The Pulpit Commentary — Hebrews — Section 422

harlots, sinners of every typo and sharle; full of the sick and the sorrowing; full or women like the widow of Nain and the sisters of Lazarus, weeping for their departed kindred. III. No CHANGE IN THE THINGS TO BE FIAID AD0UT CHRIST, Do not be carried away, says the writer of the Epistle, wHh new doctrines concerning Christ, howev6r attractive and plausible. Let us ever remind ourselves of what Ghrist has been in the great yesterday. Especially let us consider that yesterday which is revealed to us in the Scriptures of the New 'I.'estament. If that day was not a dream of the imagination, then it is one of the most glorious of soul-supporting realities. Jesus justified the name he bore, for he did indeed save his people from their sins. The yesterday of which we are now able to Hpeak is a long one. It has known many changes in the world, but none in Jesus Christ. IV. No CHANGE IN THE FUTURE. The world will not change in its need of him. They are certainly wrong who tell us the religion of Christ has seen its best days. Look at the future in the ligM of the past, and you will be assured of your Saviour ever standing in the midst of the golden candlesticks, watching that their light goes not out. We may change in our faith and hope and patience, but Christ changes not. Rising to the measure of our duties and opportunities, this would become a practical truth to us. We are not straitened in him, but in ourselves. He asks to let him do for us what he has done for those going before. He asks for admission. Let the door no longer be locked with the key of unbelief and double bolted with indolence and worldliness. Let us not go from the world without leaving a. testimony that shall if possible have a savour of life unto life to those following in our steps.-Y. Ver. 14.-The continuing city. The two previous verses express, in a thoroughly Hebraistic way, an invitation to be crucified together with Christ. At the same time, these Hebrew Christians are reminded of the wilderness and tent life which their fore- fathers led for forty years. What they experienced in the outward reality let us experience by the inward spirit. We belong to the future more than to the present. I. OUR VIEW OF PRESENT SURROUNDDTGB. We have cities, but not continuing ones. It would be very foolish in us, knowing all we do and hoping for all we do, to look upon the states and governments of this world as do those in whom nationality is the very strongest feeling. We must pray to be preserved from that narrow and one-sided idealism which so glorifies fatherland as to make it the chief object of one's enthusiasm and effort. Our hearts must not be deceived by the outward splendours of capital cities. And yet, while the pilgrim spirit is in us, let it not be a restless and a carping one. No one should be more interested in the life, prosperity, and good government of a state than the Christian. II. Oun OUTLOOK TOWARDS THE FUTURE. An abiding city, a. city where there is true stability a.ud trne glocy, is no dream. We have it not yet, but we shall have it if wo seek for it. What an interest the Christian is exhorted to have in a.biding, continuing things I Faith, hope, and love are to abide; all a.biding things will be manifested after the great shaking; and they will cohere into the true dignity of the heavenly state. Never has the human imagination been more nobly employed than in bodying forth the conditions and appearances of a. perfect state. But those indulging such imagi- nations had no definite way of reducing them to fact. Here, however, the Christian is spoken of as seeking for the coming city in a very definite way. True, our present life is a.e it were a camp-life, but not for all that like the life of savage or gipsy. Our camping.places are all stages in the journey to the new Jerusa.lem.-Y. Vera. 15, 16.-The sacrifices with which God is well pleased. Va.in is any attempt of ours to take in the full significance of this exhortation. We have not to tum away from any literal altar or any literal sacrifice. But the injunctions in themStllves, apart Crom the special aspect of them, a.re permanently important. I. OoR CONSTANT Alli MUST BE TO PLEASE Gon. Literal sacrifices had degenerated into a traditional safeguard against displeasing God. The ordinances of Sin:u with respect to sacrifice hod aimed to lift it into a great teaching and self-revealing insti- tution. But probably only a fow in every generation bad grasped the spiritual signifi.• ea.nee of sacrifice. Though, doubtless, many too, because their motive was sincere as fa1 HEBREWS. 2E  THE EPISTLE TO THE HEDREWS. [oH, xm. 1-25,