scious of his sin, and to drive him to the true source of right- eousness. To our writer the reason is to be sought in the fact that the atoning and purifying institutions of the law cannot remove the sins which prevent fellowship with God.
From Paul’s point of view he might have been expected to show that, in the Old Testament economy, it devolved on the sacrificial institution, centred in the high-priesthood, to meet the want which was not met by legal obedience. To his assertion that men could not fulfil the demands of the law, it might have been answered that the sacrifices, not in being works of the law, but in being ordained by God himself as atonements for sin, changed men’s defective righteousness into a righteousness which justified them before God. But Paul does not meet this. He nowhere shows the insufficiency of the Old Testament sacrifices. He does not treat the doctrine of the high-priesthood of Christ. He regards the system of sacrifices less as a divinely-ordained means of atonement than as a work performed by men, and therefore in the line of other works of the law.
This gap is filled by the writer to the Hebrews, in showing that the ceremonial economy did not and could not effect true fellowship with God. He, no doubt, perceived as clearly as Paul that the observance of the ritual was of the nature of legal works ; but he speaks of the ritual system as only a presumed means of grace intended to define and enforce the idea of fellowship with God, and to give temporary comfort to the worshipper, but practically impotent to institute and maintain such fellowship in any true and deep sense. There- fore he emphasises the topic of the priesthood. He dwells on the imperfect and transient nature of the priestly office : he shows that the Levitical priesthood was only a foreshadow- ing of a better and permanent priesthood. Christ as the great high priest, who appears nowhere in the Pauline Epis- tles, is the central figure in the Epistle to the Hebrews. He treats of the ritual system and its appliances as mere types of an enduring reality: he characterises the whole body of Levitical ordinances and ceremonies as fleshly ; and through all runs the one, sad note, accentuated again and again,