priest entereth into the Holy place year by year with blood not his own; else must He often have suffered since the foundation of the world: but now once at the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.

In treating of the Mosaic ritual, and of the worship of the sanctuary, the Apostle fixes the minds of his readers on the services of the great day of Atonement, when the high priest, after undergoing the most elaborate ceremonial purification, entered into the Holy of Holies and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice seven times before the mercy-seat.

The high priest did not remain in the most Holy place, the mercy-seat of God's Presence was not permanently made open. In fact, the material sanctuary and mercy-seat so carefully veiled off was a sign that the real Priest had not yet come, that the real Sacrifice had not been yet offered. It was a sign that there was something overshadowing the heart of the worshipper, which separated it from Him to whom it would draw nigh. All the appointed ceremonies for the purification of the flesh reminded him of the fact, but could not change it. They only touched the flesh, they could not reach the conscience.

But now, in the end of the ages of the Jewish dispensation, Christ the true Priest had come, had offered Himself with His spotless life, and willing death, as the one perfect all-sufficient sacrifice.

As the Jewish high priest went into the Holy of Holies, with the blood of the typical sacrifice, and sprinkled it before the mercy-seat: so Christ entered into heaven itself, into the very Presence of God, with His own blood, pleading, that is, the efficacy of His one perfect Sacrifice, and thus obtained an eternal redemption for us.

The sacrificial act of the Jewish high priest was

twofold. First he killed the appointed victim outside the Holy place, and next carried its blood into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled it seven times before the mercy-seat. So also is the sacrificial act of Christ our great High Priest twofold.

The first part was accomplished on earth when He yielded up His departing spirit into the Father's hands. This can never be repeated, Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more. He entered into the Heavenly Sanctuary once for all. But the second part of the sacrificial act is going on still. The high priest sprinkled the blood not once, but seven times. Christ continually does that which the sprinkling of the blood typified. He presents Himself continually before the throne of God for us; and He will remain there till the mysterious sevenfold sprinkling of His blood is accomplished. And what He does in heaven in His own proper Person, that He effects on earth by the ministry of His Church. As He continually presents Himself as the One Sacrifice in the courts of Heaven: so does He present Himself, in a mystery, in the courts of His Church on earth.

It is only when we grasp this twofold action of Christ's Sacrifice, only when we see that the Sacrifice which was once offered for the sins of the whole world is being perpetually presented before God in heaven, that we can understand the true meaning of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, freed alike from Roman additions and Puritan defects.

For can we think that because the one true Sacrifice has been offered, therefore sacrificial worship must cease? Is it not rather the precise reason why it should continue?

"Must not," asks one whose guidance I have been following throughout this book, and whom no one can accuse of fondness for Roman superstition,

"Must not this idea of sacrifice penetrate even more deeply into this dispensation than it did into the old? Must not the presentation of the one real perfect Sacrifice to the Father, the continual thanksgiving for that Sacrifice, be the central act of all worship to God-of all fellowship among men? Must not the offering of the worshipper's soul and body as living sacrifices to God be the necessary fruit and accompaniment of this act?"-(MAURICE on the Hebrews.)

But the Apostle goes on to show in what the essence of Christ's sacrifice, and its infinite superiority over the legal sacrifices, consisted.

The Psalmists and Prophets of Israel had been led to see the insufficiency of the sacrifices of the law: but by the very same process they had been led to look forward in faith and hope to a real and perfect sacrifice, and to see, as it were, behind the ineffectual sacrifices of the law, One who should come to offer the real, acceptable sacrifice, One who could say, "Lo! I come to do Thy will, O God."

Ch. x. 1: For the law having a shadow of the good things to come, not the very image of the things, they can never with the same sacrifices year by year, which they offer continually, make perfect them that draw nigh.... For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Wherefore when He cometh into the world, He saith,

Sacrifice and offering thou wouldest not. . . . .

...

Then said I, Lo, I am come.... to do Thy will, O God. Saying above, Sacrifices and offerings thou wouldest not, . . . then hath He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. He taketh away the first, that He may establish the second. By which will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. . . . Having therefore, brethren, boldness to enter into the Holy place by the blood of Jesus, by the way which He

dedicated for us, a new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His flesh; and having a great Priest over the house of God; let us draw near with a true heart in fulness of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure

water.

This whole passage is one of the most important in the whole Bible on the subject of sacrifice. From the sacrifice of Cain and Abel downwards, the whole Bible is full of the doctrine of sacrifice; in the tangled skein of human history the scarlet thread of sacrifice can be traced throughout. And as the sacrifices were consummated in the Sacrifice of Christ, so the doctrine of sacrifice culminates in this passage of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and in this its central thought, "Lo! I am come to do Thy will, O God."

This is the highest teaching of the Bible about sacrifice.

Men have too often thought of sacrifice as a human device to propitiate an angry deity, as an attempt to change the Divine Will, and avert the Divine vengeance: the Bible, on the other hand, teaches that sacrifice is not a human device, but a Divine ordinance: not something which changes God's will, but that which removes the obstacles to the fulfilment of His will.

We do not read, I come to change Thy will, O God; but "I am come to do Thy will, O God."

The sacrifice which the Great High Priest offered was the sacrifice of absolute submission, of entire surrender, of perfect obedience. In other words, it was the sacrifice of Himself, it was the perfect doing of the Father's will, even that good will, that perfectly righteous will, on which the government of the universe is based.

CHAPTER XL.

THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

(continued).

N our last chapter we reached that point in the Apostle's argument, in which he demonstrates that, as the Lord Jesus in the

dignity of His Person was infinitely greater than Moses, so in the excellency of His High Priesthood He excelled the high priests of Israel who succeeded one another in their high office, and so also the efficacy of His Sacrifice infinitely exceeded the efficacy of the sacrifices of the Law, and His own blood was far more precious than the blood of bulls and goats.

Moses ruled in God's household as a servant, a faithful servant no doubt, but still a servant: Christ ruled in God's household as a Son in His Father's house.

The Jewish high priest was compassed with infirmity; was constrained to offer sacrifice for his own sins, as well as for the sins of the people; was not allowed to continue long in his office by reason of death. Christ, the real High Priest, was holy, harmless, undefiled, separated from sinners; and yet could be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, and save all that came to Him to the uttermost. He exercised His priestly office not by the authority of a carnal commandment, but by the power of an endless life.