Live well to-day, to-day is thine alone;
To-morrow is not, and may never be ; And yesterday no longer is thine own ;
But now belongs to thee.
Then take the task that's nearest to thy hand, And do it earnestly with all thy might;
Though men may cavil or misunderstand, Heed not their blame or slight.
What though the common lot of toil be thine, Thy task the meanest drudgery under heaven.
Thou may'st transform and make it all divine, If love thy labour leaven.
^ Letters of James Smetham, l^Z.
TITUS II. II, 12 269
Work is the daily worship of thy hands,
The service thou dost render to mankind Must be the measure of thy worth; it stands
The index of thy mind.
Arise, go forth, thy growing powers employ In helping those who need, their load to bear;
And thus thy life shall be a growing joy, Freed from all self and care.
Thus live each day, and so thy lowly life
Shall be to all around a beacon bright, Whose beams shall lead men upward through the strife,
To heaven's pure joy and light.^
* David Lawton,
Progressive Revelation,
Literature.
Abbott (L.), Signs of Promise, 256.
Alexander (S. A.), The Mind of Christ, 148.
AUon (H.), The Indwelling Christ, 301.
Austin (G. B.), The Beauty of Goodness, 194.
Bellars (W.), Our Inheritance in the Old Testament, 33.
Caltbrop (G.), The Future Life, 26.
Cope (F. L.), A North Country Preacher, 51.
Dale (R. W.), The Jewish Temple OMd the Christian Church, 11,
Davies (D.), Talks with Men, Woraen and Children, vi. 247.
Driver (S. R.), Sermons on the Old Testament, 119.
Hort (F. J. A.), Village Sermons, i. 128.
Hunt (A. N.), Sermons for the Christian Year, 32.
Meyer (F. B.), The Way into the Holiest, 9.
New (C), Sermons Preached in Hastings, 258.
Paget (F.), Studies in the Christian Character, 112.
Eashdall (H.), Christus in Ecclesia, 233.
Robertson (F. W.), Sermons, ii. 136.
Sanday (W.), The Oracles of God, 1.
Thackeray (F. St. John), Sermons Preached in Eton College Chapel, 47.
Vaughan (C, J.), Epiphany, Lent, and Easter, 459.
Weir (J. F.), Tlie Way : The Nature and the Means of Revelation, 63, 175.
Westcott (B. F.), The Incarnation and Common Life, 277.
Christian Commonwealth, xxxiii. (1913) 489 (R. J. Campbell).
Cliristian World Pulpit, xxxviii. 170 (P. M'Adam Muir) ; Ivi. 203 (E. J.
Hardy) ; Iviii. 140 (H. Wace) ; Ixiv. 74 (J. S. Banks). Cliurch Pulpit Year Bool, 1914, p. 273. Cliurchman's Pulpit : Christmas Day, ii. 147 (T. H. Stokoe). Expositor, 1st Ser., i. 60 (J. Morison) ; x. 275 (G. Matheson).
Progressive Revelation.
God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us in his Son.— Heb. i. i, 2.
No one can read this Epistle without perceiving that the writer belongs to the Pauline school ; in other words, that he has more sympathy with the new age which is coming than with the old age which is going. Yet, if we look more closely, we shall tind that there is a conservative element amidst his sympathies. His heart is with the future, but the future which claims his heart is one which will absorb rather than divorce the past. He sees clearly that the forms of Judaism were in their very nature transitory and perishable, and that no conjunction of circum- stances could ever have made them permanent. But he sees not less clearly that they typified that which could not perish ; that they were not illusions, much less delusions, but the shadows of things to come, whose glory all along had been the forecast of the eubstance which they prefigured. ' He is prepared to see them fade, but not to fade into nothingness. When that which is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away ; yet all the parts exist in the completed whole. So to the eye of this writer the shadows of Judaism only fade in that light which gave them birth, and yield their borrowed glory to the coming substance which they foreshadowed. He repudiates the notion that he is proclaiming a new system of the universe ; he will not even admit that a new voice is speaking. He maintains that from the beginning there has been a continuity of Divine revelation : " God, having of old time spoken unto the fathers, hath at the end of these days spoken unto us." The voice has never been broken ; the accents have never been interrupted ; there has simply been a change in tone and modulation, as the ear of the listener developed from the organ of a child into the organ of a mature man.
I THESS.-HEB. — 1 8
274 PROGRESSIVE REVELATION
But, having conceded so much to the spirit of Judaism, the writer of this Epistle proceeds to exhibit the vast advance which the last stage of the revelation has made upon its earlier stages. He goes on to enumerate the different points in which the Divine voice in Christianity is distinguished from the Divine voice in Judaism, and in every one of these points he finds the advantage on the side of the former.
Let us notice : —
I. The One Authentic Voice. II. The Two Dispensations. III. The Culmination in Christ