^ K. W. Dale, The Jewish Temple and the Christian Church, 213.
HEBREWS IX. 13, 14 379
harmless. You will see that there is an am?jiQ;uity in the words " without " and " alone," and the two Apostles use them in different senses, just as I have used them in the above simile about the licrhtninfi.i
II.
The Way of Cleansing.
" How much more shall the blood of Christ." Here we have not to do with animal sacrifices, the validity of which was that they were appointed by God, but we have to do with a Person. What Person ? The Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, and Son of Man. Stop to think of this ! Who is this Christ ? He is the Person that most of all has educated our conscience. How He has broken in on my being, investing with new vividness and sublime sanction the natural moral convictions of my soul ! What a light He has thrown on the being of God ! What a view of the heinousness of sin ! Christ is the only educator of the conscience. He has thrown around my being a light of spiritual and moral obligation which made me live as a moral being even before I came to Him for salvation. But He does not rest there. He does not say, like great teachers of the world, " I have come to teach you the right way." Christ says, " I have come in another way : I have come to put myself in your place, come to answer to God for you; have offered myself to God in your stead." Kemember that we are in the region of personality here, the region of free-will, the region of character ; and this great moral and spiritual Agent, who is so much more — the Son of God — comes forth and says, " I am coming to take your place, and answer for you before the Eternal God." That means for me that I respond to this oifer in the surrender of faith. We are now on a totally different level from the Old Testament offerer. Then an animal sacrifice was offered, the equivalent was paid for certain sins, a life for a life, and the offerer got freedom from ceremonial defilement, came again into covenant relations with God, and again essayed to obey. But here is a Person, willing to answer to God for me ; and I come and give myself into the ^ Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 334.
38o CLEANSING OF THE CONSCIENCE
hands of this Person. For what ? That He may see the whole thing through. Christ has taken the whole burden and responsi- bility, and I have given myself to Him. In this union of faith, Christ answers for me before God, and I receive in Him the whole fruit of His great sacrifice, and in Him am brought nigh to God. It is Christ's work. I cannot go so far with Christ, and then proceed by myself. The whole conception of the atone- ment shuts me up to this — if I yield myself up to Christ, Christ must undertake all for me. He is to be the doer right through, and I am to receive from Him, in Him, and through Him.
^ Suppose that in the bright summer weather we were in Switzerland, and were planning to start on a mountain excursion. Going out early in the morning, we see the ostlers with lantern in hand moving about, harnessing the horses, bringing them out and yoking them, the lantern being held high so that the ostler can see how to strap them. This work goes on a little time, and presently, we enter the hotel and rouse our sleeping friends, that they may get breakfast and be ready for the journey. When we go out again, lo, there is a change ! The sun has risen, and is pouring his radiance into this magnificent valley ; and there is the lantern, so indispensable an hour ago, with its poor yellow guttering candle — which you instinctively blow out ! Like this guttering candle is this conscience of man in his dead works. What can reduce that to utter insignificance in your soul and mine ? The contemplation of the sun ! " How much more shall the blood of Christ, who, through the Eternal Spirit, offered him- self without spot unto God, purge your conscience from dead works ! " ^
1. " The blood of Christ." — That which must strike all careful readers of the Bible, in the passages which refer to the sufferings and death of Jesus Christ, is the stress which is laid upon His blood. A long course of violent treatment, ending in such a death as that of crucifixion, must involve, we know from the nature of the case, the shedding of the blood of the sufferer. But our modern feeling would probably have led us to treat this as an accidental or subordinate feature of His death.
(1) This modern feeling is far from being mere unhealthy sentimentalism ; it arises from that honourable sympathy with and respect for human nature which draws a veil over its
' J. Smith, in Keswick Week, 1900, p. 105.
HEBREWS IX. 13, 14 381
miseries or its wounds. But the New Testament, in its treat- ment of the Passion of Christ is, we cannot but observe, strangely and strongly in contrast with such a feeling. The four Evangelists, who differ so much in their accounts of our Lord's birth and public ministry, seem to meet around the foot of the cross, and to agree, if not in relating the same incidents, yet certainly in the minuteness and detail of their narratives. In the shortest of the Gospels, when we reach the Passion, the occurrences of a day take up as much space as had previously been assigned to years. From the Last Supper to the burial in the grave of Joseph of Arimathea we have a very complete account of what took place ; each incident that added to pain or shame, each bitter word, each insulting act, each outrage upon justice or mercy, of which the Divine Sufl^rer was a victim, is carefully recorded. But especially the agony and bloody sweat, the public scourging, the crowning with thorns, the nailing to the wood of the cross, the opening of the side with a spear, are described by the Evangelists — ^incidents, each one of them, be it observed, which must have in- volved the shedding of Christ's blood. And in the writings of the Apostles to their first converts more is said of the blood of Christ than of anything else connected with His death — more even than of the cross. As we read them we might almost think that the shedding of His blood was not so much an accompani- ment of His death as its main purpose. Thus St. Paul tells the Eomans that Christ is set forth to be a " propitiation through faith in his blood"; that they are "justified" by Christ's blood. He writes to the Ephesians that they have " redemption through Christ's blood"; to the Colossians that our Lord has "made peace through the blood of his cross " ; to the Corinthians that the Holy Sacrament is so solemn a rite because it is " the com- munion of the blood of Christ." Thus St. Peter contrasts the slaves, whose freedom from captivity was purchased with cor- ruptible things such as silver and gold, with the case of Christians redeemed by the " precious blood of Christ, as of a Lamb without blemish, and immaculate." Thus St. John exclaims that "the blood of Jesus Christ the Son of God cleanseth us from all sin." In the Epistle to the Hebrews this blood is referred to as the blood of the covenant wherewith Christians are sanctified, as " the blood of the everlasting covenant," as " the blood of sprink-