The "Hebrews," then, and their special circumstances of difficulty, are here in view, as everywhere else in the Epistle. Tempted to "fall away," to give up the "hope set before them," to relapse to legalism, to bondage, to the desert, to a famine of the soul, to barrenness and death--here they are dealt with, in order to the more than prevention of the evil. And here, as ever, the remedy propounded is our Lord Jesus Christ, in His personal glory, in His majestic offices, in His unfathomable human sympathy, seen in perfect harmony of light with His eternal greatness.
The remedy is Christ; a deeper, fuller, always maturing sight of Christ. The urgent necessity is first promptitude and then progress in respect of knowing Him.
At the risk of a charge of iteration and monotony, I reaffirm that here is the great antidote for the many kindred difficulties of our troubled time. From how many sides comes the strain! Sometimes from that of an open naturalism; sometimes from that of a partial yet far-reaching "naturalism under a veil" which some recent teachings on "The Being of Christianity" may exemplify, with principles and presuppositions which largely underlie the extremer forms, certainly, of the modern critique of Scripture; sometimes from the opposite quarter of an ecclesiasticism which more or less exaggerates or distorts the great ideas of corporate life and sacramental operation. It would be idle to ignore the subtle _nuances_ of difference between mind and mind, and the resultant varying incidence in detail of great and many-sided truths. But is it not fair and true to say that, on the whole, the supreme personal glory of Christ, as presented direct to the human soul in its august and ineffable loveliness, in its infinite lovableness, is what alike the naturalistic and the ultra-ecclesiastic theories of religion tend to becloud? On the other side, accordingly, it is in the "consideration" of that glory, in acquaintance with that wonderful Christ, that we shall find the glow which can melt and overcome the cloud. We must put ourselves continually in face of the revelation of this in the Word of God. We must let that revelation so sink into the heart as to do its self-verifying work there thoroughly, yet with a growth never to be exhausted. We must "bear onwards" evermore "unto perfection"--in "knowing Him." So we shall stand, and live, and love, and labour on.