But the writer to the Hebrews looking back upon the preparation for Christ can see how this and that prefigured Him who was to come. Every Old Testament institution, ceremony, person or thing in which a principle or idea was embodied which was afterwards embodied in Christ and His Kingdom may legitimately be called “typical’’. To the Jews themselves these types were helpful not because they threw light upon the person and work of Christ, but because they then and there communicated those very ideas which were subsequently expressed in their reality in Jesus. The institu- tion of sacrifice, 6.6., was useful to them not because it taught them to look for a Messiah who should die for their sins—for it had no such effect—but because it then and there communicated the very ideas and the very hopes which the death of Christ expressed—in a dim and unsatisfactory way no doubt, as this writer is careful to show, but still adequately as a first lesson in the holiness and for- giveness of God.
Keeping in view the aim of the writer to convince his readers that the new Christian order of things is an advance on the old Mosaic order, and is indeed the final and universal form of religion, the course of thought is easily followed. The Mediator of the new covenant is first of all compared with the Mediators of the old, with prophets, angels, Moses, Joshua, Aaron, and this comparison oc- cupies the first seven chapters. The writer then proceeds to exhibit the evanescence of the old covenant and the superiority of the new (viii. 6-13), and of the true God-pitched tabernacle and its sacrifice to the first man-made tabernacle with its arrangements and offerings (ix. 1-x. 18). On this demonstrated superiority and finality of the covenant which Christ has mediated the writer founds a forcible appeal and exhorts his readers to hold fast their profession and to use the access to God provided for them (x. 19-25). This exhorta- tion he enforces by warnings (x. 26-31), by awakening remembrances of better times (32-39), by the rapid, sugggestive and eloquent pre- sentation of their predecessors in faith (xf), and especially of Him whose example in faith and endurance is perfect (xii. 1-4), and by illustrating the reasonableness of hopefully submitting to present trouble as discipline sent by the heavenly Father (xii. 5-13). They are further urged to diligence in sanctification by the consideration that awful as were the sanctions of the old law, those of the new covenant are immensely more awful, that indeed our God is a con- suming fire (xii. 14-29). The closing chapter contains miscellaneous but relevant admonitions.
_Date. The chief index to the date of the Epistle is its relation