Vers. 12-14.-The powers of the full-grown Christian. Here is the close analogy between the natural life and the spiritual. I. 'l'HE PROORESS OF TllE NATURAL LIFE. At birth the babe finds food provided for it, without effort, without thought-food exactly suited to its infantile state, and which it makes use of by a kind of instinct. Nothing is expected from it save that which it is certain to do by a. law of its nature. But this season, when nothing is expected from it, is only a. season of preparing for the day when much will be expected. Nature will not always provide food in this easy, simple fashion, Milk has to make the way for solid food, and, what is even more important, food to be chosen by us. Whenever we a.re fit to choose, God leaves us to choose, not between the pleasant and the unpleasant, not between that which appeals most powerfully to the taste, and that which is plainer, simpler fare; but, as the writer here emphatically puts it, between the good and the bad. That is the great matter to decide in the choico of food-Is it good or bad? Will it minister to growth, health, energy of function, fulness of life, length of days? God leaves us to settle this. He gives us, without our choice, a suitable food up to the time when our perceptions are sufficiently trained to choose for ourselves. Then he leaves us to freedom and responsibility. II. 'l'HE SIMILAR PROGRESS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE. 'fhcre is the new creature in Christ Jesus, bom a.gain, beginning in feebleness, alive to new and heavenly things, and yet hardly knowing for a. while what that life is. Needing to be treated with great long-suffering and consideration because of infirmity (1 Cor. iii. 2). But, as in tLo natural man, there should be"growth, development of spiritual perception and grasp, so that the spiritual man may come to discern the difference between the true and tho false, the fleshly and the spiritual, the abiding and the temporary, the earthly and the heavenly. Jesus Christ is the Bread of life. Recollect his own words, all import.an~ in the present connection: "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and driukcth my blood, hsth eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed." How many, spiritually considered, are monstrosities to what they ought to be! The natural man, nourished by propor food, full of life, growi,,g and connecting itself with a thousand things around, while the now creature in Chri~t Jesus within is but a starved and pining babe. Thero may, perhaps, be much talk uf living a lifo of faith on the Son of God, but no reality.-Y.
EXPOSITION. discentes Ohristum, B1Bpe 9-uippe Ohristus CHAPTER VL dicitur Paulo per metonym111m concreti pro Vere. I, 2.-Wherefore (since it is so in- Chriatianismo" (Beugol). A further ques- cuwb~nt on us to advance out of the stato of tion is whether the writer merely expresses milk-fed iuflmts), leaving the principles of his own intention of proceeding at once in the dootrine of Christ, let us press on unto tl.iis Epistle to thu more advanced doctrine, perfeotion (TE.\oa6'1'7J'l'a, continuing tho image or whether he is exhorting his readers to of maturiLy). The proper translation of Thv make spiritual progress, using the first .,.,j, apxiis Tau XpurToii .\6-yov is doubtful, the person plurul, tp•pciiµ•8a (as iu oh. ii. I u.nu question being whether T,is apx,is is to be iv. I, tpofJM01µ•v) out of sympathetio courtesy. connected with .\&-yov wi an adjective genitive The correspondence of this deliou.to form of (so taken, as ubove, in the A.V.; cf. eh. v. exhortation with that of the earlier pasB!lges, 12, O"l'o1x••4 T,is dpx,is), or with Tou Xp1aToil, the very words tp•pciiµ.,ea," let us be borne on," the toord of the beginning of ChriBt, mean- "press forw&rd" (implying more than mere ing discourse concerning the first princi pies passing to a new line of thought), and 'l'E.\u6- of Chrislinnity. "Initium Christi, soil. apud 'l'1J'l'CI ( whioh expiesses porsonu.l maturity, 110$ 158 THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS. [CH, VI, 1-!ZQ,