life just because life holds all that is certain to them. All their treasures are stored up on earth, for they have no notion of any other storehouse. It is, indeed, miserable work to have everything dependent on so uncertain a tenure a.s that of natural life. But Jesus comes and opens the prison-door. That is all he can do. By his death he has ma?-e deli,erance possible from the fear of death. Dut man's confused heart goes on fearmg even when the objects of its fear are turned into empty phantoms.-Y. Vers. 17, 18.-The Incarnation needed for an efficient priesthood. I. WHEREIN AN £FFICIEKT PRIESTHOOD LIES. 'l'he high priest is the representative of man before God. There are cert..'lin things which, as from God, are directed towarqs man; there are certain other things which, as from men, are directed towards God. These things are summed up, or rather the most important of them is specified, in the making reconciliatiou for the sins of the people. The word is the same as the publican used in saying, " God be merciful to me a sinner!" 'l'he thing needed is that these sios should be mentioned before God io their full reality and extent, and some sin offering made exactly corre- spondent to them. And for all this there is further needed on the part of the high priest two great qualities-pity and fidelity. The priest must pity his fellow-men as sinners, and to do this requires a very special exaltation of the heart. A man might easily pity bis fellow-men for their physical pains and weaknesses, who would look with indifference on their alienation from God and the unrest of their hearts within them. Then as to the fidelity required in the priesthood, this is best seen in the elaborate instructiocs given concerning priestly duties by Moses; a sacrifice in which the least prescribed detail had been neglected was as no sacrifice at all. H. THE DEFECTS OF EXISTIKG PRIESTHOODS. It is not exactly said that the long line of Aaron and bis descendants had furnished a priesthood lacking in tenderness and faithfulness; but this is at least suggested, and it is certainly true. If, indeed, a merciful and faithful priesthood had been possible without making the humanity of Jesus to intervene, we are sure such intervention would not have occurred, for it is by no means the way of God to supersede what is doing its work efficiently. But the high priest hitherto had been taken from among men, and he was taken with all his infirmities upon him. He might have no due sense of sin. Judged by the state of his heart, thousands for whom he acted might be nearer to God than him. 'l'he priest lay exposed to just this peculiar temptation of having a lamentably inadequate sense of the sins of his fellow-men. Thus sacrifice became an unreal, perfunctory thing-altogether Gf the hand, and not at all of the heart. III. How IT WAS THAT JESUS BECAME AN EFFICIENT HiaB PRIEST. Here we must look at Jesus historically. Strange it is to remember, in the light of the emphatic assertions of his priesthood contaiued in this Epistle, how he never stood at any altar in Jerusalem, never entered the holy of holies. And yet all the time he was preparing for priesthood and for sacrifice. He was declaring, by all his ceaseless words and acts of mercy, by all his faithfulness to truth, his fitness to be the High Priest. For perfect compassion and perfect fidelity, these constitute the vocation to the priestly office. .And it must be one of ourselves who shows them. Jesus, as Son of God, had some- thing which every descendant of Aaron had lacked; bnt until he became in all respects like his brethren, the most sinful of men bad something which Jesus lacked. What wonder is it that angelic visits ceased once the humanity of Jesus been.me demonstrated and glorified I Angels, whatever their desire might be, could never come so close to us AS Jesus-could never know as he knows, man like us, looking into our hearts with Luman eyes and yet with Divine penetration.-Y.
EXPOSITION.
CHAP'f ER III. though a new branch of the argument begins, it is linked, after the artistic Tm: SoN surEBIOB TO MosEs. manner of the Epistle, to wbat he.s gone Here Lcgins the second section of the before in a continuous chain of thought. argument of the first four chapters (see This sequence is denoted by the initiatory 11umma.ry given under eh. i. 5). But 89w, CH, ru. 1-19.] THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. 85