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tion. Unbroken it prolongs itself from age to age, unchanging in its character, and unintermittent in duration. For He is made a priest, " not after the law of a carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life." It is not, then, on the fact of a past atonement, but on the power of a living Saviour, that our safety depends. No doubt the past atonement is essential to the efficacy of His priesthood, but still it is not the Cross that is the object of faith, nor any one event in the history of the incarna- tion, but Christ Himself who " was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justification." To believe in a fact is one thing, but to trust in a living person is another. That Christ died would be of no use to us, if He were not alive now, and alive, so to speak, more mightily than He ever was before. Other men death removes from their intercourse with the world. It brings their direct influence and agency to an end. But death did not so affect Him. It produced no change in His activity, except to widen its range and intensify its energy. And now the whole of His priestly functions are taken up, and absorbed in this one attitude or act of intercession.
III.
The Plea.
1. Why is a plea needed in the Court of Mercy ?
(1) The claims of a Father's heart have to he satisfied. — God is righteous, and He observes the due relations in which He stands to us, and we have to observe the relations in which we stand to Him ; but He is a Father, and we are His children, and what God wants as a Father — to put it into a word — is the answer of love. Taking that word in its comprehensive sense, implying all that it involves, what God asks from us is the life of love. What God has hungered for through all the ages is what we faintly hunger for as we look upon our children. What we have to satisfy and to expiate is not the anger of a dishonoured Deity, but the hunger- ing and unsatisfied heart of a Father. The anger of a dishonoured Deity may be fierce, though any flame will burn itself out to ashes in the long-run ; but the heart of a Father that has never yet drained to its depths the full cup of children's love — that is the
26o AN ADVOCATE WITH THE FATHER
central pain of the universe, and it is the throb of that hunger and thirst that moves through all created things. The inner truth of this world of man as it is, is that the heart of God has gone unsatisfied, lonely, starved. " Kighteous Father, the world knew thee not." There is God's agony; there is God's pain. There, if you want the word, is man's debt — the debt we shall never make up, the love we have failed to give since the world was born. \y (2) The claims of justice must he met. — God is not only Father, He is sovereign ; sin is rejection of His law, rebellion against His majesty, and its forgiveness must be in harmony with law and the inviolable claims of His throne. Before God can receive back the sinner there is wrath to be averted in some way by which righteousness shall be equally honoured with mercy. And man needs such propitiation too ; his moral sense must be satisfied in any adequate redemption, ceaseless sacrifices at innumerable shrines witness to the conviction that God must punish sin, and to those who read His word and see what He has said that conviction becomes invincible. Divine love would deserve no reverence, did it ignore righteousness.
^ Righteousness must be vindicated, and then grace becomes sure. Eighteousness must be satisfied, and then eternity becomes heaven! The law must be made honourable, then the Gospel will be given to us, with the assurance of eternal permanence — but not without.^
2. Christ's plea is His propitiation. This is, so to speak, the basis on which it proceeds, the great argument which makes it conclusive. And what can make it more so ? It is true our sins cry out for vengeance, but Christ's blood cries still louder for mercy. And ite cry continues sustained, penetrating through all obstructions, resistless, clear, never failing to enter into the ears of God. It speaks more mightily than that of Abel. As the blood of the first martyr refused to be covered, but uttered its voice from the ground, and brought down sure judgment on the guilty, so, and with a still greater certainty, will Christ's blood plead for us, in spite of all our sins and their attempts to overbear it, till it wins its desired result — a result that includes not only pardon but all that His sacrifice was offered to secure. And as
^ J, Parker,
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the sacrifice was perfect, so will be its plea. As it made an end of sin so it has abolished all that withstands and imperils the attain- ment of its end.
' (1) It is a sufficient plea. — The propitiation was the mercy- seat — the golden slab which, according to the Divine prescription, covered the ancient ark. It would, therefore, be of the same size as the tables of stone deposited within, and be encrusted with the blood of innumerable days of Atonement. When Jesus is said to be a propitiation, we are taught that His perfect obedience to the will of God measures and overlaps the full demand of God's holy law, whilst His precious blood has atoned for our sins.