» F. C. Hoggarth.
REVELATION i. 5, 6 15
(chap, vi.) and the Psalmist's confession (Ps. 11.) represent the final teaching of the Old Testament on the matter. This spiritual idea of sacrifice runs throughout the New Testament ; e.g., " I beseech you therefore, brethren ... to present your bodies a living sacri- fice " (Eom. xii. 1). We ought then to offer our conduct as a holy sacrifice to Him. There is also in the New Testament the idea that the new altar, as Hatch says, is that of human need. We give to God in giving to our brother-man. All service that alleviates human suffering, emancipates the enslaved, saves the children, is a sacrifice. " To do good and to communicate forget not : for with such sacrifices God is well pleased."
^ Love has only one measure — its willingness to sacrifice itself. Love's general law is to seek to do good to others, by service, toil, suffering, both passively and actively. What does a mother endure for her child? Sleepless nights, without food, as she soothes the suffering of her little one and wins back life and health to the child by the offering and sacrifice of her own health and life. What of Father Damien, and others like him, who became lepers to save lepers ? Sister Kate Marsden, too ? They give themselves to remove the curse of leprosy, or at least to remove the darker curse of leprosy. It is love undertaking on another's behalf, by means of sacrifice, to win for them some good. There is nothing great and noble and praiseworthy in the world, but this principle of love is at the root of it.^
(3) The priest is a mediator representing God before men, and representing men before God. As our Lord Jesus Christ re- presents God to men, and we, being one with Him, also stand as being, in a secondary sense, God's representatives, so He is perfect man, and in Him the whole of our race is summed up, and we, after a partial manner, may also appear in God's sight on behalf of our fellow-men. They do not need to approach God through us, yet we can voice their wants even when they themselves do not know them. We cannot bear the burden of a world's sin, under which our Saviour bowed, but we can by our prayer and intercession — and that, rightly understood, is no light burden — make the silence of our fellows articulate at the throne of grace.
^ Man is sometimes spoken of as a priest in relation to nature ; as George Herbert puts it —
* John Brovm Patm, by his Son (1914), 372.
i6 REDEEMING LOVE
Man is the world's high-priest: he doth present
The sacrifice for all; while they below Unto the service mutter an assent,
Such as springs use that fall, and winds that blow.
But this is a poet's graceful fancy. The truth of the text lies in the relation of the Christian to God and his fellow-men. There is no human priest in Christianity to come between God and any single human heart ; the only Mediator is He who is Son of God and Son of Man, a High Priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Yet every Christian is to be a priest unto God, as himself offering spiritual sacrifices and helping to interpret God- in-Christ to man and to bring men to the God and Father whom he has learned to love and serve.^
If The whole function of Priesthood was, on Christmas morning, at once and for ever gathered into His Person who was born at Bethlehem ; and thenceforward, all who are united with Him, and who with Him make sacrifice of themselves ; that is to say, all members of the Invisible Church become, at the instant of their conversion, Priests; and are so called in 1 Peter ii. 5 and Kev. i. 6, and xx. 6, where, observe, there is no possibility of limiting the expression to the Clergy ; the conditions of Priest- hood being simply having been loved by Christ, and washed in His blood.2
Priests, priests, — there's no such name! — God's own, except Ye take most vainly. Through heaven's lifted gate
The priestly ephod in sole glory swept. When Christ ascended, entered in, and sate
(With victor face sublimely overwept) At Deity's right hand, to mediate
He alone. He for ever. On His breast The Urim and the Thummim, fed with fire
From the full Godhead, flicker with the unrest Of human, pitiful heartbeats. Come up higher,
All Christians! Levi's tribe is dispossest.^
1 W. T. Davison, Strength for the Way, 33.
2 Ruskin, The Construction of Sheepfolds, § 15 ( Works^ xii. 537). " E. B. Browning, Casa Ouida Windows.
The Second Advent.
REV. — 2
Literature.
Banks (L. A.), John and his Friends, 189.
Bonar (H.), Light and Truth : The Revelation, 25.
Bourdillon (F.), Short Sermons^ 201.
Davies (T.), Sermons and Expositions, i. 347.
Eadie (J.), in The Home Preacher, 737.
Eyton (R.), The Apostles' Creed, 104.
Little (W. J. K.), The Mystery of the Passion, 181.
Milligan (W.), Lectures on the Apocalypse, 219.
Rossetti (C. G.), The Face of the Deep, 19.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, icuiii. (1887), No. 1989.
Temple (W.), Bepton School Sermons, 198.