land flowing with milk and honey; and
these not until forty weary years had slowly passed away. And what
became of all the rest? Alas! their carcasses fell in the wilderness.
Instead of reposing in some family burying-place in the Land of
Promise, their bodies were taken up one by one and laid in the desert
waste; the sands their winding-sheet; the solitude their mausoleum. It
took forty years for them all to die. And to accomplish this there must
have been a high percentage of deaths. How dreary those incessant
funerals! How monotonous the perpetual sounds of Oriental grief moaning
through the camp! What wonder that Psalm xc., written among such
scenes, is so inexpressibly sad!

The wilderness experience is emblematic, amongst other things, of
unrest, aimlessness, and unsatisfied longings. Unrest: the tents were
constantly being struck to be erected again in much the same spot.
Theirs a perpetual weariness; and they were not suffered to enter into
God’s rest. Aimlessness: they wandered in the wilderness in a desert
way; they found no city of habitation. Unsatisfied longings: hungry and
thirsty, their soul fainted in them.

But how typical of the lives of many amongst ourselves! Life is passing
away so swiftly from us, but how unideal! How few Christians seem to
have learned the secret of the inner rest! How many are the victims of
murmuring and discontent; or are bitten by the serpents of jealousy and
passion, of hatred and ill-will! The almost universal experience tells
of broken vows and blighted hopes, of purposeless wanderings, of a
monotony of failure. Always striking and pitching the camp! Always
surrounded by the same monotonous horizon, sand, with here and there a
palm tree! Always fed on the same food, till the soul loathes it! Life
passes away amid fret and chafing disappointment and weariness of
existence, till we say with Solomon, “Vanity of vanities, all is
vanity.”

One of the scourges of the desert is the sandstorm, when the hot wind
is laden with light powdery dust, which finds its way into eyes and
mouth and lungs; penetrating the clothes, stinging the skin, and making
life almost unbearable. An apt illustration of the small annoyances,
the petty irritations, the perpetual swarm of gnat-like stings, which
invade our most comfortable circumstances, and make us question whether
life is worth living.

Then there is also the mirage. When from afar green glades seem to
attract the weary traveler, who, as he reaches them, finds his hopes
deceived and his thirst mocked. Emblem this of the disappointments to
which they expose themselves who are ever seeking for some earthly good
to mitigate the hardships and sorrows of their life, instead of seeking
the fellowship and blessed help of the living Christ. They travel
forward, thinking at every step that they are nearing an oasis in their
desert march; but, as they approach, the fabric of their hopes fades
away into the air.

“We are made partakers of Christ.” These words may either mean that all
believers together partake of the fullness of Jesus, or that they all
partake with him of the fullness of God. “Heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Christ.” But whichever be the true rendering, the thought is
inexpressibly helpful. Jesus Christ is our Promised Land, and our
Joshua to lead us thither. He gives us rest. In him are orchards and
vineyards, and all manner of precious things. His comfort for our
sorrow; his rest for our weariness; his strength for our weakness; his
purity for our corruption; his ever-present help for our need. Oh,
blessed Jesus, surely it is the wonder of heaven that we make so little
of thee!

THE CAUSE OF THE WILDERNESS EXPERIENCE. They could not enter in because
of unbelief. See how unbelief raises a barrier which shuts us out of
blessing. A fortune may have been left you; but if you do not believe
the intelligence and apply for it, you will not profit by it. A
regiment of angels may be passing by your home, with blessings in their
hands that might enrich you forever; but if you do not believe the
tidings that they are on the march, you will not go out to greet or
welcome them. A noble character may rear itself in the neighborhood in
which you live, or the society in which you move; but if you do not
believe in it, you will derive no stimulus or comfort from its genial
and helpful influence. So whatever Christ may be, and however near, he
will be nothing to you unless you have learned to trust him.

There are three conditions in which unbelief thrives with us, as with
the children of Israel: they murmured.

The first outbreak was in the wilderness of Sin (Exod.xvi.), within a
few days of the Exodus. There was no bread. The provisions hastily
brought from Egypt were consumed. They had their kneading-troughs, but
no flour to knead. There was no organized commissariat. “And the whole
congregation of the children of Israel murmured against Moses and
against Aaron in the wilderness: and the children of Israel said unto
them, Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of
Egypt, when we sat by the flesh-pots, when we did eat bread to the
full; for ye have brought us forth into this wilderness, to kill this
whole assembly with hunger.”

The second outbreak was at Rephidim (Exod. xvii.). There was no water.
The scanty desert brooks were heaps of scorching stones, and not a leaf
of vegetation trembled in the burning sunshine. And again the sullen
sounds of discontent were heard as the people muttered their belief
that they had been brought out of Egypt to perish there.

But the most serious outbreak occurred shortly after they left Sinai
(Num. xiii.). The green hills of Palestine at last appeared in view,
and spies were sent forward to search the land. After forty days they
returned laden with luscious fruits; but they had a story to tell of
the strength and fortifications of the Canaanites, which filled the
people with dismay; and “all the people murmured against Moses and
against Aaron, and said, Would God that we had died in the land of
Egypt.” “Yea, they despised the pleasant land, they believed not his
word; but murmured in their tents, and hearkened not unto the voice of
the Lord. Therefore he lifted up his hand unto them, that he would
overthrow them in the wilderness” (Psa. cvi. 24-26). A murmuring,
complaining heart is one which has already commenced to disbelieve in
the wise and loving lead of Christ, and in which unbelief will thrive.

“They departed from the living God.” God is the Home and Source of
life. From him, as from a fountain, all things derive their being,
strength, and beauty. If Israel had remained in living union with him,
there would have been no failure in their supplies; and there would
have been sufficient grace to make the people calm and restful and
strong amid these privations and difficulties. But they departed from
him. They thought they could do better for themselves. They forsook the
Fountain of living water, and went up into the hills to hew out for
themselves broken, i.e., cracked cisterns, which could hold no water.
Of the Rock that begat them they grew unmindful; and so became as the
desert tamarisk, which inhabits dull and uninhabited wastes, in
contrast to the tree whose roots are fed by rivers, and whose arms
shadow generations.

Let us ask ourselves whether there has been any declension in our
heart-religion, less prayerfulness, less closeness in our walk with
God, less enjoyment in the worship of his house; for, if so, unbelief
is sure to manifest itself, as the fungus which grows fat on the damp
and foetid soil. Unbelief cannot live in the sunlight of fellowship
with God.

They failed to learn the lessons of the past. They did not deny the
past. They would have told you with flashing eyes the wonderful story
of deliverance. But they did not trust God’s love and wisdom; they did
not rely on his repeated promises that he would most certainly bring
them in as he had already brought them out; they did not find in the
past a guarantee that he would not fail nor forsake them. At Sin they
should have said, “He gave us these bodies with these appetites and
needs: we may trust him to provide them with food. ‘Our heavenly Father
knows that we have need of all these things.'” At Marah they should
have said, “He gave us manna, surely he can supply our thirst.” At
Paran they should have said, “God has promised to give us the land; and
so, though the Canaanites are strong, and their cities walled to
heaven, we will dare believe in him.” Instead of this they cried, “He
smote the rock, and the waters gushed out; and the streams overflowed.
Can he give bread also? Can he give flesh for his people?”

As we pass through life we should carefully store our hearts with the
memory of God’s great goodness, and fetch from past deliverances the
assurances that he will never leave, neither forsake. Has he conveyed
us across the Atlantic to leave us to drown in a ditch? Has he been
with us in six troubles to desert us in the seventh? Has he saved, and
can he not keep? Has he redeemed us from hell, and can he not bring us
to heaven?

“His love in time past forbids us to think

He’ll leave us at last in trouble to sink;

Each sweet Ebenezer we have in review

Confirms his good pleasure to help us right through.”

If we would guard against unbelief, we should reinforce our faith by
constantly recapitulating the story of God’s past dealings; and thus
through the stream of memory the uplands of our life will send their
deposits of blessed helpfulness to reinforce us in our daily anxieties
and perplexities. “The Lord hath been mindful of us, he will bless us.”
“If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of
his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.”

You were happy in your childhood; your early days were set in a golden
frame; but dear ones have vanished, as the oak’s shadow from the forest
undergrowth, and you feel unprotected and lonely: but the God of your
childhood will not be less thoughtful of you than in those happy bygone
days.

You have stepped out on the waters, and as the storm threatens you, you
almost wish yourself back; but he who was with you in the fair haven
will be as near you when the winds rave and the waves lift up their
voice. You are on the point of exchanging the flesh-pots of Egypt for
the new land of Canaan, with its blessed promise; and on the way, heart
and flesh fail at the new and untried scenes that daunt and perplex:
but he who delivered you from Pharaoh can shield you from Amalek; he
who cleft the Red Sea will divide the Jordan.

INSPIRED CAUTIONS. ” Take heed lest there be in any one of you an evil
heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” Unbelief is the
child, not of the head, but of the heart. It is always well to know the
source of disease, then the physician can attack it in its citadel. If
unbelief were the creature of our intellect, we must needs meet it
there with argument; but since it is the product of a wrong state of
heart, of an evil heart, we must meet it there.

“This,” says William Law, “is an eternal truth, which you cannot too
much reflect upon, that reason always follows the state of the heart;
and what your heart is, that is your reason. If your heart is full of
sentiments, of penitence, and of faith, your reason will take part with
your heart; but if your heart is shut up in death and dryness, your
reason will delight in nothing but dry objections and speculations.”

Guard against an evil heart. If the heart were in a right condition,
faith would be as natural to it as flowers in spring; or as smiles on
the face of healthy, innocent childhood. As soon as the heart gets into
an evil state-harboring sin; cherishing things which you would not
excuse in others, but condone in yourself; permitting unholy thoughts
and desires to remain unchecked and unjudged, then, beware! for such a
heart is no longer able to believe in God. Its head turns dizzy; its
eyes are blinded; and it is in imminent peril of falling irretrievably.

Take heed, then; watch and pray; examine yourselves whether ye be in
the faith; prove your own selves! Expose yourselves to the searching
light of God’s Spirit. Cultivate the honest and good heart. Most of the
infidelity of the present day arises from man’s disinclination to
retain God in his knowledge. More skepticism may be traced to a
neglected prayer closet than to the arguments of infidels or the halls
of secularists. First, men depart from God; then they deny him. And,
therefore, for the most part, unbelief will not yield to clever sermons
on the evidences, but to home thrusts that pierce the points of the
harness to the soul within. “Keep thy heart beyond all keeping, since
out of it are the issues of life.”

Guard especially against heart-hardening. Hard hearts are unbelieving
ones; therefore beware of ossification of the heart. The hardest hearts
were soft once, and the softest may get hard. The chalk which now holds
the fossil shells was once moist ooze. The horny hand of toil was once
full of soft dimples. The murderer once shuddered when, as a boy, he
crushed a worm. Judas must have been once a tender and impressionable
lad.

But hearts harden gradually, like the freezing of a pond on a frosty
night. At first the process can be detected by none but a practiced
eye. Then there is a thin film of ice, so slender that a pin or needle
would fall through. At length it will sustain a pebble, and, if winter
still hold its unbroken sway, a child, a man, a crowd, a cart will
follow. We get hard through the steps of an unperceived process.

The constant hearing the truth without obeying it. The knowing a better
and doing the worse. The cherishing of unholy things that seem fair as
angels. The refusal to confess the wrong and to profess the right. All
these things harden. Beware of the deceitfulness of sin! Take heed to
yourselves! Exhort one another daily.

Guard against a fickle heart. This is the sin which this epistle
especially opposes. There are many around us who eagerly embrace a
novelty; but when the stress comes, as it always does, like the
settling of a house, there is a slackening off. We must hold fast our
boldness and the glorying of our hope steadfast to the end. We can only
become partakers of Christ if we hold fast the beginning of our
confidence firm to the end.

We should see not only to our own heart, but to the heart of our
brethren; and exhort one another daily, watching over each other, and
seeking to revive drooping piety and reanimate fainting hope. Let us
take heed to these things today. Now is God’s time. The Holy Ghost
saith, Today. Every day of delay is dangerous, because the hardening
process becomes more habitual. Today restore what you have taken
wrongfully; adjust a wrong, promote a right. Today renounce some evil
habit, some unhallowed pastime, some unlawful friendship. Today reach
out after some further realization of the fair ideal whch beckons you.
Today leave the wilderness forever, and enter by faith the Land of
Promise.
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X. THE GOSPEL OF REST

“There remaineth therefore a rest to the people of God. “-HEBREWS iv. 9.

THE keynote of this chapter is Rest. In the second verse it is spoken
of as a gospel, or good news. And is there any gospel that more needs
preaching in these busy, weary days, through which our age is rushing
to its close, than the Gospel of Rest? On all hands we hear of strong
and useful workers stricken down in early life by the exhausting
effects of mental toil. The tender brain tissues were never made to
sustain the tremendous wear and tear of our times. There is no
machinery in human nature to repair swiftly enough the waste of nervous
energy which is continually going on. It is not, therefore, to be
wondered at that the symptoms of brain tiredness are becoming familiar
to many workers, acting as warning signals, which, if not immediately
attended to, are followed by some terrible collapse of mind or body, or
both.

And yet it is not altogether that we work so much harder than our
forefathers; but that there is so much more fret and chafe and worry in
our lives. Competition is closer. Population is more crowded. Brains
are keener and swifter in their motion. The resources of ingenuity and
inventiveness, of creation and production, are more severely and
constantly taxed. And the age seem’s so merciless and selfish. If the
lonely spirit trips and falls, it is trodden down in the great onward
rush, or left behind to its fate; and the dread of the swoop of the
vultures, with rustling wings, from unknown heights upon us as their
prey, fills us with an anguish which we know by the familiar name of
care. We could better stand the strain of work if only we had rest from
worry, from anxiety, and from the fret of the troubled sea that cannot
rest, as it moans around us, with its yeasty waves, hungry to devour.
Is such a rest possible?

This chapter states that such a rest is possible. “Let us labor
therefore to enter into that rest.” Rest? What rest? His rest, says the
first verse; my rest, says the third verse; God’s rest, says the fourth
verse. And this last verse is a quotation from the earliest page of the
Bible, which tells how God rested from all the work that he had made.
And as we turn to that marvelous apocalypse of the past, which in so
many respects answers to the apocalypse of the future given us by the
Apostle John, we find that, whereas we are expressly told of the
evening and morning of each of the other days of creation, there is no
reference to the dawn or close of God’s rest-day; and we are left to
infer that it is impervious to time, independent of duration,
unlimited, and eternal; that the ages of human story are but hours in
the rest-day of Jehovah; and that, in point of fact, we spend our years
in the Sabbath-keeping of God. But, better than all, it would appear
that we are invited to enter into it and share it; as a child living by
the placid waters of a vast fresh water lake may dip into them its cup,
and drink and drink again, without making any appreciable diminution of
its volume or ripple on its expanse.

What is meant by God resting? Surely not the rest of weariness! “He
fainteth not, neither is weary.” Though he had spread forth the
heavens, and laid the foundations of the earth, and weighed the
mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance, and had invented ten
thousand differing forms of being, yet his inventiveness was as fresh,
his energy as vigorous as ever. Surely not the rest of inactivity. “My
Father worketh hitherto,” said our Lord. “In him we live, and move, and
have our being.” True, he is not now sending forth, so far as we know,
suns, or systems, or fresh types of being. But his power is ever at
work, repairing, renewing, and sustaining the fabric of the vast
machinery of the universe. No sparrow falls to the ground without him.
The cry of the young lion and the lowing of the oxen in the pastures
attract his instant regard. “In him all things consist.” It was the
rest of a finished work. He girded himself to the specific work of
creation, and summoned into being all that is; and when it was finished
he said it was very good: and at once he rested from all his work which
he had created and made. It was the rest of divine complacency, of
infinite satisfaction, of perfect content. It was equivalent to saying,
“This creation of mine is all that I meant it to be, finished and
perfect. I am perfectly satisfied; there is nothing more to be done; it
is all very good.”

This, then, is the rest which we are invited to share. We are not
summoned to the heavy slumber which follows over-taxing toil, nor to
inaction or indolence; but to the rest which is possible amid swift
activity and strenuous work; to perfect equilibrium between the
outgoings and incomings of the life; to a contented heart; to peace
that passeth all understanding; to the repose of the will in the will
of God; and to the calm of the depths of the nature which are
undisturbed by the hurricanes which sweep the surface, and urge forward
the mighty waves. This rest is holding out both its hands to the weary
souls of men throughout the ages, offering its shelter as a harbor from
the storms of life.

But is it certain that this rest has not already been entered and
exhausted by the children of men? That question is fully examined and
answered in this wonderful paragraph. The Sabbath did not realize that
rest (ver. 3). We cannot prize its ministry too highly. Its law is
written, not only in Scripture, but in the nature of man. The godless
band of French Revolutionists found that they could not supersede the
week by the decade, the one-day-in-seven by the one-day in-ten. Like a
ministering angel it relieves the monotony of labor, and hushes the
ponderous machinery of life, and weaves its spell of rest; but it is
too fitful and transient to realize the rest of God. It may typify it,
but it cannot exhaust it. Indeed, it was broken by man’s rebellion as
soon as God had sanctified and hallowed it. Canaan did not realize that
rest (ver. 8). The Land of Promise was a great relief to the marchings
and privations of the desert. But it was constantly interrupted, and at
last, in the Captivity, broken up; as the forms of the mountains in the
lake by a shower of hail. Besides, in the Book of Psalms, written four
hundred years after Joshua had led Israel across the Jordan, The Holy
Spirit, speaking by David, points onward to a rest still future (Psalm
xcv. 7). Surely, then, if neither of these events has realized the rest
of God, it remains still, waiting for us and all the people of God.
“There remaineth, therefore,” unexhausted and unrealized, “a
Sabbath-keeping to the people of God.”

And there is yet a further reason for this conviction of God’s
unexhausted rest. Jesus, our Forerunner and Representative, has entered
into it for us. See what verse 10 affirms: “He that is entered into his
rest; ” and who can he be but our great Joshua, Jehovah-Jesus? He also
has ceased from his own work of redemption, as God did from his of
creation. After the creative act, there came the Sabbath, when God
ceased from his work, and pronounced it very good; so, after the
redemptive act, there came the Sabbath to the Redeemer. He lay, during
the seventh day, in the grave of Joseph, not because he was exhausted
or inactive, but because redemption was finished, and there was no more
for him to do. He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High;
and that majestic session is a symptom neither of fatigue nor of
indolence. He ever liveth to make intercession; he works with his
servants, confirming their words with signs; he walks amid the seven
golden candlesticks. And yet he rests as a man may rest who has arisen
from his ordinary life to effect some great deed of emancipation and
deliverance; but, having accomplished it, returns again to the ordinary
routine of his former life, glad and satisfied in his heart. Nor is
this rest for Christ alone; but for us also, who are forever identified
with him in his glorious life. We have been raised up together with him
in the mind and purpose of God, and have been made to sit with him in
the heavenlies; so that in Jesus we have already entered into the rest
of God, and have simply to appropriate it by a living faith.

How, then, may we practically realize and enjoy the rest of God ?-( 1)
We must will the will of God. So long as the will of God, whether in
the Bible or in providence, is going in one direction and our will in
another, rest is impossible. Can there be rest in an earthly household
when the children are ever chafing against the regulations and control
of their parents? How much less can we be at rest if we harbor an
incessant spirit of insubordination and questioning, contradicting and
resisting the will of God! That will must be done on earth as it is in
heaven. None can stay his hand, or say, What dost thou? It will be done
with us, or in spite of us. If we resist it, the yoke against which we
rebel will only rub a sore place on our skin; but we must still carry
it. How much wiser, then, meekly to yield to it, and submit ourselves
under the mighty hand of God, saying, “Not my will, but thine be done!”
The man who has learned the secret of Christ, in saying a perpetual
“Yes”to the will of God; whose life is a strain of rich music to the
theme, “Even so, Father”; whose will follows the current of the will of
God, as the smoke from our chimneys permits itself to be wafted by the
winds of autumn, that man will find rest unto his soul.

We must accept the finished work of Christ. He has ceased from the work
of our redemption, because there was no more to do. Our sins and the
sins of the world were put away. The power of the adversary was
annulled. The gate of heaven was opened to all that believe. All was
finished, and was very good. Let us, then, cease from our works. Let us
no longer feel as if we have to do aught, by our tears or prayers or
works, to make ourselves acceptable to God. Why should we try to add
one stitch to a finished garment, or append one stroke to the signed
and sealed warrant of pardon placed within our hands? We need have no
anxiety as to the completeness or sufficiency of a divinely finished
thing. Let us quiet our fears by considering that what satisfies
Christ, our Saviour and Head, may well satisfy us. Let us dare to stand
without a qualm in God’s presence, by virtue of the glorious and
completed sacrifice of Calvary. Let us silence every tremor of unrest
by recalling the dying cry on the cross, and the witness of the empty
grave.

We must trust our Father’s care. “Casting all your care upon him, for
he careth for you.” Sometimes like a wild deluge, sweeping all before
it, and sometimes like the continual dropping of water, so does care
mar our peace. That we shall some day fall by the hand of Saul; that we
shall be left to starve or pine away our days in a respectable
workhouse; that we shall never be able to get through the difficulties
of the coming days or weeks; household cares, family cares, business
cares; cares about servants, children, money; crushing cares, and cares
that buzz around the soul like a swarm of gnats on a summer’s day, what
rest can there be for a soul thus beset? But, when we once learn to
live by faith, believing that our Father loves us, and will not forget
or forsake us, but is pledged to supply all our needs; when we acquire
the holy habit of talking to him about all, and handing over all to
him, at the moment that the tiniest shadow is cast upon the soul; when
we accept insult and annoyance and interruption, coming to us from
whatever quarter, as being his permission, and, therefore, as part of
his dear will for us, then we have learned the secret of the Gospel of
Rest.

We must follow our Shepherd’s lead. ” We which have believed do enter
into rest” (ver. 3). The way is dark; the mountain track is often
hidden from our sight by the heavy mists that hang over hill and fell;
we can hardly discern a step in front. But our divine Guide knows. He
who trod earth’s pathways is going unseen at our side. The shield of
his environing protection is all around; and his voice, in its clear,
sweet accents, is whispering peace. Why should we fear? He who touches
us, touches his bride, his purchased possession, the apple of his eye.
We may, therefore, trust and not be afraid. Though the mountains should
depart, or the hills be removed, yet will his loving kindness not
depart from us, neither will the covenant of his peace be removed. And
amid the storm, and darkness, and the onsets of our foes, we shall hear
him soothing us with the sweet refrain of his own lullaby of rest: “My
peace I give unto you; in the world ye shall have tribulation, but in
me ye shall have peace.”
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XI. THE WORD OF GOD AND ITS EDGE

“The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged
sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the
joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the
heart.” HEBREWS iv. 12.

WE all have to do with God. “Him with whom we have to do.” You cannot
break the connection. You must do with him as a rebel, if not as a
friend; on the ground of works, if not on the ground of grace; at the
great white throne, if not in the fleeting days of time. You cannot do
without God. You cannot do as you would if there were no God. You
cannot avoid having to do with him; for even though you were to say
there was no God, doing violence to the clearest instincts of your
being, yet still you would breathe his air, eat his provender, occupy
his world, and stand at last before his bar.

And, if you will pardon the materialism of the reference, I will follow
the suggestion of my text, and say that the God with whom we have to do
has eyes. “The eyes of him with whom we have to do.” “Thou art a God
that seest” was the startled exclamation of an Egyptian slave girl
whose childhood had been spent amid the vast statues of gods who had
eyes with far-away stony stare, but saw not. And she was right. “The
Lord looketh from heaven; his eyes behold, his eyelids try, the
children of men.”

Those eyes miss no one. ” There is not any creature not manifest in his
sight.” The truest goodness is least obtrusive of itself. It steals
unnoticed through the world, filling up its days with deeds and words
of gentle kindness, which are known only to heaven; and herein it finds
its sufficient reward. It prays behind closed doors; it exercises a
vigorous self-denial in secret; it does its work of mercy by stealth.
Thus the great blatant world of men, with its trumpets and heralds and
newspaper notices, knows little of it, and cannot find the nooks where
God’s wild flowers bloom in inaccessible heights, for his eye alone.
But the Father seeth in secret. The eyes of the Lord are upon the
righteous. His eyes run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show
himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward him. Do
you want guidance? Look up! those eyes wait to guide by a glance. Are
you in sorrow? they will film with tears. Are you going astray? they
shall beckon you back, and break your heart, as Peter’s. You will come
to find your heaven in the light radiated by the eye of God, when once
you have learned to meet it, clad in the righteousness of Jesus.

Unconverted reader, remember there is no screen from the eye of God.
His eyes are as a flame of fire; and our strongest screens crackle up
as thinnest gauze before the touch of that holy flame. Even rocks and
hills are inadequate to hide from the face of him that sits upon the
throne. “Whither shall I go from thy presence?” That question is
unanswered, and unanswerable. It has stood upon the page of Scripture
for three thousand years, and no one yet of all the myriads that have
read it has been able to devise a reply. Heaven says, Not here. Hell
says, Not here. It is not among angels, or the lost, or in the vast
silent spaces of eternity. There is no creature anywhere not manifest
to his sight. He who made vultures, able from immense heights to
discern the least morsel on the desert waste, has eyes as good as they.
And think how terrible are the eyes of God! When Egypt’s chivalry had
pursued Israel into the depths of the sea, they suddenly turned to
flee. Why? Not because of thunder or lightning or voice; but because of
a look. “The Lord looked out of the cloud, and troubled the Egyptians.”
Ah, sinner, how terrible will it be for thee to abide under the frown
of God! “With the froward he will show himself froward.”

Those eyes miss nothing. “All things are naked and opened unto the eyes
of him with whom we have to do.” It is said of the Lord Jesus, on one
occasion, that he entered into Jerusalem, and into the Temple; and when
he had looked round about on all things, he went out. It was his last,
long, farewell look. But note its comprehensiveness. Nothing escaped
it. We look only on parts of things, and often look without seeing. But
the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. “Naked and opened.” This
is a sacrificial phrase, indicating the priestly act of throwing the
victim on its back before him, so that it lay, exposed to his gaze,
helpless to recover itself, ready for the knife. Ah, how eagerly we try
to hide and cloak our sin! We dare not pen a truthful diary; we dread
the illness which would unlock our tongues in wholesale chatterings; we
shrink from the loving gaze of our dearest. We deceive man, and
sometimes ourselves; but not our great High-Priest. He sees all, that
secret sin; that lurking enmity; that closed chamber; that hidden
burglar; that masked assassin; that stowaway; that declension of heart;
that little rift within the lute; that speck of decay in the luscious
fruit. And thus it is that men are kept out of the Canaan of God’s
rest, because he sees the evil heart of unbelief which departs from
himself; and on account of which he swears now, as of old, “they shall
not enter into my rest.”

Is it not a marvel that he who knows so much about us should love us
still? It were indeed an inexplicable mystery, save for the truth of
the words which so sweetly follow: “Seeing, then, that we have a great
High-Priest.” He has a priest’s heart. His scrutiny is not one of
morbid or idle curiosity, but of a surgeon, who intently examines the
source of disease with pity and tenderness, and resolves to extirpate
it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Is it not frequently the
case that fuller knowledge will beget love, which once seemed
impossible? There are some people whose faces are so hard, and their
eyes so cold, that we are instantly repelled; but if we knew all, how
they have been pierced and wounded, and disappointed, we should begin
to pity them, and pity is close kinsman to love. The Saviour has known
us from all eternity, our downsittings and uprisings, our secret
possibilities of evil, our unfathomed depths of waywardness and
depravity; and yet he loves us, and will love us.

“He knows all, But loves us better than he knows.”

And out of this love, which wells up perennially in the heart of Jesus,
unfrozen by the winter of our neglect, Unstanched by the demands of our
fickleness, there comes the stern discpline of which this passage
proceeds to speak. In majestic phrase, the Apocalyptic seer tells how
he beheld the Word of God ride forth on his snow-white steed, arrayed
in crimson robes, whilst the many crowns of empire flashed upon his
brow. Two features are specially noted in his appearance. His eyes were
as a flame of fire; this characteristic looks back over the words we
have considered. Out of his mouth goeth a sharp two-edged sword; this
looks forward to the words which now invite us. We must never divorce
these two. The eyes and the sword. Not the eyes only; for of what use
would it be to see and not strike? Not the sword only; for to strike
without seeing would give needless pain, this would be surgery
blindfolded. But the searching tender vision, followed by the swift and
decisive flash of the sword of amputation and deliverance. Oh, who will
now submit to that stroke, wielded by the gentle hand that often
carried healing and blessing, and was nailed to the cross; guided by
unerring wisdom, and nerved by Almighty strength? Not death, but life
and fruitfulness, freedom and benediction, are all awaiting that one
blow of emancipation. That sword is the Word of God.

THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING. The words he speaks are spirit and life
(John vi. 63). Wherever they fall, though into dull and lifeless soil,
they begin to breed life, and produce results like themselves. They
come into the heart of an abandoned woman; and straightway there follow
compunction for the past, vows of amendment, and the hasty rush to
become an evangelist to others. They come into the heart of a dying
robber; and immediately he refrains from blasphemy, and rebukes his
fellow, and announces the Messiahship, the blamelessness, the
approaching glory, of the dying Saviour. They come into hearts worn out
with the wild excesses of the great pagan ages, and ill-content, though
enriched with the spoils of art and refinement and philosophy in the
very zenith of their development; and lo! the moral waste begins to
sprout with harvests of holiness, and to blossom with the roses of
heaven. If only those words, spoken from the lips of Christ, be allowed
to work in the conscience, there will be forthwith the stir of life.

THE WORD OF GOD IS ACTIVE, i.e., energetic. Beneath its spell the blind
see, the deaf hear, the paralyzed are nerved with new energy, the dead
stir in their graves and come forth. There are few things more
energetic than life. Put a seed into the fissure of a rock, and it will
split it in twain from top to bottom. Though walls and rocks and ruins
impede the course of the seedling, yet it will force its way to the
light and air and rain. And when the Word of God enters the heart, it
is not as a piece of furniture or lumber. It asserts itself and strives
for mastery, and compels men to give up sin; to make up long standing
feuds; to restore ill-gotten gains; to strive to enter into the strait
gate. “Now ye are pruned,” said our Lord, “through the word that I have
spoken to you.” The words of Christ are his winnowing-fan, with which
he is wont to purge his flour, whether in the heart or the world. We
are not, therefore, surprised that a leading tradesman in a thriving
commercial center said that the visit of two evangelists, who did
little else than reiterate the Word of God, was as good as a revival of
trade, because it led so many people to pay up debts which were
reckoned as lost.

THE WORD OF GOD IS SHARP. Its sharpness is threefold. It is sharp to
pierce. On the day of Pentecost, as Peter wielded the sword of the
Spirit, it pierced three thousand to the heart; and they fell wounded
to the death before him, crying, “What shall we do?” Often since have
strong men been smitten to the dust under the effect of that same
sword, skillfully used. And this is the kind of preaching we need. Men
are urged to accept of the gift of God, and many seem to comply with
the invitation; but in the process of time they fall away. Is not the
cause in this, that they have never been wounded to the death of their
self-esteem, their heart has never been pierced to the letting of the
blood of their own life, they have never been brought into the dust of
death? Oh for Boanerges! able to pierce the armor of excuses of vain
hopes, behind which men shield themselves, that many may cry with Ahab,
pierced between the joints of the harness “Turn thine hand, and carry
me out of the battle, for I am wounded!”

It is sharp to divide. With his sharp knife the priest was accustomed
to dissect the joints of the animal, and to open to view even the
marrow of the bones. Every hair was searched, every limb examined; and
thus the sacred gift was passed, and permitted to be offered in
worship. And God’s scrutiny is not satisfied with the external
appearance and profession. It goes far deeper. It enters into those
mysterious regions of the nature where soul and spirit, purpose,
intention, motive, and impulse, hold their secret court, and carry on
the hidden machinery of human life. Who can tread the mysterious
confines where soul and spirit touch? What is the line of demarkation?
Where does the one end, and the other begin? We cannot tell; but that
mystic Word of God could cut the one from the other, as easily as the
selvage is divided from the cloth. It is at home in distinctions which
are too fine drawn and minute for human apprehension. It assumes an
office like that which Jesus refused when he said, “Who made me a judge
and divider over you?”

It is sharp to criticise and judge. “Quick to discern the thoughts and
intents of the heart.” Christ is eager about these. Because what a man
thinks and intends in his heart, that he will be sooner or later in
life. We must expect to have our most secret thoughts, relations, and
purposes questioned, criticised, and measured by the Word of God. No
court of inquiry was ever presided over by a more exact inquisitor than
this. The corpses of the dead past are exhumed; the old lumber-rooms
with their padlocked boxes are explored; the accounts of bygone years
are audited and taxed. God is critic of all the secrets of the heart.
As each thought or intention passes to and fro, he searches it. He is
constantly weighing in the balance our thoughts and aims, though they
be light as air.

On one occasion, when Saul had spared the spoils of a doomed city,
together with its monarch, the latter came to Samuel, not as a
criminal, but delicately, as a pampered friend. And Samuel said, “As
thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless
among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord.” Thus it
is that we have spared too many of our sins, at the risk of our
irreparable rejection from the throne of true manhood and
righteousness. How much better to let Christ do his work of amputation
and excision! If we do not know ourselves, let us ask him to search us.
If we cannot cut off the offending member, let us look to him to rid us
of it.

Do not fear him; close after these terrible words, as the peal of bells
after the crash of the storm on the organ at Freiburg, we are told that
“he was tempted in all points like as we are,” and that ” we have not a
High~Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.”
“Does she sing well?” asked the trainer of a new operatic singer.
“Splendidly,” was the reply; “but if I had to bring her out, I would
first break her heart.” He meant that one who had not been broken by
sorrow could not touch the deepest chords of human life. Ah! there is
no need for this with our Lord Jesus; reproach broke his heart. He
understands broken hearts, and is able to soothe and save all who come
unto God by him.
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XII. TIMELY AND NEEDED HELP

“Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain
mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”-HEBREWS iv. 16.

NEED! Time of need! Every hour we live is a time of need; and we are
safest and happiest when we feel our needs most keenly. If you say that
you are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing, you are
in the greatest destitution; but when you know yourself to be wretched,
miserable, poor, blind, and naked, then the traveling merchantman is
already standing on your doorstep, knocking (Rev. iii. 17-20). It is
when the supply runs short, that Cana’s King makes the vessels brim
with wine.

Have you been convinced of your need? If not, it is quite likely that
you will live and die without a glimpse of the rich provision which God
has made to meet it. Of what use is it to talk of rich provisions and
sumptuous viands to those already satiated? But when the soul, by the
straits of its necessity, has been brought to the verge of desperation,
when we cry with the lepers of old, “If we say we will enter into the
city, then the famine is in the city, and we shall die there; and if we
sit still here, we die also”, then we are on the verge of discovering
the rich provision that awaits us (2 Kings vii. 8): all spiritual
blessings in the heavenlies (Eph. i. 3); and all things that pertain to
life and godliness (2 Pet. i. 3). There are two causes, therefore, why
many Christians are living such impoverished lives: they have never
realized their own infinite need; and they have never availed
themselves of those infinite resources which hang within their reach,
like fruit from the stooping boughs of an orchard in autumn.

Our needs are twofold. We need mercy. This is our fundamental need.
Mercy when we are at our worst, yes, and at our best; mercy when the
pruning knife cuts deep, yes, and when we are covered with foliage,
flower, or fruit; mercy when we are broken and sore vexed, yes, and
when we stand on the paved sapphire work upon the mountain summit to
talk with God. The greatest saint among us can no more exist without
the mercy of God than the ephemeral insects of a summer’s noon can live
without the sun.

We need grace to help. Help to walk through the valleys; and to walk on
the high places, where the chamois can hardly stand. Help to suffer, to
be still, to wait, to overcome, to make green one tiny spot of garden
ground in God’s great tillage. Help to live and to die.

Each Of these is met at the throne. Come, let us go to it. It is not
the great white throne of judgment, but the rainbow-girt throne of
grace. “No,” you cry, “never! I am a man of unclean lips and heart; I
dare not face him before whom angels veil their faces; the fire of his
awful purity will leap out on me, shriveling and consuming. I
exceedingly fear and quake; or, if I muster courage enough to go once,
I shall never be able to go as often as I need, or to ask for the
common and trivial gifts required in daily living.” Hush, soul! thou
mayest approach as often and as boldly as thou wilt; for we have a
great High Priest, who is passed through the heavens, and not one who
cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities.

A PRIEST.-Deep down in the heart of men there is a strong and
instinctive demand for a priest, to be daysman and mediator, to lay one
hand on man and the other on God, and to go between them both. Wit and
sarcasm may launch their epithets on this primordial craving; but they
might as well try to extinguish by the same methods the craving of the
body for food, of the understanding for truth, of the heart for love.
And no religion is destined to meet the deepest yearnings of the race,
which does not have glowing at the heart the provision of a priest to
stand before the throne of grace; as, of old, the priest stood before
the mercy seat, which was its literal prefigurement under the
dispensation of the Levitical law.

A curious proof of this human craving for a priest is given in the book
of Judges. On the ridge of the hills of Ephraim stood the ancestral
home of a wealthy family, containing within its precincts a private
sanctuary, where though there were teraphim, ephod, and vestments, yet
there was no priest. Nothing, however, could compensate for that fatal
lack. And Micah said to a Levite, who happened to pass by: “Dwell with
me, and be unto me a father and a priest.” And when he, nothing loath,
consented, Micah comforted himself by saying, “Now know I that the Lord
will do me good, seeing I have a Levite to my priest.” But the same
feelings that actuated him were shared by a portion of the tribe of
Dan, on their way to colonize a remote part of the country. They, too,
must have a priest; and so, while six hundred armed warriors stood
around the gate, five men stole through the court, broke into the
little chapel, carried off its images and other apparatus for worship,
bribed the priest, by the offer of higher wage, to accompany them; and,
long before the theft was discovered, the whole party had resumed their
journey, and were far upon their way.

All families of mankind have followed the same general programme.
Wherever they have built homes for themselves, they have erected the
wigwam, the pagoda, the parthenon, the obelisk guarded temple, the
Gothic minster fashioned after the model of the forest glade, a leafy
oracle petrified to stone; and they have chosen one of themselves, set
apart from ordinary work, and sanctified by special rites to minister,
treading its floors, and pleading at its altars, interceding for them
in times of famine, pestilence, and plague; blessing their arms as they
went forth to fight, and receiving their spoils of victory; making
propitiation for sin, and assuring of forgiveness.

This craving was most carefully met in that venerable religion in which
these Hebrew Christians had been reared. The sons of Aaron were the
priests of Israel. They wore a special dress, ate special food, and
lived in special towns; whilst every care was taken to accentuate their
separation to transact the spiritual concerns of the nation. For
sixteen centuries this system had prevailed, relying around it the
deepest and most sacred emotions; and, like ivy, entwining itself
around the oak of the national life. And, as we have seen, it was no
small privation for these new converts to wrench themselves from such a
system, and accept a religion in which there was no visible temple,
ceremonial, or priest.

But here we learn that Jesus Christ is the perfect answer to these
instinctive cravings which blindly pointed to him in all ages of human
and Hebrew history. This is the aim of these opening chapters, and by
two lines of proof we have been led to the same conclusion. Before us
stand two mighty columns: the one is in chapters i. and ii. of this
Epistle; the other is in iii. and iv. They have a common base from
which they spring, the Sonship of Christ. The first column is called,
Christ superior to Angels; and this is the scroll around its capital,
that Jesus, as man’s representative, has entered into the glories
promised in the eighth Psalm. The second column is called, Christ
superior to Moses; with this scroll around its capital, that Jesus, as
our representative, has entered into the Rest of God. And each of them
helps to support a common chapiter, the Priesthood of Christ. The first
two chapters end with a description of the merciful and faithful High
Priest, who makes reconciliation for the sins of the people (ii. I 7, I
8). The next two chapters close with the words on which we are dwelling
now, concerning the Great High-Priest (iv. 14). In the mouth of two
witnesses every word is established. We need no human priests. Their
work is done, their office is superseded, their functions are at an
end. To arrogate any priestly functions of sacrifice, of absolution, or
of imparting sacramental grace, is to intrude sacrilegiously on ground
which is sacred to the Son of God; and, however royal such are in mien
or intellect, they must be withstood, as Azariah withstood
Uzziah-saying, “It appertaineth not unto thee to burn incense unto the
Lord, but to Jesus, our Great High-Priest; go out of his office, for
thou hast trespassed; neither shall it be for thine honor from the Lord
God.”

A HIGH PRIEST. A Priest of priests, able to sacrifice, not only for the
people, but for all the priests of his house; and alone responsible for
the rites of the great day of Atonement, when every other priest was
banished from the precincts of the Temple, while the high priest, clad
in simple white, made an atonement for the sins of himself, his family,
and his people.

We have been made priests unto God; but our priestly work consists in
the offering of the incense of prayer and praise, and the gifts of
surrendered lives. We have nothing to do with atonement for sin; which
is urgently required by us, not only for our sins as ordinary members
of the congregation, but for those which, consciously or unconsciously,
we commit in the exercise of our priestly office. Our penitential tears
need to be sprinkled by the blood of Jesus; our holiest hours need to
be accepted through his merits; our noblest service would condemn us,
save for his atoning sacrifice.

A GREAT HIGH PRIEST. All other high priests were inferior to him. He is
as much superior to the high priests as any one of them was to the
priests of his time. But this does not exhaust his greatness. He does
not belong to their line at all, but to an older, more venerable, and
grander one; of which that mysterious personage was the founder, to
whom Abraham, the father of Israel, gave tithes and homage. “Declared
of God a High Priest after the order of Melchisedek.” Nay, further, his
greatness is that of the Son of God, the fellow and equal of Deity. He
is as great as his infinite nature and the divine appointment and his
ideal of ministry could make him.

PASSED THROUGH THE HEAVENS. Between the holy place where the priest
daily performed the service of the sanctuary, and the inner shrine
forbidden to all save to the high priest once each year, there hung a
veil of blue. And of what was that blue veil the emblem, save of those
heavenly curtains, the work of God’s fingers, which hang between our
mortal vision and the marvels of his presence chamber? Once a year the
high priest carried the blood of propitiation through the blue veil of
separation, and sprinkled it upon the mercy seat; and in this
significant and solemn act he typified the entrance of our blessed Lord
into the immediate presence of God, bearing the marks and emblems of
his atoning death, and taking up his position there as our Mediator and
Intercessor, in whom we are represented, and for whose sake we are
accepted and beloved.

TOUCHED WITH THE FEELING OF OUR INFIRMITIES. He hates the sin, but
loves the sinner. His hatred to the one is measured by his cross; his
love to the other is infinite as his nature. And his love is not a
dreamy ecstasy; but practical, because all the machinery of temptation
was brought into Operation against him. It would take too long to
enumerate the points at which the great adversary of souls assails us;
but there is not a sense, a faculty, a power, which may not be the
avenue of his attack. Through eye-gate, ear-gate, and thought-gate his
squadrons seek to pour. And, marvelous though it be, yet our High
Priest was tempted in all these points, in body, soul, and spirit;
though there was no faltering in his holy resolution, no vacillation or
shadow of turning, no desire to yield. “The prince of this world
cometh, and hath nothing in me.”

All his experiences are vividly present to him still; and whenever we
go to him, pleading for mercy or help, he instantly knows just how much
and where we need it, and immediately his intercessions obtain for us,
and his hands bestow, the exact form of either we may require. “He is
touched.” That sympathetic heart is the metropolis to which each
afferent nerve carries an immediate thrill from the meanest and
remotest members of his body, bringing at once in return the very help
and grace which are required. Oh to live in touch with Christ! always
touching him, as of old the women touched his garment’s hem; and
receiving responses, quick as the lightning flash, and full of the
healing, saving virtue of God (Mark .28).
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XIII GETHSEMANE

“Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and
supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save
him from death, and was heard in that he feared: though he were a Son, yet
learned he obedience by the things which he suffered.” HEBREWS v.7, 8.

Eight ancient olive trees still mark the site of Gethsemane; not
improbably they witnessed that memorable and mysterious scene referred
to here. And what a scene was that! It had stood alone in unique and
unapproachable wonder, had it not been followed by fifteen hours of
even greater mystery.

The strongest words in Greek language are used to tell of the keen
anguish through which the Saviour passed within those Garden walls. “He
began to be sorrowful”; as if in all his past experiences he had never
known what sorrow was! “lie was sore amazed”; as if his mind were
almost dazed and overwhelmed. “He was very heavy,” his spirit stooped
beneath the weight of his sorrows, as afterward his body stooped
beneath the weight of his cross; or the word may mean that he was so
distracted with sorrow, as to be almost beside himself. And the Lord
himself could not have found a stronger word than he used when he said,
“My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death.”

But the evangelist Luke gives us the most convincing proof of his
anguish when he tells us that his sweat, like great beads of blood,
fell upon the ground, touched by the slight frost, and in the cold
night air. The finishing touch is given in these words, which tell of
his “strong crying and tears.”

THE THINGS WHICH HE SUFFERED. What were they? They were not those of
the Substitute. The tenor of Scripture goes to show that the work of
substitution was really wrought out upon the cross. There the robe of
our completed righteousness was woven from the top through-out. It was
on the free that he bare our sins in his own body. It was by his blood
that he brought us nigh to God. It was by the death of God’s Son that
we have been reconciled to God; and the repeated references of
Scripture, and especially of this epistle, to sacrifice, indicate that
in the act of dying, that was done which magnifies the law, and makes
it honorable, and removes every obstacle that had otherwise prevented
the love of God from following out its purposes of mercy.

We shall never fully understand here how the Lord Jesus made
reconciliation for the sins of the world, or how that which he bore
could be an equivalent for the penalty due from a sinful race. We have
no standard of comparison; we have no line long enough to let us down
into the depths of that unexplored mystery; but we may thankfully
accept it as a fact stated on the page of Scripture perpetually, that
he did that which put away the curse, atoned for human guilt, and was
more than equivalent to all those sufferings which a race of sinful men
must otherwise have borne. The mystery defies our language, but it is
apprehended by faith; and as she stands upon her highest pinnacles,
love discerns the meaning of the death of Christ by a spiritual
instinct, though as yet she has not perfectly learned the language in
which to express her conceptions of the mysteries that circle around
the cross. It may be that in thousands of unselfish actions, she is
acquiring the terms in which some day she will be able to understand
and explain all.

But all that we need insist on here, and now, is that the sufferings of
the Garden are not to be included in the act of Substitution, though,
as we shall see, they were closely associated with it. Gethsemane was
not the altar, but the way to it.

Our Lord’s suffering in Gethsemane could hardly arise from the fear of
his approaching physical sufferings. Such a supposition seems wholly
inconsistent with the heroic fortitude, the majestic silence, the calm
ascendency over suffering with which he bore himself till he breathed
out his spirit, and which drew from a hardened and worldly Roman
expressions of respect.

Besides, if the mere prospect of scourging and crucifixion drew from
our Lord these strong crying and tears and bloody sweat, he surely
would stand on a lower level than that to which multitudes of his
followers attained through faith in him. Old men like Polycarp, tender
maidens like Blandina, timid boys like Attalus, have contemplated
beforehand with unruffled composure, and have endured with unshrinking
fortitude, deaths far more awful, more prolonged, more agonizing.
Degraded criminals have climbed the scaffold without a tremor or a sob;
and surely the most exalted faith ought to bear itself as bravely as
the most brutal indifference in the presence of the solemnities of
death and eternity. It has been truly said that there is no passion in
the mind of man, however weak, which cannot master the fear of death;
and it is therefore impossible to suppose that the fear of physical
suffering and disgrace could have so shaken our Saviour’s spirit.

But he anticipated the sufferings that he was to endure as the
propitiation for sin. He knew that he was about to be brought into the
closest association with the sin which was devastating human happiness
and grieving the divine nature. He knew, since he had so identified
himself with our fallen race, that, in a very deep and wonderful way,
he was to be made sin and to bear our curse and shame, cast out by man,
and apparently forsaken by God. He knew, as we shall never know, the
exceeding sinfulness and horror of sin; and what it was to be the
meeting-place where the iniquities of our race should converge, to
become the scapegoat charged with guilt not his own, to bear away the
sins of the world. All this was beyond measure terrible to one so holy
and sensitive as he.

He had long foreseen it. He was the Lamb slain from before the
foundation of the world. Each time a lamb was slain by a
conscience-stricken sinner, or a scapegoat let go into the wilderness,
or a pigeon dipped into the flowing water encrimsoned by the blood of
its mate, he had been reminded of what was to be. He knew before his
incarnation where in the forest the seedling was growing to a sapling
from the wood of which his cross would be made. He even nourished it
with his rain and sun. Often during his public ministry he was
evidently looking beyond the events that were transpiring around him to
that supreme event, which he called his “hour.” And as it came nearer,
his human soul was overwhelmed at the prospect of having to sustain the
weight of a world’s sin. His human nature did not shrink from death as
death; but from the death which he was to die as the propitiation for
our sins, and not for ours only, but for those of the whole world.

Six months before his death he had set his face to go to Jerusalem,
with such a look of anguish upon it as to fill the hearts of his
disciples with consternation. When the questions of the Greeks reminded
him that he must shortly fall into the ground and die, his soul became
so troubled that he cried, “Father, save me from this hour !” And now,
with strong cryings and tears, he made supplication to his Father, as
king that, if it were possible, the cup might pass from him. In this
his human soul spoke. As to his divinely wrought purpose of redemption,
there was no vacillation or hesitation. But, as man, he asked whether
there might not be another way of accomplishing the redemption on which
he had set his heart.

But there was no other way. The Father’s will, which he had come down
from heaven to do, pointed along the rugged, flinty road that climbed
Calvary, and passed over it, and down to the grave. And at once he
accepted his destiny, and with the words “If this cup may not pass from
me except I drink it, thy will be done,” he stepped forth on the flints
that were to cut those blessed feet, drawing from them streams of
blood.

HIS STRONG CRYING AND TEARS. Our Lord betook himself to that resource
which is within the reach of all, and which is peculiarly precious to
those who are suffering and tempted, he prayed. His heart was
overwhelmed within him; and he poured out all his anguish into his
Father’s ears, with strong cryings and tears. Let us note the
characteristics of that prayer, that we too may be able to pass through
our dark hours, when they come.

It was secret prayer. Leaving the majority of his disciples at the
Garden gate, he took with him the three who had stood beside Jairus’s
dead child, and had beheld the radiance that steeped him in his
transfiguration. They alone might see him tread the winepress: but even
they were left at a stone’s cast, whilst he went forward alone into the
deeper shadow. We are told that they became overpowered with sleep; so
that no mortal ear heard the whole burden of that marvelous prayer,
some fitful snatches of which are reserved in the Gospels.

It was humble prayer. The evangelist Luke says that he knelt. Another
says that he fell on his face. Being formed in fashion as a man, he
humbled himself and became obedient to death, even the death of the
cross. And it may be that even then he began to recite that marvelous
Psalm, which was so much on his lips during those last hours, saying,
“I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men and despised of the
people.”

It was filial prayer. Matthew describes our Lord as saying, ” my
Father”; and Mark tells us that he used the endearing term which was
often spoken by the prattling lips of little Jewish children, Abba. For
the most part, he probably spoke Greek; but Aramaic was the language of
his childhood, the language of the dear home in Nazareth. In the hour
of mortal agony, the mind ever reverts to the associations of its first
awakening. The Saviour, therefore, appearing to feel that the more
stately Greek did not sufficiently express the deep yearnings of his
heart, substituted for it the more tender language of earlier years.
Not “Father” only, but “Abba, Father!”

It was earnest prayer. “He prayed more earnestly,” and one proof of
this appears in his repetition of the same words. It was as if his
nature were too oppressed to be able to express itself in a variety of
phrase; such as might indicate a certain leisure and liberty of
thought. One strong current of anguish running at its highest could
only strike one monotone of grief, like the note of the storm or the
flood. Back, and back again, came the words, cup . .pass . . . will . .
. Father. And the sweat of blood, pressed from his forehead, as the red
juice of the grape beneath the heavy foot of the peasant, witnessed to
the intensity of his soul.

It was submissive prayer. Matthew and Mark quote this sentence,
“Nevertheless not what I will, but what thou wilt.” Luke quotes this,
“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me; nevertheless, not
my will, but thine be done.”

Jesus was the Father’s Fellow’s co-equal in his divine nature; but for
the purpose of redemption it was needful that he should temporarily
divest himself of the use of the attributes of his deity, and live a
truly human life. As man, he carefully marked each symptom of his
Father’s will, from the day when it prompted him to linger behind his
parents in the temple; and he always instantly fulfilled his behests.
“I came down from heaven,” he said, “not to do mine own will, but the
will of him that sent me. “This was the yoke he bore, and in taking it,
he found rest unto his soul. Whatever was the danger or difficulty into
which such obedience might carry him, he ever followed the beacon-cloud
of the divine will; sure that the manna of daily strength would fall,
and that the deep sweet waters of peace would follow where it led the
way. That way now seemed to lead through the heart of a fiery furnace.
There was no alternative than to follow; and he elected to do so, nay,
was glad, even then, with a joy that the cold waters of death could not
extinguish. At the same time, he learnt what obedience meant, and gave
an example of it, that shone out with unequaled majesty, purity, and
beauty, unparalleled in the annals of the universe. As man, our Lord
then learnt how much was meant by that word obedience. “He learned
obedience.” And now he asks that we should obey him, as he obeyed God.
“Unto them that obey him.”

Sometimes the path of the Christian’s obedience becomes very difficult.
It climbs upward; the gradient is continually steeper; the foothold
ever more difficult; and, as the evening comes, the nimble climber of
the morning creeps slowly forward on hands and knees. The day is never
greater than the strength; but as the strength grows by use, the
demands upon it are greater, and the hours longer. At last a moment may
come, when we are called for God’s sake to leave some dear circle; to
risk the loss of name and fame; to relinquish the cherished ambition of
a life; to incur obloquy, suffering, and death; to drink the bitter
cup; to enter the brooding cloud; to climb the smoking mount. Ah! then
we too learn what obedience means; and have no resource but in strong
cryings and tears.

In such hours pour out thy heart in audible cnes. Plentifully mingle
the name “Father” with thine entreatles. Fear not to repeat the same
words. Look not to man, he cannot understand thee; but to him who is
nearer to thee than thy dearest. So shalt thou get calmer and quieter,
until thou rest in his will; as a child, worn out by a tempest of
passion, sobs itself to sleep on its mother’s breast.

THE ANSWER. “He was heard for his godly fear.” His holy reverence and
devotion to his Father’s will made it impossible that his prayers
should be unanswered; although, as it so often happens, the answer came
in another way than his fears had suggested. The cup was not taken
away, but the answer came. It came in the mission of the angel that
stood beside him. It came in the calm serenity with which he met the
brutal crowd, that soon filled that quiet Garden with their coarse
voices and trampling feet. It came in his triumph over death and the
grave. It came in his being perfected as mediator, to become unto all
them that obey him the Author of eternal salvation, and the High-Priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek.

Prayers prompted by love and in harmony with godly fear are never lost.
We may ask for things which it would be unwise and unkind of God to
grant; but in that case, his goodness shows itself rather in the
refusal than the assent. And yet the prayer is heard and answered.
Strength is instilled into the fainting heart. The faithful and
merciful High-Priest does for us what the angel essayed to do for him;
but how much better, since he has learnt so much of the art of comfort
in the school of suffering! And out of it the way finally emerges into
life, though we have left the right hand and foot in the grave behind
us. We also discover that we have learnt the art of becoming channels
of eternal salvation to those around us. Ever since Jesus suffered
there, Gethsemane has been threaded by the King’s highway that passes
through it to the New Jerusalem. And in its precincts God has kept many
of his children, to learn obedience by the things that they suffer, and
to learn the divine art of comforting others as they themselves have
been comforted by God.

There are comparatively few, to whom Jesus does not say, at some time
in their lives, “Come and watch with me.” He takes us with him into the
darksome shadows of the winepress, though there are recesses of shade,
at a stone’s cast, where he must go alone. Let us not misuse the
precious hours in the heavy slumbers of insensibility. There are
lessons to be learnt there which can be acquired nowhere else; but if
we heed not his summons to watch with him, it may be that he will close
the precious opportunity by bidding us sleep on and take our rest;
because the allotted term has passed, and the hour of a new epoch has
struck. If we fail to use for prayer and preparation the sacred hour,
that comes laden with opportunities for either; if we sleep instead of
watching with our Lord: what hope have we of being able to play a noble
part when the flashing lights and the trampling feet announce the
traitor’s advent? Squander the moments of preparation, and you may have
to rue their loss through all the coming years!
__________________________________________________________________

XIV. IMPOSSIBLE TO RENEW TO REPENTANCE

“It Is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of
the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, and have
tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they
shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to
themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.”-HEBREWS vi.
4-6.

The sacred writer enumerates four fundamental principles: Repentance
from dead works, which in the old dispensation was symbolized by divers
baptisms, or washings; Faith toward God, typified by the laying of
hands on the head of the victim-sacrifices; the Resurrection of the
dead; and Eternal Judgment. And then he proposes not to lay them again,
but to leave them. There is no thought, however, of deserting them. The
great principles on which God saves the soul are identical in every
age, and indispensable.

We can only leave them as the child leaves the multiplication-table,
when it is well learnt, but which lies at the root of all after-study;
as the plant leaves the root, when it towers into the majestic shrub,
which draws all its life from that low origin; and as the builder
leaves the foundation, that he may carry up stone on stone, and leans
on the foundation most heavily, when he has left it at the furthest
distance below him. And we are taught the reason why these principles
are not laid afresh. It would be useless to do so; it would serve no
good purpose; it would leave in the same state as it found them those
who had apostatized from the faith. And so we are led to one of those
passages which sensitive spirits have turned to their own torment and
anguish; just as men will distil the rankest poison from some of the
sweetest flowers.

HOW FAR WE MAY GO, AND YET FALL AWAY. These apostate disciples had been
enlightened (ver. 4). They had been led to see their sin and danger,
the temporary nature of Judaism, the dignity and glory of the Saviour.
Other Hebrews might be ignorant, the folds of the veil hanging heavily
over their sight; but it could never be so with them, since they had
stood in the midst of the Gospel’s meridian light, and had been
enlightened.

So may it be with us. Not like the savage, crouching before his fetish,
or roaming over the wild; not like the follower of Confucius, Buddha,
or Mahomet, groping in the twilight of nature or religious guess-work;
not like myriads in our own land, whose hearts are as dark as the chaos
into which God commanded the primeval beam to shine: we have been
enlightened. We may know that we are sinners; we may have learnt from
childhood the scheme of salvation; we may be familiar with the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, into which angels desire to look:
and yet we may fall away.

These Hebrews, here referred to, had also tasted of the heavenly gift.
What gift is that? I hear a voice, which we know well, speaking from
the well of Sychar, and saying: “The water that I shall give shall be
in thee, springing up into everlasting life.” It is the life of God in
the soul; it is Christ himself; and he is willing to be in us, like a
perennial spring, unstanched in drought, unfrozen in frost, leaping up,
in fresh and living beauty, like some warm spring that makes a paradise
in the arctic circle.

But some are content not to receive it, only to taste it. This is what
these persons did. They sipped the sweetness of Christ. They had a
passing superficial glimpse into his heart. Like Gideon’s soldiers,
they caught up a few drops in their hands from the river of God, and
hastened on their way. So we may have some pleasure in thoughts of
Christ. His sufferings touch; his beauty attracts; his history moves
and inspires. But it is only a taste; and yet we may fall away. They
had also been made partakers of the Holy Ghost. It is not said that
they had been converted, regenerated, or filled by the Holy Ghost. The
expression is a very peculiar one, and it is used because the sacred
writer could not affirm any of these things of them, and yet Was
anxious to show that they had been brought under his gracious
influences. For instance, he had convinced them of sin, had striven
with them, had plied them with warning and entreaty, with fear and
hope. And they had so far yielded to him as to give up some of their
sins and assume the outward guise of Christianity.

Moreover, they had tasted the good Word of God, and the powers of the
world to come. The first of these is obviously the Scriptures; and the
second is the usual expression for the age in which we live, and which,
with all its spiritual forces, was beginning to thrill the hearts of
men when these words were penned. They liked a good sermon; the Bible
was full of interest and charm; they had heard the prophets, and seen
the apostles of the Pentecostal age. All these had been analyzed,
weighed, and counted; and yet they were in peril of going back. Let us,
therefore, beware!

WHAT 15 IT TO FALL AWAY? It is something more than to fall. The real
child of God may fall, as David or as Peter did; but there is a vast
difference between falling and falling away. This latter experience can
no more come to a real believer than a second flood of waters to the
earth; but it will certainly find out the counterfeit and the sham.

To fall away is to go back from the outward profession of Christianity,
not temporarily, but finally; not as the result of some sudden sin, but
because the first outward stimulus is exhausted, and there is no true
life beating at the heart, to repair or reinvigorate the wasting
devotion of the life. It is to resemble those wandering planets, which
never shone with their own light, but only in the reflected light of
some central sun; but which, having broken from its guiding leash, dash
further and further into the blackness of darkness, without one spark
of life or heat or light. It is to return as a dog to its vomit, and as
a sow to her filth; because the reformation was only outward and
temporary, and the dog or sow natures were never changed through the
gracious work of the Holy Spirit. It is to be another Judas; to commit
the sin against the Holy Ghost; to lose all earnestness of feeling, all
desire for better things, all power of tender emotion; and to become
utterly callous and dead, as the pavement on which we walk, or the
rusty armor hanging on the old castle’s walls.

WHY IT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO RESTORE SUCH TO REPENTANCE. Notice, there is
nothing said here of what God can do. The only question is as to the
limits of human power, and the ordinary methods of influencing human
wills. Also notice, we are not told that God could not save those who
had fallen away; but that it is impossible to hope that a man who has
passed through the experiences just described, and has nevertheless
apostatized, can be reached or touched by any of those arguments or
motives which are familiar weapons in the Gospel armory. If the
mightiest arguments have been brought to bear on the conscience in
vain; if after some slight response, which gave hopes of better things,
it has relapsed into the stupor and insensibility of its former state,
there remains nothing more to be done. There is nothing more potent
than the wail of Calvary’s broken heart, and the peal from Sinai’s
brow; and, if these have been tried in vain, no argument is left which
can touch the conscience and arouse the heart. If these people had
never been exposed to these appeals, there would have been some hope
for them; but what hope can there be now, since, in having passed
through them without permanent effect, they have become more hardened
in the process than they were at first?

Here is a man dragged from an ice-pond, and brought into the infirmary.
Hot flannels are at once applied; the limbs are chafed; every means
known to modern science for restoring life is employed. At first it
seems as if these appliances will take effect, there are twitchings and
convulsive movements; but, alas! they soon subside, and the surgeon
gravely shakes his head. “Can you do nothing else?” “Nothing,” he
replies; “I have used every method I can devise; and if these fail, it
is impossible to renew again to life.”

This passage has nothing to do with those who fear lest it condemns
them. The presence of that anxiety, like the cry which betrayed the
real mother in the days of Solomon, establishes beyond a doubt that you
are not one that has fallen away beyond the possibility of renewal to
repentance. If you are still touched by Gospel sermons, and are anxious
to repent, and are in godly fear lest you should be a castaway, take
heart! these are signs that this passage has no bearing on you. Why
make yourself ill with a sick man’s medicine? But if you are growing
callous and insensible under the preaching of the Gospel, look into
this passage and see your doom, unless you speedily arrest your steps.

THE NATURAL ILLUSTRATION (ver. 7). Behold that field, well situated,
prepared by careful culture and arduous toil: the good seed is
scattered with lavish hand; the rain comes oft upon it; the sunshine
kisses it; the seasons, as they pass, woo it to bear fruit. At first it
would appear as if it were about to answer the expectations freely
entertained. But see, the show of green which covers its face turns out
to be a crop of briars and thorns. The owner for whom it was dressed
comes to visit it. “What,” cries he, “have you done all you could,
this, and that, and the other?” “All,” is the reply. Then the decision
comes back, stern and sad, “It is useless to expend more time or care.
Leave it to its fate. Let no fruit grow on it henceforth and forever.”

We may resemble that field; and yet, whilst there is a spark of
devotion, a thrill of holy longing, a sigh after a better life, a
yearning to be penitent and holy, there is still hope. The great
Husbandman will not cast us off, so long as there is one redeeming
feature in our condition. He will not break the bruised reed, nor
quench the smoking flax. He will not fail, nor be discouraged, until he
has made the desert into a garden, and the wilderness like the paradise
of God.
__________________________________________________________________

XV. THE ANCHORAGE OF THE SOUL.

“Be followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the
1)promises.”

HEBREWS vi. 12.

THE PROMISES OF GOD! That is a key-word here. Inherit the promises
(ver. 12); God made promise (ver. 13); he obtained the promise (ver.
15); the heirs of promise (ver. 17). But perhaps the reiteration of the
word does not awaken the interest or stir the heart of those who read
it. We are so familiar with it; and, above all, we are not in
circumstances which make the divine promises specially precious. The
night of sorrow must obscure our sky, or we can never descry or
appreciate the stars of promise that sparkle as gems in the firmament
of Scripture. Those who are rich and increased in goods and have need
of nothing cannot realize what the promises of God really mean.

Possessed of a good income, guaranteeing the supply of every need, it
is of little moment that God has pledged himself to provide all needful
things for those who seek his kingdom first. Environed by troops of
faithful friends, like so many successive lines of defense intrenched
in the strong fortress of position and rank, there is less interest in
the assurance that God will be the shield and buckler, the munition of
rocks, the refuge from the storm for his saints. But when riches
dwindle, and friends fail, and health declines, and difficulty,
persecution, and trial threaten, then the soul betakes itself to the
promises of God, and cons them over, studying them by the hour
together, until it wakes up to find mines of treasure under pages which
were blank as the moorlands beneath which coal-beds lie. It would be
well for some of us if God would strip us of all those things in which
we place such confidence; so that we might be compelled, perhaps for
the first time in our lives, to seek in himself all that we are now
wont to seek in his gifts. Oh, blessed loss, which should teach us our
true wealth! Oh, happy deprivation, which should reveal our
inexhaustible resources! Oh, loving discipline, which should break the
cisterns that hold the brackish rain-water, and compel us to betake
ourselves to the river of God, which proceeds from the throne of God
and the Lamb!

The lax and cursory manner in which we read pages begemmed with divine
promise is largely due to the fact that we have never been put into
such straits of sorrow and privation as to appreciate their value. One
crushing trial would open up whole tracts of promise, which are now
like the shut doors of a corridor in a royal palace. This is one reason
why such a man as the Christian hero, Gordon, would spend hours over
the Word of God, counting his Father’s promises, holding them up as
jewels in the sunshine, and rejoicing over them as great spoil; such
men as he have had little else; they have had no other resources to
fall back upon; they were driven to lay hold on them for very
existence. And thus they fulfilled the enigma of the Apostle, “Having
nothing, yet possessing all things.” Those who are conscious of their
poverty are they who become rich in faith, and heirs of the Kingdom.

It was in precisely such a condition that the Hebrews here addressed
were found. Their goods had been spoiled; they had endured a great
fight of affliction; they had been made a gazing stock both by
reproaches and afflictions; all on which men are accustomed to rely had
been swept from them; and therefore the Holy Ghost, in these pages,
directs their minds to the exceeding great and precious promises, in
which God pledged himself to supply all their need; and to furnish from
his own treasuries all, and more than all, that they had lost; not
giving them these things in visible possession, but supplying them as
they were needed, and in proportion to their faith. It was surely a
good exchange, to lose all, and to recover all in God!

GOD’S PROMISES ARE RELIABLE. A good man’s word is his bond. And when
such a one has given a promise our anxiety is allayed, our fears are
quieted, we have strong consolation. But if, in addition to the
promise, our friend has solemnly bound himself by an oath, calling
heaven and earth to witness, and God to ratify, the asseveration is so
momentous, the appeal so awful, the impression made on the mind so
deep, that, whatever happens, the soul shelters itself in the
immutability of his decision. It is doubly impossible for him to change
or deceive. And this is the bond by which God has bound himself.

When dealing with Abraham, God gave him repeated promises, first of the
land, then of the seed, also of the blessing which should accrue to all
generations of men through him. On one occasion he went through the
form of covenant making in vogue among the surrounding peoples (Gen.
xv. 17). But, on Mount Moriah, when the faithful patriarch had given
the one stupendous evidence of faith and obedience, even unto death,
God sware, and “because he could sware by no greater, he sware by
himself.” “By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord’, (Gen. xxii. 16).

And so it is with us. We who by faith are the spiritual seed of Abraham
are blessed with him. “The promise is sure to all the seed; not to that
only which is of the law, but to that also which is of the faith of
Abraham, who is the father of us all” (Rom. iv. 16). All the promises
of God are Yea and Amen. He is not a man that he should lie, nor the
son of man that he should repent. He has well calculated his resources,
before he has pledged himself; and when once he has done so it is
impossible that he should fail. Fall flat on the divine promises; cling
to them as a shipwrecked sailor to the floating spar; venture all on
them; their fulfillment is guaranteed by covenant and oath; by blood
and agony and death; by the light of the resurrection morning and the
glory of the ascension mount; by the experience of myriads, who have
never found them fail. If any man living has found one promise
untrustworthy, let him publish it to the world; and the heavens will
clothe themselves in sackcloth, and the sun and moon and stars will
reel from their seats, the universe will rock, and a hollow wind moan
through creation, bearing the tidings that God is mutable, that God can
lie. And that voice will be the herald of universal dissolution. But it
can never, never be. Heirs of promise! God’s power Is eternal, his
counsel is immutable. Heaven and earth may pass away, but his word
shall never pass away. Ye therefore may have strong consolation; though
ye lose all else, your heritage in the word and oath of God shall be
unimpaired, world without end.

GOD’S PROMISES, THUS ASSURED, MAKE AN ANCHORAGE FOR THE SOUL. Few
things are more important for the mariner than to secure a good
anchorage ground, where the soil will not give before the weight of the
vessel and the strain of the storm. And with all those inclinations
toward drifting which we have already considered, we urgently need to
discover something permanent, unchanging, and satisfying, with which we
may grapple by the anchor of our hope.

The faculty of hope in a Christian is not different to that of a
worldly man. It is the same faculty or quality in each. But there is a
vast difference in the ground in which the anchor is fixed. In the case
of the worldly man, it is the loose, light, unreliable soil of
peradventures and speculations. In the case of the Christian, it is the
unyielding, immutable promise and oath of the Eternal God. Therefore
the former is often darkened with mis-giving and fear; while the latter
cries, without a shadow of doubt, “I know whom I have believed, and am
persuaded.”

Hope is something more than faith. Faith accepts and credits
testimony; hope anticipates. Faith says the fruit is good; hope picks
and eats. Faith is bud; hope blossom. Faith presents the check; hope
lays out the amount received. And such hope is the anchor of the soul.
The comparison between hope and an anchor is familiar even to heathen
writers, and it is easy to see how fit it is. It steadies the soul.
Take an illustration from common life. A young man pledges his troth to
a poor but noble girl. He is drafted for foreign service, and says
farewell for long years. Meanwhile she is left to do as well as she can
to maintain herself. Work is scanty, wages low, she is sometimes
severely tempted and tried. But, amidst all, she is kept true to her
absent lover, and to her nobler self, by the little strand of hope
which links her to a happy and united future. So, when suffering or
tempted or discouraged, our hope goes forward into the blessed future,
depicted on the page of Scripture in glowing colors, and promised by
the word of him who cannot lie; and the anticipation of it fills the
soul with courage and patience, so as to endure the trials of time, in
view of the certain blessedness of eternity.

THE ANCHORAGE IN THE PROMISES HAS A THREEFOLD VALUE. It is sure, there
is no fear of its failing; sure as the sure mercies of David; sure as
the “everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure”; sure as God
can make it. It is steadfast, its influence on the soul is to keep it
steady: “Steadfast, unmovable, always abounding in the work of the
Lord.” It entereth into that within the veil. In the ancient world,
when there was not water enough to float a ship into the harbor, a man
would carry the anchor over the shoals, and fix it in the calm waters
of the inner basin. In some such way as this, our Lord Jesus, when,
like the high-priest in the Jewish Tabernacle, he passed through the
blue veil that hides the celestial world from ours, took our hope with
him, and holds it there. The Lord Jesus is our hope (1 Tim. i.1 ; 1
John iii. 3). He is our forerunner. He has preceded us into his
Father’s presence, the first fruits of them that slept. He has gone
thither as our Representative and Priest. When he majestically passed
from the sight of his disciples, and was hidden from the eyes that
longingly followed him, he entered within the veil. There he ever
liveth; and because of it our hopes follow him, center in him, and
connect us already with that bright home of which he is the radiant
center.

THERE ARE CERTAIN QUALITIES WHICH WE MUST LEARN TO EXERCISE. Faith and
patience can alone inherit the promises (ver. 12). Abraham had
patiently to endure before he received the promise (ver. 15). It is not
easy to wait, or to let patience have her perfect work; and it is only
possible to faith. There is no sublimer instance of long waiting than
the history of Abraham, for which his faith nerved him, and to whom the
promise was literally fulfilled. And so shall it be again. Patience
weary, eager hearts. The time shall come when you shall lay hands on
your capital; but be content in the meanwhile to enjoy the interest.
The auspicious moment hastens when you shall know and taste all the
blessedness of Paradise regained; but feast in the interim on the
grapes of Eshcol, the pomegranates and other produce of the land. Claim
the patience of Christ, of which the last of the apostles, who had need
of it to sustain him in the long delay, so sweetly speaks (Rev. i. 9).
“Be ye patient; stablish your hearts; for the coming of the Lord
draweth nigh.” “Let us run with patience the race set before us,
looking unto Jesus.” Thus shall we manifest “the patience of the
saints”; and thus shall we, like those who have preceded us, finally
inherit the promises.
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XVI THE PRIESTHOOD OF CHRIST

“Thou art a Priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”-HEBREWS vii. 17.

VARIOUS fancies have gathered around the person of Melchizedek,
investing him with extraordinary qualities; but it is better far to
think of him simply as the head or chieftain of a large family or clan,
which gathered around the site to be known, in after years, as the holy
city.” Already its name was shadowed forth in the term “Salem,” which
designated the clustered rude huts or tents. Amid the almost universal
lawlessness and depravity which swept over Palestine, righteousness and
peace seem to have fled for shelter to this little community, where
alone due reverence was given to the Most High God, possessor of heaven
and earth.

How this oasis had come into existence amid the surrounding moral
desert we cannot tell; but it may have been due to the commanding
personal influence of the king, who, according to patriarchal custom,
as father of the family, was not only the ruler of the family life, but
leader in the family devotions; and thus, while Melchizedek was king of
Salem, he was also priest of the Most High. Moreover, it would appear
that he bore a special commission, and was raised up for a specific
purpose, as the ordained messenger between God and men; and as
embodying a striking portraiture of the priesthood to be exercised for
man by the Son of God.

Note the significance of the words, made like unto the Son of God (ver.
3). Christ’s eternal Priesthood vias the archetypal reality, after the
similitude of which that of Melchizedek was fashioned. It was as if the
Father could not await the day of his Son’s priestly entrance within
the veil but must needs anticipate the marvels of his ministry by
embodying its leading features in miniature. Let us now study some of
them.

CHRIST IS KING AS WELL AS PRIEST (ver. 1). History gives its unanimous
judgment against the temporal and the spiritual power being vested in
the same man. In Israel the two offices were kept rigorously separate;
and when, on one occasion, a king passed the sacred barrier, and,
snatching up a censer, strode into the inner court, he was at once
followed by the remonstrances of the priestly band, whilst the white
brand of leprosy wrote his doom upon his brow; “and he himself hastened
to go out, because the Lord had smitten him.” But the simple monarch of
whom we write, living before gathering abuses forbade the union,
combined in his person the royal scepter and the sacerdotal censer. And
herein he foreshadowed the Christ.

Jesus is King and Priest. He is King because he is a priest. He is
highly exalted, demanding homage from every knee, and confession from
every lip, because he became obedient to the death of the cross. He
bases his royal claims, not on hereditary descent, though the blood of
David flowed in his veins; not on conquest or superior force; not on
the legislation that underpins the kingdom of heaven among men: but on
this, that he redeemed us to God by his blood. He is the King of glory,
because he is the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.
The cross was the stepping-stone to his throne.

And he cannot fulfill his office as Priest unless he be first
recognized as King. Many fail to derive all the blessing offered to men
through the Priesthood of Christ, because they are not willing to admit
his claims as King. They do not reverence and obey him. They do not
open the whole of the inner realm to his scepter. They endeavor to
serve two masters; and to stand well with empires as different as light
and darkness, heaven and hell, God and Satan. There must be
consecration before there can be perfect faith; coronation before
deliverance; the King before the Priest.

The order is invariable first King of Righteousness, and after that
also King of Peace (ver. 2). ” Peace, give us peace!” is the
importunate demand of men; peace at any price; by all means peace. But
God, in the deep waters, lays the foundation of righteousness; “and the
work of righteousness shall be peace, and the effect of righteousness
quietness and assurance forever.” It is of no use to heal the wound
slightly, saying, “Peace, peace,” when there is none. Infinitely better
is it to probe to the bottom, and to build up from a sound and healthy
foundation to the surface of the flesh. And the King of Peace will
never enter your soul until you have first acknowledged him as King of
Righteousness, submitting yourself to his righteous claims, and
renouncing the righteousness which is of the law for that which is by
faith.

It is lamentable to find how few Christians, comparatively, are
realizing the full meaning or power of Christianity. Joyless,
fruitless, powerless, they are a stumbling block to the world, and a
mockery to devils. And is not the reason here? They are not right. They
are harboring traitors and aliens in their souls. They constantly
condemn themselves in things that they allow. No doubt they excuse
themselves, and invent special reasons to palliate their faults, so
that what would be inadmissible with others is pardonable in them. What
special pleading! What ingenious arguments! What gymnastic feats are
theirs! But all in vain. Let any such who read these lines learn that
it is peremptory to make Christ King, and King of Righteousness, before
ever they can appreciate the peace which accrues from his Priesthood on
our behalf.

CHRIST’S PRIESTHOOD WAS NOT INHERITED (ver. 3). This also comes out
clearly in the history of the priest-king of Salem. The Levitical
priest had carefully to trace his connection with Aaron, and hence the
elaborate genealogies of which some parts of the Bible are full. The
priests, at the time of the return from Babylon, who could not prove
their pedigree, were suspended until a priest arose with Urim and
Thummim. But Melchizedek’s priesthood had evidently nothing to do with
his descent. He was independent of priestly pedigree. Of course it is
not necessary to infer that he really had no human parentage and that
he knew neither birth nor death. This is neither stated nor assumed.
The argument is simply built on the omission of any reference to these
events in ordinary human life; and aims to prove that, therefore, this
old-world priesthood was quite independent of those conditions which
were of prime importance in the Levitical dispensation. It was of an
entirely different order from that which officiated in the Jewish
Temple; and was, therefore, so capable to represent Christ’s.

As God, our Lord had no mother. As man, no father. He did not Spring
from a family of priests; for it is evident that our Lord sprang out of
Judah, of which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning the priesthood.
What was allegorically true of Melchizedek was literally true of Jesus;
who has had neither beginning of days nor end of life. His Priesthood,
therefore, is utterly unique. He stands amongst men unrivaled. There
have been none like him before nor since. His functions derived from
none, shared by none, transmitted to none. Made what he was from all
eternity by the foreknowledge and counsel of God.

There never was a beginning to the priestliness of our Saviour’s heart.
There is no date in heaven’s calendar for the uprising within him of
mercy and pity, and of the intention to stand as the Advocate and
Intercessor for our race. Before the mountains were brought forth, or
the heavens and earth were made, there was already in his thoughts the
germ of that marvelous drama which is slowly unfolding before the gaze
of the universe. He was Priest, as well as the Lamb slain, from before
the foundation of the world. Love is eternal. Sacrifice is one of the
root principles of the being of God. Priesthood is part of the texture
of the nature of the Second Person in the adorable Trinity. There need
be no fear, therefore, that he will ever desert his office; or lay it
aside for some other purpose; or cease to have compassion on the
ignorant and erring, the tempted and fallen.

CHRIST’S PRIESTHOOD IS CONTINUAL (ver. 3). The priests of Aaron’s line
were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But of him “it is
witnessed that he liveth” (ver. 8). Hallelujah! a Priest has arisen
“after the power of an endless life” (ver. 16). “The Lord sware and
will not repent, Thou art a Priest forever” (ver. 21). “Because he
abideth forever, his Priesthood is unchangeable” (ver. 24). “He ever
liveth to make intercession” (ver. 25). “Consecrated forevermore” (ver.
28). What explicit and abundant testimony! Our High-Priest shall never
ascend Mount Hor to be stripped of his robes of office and die. The
secrets confided to him need never be told again to his successor. The
tender love which links him and us shall never be snapped or cut in
death. No one else will ever be called in to take his place in the
superintendence of our souls.

This teaching rebukes two errors-(1) The error of those who teach
sinlessness in the flesh. It is impossible to exaggerate the mischief
which is being wrought just now by some who take advantage of the
universal yearning for a higher experience, and are holding out to
credulous souls the prospect of reaching a position in which they will
no longer need to confess sin, no longer require perpetual cleansing in
the blood of Christ, no longer be sensible of their sinnership.

They who speak thus confound sin and sins. They apply the term
infirmity to acts and dispositions which the Word of God calls by
blacker, darker names. This teaching lowers a man’s standard of sin to
suit the erroneous doctrine which he has imbibed. It is contrary to the
distinct teaching of Scripture that the flesh in the believer may yet
lust for the upper hand. It is in Opposition to all deeper experience
of the Christian life, which goes to show that, even when we know
nothing against ourselves, yet are we not hereby justified; because
there may be many evils of which, for want of clearer light, we are
completely ignorant, but which stand out patent enough to the eye of
him who judges us, the Lord who searches the heart and reins.

The error of those who teach the perplexity if sacrificing priesthood.
Of course all believers are priests, in the sense of offering the
sacrifice of praise and prayer, the offerings of self-denying love. But
there are many among us who persist in affirming that they are called,
in addition, constantly to offer the perpetual sacrifice of Calvary, in
the elements of the Lord’s Supper. Amid the ceremonial of the mass, as
offered in too many of our English churches by professed Protestants,
claiming to be priests, it is hard to see any trace of the simple
institution of the Lord’s Supper. And it makes one tingle with
righteous indignation to see the way in which these blind leaders of
the blind are deceiving the multitudes to the ruin of their soul
Sometimes one longs for the withering sarcasm of an Erasmus, the sturdy
common sense of a Latimer, the vehemence of a Knox, to show up the
unscriptural pretensions of these men, tricked out in the gaudy finery
of pagan costumes, and going through mummeries which would provoke to
laughter, if the whole system were not so inexpressibly sad. “How long,
Lord, how long!”

But, after all, the true way to meet these errors is to insist upon our
Lord’s continual and unchangeable intercession and priesthood. Surely
if he lives and continues his work, it is a piece of impertinent and
arrogant folly to intrude upon his functions. We must revert to the
earlier methods of Scriptural interpretation and exposition before ever
we shall be able to forearm our young people against the monstrous
errors of our times, or win back those who have been so disastrously
led astray.
__________________________________________________________________

XVII. THE SUPERLATIVE GREATNESS OF CHRIST.

“Able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he
ever liveth to make intercession for them.”-HEBREWS vii. 25.

THIS chapter needs to be read under a deep sense of sin, to be properly
understood and appreciated. It is the conscious sinner who needs the
Priest. We can do very well with Christ as Teacher, Philanthropist,
Ideal Man, until we see ourselves as we are in the sight of God; but
when that vision is given to us, our hearts cry out with an exceeding
great and bitter cry for the Priest, who can stand for us with God, and
for God with us.

There is urgent need for a fresh consciousness and conviction of our
sinnership, both amongst unbelievers and professing Christians. Light
views of sin give slight views of the sacrifice of Calvary, of the need
for propitiation, and of the dread future penalty on willful
wrong-doing. Did men really understand what sin is, they would not talk
so glibly of their complete deliverance from it; confounding as they do
the few sins of which they are cognizant with the mass of evil that
lies still in their nature, like the mud at the bottom of a pellucid
lake, only needing to be stirred to show itself. And if men really felt
their sins, there would be a unanimous rush to the precious Blood and
to the only priest for absolution and pardon.

It is hardly likely that these poor words can affect the set of the
current; yet, if it were possible to reach the great mass of the
preachers of the present day, one would urge them to lay aside their
literary essays, their arguments with evolutionists, their poetry and
rhetoric, and to bring the trenchant teaching of God’s Word to bear on
human consciences and lives. Let them attack sin as sin. Let them deal
with the sins of their congregations specifically, as the Boer marks
his man for his bullet. Let them show what God thinks of the sins which
we treat so lightly. And as soon as we get back to the old fashioned
style of preaching, we shall see a revival of old fashioned
conversions. It is of no use complaining, when we are ourselves to
blame. Human nature is unaltered. The law of God is unchanged. The cry
of the conscience is stifled, not silenced. Again shall we hear of
multitudes pierced to the heart, and crying for mercy. And then the
Priesthood of Christ, as described here, will acquire a new
preciousness.

HE IS A GREAT HIGH-PRIEST (ver. 4). How great, appears from the episode
here referred to. Flushed with victory, bringing with him all the
captives and goods which Chedorlaomer had swept away from Sodom, the
patriarch Abraham had nearly reached his own camp. But as he drew nigh
to Salem, where peace and righteousness dwelt beneath the rule of
Melchizedek, he was met by this saintly figure, bearing in his hands
the sacred emblems of bread and wine: meet type of him who often
accosts us on the road of life, when weary with conflict, or when
entering into subtle temptation, and refreshes us with the bread of his
flesh, and the wine of his blood. And Abraham knelt to receive a
blessing at his hand, and gave him tithes of all (Gen. xiv. 19, 20).

Does not this prove the greatness of Melchizedek? The Levites and
priests were indeed permitted to take tithes of their brethren; but
this glorious priest feels no compunction to take tithes of one of
another race. He rose above the narrow boundaries of race or blood, and
was prepared to do his office with equal care for an alien as for his
own. This unsectarian, cosmopolitan, large-hearted view of his
obligations to man as man is a true mark of greatness. And in this he
manifests a trait of the greatness of our dear Lord, whose Priesthood
overleaps the limits which might be set by nationality or birth, and
deals with man as man; with thee, reader, and me, if only we will come
to him.

Besides this, since the greater must bless the less, it is obvious that
Abraham, great and good though he was, the friend of God, and the
recipient of the promises, must have felt that Melchizedek was his
superior, or he would never have treated him with such marked respect
(Heb. vii. 6, 7). Surely, then, this holy man was a fit representative
of our blessed Lord, to whom all the noblest in heaven and earth bow
the knee; confessing that he is Lord; and consecrating to him, not a
tenth only, but the whole of what they have and are.

HE IS A GREATER HIGH-PRIEST THAN AARON OR HIS SONS. When Abraham knelt
beneath that royal and priestly hand, he did not do so for himself
alone, but as a representative man. First and head of his race, his
descendants were identified with him in his deed. Levi, therefore, who
receiveth tithes paid tithes in the patriarch; and, in doing so,
forevermore took up the second place as inferior, and second best.

“Stop,” cries an objector; “if you affirm this inferiority of the
Jewish priesthood to that of Melchizedek, you are making an assertion
so far-reaching in its results as to need some further corroboration.
Are you quite sure that this is as you say?”

“Certainly,” is the reply; “else, why should there be so emphatic an
announcement made in David’s Psalms of the coming of another Priest
long after the Jewish priesthood had been in operation? ‘If perfection
were by the Levitical priesthood, what further need was there that
another Priest should arise after the order of Melchizedek and not be
called after the order of Aaron?'”

“But stay,” again interposes the objector; “if you are going to
supersede the Levitical priesthood, you are of necessity making a
change in all that ceremonial law which rested on the priesthood as an
arch upon its keystone. Are you prepared to sweep away a system so
venerable, so religiously maintained, the bulwark of religion, the
institution of God?”

“I am prepared for this,” is the reply; “the previous commandments that
relate to sacrifices and rites and ceremonies will have to go. They
were temporary and imperfect. Types, not realities; molds, not the real
vessels; shadows, not the substance. They made nothing perfect. Their
office was to bring in a better hope; but, now that this is come, they
may be annulled and laid aside.”

It seems a light thing to us; but it was of the gravest import to those
who were here addressed. To them the Jewish priesthood and ceremonial
were more than a state religion; they were religion itself. Tradition,
custom, ancestral veneration, personal admiration, and adherence, all
these ties had to be rudely snapped, as they were compelled to admit
the cogency of this inspired and irresistible argument. If Jesus were
indeed the Priest spoken of by David in Psalm cx.- and of this there
seemed no doubt because it was so often applied to him (Matt. xxii. 44;
Acts ii. 34)- then there could be no doubt that his Priesthood was
better than Aaron’s; and that the whole system of which the Levitical
priesthood was the essential characteristic must pass away before that
system which gathers around the person and work of the Lord Jesus.

We must distinguish between the moral and the ceremonial law: the
latter is transient, and was fulfilled in Jesus Christ; the former, of
course, is of permanent and eternal force, written on the conscience of
man and the government of the world.

We can only stay for a moment here to show how absurd it is for either
the Roman or the Anglican priest to base his pretensions on the example
of the Old Testament. To do so is to confess their inferiority to the
only Priesthood which is recognized in the present age. They are in
evil case. Press them for their warrant of existence. If they quote
Rev. i. 6, then we all have an equal right to wear their dress and
fulfill their office. If they quote Leviticus, then are they hopelessly
undone; for that priesthood has been superseded. The time is coming
when all his people will have to disavow connection with those men
whose pretensions are baseless, or worse, delusive; and an
unwarrantable intrusion into the sacred offices of Christ. Alas I poor
souls, deluded and fleeced by them!

HE IS THE GREATEST OF HIGH-PRIESTS. Because he was made priest by the
oath of God (vv. 20, 21). Ordinary priests had no such sanction to
their appointment; but he by an oath. Jehovah sware, and will not
change his mind. His appointment is final, absolute, immutable. It
never can be superseded, as that of Aaron has been. Heaven and earth
may pass away, but it will not pass away.

Because he continueth ever. His is the Priesthood in which throbs the
power of an endless life (ver. 16). It is witnessed of him, that he
liveth. “Behold,” said he, “I am alive forevermore.” What a contrast to
all human priests, on whose graves this epitaph may ever be inscribed,
“Not suffered to continue by reason of death.” One by one they grow old
and die: the eye, often filmed with tears, is closed; the heart stands
still; the hands, often raised in absolution, crossed meekly on the
breast, as if asking for pardon. But he ever liveth. And of this
perpetual life there are two blessed results. On the one hand, he has
an untransferable Priesthood (ver. 24); on the other hand, he is able
to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him (ver. 25).
There is no limit to his salvation, no barrier beyond which he may not
pass. Uttermost in time, and in character, and in desperation, you may
be at one of the ends of the earth; yet you shall be lifted to the
uttermost degree of glory. To the uttermost-from sins of thought as
well as of word and deed; to the uttermost, in cleansing the thoughts
and intents of the heart.

Because of his blameless character. Holy toward God; harmless toward
man; undefiled in heart; separate from sinners in life. Not needing to
offer up sacrifice for himself, as the priests did always before
offering for the congregation; not requiring to make a daily or yearly
repetition of that perfect sacrifice and oblation which was once made
on the cross (vv. 26, 27).

Because of the dignity of his Person (ver. 28). The office of mediation
is no longer intrusted to a man, or set of men, encompassed by
infirmities. See! through the shining ranks of being there advances the
Son, Light of Light, Fellow of Jehovah, Co-equal with God, One with
Father and Spirit in the ever-blessed Trinity. He is solemnly
consecrated to this task of reconciling and saving sinners. All heaven
hears and ratifies the oath. And surely we may well ponder what must be
our worth in the thought of God, and what our destiny, when our case is
undertaken, amid such solemnities, by One so August, so glorious, so
divine, as the High-Priest, who now awaits the appeal of the humblest
penitent of the human race. “Such a High-Priest became us.”

“To THE UTTERMOST.” Eyes may light on these words, weary with weeping,
of those who have been reduced well-nigh to despair through the
greatness and virulence of their sins. Not only does the record of the
past seem too black to be forgiven, but old habits are perpetually
reasserting themselves; ridiculing the most steadfast resolutions, and
smiting the inner life of the soul down to the ground. At such times we
are disposed to envy the vegetable and animal creation, which are not
capable of sin; or the myriads of sweet children who have been taken
home to God before the time of conscious rebellion and war could rend
their infant hearts. But the greatness of our sin is always less than
the greatness of God’s grace. Where the one abounds, the other much
more abounds. If we go down to the bottoms of the mountains and touch
the heart of the deep, deeper than all is the redeeming mercy of God.
The love and grace and power of Jesus are more than our unutterable
necessities. Only trust him, he is “able to save unto the uttermost”;
and he is as willing as able.

There are many in these days filled with questionings about the clean
heart, the extent to which we may be delivered from sin, and such like
speculations. To these we say: Cease to think of cleansing, and
consider the Cleanser; forbear to speculate on the deliverance, and
deal with the Deliverer; be not so eager as to the nature of the
salvation, but let the Saviour into your heart; and be sure that so
long as he is in possession, he will exert so salutary an effect, that
sin, however mighty, shall instantly lose its power over the
tempest-driven soul that comes through him to God, the source of
holiness.
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XVIII. THE TRUE TABERNACLE

“According to the pattern showed to thee in the mount.”-HEBREWS viii. 5.

THERE were three stages by which Moses, the man of God, ascended into
the Mount. To the first, he went in company with Aaron, Nadab, and
Abihu, and seventy elders of the children of Israel, the chosen
representatives of the people. “And they saw the God of Israel; and
there was under his feet as it were a paved work of a sapphire stone,
and as it were the body of heaven in his clearness; they saw God, and
did eat and drink” (Exod. xxiv. 10, 11). This eating and drinking was
evidently a symbol of friendship and peace, based upon the shedding of
the blood, which is recorded in the previous verses. We, too, may see
God, and eat of the flesh and drink of the blood of the Son of Man, on
the basis of that precious blood by which we have been made nigh.

When this feast was over, the voice of God called Moses up to a higher
range, a further steep. He first bade the elders tarry where they were;
and then, accompanied only by Joshua, he rose up, and went into the
mount of God, on which the cloud brooded, steeped and bathed in the
glory of the Lord, like the long bars of cloud in the brilliance of a
setting sun.

But on the seventh day, even Joshua was left behind. God called unto
Moses out of the cloud. And Moses went up further into the mount,
deeper and yet deeper into the heart of the burning glory. All his
senses were keenly awake to the scenes around him, and entranced; each
the channel for tides of rapturous enjoyment, without pain, without
self-consciousness, without the paralysis of fear, as if one were borne
ever onward by a tide of glory and music, each movement of which was
rapture. “And Moses was in the Mount forty days and forty nights.”

During that time minute instructions were given Moses concerning the
Tabernacle, which was to be erected on the plains below. Those
instructions are given in Exod. xxv., xxvi.,xxvii., and are exceedingly
minute. But nothing was left to human fancy. Beginning with the ark and
its mercy-seat as the throne of God, the instructions pass through the
table of shittim wood, the candlestick with its seven branches, the
boards and curtains and hangings, until they end at the great brazen
altar in the court of the Tabernacle, where God and the sinner met. Is
not this also the path trodden by the Lord himself, the substance of
all these types, who came from the bosom of the Father to the cross of
Calvary, the brazen altar where he put away the sins of men?

But, in addition to the minute description thus given, there appears to
have been presented to the mind of Moses some representation of the
things which he was bidden to construct. It was as if the eternal
realities which had dwelt forever in the mind of God took some visible
shape before his vision. The unseen became visible. The eternal took
form. A pattern was shown him. He trod the aisles of the true
Tabernacle. He beheld the heavenly things themselves. And it was after
this pattern that he was repeatedly urged and commanded to build.
“According to all that I show thee, after the pattern of the
Tabernacle, and the pattern of all the instruments thereof, even so
shall ye make it” (Exod. xxv. 9, 40; xxvi. 30; xxvii. 8).

THE JEWISH RITUAL DESERVES DEVOUT STUDY. It is always interesting to
study methods of religious worship, even though the rites have become
obsolete, the altars deserted, and the dust of priest and votary has
long since mingled in the sand of the desert or the verdure of the
glade. Who can look unmoved at the gigantic monuments which rear
themselves in the dense forests of Central Mexico, the remnants of an
age of giants who have passed away, giving no clew to the symbols or
hieroglyphs which they have carved? Who can walk unmoved through the
stone circles of Stonehenge, Keswick, or Penmaenmawr, and not fall into
pensive musings?

For this reason, if for no other, the Levitical ritual would ever be
possessed of intrinsic interest. When we think of the noble spirits who
have bequeathed us our most precious religious records, who sang in the
Psalms, and wept in the Lamentations, and flashed with the ecstasy of
Messianic prediction and prophecy; and all of whom were trained in the
system of which the Tabernacle was the focus and heart, we cannot fail
to examine it with holy and reverent curiosity, as if one should visit
the nursery or schoolhouse where loved and honored teachers spent their
earliest years.

But there is a yet deeper interest here. For we are told that these
things were made after the pattern of things in the heavens. Every
knob, and tache, and curtain, and vessel, and piece of furniture, had
some analogue, some spiritual counterpart of which it was the rude and
material expression. Through these examples and shadows there is no
doubt that the ancient saints caught glimpses of the eternal realities.
We infer this, because there is such a similarity between their
religious life, as expressed in their writings, and our own. But if
they, who had nothing but the type to guide them, were able to discern
so many deep and holy lessons through its medium, how much more
evidently should we be able to see the grand principles of redemption
in the ancient ritual, when before us have passed the scenes of
Bethlehem, Calvary, the Garden of Arimathea, and the Ascension Mount!

Sometimes in a shadow we may see details of workmanship which otherwise
in the substance we might have missed. One of the most wonderful
achievements of the present day is sun-photography, by which
photographs are obtained of the sun-disk under certain conditions. And
it is obviously much easier to investigate the nature of the sun from
such photographs than to study it amid the unbearable glory of his
presence. The eye may quietly pursue its investigations undazzled and
unabashed. So we may better understand some of the details of Christ’s
work, as we study Leviticus, than when we stand with the apostles amid
the marvels of the cross, or with the Seer amid the supernal blaze of
Apocalyptic vision.

Turn not lightly then from the Book of Leviticus, which shadows forth
the Gospel; and, indeed, gives much of the terminology, the phrases and
symbols, to be afterward employed. Beneath the teaching of the same
Holy Spirit as taught Moses of old we explore the sacred meanings which
underlie ark and propitiatory; fine twined linen and blue; candlestick
and table; altar of incense and altar of burnt-offering; basin and
vessel and snuffer. Each is like a hook in the divine household, to
which God has attached a sacred meaning, and which will yield up its
secret to those who reverently ask and seek and knock. Adapting some
memorable words, we may say: “The invisible things of God, from the
construction of the Tabernacle, are clearly seen, being understood by
the things that were made, even his eternal purpose of redemption.”

THE TRUTHS OF THE GOSPEL ARE ETERNAL REALITIES. We must not think that
they are ever destined to pass away, as the Jewish types did. They
cannot. They are the heavenly things themselves. They are the true, the
ideal, the divine. They have always been what they are. They always
will be what they are. We may yet have to see much deeper into them; we
may need to be taught them in yet higher methods of divine
communication. We may have to be lifted on to a loftier region of
experience in order to comprehend them. But they are essentially and
forever settled, the granite of eternal fact. Any structure built on
them shall last forever. The Jews had only the example, we have the
reality; they the picture, we the person; they the shadow, we the
substance.

It is interesting to feel that Moses saw no other truth in God’s
revelation than what Paul saw; though to Moses it shaped itself in the
Tabernacle with its layers of skins, whilst to Paul it took shape in
glowing trains of splendid argument and rhetoric. But ever in the mind
and thought of God there has been the same distinction between holiness
and sin; ever the need of sacrifice, even unto death; ever the demand
for shed life, as the only means through which the sinner may approach
his holy Majesty; ever the requirements of the incense of praise, the
bread of obedience, the light of an illuminated character; ever the
priest to make intercession; and ever the aisles and courts and spaces
dedicated to worship and intercourse, lofty as the fellowship between
the Father and the Son.

Calvary is no novelty, nor the Priesthood, nor the work of Jesus; they
represent the shining forth of eternal facts in the deepest nature of
God. To ignore them is to miss union with God on the most fundamental
laws and processes of his being. The Lamb was slain before the
foundation of the world: and lie appears in heaven still bearing the
marks of his death, “a Lamb as it had been slain.”

OUR PLACE OF WORSHIP. We must needs assemble ourselves in places of
assembly with fellow Christians; but in point of fact not one of them
is essential to true worship. The type has passed, and we know that the
Jewish Tabernacle is no more. But what do we see? Men are trying to
reproduce it, or to invent a substitute for it. Ah, how greatly they
misconceive our true position! We certainly neither need the Jewish
Tabernacle nor any substitute; because we are constituted priests of
the heavenly tabernacle, which no human hand ever reared, and which is
the meeting place between God and all true hearts, yea, of all who love
God. “Neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, shall ye worship
the Father.” When we meet a company of our fellow Christians, we are
not to think of them as the whole of those with whom we worship. The
true worshiper is one of a great festal throng, which is filling the
spiritual temple. We are but part of a congregation consisting of all
the sainted dead, and the believing living, in all communions, and
throughout the universe of God. The prisoner, the traveler, the
invalid, the mother, the nurse- a11 meet there in unison, and worship
God together. All are priests, and yonder is the High-Priest, who has
passed through the heavens and ever lives to make intercession. “A
minister of the true tabernacle.” How ridiculous do those appear to
such an assembly who arrogate to themselves priestly pretensions, and
who would make us believe that they are repeating the sacrifice of
Christ! In this temple at least they are not wanted, for Christ is here
to offer the sacrifice himself.

THE TRUE PATTERN OF OUR LIFE IS SUGGESTED HERE. We have many plans and
schemes and patterns; but how often abortive and disappointing! Would
that we could spend long periods with God in the mount, getting his
pattern of our life and work! There is nothing higher for us than to
build up some resemblance to God’s eternal thought. All structures
built on that scheme will stand forever. And God will ever find
material, more than enough, for those who dare to be singular, because
they are true to the pattern which he shows on the mount. And if it be
asked what that pattern is which God will show us in the mount of
communion, we may reply: it is the life and character and work of Jesus
Christ our Lord; the model and exemplar and pattern of all that is true
and just and pure and lovely and of good report. See that thou make thy
life on this pattern, which God waits to show thee in the mount. God
calls thee to it, and he will enable thee to perform.
__________________________________________________________________

XIX. THE TWO COVENANTS

“I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” HEBREWS viii.
10.

NEW word comes into this marvelous treatise which may repel some, as
having a theological sound; and yet it contains new depths of meaning
and interest for us all. It is the word Covenant. We all understand
pretty clearly the covenants into which men enter with each other with
respect to property, or other matters of daily business. One man
undertakes to do certain things, on condition that another pledges
himself to do certain other things. When these respective undertakings
are settled, they are engrossed on parchment, signed, and sealed; and
from that moment each party is honorably bound to perform his share in
the transaction.

In some such way, adapting himself to our methods of thought and
practice, the eternal God has entered into covenant with faithful and
obedient souls. Nor is it possible to overestimate the condescension on
his part, or the honor and advantage placed within our reach, by such
relationship. It seems too wonderful to be true; yet it must be true,
for on no other grounds than its revealed truthfulness could it ever
have become a matter of human statement or debate. The covenant between
a prince and a beggar, or between a man like William Penn and the rude
dark skins of America, is dwarfed into utter insignificance and
paltriness when mentioned in the same day as the covenant between God
and the soul of man.

Theologians have detected several different kinds of covenant in the
course of human history, and as depicted in the Bible. But it is
sufficient for us to notice the two covenants, Old and New, mentioned
in this paragraph. And the basis of the whole argument is contained in
Jer. xxxi. 31-34, in which there is a distinction made between the
covenant made with the fathers-when God took them out of the land of
Egypt, and that new covenant, which in the days of Jeremiah, was still
future. Moses was the mediator of the first, as Jesus is of the second.

THE MOSAIC COVENANT. It was often reiterated in very gracious and
searching tones. Take, for instance, that scene which took place as the
vast host defiled into the plain beneath the brow of Sinai, in the
third month of the Exodus. As yet there was no cloud or fire on Sinai’s
crest; but a proposition was made to the people by Moses, that if they,
on their side, would obey God’s voice and keep his word, God, on his
side, would do two things: he would regard them as his peculiar
treasure above all people; and he would take them to himself as a
kingdom of priests, and a holy nation (Exod. xix. 5, 6). And the
people, little counting the cost, or realizing all that was involved,
cried with one glib, unanimous voice, “All that the Lord hath spoken
will we do.” They thus entered into covenant.

Shortly after, when the Ten Commandments had been given, the terms of
the covenant on God’s part were very much enlarged. On the fulfillment,
on the part of the people, of the old condition of obedience, God went
further than ever before in his promises, which comprehended a vast
variety of need, and consisted of many parts (Exod. xxiii. 22-31). And
again the people gave one mighty, unanimous shout of assent (xxiv. 3).

Nor was this all; for when, with the intention of recording these
solemn engagements, they were entered in the Book of the Covenant, and
read publicly, amid the solemn ratification of sprinkled blood, the
people again said, “All that the Lord hath said will we do, and be
obedient” (xxiv. 7). But how little they knew themselves! Within a week
or two they were dancing wildly around the golden calf; and within a
few months there was not one who dared affirm that he had kept the
covenant in every jot and tittle. Nay, on the contrary: “which my
covenant they brake, saith the Lord.” What else could be expected of
them! although Moses did write them a second and detailed statement of
the conditions of the covenant in the Book of Deuteronomy, with the
reiterated demand, that occurs like a refrain, “Ye shall observe to
do.”

There were two great defects in that old covenant, which arose out of
the weakness of poor human nature; in the first place, it gave no
power, no moral dynamics, to enable the human covenanters to do what
they promised; and, secondly, it could not provide for the effectual
putting away of those sins which arose from their failure to carry into
effect their covenanted vows (Heb. ix. 9).

Surely the majority of men, aiming after a religious life, pass through
an experience like this. When first we are redeemed by the blood of the
Lamb, and brought out into the new life, we seem to stand again under
Mount Sinai; or, better still, our conscience becomes our Sinai, and
from its highest point we seem to hear the voice of God, engaging
himself to be a God to us if we will in all things obey his voice. And
this we immediately pledge ourselves to do. We are not insincere, we
really mean to perform it; we are enamoured at the ideal of life
presented to us. It is not only desirable as the condition of
blessings, but it is eminently attractive and lovely.

But we make a profound mistake in pledging ourselves; for we are
undertaking a matter which is totally beyond our reach. As well might a
paralyzed man undertake to climb Mount Blanc, or a bankrupt to pay his
debts. We soon learn that sin has paralyzed all our moral motor nerves.
The good we would, we do not: the evil we would not, we do. We are
brought into captivity to the law of sin in our members, which wars
against the law of our mind. We go out to shake ourselves, as at other
times; but we wist not that razors have passed over our locks of
strength, leaving us powerless and helpless.

It seems a pity that each has to learn the uselessness of these
attempts for himself, instead of profiting by the experience of others
and the records of the past. Yet so it is. One after another starts to
earn the privilege of God’s presence and smile and blessing by being
good and obedient and punctilious in complying with rules and forms and
regulations. It goes on well for a little while, but soon utterly
breaks down. We are baffled and beaten, as sea-fowl who dash themselves
against a lighthouse tower in the storm, and then fall wounded into the
yeasty foam beneath. We are slow to learn that, as we receive
justification, so must we receive sanctification, from the hands of God
as his free gift.

If any reader of these lines is trying to keep up a friendly
relationship with God on this principle of try and do and keep, the
sooner that soul realizes the certainty of failure, not for want of
will, but through the weakness of the moral nature, and yields itself
to the grace revealed in the second and better covenant, the more
quickly will it find a secure and happy resting place, from which it
will not be disturbed or driven, world without end.

THE BETTER COVENANT. It is so much better than that of Moses, in this
way: while it pledges God to even better promises (ver. 6) than those
of the earlier covenant, promises which for a moment demand our
attention, there is no pledge or undertaking of any kind demanded from
us. There are no ifs; no injunctions of observe to do; no conditions of
obedience to be fulfilled. From first to last it consists of the f
wills of the Most High. Count them up in this marvelous enumeration
(vv. 10, II, 12), and then dare to claim that each should be fulfilled
in your personal experience; because this is the covenant under which
we are living, and through which we have access to God.

“I will write my laws into their minds.” That refers to the
intellectual faculty, which thinks, remembers, argues. It will be of
inestimable value to have them there for constant reference; so that
they shall always stand inscribed on the side posts and lintels of the
inner life, demanding reverence, and compelling daily attention.

“I will write them upon their hearts.” That is the seat of the
emotional life and of the affections. If they are written there, they
must engage our love. And what a man loves, he is pretty certain to
follow and obey. “A little lower,” said the dying veteran, as they
probed for the bullet, which had sunk deep down into his breast, “and
you will find the Emperor”; and in the case of the Christian who has
been taken into covenant with God, the law is inscribed on the deepest
affections of his being. He obeys because he loves to obey. He stays in
his Master’s service, not because he must, but because he chooses it
for himself, saying, as his ear is bored to the door, “I love my
Master, I will not go out free.”

“I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” The last
clause is even better than the first, because it implies the keeping
power of God. His chosen people so wandered from him that he once
called them “LoAmmi” Not my people (Hos. i.). But if we are ever to be
his people; people for his peculiar possession then it can only result
from the operation of his gracious Spirit, who keeps us, as the sun
restrains the planets from dashing off into space to become wandering
stars.

“All shall know me.” Oh, rapture of raptures! can it be? To know God!
To know the deep things of God. To know him, or to be known of him. To
know him as Abraham did, to whom he told his secrets; as Moses did, who
conversed with him face to face; or as the Apostle John did, when he
beheld him in the visions of the Apocalypse. And that this privilege
should be within reach of the least!

“I will be merciful to their unrighteousness.” In the old covenant
there was little room for mercy. It was a matter of voluntary
agreement; if one of the covenanting parties failed in the least
particular, there was no obligation on the other to remain faithful to
their mutual agreement. The failure of one party neutralized the whole
covenant. But there is no such stringency here. On the contrary, mercy
is admitted into the relationship, and exercises her gracious sway.

“I will remember their sins and iniquities no more.” As a score is
forgotten when blotted from a slate, so shall sin be, as if obliterated
from the memory of God. It will be forgotten, as a debt paid years ago.
It will be so entirely put out of mind that it shall be as if it had
never been. If sought for, not found. The handwriting nailed through.
The stone dropped into ocean depths. The cloud absorbed by the summer
heat, as it fades from the deep blue sky. Joseph’s brethren, in their
last approach to Joseph, after their father’s death, betrayed a fear
that though his resentment was cloaked, it was not thoroughly
relinquished. But their fears were entirely groundless. They discovered
that the offense had utterly passed from their brother’s thought, and
Joseph wept when they spake unto him.” In some such way as this God
ceases to consider our sins, and grieves if we do not believe the
thoroughness of his abundant pardon.

Are you enjoying the terms of this covenant in your daily experience?
God is prepared to fulfill them to the letter. Count on him to do as he
has promised. Reckon on his faithfulness. Claim that each pledge shall
be realized in you to the fullest limits of his wealth, and your need.
Do not try to invent conditions or terms not laid down by him; but
gladly accept the position of doing nothing to earn or win, and of
accepting all that God gives, without money and without price.

Do you ask how God can call this a covenant, in which there is no
second covenanting party? The answer is easy: Jesus Christ has stood in
our stead, and has not only negotiated this covenant, but has fulfilled
in our name, and on our behalf, all the conditions which were necessary
and right. He has borne the penalty of human weakness and
transgression. He has met all demands for a perfect and unbroken
obedience. He has engaged to secure, by the gift of the Holy Spirit, a
holiness in us which could never have been obtained by our own efforts.
And as he has become our Sponsor and Surety, so God is able to enter
into these liberal terms with us, saying nothing of all the cost to his
Son, but permitting us to share all the benefits; on this condition
only, that we identify ourselves with him by a living faith, intrusting
all spiritual transactions into his hands, and abiding by the decisions
of his will. This is the new and better covenant, which has replaced
the old.
__________________________________________________________________

XX. THE HEAVENLY THINGS THEMSELVES.

For there was a tabernacle made.”HEBREWS ix. 2.

THE eye is quicker than the ear. And there is therefore no language so
expressive as the language of symbols. The multitude will better catch
your meaning by one apt symbol than by a thousand words. The mind
shrinks from the intellectual effort of grappling with the subtle
essences of things, and loves to have truth wrapped up in a form which
can easily be taken in by the eye, the ear, the sense of touch.

This explains why there is such a tendency toward ritualism in the
Romanish and Anglican Churches. Where man’s spiritual life is strong,
it is independent of the outward form; but when it is weak it leans
feebly on external aids. And it was because the children of Israel were
in so childish a condition that God enshrined his deep and holy
thoughts in outward forms and material shadows. The untutored people
must have spiritual truth expressed in symbols, which appealed to the
most obtuse. For fifteen hundred years, therefore, the Jewish worship
gathered round the most splendid ceremonial that the world has ever
seen

ceremonial which these Hebrew Christians sadly missed when they passed
into the simple ordinances of some bare upper room.

Let us for a moment study those ancient symbols.

Choose an expanse of sand; mark out an oblong space forty-five feet
long by fifteen feet broad. Lay all along upon your outlines a
continuous belt of silver sockets, hollowed out so as to hold the ends
of the planks that form the walls of the Tabernacle. Now fetch those
boards themselves, beams of acacia wood fifteen feet high, covered with
the choicest gold, and fastened together by three long bars of gold,
running from end to end. The entrance doorway must face the east,
composed of five golden pillars, over which fall the folds of a rich
and heavy curtain. Then measure thirty feet from this, and let another
curtain separate the holy from the most holy place. Now fetch more
curtains to make the ceiling, and to hang down on either side over the
gilded acacia beams that form the outer walls; first, a gorgeous
curtain wrought with brilliant hues, and covered with the forms of
cherubim; next, a veil of pure white linen; third, a strong curtain of
rams’ skins, dyed red; and, lastly, to defend it from the weather, a
common and coarse covering of badgers’ skins. The court is constituted
by heavy curtains that hang around and veil the movements of the
priests within.

Let us cast a brief glance at each item as we briefly pass from the
outer to the inner shrine.

THE BRAZEN ALTAR, with its projecting horns, to which animals
designated for sacrifice were tied (Psalm cxviii. 27), or on which the
fugitive laid hold for sanctuary and shelter (Exod. xxi. 14), stood in
the outer court. There were offered the sin offering, the burnt
offering, and the peace offering. It was deemed most holy (Exod. xxix.
37.) And well it might be; for it was the symbol of the cross of
Calvary, that wondrous cross where Jesus offered himself as a sacrifice
for sin; himself both priest and victim and altar too.

None could enter the holy place, save by passing this sacred emblem,
any more than we could ever have entered into fellowship with God,
unless there had been wrought for us upon the cross that one
all-sufficient sacrifice and oblation for sins, which purges our heart
from an evil conscience. The longer we live, and the more we know of
God, the more precious and indispensable does that cross appear: our
hope in sorrow, our beacon in the dark, our shelter in the storm, our
refuge in hours of conviction, our trysting-place with God, our pride
and joy.

Blest cross! blest sepulcher! blest rather be

The Man that there was put to death for me.”

And if the brazen altar speaks of the one sacrifice, once for all, of
Calvary, the laver speaks of the daily washing of the stains of our
wilderness journeyings, as Jesus washed the feet of his disciples (John
xiii).

THE SEVEN-BRANCHED CANDLESTICK, from which the light was shed which lit
up the holy place, would first arrest the eye of the priest, who might
cross the threshold for the first time. Its form is familiar to us from
the bas-relief upon the Arch of Titus. How eloquently does it speak of
Christ! The texture of beaten gold, on every part of which the hammer
strokes had fallen, tells of his bruisings for us (Exod. xxv. 36). The
union of the six lesser lamps, with the one tall Center one, betokens
the mystery of that union in light-giving which makes the Church one
with her Lord forevermore in illuminating a dark world. The golden oil,
stealing through the golden pipes that needed to be kept clean and
unchoked, shows our dependence on him for supplies of the daily grace
of the Holy Spirit (Zech. iv. 2). And the very snuffers, all of gold,
used wisely by the high-priest to trim the flame, are significant of
those processes by which our dear Lord is often obliged to cut away the
unevenness of the wick, and to cause us a momentary dimming of light
that we may afterward burn more clearly and steadily. His life is the
light of men. In his light we see light. He sheds light on hearts and
homes and mysteries and space; and hereafter the Lamb shall be the
light of heaven.

THE GOLDEN SHEWBREAD TABLE must not be over looked, with its array of
twelve loaves of fine flour, sprinkled with sweet smelling
frankincense, and eaten only by the priests, when replaced on the
seventh day by a fresh supply. Here again, as in the last symbol, is
that mysterious blending of Christ and his people. Christ is the true
bread of presence. He is the bread of God. Jehovah finds in his
obedience and life and death perfect satisfaction; and we too feed on
him. His flesh is meat indeed. We eat his flesh and live by him. The
table was portable, so as to be carried in the journeyings of the
people; and we can never thrive without taking him with us wherever we
go. This is the heavenly manna; our daily bread; our priestly
perquisite. But the people also were represented in those twelve
loaves, as they were in the twelve stones of the breastplate. And
doubtless there is a sense in which all believers still stand ever
before God in the purity and sweetness of Christ; “for we, being many,
are one bread and one body, for we are all partakers of that one
bread.” Oh, is it possible for me to give aught of satisfaction to God?
To believe this would surely instill a new meaning into the most
trivial acts of life. Yet this may be so.

THE CENSER, OR ALTAR OF INCENSE, is classed with the most holy place;
not because it stood inside the veil, but because it was so closely
associated with the worship rendered there. It was as near as possible
to the ark (Exod. xxx. 6). It reminds us of the golden altar which was
before the throne (Rev. viii. 3). No blood ever dimmed the luster of
the gold; the ashes that glowed there were brought from the altar of
burnt offering; and on them were sprinkled the incense, which had been
compounded by very special art (Exod. xxx. 34-38). That precious
incense, which it was death to imitate, speaks of his much merit, in
virtue of which our prayers and praises find acceptance. Is not this
his perpetual work for us, standing in heaven as our great High
Priest? ever living to make intercession, catching our poor prayers,
and presenting them to his Father, fragrant with the savor of his own
grace and loveliness and merit?

THE VEIL, passed only once a year by the high-priest, carrying blood,
reminded the worshipers that the way into the holiest was not yet
perfect. There were degrees of fellowship with God to which those rites
could give no introduction. “The way into the holiest was not yet made
manifest.” “The veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Heb. x. 20). Oh, fine
twined linen, in thy purity, thou wert never so pure as that body which
was conceived without sin! Oh, exquisite work of curious imagery, thou
canst not vie with the marvelous mysteries that gather in that human
form! Yet, till Jesus died, there was a barrier, an obstacle, a veil.
It was bespattered with blood, but it was a veil still. But at the hour
when he breathed out his soul in death, the veil was rent by mighty
unseen hands from top to bottom, disclosing all the sacred mysteries
beyond to the unaccustomed eyes of any priests who at that moment may
have been burning incense at the hour of prayer, while the whole
multitude stood without (Luke i. 9). It is a rent veil now, and the way
into the holiest lies open. It is new and living and blood-marked; we
may therefore tread it without fear or mistake, and pass in with holy
boldness to stand where angels veil their faces with their wings in
ceaseless adoration (x. 19, 20).

THE ARK. A box, oblong in shape, 4 ft. 6 in. in length, by 2 ft. 8 in.
in breadth and height; made of acacia wood, overlaid with gold; its
lid, a golden slab, called the mercy-seat, on which cherubic forms
stood or knelt, with eyes fixed on the blood stained golden slab
between them; for it was on the mercy-seat that the blood was copiously
sprinkled year by year, and there the Shekinah light ever shone. In the
wilderness wanderings the ark contained the tables of stone, not broken
but whole, the manna, and the rod. But when it came to rest, and the
staves were drawn out, the manna, food for pilgrims, and the rod, which
symbolized the power of life, were gone; only the law remained.

The law can never be done away with. It is holy, just, and good. Not
one jot or tittle can pass away from it. It is at the heart of all
things. Beneath all surfaces, below all coverlets, deeper than the foam
and tumult and revolution of the world, rests righteous and inexorable
law. We must all yield to its imperial sway. Even the atheist must
build his walls according to the dictates of the plumb-line, or they
will inevitably crumble to ruin.

But law is under love. The golden mercy-seat exactly covered and hid
the tables, as they no longer leaped from crag to crag, but lay quietly
beneath it. An ark without a covering, and from which tables of stony
law looked out on one, would be terrible indeed. But there need be no
dread to those who know that God will commune with them from above a
mercy-seat which completely meets the case and is sprinkled with blood.
We are told by the Apostle, who had well read the deepest meaning of
these types, that “God hath set forth Christ Jesus as a mercy seat,
through faith in his blood” (Rom. iii. 24, 25). Jesus has met the
demands of law by his golden life and his death of blood; and we may
meet God’s righteousness in him. Our own righteousness would be an
insufficient covering, too narrow and too short; but our Substitute has
met every possible demand. “Who is he that condemneth ? It is Christ
that died.” Grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life.

But ah, no blood of goat or calf can speak the priceless value of his
blood, by which we have access into the holiest. Oh, precious blood!
which tells of a heart breaking with love and sorrow; which betrays a
life poured out like water on the ground in extremest agony; which
gathers up all the meaning of Leviticus and its many hecatombs of
victims; the pledge of tenderest friendship, the purchase money of our
redemption, the wine of life: thy scarlet thread speaks to us from the
windows of the past in symbols of joy and hope and peace and immortal
love. The precious blood of Christ!
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XXI. TEACHING BY CONTRAST

“How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the Eternal Spirit
offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works
to serve the living God! “HEBREWS ix. 14.

IN this marvelous paragraph (vv. 6-14) there are five striking and
well-defined contrasts between the picture symbols of Leviticus, and
the realities revealed in the New Testament Scriptures. And to their
consideration we will at once proceed, thanking God as we do so that we
live in the very midst of the heavenly things themselves, rather than
in the shadows, which, though they doubtless helped and nourished the
devout souls of an earlier age, were confessedly inadequate to supply
the deeper demands of man’s spiritual life.

THE FIRST TABERNACLE IS CONTRASTED WITH THE TRUE (vv. 6, 8, 11). It
must have been a fair and lovely sight to behold, when first, on the
plains of Sinai, the Tabernacle was reared, with its golden furniture
and sumptuous drapery. The very angels may have desired to look into
it, and trace the outlines of thoughts, which perhaps were only
beginning to unfold themselves to their intelligence. But fair though
it was, it had in it all those traces of imperfection which necessarily
attach to human workmanship, and make even a needle-point seem coarse
beneath the microscope. It was “made with hands.” Besides which it was
destined to grow old, and perish beneath the gnawing tooth or fret of
time. Already it must have shown signs of decay when it was carefully
borne across the Jordan; and, in David’s days, its venerable
associations could not blind him to the necessity of replacing it as
soon as possible.

How different to this is the true tabernacle, of which it was the type,
which is so much “greater and more perfect.” What is that tabernacle?
and where? Sometimes it seems to pious musing as if the whole universe
were one great temple; the mountains its altars; the seas and oceans,
with their vast depths, its lavers; the heavens its blue curtains; the
loftier spaces, with their stars and mystery of color, and fragrant
incense-breath and angel worship, its holy place; whilst the very
throne-room of God, where the Seer’s eye beheld the rainbow-circled
throne, corresponds to the most holy place in which the light of the
Shekinah glistened over the blood-stained mercy seat.

But such poetic flights are forbidden by the sober prose which tells us
that the true tabernacle is not “of this creation” (ver. 11). It is no
part of this created world, whether earth or heaven; it would exist,
though all the material universe should resolve itself into primeval
chaos; it is a spiritual fabric, whose aisles are trodden by saintly
spirits in their loftiest experiences, when, forgetting that they are
creatures of time, they rise into communion with God, and enjoy
rapturous moments, which seem ages in their wealth of blessed meaning.
Such is the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man (viii.
2).

THE HIGH-PRIESTS ARE CONTRASTED WITH CHRIST (vv.7,11). The outer court
of the sanctuary might be trodden, under certain conditions, by
ordinary Israelites; but for the most part they were excluded, and
service was rendered by Levites and priests, at the head of whom stood
the high-priest, radiant in his garments of glory and beauty. The
garment of fine white linen worn next his person; the linen girdle girt
about his loins fitting him for ministry (John xiii. 4); the robe of
the ephod, woven all of blue, and fringed with scarlet tassels in the
form of pomegranates; the ephod itself, composed of the same materials
as constituted the veil; and on his breast the twelve precious stones,
engraven with the names of Israel. How grand a spectacle was there!

And yet there were two fatal flaws. He was not suffered to continue by
reason of death (vii. 23); and he was a sinful man, who needed to offer
sacrifice for himself (ix. 7). On the great day of atonement, it was
expressly stated that he was not to go within the veil to plead for the
people, until he had made an atonement for himself and his house by the
blood of the young bullock, which he had previously killed (Lev. xvi.
11, 12, 13).

In these respects, how different is our High-Priest, after the order of
Melchizedek! Death tried to master him; but he could not be holden of
it; and by death he destroyed him that hath the power of death. “He
continueth ever.” “He ever liveth.” His priesthood is unchangeable. “He
is a priest forever.” All this was clearly proved in the seventh
chapter. But now it is asserted that he was “without spot” (ver. 14).
He was well searched; but none could convince him of sin. Judas tried
to find some warrant for his treachery, but was compelled to confess
that it was innocent blood. Caiaphas and Annas called in false
witnesses in vain; and at last condemned him on words uttered by his
own lips, claiming divine authority and power. Pilate repeatedly
asseverated, even washing his hands in proof, that he could find in him
no fault at all.

Nay, the Lord himself bared his breast to the Father in conscious
innocence; unlike the saintliest of men, who, in proportion to their
goodness, confess their sinnership. “Such a High-Priest became us, who
is holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners, who needeth
not daily to offer up sacrifice for his own sins.

THE VEILED WAY INTO THE HOLIEST IS CONTRASTED WITH OUR FREEDOM TO ENTER
THE PRESENCE OF GOD. We have the positive assurance of these words that
the Holy Spirit meant to signify direct spiritual truth in the
construction of the Jewish Tabernacle (ver. 8). He who revealed divine
truth by inspired prophets, revealed it so in the structure of the
material edifice. The methods of instruction might vary; the teacher
was the same. Indeed, the whole ritual was a parable for the present
time (ver. 9).

Every well-taught child is aware of the distinction between the holy
place, with its candlesticks, incense-table, and shew-bread, and the
holy of holies, with its ark, and cloud of glory. The first tabernacle
was separated from the second by heavy curtains, which were never drawn
aside except by the high-priest, and by him only once a year, and then
in connection with an unusually solemn ritual. Surely the dullest
Israelite must have understood the meaning of that expressive figure;
and have felt that, even though his race might claim to be nearer to
God than all mankind beside, yet there was a depth of intimacy from
which his foot was checked by the prohibition of God himself. “The way
into the holiest was not yet made manifest.”

For us, however, the veil is rent. Jesus entered once into the holy
place, and as he passed the heavy folds were rent in twain from the top
to the bottom. Surely no priest that witnessed it could ever forget the
moment, when, as the earth trembled beneath the temple floor, the
thickly woven veil split and fell back, and disclosed the solemnities
on which no eyes but those of the high-priest dared to gaze. Surely the
most obtuse can read the meaning signified herein by the Holy Ghost.
There is no veil between us and God but that which we weave by our own
sin or ignorance. We may go into the very secrets of his love. We may
stand unabashed where angels worship with veiled faces. We may behold
mysteries hidden from before the foundation of the world. The love of
God has no secrets for us whom he calls friends.

Oh, why are we so content with the superficial and the transient, with
the ephemeral gossip and literature of our times, with the outer courts
in which the formalists and worldly Christians around us are contented
to remain? when there are such heights and depths, such lengths and
breadths, to be explored in the very nature of God. Why do men in our
time bring back that veil, though they call it “a screen- Alas, they
are blind leaders of the blind.

THE RITES OF JUDAISM ARE CONTRASTED WITH CONSCIENCE-CLEANSING
ORDINANCES OF THE GOSPEL. They stood in meats and drinks and divers
washings, which at the best were carnal ordinances imposed until a time
of reformation; and though they rendered the worshiper ceremonially
clean, they left his conscience unappeased.

A great many of the offenses which required to be put away in those
olden days arose from the breach of ceremonial laws. A man who touched
the dead or the unclean became ceremonially defiled. For any such thing
he must undergo the appointed rites of cleansing, ere he could enter
the courts of the Lord’s house. The ceremonial laws were quite
competent to deal with delinquencies like these; but they failed in
providing atonement or in securing pardon for acts of sin. “They could
not make him that did the service perfect, as pertaining to the
conscience.”

The unsatisfactory nature of sacrifices was even patent on the great
day of atonement, which is here evidently referred to. Laying aside the
gorgeous robes in which he was usually arrayed, the high-priest clothed
himself in simple linen. The animals to be offered during the day were
next presented at the door of the Tabernacle; and lots were cast as to
which of the two bullocks was to be for himself, and which of the two
goats was to be slain. Then for the first time he entered the most holy
place amid the fumes of fragrant incense, and sprinkled the blood of
the bullock to make an atonement for the sins of himself and his house.
A second time he entered with the blood of the goat, to make an
atonement for the sins of the people, who, meanwhile, stood without in
penitential grief. And when all was over, the nation’s sins were
confessed over the head of the living goat, which was sent into the
land of forgetfulness. Still, no one could suppose that the slaying of
the one goat or the sending of the other into the wilderness actually
expiated the offense of the whole people. There was a remembrance of
sins made once a year; but not necessarily entire remission for all who
stood in that vast silent crowd. And many must have turned away in
doubt and misgiving. David expressed their feeling when he sang the
Fifty-first Psalm beneath the impression of his own sinnership (see
also Micah vi. 6).

But how different is all this now! Our consciences are purged (ver.
14). We have no more conscience of sins. We feel that the death of our
Lord Jesus is an adequate expiation for them all, and that he has so
fully taken them from us and put them away that they cannot be found;
they are as though they had never been; they have ceased from the very
memory of God. True, there are works which are constantly rendering our
conscience unclean, as of old the flesh of the Israelite was rendered
unclean by the touch of death. But the blood of Jesus does for our
conscience what the ashes of the heifer did for the flesh of the
ceremonially unclean. “The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us
from all sin.” We have therefore no longer an evil conscience resulting
from unexpiated sin.

THE BLOOD OF ANIMALS IS CONTRASTED WITH THE BLOOD OF CHRIST. Hecatombs
of victims are not of equal value with one man; how much less with the
Son of God! Rivers of the blood of beasts are not equivalent to one
drop of his. They offer no standard by which to apprise his precious
blood. This is too obvious to need further comment here, and we shall
need to defer to another chapter our estimate, however inadequate, of
the value of that blood.

But in the meanwhile, let us notice that it was through the Eternal
Spirit that Christ offered himself without spot to God. It was not, as
some falsely affirm, that the Father forced an innocent man to suffer
for sins he had never done, or that our Saviour suffered to appease the
Father’s wrath; but that the eternal nature of God came out in the
sacrifice of Calvary. “God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto
himself.” When God determined to save men, he did not delegate the work
to angels, nor did he permit a sinless man to sink beneath the
intolerable burden of a world’s sin; but in the person of his Son, he
took home to himself the agony and curse and cost of sin, and by
bearing them, wiped them out forever. It is, therefore, eternal
redemption (ver. I 2).

The death of the cross was a voluntary act; “he offered himself; ”
Priest and victim both. And it was an act in which the Eternal Trinity
participated; the manifestation in time of an eternal fact of the
divine nature.

And how can we ever show our gratitude, except by serving the living
God (ver. 14). We are redeemed to serve; bought to be owned absolutely.
Who can refuse a service so reasonable, fraught with blessedness so
transcendent? Head! think for him whose brow was thorn-girt. Hands!
toil for him whose hands were nailed to the cross. Feet! speed to do
his behests whose feet were pierced. Body of mine! be his temple whose
body was wrung with pains unspeakable. To serve him-this is the Only
true attitude and behavior, as those who are not their own, but his.
__________________________________________________________________

XXII. THE BLOOD OF CHRIST

Without shedding of blood is no remission.” -HEBREWS ix. 22.

ROUND and round this ancient window into the past (vv. 15-28) is bound
the red cord of blood. Twelve times at the very least does this solemn,
this awful, word occur. The devil himself seems to admit that it is
invested with some mystic potency; else why should he compel so many of
his miserable followers to interlard each phrase they utter by some
reference to it? Man cannot look on or speak of blood without an
involuntary solemnity; unless, indeed, he has done despite to some of
the deepest instincts of his being, or through familiarity has learned
con-tempt. And we feel whilst reading this chapter, as if we have come
into the very heart of the deepest of all mysteries, the most solemn of
all solemnities, the most awful of all tragedies or martyrdoms or
sacrificial rites. Take off the shoes from your feet; for the place on
which we stand together now is holy ground.

Blood is becoming increasingly recognized as one of the most important
constituents of the human body. Scientific and other research is more
and more inclined to verify the ancient sayings, which may have been
broken in the colleges of Egypt, where Moses learned the most advanced
science of his time, before ever they were stamped with the imprimatur
of inspiration, “the blood is the life”; “the life of the flesh is in
the blood” (Deut. xii. 23; Lev. xvii. ii). We know that the red
corpuscles of the blood play an important function in carrying the
oxygen of the air to consume the decaying tissues, and to light fires
in every part of the human frame. But who can tell all the mysterious
functions of the numberless colorless disks which float along the
currents of the blood, and which may be intimately connected with the
very essence of our vitality? Certain it is that impoverished blood
means decrepit life; tainted blood means corruption and disease; ebbing
blood means waning life. The first effort of the physician is to feel
the pulse of the blood; whilst the most fatal disease is the poisoning
of the blood. The blood is the life. And shed blood is life poured
forth from its source and fountain-head.

There is nothing, therefore, in man more precious than blood. If he
gives that, he gives the best he has to give. His blood is his life-his
all; and it is a noble act when a man is ready to make this supreme
gift for others. It is this which lights up the devilry of war, and
sheds a transient gleam of nobility on the coarsest, roughest soldiery,
that they are prepared to sacrifice their lives in torrents of blood,
to beat the foeman back from hearth and home and fatherland. This is
why women have treasured up handkerchiefs dipped in the blood that has
flowed on the heads-man’s block from the veins of martyrs for liberty
or religion. This is why men point without a shudder to the stains of
blood on blades that have been drawn in freedom’s holy cause; or on
tattered banners which led the fight against the battalions of Paganism
or Popery. This is why the historian of the Church does not feel too
dainty to make frequent reference to the blood which flowed in rivers
on the eve of the Sicilian Vespers, and on the day of black St.
Bartholomew. No, we glory in the blood which noble men have poured out
as water on the ground. None of us is too sensitive to dwell with
exultation on the phrase.

Why, then, should we hesitate to speak of the blood of Christ? It was
royal blood. “His own” (ver. 12); and he was a King indeed. It was
voluntarily shed: ” He offered himself” (ver. 14). It was pure
“innocent blood,” “without spot” (ver. 14). It was sacrificial. He died
not as a martyr, but as a Saviour (ver. 26). It flowed from his head,
thorn-girt, that it might atone for sins of thought; from his hands and
feet, fast nailed, that it might expiate sins of deed and walk; from
his side, that it might wipe out the sins of our affections, as well as
tell us of his deep and fervent love, which could not be confined
within the four chambers of his heart, but must find vent in falling on
the earth. Why should we be ashamed of the blood of Christ? No other
phrase will so readily or sufficiently gather up all the complex
thoughts which mingle in the death of Christ. Life; life shed; life
shed violently; life shed violently, and as a sacrifice; life passing
forth by violence, and sacrificially, to become a tide of which we must
also all stoop down and drink, if we desire to have life in ourselves
(John vi. 53-56).

“This is he that came by water and blood; not by water only, but by
water and blood” (1 John v. 6). Oh, precious words, recalling that
never-to-be-forgotten incident when, following the rugged point of the
soldier’s spear, there came out blood and water from the Saviour’s
broken heart (John xix. 34). Had it been water only, we had been
undone. Water might do for respectable sinners-fifty-pence debtors,
Pharisees, who are not sinners as other men. But some of us feel water
would be of no avail at all. Our sins are so deep-dyed, so inveterate,
so fast, that nothing but blood could set us free. Blood must atone for
us. Blood must cleanse us. In other words, life must be shed to redeem
us, such life as is poured from the very being of the Son of God.

But there is a deep sense in which that blood is flowing, washing,
cleansing, and feeding soul, all down the age. Like the stream of
desert, it follows us. “It speaketh” pleading with God for man, and
with man for God (xii. 24). “It cleanseth,” not as a single past act,
but as a perpetual experience in the believer’s soul, removing recent
sin, and checking the uprisings of our evil nature (1 John i. 7). It is
the drink of all devout souls; and its perennial presence and efficacy
is well symbolized by the appearance still on the communion table of
the church of the wine, which tells the worshiper that the blood of
Calvary, once shed, and never shed again, is a s fresh and efficacious
as ever, or as the wine poured freshly into the cup. Let men say what
they will, the shedding of the blood of Christ is an embodiment of an
eternal fact in the Being of God, and is an essential condition of the
healthy life of man.

It purges the defiled conscience more completely than the ashes of a
heifer purged of flesh of the ceremonially unclean (ver. 14). Why,
then, do you carry about the perpetual consciousness of sin? Confess
sin instantly, of ever you are aware of it. Claim the blood of
sprinkling, and go at once top serve the living God.

It put away the sin of previous dispensation. It was in virtue of the
death to be suffered on Calvary that the holy God was able to forgive
the offences and accept the imperfect services of Old Testament saints.
The shadow of the cross fell backward, as well as forward. And it is
because of what Jesus did that all have been saved, who have passed
within the pearly gate, or shall pass it (ver. I 5, and compare Rom.
iv. 24).

It ratifies the covenant. No covenant was ratified in the old time,
except in blood. When God entered into covenant with Abraham, five
victims were divided in the midst, making a lane, down which the
fire-symbol of the divine presence passed. “There is of necessity the
death of the covenant maker.” And in pursuance of this ancient custom,
the first covenant was solemnly sealed by blood (vv. i8, 19). How sure
and steadfast must that covenant be into which God has entered with our
Surety on our behalf! The blood of Jesus is an asseveration which
cannot be gain-said or transgressed. All God’s will is opened to us
since Jesus died. We may claim what we will. We are his heirs, the
heirs of the wealth of our Elder Brother, Jesus.

It opens the way into the holies. What the high-priest did every year
in miniature, Christ has done once (vv. 24, 25, 26). “He died unto sin
once.” By virtue of his own shed blood, he went once for all into the
real holiest place, appearing in the presence of God for us as our
High-Priest, and leaving the way forever open to those who dare to
follow. “The heavenly things themselves” need cleansing; not because of
any intrinsic evil in themselves, but because they are constantly being
used and trodden by sinful men. Now, however, though that is so, there
is an efficacy in the work of Jesus which is always counterveiling our
impurity, and making it possible for us to draw near to God with
boldness and acceptance.

It put away sin. “Once for all.” ” Once in the end of the world.” Not
for each dispensation, but for all dispensations. Not for one age, but
for all ages Not for a few, but for the “many,” comprehending the
vastness of the number which no man can compute of the great family of
man. As the year’s sin of a nation was borne away into the desert by
the scapegoat, and put away, so was the whole sin of the race centered
on the head of Jesus. He was made sin. As a physician might be imagined
drawing on himself all the maladies of his patients, so did Jesus draw
to himself and assume all the sins of mankind. He was the propitiation
for the whole world. And when he died, he dropped sin as a stone into
the depths of oblivion. And he put away sin. The Greek word is very
strong; annihilated, made nothing of made as though it had never been.
Sin, in the mind and purpose of God, is as entirely done away as a debt
when it is paid. Hallelujah! in heaven and on earth (Rev. v. 9; 1. 5).
But whilst this is an eternal truth with him who knows not our
distinctions of time, yet it will avail only as a fact when each
individual sinner lays claim to this wonderful provision, confesses his
sin, and realizes that there is now no longer condemnation, because the
Lamb of God has borne away his sin and the world’s. Will you now dare
to reckon this to be true for you, not because you feel it, but because
God says it? Dare to repeat 1 Peter ii. 24, and Isaiah liii. 5,
substituting “my” for “our.

“What marvelous appearances are these three! He appeared once in the
end of the world as a sacrifice. He appears now in heaven as a Priest.
He will appear the second time without sin unto salvation; as of old
the high priest, at the close of the day of atonement, came out with
outstretched hands to bless the people. Oh, to be looking for him, that
we may not miss the radiant vision or the tender blessing of peace!
__________________________________________________________________

XXIII. “ONCE”

“Once in the end of the world hath he appeared, to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.” HEBREWS ix. 26. (See a130 ix. 27,28; x. 2, 10.)”

THERE is a word here which recurs, like a note on an organ beneath the
tumult of majestic sound. Five times, at least, it rolls forth its
thunder, pealing through all ages, echoing through all worlds,
announcing the finality of an accomplished redemption to the whole
universe of God “ONCE!”

And there is another phrase which we must couple with it, spoken by the
parched lips of the dying Saviour, yet with a loud voice, as though it
were the cry of a conqueror: “When Jesus, therefore, had received the
vinegar, he said, ‘It is finished’; and he bowed his head and gave up
the ghost.” It is very seldom that man can look back on a finished
life-work. The chisel drops from the paralyzed hand ere the statue is
complete; the chilling fingers refuse to guide the pen along another
line, though the book is so nearly done; the statesman must leave his
plans and far-reaching schemes to be completed by another, perhaps his
rival. But as from his cross Jesus Christ our Lord looked upon the work
of redemption which he had undertaken, and in connection with which he
had suffered even to the hiding of his Father’s face, he could not
discover one stitch, or stone, or particle deficient. For untold
myriads for thee and me and all there was done that which never needed
to be done again, but stood as an accomplished fact forevermore.

THE “ONCE” OF A COMPLETED WORK (ix. 26). In these words there is a sigh
of relief. A thought had for a moment flashed across the sunlit page of
Scripture, which had suggested an infinite horror. In pursuing the
parallels between the incidents of the great day of atonement and the
great day when Jesus died, we had been suddenly reminded of the fact
that the solemn spectacle was witnessed once a year ” The high-priest
entereth into the holy place every year with blood of others” (ver.
25). Every year the same rites performed, the same blood shed, the same
propitiation made. Suppose that, after the same analogy, Jesus had
suffered every year! Every year the agony of the shadowed garden! Every
year the bitter anguish of the cross! Every year the burial in the
garden tomb! Then earth would have been overcast with midnight, and
life would have been agony! Who could bear to see him suffer often!

But there was no necessity for him to suffer more than once; because
repetition means imperfection, of which, in his work, there is no sign
or trace. There petition of the sacrifices of the Jewish law meant that
they could not take away sin, or make the comers thereunto perfect.
Again and again the crowd of pious Jews gathered, driven to seek
deliverance from the conscience of sins, which brooded deeply and
darkly over their souls. Perhaps they would receive momentary respite
as they saw the elaborate ceremonial, and felt that they were included
in the high-priest’s confession and benediction. And so they wended
their way homeward; but ere long a weary sense of dissatisfaction would
again betake them: they would reflect on the inadequacy of the
atonement which stood only in the offering of the life of slain beasts.
Sins were remembered, but not put away; it was impossible that the
blood of bulls and goats could do that (x. 4). And so, doubtless, in
the more thoughtful, hearts must have failed, and consciences moaned
out their weary plaint unsatisfied. Therefore the sacrifices had to be
presented continually.

On the other hand, Christ’s work needs no repetition. It is final
because it is perfect. Its perfection is attested, because it has never
been repeated. “In that he died, he died unto sin once.” Our Saviour
set his hand to save us: he did not mean to faith he came into our
world with this distinct purpose; he died to do it; and, having done
it, he went home to God. But if from the vantage-ground of the throne,
reviewing his work, he had discerned any deficiency or flaw, he would
have come back to make it good; and, inasmuch as he has not done so, we
may be sure that the death of the cross is perfectly satisfactory. “Now
once, in the end of the ages, hath he appeared to put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.” Oh, ponder these wondrous words! Once. He
liveth forevermore; and shall never again pass for a moment under the
dark shadow of death.

He hath appeared (or been manifested). What then? He must have existed
previously. The incarnation was but the embodiment in visible form of
One who existed before all worlds; and the death of the cross was the
unfolding in a single act of eternal facts in the nature of God. As the
great sun-disk may be mirrored in a tiny mountain tarn, so in the one
day of crucifixion, there were set forth to men, angels, and devils,
love, sacrifice, and redeeming mercy, which are part of the very
essence of God. Marvelous, indeed, the rending of the veil, by which
such marvels are revealed.

In the end of the world (or of the ages). God is called the King of
Ages. Time is probably as much a creation as space or distance or
matter. It is an accommodation to finite thought; a parenthesis in
eternity; a rainbow flung across the mighty age of deity. We break time
into hours; God breaks it into ages. There are ages behind us, and ages
before. We stand on a narrow neck of land between two seas. The first
age of which we know anything is that of creation. The second, of
Paradise. The third, of the world before the flood. The fourth, of the
Patriarchs. The fifth, of Moses, ending with the fall of Jerusalem, and
the death of the Messiah. The sixth, of the Gentiles, in which we live.
And before us, we can dimly descry the forms of the Age of Millennium;
the Age of Regeneration and Restitution; the Age of Judgment; and the
Age in which the kingdom shall be delivered to the Father. There is
thus a complete analogy between the creation of the material world, and
the creation of the new heavens and earth.

Geologists love to enumerate the strata of the earth’s formation
through which the processes of world -building were carried; and we
shall probably discover some day that God has been building up the new
creation through successive ages of history and development. Christ’s
death is here said to have happened at the end of the ages; and we
should at once see the force of this, even though there may remain
several great ages to be fulfilled, ere time run out its course, if
only we knew how many ages have preceded. Compared to the number that
have been, this is the end, the climax, the ridge of the weary climb;
what lies beyond are the miles of level surface, to the sudden dip down
of the cliffs in face of the ocean of eternity.

He hath put away sin. Oh, marvelous word! It might be rendered to
annihilate, to make as if it had never been. The wreath of cloud may
disappear, but the separated drops still float through space. The
bubble may break on the foam-tipped wave, but the film of water has
gone to add its attenuated addition to the ocean depth. But Jesus has
put sin away as when a debt is paid, an obligation is canceled, or a
sin-laden victim was slain, burned, and buried in the old days of
Moses. All sin, the sin of the world, the accumulated sin of mankind
was made to meet in Jesus. He was made sin. He stood before the
universe as though he had drawn upon himself all the human sin which
has ever rent the air or befouled the earth, or put the stars of night
to the blush; and, bearing the shame, the horror, the penalty during
those dread hours which rung from him the cry of desolate forsakenness,
he put it away, and wiped it out forever; and, in doing this, he has
put away the penal results of Adam’s fall.

The inherited tendencies to evil remain in all the race; but the
spiritual penalty which Adam incurred for himself and all of us, as our
representative and head, has been canceled by the sufferings and death
of our glorious representative and head, the Second Adam, the Lord from
heaven. Men will still have to suffer the penalty of sins which they
voluntarily commit, and for which they do not seek forgiveness and
cleansing through the blood; but men will not have to suffer the
penalty which otherwise must have accrued to them, as members of a
fallen race-fallen with their first parents and father, because Jesus
put away that when he died. And thus it is that the multitudes of sweet
babes, idiots, and others who belong to Adam’s race, but have had no
opportunity of personal transgression, are able to enter without let or
hindrance into the land where there entereth nothing which defileth.

By the sacrifice of himself. Not by his example, fair and lovely though
it was. Not by his teaching, though the food of the world. Not by his
works, the source and fountain-head of modern philanthropy. But by his
death, and by his death as a sacrifice. If you want to understand a
writer, you must know the sense in which he uses his characteristic
words, and you must carefully study the definitions which he gives of
them. And if you would understand the meaning of Christ’s death, you
must go back to the definitions, given in minute detail in Leviticus,
of the meaning of sacrifice, atonement, and propitiation, by which that
death is afterward described; and Only so much you dare to interpret.
Whatever sacrifice meant in Leviticus, it means when applied to the
death of the cross. And surely there can be no controversy that of old
it stood for the substitution of the innocent for the guilty; the
canceling of deserved penalty because it had been borne by another; the
wiping out of sin by the shedding of blood. All this it must mean when
applied to the death of Christ, with this difference, that of old the
suffering was borne and death endured involuntarily; but in the case of
our blessed Redeemer, God in him took home to himself, voluntarily and
freely, the accumulated results of a world’s sin, and suffered them,
and made them as if they had never been. “He put away sin by the
sacrifice of himself.”

What was the death of Christ? “A martyrdom,” cries modern thought. “A
mischance in an unenlightened age,” replies the reviewer. “An outcome
of all such efforts to battle with evil,” says the broad-church
teacher.

“A SACRIFICE!” thunders this Book. A voluntary sacrifice! A voluntary
sacrifice by which sin has been borne and put away. Here we rest,
content to abide, in a world of mystery, at the foot of one mystery
more, which, despite all its mystery, answers the cry of a convicted
conscience, and sheds the peace of heaven through our hearts.

THE “ONCE” OF MORTALITY (ix. 27). With a few exceptions mentioned on
the page of Scripture, where miracles of raising are recounted, men die
but once. For those there was one cradle, two coffins; one birth, two
burials. But for most it is mercifully arranged that the agony and pain
of dissolution should be experienced only once. And this, which is the
ordinary lot of humanity, also befell Jesus Christ. He could not die
often, because he was literally man, and it would have been
inconsistent to violate in his case the universal law. He must become
man, because only through the portal of birth could he reach the bourne
of death; but, having been born, and assumed our nature, he must obey
the laws of that nature, and die but once.

THE “ONCE” OF DEITY (ix. 28). There must have been something more than
mortal in him, who in his one death could bear away the sins of many.
Good and great men have died, who would have done anything to cancel or
atone for the sins of their nation, their family, and their beloved;
but in vain. How marvelous then must be his worth, whose sufferings and
death will counterveil for a world’s sin!

And we can see the imperious necessity that our Saviour should be God
manifest in the flesh; and that he who became obedient to the death of
the cross should be also he who was in the form of God, and thought it
not robbery to be God’s equal. If it be true that his death “once” has
put away sin, then, bring hither your songs of worship, your wreaths of
empire, your ascriptions of lowliest adoration; for he must be God. No
being of inferior make could do for man what, in that brief but
dreadful darkness, he has done once for all, and forever.

THE “ONCE” OF A PURGED CONSCIENCE (x. 2). We are not in the position of
the Jews, needing to repeat their sacrifices year by year, in sad
monotony; our sacrifice has been offered once for all. Therefore, we
have not, like them, the perpetual conscience of sins. Our hearts are,
once and forever, sprinkled from an evil conscience (ver. 22).

There is no necessity to ask repeatedly for forgiveness for the sins
that have been once confessed and forgiven. God does not accuse us of
them; we need not accuse ourselves. God does not remember them; we may
well forget them, save as incentives to gratitude and humility. There
is daily need for fresh confession of recent sin; but when once the
soul realizes the completeness of Christ’s work on its behalf, it cries
with great joy: “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he
removed our transgressions from us.”

THE “ONCE” OF A FULFILLED PURPOSE (x. io). Space forbids our lingering
longer. In our next chapter we may show how completely the purpose of
God has been realized in Jesus, and, therefore, that there is no
necessity for a repetition of his sacrificial work. The will or purpose
of God for man’s redemption asks for nothing more than that which is
given it in the life and death of our Saviour. Nothing more is required
for the glory of God, for the accomplishment of the divine counsels, or
for the perfect deliverance and sanctification of those who believe.

“Once for all, sinner, receive it!

Once for all, hrother, believe it!

Cling to the cross, the burden will fall;

Christ has redeemed us, once for all”
__________________________________________________________________

XXIV. AN ANCIENT HEBREW CUSTOM

“Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not; but a body hast thou prepared
me.” – HEBREWS x. 5.

IN that old Hebrew world that lies now so far back in the dim twilight
of the past, there were several customs, of more than transient
interest, one of which claims our thought as it glistens for a moment
beneath the touch of this Epistle, as a wave far out to sea, when
smitten for a moment by the sunlight.

It appears that if an Israelite, through the stress of bad seasons and
disappointing harvests, were to fall into deep arrears to some rich
neighboring creditor-so much so that he owed him even more than the
land of his inheritance was worth-he was permitted not only to alienate
his land till the year of jubilee, but to sell his own service so as to
work out his debt. It must have been a very painful thing for the
peasant proprietor to say farewell to his humble home and endeared
possessions, in which his forefathers had lived and thriven, and to go
forth into the service of another. Very affecting must have been the
farewell walk around the tiny plot, which he and his might not live to
revisit. And yet the bitterness of the separation must have been
greatly mitigated and lessened by the instant freedom from anxiety
which ensued. No more dark forebodings for the future; no eager
questioning of how to keep the wolf from the door; no unequal struggle
with the adverse seasons. All responsibility-for the payment of other
creditors, for supplies of food and clothing for himself and his wife
and children-from henceforth must rest on the shoulders of another.

So the appointed six years passed away, and at their close the master
would call the laborer into his presence, to give him his discharge.
But at that moment he might, if he chose, bind himself to that master’s
service forever. If he shrank from facing the storms of poverty and
difficulty; if he preferred the shelter and plenty of his master’s home
to the struggle for existence from which he had been so happily
shielded; if, above all, he loved his master, and desired not to be
separated from him again, he was at liberty to say so” I love my
master, I will not go out free.” Then, solemnly, and before the judges,
that the choice was deliberately ratified, his master bored his ear
through with an awl to the doorpost, leaving a permanent and indelible
impression of the relationship into which they had entered. “And he
shall serve him forever” (Exod. xxi. 6). This custom was-

ALLUDED TO BY THE PSALMIST (Psalm xl. 6). Living amid the routine of
daily, monthly, and yearly sacrifices, this saint felt deeply their
inability to take away sin, and saw that the true offering to God must
be of another kind. What could he do adequately to express his sense of
the wonderful works and countless thoughts of God! Surely the offered
sacrifice of flour or blood, the burnt-offering or sin offering could
not be the highest expression of human love and devotion; and then he
bethought him of a more excellent way. He will come to God, bearing in
his hand the volume of the book of his will; his heart shall dote upon
that holy transcript of his Father’s character; yea, he will translate
its precepts into prompt and loving obedience. “I delight to do thy
will, my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.” ” This shall please the
Lord better than an ox or bullock that hath horns and hoofs.”

Nor is this all; recalling the ancient usage to which we have alluded,
he imagines himself repeating the vow of the Hebrew bond-servant, and
standing meekly and voluntarily at God’s door, while his ear is bored
to it forever. Henceforth he may almost cry with the Apostle, “From
henceforth let no man trouble me; for I bear branded on my body the
marks of Jesus.” “Mine ears hast thou bored.” “Truly I am thy servant,
thou hast loosed my bonds.”

We need not wonder at the glad outburst which succeeds (ver. io). As
with emphatic and repeated phrase the Psalmist avows his intention of
telling the great congregation his discoveries of the love of God, we
can well understand the reason of his exultation. There is no life so
free as that which has escaped all other masters in becoming the
bond-slave of Jesus. There is no nature so exuberant with joy and peace
unspeakable as that which has felt the stab of the awl, has been tinged
with the blood of self-sacrifice for his dear sake, and has passed
through the open doorway to go out nevermore. There is no rest so
unutterable as that which knows no further care; since all care has
been once and forever laid on him who can alone bear the pressure of
sorrow and sin, responsibility and need.

APPROPRIATED BY THE LORD JESUS. In his incarnation our blessed Lord has
realized all the noblest aspirations and assertions which had ever been
spoken by the lips of his most illustrious saints. The very words used
by them can, therefore, be literally appropriated by him, without
exaggeration, save where they falter with the broken confessions of sin
and mortal weakness. Amongst others, when he came into the world, he
could take up those olden words of the Fortieth Psalm, and, through
them, fulfill the meaning of the ancient Hebrew custom.

The sacrifices of Leviticus had served a very necessary purpose in
familiarizing men with the thoughts of God as to the true aspect in
which our Saviour’s death was to be viewed; but it was evident that
they could not exhaust his idea, or fill up the measure of his
redeeming purpose. His will went far beyond them all, and, therefore,
they could not be other than incomplete; and, on account of their very
incompleteness, they needed incessant repetition; and even then, though
repeated for centuries, they could not accomplish the purposes on which
the divine nature was set. As well fill up the ocean with cartloads of
soil, as accomplish the measure of God’s will by the blood of bulls and
goats.

But when Jesus came into the world he at once set himself to accomplish
that holy will. This was his constant cry: “Lo, I come to do thy will,
God! “And he not only essayed to do God’s will in every minute
particular and detail of his life, but especially where it touched the
removal of sin, the redemption of men, the sanctification and
perfecting of those who believe. It was to accomplish God’s will in
these respects that the Saviour died on the cross. And it is because he
perfectly succeeded, cutting out the entire pattern of the divine mind
in the cloth of his obedience, that the ineffective sacrifices of
Judaism have been put an end to; whilst his own sacrifice has not
required the addition of a single sigh or tear or hour of darkness or
thrill of agony. By the offering of his body once for all we have been
sanctified, i.e., our judicial standing before God is completely
satisfactory. And by one offering he bath perfected forever them that
are being sanctified, i.e., he has accomplished all the objective work
of our redemption in such wise as that in him we stand before God as
accepted saints, though much more has yet to be done in our subjective
inward experience (Heb. x. 10, 14).

The entire submission of our Lord to his Father’s will comes out very
sweetly in a slight change here made in quoting the ancient Psalm. It
may be that some older version, or various reading, is given, with the
sanction of the divine Spirit. Instead of saying “Mine ear hast thou
opened,” the Lord is represented as saying, “A body hast thou prepared
for me.” In point of fact, though the ear carried the body with it,
because it is notoriously difficult to move hand or foot so long as the
ear is a captive, yet the Hebrew slave only gave his ear to the
piercing awl in token of his surrender. But our Lord Jesus gave, not
his ear only, but his whole body, in every faculty and power. He held
nothing back, but yielded to God the Father the entirety of that body
which was prepared for him by the Holy Ghost in the mystery of the holy
incarnation. Ah! blessed is our lot, that God’s holy redemptive purpose
has been so utterly and so efficiently fulfilled, through the offering
of that body once for all nailed, not to the doorpost, but to the
cross.

APPLICABLE TO OURSELVES. There is a strong demand amongst God’s people
in the present day for that “more abundant life” which the Good
Shepherd came to bestow. Out of this demand is springing a mighty
movement, which if it obey the following rules and conditions, will
surely be a blessing to the Church.

It must be natural. The saintliness that cannot romp and laugh with
little children, and looks askance on the great movements in the world
around, and shuts itself up in cloistered seclusion, is not the ideal
of Jesus Christ, who watched the children playing in the market places,
and called them to his arms, and mingled freely at the dinner-tables of
the rich. It is easier, perhaps, than his, but it is a profound mistake
to suppose that it will satisfy his heart. No; the saintliness of the
true saint must find its home in the ordinary homes and haunts of men.

It must be humble. Directly a man begins to boast of what he has
attained, you may be sure that he makes up in talk for what he lacks in
vital experience. The tone with which some speak of perfection
indicates how far they are from it. To brag of sinlessness is to yield
to pride, the worst of sins. No face truly shines so long as its owner
wists it. No heart is childlike which is conscious of itself.

It must lay stress on the objective side of Christ’s work. There must
be introspection for the detection and removal of anything that lies
between the soul and God; just as there must be sometimes a discharge
of gunpowder to dislodge the accumulated soot of a foul chimney. But
when the necessary work of introspection and confession is over, there
should be an instant return to God, with the devout outlook of the soul
on the person and work of the Lord Jesus. We must never encourage the
introspection, except with the view of a more uninterrupted vision of
Jesus.

If these three conditions are complied with, the movement now afoot
cannot but be fraught with blessing to the universal Church; and it
will probably have the effect of leading multitudes to pass through an
experience like that indicated in the Psalm. Previously they may have
acted merely from a sense of legalism and duty, giving sacrifices and
offerings as appointed by the law. But from the glad hour that they
realize all the claims of Jesus on their emancipated and surrendered
natures, they will exclaim, “We love our Master; we will not go out
free; bore our ears to his door, that we may serve him forever; we
delight to do his will; his law is within our hearts; we are eager to
do all things written in the roll of the book of his will.”

Have you ever uttered words like these? Has your life been only a
monotonous round of unavoidable service, of which the key-word has been
“must- Alas! you have not as yet tasted how easy is his yoke, how
light his burden. But if only from this moment you would open your
whole heart to the work of the Holy Spirit, yielding fully to him, he
would shed the love of God abroad within you, kindling your love to
him; and, at once, you would do from love what you have done from law:
you would be so knit to Christ that you would not be free from him,
even though you could do without him; you would have forever the scar
of the slavery of Jesus wrought into your very nature.

There is nothing in the world that gives so much rest to the soul as to
do the will of God; whether it speaks on the page of Scripture, or
through the inspirations of the Holy Spirit within the shrine of the
heart, or in the daily routine of ordinary or extraordinary Providence.
If only we could always say, “I delight to do thy will; I come, I
come!” if only we could offer up to God, as Jesus did, the bodies which
he has prepared for us, though to the very bitterness of the cross, if
only we were as intent on finishing the work given us to do by him, as
men are in achieving the ends of personal ambition: then the spirit of
heaven, where the will of God is done, would engird our barren, weary
lives, as the Gulf Stream some wintry shore, dispelling the frost and
mantling the soil with flowers of fairest texture and fruits of
Paradise. Do not try to feel the will of God: will it, choose it, obey
it; and as time goes on, what you commenced by choosing you will end by
loving with ardent and even vehement affection.
__________________________________________________________________

XXV. DRAWING BACK

“The just shall live by faith; but if any man draw back, my soul shall have
no pleasure in him.”-HEBREWS x. 38. (Read verses 19- 39.)

THE Epistle has been for some time glowing with ever-increasing heat;
and now it flames out into a vehement expostulation, which must have
startled and terrified those Hebrew Christians who were still wavering
between Judaism and Christianity. As we have had more than one occasion
to remark, it had become a great question with some of them whether
they should go back to the one, or go on with the other. The splendid
ceremonial, venerable age, and olden associations of Judaism, were
fighting hard to wean them away from the simplicity and spiritual
demands of the later faith. But surely the retrograde movement would be
arrested, and the impetus toward Christ accelerated, by these sublime
and soul-stirring remonstrances.

THE THREEFOLD CONCLUSION ALREADY ARRIVED AT IS summed up in three
momentous propositions.

We may boldly enter the holiest by the blood of Jesus. The holiest was
the chamber of innermost communion with God. To enter it was to speak
with God face to face. And its equivalent for us is the right to make
our God our confidant and friend, into whose secret ear we may pour the
whole story of sin and sorrow and need. Nor need the memory of recent
sin distress us; because the blood of Jesus is the pledge of the
forgiveness and acceptance of those who are penitent and believing. We
may go continually, and even dwell, where Israel’s high priests might
tread but once each year.

Jesus has inaugurated a new and living way. The veil of the Temple was
rent when Jesus died, to indicate that the way to God was henceforth
free to man, without let or hindrance, and without the intervention of
a human priest. Priests have tried to block it, and to compel men to
pay them toll for Opening it. But their pretensions are false. They
have no such power. The way stands open still for every trembling
seeker. It is new, because, though myriads have trodden it, it is as
fresh as ever for each new priestly foot. It is living, because it is
through the living Saviour that we come to God. “No man cometh unto the
Father but by me.” Stay here to note that the veil, with its curious
workmanship, was a symbol of the body of Christ. “The veil, that is to
say, his flesh.” We get near to God through the death of that Son of
man who, in real human sorrow, hung on the cross for us.

We have a Great priest. We belong to the household of God by faith; but
we need a Priest. Priests need a Priest. And such a one we have, who
ever liveth to make intercession for us, and to offer our prayers on
the golden altar, mingled with the much incense of his own precious
merit. These are the three conclusions which recapitulate the positions
laid down and proved up to this point.

THE THREEFOLD EXHORTATION FOUNDED ON THE PREVIOUS CONCLUSIONS, “Let us
draw near” (ver. 22). “Let us hold fast” (ver. 23). “Let us consider
one an-other” (ver. 24). And each of these three exhortations revolves
around one of the three words which are so often found in combination
in the Epistles-Faith, Hope, and Love (R.V).

FAITH consists of two parts belief, which accepts certain declarations
as true; and trust in the person about whom these declarations are
made. Neither will do without the other. On the one hand, we cannot
trust a person without knowing something about him; on the other hand,
our knowledge will not help us unless it leads to trust, any more than
it avails the shivering wretch outside the Bank of England to know that
the vaults are stored with gold. A mere intellectual faith is not
enough. The holding of a creed will not save. We must pass from a
belief in words to trust in the Word. By faith we know that Jesus
lives, and by faith we also appropriate that life. By faith we know
that Jesus made on the cross a propitiation for sin; and by faith we
lay our hand reverently on his dear head and confess our sin. Faith is
the open hand receiving Christ. Faith is the golden pipe through which
his fullness comes to us. Faith is the narrow channel by which the life
that pulses in the Redeemer’s heart enters our souls. Faith is the
attitude we assume when we turn aside from the human to the divine.

We ought not to be content with anything less than the full assurance
of faith. The prime method of increasing it is in drawing near to God.
In olden days the bodies of the priests were bathed in water and
sprinkled with blood ere they entered the presence of God. Let us seek
the spiritual counterpart of this. Relieved from the pressure of
conscious guilt, with hearts as sincere and guileless as the flesh is
clean when washed with pure water, let us draw near to God and keel) in
fellowship with him; and in that attitude faith will grow exceedingly.
It will no longer sit in the dust, but clothe itself in beautiful
garments. It will wax from a thread to become a cable. No longer the
trembling touch of a woman’s hand, it will grasp the pillars of the
Temple with a Samson’s embrace.

HOPE is more than faith, and has special reference to the unknown
future which it realizes, and brings to bear on our daily life. The
veil that hides the future parts only as smitten by the prow of our
advancing boat; it is natural, therefore, that we should often ask what
lies beyond.

Foreboding is the prophet of ill; Hope of good. Foreboding cries, “We
shall certainly fall by the hand of; Hope replies, “No weapon that is
formed against us shall prosper.” Foreboding cries, “Who shall roll
away the stone? ” Hope sings merrily, “The Lord shall go before us, and
make the crooked places straight.” Foreboding, born of unbelief, cries,
“The people are great and tall, and the cities walled up to heaven”;
Hope already portions out the land and chooses its inheritance. But
Christian hope is infinitely better and more reliable than that of the
worldling. In ordinary hope there is always the element of uncertainty;
it may be doomed to disillusion and disappointment; things may not turn
out as we expect: and so, being the characteristic of youth, it dies
down as the years advance. But Christian hope is based on the promise
of God, and therefore it cannot disappoint; nay, it is the anchor of
the aged soul, becoming brighter and more enduring as the years pass
by, because “he is faithful that promised.”

But how may we increase our hope, so as never to let it slip, but to
hold it fast with unwavering firmness? There is nothing which will
sooner strengthen it than to consider his faithfulness whose promises
are hope’s anchorage. Has he ever failed to fulfill his engagements? Do
not the stars return to their appointed place to a hairbreadth of their
time? Have not good men given a unanimous testimony to the fidelity of
the covenant-keeping God? He has never suffered his faithfulness to
fail-and never will. Our hope, therefore, need not falter, but be
strong and very courageous.

LOVE comes last. She is queen of all the graces of the inner life. Love
is the passion of self-giving. It never stays to ask what it can
afford, or what it may expect to receive; but it is ever shedding forth
its perfume, breaking its alabaster boxes, and shedding its heart’s
blood. It will pine to death if it cannot give. It must share its
possessions. It is prodigal of costliest service. Such love is in the
heart of God, and should also be in us; and we may increase it
materially by considering one another, and associating with our
fellow-believers. Distance begets coldness and indifference. When we
forsake the assembly of our fellow- Christians we are apt to wrap
ourselves in the chill mantle of indifference. But when we see others
in need, and help them; when we are willing to succor and save; when we
discover that there is something attractive in the least lovable; when
we feel the glowing sympathy of others-our own love grows by the
demands made on it, and by the opportunities of manifestation.

Let us seek earnestly these best gifts; and that we may have them and
abound, let us invoke the blessed indwelling of the Lord Jesus, whose
entrance brings with it the whole train of sweet Christian graces.

THE THREEFOLD REMONSTRANCE. Go forward! otherwise penally (ver. 26). If
a man unwittingly broke Moses’ law, he was forgiven; but if he
willfully despised it, he died without mercy. What then can be expected
by those who sin willfully, not against the iron obligations of Sinai,
but against the gracious words which distill from the lips of the dying
Saviour! The heart that can turn from the love and blood-shedding of
Calvary, and ignore them, and trample them ruthlessly under foot, is so
hard, so hopeless, so defiant of the Holy Spirit as to expose itself to
the gravest displeasure of God, and can expect no further offering for
its sins. There is no sacrifice for the atonement of the sin of
rejecting Calvary.

Go forward! otherwise past efforts nullified (ver. 32). These Hebrew
Christians had suffered keenly on their first entrance into the
Christian life. The martyrdom of the saintly Stephen; the great havoc
wrought in the Church by Saul of Tarsus; the terrible famines that
visited Jerusalem, causing widespread destitution. They had become even
a gazing-stock by reproaches and afflictions. But they had taken
joyfully the spoiling of their goods, not shrinking from the ordeal. To
go back to Judaism now would annul the advantages which otherwise might
have accrued from their bitter experience; would miss the harvest of
their tears; would counterwork the respect with which they were being
regarded; and would rob them of the reward which the Lord might give to
them, if they only endured to the end. “Cast not away your boldness,
which hath great recompense of reward.”

Go forward! the Lord is at hand (ver. 36). Jesus was about to come in
the fall of Jerusalem, as lie will come ere long to close the present
age; and every sign pointed to the speedy destruction of the Jewish
polity by the all-conquering might of Rome. How foolish then would it
be to return to that which was on the eve of dissolution: to the Temple
that would burn to the ground; to sacrifices soon to cease; to a
priesthood to be speedily scattered to the winds!

There was only one alternative: not to go back to certain perdition, to
the ruin of all the nobler attributes of the soul, to disgrace and
disappointment and endless regret; but to go on through evil and good
report, through sorrow and anxiety and blood, until the faithful
servant should be vindicated by the Lord’s approval, and welcomed into
the realms of endless blessedness.

Are we amongst those who go on to the saving of the soul? Here, as so
often, the salvation of the soul is viewed as a process. True, we are
in a sense saved when first we turn to the cross and trust the
Crucified. But it is only as we keep in the current that streams from
the cross, only as we remain in abiding fellowship with the Saviour,
only as we submit ourselves habitually to the gracious influences of
the divine Spirit, that salvation pervades and heals our whole being.
Then the soul may be said to be gained (R.V., marg.), i.e., restored to
its original type as conceived in the mind of God before he built the
dust of the earth into man, and breathed into him the breath of life,
and he became a living soul.
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XXVI. FAITH AND ITS EXPLOITS

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen.” HEBREWS xi. 1.

SOCIETY rests on the faith which man has in man. The workman, toiling
through the week for the wage which he believes he will receive; the
passenger, procuring a ticket for a distant town, because he believes
the statements of the time-tables; the sailor, steering his bark with
unerring accuracy in murky weather, because he believes in the
mercantile charts and tables; the entire system of monetary credit, by
which vast sums circulate from hand to hand without the use of a single
coin-all these are illustrations of the immense importance of faith in
the affairs of men. Nothing, therefore, is more disastrous for an
individual or a community than for its credit to be impaired, or its
confidence shaken.

There seem to be three necessary preliminaries in order to faith.
First, some one must make an engagement or promise. Second, there must
be good reason for believing in the integrity and sufficiency of the
person by whom the engagement has been made. Third, there follows a
comfortable assurance that it will be even so; in fact, the believer is
able to count on the object promised as being not less sure than if it
had already come into actual possession. And this latter frame of mind
is precisely the one indicated by the writer of this Epistle, when,
guided by the Holy Spirit, he affirms that faith is the assurance of
things hoped for, the persuasion or conviction of things not seen. In
other words, faith is the faculty of realizing the unseen.

These three conditions are fulfilled in Christian faith. The same
faculty is called into action with respect to the things of God. At the
outset we are sure that a Voice has spoken to man from the page of
Scripture; not voices, but a Voice. Next, we are sure that this Speaker
is infinitely credible. Our assurance rests on several grounds: we find
that his words have ever come true in the experience of past
generations; we have seen them accompanied by the introduction of
miraculous phenomena, indicating in their beneficence and power the
goodness and glory of the Worker; we discover in our own hearts the
assent of our moral nature to their evident truth: and for all these
reasons we hold that the Voice which speaks deserves our credence. And
therefore, lastly, we calculate on whatever has been promised as surely
as if we saw it, and may reckon on it as certainly ours.

Let us emphasize again what has been said. We look on the words which
God speaks to us from the Scriptures as being altogether different from
any other words which may claim our attention from the lips of men; not
only because of the character of the miracles which accompany them, but
because they touch us as no other words do, and elicit the spontaneous
assent and consent of our moral nature, though sometimes in
condemnation of ourselves. That must be the Book of God which so
exactly coincides with the best emotions and intuitions of our moral
nature; and not of ours only, but of the noblest and best of our race

“The mighty God, the Lord hath spoken, and called the earth from the
rising of the sun to the going down of the same.” And if we are once
assured of this, then there is no limit to the restful confidence,
which not only counts the promise as credible, but actually begins to
enjoy in anticipation the boons they offer. The maxim of human
experience runs thus: Seeing is believing; but with the child of God
the reverse is true: Believing is seeing. We are as sure of what God
had promised as we would be if we saw it already before our eyes. Our
vision could not make us more sure than we are that God loves us; that
there is a Father’s house with its many mansions; and that some day our
mortality is to put on immortality, so as to live forever in a state of
existence which is absolutely sinless, sorrowless, and nightless.

Such faith as this is begotten in our souls, primarily by the study of
God’s Word; appealing, as we have seen, to our moral consciousness,
which, as it is more and more developed, is more and more satisfied
with the Book which called it into being, and has done so much for its
education. But sometimes faith seems to be given us in respect of some
special matter which is not directly indicated in Scripture, but which
we feel able to claim, yes, and as we pray and think over it we are
still more able to claim it; and when we find such a conviction forming
in our hearts, we may be perfectly sure of it. “Whosoever shall say to
this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; and
shall not doubt in his heart, but believe that those things which he
saith shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever he saith.” Thus the
child of God may begin to praise for blessings of which there is no
outward sign; being as sure of them as though they had risen above the
horizon, like the little cloud, no bigger than a man’s hand, to
Elijah’s prayer. “We have the petitions that we desired of him.”

Do you want a greater faith? then consider the promises, which are its
native food! Read the story of God’s mighty acts in bygone days. Open
your heart to God, that he may shine in with his own revealing
presence. Ask him to give you this wondrous faculty to which nothing is
impossible. Put away from you aught which might clash with the growth
of your heart in faith and love.

FAITH GREATENS MEN. Run through this roll-call of heroes. You must
admit that those whose names are mentioned stand in the first ranks of
our race, shining as stars. But their claim to be thus regarded was
certainly not natural genius. Enoch, for instance, and his line, being
Sethites, may have been inferior to many of the family of Cain, so far
as mere intellectual or artistic attainment went. But his faith lifted
him out of the ranks of mediocrity to a species of primacy amongst men;
and should faith become the master-principle of your life and mine, it
would similarly enlarge and enrich our whole being.

FAITH MIGHTILY AFFECTS OUR ORDINARY HUMAN LIFE. With most men you can
determine pretty nearly how they will act in given circumstances; you
can enumerate the influences at work, and their value. But you can
never be sure in the case of the Christian, because his faith is making
real much of which the world around takes no thought whatever. The
tyrant, anxious to save some young Christian confessor, approaches him
with flatteries and promises, things that attract the young, and is
surprised to find that they have no charm; he then approaches with
suffering, obloquy, and death, things that sadden young hearts, and is
equally astonished to discover that they cause no alarm. The cause is
inexplicable, and is set down to obstinacy; but in point of fact the
eyes of the young heart are opened on a world of which the tyrant has
formed no conception. Faith is not careless of time, but more mindful
of eternity. Faith does not underrate the power of man, but she
magnifies omnipotence. Faith is not callous of present pain, but she
weighs it against future joy. Against ill-gotten gains, she puts
eternal treasure; against human hate the recompense of reward; against
the weariness of the course, the crown of amaranth; against the tears
of winter sowing, the shoutings of the autumn sheaves; against the
inconvenience of the tent, the permanent city. None of these men would
have lived the noble lives they did, had it not been for the recompense
of reward and the gleams given them of the golden city amid the sorrows
and straits of their lives.

FAITH IS POSSIBLE TO ALL CLASSES. In this list are women as well as
men. Sarah and Rahab, as well as Abraham and Joshua; the widow of
Shunem, and the mighty prophet who brought her son back to life; Moses,
the student of Egypt’s wisdom; Gideon, the husbandman; Isaac, the
grazier; Jacob, the shrewd cattle breeder; Barak, the soldier; David,
the shepherd; and Samuel, the prophet. Their Occupations and
circumstances varied infinitely; but there was not one of them that did
not live under the influence of this master-principle. Whatever may be
a man’s lawful calling, he may abide therein with God, under the
influence of faith. Like the fir or pine, faith flourishes in any soil.

FAITH IS CONSISTENT WITH VERY DIFFERENT DEGREES OF KNOWLEDGE. It would
be difficult to enumerate more varieties of religious knowledge than
are summarized in. this catalogue of names. Abel’s idea of sacrifice
would differ widely from David’s. The degree of acquaintance with God
would be much intenser with Moses than Samson. And, compared with the
clear views of truth held by these Hebrew Christians, those of the
world’s gray fathers were but as baskets full of fragments. But,
notwithstanding all these differences, the same principle of faith
leaped upward from each heart. And the woman who touched the hem of the
garment was animated with the same spirit as that which in her sister
elicited the wonder of Jesus: ” woman, great is thy faith!”

FAITH CAN MASTER INSUPERABLE DIFFICULTIES. It is difficult to be
singular; but faith enabled Abel to offer a more excellent sacrifice
than Cain. It is difficult to walk constantly with God, when wickedness
is great on the earth, and all flesh has corrupted its way; but it is
not impossible, for Enoch walked with God on the very margin of the
Flood, and obtained the testimony that he pleased him. It is difficult
to lead a pilgrim life, and such difficulties would be probably as
keenly felt by the patriarchs; but what faith did for them it will do
for others. It is difficult, amid the cares of business or public
office, to keep the heart fresh, devout, and young; but it is not
impossible to faith, which maintained the spirit of patriotism and
devotion in the heart of Joseph, though sorely tempted to sink into an
Egyptian grandee. It is difficult to face the loss of all things, and
the displeasure of the great; but Moses did both, under the spell of
faith in the unseen.

There are many difficulties before us all. Stormy seas forbid our
passage; frowning fortifications bar our progress; mighty kingdoms defy
our power; lions roar against us; fire lights its flaming barricade in
our path; the sword, the armies of the alien, mockings, scourgings,
bonds, and imprisonment-all these menace our peace, darken our horizon,
and try on us their power; but faith has conquered all these before,
and it shall do as much again. We will laugh at impossibility; we will
tread the shores of the seas, certain they must make us a way; we will
enter the dens of wild beasts and the furnaces of flame, sure that they
are impotent to injure us; we shall escape the edge of the sword, out
of weakness become strong, turn to flight armies of aliens, and set at
nought all the power of the enemy: and all because we believe in God.
Reckon on God’s faithfulness. Look not at the winds and waves, but at
his character and will. Get alone with him, steeping your heart and
mind in his precious and exceeding great promises. Be obedient to the
utmost limit of your light. Walk in the Spirit, one of whose fruits is
faith. So shall you be deemed worthy to join this band, whose names and
exploits run over from this page into the chronicles of eternity, and
to share their glorious heritage.
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XXVII. STRIPPING FOR THE RACE

“Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of
witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us;
looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith.” HEBREWS Xii. 1,
2.

WHEN, in his Egyptian campaign, the Emperor Napoleon was leading his
troops through the neighborhood of the Pyramids, he pointed to those
hoary remnants of a great antiquity, and said, “Soldiers, forty
centuries look down on you!” Similarly there have been summoned before
our thought in the preceding chapter the good and great, the martyrs,
confessors, prophets, and kings of the past. We have been led through
the corridors of the divine mausoleum, and bidden to read the names and
epitaphs of those of whom God was not ashamed. We have felt our faith
grow stronger as we read and pondered the inspiring record; and now, by
a single touch, these saintly souls are depicted as having passed from
the arena into the crowded tiers, from which to observe the course
which we are treading to-day. They were witnesses to the necessity,
nature, and power of faith. They are witnesses also of our lives and
struggles, our victories and defeats, our past and present.

And they are compared to a cloud. One of the finest pictures in the
world is that of the Madonna de San Sisto at Dresden, which depicts the
infant Saviour in the arms of his mother, surrounded by clouds, which
attracted no special notice until lately; but when the accumulated dust
of centuries was removed, they were found to be composed of myriads of
angel faces. Surely this is the thought of the inspired writer when he
speaks of “so great a cloud of witnesses.”

In some of the more spacious amphitheaters of olden times, the
spectators rose in tier above tier to the number of forty or fifty
thousand; and to the thought of the combatant as he looked around on
this vast multitude of human faces, set in varied and gorgeous
coloring, these vast congregations of his race must have appeared like
clouds, composed of infinitesimal units, but all making up one mighty
aggregate, and bathed in such hues as are cast on the clouds at sunrise
or sunset by the level sun.

If before this time these Hebrew Christians had been faltering, and
inclined to relinquish their earnestness, they would have been
strangely stirred and quickened by the thought that they were living
under the close inspection of the spirits of the mighty dead. To us
also the same exhortation applies.

THE SPEED OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. “Let us run.” We must not sit still to
be carried by the stream. We must not loiter and linger as children
returning from a summer’s ramble. We must not even walk as men with
measured step. We must run. Nor are we only to run as those who double
their pace to an easy trot; we must run as men who run a race. The idea
of a race is generally competition; here it is only concentration of
purpose, singleness of aim, intensity.

Life in earnest-that is the idea. But how far do we seem from it! And
what a contrast there is between our earnestness in all beside, and in
our devotion to God and man! We are willing enough to join in the rush
of business competition, in the race for wealth, in the heated
discussion of politics, and in social life in the pursuit of pleasure;
but, ah! how soon we slacken when it becomes a question of how much we
are willing to do for God! How earnest men are around us! Newton poring
over his problems till the midnight wind sweeps over his pages the
ashes of his long-extinguished fire. Reynolds sitting, brush in hand,
before his canvas for thirty six hours together, summoning into life
forms of beauty that seemed glad to come. Dryden composing in a single
fortnight his Ode for St. Cecilia’s Day. Buffon dragged from his
beloved slumbers to his more beloved studies. And the biographer who
records these traits himself rising with the dawn to prepare for the
demands of his charge.

In a world like this, and with a theme like ours, we ought not to be
languid and supine; but devoted, eager, consumed with a holy love to
God, and with a passion for the souls of men. Then should we make
progress in the knowledge of the Word of God, and enter into the words
of one of the greatest spiritual athletes that ever lived: “This one
thing I do . . . I press toward the goal for the prize of the high
calling in Christ Jesus.”

WE MUST RUN FREE OF WEIGHTS. This speed can only be maintained when we
run unencumbered and free. Now, of course we would all admit the
necessity of divesting ourselves of sins; but in all our lives there
are weights which are not sins. A sin is that which in its very nature,
and always, and by whomsoever perpetrated, is a transgression of God’s
law, a violation of God’s will. But a weight is something which in
itself or to another may be harmless, or even legitimate, but in our
own case is a hindrance and an impediment.

Every believer must be left to decide what is his own special weight.
We may not judge for one another. What is a weight to one is not so to
all. But the Holy Spirit, if he be consulted and asked to reveal the
hindrance to the earnestness and speed of the soul’s progress in divine
things, will not fail to indicate it swiftly and infallibly. And this
is the excellence of the Holy Spirit’s teaching: it is ever definite.
If you have a general undefined feeling of discouragement, it is
probably the work of the great enemy of souls; but if you are aware of
some one hindrance and encumbrance which stays your speed, it is almost
certainly the work of the divine Spirit, who is leading you to
relinquish something which is slackening your progress in the spiritual
life.

No man would think of maintaining a high speed encompassed with
weights. The lads who run for a prize litter the course with garments
flung away in their eager haste. There would be little difficulty in
maintaining an intense and ardent spirit if we were more faithful in
dealing with the habits and indulgences which cling around us and
impede our steps. Thousands of Christians are like water-logged
vessels. They cannot sink; but they are so saturated with
inconsistencies and worldliness and permitted evil that they can only
be towed with difficulty into the celestial port.

Is there anything in your life which dissipates your energy from holy
things, which disinclines you to the practice of prayer and Bible
study, which rises before you in your best moments, and produces in you
a general sense of uneasiness and disturbance? something which others
account harmless, and permit, and in which you once saw no cause for
anxiety, but which you now look on with a feeling of self-condemnation?
It is likely enough a weight.”

Is there anything within the circle of your consciousness concerning
which you have to argue with yourself, or which you do not care to
investigate, treating it as a bankrupt treats his books into which he
has no desire to enter, or as a votary of pleasure treats the first
symptoms of decaying vitality which he seeks to conceal from himself?
We so often allow in ourselves things which we would be the first to
condemn in others. We frequently find ourselves engaged in discovering
ingenious reasons wily a certain course which would be wrong in others
is justifiable in ourselves. All such things may be considered as
weights. It may be a friendship which is too engrossing; a habit which
is sapping away our energy as the tap-root the fruit bearing powers of
a tree; a pursuit, an amusement, a pastime, a system of reading, a
method of spending time, too fascinating and too absorbing, and
therefore harmful to the soul-which is tempted to walk when it should
run, and to loiter when it should haste.

But, you ask, Is it not a sign of weakness, and will it not tend to
weakness, always to be relinquishing these and similar things? Surely,
you cry, the life will become impoverished and barren when it is
stripped in this way of its precious things. Not so. It is impossible
to renounce anything at the bidding of the inner life without adding
immensely to its strength; for it grows by surrender, and waxes strong
by sacrifice. And for every unworthy object which is forsaken there
follows an immediate enrichment of the spirit, which is the sufficient
and unvarying compensation. The athlete gladly foregoes much that other
men value, and which is pleasant to himself, because his mind is intent
on the prize; and he considers that he will be amply repaid for all the
hardships of training if he be permitted to bear it away, though it be
a belt he will never wear, or a cup he will never use. How much more
gladly should we be prepared to relinquish all that hinders our
attainment, not of the uncertain bauble of the athlete, but the certain
reward, the incorruptible crown, the smile and “well-done” of our Lord!

There is an old Dutch picture of a little child dropping a cherished
toy from its hands; and, at first sight, its action seems
unintelligible, until, at the corner of the picture, the eye is
attracted to a white dove winging its flight toward the emptied
outstretched hands. Similarly we are prepared to forego a good deal
when once we catch sight of the spiritual acquisitions which beckon to
us. And this is the true way to reach consecration and surrender. Do
not ever dwell on the giving-up side, but on the receiving side. Keep
in mind the meaning of the old Hebrew word for consecration, to fill
the hand. There will not be much trouble in getting men to empty their
hands of wood, hay, and stubble if they see that there is a chance of
filling them with the treasures which gleam from the faces or lives of
others, or which call to them from the page of Scripture. The world
pities us, because it sees only what we give up; but it would hold its
sympathy if it could also see how much we receive “good measure,
pressed down, and running over given into our bosoms.”

WE MUST LAY ASIDE BESETTING SIN. “Let us lay aside the sin which doth
so closely cling to us” (R.V.). We often refer to these words; no
sentence of the Bible is more often on our lips; but do we not misquote
them in divorcing them from their context? We should read them as part
of the great argument running through the previous chapter, and of
which they are the culmination and brilliant climax. That argument has
been devoted to the theme of faith. Case after case has been adduced of
the exploits of the heroes of Hebrew story; and it has been shown that
in each faith was the secret motive and the sufficient power. The close
connection between that glowing panegyric and the opening words of the
following chapter is shown by the word “Wherefore,” which even defies
the wanton intrusion of the division forced upon us in our English
version. And surely it is most natural to hold that the sin which so
closely clings to us is nothing else than the sin of unbelief, which is
the opposite pole to the faith so highly eulogized.

If that be a correct exegesis, it sheds new light on unbelief. It is no
longer an infirmity, it is a sin. Men sometimes carry about their
doubts, as beggars a deformed or sickly child, to excite the sympathy
of the benevolent. But surely there is a kind of unbelief which should
not meet with sympathy, but rebuke. It is sin which needs to be
repented of as sin, to be resisted as sin, and to receive as sin the
cleansing of Christ.

Unbelief may, as in the case of Thomas, spring from intellectual and
constitutional difficulties. But these will not lead the soul to vaunt
itself as surpassing others in insight; or to relinquish the society of
others with happier constitutions; or, above all, to forego the habit
of secret prayer. It will rather induce a temper of mind the very
opposite of that self-confident, arrogant spirit which prevails so much
in the unbelievers of our time.

But much unbelief springs from moral causes. The soul gets wrong with
God, and says that it is not sure whether there is a God. The windows
are allowed to be covered with grime, and then it doubts whether the
sun is shining. The faculties of the inner life are clogged with
neglect, and refuse to do their appointed office in revealing the
spiritual and the unseen. We should be wiser if we dealt with much of
the unbelief of our time as a disease of the spiritual life, rather
than of the intellectual. Its source is largely moral. Do not set
agnostics to study evidences; but show them that their temper of heart
is the true cause of their darkness and unbelief. God has given each of
us powers of discerning his truth, which will certainly perceive and
love it; and where the reverse is the case, it is often due to some
moral obliquity, to some beam in the eye, to some secret indulgence,
which is destructive of all spiritual perception. Put away known sin.
Read the Bible, even though you doubt its inspiration. Wait. Pray. Live
up to all the light you have. And unbelief will drop away as the old
leaves from the evergreens in spring.

There will, of course, be difficulties in all our lives to impede our
heavenward progress: difficulties from the opposition of our foes;
difficulties from within our own hearts. We shall need patience and
long forbearance as we tread our appointed track. But there are two
sources of comfort open to us.

Let us remember that the course is set before us by our heavenly
Father, who therefore knows all its roughness and straitness, and will
make all grace abound toward us, sufficient for our need. To do his
will is rest and heaven.

Let us “look off unto Jesus.” Away from past failure and success; away
from human applause and blame; away from the gold pieces scattered on
the path, and the flowers that line either side. Do not look now and
again, but acquire the habit of looking always, so that it shall become
natural to look up from every piece of daily work, from every room,
however small, from every street, however crowded, to his dear, calm,
sweet face; just as the sojourner on the northern shores of Geneva’s
lake is constantly prone to look up from any book or work on which the
attention may have been engaged, to behold the splendor and glory of
the noble range of snow-capped summits on the further shores. And if it
seems hard to acquire this habitual attitude, trust the Holy Spirit to
form it in your soul.

Above all, remember that where you tread there your Lord once trod,
combating your difficulties and sorrows, though without sin; and ere
long you shall be where he is now. Keep your eye fixed, then, on him as
he stands to welcome and reward you; and struggle through all, animated
by his smile, and attracted to his side, and you will find weights and
unbelief dropping off almost insensibly and of themselves.

This is the only way by which souls can be persuaded. Argue with them;
urge them; try to force them-and they will cling the closer to the
encumbrances which are clogging their steps. But present to them Jesus
in the beauty and attractiveness of his person and work, and there will
be a natural loosening of impediments; as the snow which had been
bending the leaves to the earth drops away when the sun begins to
shine. And God never takes aught from us, without giving us something
better. He removes the symbol, to give us the reality; breaks the type,
to give the substance; releases us from the natural and human, to give
us the divine. Oh, trust him, soul: and dare to let go, that thou
mayest take; to be stripped, that thou mayest become clothed!
__________________________________________________________________

XXVIII. CHASTISEMENT

Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he
receiveth.”

HEBREWS xii. 6.

IT is hardly possible to suppose that any shall read these lines who
have not drunk of the bitter cup of affliction. Some may have even
endured a great fight of afflictions. Squadron after squadron has been
drawn up in array, and broken its regiments on the devoted soul. It has
come to us in different forms, but in one form or another it has come
to us all. Perhaps our physical strength and health have been weakened
in the way; or we have been racked with unutterable anguish in mind or
body; or have been obliged to see our beloved slowly slipping from the
grasp of our affection, which was condemned to stand paralyzed and
helpless by. In some cases, affliction has come to us in the earning of
our daily bread, which has been procured with difficulty and pain,
whilst care has never been long absent from our hearts, or want from
our homes. In others, homes which were as full of merry voices as the
woods in spring of sweet-voiced choristers are empty and silent. Ah,
how infinite are the shades of grief! how extended the gamut of pain!
How many can cry with the Psalmist, “All thy waves and thy billows are
gone over me!

We can see clearly the reason of all this suffering. The course of
nature is out of joint. Man’s sin has put not himself only, but the
whole course of nature into collision with the will and law of God; so
that it groans and travails in its pains. Selfishness has also
alienated man from his fellows, inciting him to amass all that he can
lay hands on for himself, oblivious to the bitter sufferings of those
around him, and careless of their woes. Whilst behind the whole course
of nature there is the incessant activity of malignant spirits, who, as
in the case of Job, may be plotting against us, reveling in any
mischief, which, for some great reasons, they are permitted to work to
our hurt.

There are different ways in which affliction may be borne. Some despise
it (ver. 5). They refuse to acknowledge any reason in themselves for
its infliction. They reject the lesson it was designed to teach. They
harden themselves in stoical indifference, resolving to bear it with
defiant and desperate courage. Some faint under it (ver. 5). They
become despondent and dispirited, or lose heart and hope. Like Pliable,
they are soon daunted, and get out of the Slough of Despond with as
little cost as possible to themselves; or, like Timorous and Mistrust,
turn back from the lion’s roar. We ought to be in subjection. Lifting
the cup meekly and submissively to our lips; calmly and trustfully
saying “Amen”to every billow and wave; lovingly trying to learn the
lesson written on the page of trial; and bowing ourselves as the reeds
of the river’s edge to the sweeping hurricane of trial. But this,
though the only true and safe course, is by no means an easy one.

Subjection in affliction is only possible when we can see in it the
hand of the Father of spirits (ver. 9). So long as we look at the
second causes, at men or things, as being the origin and source of our
sorrows, we shall be filled alternately with burning indignation and
hopeless grief. But when we come to understand that nothing can happen
to us except as our Father permits, and that, though our trials may
originate in some lower source, yet they become God’s will for us as
soon as they are permitted to reach us through the defense of his
environing presence, then we smile through our tears; we kiss the dear
hand that uses another as its rod; we realize that each moment’s pain
originates in our Father’s heart; and we are at rest. Judas may seem to
mix the cup, and put it to our lips; but it is nevertheless the cup
which our Father giveth us to drink, and shall we not drink it? Much of
the anguish passes away from life’s trials as soon as we discern our
Father’s hand; then——

Affliction becomes chastisement. There is a great difference between
these two. Affliction may come from a malignant and unfriendly source;
chastisement is the work of the Father, yearning over his little
children, desiring to eliminate from their characters all that is
unlovely and unholy, and to secure in them entire conformity to his
character and will. But, before you can appropriate the comfort of
these words, let me earnestly ask you, my reader, whether you are a
child? None are children in the sense of which we are speaking now,
save those who have been born into the divine family by regeneration,
through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Of this birth, faith is the sure
sign and token; for it is written: “Those that believe on his name are
born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God.” Are you a child? Does the Spirit witness with your
spirit that you are born of God? Can you look up into his face and cry,
“Abba, Father- If so, you are surrounded by your Father’s tender,
loving care. Nothing can reach you without passing through the cordon
of his protection. If, therefore, affliction does lay its rough hand
upon your arm, ;arresting you, then be sure that it must first have
obtained permission from One who loves you infinitely, and who is
willing to expose both you and himself to pain because of the vast
profit on which he has set his heart.

All chastisement has a Purpose. There is nothing so absolutely
crushing in sorrow as to feel one’s self drifting at the mercy of some
chance wave, sweeping forward to an unknown shore. But a great calm
settles down upon us when we realize that life is a schoolhouse, in
which we are being taught by our Father himself, who sets our lessons
as he sees we require them. The drill-sergeant has a purpose in every
exercise; the professor of music, an object in every scale; the farmer,
an end in every method of husbandry. “He does not thresh fitches with a
sharp threshing instrument, neither is a cart-wheel turned about upon
cummin; but the fitches are beaten out with a staff, and the cummin
with a rod.” So God has a purpose in every pain he permits us to feel.
There is nothing fortuitous or empirical or capricious in his dealings
with his own.

The purposes which chastisement subserves are very various. Of course
we know that the penalty of our sins has been laid on the head of our
great Substitute; and that, therefore, we are forever relieved from
their penal consequences. But though that is so, yet often chastisement
follows on our wrong-doing; not that we expiate the wrong-doing by
suffering, but that we may be compelled to regard it in its true light.
Amid the pain we suffer we are compelled to review our past. The
carelessness, the unwatchfulness, the prayerlessness which have been
working within us pass slowly before our minds. We see where we had
been going astray for long months or years. We discover how deeply and
incessantly we had been grieving God’s Holy Spirit. We find that an
alienation had been widening the breach between God and our souls,
which, if it had proceeded further, must have involved moral ruin.
Perhaps we never see our true character until the light dies off the
landscape, and the clouds overcast the sky, and the wind rises
moaningly about the house of our life.

Times of affliction lead to heart-searchings, and we become
increasingly aware of sins of which we had hardly thought at all. And
even though the offense may be confessed and put away, so long as
affliction lasts there is a subdued temper of heart and mind, which is
most favorable to religious growth. We cannot forget our sin so long as
the stroke of the Almighty lies on our soul; and we are compelled to
maintain a habit of holy watchfulness against its recurrence.

It is also in affliction that we learn that fellowship with the
sufferings of Christ and that sympathy for others which are so lovely
in true Christians. That is not the loftiest type of character which,
like the Chinese pictures, has no background of shadow. Even Christ
could only learn obedience by the things that he suffered, or become a
perfect High-Priest by the ordeal of temptation. And how little can we
enter into the inner depths of his soul, unless we tread the shadowed
paths, or lie prostrate in the secluded glades of Gethsemane! We who
attempt to assuage the griefs of mankind must ourselves be acquainted
with grief, and become men of sorrows.

Be sure, then, that not one moment’s pain is given you to bear that
could have been dispensed with. Each has been the subject of divine
consideration before permitted to come, and each will be removed
directly its needed mission is fulfilled.

Special discipline is evidence of special love (ver. 6). It costs us
much less to fling our superfluities on those we love than to cause
them pain. Indulgence is a sign not of intense but of slender love. The
heart that really and wisely loves will bear the pain of causing pain,
will incur the risk of being misjudged, will not flinch from
misrepresentation and reproach; from all of which a less affection
would warily shrink. It is because our Father loves us that he chastens
us. He would not take so much trouble over us if we were not dear to
his heart. It is because we are sons that he sets himself to scourge
us. But oh, how much he suffers as he wields that scourge of small
cords! Yet, hail each blow; for each sting and smart cries to thee that
thou art being received into the inner circle of love.

When suppliants for his healing help came to our Lord, for the most
part he hastened to their side. But on one occasion he lingered yet two
days in the place where he was. He dared to face the suspicion of
neglect and the loving impeachment of bereaved love, because he loved
Martha and her sister and Lazarus. He loved them too much to be
satisfied with doing small things for them, or revealing only fragments
of his great glory. He longed to enrich them with his precious
revelation of resurrection life. But his end could only be reached at
the cost of untold sorrow, even unto death. Lazarus must die, and lie
for two days in the grave, before his mightiest miracle could be
wrought. And so he let the thunder-cloud break on the home lie loved,
that he might be able to flash on it light which broke into a rainbow
of prismatic glory.

If you are signally visited with suffering, such as you cannot connect
with persistence in carelessness or neglect, then take it that you are
one of Heaven’s favorites. It is not, as men think, the child of
fortune and earthly grace, dowered with gifts in prodigal profusion,
who is best beloved of God; but oftenest the child of poverty and pain
and misfortune and heart-break. “If ye be without chastisement, whereof
all are partakers, then ye are bastards and not sons.” Oh, ye who
escape the rod, begin seriously to ask whether indeed ye be born again!

Pain is fraught with precious results (vv. 10, ii). ” Not joyous but
grievous: nevertheless afterward.” How full of meaning is the
“afterward.” Who shall estimate the hundredfold of blessing from each
moment of pain? The Psalms are crystallized tears. The Epistles were in
many cases written in prison. The greatest teachers of mankind have
learned their most helpful lessons in sorrow’s school. The noblest
characters have been forged in a furnace. Acts which will live forever,
masterpieces of art and music and literature, have originated in ages
of storm and tempest and heart-rending agony. And so also is it with
our earthly discipline. The ripest results are sorrow-born. “The path
of sorrow, and that path alone, Leads to the land where sorrow is
unknown.”

Holiness is the product of sorrow, when sanctified by the grace of God.
Not that sorrow necessarily makes us holy, because that is the
prerogative of the divine Spirit; and, as a matter of fact, many
sufferers are hard and complaining and unlovely. But that sorrow
predisposes us to turn from the distractions of earth to receive those
influences of the grace of God which are most operative where the soul
is calm and still, sitting in a veiled and darkened room, whilst
suffering plies body or mind. Who of us does not feel willing to
suffer, if only this precious result shall accrue, that we may be
“partakers of his holiness” ?

Fruit is another product (ver. 11). Where, think you, does the
Husbandman of souls most often see the fruit he loves so well, and hear
the tones of deepest trust? Not where his gifts are most profuse, but
where they are most meager. Not within the halls of successful ambition
or satiated luxury, but in cottages of poverty, and rooms dedicated to
ceaseless pain. Genial almost to a miracle is the soil of sorrow.
Necessary beyond all count is the pruning-knife of pain.

Count, if you will, the precious kinds of fruit. There is patience,
which endures the Father’s will; and trust that sees the Father’s hand
behind the rough disguise; and peace, that lies still, content with the
Father’s plan; and righteousness, that conforms itself to the Father’s
requirements; and love, that clings more closely than ever to the
Father’s heart; and gentleness, which deals leniently with others,
because of what we have learned of ourselves.

Nor is it for very long. Jesus, who endured the cross and shame and
spitting, is now set down on the right hand of the throne of God. Ere
long we too shall come out of the great tribulation, to sit by his
side. Every tear kissed away; every throb of anguish stayed; every
memory of pain allayed by God’s anodyne of bliss. The results will be
ours forever. But sorrow and sighing, which may have been our daily
comrades to the gates of the celestial city, will flee away as we step
across its threshold, unable to exist in that radiant glory. “And God
shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more
death, neither sorrow nor crying; neither shall there be any more
pain.” “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not
worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.”
“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a
far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” “Wherefore lift up the
hands that hang down, and the feeble knees.”
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XXIX. THE IDEAL LIFE

“Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the
Lord: looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any
root of bitterness springing up trouble you, and thereby many be
defiled.”-HEBREWS xii. 14, 15.

How beautiful and solemn are these words, like the swelling cadence of
heaven’s own music. Evidently they do not emanate from this
sorrow-stricken and warring world; they are one of the laws of the
kingdom of heaven, intended to mold and fashion our life on earth. It
is quite likely that those who elect to obey them may not achieve name
and fame amongst men; but they will win something infinitely better-the
beatitude of blessedness, the smile of the Saviour, and the vision of
God.

There are souls among us of whom the world is not worthy; yet for whom
the world, when it catches sight of them, prepares its bitterest venom;
who have withdrawn their interest from the ambitions and schemes, the
excitements and passions of their fellows, and who live a retired life,
hidden with Christ in God, content to be unknowing and unknown; eager
only to please God, to know him, or rather to be known of him, and to
preserve the perfect balance of their nature with him, as its center
and pivot and final cause. Such souls, perhaps, will best understand
the infinite meaning and beauty of these deep and blessed words.

THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD GOD. ” Follow after holiness.” In the
Revised Version this is rendered sanctification.” And this in turn is
only a Latin equivalent for “setting apart “, as Sinai among mountains;
the Sabbath among the days of the week; the Levites among the Jews; and
the Jews among the nations of the earth.

But after all there is a deeper thought. Why were people, places, and
things set apart? Was it not because God was there? He came down in
might and glory on Sinai; therefore they needed to set bounds around
its lower declivities. He chose to rest on the seventh day from all his
work; therefore it was hallowed and sanctified. He selected the Jews to
be his peculiar people, and the Levites to be his priests; therefore
they were isolated from all beside. He appeared to Moses in the bush,
glowing with the light of the Shekinah; therefore the spot was holy
ground, and the shepherd needed to bare his feet. In other words, it is
the presence of God which makes holy. There is only one Being in all
the universe who is really holy. Holiness is the attribute of his
nature, and of his nature only. We can never be holy apart from God;
but when God enters the spirit of man, he brings holiness with him.
Nay, the presence of God in man is holiness.

A room or public building may be full of delicious sunlight. But that
sunlight is not the property of the room. It does not belong to it. You
cannot congratulate it upon its possession. For when the shadows of
evening gather, and curtain the face of the sun, the chamber is as dark
as possible. It is light only so long as the sun dwells in it. So the
human spirit has no holiness apart from God. Holiness is not a
perquisite or property or attribute to which any of us can lay claim.
It is the indwelling of God’s light and glory within us. He is the holy
man in whom God dwells. He is the holier in whom God dwells more fully.
He is the holiest who, however poor his intellect and mean his earthly
lot, is most possessed and filled by the presence of God through the
Holy Ghost. We need not wonder at the Apostle addressing believers as
saints, when he was able to say of them: “Your body is the temple of
the Holy Ghost, which is in you” (1 Cor. iii. 16; vi. 19).

Why, then, does the sacred writer bid us “follow after holiness,” as
though it were an acquisition? Because, though holiness is the
infilling of man’s spirit by the Spirit of God, yet there are certain
very important conditions to be observed by us if we would secure and
enjoy that blessed gift.

Give self no quarter. It is always asserting itself in one or other of
its Protean shapes. Do not expect to be rid of it. Even if you say you
have conquered it, then it lurks beneath the smile of your
self-complacency. It may show itself in religious pride, in desire to
excel in virtue, in the satisfaction with which we hear ourselves
remarked for our humility. It will need incessant watchfulness, because
where self is there God cannot come. He will not share his glory with
another. When we are settling down to slumber, we may expect the cry,
“Thine enemy is upon thee; “for it will invade our closets and our
places of deepest retirement.

It is impossible to read the Epistles of the Apostle Peter without
being impressed with the solemn and awful character of the Christian
life, the constant need of watchfulness, the urgency for diligence,
self-restraint, and self-denial. Oh for this holy sensitiveness! always
exercising the self~watch; never sparing ourselves; merciful to others
because so merciless to self; continually exercising ourselves to
preserve a conscience void of offense toward God and men.

Yield to God. He is ever seeking the point of least resistance in our
natures. Help him to find it; and when found, be sure to let him have
his blessed way. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” Work out what
God works in. Translate the thoughts of God into the vernacular of
daily obedience. Be as plastic to his touch as clay in the hands of the
potter, so that you may realize every ideal which is in his heart. Be
not as the horse and mule, but let your mouth be tender to every motion
of the divine purpose concerning you. And if you find it difficult to
maintain this attitude, be sure to tell your difficulty to the Holy
Spirit, and trust him to keep your heart steadfast and unmovable, fixed
and obedient.

Take time to it. “Follow after.” This habit is not to be acquired in a
bound or at a leap. It can be formed in its perfection only after years
of self-discipline and watchful self-culture. To abide ever in Christ,
to yield to God, to keep all the windows of the nature open toward his
gracious infilling, to turn naturally to him, and first, amid peril and
temptations, in all times of sorrow and trial, this is not natural, but
it may become as second nature by habitual diligence.

But it must necessarily be the work of time ere the sense of effort
ceases and the soul naturally and spontaneously turns to God “in every
hour of waking thought.” And if we are to acquire this blessed and
perpetual attitude of soul, we must take time to acquire it, as to
acquire aught else which is really precious. It must be no by~play; nor
the work of off or leisure hours; nor a pastime: but the serious object
of life, the purpose which shall thread all the varied beads of life’s
chain, and give a beautiful unity to all.

To such a character there shall be the vision of God. “Blessed are the
pure in heart; for they shall see God.” Had you been beside Moses
during his forty days in the heart of the cloud, when he saw God face
to face, you would not have seen him if you had not been holy. Had you
stood beside the martyr Stephen when he beheld the glory of God, and
the Son of man standing beside him, your eyes would have discerned
nothing if you had not been holy. Yea, if it were possible for you
without holiness to pass within the pearly gate, you would not see the
sheen, as it were, of sapphire; you would carry with you your own
circumference of darkness, and the radiant vision would vanish as you
approached. “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord.”

The heart has eyes as well as the head; and for want of holiness these
become seriously impaired, so that the wise in their own conceits see
not, whilst those who are simple, humble, and pure in heart behold the
hidden and prepared things of God. The one condition for seeing God in
his Word, in nature, in daily life, and in closet-fellowship, is
holiness of heart wrought there by his own indwelling. Follow after
holiness as men pursue pleasure; as the athlete runs for the prize; as
the votary of fashion follows in the wake of the crowd.

THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD MEN. ” Follow after peace.” The effect of
righteousness is always peace. If you are holy, you will be at peace.
Peace is broken by sin; but the holy soul takes sin instantly to the
Blood. Peace is broken by temptation; but the holy soul has learned to
put Christ between itself and the first breath of the tempter. Peace is
broken by care, dissatisfaction, and unrest; but the Lord stands around
the holy soul, as do the mountains around Jerusalem, which shield off
the cruel winds, and collect the rain which streams down their broad
sides to make the dwellers in the valleys rejoice and sing. Others may
be fretful and feverish, the subjects of wild alarms; but there is
perfect peace to the soul which has God, and is satisfied.

When a man is full of the peace of God, he will naturally become a son
of peace. He will follow after peace with them that call on the Lord
out of a pure heart (2 Tim. ii. 22). He will endeavor to keep the unity
of the Spirit in the bond of peace (Eph. iv. 3). He will sow harvests
of peace as he makes peace (James iii. 18). All his epistles, like
those of the great Apostle, will breathe benedictions of peace; and his
entrance to a home will seem like a living embodiment of the ancient
form of benediction: Peace be to this house. He will have a wonderful
power of calling out responses from like-minded men; but where that is
not the case, his peace, white-robed and dove-winged, shall come back
to him again.

But there must be a definite following after peace. The temperaments of
some are so trying. They are so apt to look at things in a wrong light,
to put misconstructions on harmless actions, and to stand out on
trifles. Hence the need of endeavor and patience and watchfulness, that
we may exercise a wholesome influence as peacemakers.

Avoid becoming a party to a quarrel. It takes two to make a quarrel;
never be one. A soft answer will often turn away wrath, and where it
does not, yield before the wrong-doer, give place to wrath, let it
expend itself unhindered by your resistance; it will soon have vented
itself, to be succeeded by shame, penitence, and regret.

If opposed to the malice of men, do not avenge yourselves. Our cause is
more God’s than it is our own. It is for him to vindicate us; and he
will. He may permit a temporary cloud to rest on us for some wise
purpose; but ultimately he will bring out our righteousness as the
light, and our judgment as the noonday. The non-resistance of evil is
the dear teaching of Christ (Matt. v.39; Rom. xii. 19; 1 Pet. ii. 21).
Stand up for the true, the holy, the good, at all costs; but think very
little of standing up for your own rights. What are your rights? Are
you anything better than a poor sinner who has forfeited all? You
deserve to be treated much worse than you were ever treated at the
worst. Leave God to vindicate you.

Do not give cause of offense. If you are aware of certain
susceptibilities on the part of others, where they may be easily
wounded and irritated, avoid touching them, if you can do so without
being a traitor to God’s holy truth. And if thy brother has any true
bill against you, rest not day nor night, tarry not even at the
footstool of divine mercy; but go to him forthwith, and seek his
forgiveness, and make ample restitution, that he may have no cause of
reproach against thy professions, or against thy Lord (Matt.v.23).

Oh for more of his peace! -in the face never crossed by impatience; in
the voice never rising above gentle tones; in the manner never excited
or morose; in the gesture still and restful, which acts as oil poured
over the raging billows of the sea when they foam around the bulwarks
of the ship and are suddenly quelled.

THERE IS OUR ATTITUDE TOWARD OUR FELLOW CHRISTIANS. “Looking diligently
lest any man fail of the grace of God.” It is a beautiful provision
that love to common Lord attracts us into the fellowship of his
disciples; and as no individual life truly develops in Solitariness, so
no Christian is right or healthy who isolates himself from the
communion of saints. But we go not there only for selfish
gratification, but that we may look after one another, not leaving it
to the officers of the host, but each doing our own share.

There are three dangers. The laggards. This is the meaning of “fail.”
The idea is borrowed from a party of travelers, some of whom lag
behind, as in the retreat from Moscow, to fall a prey to Cossacks,
wolves, or the awful sleep. Let us who are in the front ranks, strong
and healthy, go back to look after the weaklings who loiter to their
peril.

The root of bitterness. There may be some evil root lurking in some
heart, hidden now, but which Wi1l bear a terrible harvest of misery to
many. So was it in Israel once, when Achan conceived thoughts of
covetousness, and brought evil on himself, and mourning on the host
whose defeat he had brought about. If we can discover the presence of
such roots of bitterness, let us, with much searching of our own souls,
humility, and prayer, root them out ere they can spring up to cause
trouble.

The profane and early-minded. Of these Esau is the type, “who for one
morsel of meat sold his birthright.” Alas are there not many such? For
one momentary gratification of the flesh, they forfeit not their
salvation perhaps (we are not told that even Esau forfeited that); but
their power to lead, to teach, to receive and hand on blessing to the
Church.

Are any such reading these words? Let them beware! Such choices are
sometimes irrevocable. So was it with Esau. He wept and cried like some
trapped animal; but he could not alter the destiny he had made for
himself. The words “place for repentance” do not refer to his personal
salvation, but to the altering of the decision which he had made as a
young man, and which his father ratified. He could not undo. What he
had written, he had written. And so there may come a time when you
would give everything you possess to have again the old power of
blessing and helping your fellows; but you will find that for one
moment’s sensual gratification, the blessed prerogative has slipped
from your grasp-never-never-never to return. Wherefore, let us eagerly
and diligently look both to ourselves and our fellow-believers in the
Church of God.
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XXX. SINAI AND SION

“Ye are come unto Mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, . . . and
to an innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of
the firstborn; . . and to God the Judge of all; and to the spirits of just
men made perfect; and to Jesus; and to the blood of sprinkling, that
speaketh better things than that of Abel. “-HEBREWS xii. 22-24.

To how great splendor had these Hebrew Christians been
accustomed-marble courts, throngs of white-robed Levites, splendid
vestments, the state and pomp of symbol, ceremonial, and choral psalm!
And to what a contrast were they reduced-a meeting in some hall or
school, with the poor, afflicted, and persecuted members of a despised
and hated sect! It was indeed a change, and the inspired writer knew it
well; and in these magnificent words, the sublime consummation and
crown of his entire argument, he sets himself to show that, for every
single item they had renounced, they had become possessed of a
spiritual counterpart, a reality, an eternal substance, which was
compensation told over a thousand fimes.

“Ye are come.” He refuses to admit the thought of it being a future
experience, reserved for some high day, when the heavenly courts shall
be thronged by the populations of redeemed and glorified spirits. That
there will be high days of sacred festivity in that blessed state is
clear from the Apocalypse of the beloved Apostle. But it is to none of
them that these words allude. Mark that present tense, “Ye are come.”
Persecuted, weary, humiliated, these Hebrew Christians had already come
to Mount Sion, to the city of the living God, and to the festal throngs
of the redeemed. That they saw not these by the eye, and could not
touch them by the hand of sense, was no reason for doubting that they
had come to these glorious realities. And what was true of them is true
of each reader of these lines who is united to the Lord Jesus by a
living faith.

WE BELONG TO MOUNT SION. “Ye are not come unto the mount that might be
touched and that burned with fire, . . . but ye are come unto Mount
Sion.” At the bidding of these two words two mountains rise before us.
First, Sinai, stern and naked, rifted by tempest, cleft by earthquake,
the center and focus of the vast sandstone passages which conducted the
pilgrim host, stage above stage, until it halted at its foot.

But, grand as Sinai was by nature, it must have been grander far on
that memorable day in which all elements of terror seemed to converge.
There was the flash of the forked lightning out of the blackness of the
brooding clouds. There was the darkness of midnight; the peal of
thunder, the reverberations of which ran in volumes of sound along
those resounding corridors; the whirlwind of tempest, and the voice of
words which they entreated they might not hear any more. And all was
done to teach the people the majesty, the spirituality, and the
holiness of God. The result was terror, struck into the hearts of
sinners, trembling at the contrast between the greatness and holiness
of God and their own remembered murmurings and shortcomings. Even Moses
said: “I exceedingly fear and quake.”

In contrast with this stands Mount Sion, the gray old rock on which
stood the palace of David and the Temple of God-sites sacred to Jewish
thought for holy memories and divine associations. “The Lord hath
chosen Sion, he hath desired it for his habitation. This is my rest
forever; here will I dwell; for I have desired it.” To the pious Jew,
Mount Sion was the joy of the whole earth, the mountain of holiness,
the city of the Great King. Her palaces, gray with age, were known to
be the home and haunt of God. The very aspect of the hoary hills must
strike panic into the heart of her foes. And her sons walked proudly
around her ramparts, telling her towers, marking her bulwarks,
considering her palaces, whilst fathers told to their children the
Stories of her glory which in their boyhood they too had received
(Psalm xlviii.).

The counterpart of this city is ours still, ours forever. The halo of
glory has faded off those ancient stones, and has passed on to rest on
the true city of God, of which the foundations are Righteousness, the
walls Peace, and the gates Praise; which rises beyond the mists and
clouds of time, in the light that shines not from the sun or moon, but
from the face of God. In other words, somewhere in this universe there
is a holy society of souls, pure and lovely, the elite of the family of
man, gathered in a home which the hand of man has never piled, and the
sin of man has never soiled. Its walls are jasper, its gates pearl.
Into it nothing can enter that defiles or works abomination, and deals
in lies.

The patriarchs caught sight of that city in their pilgrimage; it
gleamed before their vision, beckoning them ever forward, and
forbidding their return to the country from which they had come out.
And the Seer of Patmos beheld it descending from God out of heaven,
bathed in the divine glory.

To that city we have come. It has come down into our hearts; day by day
we walk its streets; we live in its light, we breathe its atmosphere,
we enjoy its rights. We have no counterpart in our experience of Mount
Sinai, with its thunder and terror; but, thank God, we have the reality
of Mount Sion, with its blessed and holy privileges. Sinai is the law,
temporary and intermediate; Sion, the Gospel, eternal and abiding.
Sinai is full of human resolutions and vows, made to be broken; Sion is
the election of grace. Sinai is terrible with the thunder of law; Sion
is tender with the appeals of the love of the heart of God.

WE BELONG TO A GREAT FESTAL THRONG. The converted Jew might miss the
vast crowds that gathered at the annual feasts, when the tribes of the
Lord went up; whilst kinsfolk and acquaintance took sweet counsel
together, as they went to the house of God in company. But, to the
opened eye of faith, the rooms where they knelt in worship were as full
of bright and festal multitudes as the mountain of old was full of
horses and chariots of fire. And these are for us also.

There is an innumerable company of angels. Myriads. Thousand thousands
minister to our Lord; ten thousand times ten thousand stand before him.
When, therefore, the saintly spirit ascends the altar steps of true
devotion, it passes through a vast host of sympathetic spirits, all of
whom are devoted to the same Master, and are joining in the same act of
worship. Listen! Do you not hear the voice of many angels around the
throne as you draw nigh?

There is also the general assembly and Church of the first-born. We
meet the Church of the redeemed each time we sincerely worship God. We
may belong to some small section of the visible Church, unrecognized
and unknown by the great bulk of our fellow-believers. We may be
isolated from all outward fellowship and communion with the saints,
imprisoned in the sick-chamber, or self-banished to some lone spot for
the sake of the Gospel; but nothing can exclude us from living
communion with saintly souls of all communions and sects and
denominations and names.

Your name may be written on no communicants’ roll, or church register.
But is it written in the Lamb’s Book of Life in heaven? If so, then
rejoice! This is more important than if the spirits were subject to
you. And, remember, whenever you worship God you are ascending the
steps of the true temple, in company with vast hosts of souls, whether
on this side or on the other of the veil of sense. Neither life nor
death nor rite nor church order can divide those who, because they are
one with Christ, are forever one with each other.

There are also the spirits of just men made perfect. If the former
phrase rather speaks of the New Testament believers, this may be taken
to describe the Old Testament saints. Or, if the one designates those
who are still serving God on earth, the other probably refers to those
who have passed into the presence of God, and have attained their
consummation and bliss.

Who can be lonely and desolate, who can bemoan the past, who can
disparage the present, when once the spirit is able to realize that
rejoicing company, in earth and heaven, circling around the Saviour as
planets around the central sun, and sending in tides and torrents of
love and worship? Yea, who can forbear to sing, as the ear detects the
mighty harmonies of every creature which is in heaven, and on the
earth, and under the earth, saying, “Blessing, and honor, and glory,
and power, be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb
forever.”

WE ARE COME TO THE BLOOD OF JESUS. We dare not approach the august
Judge of all, were it not for the Mediator between God and men, Jesus
Christ the righteous. Nor would he avail for his chosen work, unless he
had shed his most precious blood, which has ratified the new covenant,
and cleansed away our sins, and now ever avails to sprinkle us from an
evil conscience, removing each stain of guilt so soon as the soul
confesses and seeks forgiveness, with tears of penitence and words of
faith.

It speaks better things than Abel’s. That was the blood of martrydom;
this of sacrifice. That accursed, as it cried from the ground; this
only pleads for mercy. That denounced wrath; this proclaims reconciling
love. That led to punishment which branded the murderer; this issues in
salvation. That was unto death; this is unto life.

All blood has a cry. Listen to the cry of the blood of Jesus. It speaks
to man for God. It speak~ to God for man. It tells us that there is no
condemnation, no wrath, no judgment; because the thunderstorm broke and
exhausted itself on Calvary. And when we go to our Father, it pleads
for us from the wounds of the Lamb as it had been slain.

Oh, precious blood! if better than that of Abel, how much better than
all the blood of all the beast1 ever slain; than all the sacrifices
ever offered; than al1 the tears or prayers ever presented in the
strength of human virtue: we cannot, we will not refuse thee, or turn
away from thy pleading cry, or reject him who once spake from the
cross, and now speaks from heaven!
__________________________________________________________________

XXXI. THE THINGS THAT CANNOT BE SHAKEN

This word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are
shaken, as of things that are made; that those things which cannot be shaken
may remain.”-HEBREWS xii. 27.

WHAT majesty there is in these words! They bear the mint mark of Deity.
No man could presume to utter them; but they become the august speaker.
Their original setting is even more magnificent, as we find them in the
Book of Haggai: “Thus saith the Lord of hosts; Yet once, it is a little
while, and I will shake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and
the dry land; and I will shake all nations, and the Desire of all
nations shall come.”

These words were first spoken to encourage the Jewish exiles on their
return from Babylon to their ruined Temple and city. The elder men wept
as they thought of the departed glories of earlier days, and God
comforted them, as he delights to comfort those who are cast down. “Be
comforted,” said he in effect, “there is a crisis coming, which will
test and overthrow all material structures; and in that convulsion the
outer form will pass away, however fair and costly it may be, whilst
the inner hidden glory will become more apparent than ever; nay, amid
all the sounds of wreck and change, there will come the Desire of all
nations, the substance of which these material objects are but the
fading and incomplete anticipation.”

These Hebrew Christians were living in the midst of a great shaking. It
was a time of almost universal trial. God was shaking not earth only,
but also heaven. The Jewish tenure of Palestine was being shaken by the
Romans, who claimed it as their conquest. The interpretation given to
the Word of God by the rabbis was being shaken by the fresh light
introduced through the words and life and death of Jesus. The supremacy
of the Temple and its ritual was being shaken by those who taught that
the true Temple was the Christian Church, and that all the Levitical
sacrifices had been realized in Christ. The observance of the Sabbath
was being shaken by those who wished to substitute for it the first day
of the week.

The first symptoms of this shaking began when Jesus commenced to teach
and preach in the crowded cities of Palestine, and all people flocked
about him. The successive throes became more obvious when the Jewish
leaders sought to silence the Apostles and stay the onward progress of
the Church. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles, and the Epistles, are
full of evidence of the intensity of that revolution which must have
made many godly people tremble for the Ark of God. And the climax of
all came in the fearful siege of Jerusalem, when, once and forever, the
Jewish system was shattered, the Temple burned, the remaining vessels
sunk in the Tiber, and the Jews were driven from the city which was
absolutely essential for the performance of their religious rites. The
whole New Testament is witness to the throes of one of the mightiest
spiritual revolutions that ever happened; as great in the spiritual
sphere as the French Revolution was in the temporal.

It was amidst these fires that this Epistle was written. “Take heart,”
says the inspired writer; “these shakings come from the hand of God.”
Listen to his own words, I shake. And they shall not last forever, yet
this once; nor will they injure anything of eternal worth and truth. He
shakes all things, that the material, the sensuous, and the temporal
may pass away; leaving the essential and eternal to stand out in more
than former beauty. But not a grain of pure metal shall be lost in the
fires; not a fragment of heaven’s masonry shall crumble beneath the
shock.

In such a time we are living now. Everything is being shaken and
tested. But there is a divine purpose in it all, that his eternal truth
may stand out more clearly and unmistakably, when all human traditions
and accretions have fallen away, unable to resist the energy of the
shock. And who will bewail this too bitterly? Who shall weep because
the winds strip the trees of their old dead leaves, if only the new
spring verdure may be able to show itself? Who shall lament that the
heavy blow shatters the mold, if only the perfect image shall stand out
in complete symmetry? Who shall mourn over the passing away of the
heaven and the earth, if, as they break up, they reveal beneath them
the imperishable beauty of the new heavens and the new earth in which
dwells Righteousness?

THEOLOGICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. There was a time when men
received their theological beliefs from their teachers, their parents,
or their Church without a word of question or controversy. There was
none that moved the wing, or opened the mouth, or chirped. It is not so
now; the air is filled with questionings. Men are putting into the
crucible every doctrine which our forefathers held dear. There is no
veneration shown for time honored creeds or theological distinctions or
doctrinal formularies. The highest themes, such as the Nature of the
Atonement, the Necessity of Regeneration, the Duration of Future
Punishment, are being criticised in the public press.

Many children of God are very distressed about this, and fear for the
truth of the Gospel. They speak as if there were no other agents in the
conflict but those of mortal birth. They lose sight of the eternal
issues at stake, and the unseen forces which are implicated in the
conflict. Is it likely that God will allow his precious Gospel to be
overshadowed or robbed of all essential elements? Has he maintained it
in its integrity for these ages, and is he now suddenly become a mighty
man who cannot save? When it seemed as if evangelical doctrine had died
out of the world in the sixteenth century, because it lingered only
amid some obscure and humble saints, he raised up one man, who rolled
back the tides of error, and reared once more the standard of Gospel
truth; and can he not do it again?

In these terrible shakings, not one jot or tittle of God’s Word shall
perish; not one grain of truth shall fall to the ground; not one stone
in the fortress shall be dislodged. But they are permitted to come,
partly to test the chaff and wheat as a winnowing-fan; but chiefly that
all which is temporal and transient may pass away, whilst the simple
truth of God becomes more apparent, and shines forth unhidden by the
scaffolding and rubbish with which the builders have obscured its
symmetry and beauty. “The things which cannot be shaken shall remain.

ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEMS ARE BEING SHAKEN. It is not enough that any
religious system should exist; it is asked somewhat rudely to show
cause why it should continue to exist. The spirit of the age is
utilitarian, and is reluctant to consider any plea for mercy which is
not based on a clear evidence of service rendered to its pressing
necessities.

The signs of this are abundantly evident. Now it is the
Disestablishment of the Church which is proposed; a proposal which
fills with horror those who regard it as necessary for the maintenance
of Christianity in our midst. Teachers of religion are challenged to
show reason for assuming their office, or of claiming special
prerogatives. Methods of work are being weighed in the balances;
missionary plans trenchantly criticised; religious services
metamorphosed. Change is threatening the most time-honored customs; and
all this is very distressing to those who have confused the essence
with the form, the jewel with the casket, the spirit with the temple in
which it dwells. But let us not fear. All this is being permitted for
the wisest ends. There is a great deal of wood, hay, and stubble in all
our structures which needs to be burned up; but not an ounce of gold or
silver will ever be destroyed. The waves may wash off the weed which
has attached itself to the harbor wall; but they will fail to start one
constituent stone. The simplicity of early Church life has been
undoubtedly covered over with many accretions which hinder the progress
of the Church and impede her work; and we may hail any visitation,
however drastic, which shall set her free. But the Church herself is
founded on a rock, and the gates of hell shall never prevail against
her.

Well was it for the Church of Christ when the days of persecution lay
sorely on her. Never was she so pure, so spiritually powerful, as then.
And if such days should ever be allowed to return, and God were to
shake her fabric with the fierce whirlwinds of martyrdom, there would
be no need for anxiety. The time-servers, the mere professors, the
creatures of fashion would stand revealed; but those who had
experienced the work of God in their souls would endure to the end, and
their true character would be manifested. “The things that cannot be
shaken will remain.”

OUR CHARACTERS AND LIVES ARE CONSTANTLY BEING SHAKEN. What a shake that
sermon gave us which showed that all our righteousnesses, on which we
counted so fondly, were but withered leaves! What a shake was that
commercial disaster which swept away in one blow the savings and credit
of years, that were engrossing the heart, and left us only what we had
of spiritual worth! What a shake was that temptation which showed that
our fancied sinlessness was an empty dream, and that we were as
sensitive to temptation as those over whom we had been vaunting
ourselves.

What has been the net result of all these shakings? Has a hair of our
heads perished? The old man has perished; but the inward man has been
daily renewed. The more the marble has wasted, the more the statue has
grown. As the wooden centers have been knocked down, the solid masonry
has stood out with growing completeness. “The things which could not be
shaken have remained.”

“Go on, great Spirit of God: shake with thine earthquakes even more
violently these characters of ours, that all which is not of thee, but
of us, and therefore false and selfish, may be revealed and overthrown,
so that we may learn our true possessions. And as we see them saved to
us from the general wreck, we shall know that, having been given us by
thyself, they must partake of thine own permanence and eternity. Let us
learn the worst of ourselves, that we may learn to prize thy best.” At
the most these shakings are temporary. “Only this once,” child of God!
Then, nevermore!

THERE ARE A FEW THINGS WHICH CANNOT BE SHAKEN. God’s Word. Heaven and
earth may pass away; but God’s Word-never! All flesh is grass, and all
the glory of man, his opinions, his pretensions, his pomp and pride, as
the flower of grass, beautiful, but evanescent; but the Word of the
Lord shall stand forever, and this is the Word which by the Gospel is
being preached. Let us not fear modern criticism; it cannot rob us of
one jot or tittle of God’s truth. Scripture will shake it off, as the
Apostle did the viper which fastened on his hand, and felt no hurt.

God’s Love. Our friends’ love may be shaken by a rumor, a moment’s
neglect, a change in our estate; but God’s love is like himself,
immutable. No storm can reach high enough to touch the empyrean of his
love. He never began to love us for anything in ourselves, nor will he
cease to love us because of what he discovers us to be. The love of
God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord, is unassailable by change or
shock.

God’s Eternal Kingdom. “We receive a kingdom which cannot be shaken.”
Amid all our revolutions and political changes that Kingdom is coming.
It is assuming body and shape and power. It is now in mystery, but it
shall soon be revealed. And it cannot be touched by any sudden attack
or revolt of human passion. “The God of heaven shall set up a kingdom,
which shall never be destroyed.”

Let us count up our inalienable and imperishable treasures; and though
around us there is the terror of the darkness or the pestilence of the
noontide, we shall be kept in perfect peace; as when some petty
sovereign eyes with equanimity the mob arising to sack his palace,
because long ago he sent all his treasures to be kept in the strong
cellars of the Bank of England.

This world of change and earthquake is not our rest or home. These
await us where God lives, in the city which hath foundations, and in
the land where the storm rages not, but the sea of glass lies
peacefully at the foot of the throne of God. We may well brace
ourselves to fortitude and patience, to reverence and Godly fear; since
we have that in ourselves and yonder which partakes of the nature of
God, and neither thieving time can steal it, nor moth corrupt, nor
change affect.

It is out of a spirit like this that we are able to offer service that
pleases God. Too often there is a self-assumption, a vainglory, an
energy of the flesh, that must be in the deepest degree objectionable
to his holy, loving eye. It partakes so much of the unrest and chafe of
the world around. But when once we breathe the Spirit of the Eternal
and Infinite, our hand becomes steadier, our heart quieter, and we
learn to receive his grace. We do not agonize for it; we claim and use
it, and we serve God with acceptance, through the merits of Jesus
Christ our Lord.
__________________________________________________________________

XXXII. GOD A CONSUMING FIRE.

Our God is a consuming fire.”-HEBREWS xii. 29.

THIS is one of the shortest texts in the Bible. It takes rank with
those other three brief sentences which declare the nature of God: God
is Light, God is Love, God is Life. But to many it is one of the most
awful sayings in the whole of Scripture. It rankles in the memory;
recurs continually to the uneasy conscience; and rings its wild tocsin
of alarm in the ear of the anxious inquirer. And yet there is an aspect
in which it may be viewed which will make it one of the most
comforting, precious passages in the whole range of inspiration.

Fire is indeed a word significant of horror. To be awakened from sleep
by that one awful cry will make the flesh tremble and the heart stand
still. A baby’s cradle wrapped in flame; a beloved form suddenly
enveloped in a burning fiery furnace; a ship on fire amid the wild
expanse of the homeless ocean, and slowly burning down to the level of
the waves-in any of these figures you have a suggestion of almost
unparalleled horror.

And yet, for all that, what comfort and homelikeness and genial
blessedness there are in the kindly glow of firelight! There is no sign
of more abject poverty than the fireless grate. And however warm the
rooms may be in Russia or France, the traveler greedily longs for the
blaze of the open fireplace of his native land. Besides, what should we
do without this strong, good-natured giant, which toils for us so
sturdily? It draws our carriages along the metal track. It drives the
machinery of our factories. It disintegrates the precious ore from its
rocky matrix. It induces a momentary softness in our toughest metals,
so that we can shape them to our will. The arts of civilized life would
be impossible but for this Titan worker.

It is obvious, therefore, that whilst Fire is the synonym for horror
and dismay, yet it is also full of blessing and good-will. It is the
former only when its necessary laws are violated. It is the latter when
those laws are rigorously and reverently observed. Yes, and are not
destruction and ruin the strange and unnatural work of fire? whilst its
chosen mission is to bless and beautify and enrich; consuming only the
dross and thorns and rubbish, so that there may be a clearer revelation
of the enduring realities over which it has no power.

When, therefore, our God is compared to fire, is it only because of the
more terrible aspects of his nature, which are to be dreaded by
transgressors? Is there not also, and perhaps more largely, a
suggestion of those beneficent qualities which are needed for our
purity and comfort? Surely there is a strong flavor of such
characteristics in the assurance given to us by the prophet Isaiah,
“The light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for a flame:
and it shall burn and devour his thorns and his briers in one day”
(Isa. x. 17).

Fire in the Word of God is not always terrible. When of old God came
down on Sinai, its upper peaks were veiled with impenetrable folds of
smoke, like the smoke of a furnace. And in the heart of the smoke there
was the appearance of devouring fire. There is dread here! Bounds had
been set to keep the people back; but a special message must be see fit
to warn them against breaking through to gaze, lest the fire should
break forth upon them. But there was no harm so long as they kept
without the barriers; and when Moses entered into the very heart of it,
it did not singe a hair of his head, and injured him no more than when
it played round the fragile acacia bush, which burned with fire without
being consumed, not a leaf shriveled, nor a twig scorched. It is quite
true that in the desert pilgrimage there was much of the punitive
aspect in the divine fire; as when there came out a fire from the Lord,
and consumed the two hundred and fifty men with censers who had joined
in Korah’s rebellion, and had spoken contemptuously of God’s anointed
servants: but, on the other hand, it did not hurt one other soul; and
these were destroyed, awfully indeed, but almost too suddenly to feel
the keen smart of pain. And surely that fire did a beneficent work in
staying the further progress of evil, which would have honeycombed the
whole nation and led to their destruction as a people.

In the days of Elijah the fire of God consumed two captains and their
fifties; but the captains and their troops were full of wanton
insolence. There was no hurt done to him who knelt at the mountain
foot, beseeching the man of God with reverence and humility. And when,
shortly afterward, the great prophet was to go home, it was a chariot
of fire in which he sat himself, as in some congenial and friendly
element, to waft him to his home.

And on the day of Pentecost when each head bent low beneath the sound
as of a mighty rushing wind, a moment afterward each was girt with
fire. Apostles, disciples, and women alike experienced this sacred
investiture; but it hurt them not. They were far from being perfect
characters; and yet there was evidently nothing to fear in the descent
of that fiery baptism. They were baptized with the Holy Ghost, but they
were unconsumed.

Do not these instances shed light upon our text?

OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE; AND THERE IS TERROR IN THE SYMBOL. But the
terror is reserved for those who unceasingly and persistently violate
his laws and despise his love. For those who willfully follow courses
of sin, after they have received the knowledge of the truth, there is
doubtless a fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation. On
those who will not obey the Gospel of the Lord Jesus, clearly presented
to them, vengeance will be taken in flaming fire. No words can
exaggerate the terror, the anguish, the dreadfulness of their fate. Sin
is no light matter. In this world even it is fearfully avenged. Walk
through certain wards in our hospitals, and tell me if anything could
exceed the horror, the agony, of the penalty which is being inflicted
on those who have flagrantly violated the laws of nature. And, so far
as we can see, the physical penalties which follow upon wrongdoing are
not unto life and restoration, but unto death and destruction. It is
necessary that these sufferings should be veiled from the eye of man;
but surely they must be taken into account when we estimate God’s
treatment of sin. And if such pain, keen as fire, consumes those who
violate physical law, surely we must admit that there is a still more
awful doom for those who violate the laws of God’s love and grace and
pleading mercy.

God forbid that we should say one word to lessen men’s dread of the
penal consequences of sin. There is a great danger lest, amid our
growing conceptions of the love of God, we should come to think that he
is altogether such a one as we are inclined to be in our dealings with
our children, soft, easy, and indulgent. God is love; and yet he
permits the little child to be burned, if it plays heedlessly with
flame. God is love; but he permits bodies to rot in loathsome disease,
without hope of cure, if men persistently do despite to his law. God is
love; but he allows the whole course of a life to be blasted by one
yielding to transgression and sin. And thus, though God is love, it is
possible for sins to be punished with sufferings, bitter as the gnawing
worm, keen as the fire that is not quenched.

If once we realized these things (and we should realize them if we
would quietly consider the clear statements of the Word of God on such
matters), we should come to understand much better the desperate nature
of sin; and to yearn with deeper compassion over those who obstinately
resist the grace of God, either following the evil courses suggested by
their own hearts, or led captive by the devil at his will.

O disobedient soul, who hast read these words thus far, stop and
bethink thee of thy danger! Beware lest thou be as the chaff or thorns,
which are burned up with unquenchable fire, on the part of the Lord
himself. Be quick to turn to him and live. Yet if thou suffer
irretrievable ruin, remember thou wilt have only thyself to blame;
because thou hast broken the elementary laws of thy nature, and hast
set thyself in opposition to the God who loves thee, and would redeem
thee, but whom thou hast refused and defied. If only thou wouldst bend
thy stubborn neck and sutbmit to shelter thyself in the person and work
of Jesus, God’s perfect holiness would bring thee, not hurt, but
blessing and help.

OUR GOD IS A CONSUMING FIRE; AND THERE IS COMFORT AND BLESSING IN THE
THOUGHT. When we yield to God’s love, and open our hearts to him, he
enters into us, and becomes within us a consuming fire; not to
ourselves, but to the evil within us. So that, in a very deep and
blessed sense, we may be said to dwell with the devouring fire, and to
walk amid the eternal burnings.

Fire is warmth. We talk of ardent desire, warm emotion, enthusiasm’s
glow and fire; and when we speak of God being within us as fire, we
mean that he will produce in us a strong and constant affection to
himself. Do you long for more love? you really need more of God: for
God is love; and when he dwells in the heart, love dwells there in
power. And there is no difficulty in loving him or loving men with the
love which has entered in majestic procession in the entrance of God.
Live in God, make room for God to live in you; and there will be no
lack to the love which shall exemplify in daily action each precept of
the holy psalm of love (1 Cor. xiii.).

Fire is light. We are dark enough in our natural state; but when God
comes into the tabernacle of our being, the shekinah begins to glow in
the most holy place, and pours its waves of glory throughout the whole
being: so that the face is suffused with a holy glow, and there is an
evident elasticity and buoyancy of spirits which no world joy can
produce or even imitate. The light that shone on the face of Moses was
different from that which shone on the face of Jesus. That was flung on
it from without; this welled up from within. But the latter rather than
the former is the true type of the blessed effect produced on that
nature which becomes the temple of the indwelling God.

Fire is purity. ” How long, think you, would it take a workman with
hammer and chisel to get the ore from the rocks in which it lies so
closely imbedded? But if they are flung into the great cylinder, and
the fires fanned to torrid heat, and the draught roars through the
burning mass, at nightfall the glowing stream of pure and fluid metal,
from which all dross and rubbish are parted, flows into the waiting
mold.” This is a parable of what God will do for us. Nay, more: he will
burn up the wood, hay, and stubble, the grit and dross, the selfishness
and evil of our nature; so that at last only the gold and silver and
precious stones shall remain. The bonds that fetter us will be
consumed; but not a hair of our heads shall fall to the ground.

“The Lord shall sit as a refiner of silver.” He the refiner, and he the
fire. Contact with God, being bathed in his Holy Spirit, the perpetual
yielding of the nature to him, will work a marvelous change upon us. At
first the face of the melting metal may be dark and lurid-deep orange
red, over which a flickering flame shall pass; but, as the process is
pursued, the color will become lighter, the dark fumes will pass off,
and the metal shall bear the appearance of the highly polished mirror,
reflecting the beholder’s face. The process may be long; but the result
is sure.

Is not fire painful and terrible, though applied by infinite love? It
may be so; but he will not ply us with more than we can bear, and he
will enable us to endure. And it will be more than a compensation, as
we find one after another of the old evils losing its power. We shall
never in this life be free from a sinful tendency, which seems part of
our human nature. Nor shall we ever, on this side of heaven, be
perfect; but we may expect to be growingly transformed into the image
of the Son of God.

God, who art as fire, be thou a consuming fire to our inbred sins; burn
deeply into our inmost hearts, until all that grieves thee is compelled
to yield to the holy intensity of thy grace, and our whole being, made
free from sin, begins to serve thee in holiness and righteousness,
through Jesus Christ, who came to kindle thy Sacred Fire on the earth!
__________________________________________________________________

XXXIII. THE UNCHANGING SAVIOR

“Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and to-day, and forever.” HEBREWS xiii.
8.

THREE times over in this chapter, the closing chapter of an Epistle the
study of which has been so pleasant and helpful, the sacred writer
urges his readers to think kindly of those who ruled over them. The
full force of the Greek word is better represented by the marginal
rendering guide, than by the word rule. But in any case he referred to
those who were the spiritual leaders and teachers of the flock. The
three injunctions are-Remember (ver. 7); Obey (ver. ‘7); Salute (ver.
23).

It is a proud name for the Christian minister to be called a leader.
But unless he has some other claim to it than comes from force of
character, eloquence, or intellectual power, his name will be an empty
sound, the sign of what he might be rather than of what he is. Those
who are qualified to lead other men must be themselves close followers
of Christ; so that they may be able to turn to others and say, “Be ye
followers of me, even as I also am of Christ;” “Be followers together
with Me.”

But the Christian minister must also watch for souls (ver. 17). He is
not sent to his charge to preach great sermons, to elaborate brilliant
orations, or to dazzle their intellects; but to watch over their souls,
as the shepherd watches over his flocks scattered upon the downs, while
the light changes from the gray morning, through the deep tints of the
noon, into the last delicate flush of evening far up on the loftiest
cliffs. He must indeed keep careful watch, for he must give an account
in the evening; of his hand every missing one will be required.

It is told of the holy Melville, that his wife would sometimes find him
on his knees in the cold winter night; and on asking him to return to
bed, he would reply, “I have got fifteen hundred souls in my charge,
and fear that it is going ill with some of them.” It is not difficult
to remember or obey or salute men like that. They carry their Master’s
sign upon their faces. They are among Christ’s most precious gifts to
his Church.

But there is this sorrow connected with all human leaders and teachers.
However dear and useful they are, they are not suffered to continue by
reason of death. One after another they pass away into the spirit
world, to enter upon their loftier service, to give in their account,
to see the Master whom they have loved. The last sermon lies unfinished
on the study table; but they never come there to complete it. The final
word is spoken. The closing benediction is given. The ministry is done.
But what a relief it is to turn from men to Christ: from the constant
change in human teachers to the unchanging Master; from the
under-shepherds who are here today but gone tomorrow, to the chief
Shepherd and Bishop of souls who watches his sheep in the evening
shadows of this era, equally as in the first bright beams of its
Pentecostal morning!

This is the meaning of our writer (ver. 7). The verb is in the past
tense: “Remember them which had the rule over you, such as spoke unto
you the word of God: the end of whose life considering, imitate their
faith.” Evidently they had been lately called to witness the end of the
life and ministry of some who had been very precious to them. And, as
their hearts were sorrowing, their attention was turned from the
changing guide and leader to the ever-living, unchanging Lord, Jesus
Christ, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.

WHAT IS DENIED. It is denied that either time or mood or circumstances
or provocation or death can alter Jesus Christ our Lord.

Time changes us. Your portrait, taken years ago, when you were in your
prime, hangs on the walls of your home. You sometimes sadly contrast it
with your present self. Then the eye flashed with fires which have been
quenched with many tears. Then the hair was raven and thick, which is
now plentifully streaked with the gray symptoms of decay. Then the face
was unseamed by care, unscarred by conflict; but now how weary and
furrowed! The upright form is bent, the step has lost its spring.

But there is a greater difference between two mental and two physical
portraitures. Opinions alter. The radical becomes conservative; temper
changes, and affections cool. Names and faces which used to thrill are
recalled without emotion. Faded chaplets lie where once flowers of
rarest texture yielded their breath in insufficient adoration. Thus is
it with those who are born of woman. Time does for them what hardship
and authority and suffering would fail to effect. And sometimes the
question arises, Can time alter him whose portrait hangs on the walls
of our hearts, painted in undying colors by the hands of the four
Evangelists?

Of course, time takes no effect on God, who is the f AM; eternal and
changeless. But Jesus is man as well as God. He has tenses in his
being: the yesterday of the past, the to-day of the present, the
to-morrow of the future. It is at least a question whether his human
nature, keyed to the experiences of man, may not carry with it, even to
influence his royal heart, that sensitiveness to the touch of time
which is characteristic of our race. But the question tarries only for
a second. The moment it utters itself it is drowned by the great
outburst of voices which exclaim, “He is the same in the meridian day
of the present as he was in the yesterday of his earthly life; and he
will be the same when to-morrow we shall have left far behind us the
shores of time and are voyaging with him over the tideless, stormless
depths of the ocean of eternity.”

If we could ask the blessed dead if they had found him altered from
what they had expected him to be from the pages of the holy Gospels,
they would reiterate the words of the angels-this same Jesus; they
would tell us that his hair is white as snow, not with age, but with
the light of intense purity; that his face shines still as the sun in
his strength, with no sign of westering; and that his voice is as full
as when he summoned Lazarus from the grave, as mellifluous as when it
called Mary to recognize him. Time is foiled in Jesus. He has passed
out of its sphere, and is impervious to its spell.

Moods change us. We know people who are like oranges one day and lemons
the next; now a summer’s day, and, again, a nipping frost; rock and
reed alternately. You have to suit yourself to their varying mood,
asking to-day what you would not dare to mention to-morrow; and thus
there is continual unrest and scheming in the hearts of their friends.

But it is not so with Jesus. Never tired, or put out, or variable.
Without shadow cast by turning. In his earthly life, wherever we catch
sight of him-on the mountainside, on the waters of the lake, beneath
the olive trees in the evening; in the synagogue, or alone; at work in
the sunlight, at prayer in the moonlight, at supper in the upper room,
he was always the same Jesus. And the apparent exceptions when, for a
certain purpose, he entered his manner and made himself strange, only
brought his essential sameness into stronger relief. And so is he
to-day. And we shall become happy and strong when we remove from all
thought of others’ moods or our own, and settlt down under the
unchanging empyrean of his love.

Circumstances change us. Men who in poverty and obscurity have been
accessible and genial, become imperious and haughty when they become
idolized for their genius and fawned on for their wealth. The butler
who would have done any favor for Joseph in the prison forgot him when
he was reinstated in the palace. New friends, new spheres, new
surroundings, alter men marvelously.

What a change has passed over Jesus Christ since mortal eyes beheld
him! Crowned with glory and honor; seated at the right hand of the
Father; occupied with the government of all worlds; worshiped by the
loftiest spirits. Can this be he who trod our world, confessing his
ignorance of times and seasons, surrounded by a handful of the poor and
despised, an outcast and a sufferer? It is indeed he. But surely it
were too much to expect that he should be quite the same! Nay, but he
is. And one proof of it is that the graces which he shed on the first
age of the Church were of exactly the same quality as those which we
now enjoy.

We know that the texture of light is unaltered; because the analysis of
a ray, which has just reached us from some distant star, whence it
started as Adam stepped across the threshold of Eden, is of precisely
the same nature as the analysis of the ray of light now striking on
this page. And we know that Jesus Christ is the same as he was; because
the life which throbbed in the first believers resulted in those very
fruits which are evident in our own hearts and lives, all having
emanated from himself. He has to govern the worlds; but he is still as
accessible to the vilest, as gentle and tender-hearted, as humble and
lovely, as when that Jewish woman could not restrain her envy of the
mother who had borne him, and when he sat to rest amid the sycamores of
Bethany, and the sisters rested by his feet.

Sin and provocation change us. We forgive seven times, but draw the
line at eight. Our souls close up to those who have deceived our
confidence. We are friendly outwardly, but there is frost within. We
forgive, but we do not forget; and we are never the same afterward as
before. But sin cannot change Christ’s heart, though it may affect his
behavior. If it could do so, it must have changed his feelings to
Peter. But the only apparent alteration made by that sad denial was an
increased tenderness and considerateness. “Go, tell my disciples, and
Peter, that I am risen.” “He was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve.”
“He said unto Peter, Lovest thou me?”

Your sins may be many and aggravated; and you are disposed to think
that you should give up all profession of being his at all. But you do
not know him. He is not oblivious to your sins; he has noticed each one
with sharp pangs of pain. His eye has followed you in all your way ward
wanderings; but he is absolutely unchanged. You are as dear to him as
when, in the first blush of your young hope, you knelt at his feet, and
were clothed, as the old warriors used to be, by a stainless tunic over
your armor of proof. Naught that you have said or done has lessened his
love by a single grain, or turned it aside by a hair’s-breadth. He
loved you in eternity; he foreknew all that you would be before he set
his heart upon you; he cannot be surprised by any sudden outburst of
your evil. You may be, but he cannot be; and he laid his account for
this, and more, when he undertook to redeem. Your sins, child of God,
can no more alter your Lord’s heart than can the petulance of a child
alter its mother’s.

WHAT IS AFFIRMED. He is the same in his Person (Heb. i. 12). His
vesture alters. He has exchanged the gaberdine of the peasant for the
robes of which he stripped himself on the eve of his incarnation; but
beneath those robes beats the same heart as heaved with anguish at the
grave where his friend lay dead. We shall yet see, though in
resurrection glory, the face on which stood the bead-drops of bloody
sweat; and touch the hands that were nailed to the cross; and hear the
voice of the Son of man. What does the mystery of the forty days teach
us, except this, that he carried with him from the grave, and upward to
his home, the identical body of his incarnation-though the corruptible
had put on incorruption, and the mortal had put on immortality? Thus he
is the same as “Jesus.”

He is also the same in his once (Heb. vii. 24). Aaron died on Hor, and
all his successors in mystic procession followed him. Ancient
burying-grounds are closely packed with the remains of priests, abbots,
and fathers. The ashes of the shepherds are mingled with those of their
flocks. The office remains, but the occupants pass. But Christ, as the
Anointed Priest, is ever the same. Unweariedly he pursues his chosen
work as the Mediator, Priest, and Inter cessor of men. He does not
fail, nor is he discouraged. Though the great world of men neither
knows nor heeds him, yet does he bear it up upon his heart, as when he
first pleaded for his murderers from his cross. “Forgive them, Father,
forgive them !” is his unwearying constant cry. And though the age be
black with tempest and red with blood, his pity wells up like one of
those perennial fountains which heat cannot scorch, nor cold freeze;
because they draw their supplies from everlasting sources. He is the
same as “Christ.”

WHAT IT IMPLIES. It implies that he is God. It implies, too, that the
Gospels are a leaf out of his eternal diary, and may be taken as a true
record of his present life. What he was, he is. He still sails with us
in the boat; walks in the afternoon with us to Emmaus; stands in our
rnidst at nightfall, opening to us the Scriptures. He wakes our
children in the morning with his “Talitha cumi”; calls the boys to his
knees; watches them at their play; and rebukes those who would forbid
their Hosannas. He feeds us with bread and fish; lights fires on the
sands to warm us; shows us the right side of the ship for our nets; and
interests himself with the results of our toils. He takes us with him
to the brow of the Transfiguration Mount, and into the glades of
Gethsemane.

When we are slow to believe, he is slower still to anger. He teaches us
many things, graduating his lessons, according to our ability to
understand. When we cannot bear more, he shades the light. When we
strive for high places, he rebukes. When soiled, he washes our feet.
When in peril, he comes across the yeasty waves to our help. When
weary, he leads us aside to rest.

Oh, do not read the Gospels as a record merely of the past, but as a
transcript of what he is ever doing. Each miracle and parable and trait
is a specimen of eternal facts, which are taking place by myriads, at
every moment of the day and night; the achievements of the ever-
living, ever-working Lord. No lake without that figure treading its
waters. No storm without that voice mightier than its roar. No meal
without that face uplifted in blessing, or that hand engaged in
breaking. No grave without that tender heart touched with sorrow. No
burden without those willing shoulders to share the yoke.

Oh, take me not back through the long ages to a Christ that was! He is!
He lives! He is here! I can never again be alone, never grope in the
dark for a hand, never be forsaken or forlorn. Never need a Guide, a
Master, a Friend, or a Husband to my soul. I have him, who suffices for
uncounted myriads in the dateless noon of eternity. He who was
everything in the yesterday of the past, and who will be everything in
the to-morrow of the future, is mine to-day; and at each present moment
of my existence-here, and in all worlds.

The Revised Version adds a significant yea to this verse, to bring out
the emphatic accentuation which the writer lays upon the
unchangeableness of Jesus. It is well placed. And with what a thunder
of assent might that word be uttered! All who are of this opinion
answer YEA. First, the innumerable company of angels utters it; then
the spirits of just men made perfect reaffirm it; then the universe of
created things, the regularity of whose laws and processes is due to
it, bursts forth with one great Amen. God himself says Amen; “for how
many soever be the promises of God, in him is the yea: wherefore also
through him is the Amen, unto the glory of God.
__________________________________________________________________

XXXIV. THE ESTABLISHED HEART

“It is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with
meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein.”
HEBREWS xiii. 9.

IT is a good thing to have an established heart. With too many of us
the inner life is variable and fickle. Sometimes we have days of deep
religious earnestness, when it seems impossible for us to spend too
long a time in prayer and fellowship with God. The air is so clear that
we can see across the waters of the dividing sea, to the very outlines
of the heavenly coasts. But a very little will mar our peace, and bring
a veil of mist over our souls, to enwrap us perhaps for long weeks. Oh
for an established heart!

Now there is one thing which will not bring about this blessed state of
establishment. And that is indicated by the expression, “meats”; which
stands for the ritualism of the Jewish law. There is ever a tendency in
the human heart toward a religion of rites. It is so much easier to
observe the prescriptions of an outward ceremonial than to brace the
soul to faith and love and spiritual worship. Set the devotee a round
of external observance, it matters little how rigorous and searching
your demands, and the whole will be punctually and slavishly performed,
with a secret sense of satisfaction in being thus permitted to do
something toward procuring acceptance and favor with God.

There is a great increase of ritualistic observance amongst us. We
behold with astonishment the set of our times toward genuflexions; the
austerities of Lent; the careful observance of prolonged and incessant
services; and all the demands of a severe ritual. People who give no
evidence in their character or behavior of real religion are most
punctilious in these outward religious rites. Young men will salve
their consciences for a day of Sabbath-breaking by an early
celebration. In many cases these things are revivals of ancient
Babylonish customs, passed into the professing Church in the worst and
darkest days of its history. But their revival points to the strong
religious yearnings of human nature, and the fascination which is
exerted by outward rites in the stead of inward realities.

But “meats” can never establish the inner life. The most ardent
ritualist must confess to the sense of inward dissatisfaction and
unrest, as the soul is condemned to pace continually the arid desert of
a weary formalism, where it comes not to the green pastures or the
waters of rest. “They have not profited them that have been occupied
therein.”

Another obstruction to an established heart arises from the curiosity
which is ever running after divers and strange doctrines. In all ages
of the Church, men have caught up single aspects of truth, distorting
them out of the harmony of the Gospel, and carrying them into
exaggerated and dangerous excess; and directly any one truth is viewed
out of its place in the equilibrium of the Gospel, it becomes a heresy,
leading souls astray with the deceitfulness of the false lights that
wreckers wave along the beach. And when once we begin to follow the
vagaries and notions of human teachers, apart from the teaching of the
Spirit of God, we get into an unsettled, restless condition, which is
the very antipodes to the established heart.

There is only one foundation which never rocks, one condition which
never alters. “It is good that the heart be established with grace.”
Primarily, of course, the established heart is the gift of God. “He
which stablisheth us with you in Christ is God.” “The Lord shall
establish thee an holy people unto himself.” “The God of all grace make
you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you.” We need therefore to
pray to him to give us the heart established in grace. But there are
certain conditions also indicated in this context with which we do well
to comply.

WE MUST FEED ON CHRIST. The very denial of the tenth verse proves that
there is an altar whereof we have a right to eat. Not the Jews only,
but Christians also, lay stress on eating; but ah, how different the
food which forms their diet ! In the case of that ancient system out of
which these Hebrew Christians had just emerged, the priests ate a
considerable portion of the sacrifices which the people offered on the
altar of God. This was the means of their subsistence. In consideration
of their being set apart wholly to the divine service, and having no
inheritance in the land, “they lived by the altar.” But we, who are
priests by a &viner right, have left behind us the Tabernacle, with its
ritual and sacrifices, and cannot feed on these outward meats without
betraying the spirituality of the holy religion we profess.

Our altar is the cross. Our sacrifice is the dying Saviour. Our food is
to eat his flesh. “This is the bread which cometh down from heaven,
that a man may eat thereof, and not die.” “The bread is my flesh, which
I will give for the life of the world.”

Eating consists of three processes: apprehension, mastication, and
assimilation; and each of these has its spiritual counterpart in that
feeding upon Christ which is the very life of our life. We, too, must
apprehend him, by the careful reading of the Word of God. The Word is
in the words. His words are spirit and life. We need not be always
reading them, any more than we should be always eating. But just as a
good meal will go on nourishing us long after we have taken it, and
indeed when we have ceased to think about it, so a prolonged prayerful
study of the Word of God will nourish our souls for long afterward.

We, too, must fulfill the second process of eating by meditating long
and thoughtfully on all that is revealed to us in the Word of the
person and work of the Lord Jesus. It is only by allowing our heart and
mind to dwell musingly on these sacred themes that they become so real
as to nourish us. Better read less and meditate more, than read much
and meditate little.

We too must assimilate Christ, until he becomes part of our very being,
and we begin to live, yet not we, because Christ lives in us, and has
become our very life. Our Lord told his disciples that he lived by the
Father; and said that, if they desired to live in the same dependent
state on himself, they must “eat him ” (John vi. 57). In Christ’s own
case his being had reached such a pitch of union with his Father’s that
to see or hear or know him was to see and hear and know God. And if we
would only spend more time alone with him in prayerful, loving
fellowship, a great change would pass over us also, and we should be
transformed into his likeness in successive stages of glory upon glory.

At regular intervals we meet around the table of the Lord to eat the
bread and drink the wine. But our feeding on him ought to be as
frequent as our daily ordinary meals.

Why should we feed the spiritless than we do the body? Alas! how we
pamper the latter, and starve the former, until we get past the sense
of desire! We spoil our appetite by feeding it with the cloying
sweetmeats and morsels of sense. We are content to live as parasites on
the juices of others, instead of acquiring nourishment at first hand
for ourselves. What wonder that we are carried about by every wind of
doctrine, and lack the established heart? And perhaps there would be
nothing better for the whole of us Christian people than a revival of
Bible study, a fresh consecration of the morning hour, a regular and
systematic maintenance of seasons of prolonged fellowship with our
Master and Lord.

IF WE WOULD FEED ON CHRIST, WE MUST GO WITHOUT THE CAMP. In the solemn
ritual of the great Day of Atonement it was ordained that the bodies of
all the victims which had suffered death as sin-offerings, and of which
the blood had been sprinkled before the mercy-seat, should be burned
Without the camp (Lev. xvi. 27). And in this mysterious specification,
two truths were probably symbolized: first, that in the fullness of
time, Jesus, the true sin-offering of the world, would suffer outside
the city gate; and secondly, that men must leave the principles and
rites of earthly systems behind them, if they Would realize all the
blessedness of acceptance with God through the sacrifice of Christ.

If, then, we would have Jesus as our food, our joy, our life, we must
not expect to find him in the camps which have been pitched by men of
this world. We must go forth from all such; from the camp of the
world’s religiousness equally as from that of its sensuality; from the
tents of its formalism and ritualism, as well as from those of its
vanity.

The policy of going forth without the camp is the only safe course for
ourselves, as it is the only helpful one for the world itself. There
are plenty who argue that the wisest policy is to stop within the camp,
seeking to elevate its morals. They do not realize that, if we adopt
their advice, we must remain there alone; for our Lord has already
gone. It is surely unbefitting that we should find a home where he is
expelled. What is there in us which makes us so welcome, when our
Master was cast out to the fate of the lowest criminals? Besides, it
will not be long before we discover that, instead of our influencing
the camp for good, the atmosphere of the camp will infect us with its
evil. Instead of our leveling it up, it will level us down.

The only principle of moving the world is to emulate Archimedes in
getting a point without it. All the men who have left a mark in the
elevation of their times have been compelled to join the pilgrim host
which is constantly passing through the city gates, and taking up its
stand by the cross on which Jesus died. Looking back on that memorable
spot, we seem to see it thronged with the apostles, martyrs, reformers,
and prophets of every age, who invite us to join them. It remains with
us to say whether we will linger amid the luxury and fascinations which
allure us to the camp; or whether we will dare to take up our cross,
and follow our Master along the Via Dolorosa, bearing his reproach. Ah,
young hearts, secret disciples, halters between two opinions, the issue
of such a choice cannot be doubtful! With the cry, Deus vult, you will
join this new crusade, and take your stand with Jesus, at the
trysting-place of his cross.

IF WE GO OUTSIDE THE CAMP, WE MUST BEAR HIS REPROACH. It is related of
the good Charles Simeon, of Cambridge, that, at the commencement of his
career as an evangelical clergyman at Cambridge, he encountered such
virulent abuse and opposition that his spirit seemed on the point of
being crushed. Turning to the Word of God for direction and
encouragement, his eye lighted on the following passage: ” As they came
out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to
bear his cross.” The similarity of the name to his own arrested him,
and he was moved to new courage with the thought of his oneness with
the sufferings of Jesus. So is it with us all. If we are reproached for
the name of Jesus, happy are we; and we should rejoice, inasmuch as we
are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that, when his glory is revealed,
we also may be glad with exceeding joy.

How marvelous is it to learn the closeness of the bonds by which we are
bound to the saints of the past When we are reproached for being
Christians, we know something of what Moses felt when taunted in the
royal palace of Egypt with his Hebrew origin; but “he esteemed the
reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt,
because he had respect unto the recompense of reward.”

BUT WHILST BEARING CHRIST’S REPROACH, WE SHALL FIND THE ONLY CONTINUING
CITY. It is very remarkable that, as we tear ourselves away from the
gate of the city, and say farewell to what had seemed to be a symbol of
the most enduring fabrics of earthly permanence, we are really passing
out of the transient and unreal to become citizens of the only enduring
and continuing City.

The greatest cities of human greatness have not continued. Babylon,
Nineveh, Thebes, the mighty cities of Mexico-all have passed. Buried in
mounds, on which grass grows luxuriantly; while wild beasts creep
through the moldering relics of the past. But, amid all, there is
arising from age to age a permanent structure, an enduring City, a
confederation which gathers around the unchanging Saviour, and has in
it no elements of decay. Do we enough live in this City in our habitual
experience? It is possible to tread its golden streets as we plod along
the thoroughfares of earth’s great cities; to mingle in its blessed
companies, and share its holy exercises, though apparently we spend our
days in dark city offices, and amid money-loving companions. The true
pilgrim to tho City really lives in the City. It will not be long, and
it shall not be only an object for faith and spiritual vision, it shall
become manifest. See, it comes! it comes! the holy City out of heaven
from God, radiant with his light, vocal with song, the home of saints,
the metropolis of a redeemed earth, the Bride of the Lamb, for whom the
universe was made.
__________________________________________________________________

XXXV. THE CLOSING PRAYER

“Now the God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that
great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,
make you perfect in every good work to do his will, working in you that
which is well pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ; to whom be glory
forever and ever. HEBREWS xiii. 20, 21.

THROUGHOUT this Epistle, the inspired writer has been appealing to man.
Through successive paragraphs he has poured forth a burning stream of
argument, remonstrance, or appeal; now opening the full peal of Sinai’s
thunders, and now the wail of Calvary’s broken heart, and finally
summoning the most honored names in Hebrew story to enforce his words.

All this is over now. He can say no more. The plowing and sowing and
harrowing are alike complete. He must turn from earth to heaven, from
man to God; and leave his converts and his work with that glorious
Being whose cause he had striven so faithfully to plead, and who alone
could crown his labors with success. There are many splendid outbursts
of prayer beginning these Epistles; but amongst them all, it is
impossible to find one more striking or beautiful than this.

THE BURDEN OF THE PRAYER is that these Hebrew Christians may be made
perfect to do God’s will. The word “perfect” means to set in joint, or
articulate. Naturally, we are out of joint, or, at the best, work
stiffly; but the ideal of Christian living is to be so perfectly “set”
that God’s purposes may be easily and completely realized in us.

There is no higher aim in life than to do the will of God. It was the
supreme object for which our Saviour lived. This brought him from
heaven. This determined his every action. This fed his inner life with
hidden meat. This cleared and lit up his judgment. This led him with
unfaltering decision into the valley of death. This was the stay and
solace of his spirit as he drank the bitter cup of agony. Throughout
his mortal life his one glad shout of assurance and victory was, “I
delight to do thy will, my God; yea, thy law is within my heart.” And
human lives climb up from the lowlands to the upland heights just in
proportion as they do the will of God on earth as it is done in heaven.
If every reader of these lines would resolve from this moment to do the
will of God in the very smallest things-with scrupulous care, counting
nothing insignificant, shrinking from no sacrifice, evading no
command-life would assume entirely a new aspect. There might be a
momentary experience of suffering and pain; but it would be succeeded
by the light of resurrection, and the new song of heaven, stealing like
morning through the chambers of the soul.

God is love; to do his will is to scatter love in handfuls of blessing
on a weary world. God is light; to do his will is to tread a path that
shines more and more unto the perfect day. God is life; to do his will
is to eat of the Tree of Life, and live forever, and to drink deep
draughts of the more abundant life which Jesus gives. God is the God of
hope; to do his will is to be full of all joy and peace, and to abound
in hope. God is the God of all comfort; to do his will is to be
comforted in all our tribulation by the tender love of a mother. God is
the God of peace; to do his will is to learn the secret inner calm,
which no storm can reach, no tempest ruffle. God is the God of truth;
to do his will is to be on the winning side, and to be assured of the
time when he will bring out our righteousness as the light, and our
judgment as the noonday.

Why will you not, my readers, who have followed these chapters thus far
to the last, resolve from this moment that your will shall henceforth
say “Yes”to God’s will, and that you will live out what be wills and
works within? Probably, at the very outset, you will be tested by your
attitude to some one thing. Do not try to answer all the suggestions or
inquiries that may be raised tumultuously within, but deal immediately
and decisively with that single item. Dare to say, with respect to it,
“I will thy will, my God.” And immediately the gate will open into the
rapture of a new life. But remember that his will must be done in every
work to which you put your hands; and then every work will be good.

We cannot tell how the mysterious promptings of our will are able to
express themselves in our limbs and members. We only know that what we
will in ourselves is instantly wrought out through the wonderful
machinery of nerve and muscle. And we are quick to perceive when,
through some injury or dislocation, the mandate of the will fails to be
instantly and completely fulfilled. Nor do we rest content until the
complete communication is restored.

But in all this there is a deep spiritual analogy. We are members,
through grace, of the body of Christ. The will lies with him; and if we
were living as we ought, we should be incessantly conscious of its holy
impulses, withdrawing us from this, or prompting us to that. Our will
would not be obliterated, but would elect to work in perpetual
obedience and subordination to the will of its King. Alas! this is not
our case. We are too little sensible of those holy impulses. On rare
occasions we realize and yield to them. But how many of them fail to
reach or move us, because we are out of joint! What prayer could better
befit our lips than that the God of peace, the true surgeon of souls,
would put us in joint, to do his will, with unerring accuracy,
promptitude, and completeness!

MARK THE GUARANTEES THAT THIS PRAYER SHALL BE REALIZED. The appeal is
made to the God of peace. He whose nature is never swept by the storms
of desire or unrest; whose one aim is to introduce peace into the heart
and life; whose love to us will not brook disappointment in achieving
our highest blessedness, he must undertake this office; he will do it
most tenderly and delicately; nor will he rest until the obstruction to
the inflow of his nature is removed, and there is perfect harmony
between the promptings of his will and our immediate and joyous
response.

He brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of
the sheep. To have given us a Shepherd was much; but to have given us
so great a Shepherd is marvelous. He is the great Shepherd who died,
just as he is the good Shepherd who knows his flock, and the chief
Shepherd who is coming again. He is great, because of the intrinsic
dignity of his nature; because of his personal qualifications to save
and bless us; because of the greatness of his unknown sufferings; and
because of the height of glory to which the Father hath exalted him.
The words “brought again” are very expressive. They contain the idea of
“brought up.” More is meant than the reanimation of the dead body of
Christ. There is included, also, his exaltation by the right hand of
God, to be a Prince and a Saviour. And, surely, if our God has given us
such a Shepherd, and raised him to such a glory, that he may help us
the more efficiently, there is every reason why we should confidently
count on his doing all that may needed in us, as he has done all that
was needed for us.

He will certainly respect the everlasting covenant, which has been
sealed with blood. God has entered into an eternal covenant with us
to be our God and Friend. That covenant, which does not depend on
anything in us, but rests on his own unchanging nature, has been
ratified by the precious blood of his Son. As the first covenant was
sealed by the sprinkled blood of slain beasts, so the second was sealed
by the precious blood of Christ. “This is my blood of the new
testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins.” Thus
spoke our Saviour on the eve of his death, with a weight of meaning
which this Epistle was needed to explain. And is it likely that he who
has entered into such a covenant with our souls-a covenant so
everlasting, so divine, so solemn-will ever go back from it, or allow
anything to remain undone which may be needed to secure its perfect and
efficient operation? It cannot be! We may count, without the slightest
hesitation, on the God of peace doing all that is required to perfect
us in every good work to do his will.

THE DIVINE METHOD will be to work in us. It is necessary first that we
should be adjusted so that there may be no waste or diversion of the
divine energy. When that is done, then it will begin to pass into and
through us in mighty tides of power. “God working in you.” It is a
marvelous expression! We know how steam works mightily within the
cylinder, forcing up and down the ponderous piston. We know how sap
works mightily within the branches, forcing itself out in bud and leaf
and blossom. We read of a time when men and women were so possessed of
devils that they spoke and acted as the inward promptings led them.
These are approximations to the conception of the text, which towers
infinitely beyond.

Have we not all been conscious of some of these workings? They do not
work in us mightily as they did in the Apostle Paul, because we have
not yielded to them as he did. Still, we have known them when the
breath of holy resolution has Swept through our natures; or we have
conceived some noble purpose; or have been impelled to some deed of
self-sacrifice for others. These are the workings of God within the
heart, not in the tornado only, but in the zephyr; not in the thunder
alone, but in the still small voice. Every sigh for the better life,
every strong and earnest resolution, every determination to leave the
nets and fishing-boats to follow Jesus, every appetite for fellowship,
every aspiration heavenward-all these are the result of God’s
in-working.

How careful we should be to gather up every divine impulse, and
translate it into action! We must work out what he works in. We must
labor according to his working, which works in us mightily. We must be
swift to seize the fugitive and transient expression, embodying it in
the permanent act.

It does not seem so difficult to live and work for God when it is
realized that the eternal God is energizing within. You cannot be
sufficiently patient to that querulous invalid, your patience is
exhausted; but God is working his patience within you: let it come out
through you. You cannot muster strength for that obvious Christian
duty; but God is working that fruit in your innermost nature; be
content to let it manifest itself by you. You are incompetent to
sustain that Christian work, with its manifold demands; but stand
aside, and let the eternal God work in and through you, to do by his
strength what you in your weakness cannot do.

The Christian is the workshop of God. In that mortal but renewed nature
the divine Artisan is at work, elaborating products of exquisite beauty
and marvelous skill. Would that we might be less eager to give the
world ourselves, and more determined that there should be a
manifestation through all the gateways of our being of the wondrous
in-working of the God of peace! Then we might say, with some approach
to the words of our Lord, to such as demand evidences of his
resurrection and life, “How sayest thou, Prove to me the resurrection
of Jesus? the words which I speak, I speak not of myself; but my
Saviour, who dwelleth in me, he doeth the works.”

THE RESULT will be that we shall be well-pleasing in his sight, through
Jesus Christ. Our good works can never be the ground of our acceptance
or justification. The very best of them can only please God through
Jesus Christ. Our purest tears need washing again in his blood. Our
holiest actions need to be cleansed ere they can be viewed by a holy
God. Our best prayers and gifts need to be laid on the altar which
sanctifies all it touches. We could not stand before God for a moment,
save by that one sufficient substitutionary sacrifice, once offered by
Jesus on the cross, and now pleaded by him before the throne.

At the same time, our Father is pleased with our obedient loyalty to
his will. He gives us this testimony, that we please him; as Enoch did,
who walked with him before the flood. And it should be the constant
ambition of our lives so to walk as to please him, and to obtain from
him a faint echo of those memorable words which greeted our Saviour as
he stepped upon the waters of Baptism: “This is my beloved Son, in whom
I am well pleased.”

To him be glory forever and ever! Directly the soul is right with God,
it becomes a vehicle for God; and thus a revenue of glory begins to
accrue to God, which ceases not, but augments as the years roll by. And
the time will never come when the spirit shall not still pour forth its
glad rejoicings to the glory of him to whom is due the praise of all.

If your life is not bringing glory to God, see to it that at once you
set to work to ascertain the cause. Learning it, let it be dealt with
forthwith. Hand yourself over to God to make you and keep you right.
And thus begin a song of love and praise, which shall rise through all
coming ages, to the Father who chose you in Christ, to the Saviour who
bought you with his blood, and to the Spirit who sanctifies the heart;
one adorable Trinity, to whom be the glory forever and ever, Amen.
__________________________________________________________________

Indexes
__________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture References

Genesis

[2]1:26-28 [3]1:27 [4]1:28 [5]14:19-20 [6]15:17 [7]22:16

Exodus

[8]16 [9]17 [10]19:5-6 [11]21:6 [12]21:14 [13]23:22-31
[14]24:10-11 [15]25:9 [16]25:36 [17]25:40 [18]26:30
[19]27:8 [20]29:37 [21]30:6 [22]30:34-38

Leviticus

[23]2 [24]16:11-13 [25]16:27 [26]17

Numbers

[27]13

Deuteronomy

[28]12:23 [29]33:2

2 Kings

[30]7:8

Job

[31]7:17 [32]7:20

Psalms

[33]2 [34]8 [35]8:4 [36]8:5-6 [37]40:6 [38]45 [39]48
[40]68:17 [41]90 [42]95:7 [43]97:7 [44]102 [45]104:4
[46]106:24-26 [47]110 [48]110 [49]118:27 [50]144:3

Isaiah

[51]10:17 [52]53:5

Jeremiah

[53]31:31-34

Hosea

[54]1

Micah

[55]6:6

Zechariah

[56]4:2

Matthew

[57]5 [58]22:44

Mark

[59]16:19

Luke

[60]1:9 [61]10:9 [62]24 [63]24:20

John

[64]1 [65]1:3 [66]1:12 [67]2 [68]3:2 [69]5 [70]6:53-56
[71]6:57 [72]6:63 [73]12:31 [74]13 [75]13:4 [76]16 [77]17
[78]19:34

Acts

[79]2:34 [80]2:34 [81]4 [82]7:53 [83]7:53 [84]27:23-24

Romans

[85]3:24-25 [86]4:16 [87]4:24 [88]5 [89]8:34 [90]12:19
[91]42:11-12

1 Corinthians

[92]1 [93]3:16 [94]13 [95]15:24-26

Galatians

[96]3:19

Ephesians

[97]1:3 [98]2:8 [99]4:3

Philippians

[100]2:7-8 [101]2:8-9

Colossians

[102]1:16

1 Timothy

[103]1:1

2 Timothy

[104]2:22 [105]3

Hebrews

[106]1:1-2 [107]1:3 [108]1:3-4 [109]1:4 [110]1:12 [111]2:1
[112]2:2 [113]2:5-9 [114]2:6 [115]2:8 [116]2:10 [117]2:10
[118]2:14-15 [119]2:17 [120]3:12 [121]4:9 [122]4:12
[123]4:16 [124]5:7-8 [125]6:4-6 [126]6:12 [127]6:17-18
[128]7:6-7 [129]7:17 [130]7:24 [131]7:25 [132]8:5 [133]8:10
[134]9:2 [135]9:9 [136]9:14 [137]9:22 [138]9:26 [139]10:5
[140]10:10 [141]10:14 [142]10:20 [143]10:38 [144]11:1
[145]12:1-2 [146]12:6 [147]12:14-15 [148]12:22-24 [149]12:27
[150]12:29 [151]13:8 [152]13:9 [153]13:20-21

James

[154]3:18

1 Peter

[155]1 [156]2:21 [157]2:24

2 Peter

[158]1:3 [159]1:11

1 John

[160]1:7 [161]3:3 [162]5:6

Revelation

[163]1:5 [164]1:6 [165]1:9 [166]3:17-20 [167]5:9 [168]8:3
[169]21:12
__________________________________________________________________

Index of Scripture Commentary

Hebrews

[170]1:1-2 [171]1:3-4 [172]1:4 [173]2:1 [174]2:5-9
[175]2:10 [176]2:14-15 [177]2:17 [178]3:12 [179]4:9
[180]4:12 [181]4:16 [182]5:7-8 [183]6:4-6 [184]6:12
[185]7:17 [186]7:25 [187]8:5 [188]8:10 [189]9:2 [190]9:14
[191]9:22 [192]9:26 [193]10:5 [194]10:38 [195]11:1
[196]12:1-2 [197]12:6 [198]12:14-15 [199]12:22-24 [200]12:27
[201]12:29 [202]13:8 [203]13:9 [204]13:20-21

On this day...

• Nahum 3 - 2023
• Nahum 2 - 2023
• Always Tell the Truth - 2009
• Standard of Truth - 2009
• THE SECRET OF GUIDANCE - 2009
• Frederick Brotherton Meyer - Evangelist - 2009
• Proclaiming the Excellencies of Christ, Not Prosperity, Among the Nations - 2009
• Statement on Poverty - 2009
• We Beheld His Glory, Full of Grace and Truth - 2009
• Christian Poverty - 2009