58 Tl 9/1 EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE Expositions of Holy Scripture A COMMENTARY ON THE BIBLE COMPLETE IN 32 VOLyUMES B? tbe IRev, Hlexant)er^flDacIaren Contents of tbe Tirst Series, Six Uolumes, $7.$o I The Boole of Genesis. 2. The Book of Isai ih (Chapters I-XLVIII) . 3. The Gospel of St. Matthew, Vol. I (Chapters I— VIII). 4. The Gospel of St. Matthew. Vol. II ( Chapters IX - XVII). 5. The Gospel of St. Matthew. Vol. Ill (XVlll- XXVIII). 6. The Book of Isaiah (Chapten XUX— LXVI) and the Book o» Jeremiah. Contents of the Second Series, Six Uolumes, $7.50 1 . The Gospel of St. Mark, Vol. I (Chapters I-VIIl) . 2. The Gospel of St. Mark, Vol. II (Chapters VIII-XVI). 3. The Books of Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers. 4. The Books of Deuteronomy. Joshua. Judges. Ruth and I. Samuel. 3. Second Book of Samuel, First Book of Kings. Second Book of Kingt (to Chapter Vll). 6. The Acti of the Apostles, Vol. I (Chapters I— XUI) . Contents of thi third Series, Six Uolumes, $7.50 1 . The Acts of the Apostles. Vol. II (Chapters XllI to end). 2. The Gospel of Sl. John, Vol. I (Chapters I-VIII). 3. The Gospel of St. John, Vol, II (Chapters IX-XIV) . 4. The Gospel of St. John, Vol. Ill (Chapters XV XXI). 5. The Second Book of Kings (from Chapter VllI), The Books of Chronidps, Ezra, Nehemiah. 6. The Books of Esther, Job, Proverbs and Ecdetiastes. Contents of tbe Tourtl) Series, Six Uolumes, $7.50 1 . The Book of Psalms. Vol. I. 2. The Book of Psalms, Vol. II. 3. Elzekiel. Daniel and the Minor Prophets. 4. The Book of St. Luke. Vol. I. 5. The Book of St. Luke. Vol. II. 6. The Epistle to the Romans. Contents of tbe Tlftl) Series, CigM Uolumes, $10.00 1 . First and Second CorinthiaDS. 2. Ephesians. 3. Cialatians and Philippians. 4. Colossians to Timothy. 5. Timothy, Titus. Philemon. 6. Hebrews. James. 7. First and Second Peter, First John. 8. Second and Third John, Jude, Revelation. Dr. Alexander Maclaren's incomparable position as the prince of ex- positors has for more than a generation been recognized throughout the English-speaking world. He holds an unchallenged position, and it is believed that this series, embodying as it docs the treasure store of Dr. Maclaren's lifework, will be found of priceless value by preachers, teachers, and readers of the Bible generally. SOLD ONLY IN SERIES MA'V ')?» 19A1 THE EPISTLE TO S^o.^:,.^ THE HEBREWS (CHAPTERS VII. TO XIII.) THE GENERAL EPISTLE OF JAMES BY ALEXANDER MACLAREN D.D., LiTT.D. NEW YORK A. C. ARMSTRONG AND SON 3 & 5 WEST EIGHTEENTH STREET LONDON: HODDER AND STOUGHTON MCMX CONTENTS HEBREWS Righteousness Fibst, Peace Second (Heb. vil. 2) rAOB 1 The Priest whom we Need (Heb. vii. 26) 10 The Enthroned Servant Christ (Heb. viii. 1, 2) 20 The True Ideal (Heb. viii. 5) , 29 The Articles of the New Covenant (Heb. viii. 10) The Articles of the New Covenant (Heb. viii. 10) 46 The Articles of the New Covenant (Heb. viii. 11) 68 The Articles of the New Covenant (Heb. viii. 12) 62 The Priest in the Holy Place (Heb. ix. 11-14, 24-28) 72 Thh Enthroned Christ (Heb. x. 12) • 76 vi HEBREWS MOB PBRFBOTBD AMD BBINO Sanotivibd (Heb. X. 14) • .84 A Better and an Endubino Substance (Heb. x. 34) . 02 How TO OWN OuBSBLVBB (Heb. X. 80) • • .08 Seeking God (Heb. xi. 6) • • • • .106 Noah's Faith and Ours (Heb. xl. 7) • • .112 The Citt and thb Tbnt (Heb. xi. 0, 10) , • • 120 The Attachments and Detachments of Faith (Heb. xi. 13, R.V.) ••••.. 129 Seeking the Fatherland (Heb. xi. 14) • • • 188 The Future which Vindicates God (Heb. xi. 16) • 147 The Faith of Moses (Heb. xi. 24-27) • • • 166 The Cloud of Witnesses and their Leader (Heb. xii. 1, 2) . . . • • • .166 The Christian Life a Race (Heb. xii. 1) . . 177 Weights and Sins (Heb. xii. 1) . . • • 186 CONTENTS vii FAOB Thb Pebveotbr of Faith (Heb. xll. 2) • • •109 RssiSTiNQ UNTO Blood (Heb. xiL 4) • • .«jtf A Father's Disciplinb (Heb. xii. 10) ^ • • 218 Esau's Vain Tbabs (Heb. xll. 17) . • • ,227 With whom Faith Liyks (Heb. xii. 22, 23) . • • 238 Faith's Access to the Judob, and His Attendants (Heb. xii. 23) 247 The Mbssengbb ov the Ooyenant and its Seal (Heb. xii 21) 257 Refusing God's Voice (Heb. xii. 25) • • • 288 God's Voice and Man's Echo (Heb. xiii. 5, 6) • • 277 The UNCHANQiNa Christ (Heb. xiii. 8) • • •285 An Established Heart (Heb. xilL 0) • • • 294 Our Altar (Heb, xiii. 10, 15) . • • .803 • Without the Camp ' (Heb. xiii. 13, 14) . • • 818 viii JAMES The Christian Sacrifice (Heb. xiii. 15, 16) VAoa . 828 Great Hopes a Great Duty (Heb. xiii. 20) , , 832 The Great Prayer Based on Great Pleas (Heb. xiii. 21) . 812 JAMES Patience and Her Work (James i. 4) • 851 Divine Wisdom, and How to Get It (James i. 5) . 360 The Crown (James i. 12) . . • First-Fruits op His Creatures * (James i. 18) The Perfect Law and Its Doers (James i. 25) Pure Worship (James i. 27) • • Faith in His Name (James ii. 1) , • Faith Without Works (James ii. 14-23) . God's Friends (James ii. 23) • S68 876 • 807 . 406 415 . 421 A Watch on the Door of the Lips (James iii. 1-13) . 431 RIGHTEOUSNESS FIRST, PEACE SECOND 'First being, by interpretation. King of righteousDess, and after that also King of Salem, which is, King of peace.'— Heb. vii. 2. That mysterious, shadowy figure of the priest-king Melchizedec has been singularly illuminated and solidi- fied by recent discovery. You can see now in Berlin and London, letters written fourteen centuries before Christ, by a king of Jerusalem who describes himself almost in the very words which the Old and the New Testaments apply to Melchizedec. He says that he is a royal priest or a priestly king. He says that he derived his royalty neither from father nor mother, nor by genealogical descent ; and he says that he owes it to 'the great King' — possibly an equivalent to the 'Most High God'; of whom Melchizedec is in Scripture said to have been a worshipper. The name of the letter- writer is not Melchizedec, but the fact that his royalty was not hereditary, like a Pharaoh's, may explain how each monarch bore his own personal appellation, and not one common to successive members of a dynasty. And are not the names of King and city significant — 'King of righteousness . . . King of peace"? It sounds like a yearning, springing up untimely in those dim ages of oppression and strife, for a royalty founded on something better than the sword, and wielded for something higher than personal ambition. Such an ideal at such a date is like a summer day that has wandered into a cold March. But the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews imposes a meaning not only on the titles, but on their sequeucOi A 2 HEBREWS [ch. vii. Of course therein he is letting a sanctified imagination play round a fact, and giving to it a meaning which is not in it. None the less in that emphatic expression 'first King of righteousness, and after that also King of peace/ he penetrated very deeply into the heart of Christ's reign and work, and echoed a sentiment that runs all through Scripture. Hearken to one psalmist : 'The mountains shall bring peace to the people, and the little hills, by righteousness.' Hearken to another : 'Righteousness and peace have kissed each other.' Hearken to a prophet: 'The work of righteousness shall be peace ; and the effect of righteousness, quietness and assurance for ever.' Hearken to the most Hebrais- tic of New Testament writers : ' The fruit of righteous- ness is sown in peace.' Hearken to the central teaching of the most Evangelical, if I may so say, of New Testa- ment writers: 'Being justified' — made righteous — 'by faith, we have peace with God.' So the 'first' and the 'after that' reveal to us the very depth of Christ's work, and carry in them not only important teaching as to that, but equally important directions and guides for Christian conduct; and it is to this aspect of my text, and this only, that I ask your atten- tion now. The order which we have here, * first of all King of righteousness, and after that King of peace,' is the order which I shall try to illustrate in two ways. First, in reference to Christ's work on the individual soul; second, in reference to Christ's work on society and communities. First, then, here we have laid down the sequence in which I. Christ comes with His operations and His gifts to the soul that clings to Him. T.3] RIGHTEOUSNESS FIRST 8 First ' righteou8Qes8 . . . after . . . peace.* Now I need not do more than in a sentence remind you of the basis upon which the thoughts in the text, and all right understanding of Christ's work on an individual, repose, and that is that without righteousness no man can either be at peace with God or with himself. Not with God — for however shallow experience may talk effusively and gushingly about a God who is all mercy, and who loves and takes to His heart the sinner and the saint alike ; such a God drapes the universe in dark- ness, and if there are no moral distinctions which determine whether a man is in amity or hostility with God, then ' the pillared firmament itself is rottenness, and earth's base built on stubble.* No, no, brethren ; it sounds very tender and kindly; at bottom it is the cruellest thing that you can say, to say that without righteousness a man can please God. The sun is in the heavens, and whether there be mist and fog down here, or the bluest of summer skies, the sun is above. But its rays coming through the ethereal blue are warmth and blessedness, and its rays cut off by mists are dim, and itself turned into a lurid ball of fire. It cannot be — and thank God that it cannot — that it is all the same to Him whether a man is saint or sinner. I do not need to remind you that in like manner righteousness must underlie peace with oneself. For it is true to-day, as it was long generations ago, according to the prophet, that 'the wicked is like the troubled eea which cannot rest, whose waters throw up mire and dirt,' and, on the other hand, the promise is true still and for ever; 'O that thou hadst hearkened unto me, then had thy peace been like a river,' because 'thy righteousness ' will be ' like the waves of the sea.' For ever and ever it stands true that for peace with God, 4 HEBREWS [ch. vii. and for a quiet heart, and a nature at harmony with itself, there must be righteousness. Well, then, Jesus Christ comes to bring to a man the righteousness without which there can be no peace in his life. And that is the meaning of the great word which, having been taken for a shibboleth and 'test of a falling or a standing Church,' has been far too much ossified into a mere theological dogma, and has been weakened and misunderstood in the process. Justifica- tion by faith ; that is the battle-cry of Protestant com- munities. And what does it mean? That I shall be treated as righteous, not being so? That I shall be forgiven and acquitted ? Yes, thank God ! But is that all that it means, or is that the main thing that it means ? No, thank God ! for the very heart of the Christian doctrine of righteousness is this, that if, and as soon as, a man puts his trembling trust in Jesus Christ as his Saviour, then he receives not merely pardon, which is the uninterrupted flow of the divine love in spite of his sin, nor an accrediting him with a righteousness which does not belong to him, but an imparting to him of that new life, a spark from the central fire of Christ's life, * the new man which, after God, is created in right- eousness and true holiness.* Do not suppose that the great message of the gospel is merely forgiveness. Do not suppose that its blessed gift is only that a man is acquitted because Christ has died. All that is true. But there is something more than that which is the basis of that other, and that is that by faith in Jesus Christ, I am so knit to Him — ' He that is joined to the Lord' being 'one spirit' — as that there passes into me, by His gift, a life which is created after His life, and is in fact cognate and kindred with it. No doubt it is a mere germ, no doubt it needs cultivat- V. 2] RIGHTEOUSNESS FIRST 5 ing, developmont, carefully guarding against gnawing insects and blighting frosts. But the seed which is implanted, though it be less than the least of all seeds, has in itself the promise and the potency of triumphant growth, when it will tower above all the poisonous shrubs and undergrowth of the forest, and have the light of heaven resting on its aspiring top. Here is the great blessing and distinctive characteristic of Christian morality, that it does not say to a man : ' First aim after good deeds and so grow up into goodness,' but it starts with a gift, and says, ' Work from that, and by the power of that. " I make the tree good," ' says Jesus to us, 'do you see to it that the fruit is good.' No doubt the vegetable metaphor is inadequate, because the leaf is wooed from out the bud, and * grows green and broad, and takes no care,' but that effortless growth is not how righteousness increases in men. The germ is given them, and they have to cultivate it. First, there must be the impartation of righteousness, and then there comes to the mian's heart the sweet assur- ance of peace with God, and he has within him 'a conscience like a sea at rest, imaginations calm and fair.' 'First, King of righteousness; after that, King of peace.' Now if we keep firm hold of this sequence, a great many of the popular objections to the gospel, as if it were merely a means of forgiveness and escape, and a system of reconciliation by some kind of forensic expedient, fall away of themselves, and a great many of the popular blunders that Christian people make fall away too. For there are good folks to whom the great truth that ' God is in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing to them their trespasses,' and welcoming them to all the fulness of an overflowing 6 HEBREWS [ch. vii. love, has obscured the other truth that there is no peace for a Christian man continuous through his life, unless equally continuous through his life are his efforts to work out in acts the new nature which he has received. Thus my text, by the order in which it places righteous- ness and peace, not only illuminates the work of Christ upon each individual soul, but comes with a very weighty and clear direction to Christian people as to their course of conduct. Are you looking for comfort? Is what you want to get out of your religion mainly the assurance that you will not go to hell? Is the great blessing that Christ brings to you only the blessing of pardon, which you degrade to mean immunity from punishment? You are wrong. 'First of all, King of righteousness' — let that which is first of all in His gifts be first of all in your efforts too ; and do not seek so much for comfort as for grace to know and to do your duty, and strength to 'cast off the unfruitful works of darkness,' and to ' put on the armour of light.' The order which is laid down in my text was laid down with a different application, by our Lord Himself, and ought to be in both forms the motto for all Christian people. ' Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things '—comfort, sense of reconciliation, assurance of forgiveness, joyful hope, and the like, as well as needful material good — 'shall be added unto you.' And now, secondly, my text gives the order of II. Christ's work in the world, and of His servant's work after Him. Of course, our Lord's work in the world is simply the aggregate of His work on individual souls. But f.2] RIGHTEOUSNESS FIRST 7 for the sake of clearness we may consider these two aspects of it somewhat apart. In regard to this second part of my subject, I would begin, as I began in the former section, by reminding you that the only basis on which harmonious relations between men in com- munities, great or small, can be built, is righteousness, in the narrowest sense O'f the word, meaning thereby justice, equal dealing as between man and man, with- out partiality or class favouritism. Wherever you get an unjustly treated section or order of men, there you get the beginnings of war and strife. A social order built upon injustice, just in the measure in which it is so built, is based upon a quicksand which will suck it down, or on a volcano which will blow it to pieces. Injustice is the grit in the machine ; you may oil it as much as you like with philanthropy and benevolence, but until you get the grit out, it will not work smoothly. There is no harmony amongst men unless their association is based and bottomed upon righteous- ness. Jesus Christ comes into the world to bring peace at the far end, but righteousness at the near end, and therefore strife. The herald angels sang peace upon earth. They were looking to the deepest and ultimate issues of His mission, but when He contemplated its immediate results He had to say, 'Suppose ye that I bring peace on earth ? I tell you nay, but rather division.' He rode into Jerusalem 'the King, meek, and having salvation,' throned upon the beast of burden which symbolised peace. But He will come forth in the last fight, as He has been coming forth through all the ages, mounted on the white horse, with the sword girt upon His thigh in behalf of meekness and righteousness and truth. Christ, and Christianity 8 HEBREWS [ch. vn. when it keeps close to Christ, is a ferment, not an emollient. The full and honest application of Christ's teaching and principles to any society on the face of the earth at this day is bound to result in agitation and strife. There is no help for it. When a pure jet of water is discharged into a foul ditch, there will be much uprising of mud. Effervescence will always follow when Christ's principles are applied to existing institutions. And so it comes to pass that Christian men, in the measure in which they are true to their Master, turn the world upside down. There will follow, of course, the tranquillity that does follow on righteousness ; but that is far ahead, and there is many a weary mile to be trod, and many a sore struggle to be undertaken, before the kingdoms of this world become the Kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and strife ends for ever. Now, if this be so, then in this necessary char- acteristic of Christ's operation on the world, viz., disturbance arising from the endeavour to enthrone righteousness where its opposite has ruled — there results very plainly important teaching as to the duties of Christ's servants to take their full share in the fight, to be the knights of the Holy Ghost, the champions of righteousness. The Church ought to lead in the van of all assaults on hoary wrongs or modern forms of unrighteousness in municipal, political, national life. And it is the disgrace of the Church that so largely it leaves that contest to be waged by men who make no pretence to be Christians. There is, unfortunately, a type of Christian thinking and life, of which in many respects one would speak with all sympathy and admiration, which warns the Christian Church against casting itself into this V.2] RIGHTEOUSNESS FIRST 9 contest, in the alleged interest of a superior spirit- uality and a loftier conception of Evangelical trutli. I believe, as heartily as any man can — and I venture to appeal to those who hear me Sunday by Sunday, and from year to year, whether it is not so — that the preaching of Jesus Christ is the cure for all the world's miseries, and the banishment of all the world's un- righteousness ; but am I to be told that the endeavour to ax>i)ly the person and the principles of Jesus Christ, in His life and death, to existing institutions and evils, is not preaching Christ ? I believe that it is, and that the one thing that the Church wants to-day is not less of holding up the Cross and the Sacrifice, but more of pointing to the Cross and the Sacrifice as the cure of all the world's evils, and the pattern for all righteousness. It is difficult to do, it is made difficult by our own desire to be what the prophet did not think a very reputable position, 'at ease in Zion.' It is also made difficult by the way in which, as is most natural, the world, meaning thereby godless, organised society, regards an active Church that desires to bring its practices to the test of Christ's word. Muzzled watch- dogs that can neither bark nor bite are much admired by burglars. And a Church that confines itself to theory, to what it calls religion, and leaves the world to go to the devil as it likes, suits both the world and the devil. There was once a Prime Minister of England who came out of church one Sunday morning in a state of towering indignation because the clergyman had spoken about conduct. And that is exactly how the world feels about an intrusive Church that will push its finger into all soc-lal arrangements, and say about each of them, ' This must be as Christ commanded.' 10 HEBREWS [cH.vii. Brethren ! would God that all Christian men deserved the name of ' troublcrs of Israel.' There was once a prophet to whom the men of his day indignantly said, * O sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself in thy scabbard, rest and bo still.' And the answer was the only possible one, 'How can it be quiet, seeing that the Lord hath appointed it ? ' If you and I are Christ's servants, we shall follow the sequence of His operations, and seek to establish righteousness first and then peace. The true Salem is above. • My soul, there is a country Afar beyond the stars.' There ' sweet peace sits crowned with smiles.' The Bwords will then be wreathed with laurel and men ' shall learn war no more,' for the King has fought the great fight, 'and of the increase of His government and peace there shall be no end ... in righteousness and justice, from henceforth even for ever.' Let us take Him for ' the Lord our righteousness,' and we shall blessedly find that * this Man is our peace.' Let us take arms in the Holy War which He wages, and we shall have peace in our hearts whilst the fight is sorest. Let us labour to ' be found in Him . . . having the righteousness which is of God by faith,' and then we shall ' be found in Him in peace, without spot, blameless.' THE PRIEST WHOM WE NEED ' Such an high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefllcd, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.'— Heb. vii. 26. ' It became Him to make the Captain of our salvation perfect through sufferings.' ' In all things it behoved V.2G] THE PRIEST WHOM WE NEED 11 Him to be made like unto His brethren.' 'Such an High Priest became us.' In these three sayings of this Epistle the historical facts of the gospel are considered as corresponding to or in accordance and congruity with, respectively, the divine nature ; Christ's char- acter and purpose ; and man's need. I have considered the two former texts in previous sermons, and now I desire to deal with this latter. It asserts that Jesus Christ, regarded as the High Priest, meets the deepest wants of every heart, and fits human necessity as the glove does the hand. He is the answer to all our questions, the satisfaction of all our wants, the bread for our hunger, the light for our darkness, the strength for our w^eakness, the medicine for our sickness, the life for our death. 'Such a High Priest became us.' But the other side is quite as true. Christianity is in full accordance with men's wants, Christianity is in sharp antagonism with a great deal which men suppose to be their wants. Men's wishes, desires, readings of their necessities and conceptions of what is in accord- ance with the divine nature, are not to be taken with- out more ado as being the guides of what a revelation from God ought to be. The two characteristics of correspondence and opposition must both unite, in all that comes to us certified as being from God. There is an ' offence of the Cross ' ; and Christ, for all His correspondence with the deepest necessities of human nature, and I might even say just by reason of that correspondence, will be 'to the Jews a stumbling- block and to the Greeks foolishness.' If a message professing to be from God had not the discord between man's expectations and its facts, a message so like a man's would bear upon its front the evidence that it 12 HEBREWS [cn.vii. was of man. If a message professing to be from God had not the correspondence with man's deepest wants, a message so unlike men would bear upon its front the evidence that it was not of God. So then, remembering the necessary complementary thought to this of my text that ' such a high priest became us,' there are two or three considerations springing from the words that I desire to suggest. I. The first of them is this — we all need a priest, and we have the priest w^e need in Jesus Christ. The outstanding fact in reference to human nature in this connection is that it is a sinful nature. We have all departed from the path of rectitude and have nourished desires and tastes and purposes which do not rend us apart from God, and between us and Him do interpose a great barrier. Our consciences need a priest, or rather they say 'Amen' to the necessity born of our sins, that there shall stand between us and God ' a great High Priest.' I need not elaborate or enlarge upon this matter. The necessity of Christ's sacerdotal character, and the adaptation of that character to men's deepest wants, are not only to be argued about, but we have to appeal to men's consciences, and try to waken them to an adequate and profound sense of the reality and significance of the fact of transgression. If once a man comes to feel, what is true about him, that he is in God's sight a sinful man ; to regard that fact in all its breadth, in all its consequences, in all its depth, there will not want any more arguing to make him see that a gospel which deals primarily with the fact of sin, and proclaims a priest whose great work is to offer a sacrifice, is the gospel that he needs. In fair weather, when the summer seas are sunny and smooth, and all the winds are sleeping in their caves, V. 2GJ THE TRIES T WHOM WE NEED 13 the life-belts on the deck of a steamer may be thought to be unnecessary, but when she strikes on the black- toothed rocks, and all about is a hell of noise and despair, then the meaning of them is understood, When you are amongst the breakers you will need a life-buoy. AVlien the flames are flickering round you, you will understand the use and worth of a fire-escape, and when you have learned what sort of a man you are, and what that involves in regard of your relations to God, then the mysteries which surround the thought of the high priesthood and sacrifice of Jesus Christ will be accepted as mysteries, and left where they are, and the fact will be grasped with all the tendrils of your soul as the one hope for you in life and in death. I do not care to argue a man out of his imperfect apprehensions, if he have them, of the mission and work of Jesus Christ. But oh, dear friends ! you for whose blood I am in some sense responsible, let me plead with you this one thought— you have not taken the point of view from which to judge of the gospel until you have stood in the perfect rectitude of heaven and contrasted your blackness with its stainless purity, and its solemn requirements ; and have looked all round the horizon to see if anywhere there is a means by which a sinful soul can be liberated from the dragon's sting of conscience, and from the crushing burden of guilt, and set upon a rock, emancipated and cleansed. We need a priest because we are sinful men, and sin means separation in fact and alienation in spirit, and the entail of dreadful consequences, which, as far as Nature is concerned, cannot be prevented from coming. And so sin means that if men are to be brought again into the fellowship and the family of God, it must be 14 HEBREWS [CH. vii. through One who, being a true priest, offers a real sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. The new science of comparative religion has been made by some of its adepts to bear witness unfavour- ably to the claims of Christianity. A far truer use of it would be this— Wherever men have worshipped, they have worshipped at an altar, there has been on it a sacrifice offered by a purged hand that symbolised moral purity. And all these are witnesses that human- ity recognises the necessity which my text affirms has been met in Christ. Some people would say ' Yes ! and your doctrine of a Christ who is sacrifice and priest, has precisely the same origin as those altars, many smoking with sacrifices to tyrannical gods.' But to me the relation between the faiths of the world and the gospel of Christ, in reference to this matter, is much rather this, that they proclaim a want, and that Christ brings the satisfaction of it; that they with one voice cry, ' Oh ! that I knew where I might find Him! How shall a man be just with God?' and that the Cross of Christ answers their longings, and offers the means by which we may draw nigh to God. 'Such a High Priest became us.' II. We may take another consideration from these words, viz. — We need for a priest a perfect man, and we have the perfect priest whom we need, in Jesus Christ. The writer goes on to enumerate a series of qualities by which our Lord is constituted the priest we need. Of these five qualities which follow in my text, the three former are those to which I now refer. ' He is holy, harmless, undefiled.' Now I do not need to spend time in discussing the precise meaning of these words, but a remark or two V.26] THE PRIEST WHOM WE NEED 15 about each of them may perhaps bo admissible. Taken generally, these three characteristics refer to the priest's relation to God, to other men, and to the law of purity. ' He is holy ' ; that is to say, not so much morally free from guilt as standing in a certain relation to God. The word here used for 'holy' has a special meaning. It is the representative of an old Testament word, which seems to mean ' Devoted to God in love.' And it expresses not merely the fact of consecration, but the motive and the means of that consecration, as being the result of God's love or mercy which kindles self-surrendering love in the recipient. Such is the first qualification for a priest, that he shall be knit to God by loving devotion, and have a heart throbbing in unison with the divine heart in all its tenderness of pity and in all its nobleness and loftiness of purity. And, besides being thus the earthly echo and repre- sentative of the whole sweetness of the divine nature, so, in the next place, the priest we need must, in relation to men, be harmless — without malice, guile, unkindness; a Lamb of God, with neither horns to butt, nor teeth to tear, nor claws to wound, but gentle and gracious, sweet and compassionate ; or, as we read in another place in this same letter, ' a merciful High Priest in things pertaining to God.' And the priest that we need to bridge over the gulf between us sinful and alienated men and God, must not only be one knit to God in all sympathy, and representing His purity and tenderness amongst us ; nor must the priest that we need by reason of our miseries, our sorrows, our weaknesses, our bleeding wounds, our broken hearts, be only a priest filled with compassion and merciful, who can lay a gentle hand upon our sore and sensitive spirits, but the priest that we men, spattered and 16 HEBREWS [ch. vil befouled witli the mire and filth of sin, which has left deep stains upon our whole nature, need, must be one * undefiled,' on whose white garments there shall be no speck; on the virgin purity of whose nature there shall be no stain ; who shall stand above us, though He be one of us, and whilst * it behoves Him to be made in all points like unto His brethren,' shall yet be 'without blemish and without spot.' 'It behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren.' The priest of the world must be like the w^orld. My text says, ' Yes ! and He must be absolutely unlike the world.' Now, is this not a strange thing — this is a disgression, but it may be allowed for one moment — is it not a strange thing that in these four little tracts which we call gospels, that might all be printed upon two sides of a penny newspaper, you get drawn, with such few strokes, a picture which harmonises, in a possible person, these two opposite requirements, the absolute unlikeness and the perfect likeness? Think of how difficult it would be if it was not a copy from life, to draw a figure with these two characteristics harmonised. What geniuses the men must have been that wrote the gospels, if they were not something much simpler than that, honest witnesses who told exactly what they saw! The fact that the life and death of Jesus Christ, as recorded in Scripture, present this strange combination of two opposite requirements in the most perfect harmony and beauty, is in my eyes no contemptible proof of the historical veracity of the picture which is presented to us. If the life was not lived I, for one, do not believe that it ever could have been invented. But that, as I said, has nothing to do with my present subject. And so I pass on just to notice, in a word, V. 20] THE rillEST WHOM WE NEED 17 how this assemblage of qualifications which, taken together, make np the idea of a perfect man, is found in Jesus Christ for a certain purpose, and a purpose beyond that which some of you, I am afraid, are accustomed to regard. Why this innocence; this God- devotedncss; this blamelessness; this absence of all selfish antagonism ? Why this life, so sweet, so pure, so gentle, so running over with untainted and un- grudging compassion, so conscious of unbroken and perfect communion and sympathy with God? Why? That He might, 'through the Eternal Spirit, offer Himself without spot unto God ' ; and that by His one offering He might perfect for ever all them that put their trust in Him. Oh, brother ! you do not understand the meaning of Christ's innocence unless you see in it the condition of efficiencj'^ of His sacrifice. It is that He might be the priest of the world that He wears this fine linen clean and white, the righteousness of a pure and perfect soul. I beseech you, then, ponder for yourselves the mean- ing of this admitted fact. We all acknowledge His purity. We all adore, in some sense of the word. His perfect manhood. If the one stainless and sinless man that the world has ever seen had such a life and such a death as is told in these gospels, they are no gospels, except on one supposition. But for it they are the most despairing proclamation of the old miserable fact that righteousness suffers in the world. The life of Christ, if He be the pure and perfect man that we believe Him to be, and not the perfect priest offering up a pure sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, is the most damning indictment that was ever drawn up against the blunders of a Providence that so mis- governs the world. B 18 HEBREWS [ch.vii. 'He did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.' And, therefore, when we look upon His sufferings, in life and in death, we can only understand them and the relation of His innocence to the divine heart when we say : ' Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him. He hath put Him to grief,' 'by His stripes we are healed. Such a priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled'; the sacrificial Lamb, without blemish and without spot. IIL Lastly, my text suggests that we need a priest in the heavens, and we have in Christ the heavenly priest whom we need. The two last qualifications for the priestly office included in my text are, ' separate from sinners ; made higher than the heavens.' Now, the 'separation' intended, is not, as I suppose, Christ's moral distance from evil-doers, but has what I may call a kind of half-local signification, and is explained by the next clause. He is ' separate from sinners ' not because He is pure and they foul, but because having offered His sacrifice He has ascended up on high. He is 'made higher than the heavens.' Scripture sometimes speaks of the living Christ" as at present in the heavens, and at others as having ' passed through ' and being 'high above all heavens'; in the former case simply giving the more general idea of exaltation, in the latter the thought that He is lifted, in His manhood and as our priest, above the bounds of the material and visible creation, and 'set at the right hand of the Majesty on high.' Such a priest we need. His elevation and separation from us upon earth is essential to that great and continual work of His which we call, for want of any more definite name, His intercession. The High Priest r. 26] THE PRIEST WHOM WE NEED 19 in the heavens presents His sacrifice there for ever. The past fact of His death on the Cross for the sins of the whole world is ever present as an element deter- mining the direction of the divine dealings with all them that put their trust in Him. That sacrifice was not once only offered upon the Cross, but is ever, in the symbolical language of Scripture, presented anew in the heavens by Him. No time avails to corrupt or weaken the efficacy of that blood ; and He has offered one sacrifice for sins for ever. Such a priest we need, to-day, presenting the sacrifice which, to-day, in our w^eakness and sinfulness, we require. We need a priest who in the heavens bears us in His heart. As His type in the Old Testament economy entered within the veil with the blood ; and when he passed within the curtain and stood before the Light of the Shekinah, had on his breast and on his shoulders, — the home of love, the seat of strength— the names of the tribes, graven on flashing stones, so our priest within the veil has your name and mine, if we love Him, close by His heart, governing the flow of His love, and written on His shoulders, and on the palms of His pierced hands, that all His strength may be granted to us. ' Such a priest became us.' And we need a priest separated from the world, lifted above the limitations of earth and time, wielding the powers of divinity in the hands that once were laid in blessing on the little children's heads. And such a priest we have. We need a priest in the heavens, whose presence there makes that strange country our home; and by whose footstep, passing through the gates and on to the golden pavements, the gate is open for us, and our faltering poor feet can tread there. And such a priest we have, passed within the veil, that 20 HEBREWS [ch. viii. to-day, in aspiration and prayer; and to-morrow in reality and person, where He is, there we may be also. ' Such a priest became us.' We need no other ; we do need Him. Oh, friend ! are you resting on that sacrifice? Have you given your cause into His hands to plead? Then the great High Priest will make you too His priest to offer a thank-offering, and Himself will present for ever the sacrifice that takes away your sin and brings you near to God. ' It is Christ that died, yea ! rather, that is risen again ' ; and whose death and resurrection alike led on to His ascension to the right hand of God, where for ever ' He maketh intercession for us.' THE ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST 'We have such an high priest, who is set on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty iu the heavens ; 2. A minister of the sanctuary.'— Heb. viii. 1, 2. A LITTLE consideration will show that we have in these words two strikingly different representations of our Lord's heavenly state. In the one He is regarded as seated 'on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty.' In the other He is regarded as being, not- withstanding that session, a 'minister of the sanc- tuary'; performing priestly functions there. This combination of two such opposite ideas is the very emphasis and force of the passage. The writer would have us think of the royal repose of Jesus as full of activity for us; and of His heavenly activity as consistent with deepest repose. Resting He works; working He rests. Reigning He serves; serving He reigns. So my purpose is simply to deal with these vs.1.2] ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST 21 two representations, and to seek to draw from them and from their union the lessons that they teach. I. Note, then, first, the seated Clirist. •We have a high priest who' — to translate a little more closely—' has taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens.' 'Majesty' is a singular expression or periphrasis for God. It is used once again in this letter, and seems probably to have been derived by the writer from the Rabbinical usage of his times, when, as we know, a certain mis- placed, and yet most natural, reverential or perhaps superstitious awe, made men unwilling to name the mighty name, and inclined rather to fall back upon other forms of speech to exi)ress it. So the writer here, addressing Hebrews, steeped in Rabbinical thought, takes one of their own words and speaks of God as the 'Majesty in the heavens'; empha- sising the idea of sovereignty, power, illimitable magnificence. 'At the right hand' of this throned personal abstraction, ' the Majesty,' sits the Man Christ Jesus. Now the teaching, both of this Epistle to the Hebrews and of the whole New Testament, in reference to the state of our exalted Lord, is that His manhood is elevated to this supreme dignity. The Eternal Word who was with the Father in the beginning, before all the worlds, went back to ' the glory which He had with the Father.' But the new thing was that there went, too, that human nature which Jesus Christ indissolubly united with divinity in the mystery of the lowliness of His earthly life. An ancient prophet foretold that in the Messianic times there should spring from the cut- down stump of the royal house of Israel a sucker "which, feeble at first, and in strange contrast with the 22 HEBREWS [ch. vm. venerable ruin from which it arose, should grow so swiftly, so tall and strong, that it should become an ensign for the nations of the world ; and then, he adds, 'and His resting-place shall be glory.' There was a deeper meaning in the words, I suppose, than the prophet knew, and we shall not be chargeable with forcing New Testament ideas upon Old Testament words which are a world too narrow for them, if we say that there is at least shadowed the great thought that the lowly manhood, sprung from the humbled royal stock, shall grow up as a root out of a dry ground, without form or comeliness, and be lifted to find its rest and dwelling-place in the very central blaze of the divine glory. We have a High Priest w^ho, in His manhood, in which He is knit to us, hath taken His seat on the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in the heavens. Then, again, remember that whilst in such represen- tations as this we have to do with realities set forth under the symbols of time and place, there is yet a pro- found sense in which that session of Jesus Christ at the right hand of God proclaims both the localisation of His present corporeal humanity and the ubiquity of His presence. For what is 'the right hand of God'? What is it but the manifestation of His energies, the forthputting of His power? And where is that but everywhere, where He makes Himself known ? Where- soever divine activity is manifested, there is Jesus Christ. But yet, though this be true, and though it may be difficult for us to hold the balance and mark the dividing line between symbol and reality, we are not to forget that t/ae facts of Christ's wearing now a real though glorified body, and of His visible corporeal ascension, and the promise of a similar visible vs. 1,2] ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST 23 corporeal return to earth at the end of the days seem to require the belief that, above all the heavens, and filling all things, as that exalted manhood is, there is yet what we must call a place, wherein that glorified body now abides. And thus both the awful majestic idea of omnipresence, and the no less majestic idea of the present localisation in place of the glorified Christ, are taught us in the text. And what is the deepest meaning of it all? What means that majestic session at 'the right hand of the throne'? Before that throne 'angels veil their faces.' If in action, they stand ; if in adoration, they fall be- fore Him. Creatures bow prostrate. Who is He that, claiming and exercising a power which in a creature is blasphemy and madness, takes His seat in that awful presence ? Other words of Scripture represent the same idea in a still more ^vonderful form when they speak of ' the throne of God and of the Lamb,' and when He Himself speaks from heaven of Himself as * set down with My Father on His throne.' If we translate the symbol into colder words, it means that deep repose, which, like the divine rest after creation, is not for recuperation of exhausted powers, but is the sign of an accomplished purpose and achieved task, a share in the sovereignty of heaven, and the wielding of the energies of deity — rest, royalty, and power belong now to the Man sitting at the right hand of the throne of God. II. Note, secondly, the servant Christ. * A minister of the sanctuary,' says my text. Now the word employed here for 'minister,' and which I have ventured variously to translate servant, means one who discharges some public official act of service either to God or man, and it is especially, though by no 24 HEBREWS [en. viii. means exclusively, employed in reference to the service of a ministering priest. The allusion in the second portion of my text is plainly enough to the ritual of the great day of atone- ment, on which the high priest once a year went into the holy place; and tliere, in the presence of God throned between the cherubim, made atonement for the sins of the people, by the offering of the blood of the sacrifice. Thus, says our writer, that throned and sovereign Man who, in token of His accomplished work, and in the participation of deity, sits hard by the throne of God, is yet ministering at one and the same time within the veil, and presenting the might of His own sacrifice. Put away the metaphor and we just come to this, a truth which is far too little dwelt upon in this genera- tion, that the work which Jesus Christ accomplished on the Cross, all sufficient and eternal as it was in the range and duration of its efficacy, is not all His work. The past, glorious as it is, needs to be supplemented by the present, no less wonderful and glorious, in which Jesus Christ within the veil, in manners all unknown to us, by His presence there in the power of the sacrifice that He has made, brings down upon men the blessings that flow from that sacrifice. It is not enough that the offering should be made. The deep teaching, the whole reasonableness of which it does not belong to us here and now to apprehend, but which faith will gladly grasp as a fact, though reason may not be able to answer the question of the why or how, tells us that the interceding Christ must necessarily take up the work of the suffering Christ. Dear brethren, our salvation is not so secured by the death upon the Cross as to make needless the life beside the throne. Jesus that vs.h2] ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST 25 died is the Christ ' that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.' But, beyond that, may I remind you that my text, though not in its direct bearing, yet in its implication, suggests to us other ways in which the rest of Christ is full of activity. ' I am among you as He that serveth' is true for the heavenly glory of the exalted Lord quite as much as for the lowly humiliation of His life upon earth. And no more really did He stoop to serve when, laying aside His garments, He girded Himself with the towel, and wiped the disciples' feet, than He does to-day when, having resumed the garments of His glorious divinity, and having seated Himself in His place of authority above us. He comes forth, according to the w^onderful condescension of His own parable, to serve His servants who have entered into rest, and those also who still toil. The glorified Christ is a ministering Christ. In us, on us, for us He works, in all the activities of His exalted repose, as truly and more mightily than He did when here He helped the weaknesses and healed the sicknesses, and soothed the sorrows and supplied the wants, and washed the feet, of a handful of poor men. He has gone up on high, but in His rest He works. He is on the throne, but in His royalty He serves. He is absent from us, but His power is with us. The world's salvation was accomplished when He cried, * It is finished ' ! But ' My Father worketh hitherto, and I work,' and they who saw Him ascend into the heavens, and longingly followed the diminishing form as it moved slowly upward, with hands extended in benediction, as they turned away, when there was nothing more to be seen but the cloud, • went every- 26 HEBREWS [ch. viii. where, the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following.' So then, let us ever hold fast, inextricably braided together, the rest and the activity, the royalty and tlie service, of the glorified Son of Man. III. And now, in the last place, let me point to one or two of the practical lessons of such thoughts as these. They have a bearing on the three categories of past, present, future. For the past a seal, for the present a strength, for the future a prophecy. For the past a seal. If it be true— and there are few historical facts the evidence for which is more solid or valid — that Jesus Christ really went up into the heavens, and abode there, then that is God's last and most emphatic declaration, 'This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.' The trail of light that He leaves behind Him, as He is borne onwards, falls on the Cross, and tells us that it is the centre of the world's history. For what can be greater, what can afford a firmer foundation for us sinful men to rest our confidence upon, than the death of which the re- compense was that the Man who died sits on the throne of the universe ? Brethren ! an ascended Christ forces us to believe in an atoning Christ. No words can exaggerate, nor can any faith exalt too highly, or trust too completely, the sacrifice which led straight to that exaltation. Read the Cross by the light of the throne. Let Olivet interpret Calvary, and we shall understand what Calvary means. Again, this double representation of my text is a strength for the present. I know of nothing that is mighty enough to draw men's desires and fix solid reasonable thought and love upon that awful future, vs. 1,2] ENTHRONED SERVANT CHRIST 27 except the belief that Christ is there. I think that the men who have most deeply realised what a solemn, and yet what a vague and impalpable thing the concep- tion of immortal life beyond the grave is, will be most ready to admit that the thought is cold, cheerless, full of blank misgivings and of waste places, in which the speculative spirit feels itself very much a foreigner. There is but one thought that flashes warmth into the coldness, and turns the awfulness and the terror of the chilling magnificence into attractiveness and homelikeness and sweetness, and that is that Christ is there sitting at the right hand of God. Foreign lands are changed in their aspect to us when we have brothers and sisters there; and our Brother has gone whither we too, when we send our thoughts after Him, can feel that our home is, because there He is. The weariness of existence here is only perpetuated and intensified when we think of it as i)rolonged for ever. But with Christ in the heavens, the heavens become the home of our hearts. In like manner, if we only lay upon our spirits as a solid reality, and keep ever clear before us, as a plain fact, the present gloi-y of Jesus Christ and His activity for us, oh ! then life becomes a different thing, sorrows lose their poison and their barb, cares become trivial, anxieties less gnawing, the weights of duty or of suffering less burdensome ; and all things have a new aspect and a new aim. If you and I, dear friends, can see the heavens opened, and Jesus on the throne, how petty, how unworthy to fix our desires, or to compel our griefs, will all the things here below seem. We then have the true standard, and the littlenesses that swell themselves into magnitude when there is nothing to compare them with will shrink into their insignifi- 28 HEBREWS [en. viii. cance. Lift the mists and let the Himalayas sliine out ; and what then about the little molehills in the fore- ground, that looked so big whilst the great white mass was invisible ? See Christ, and He interprets, dwindles, and yet ennobles the world and life. Lastly, such a vision gives us a prophecy for the future. Thei^e is the measure of the possibilities of human nature. A somewhat arrogant saying affirms, • Whatever a man has done, a man can do.' Whatever that Man is, I may be. It is possible that humanity may be received into the closest union with divinity, and it is certain that if we knit ourselves to Jesus Christ by simple faith and lowly, obedient love, what- ever He is He will give to us to share. ' Even as I also overcame, and am set down with My Father on His throne,' is His own measure of what He will do for the men who are faithful and obedient to Him. I do not say that there is no other adequate proof of immortality than the facts of the resurrection and ascension of Jesus Christ. I do not know that I should be far wrong if I ventured even on that assertion. But I do say that there is no means by which a poor sinful soul will reach the realisation of the possibilities that open to it, except faith in Jesus Christ. If we love Him, anything unreasonable and impossible is more reasonable and possible than that the Head shall be glorified and the members left to see corruption. If I am wedded to Jesus Christ, as you all may be if you will trust your souls to Him and love Him, then God will take us and Him as one into the glory of His presence, where we may dwell with and in Christ, in indissoluble union through the ages of eternity. My text is the answer to all doubts and fears for ourselves. It shows us what the true conception of a ys.1.2] THE TRUE IDEAL 29 perfect heaven is, the perfection of rest and the per- fection of service. As Christ's heaven is the fuhiess of repose and of activity, so shall that of His servants be. 'His servants shall serve Him' — there is the activity — 'and see His face' — there is the restful con- templation — 'and His name shall be in their foreheads' — there is the full participation in His character and glory. And so, dear brethren, for the world and for our- selves, hope is duty and despair is sin. Here is the answer to the question, Can I ever enter that blessed land ? Here is the answer to the question. Is the dream of perfected manhood ever to be more than a dream ? ' We see not j^et all things put under Him, but we see Jesus,' and, seeing Him, no hope is absurd, and anything but hope is falling beneath our privileges. Then, dear friends, let us look unto Him who, 'for the joy that was set before Him, endured the Cross, despising the shame, and is now set down at the right hand of the Throne of God.' THE TRUE IDEAL 'See (saith He) that then make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.'— 1Iei3. viii. 5. I DO not intend to deal with the original bearing of these words, nor with the use made of them by the writer of Hebrews. Primarily they refer to the direc- tions as to the Tabernacle and its furniture, which are given at such length, and with such minuteness, in Leviticus, and are there said to have been received by Moses on Sinai. The author of this Epistle attaches an even loftier significance to them, as supporting his 30 HEBREWS [ch. viii. contention that the whole ceremonial worship, as well as the Temple and its equipment, was a copy of heavenly realities, the heavenly sanctuary and its altar and priest. I wish to take a much humbler view of the injunction, and to apply it, with permissible vio- lence, as a maxim for conduct and the great rule for the ordering of our lives. ' See that thou,' in thy shop and office, and wherever thou mayst be, 'make all things according to the pattern shewed to thee in the mount.' A far-reaching, high-soaring commandment, not to be obeyed without much effort, and able to revolutionise the lives of most of us. There are three points in it: the pattern, its universal applicability, and the place where we get to see it. I. The pattern. — The difference between noble and ignoble lives is very largely that the one has — and seeks, however partially and interruptedly, to follow — an ideal and the other has not. Or, to put it into plainer words, the one man regulates his life according to momentary inclinations and the obvious calls of sense, business and the like, and the other man has, far ahead and high up, a great light burning, to which he is ever striving to attain. The one has an aim to which he can only approximate, and the other largely lives from hand to mouth, as circumstances and sense, and the recurring calls of material necessities, or tempta- tions that are put in his way every day, may dictate. And so, the one turns out a poor creature, and the other — God helping him — may turn out a saint. Which are you ? Which we are depends very largely on the clearness with which we keep before us — like some great mountain summit rising above the mists, and stirring the ambition of every climber to reach the peak, whei'e foot has never ti'od — th^ ideal, to use 7.6] THE TRUE IDEAL 31 modern language, or to fall back upon the good old- fashioned Bible words, 'the pattern shewed to us.' You know that in mountain districts the mists are apt to gather their white folds round the summits, and that often for many days the dwellers in the plains have to plod along on their low levels, without a glimpse of the calm peak. And so it is with our highest ideal. Earth-born mists from the undrained swamps in our own hearts hide it too often from our eyes, and even when that is not the case, we are like many a mountaineer, who never lifts an eye to the sacred summit overhead, nor looks higher than his own fields and cattle-sheds. So it needs an effort to keep clear before us the pattern that is high above us, and to make very plain to ourselves, and very substantial in our thoughts, the unattained and untrodden heights. 'Not in vain the distance' should 'beckon.' 'Forward, forward, let us range,' should always be our word. ' See that thou make all things after the pattern,' and do not rule your lives according to whim, or fancy, or inclina- tion, or the temptations of sense and circumstances. To aim at the unreached is the secret of i^erpetual youth. No man is old as long as he aspires. It is the secret of perpetual growth. No man stagnates till he has ceased to see, or to believe in great dim possibilities for character, as yet unrealised. It is the secret of per- petual blessedness. No man can be desolate who has for his companion the unreached self that he may be- come. And so artist, poet, painter, all live nobler lives than they otherwise would, because they live, not so much with the commonplace realities round them, as with noble ideals, be they of melody or of beauty, or of musical words and great thoughts. There should be the same life with, and directed towards, attaining 32 HEBREWS [ch. viii. the unattaincd in the moralist, and above all in the Christian. But then, do not let us forget that we are not here in our text, as I am using it in this sermon, relegated to a pattern which takes its origin, after all, in our own thoughts and imaginations. The poet's ideal, the painter's ideal, varies according to his genius. Ours has taken solidity and substance and a human form, and stands before us, and says : ' If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.' ' See that thou make all things according to the pattern,' and be thankful that we are not left to our own thoughts, or to our brethren's teachings, or to abstract ideas of the true and the beautiful and the good for our pattern and mould of life, but that we have the law embodied in a Person, and the ideal made actual, in our Brother and our Saviour. There is the joy and the blessedness of the Christian aim after Christian perfection. There is something unsubstantial, misty, shadowy, in an ideal which is embodied nowhere. It is ghost-like, and has little power to move or to attract. But for Christians the pattern is all gathered into the one sweet, heart- compelling form of Jesus, and whatever is remote and sometimes cold in the thought of an unattained aim, changes when we make it our supreme purpose to be like Jesus Christ. Our goal is no cold, solitary moun- tain top. It is the warm, loving heart, and companion- able purity and perfectness of our Brother, and when we can, even in a measure, reach that sweet resting- place, we are wrapped in the soft atmosphere of His love. We shall be like Him when we see Him as He is ; we grow like Him here, in the measure in which we do see Him, even darkly. We reach Him most surely by loving Him, and we become like Him most surely by V.5] THE TRUE IDEAL 88 loving Him, for lovo breeds likeness, and they who live near the light are drenched with the light, and become lights in their turn. There is another point here that I would suggest, and that is II. The universal applicability of the pattern. — ' See that thou make all things.' Let us go back to Leviticus. There you will find page after page that reads like an architect's specification. The words that I have taken as my text are given in imniodiatc connection with the directions for making the seven-branched candlestick, which are so minute and specific and detailed, that any brass-founder in Europe could make one to-day ' after the pattern.' So many bowls, so many knops, so many branches ; such and such a distance between each of them ; and all the rest of it — there it is, in most prosaic minuteness. Similarly, we read how many threads and fringes, and how many bells on the high priest's robe. Verse after verse is full of these details ; and then, on the back of them all, comes, * See that thou make all things according to the pattern.' Which things are a parable — and just come to this, that the minutest pieces of daily life, the most commonplace and trivial incidents, may all be moulded after that great example, the life of Jesus Christ. It is one of the miracles of revelation that it should be so. The life of Jesus Christ, in the fragmentary records of it in these four Gospels, although it only covered a few years, and is very imperfectly recorded, and in outward form was passed under conditions most remote from the strange com^jlex conditions of our civilisation, yet fits as closely as a glove does to the hand, to all the necessities of our daily lives. Men and women, young men and maidens, old men and children, 34 HEBREWS [en. viii. professional men and students, women in their houses, men of business, merchants, and they that sail the sea and they that dig in the mine, they may all find directions for everything that they have to do, in that one life. And here is the centre and secret of it. 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.' Therefore that which is the law for Jesus is the law for us, and the next verse goes on ; 'he that loveth his life shall lose it,' and the next verse hammers the nail farther in : 'If any man serve Me, let him follow Me.'— Take that injunction and apply it, in all the details of daily life, and you will be on the road to reproduce the pattern. But remember the ' all things.' It is for us, if we are Christian people, to bring the greatest principles to bear on the smallest duties, 'Small duties?' 'Great' and 'small' are adjectives that ought never to be tacked on to ' duty.' For all duties are of one size, and while we may speak, and often do speak, very mis- takenly about things which we vulgarly consider 'great,' or superciliously treat as 'small,' the fact is that no man can tell what is a great thing, and what is a small one. For the most important crises in a man's life have a strange knack of leaping up out of the smallest incidents; just as a whisper may start an avalanche, and so nobody can tell what are the great things and what the small ones. The tiniest pin in a machine drops out, and all the great wheels stop. The small things are the things that for the most part make up life. You can apply Christ's example to the least of them, and there is very small chance of your applying it to the great things if you have not been in the way of applying it to the small ones. For the small things make the habits which the great ones test and require. V.5] THE TRUE IDEAL 85 So ' thorough ' is the word. ' See that thou make all things according to the pattern.' I remember once going up to the roof of Milan Cathedral, and finding there stowed away behind a buttress — where I suppose one man in fifty years might notice it, a little statuette, as completely chiselled, as perfectly polished, as if it had been of giant size, and set in the fa