Its Ilatiunale. — The main contribution towards this object is to be found in ch. 2^"*. The leading puqjo.se of this very important section, crammed full with deep weighty thoughts, is to set forth the ration.ale of the earthly humiliation of Christ. And the drift of it is: a (ilorij in the humiliation. On this theme three possible jjositions may be taken up — (1) the glory of tlie .Son and the humili.ation of .Jesus incompatible, the iiosition of unbelief ; (2) the humiliation a temporary veiling of the glory compensated for by subse(iuent re- sumirtion of glory, the common position of average Christian belief ; (o) the humiliation itself glorious when seen in the light of its aim and result, the position of enlightened faith. The writer of our Epistle occupies this highest position, his readers not being far from the lowest. He holds the humiliation it.self to be glorious, and worthy of God the fir.st cause and last end of all, profitable to Christ Himself, and full of benefit to us. It be- came God, he teaches, to subject His Son Jesus to
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suffuiiiig (2'"). It profited Jesus by perfecting Iliiii for His office iis Captain of Salvation, de- veloping in His character the virtues of patience and sympathy, which are necessary to efficient captaincy (2'"- ''■'"). It is beiicticial to us, for we have ill .lesus one of whose interest we can be assured, iuid to whom we can always come with conliilenee that He will grant us seasonable succour (4'"). Such, in brief, is our author's splendid theodicy, his demonstration of the moral fitness of Christ's tragic experience. In the liglit of it we can have no doubt as to what he means when ni ch. '2' he speaks of Jesius as 'crowned with glory and honour, that he, by the grace of (Jod, should taste death for every man.' He means just what he plainly says, that God showed His favour to His Son in appointing Him to an office in connexion with which He should have to taste death for men, and that, in the very act of tasting death as Captain of Salvation, the Son was crowned with glory and honour. These things are true; they are also rfli'raiU to the situation. No one has really mastere<l the probh-m presented in the antinomy between glory and humiliation till he h;us got insight into their truth, and thorough mastery was what the writer posse.s.seii and aimed at for his readers. There is no diffi- culty in understanding his words. The difficulty felt by most interpreters arises from their un- willingness to credit him with clear insight into the moral order of the world. Such insight they appe ir to think beyond the reach of any writer in the first Christian century, even though inspired.
((/) Christ'^ Pi-icsthoixl. — 1'a.ssing from the subject of Christ's person to His priestly function, the subject may be introduced with the remark that the writer takes advantage of any means that olfers it.self of making intelligible to his rea<lei-s the suffering experience of Christ. He is glad to be able to show them from any point of view that it behoved Jesus to die. Sometimes his lines of thought are remote enough from any recognized theories of atonement, as when he bases the thesis that Jesus had to die once onhj on the analogj- of general human experience {'S'^- ^S). The reason which he assigns In the same context for Christ's dying o/icc, viz. that a testator must die before his will can come into effect, is also peculiar, ina.smuch, as it is enough that a testator die anyhow, it is nowise necessary that his death should be of a .sacrificial character. One wonders at the intro- duction of .so elementary and inferior a view close upon the grand conception contained in 9'* ; and all the more wluui it is observed that in order to get a chance of introducing it he has to take advantage of the ilouble meaning of Siad-f/Kri, as sigidlying at once an alliance or covenant and a te.stament. In the ciuse of a covenant there is no necessity for the death of either party, therefore after the word has been u.sed in the .sense of a covenant in !t" it is employed in the other sen.se without any apology. The reason for this nmst be found in t!io ignorance of the first reaihrs. They had, it must be- supposed, no nnderstauding of the rationale of (Jlirist's death from any point of view, and therefore their instructor felt that it w:us a poMit gained if he couhl a.ssign any reason for that death level li> their understanding. It is essential to our understanding of the ICpistlo that this state of ignorance in the first readers be con- stantly borne in mitid. If we come to it, as some interpreters do, with the a.ssumption that the whole doctrine of the atonement w:is familiar to the persons addressed, and that in all that the writer says on the subject of Christ's priestly work he is simply repiating contmonplaces, we incapacitate ourselves for attainiii'.; any true insight into its meaning. The truth is, he is writing to persons
who do not know the alphabet of the subject, and the problem for him is to get into their dull minds by any means the idea: Jesus, though the Christ, the Son of God, nmst die. For this purpose several lines of thouglit are pres.sed into the seri-ice : Jesus must die, ius all men die, unce ; He must die, as a testator dies before his heirs enter into po.sses- sion of his inheritance ; He must die for His own advantage as the Captain of Salvation, becaas' As could not be a good fit captain unless He wete perfected by suffering ; He must die as a pi.est, not indeed as a priest after the type of Aaron, who offered animals as sacrificial victims, but a„ a priest of a higher order, that of Mflcliizf<lfk: