PREFACE

The Epistle to the Hebrews was written by the eternal
Spirit for the whole Church of God in all ages. It
shows us on what footing we are to stand before God as
sinners; and in what way we are to draw near as
worshippers.
 It assumes throughout, that the present
condition of the Church on earth is one continually
requiring the application of the great sacrifice for
cleansing. The theory of personal sinlessness has no
place in it. Continual evil, failure, imperfection,
are assumed as the condition of God's worshippers on
earth, during this dispensation. Personal imperfection
on the one hand, and vicarious perfection on the
other, are the solemn truths which pervade the whole.
There is no day nor hour in which evil is not coming
forth from us, and in which the great bloodshedding is
not needed to wash it away. This epistle is manifestly
meant for the whole life of the saint, and for the
whole history of the Church. God's purpose is that we
should never, while here, get beyond the need of
expiation and purging; and though vain man may think
that he would better glorify God by sinlessness, yet
the Holy Spirit in this epistle shows us that we are
called to glorify God by our perpetual need of the
precious bloodshedding upon the cross. No need of
washing, may be the watchword of some; they are beyond
all that! But they who, whether conscious or
unconscious of sin, will take this epistle as the
declaration of God's mind as to the imperfection of
the believing man on earth, will be constrained to
acknowledge that the bloodshedding must be in constant
requisition, not (as some say) to keep the believer in
a sinless state, but to cleanse him from his hourly
sinfulness.[1]
 Boldness to enter into the holiest is a
condition of the soul which can only be maintained by
continual recourse to the blood of sprinkling, alike
for conscious and for unconscious sin: the latter of
these being by far the most subtle and the most
terrible,--that for which the sin-offering required to
be brought.
 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us." The presence
of sin in us is the only thing which makes such
epistles as that to the Hebrews at all intelligible.
When, by some instantaneous act of faith, we soar
above sin, (as some think they do) we also bid
farewell to the no longer needed blood, and to the no
longer needed Epistle to the Hebrews.
 "Through the veil, which is His flesh," is our
one access to God; not merely at first when we
believed, but day by day, to the last. The blood-
dropped pavement is that one which we tread, and the
blood-stained mercy-seat is that before which we bow.
In letters of blood there is written on that veil, and
that mercy-seat, "I am the way, the truth, and the
life; no man cometh to the Father but by me": and,
again, "Through Him we have access, by one Spirit,
unto the Father."
 Every thing connected with the sanctuary, outer
and inner, is, in God's sight, excellent and precious.
As of the altar, so of every other part of it, we may
say, "Whatsoever toucheth it shall be holy" (Exo
29:37). Or, as the Apostle Peter puts it, "To you who
believe this preciousness belongs" (1 Peter 2:7, i.e.,
all the preciousness of the "precious stone").
 Men may ask, May we not be allowed to differ in
opinion from God about this preciousness? Why should
our estimate of the altar, or the blood, or the veil,
if not according to God's, be so fatal to us as to
shut us out of the kingdom? And why should our
acceptance of God's estimate make us heirs of
salvation? I answer, such is the mind of God, and such
is the divine statute concerning admission and
exclusion.
 You may try the experiment of differing from Him
as to other things, but beware of differing from Him
as to this. Remember that He has said, "This is my
beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." Say what you
like, He is a jealous God, and will avenge all
disparagement of His sanctuary, or dishonour of His
Son. Contend with Him, if you will try the strife,
about other things. It may not cost you your soul.
Dispute His estimate of the works of His hand in
heaven and earth; say that they are not altogether
"good," and that you could have improved them, had you
been consulted. It may not forfeit your crown. Tell
Him that His light is not so glorious as He thinks it
is, nor His stars so brilliant as He declares they
are. He may bear with this thy underrating of His
material handiwork, and treat thee as a foolish child
that speaks of what he knows not.
 But touch His great work, His work of works,--
the person and propitiation of His only-begotten Son,
and He will bear with thee no more. Differ from Him in
His estimate of the great bloodshedding, and he will
withstand thee to the face. Tell Him that the blood of
Golgotha could no more expiate sin than the blood of
bulls and of goats, and He will resent it to the
uttermost. Depreciate anything, everything that He has
made; He may smile at thy presumption. But depreciate
not the cross. Underrate not the sacrifice of the
great altar. It will cost thee thy soul. It will shut
thee out of the kingdom. It will darken thy eternity.

 The Grange,
Edinburgh, October 1874
 
 
 

CONTENTS.
 

1. Open Intercourse with God.

2. How There Came to be a Veil.

3. The Symbolic Veil.

4.  The True Veil.

5. The Rending of the Veil.

6. The Removal of the First Sacrifice and the
 Establishment of the Second.

7. Messiah within the Veil.

8. The Blood within the Veil.

9. God Seeking Worshippers.

10. God Seeking Temples.

11. God Seeking Priests.

12. God Seeking Kings.
 
 

CHAPTER 1

OPEN INTERCOURSE WITH GOD.
 
 

It does not seem a strange thing that the creature and
the Creator should meet face to face, and that they
should hold intercourse without any obstructing
medium.
 We may not understand the mode of communication
between the visible and the invisible, but we can see
this, at least, that He who made us can communicate
with us, by the ear or the eye or the touch. He can
speak and we can hear; and, again, we can speak and He
can hear. His being and ours can thus come together,
to interchange thought and affection: He giving, we
receiving; He rejoicing in us, and we rejoicing in
Him: He loving us, and we loving Him. He can look on
us, and we can look on Him; He "guiding us with His
eye" (Psa 32:8), and we fixing our eye on His, as
children on the eye of a father, taking in all the
love and tenderness which beam from His paternal look,
and sending up to Him our responding look of filial
confidence and love. Not that He has "eyes of flesh,
or seeth as man seeth" (Job 10:4); but He can fix His
gaze on us in ways of His own, and make us feel His
gaze, as really as when the eyes of friends look into
each other's depths. "He that formed the eye shall He
not see" (Psa 94:9). He who made the human eye to be
"the light of the body" (Matt 6:22),--that organ
through which light enters the body,--in order that He
might pour into us the glory of His own sun and moon
and stars,--can He not, through some inner eye which
we know not, and for which we have no name, pour into
us the radiance of His own infinite glory, though He
be the "King invisible" (1 Tim 1:17),--He "whom no man
hath seen nor can see" (1 Tim 6:16),--the "invisible
God" (Col 1:15). He can touch us; for in Him we live
and move and have our being:[2] and we can lay hold of
Him, for He is not far from any one of us; He is the
nearest of all that is near, and the most palpable of
all the palpable. It would seem, then, that open and
free and near intercourse with the God who made us
arose from His being what He is, and from our being
what we are: as if it were a necessity both of His
existence and of ours.
 That He should be our Creator, and yet be
separated from us, seems an impossibility; that we
should be His creatures, and yet remain at a distance
from Him, seems the most unnatural and unlikely of all
relations. Intercourse, fellowship, mutual love, then,
seem to flow from all that He is to us, and from all
that we are to Him.
 We can conceive of no obstruction, no difficulty
in all this, so long as we remained what He has made
us. There could be nothing but the sympathy of heart
with heart; a flow and reflow of holy and unobstructed
love.
 Unhindered access to the God who made us seems
one of the necessary conditions of our nature; and
this not arising out of any merit or worthiness on the
part of the creature, but from the fitness of things;
the adaptation of the thing made to Him who made it;
and the impossibility of separation between that which
was made and Him who made it. The life above and the
life below must draw together; heart cannot be
separated from heart, unless something come between to
put asunder that which had by the necessity of nature
been joined together. Distance from God does not
belong to our creation, but has come in as something
unnatural, something alien to creative love, something
which contravenes the original and fundamental law of
our being.
 The tree separated from its root, the flower
broken off from its stem, are the fittest emblems of
man disjoined from God. Such distance seems altogether
unnatural. The want of vital connection, in our
original constitution, or the absence of sympathy,
would imply defect in the workmanship, of the most
serious kind,--and no less would it indicate
imperfection on the part of the Great Worker.
 God made us for Himself; that He might delight
in us and we in Him; He to be our portion and we His;
He to be our treasure and we His.[3] He made us after
His own likeness; so that each part of our being has
its resemblance or counterpart in Himself: our
affections, and sympathies, and feelings being made
after the model of His own. We are apt to associate
God only with what is cold and abstract and ideal;
ourselves with what is emotional and personal. Herein
we greatly err. We must reverse the picture if we
would know the truth concerning Him with whom is no
coldness, no abstraction, no impersonality. The
reality pertaining to the nature of man, is as nothing
when compared with the reality belonging to the nature
of Him who created us after His own image. In so far
as the infinite exceeds the finite, in so far does
that which we call reality transcend in God all that
is known by that term in man. We are the shadows, He
is the substance. Jehovah is the infinitely real and
true and personal: and it is with Him as such that we
have to do. The God of philosophy may be a cold
abstraction, which no mind can grasp, and by which no
heart can be warmed; but the God of Scripture, the God
who created the heavens and the earth, the God and
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, is a reality,--a
reality for both the mind and heart of man. It is the
infinite Jehovah that loves, and pities, and blesses;
who bids us draw near to Him, walk with Him, and have
fellowship with Him. It is the infinite Jehovah who
fills the finite heart; for He made that heart for the
very purpose of its being filled with Himself. Our joy
is to be in Him; His joy is in us. Over us He resteth
in His love, and in Himself He bids us rest. Apart
from Him creaturehood has neither stability nor
blessedness.
 Free and open intercourse with the God who made
us, is one of the necessities of our being.
Acquaintanceship with Him, and delight in Him, are the
very life of our created existence. Better not to be
than not to know Him, in whom we live, and move, and
have our being. Better to pass away into
unconsciousness or nothingness, than to cease to
delight in Him, or to be delighted in by Him.
 The loss of God is the loss of everything; and
in having God we have everything. His overflowing
fulness is our inheritance; and in nearness to Him we
enjoy that fulness. He cannot speak to us, but
something of that fulness flows in. We cannot speak to
Him without attracting His excellency towards us. This
mutual speech, or converse, is that which forms the
medium of communication between heaven and earth. Man
looketh up, and God looketh down: our eyes meet, and
we are, in the twinkling of an eye, made partakers of
the divine abundance.[4] Man speaks out to God what He
feels; God speaks out to man what He feels. The finite
and the infinite mind thus interchange their
sympathies; love meets love, mingling and rejoicing
together; the full pours itself into the empty, and
the empty receiveth the full.
 The greatness of God is no hindrance to this
intercourse: for one special part of the divine
greatness is to be able to condescend to the
littleness of created beings, seeing that creaturehood
must, from its very nature, have this littleness;
inasmuch as God must ever be God, and man must ever be
man: the ocean must ever be the ocean, the drop must
ever be the drop. The greatness of God compassing our
littleness about, as the heavens the earth, and
fitting into it on every side, as the air into all
parts of the earth, is that which makes the
intercourse so complete and blessed. "In His hand is
the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all
mankind" (Job 12:10). Such is His nearness to, such
His intimacy with, the works of His hands.
 It is nearness, not distance, that the name
Creator implies; and the simple fact of His having
made us is the assurance of His desire to bless us and
to hold intercourse with us. Communication between the
thing made and its maker is involved in the very idea
of creation. "Thy hands have made me and fashioned me:
give me understanding, that I may learn Thy
commandments" (Psa 119:73). "Faithful Creator" is His
name (1 Peter 4:19), and as such we appeal to Him,
"Forsake not the work of Thine own hands" (Psa 138:8).
 Nothing that is worthless or unloveable ever
came from His hands; and as being His "workmanship,"
we may take the assurance of His interest in us, and
His desire for converse with us.[5]
 He put no barrier between Himself and us when He
made us. If there be such a thing now, it is we who
have been its cause. Separation from Him must have
come upon our side. It was not the father who sent the
younger son away; it was that son who "gathered all
together and took his journey into the far country"
(Luke 15:13), because he had become tired of the
father's house and the father's company.
 The rupture between God and man did not begin on
the side of God. It was not heaven that withdrew from
earth, but earth that withdrew from heaven. It was not
the father that said to the younger son, Take your
goods, pack up and be gone; it was that son who said,
"Father give me the portion of goods that falleth to
me," and who, "not many days after, took his journey
into the far country," turning his back on his father
and his father's house.
 "O Israel! thou hast destroyed THYSELF" (Hosea
13:9). O man! thou hast cast off God. It is not God
who has cast off thee. Thou hast dislinked thyself
from the blessed Creator; thou hast broken the golden
chain that fastened thee to His throne, the silken
cord that bound thee to his heart.
 Yet He wants thee back again; nor will He rest
till He has accomplished His gracious design, and made
thee once more the vessel of His love.
 
 

CHAPTER 2.

HOW THERE CAME TO BE A VEIL.
 
 

There was no veil in Paradise between man and God.
There were three places or regions; the outer earth,
Eden, and "the Garden of Eden," or Paradise; but there
was no veil nor fence between, hindering access from
the one to the other. There was nothing to prevent man
from going in to speak with God, or God from coming
out to speak with man.
 It was not till after man had disobeyed that the
veil was let down which separated God from man, which
made a distinction between the dwellings of man and
the habitation of God.
 Before God had spoken or done aught in the way
of separation, man betrayed his consciousness of his
new standing, and of the necessity for a covering or
screen. He fled from God into the thick trees of the
garden, that their foliage might hide him from God and
God from him. In so doing he showed that he felt two
things,--

1. That there must be a veil between him and God;

2. That, now, in his altered position, distance from
God (if such a thing could be) was his safety.

 Even if God had said "draw near," man could not
have responded "let us draw near," or felt "it is good
for me to draw near to God." For sin had now come
between, and until that should be dealt with in the
way of pardon and removal, he could not approach God,
nor expect God to approach him.
 There was a sense of guilt upon his conscience,
and he knew that there was displeasure on the part of
God; so that fellowship, in such circumstances, was
impossible. Any meeting, in this case, could only be
that of the criminal and the Judge; the one to
tremble, and the other to pronounce the righteous
sentence.
 God did come down to man; but not to converse as
before; not to commune in love as if nothing had come
in between them. He came to declare His righteousness;
and yet to reveal His grace. He came to condemn, and
He came to pardon. He came to show how utterly he
abhorred the sin, and yet how graciously he was minded
toward the sinner.
 Something then had now come in between the
Creator and the creature, which made it no longer
possible for the same intercourse to be maintained as
before. Man himself felt this, as soon as he had
sinned; and God declared that it was so.
 How was that "something" to be dealt with? It
was of man's creation; yet man had no power to deal
with it.
 Shall it be removed, or shall it stand? If it
stands, then man is lost to God and to himself. For
the sentence is explicit, "In the day thou eatest
thereof thou shalt surely die."[6] If it is to be
removed, the barrier swept away, and the distance
obliterated, God must do it, and He must do it
immediately, before the criminal is handed over to
final execution, and He must do it righteously, that
there may be no uncertainty as to the thing done, and
no possibility of any future reversal of the blessing
or any replacement of the barrier.
 God, in coming down to man, said, "Thou hast
sinned, and there is not now the same relationship
between us that there was: there is a barrier; but I
mean to remove it; not all at once; and yet completely
at last." Man was not to be lost to God, nor to
himself. He was too precious a part of God's
possessions to be thrown away. He was too dear to God
to be destroyed. "God loved the world" (John 3:16).
 Yet there must be a shutting out from God; and
this was intimated from the beginning. God shuts
Himself out from man; and He shuts man out from
himself: for the way into the holiest for a sinner
could not be prepared all at once. Not man only, but
the universe, must be taught long lessons both in
righteousness and in grace, before the new and living
way can be opened.
 Law had said "The soul that sinneth it shall
die" (Eze 18:4); Grace had said "I have no pleasure in
the death of the wicked" (Eze 33:11); Righteousness
had said "The wicked shall be turned into hell" (Psa
9:17); Mercy had said "How shall I deliver thee up?"
(Hosea 11:8). In what way are these things to be
reconciled? Condemnation is just: can pardon be also
just? Exclusion from God's presence was righteous, can
admission into that presence be no less so?
 The solution of this question must be given on
judicial grounds, and must recognise all the judicial
or legal elements involved in the treatment of crime
and criminals. For law is law, and grace is grace. The
two things cannot be intermingled. What law demands it
must have; and what grace craves can only be given in
accordance with unchanging law. "The reign of grace"
must be "the reign of law"; and the triumph of grace
must be the triumph of law. The grace which alone can
reach the case of the sinner is the grace of the
LAWGIVER, the grace of the JUDGE.
 These were truths which man could not fully
comprehend. They were new truths, or new ideas, which
could only be thoroughly understood by long training,
by ages of education. The method of instruction was
peculiar, and such as suited man's special state of
imperfect knowledge. It was twofold, consisting of a
long line of revelations extending over four thousand
years; and a long series of symbols increasing and
becoming more expressive age after age.
 That there was free love in God for the sinner
was a new truth altogether, and needed to be fully
revealed, "line upon line." Reasoning from God's
treatment of the angels, man would conclude that there
was no favour to be expected for the sinner; nothing
but swift retribution, "everlasting chains." God's
first words to man were those of grace; intimating
that the divine treatment of man was to be very
different from that of the fallen angels: that where
sin had abounded grace was to abound much more.
Forgiveness, not condemnation, was the essence of the
early promise.
 But this was only one-half of the great primal
revelation. God having announced His purpose of grace,
proceeds to show how this was to be carried out with
full regard to the perfection of the law and the
holiness of the Lawgiver.
 The unfolding of this latter part of His purpose
fills up the greater part of the Divine Word.
 The announcement of God's free love was made on
the spot where the sin had been committed and the
transgressors arrested. But the unfolding of the plan,
whereby that free love was to reach the sinner in
righteousness, was commenced outside--at the gate of
Paradise, where the first altar was built, the first
sacrifice was offered, and the first sinner
worshipped.
 The blood-shedding was outside, and Paradise was
closed against the sinner:--Paradise the type of that
heavenly sanctuary from which man had shut himself
out. No blood was shed within; for the place was
counted holy; and besides, man, the sinner, was
excluded from it now, and blood was only needed in
connection with him and his entrance to God.
 To shut out man the sword of fire was placed at
the gate: teaching him not only that he was prohibited
from entering, but that it was death to attempt an
entrance. Paradise was not swept away; nay, man was
allowed to build his altar and to worship at its gate;
but he must remain outside in the meantime, till the
great process had been completed, by which his nearer
approach was secured,--not only without the dread of
death, but with the assurance that there was life
within for him.
 But the flaming sword said, "Not now; not yet."
Much must be done before man can be allowed to go in.
"The Holy Ghost this signified that the way into the
holiest was not yet made manifest."
 In after ages there was no flaming sword at the
gate. But the veil of the tabernacle was substituted
instead of it. That veil said also, "Not now, not
yet." Wait a little longer, O man, and the gate shall
be thrown wide open. These sacrifices of yours have
much to do in connection with the opening of the gate.
Without them it cannot be opened; but even with them,
a long time must elapse before this can be done; man
must be taught that only righteousness can open that
gate, and that this righteousness can only be unfolded
and carried out by the blood-shedding of a substitute.
 Man had been driven out in one hour; but he must
wait ages before he can re-enter. In that interval of
patient waiting he must learn many a lesson, both
regarding God and himself; both regarding sin and
righteousness; both regarding the reason of his being
excluded and the way of re-admission.
 For man is slow to learn. He cannot all at once
take in new ideas as to God and His character. He must
be fully "educated" in these; and this education must
be one not of years but of ages.
 God then began to teach man by means of
sacrifice. This method of teaching him concerning
grace and righteousness widened and filled up age
after age. For this fuller education the tabernacle
was set up; and there God commenced His school. By
means of it He taught Israel, He taught man. The text-
book was a symbolic one, though not without
explanations and comments. It is contained in the Book
of Leviticus. Not till man, the sinner, should master
the profound and wondrous lessons contained in that
book could the veil be removed and access granted. Not
till He had come, who was to be the living personal
exhibition or incarnation of all these lessons, could
the sinner draw nigh to God.
 It seemed a long time to wait, but it could not
be otherwise. The lesson to be taught was a lesson not
for Israel merely, but for the world; not for a few
ages, but for eternity; not for earth only, but for
heaven.
 Every fresh sacrifice offered outside the veil
was a new knock for admission, and a new cry, "How
long, O Lord, how long." In patience the Old Testament
saints waited on; assured that sooner or later the
veil would rend or be swept away, and the way into the
holiest be made manifest; the right of entrance to the
mercy-seat seemed to the sinner for ever.

CHAPTER 3.

THE SYMBOLIC VEIL.
 

The veil of the tabernacle was hung between the holy
place and the holiest of all. Inside of it were the
Ark of the Covenant, the mercy-seat, and the cherubim;
outside were the golden altar of incense, the golden
candlestick, or lamp-stand, and the table of shew-
bread or "presence-bread," the twelve loaves that were
placed before Jehovah.
 Properly there were three veils or curtains for
the tabernacle.
 The outermost hung at the entrance of the
tabernacle; and was always drawn aside, or might be so
by any Israelite that wished to pass into the outer
court, where the brazen altar and brazen laver were.
That veil hindered no one, and concealed nothing. It
was an ever-open door; at which any Israelite might
come in with his sacrifice. It was at this door that
the priest met the comer and examined his sacrifice to
see if it were without blemish; for no blemished
offering could pass the threshold; and the bringer of
a blemished sacrifice must go back unaccepted and
unblest. The Priest rejected him and his victim. He
must go and get another bullock, or else bear his own
sin.[7]
 The second veil hung at the entrance of the holy
place. It allowed any one to look in; but it
prohibited the entrance of all but Priests. "Now when
these things were thus ordained (arranged or set up)
the priests went always (were continually going) into
the first tabernacle (what we usually call the
second), accomplishing the service of God" (Heb 9:6).
They fed at the royal table there; they kept the lamps
burning; they put incense on the golden altar. But
they could enter no farther. The way into the holiest
was not yet opened; the time had not yet come when the
three places should be made one; all veils removed;
all exclusions cancelled; all sprinkled with one
blood; open freely to each coming one: altar, laver,
table, candlestick, incense-altar, ark, and mercy-seat
no longer separated, but brought together as being but
parts of one glorious whole; divided from each other
for a season, for the sake of distinct teaching and
for the exhibition of sacrificial truth in its
different parts and aspects; but in the fulness of
time brought together; as being but one perfect
picture of the one perfect sacrifice, by means of
which we have access to God and re-entrance into the
Paradise which we had lost.
 The third veil hung before the holy of holies:
hiding, as it were, God from man and man from God, and
intimating that the day of full meeting and fellowship
had not yet come. It said to Israel, and it said to
man (for all these things had a world-wide meaning),
God is within; but you cannot enter now. The time is
coming; but it is not yet.
 In heathen temples there were veils hiding their
holy places. But these pointed to no coming
manifestation; no future unveiling of Him who was
supposed to dwell within. These veils were but parts
of the idolatry and darkness of the system; not
proclamations of truth or promises of light. It was
not so in the tabernacle. The veil that hid the glory
was a promise of the revelation of that glory. In
pagan shrines it was a signal of distress and despair;
man's declaration that there was no hope of light;
that the unknown must always be the unknown; nay, that
the unknown was also the unknowable; and that the
unapproached was also the unapproachable. In Israel's
shrine the veil was a thing of light, not of darkness;
it was a covering, no doubt, but it was also a
revelation. It told what God was; where God was, and
how God could be approached.
 That it was not a gate,--of iron or brass, of
silver or of gold,--said much; that it was a veil of
needlework, slight and moveable, said more. For it
intimated that the hindrance in the way of the
worshipper's nearer approach was slender and
temporary. The nature of a tent intimated among other
things its removeableness: "mine age is departed, and
is removed from me as a shepherd's tent" (Isa 38:12).
The nature of a veil in a tent intimates still greater
slightness and removeableness. It was a thing which
could easily be drawn aside, nay, which was, at the
needed season, to be taken away. It was no wall of
obstruction, but simply of temporary separation and
exclusion, to be done away with in due time.
 But while it was slight it was very beautiful.
It is thus described:-- "And thou shalt make a veil of
blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine-twined linen,
of cunning work: with cherubims shall it be made: and
thou shalt hang it upon four pillars of shittim wood,
overlaid with gold: their hooks shall be of gold upon
the four sockets of silver" (Exo 26:31,32). Of the
veil made by Solomon for the temple on Moriah it is
said, "He made the veil of blue, and purple, and
crimson, and fine linen, and wrought cherubims
thereon" (2 Chron 3:14).
 The temple-veil seems to have been thicker and
of course larger every way, than that of the
tabernacle. It is said to have been about twenty feet
in height, and as much in width, strongly wrought and
finely woven. It was never drawn, or at least only so
much of it was moved aside once a-year as to admit the
High Priest, when he approached the mercy-seat with
blood and incense. For ages it stretched across that
awful entrance, a more immoveable barrier than brass
or iron: no Priest, or Levite, or Israelite venturing
within its folds. Torn down again and again in
different centuries, by the Babylonian, Persian,
Grecian, and Roman invader, it was often replaced,
that it might hang there, to teach its wondrous
lessons, till God's great purpose with it had been
fulfilled.
 To the Jew of old there must have seemed
something mysterious about that veil. It was not hung
up merely to conceal what was within, as if God
grudged to man the full vision of His glory, or had no
desire to be approached. Many things connected with
its texture and place showed that this was not the
case. The unspiritual Jew of course was very likely to
misjudge its use and import; and the historian
Josephus is a specimen of that class. He seems to have
had not the most distant idea of its use.[8] But the
Israelite who had discernment in the things of God
would see something far higher and nobler than this,
though he might not understand it fully in connection
with Messiah. Still he would see in that veil
something glorious; something which both attracted and
repelled; something which hid and revealed; something
which spoke of himself and of his Messiah; for he knew
that every thing pertaining to that tabernacle, and
specially these on which cherubim were wrought, had
reference to Messiah the Deliver, the seed of the
woman, the man with the bruised heel.
 All the curtains of the tabernacle had more or
less the same reference. For on all of them the same
devices were wrought. "Thou shalt make the tabernacle
with ten curtains of fine-twined linen, and blue, and
purple, and scarlet: with cherubims of cunning work
shalt thou make them" (Exo 26:1, 36:8). The cherubim-
figure was to be seen everywhere. That mysterious
device which was first placed in Paradise, and which
for ages had disappeared, was now reproduced in
connection with the tabernacle. Since the garden of
the Lord had been swept away (probably at the flood),
the cherubim had not been seen; though doubtless
tradition had handed down the memory of their
appearance, and to Israel they were not strangers.
Moses is now commanded to restore them. From Noah to
Moses the Church had been a wanderer, with no
sanctuary, only an altar to worship at. Yet,
doubtless, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew well about
the cherubim; and when Moses was instructed to replace
them he does not require to have their nature
explained. They are now to be inwoven into the
sanctuary,--that sanctuary which symbolised nothing
less than Messiah Himself; teaching us that (whatever
these cherubim might mean) the cherubim and Messiah
were all "of one." The Church is represented in the
tabernacle as one with Christ, "members of His body,
of His flesh, and of His bones." Israel was taught
that "the Church in the wilderness" (Acts 7:38) was as
truly the body of Christ as the Church at Pentecost.
 But however vague might be the ideas of the old
Jew regarding the veil, it could not but be viewed as
very peculiar, something by itself; part of the
tabernacle furniture no doubt, yet a singular and
unique part of it; in texture, in position, and in
use, quite peculiar: exquisite as a piece of
workmanship,--every colour and thread of which it was
composed being symbolic and vocal. But still it was
the frailest part of the fabric,--a strange contrast,
in after days when the temple was built, with the
massive marble walls and cedar beams, with which it
was surrounded. For the temple was in all respects
magnificent,--even as a piece of architecture. Its
enormous foundations were let in to the solid rock;
its vast stones, each in itself a wall, rose tier
above tier; its gates were of solid brass, so weighty,
that one of them required twenty men to open and shut
it. It thus presented a solid mass to view more like a
part of the mountain than a mere building upon it.
 But the veil was a thing which a child's hand
could draw aside; and it was hung just where we should
have expected a gate of brass or a wall of granite,--
at the entrance into the holiest of all,--to guard
against the possibility of intrusion. Its frail
texture in the midst of so much that was strong and
massive, said that it was but a temporary barrier,--a
screen,--in due time to be removed. The worshipper in
the outer court, as he looked towards it from the
outer entrance of the holy place, would see something
of its workmanship, and might perhaps get some
glimpses of the glory within shining through its
folds. He would learn this much, at least, that the
way into the holiest was not fully opened; yet it was
only stopped by a veil, no more. He would conclude
within himself, that though shut out now he would one
day be allowed to enter and worship at the mercy-seat,
or at something better than that mercy-seat, at the
heavenly throne, in the true tabernacle which the Lord
pitched, and not man, when the High Priest of good
things to come should arrive, and as his forerunner,
lead him into the very presence of that Invisible
Jehovah who was now by symbols showing how He was to
be approached and worshipped.
 The veil! It hid God from man; for till that
should be done which would make "grace reign through
righteousness" (Rom 5:21), man could not be allowed to
see God face to face. It hid man from God; for till
this "righteousness" was established by the
substitution of the just for the unjust, God could not
directly look upon man. It hid the glory of God from
man; it hid the shame of man from God. It so veiled or
shaded both the shame and the glory, that it was
possible for God to be near man, and yet not to repel
him; and it was possible for man to be near God and
yet not to be consumed.
 The veil! It was let down from above, it did not
spring up from below. It originated in God, and not in
man. It was not man hiding himself from God, but God
hiding Himself from man, as His holiness required,
until it should become a right for a holy God and
unholy man to meet each other in peace and love.
 And it was sprinkled with blood! For though the
expression "before the veil" (Lev 4:6) does not
necessarily mean that it was sprinkled on the veil,
yet the likelihood is that this was done. "The seven
times, (says a commentator on Leviticus), throughout
all Scripture, intimates a complete and perfect
action. The blood is to be thoroughly exhibited before
the Lord; life openly exhibited as taken, to honour
the law that had been violated. It is not at this time
taken within the veil; for that would require the
priest to enter the holy of holies, a thing permitted
only once a year. But it is taken very near the mercy-
seat; it is taken 'before the veil,' while the Lord
that dwelt between the cherubim bent down to listen to
the cry that came up from the sin-atoning blood. Was
the blood sprinkled on the veil? Some say not; but
only on the floor close to the veil. The floor of the
holy place was dyed with blood; a threshold of blood
was formed, over which the High Priest must pass into
on the day of judgment, when he entered into the most
holy, drawing aside the veil. It is blood that opens
our way into the presence of God; it is the voice of
atoning blood that prevails with Him who dwells
within. Others, however, with more probability, think
that the blood was sprinkled on the veil. It might
intimate that atonement was yet to rend that veil; and
as that beautiful veil represented our Saviour's holy
humanity (Heb 10:20), oh, how expressive was the
continual repetition of the 'blood-sprinkling' seven
times. As often as the Priest offered a sin-offering,
the veil was wet again with blood, which dropped on
the floor. Is this Christ bathed in the blood of
atonement? Yes, through that veil the veil was opened
to us, through the flesh of Jesus, through the body
that for us was drenched in the sweat of blood."[9]
 We speak of the blood-sprinkled mercy-seat, and
the blood-sprinkled floor, on which that mercy-seat
stood; but let us not forget the blood-sprinkled
pavement, the "new and living way" into the holiest,
and the blood-sprinkled veil. For "almost all things
under the law were purged with blood, and without
shedding of blood is no remission."
 Nor let us forget Gethsemane, where "His sweat
was as it were great drops of blood falling down to
the ground." At His circumcision, at Gethsemane, at
the cross, we see the blood-sprinkled veil. And all
this for us; that the blood which was thus required at
His hands should not be required of us.

CHAPTER 4.

THE TRUE VEIL.
 
 

All man's thoughts regarding the true meaning of the
veil have been set at rest by that brief parenthesis
of the Apostle Paul,-- "the veil, that is to say, His
flesh" (Heb 10:20). The Holy Spirit has interpreted
the symbol for us, and saved us a world of speculation
and uncertainty. We now know that the veil meant the
body of "Jesus."[10]
 Thus Christ is seen in every part of the
tabernacle; and everywhere it is the riches of His
grace that we see. Here "Christ is all and in all."
The whole fabric is Christ. Each separate part is
Christ. The altar is Christ the sacrifice. The laver
is Christ filled with the Spirit for us. The curtains
speak of Him. The entrances all speak of Him.
Candlestick, and table, and golden altar speak of Him.
The Ark of the Covenant, the mercy-seat, the glory,
all embody and reveal Him. Everything here says,
"Behold the Lamb of God who taketh away the sin of the
world."
 But the veil is "His flesh,"--His body, His
humanity. As the lamb was to be without blemish, and
without spot, in order to set forth His perfection; so
the veil was perfect in all its parts, finely wrought
and beautiful to the eye, to exhibit the excellency of
Him who is fairer than the children of men. As the
veil was composed of the things of earth, so was His
body; not only bone of our bone and flesh of His
flesh, but nourished in all its parts by the things of
earth, fed by the things which grew out of the soil,
as we are fed. Christ's flesh was perfect, though
earthly: without sin, though of the substance of a
sinful woman; unblemished in every part, yet sensitive
to all our sinless infirmities. Through the veil the
glory shone, so through the body of Christ the Godhead
shone.
 As in the holy of holies the shekinah or symbol
of Jehovah dwelt; so in the man Christ Jesus dwelt
"all the fulness of the Godhead BODILY" (Col 2:9). He
was "the Word made flesh" (John 1:14); "God manifest
in flesh" (1 Tim 3:16); "Immanuel," God with us;
Jehovah in very deed dwelling on earth, inhabiting a
temple made with hands; and that temple a human body
such as ours. For God became man that He might dwell
with man, and that man might dwell with Him. In Jesus
of Nazareth Jehovah was manifested; so that he who saw
Him saw the Father, and he who heard Him heard the
Father, and he who knew Him knew the Father.
 In Jesus of Nazareth was seen the mighty God. In
the son of the carpenter was seen the Creator of
heaven and earth. In the Man of sorrows was seen the
Son of the blessed. He who was born at Bethlehem was
He whose days are from eternity. He who died was the
Prince of life, of whom it is written, "In Him was
life, and the life was the light of men." Of these
things the mysterious veil of the temple was the fair
symbol. He who could read the meaning of that veil
could read unutterable things concerning the coming
Messiah,--the Redeemer of His Israel, the Deliverer of
man; divine yet human, heavenly yet earthly, clothed
with divine majesty, yet wearing the raiment of our
poor humanity.
 In Him was manifested divine strength, residing
in and working through a feeble human arm such as
ours: divine wisdom, in its perfection, speaking
through the lips of a child of dust; divine majesty
seated on a human brow; divine benignity beaming from
human eyes, and put forth in the touch of a human
hand; divine purposes working themselves out through a
human will; divine sovereignty embodied in each act
and motion of a human organism; divine grace coming
forth in human compassions and sympathies; and divine
grief finding vent to itself in human tears.
 The perfection of His holy and glorious, yet
true manhood is seen in that mysterious veil. Its
materials, so choice, so fair, yet still earthly,
spoke of Him who, though fairer than the children of
men, is still bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh.
Its well-wrought texture and exquisite workmanship, of
purple, and scarlet, and fine-twined linen, spoke of
His spotless yet thoroughly human body, prepared by
the Holy Ghost; while its embroidered or interwoven
cherubim spoke of the Church in Him,--part of Himself;
one with Him as He is one with them; for "both He that
sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of
one."
 The "flesh of Christ" both revealed and hid the
glory. It veiled and it unveiled Godhead: it
proclaimed the nearness of Jehovah to His worshippers,
and yet suggested some distance, some interposing
medium, which could only be taken out of the way by
God Himself. For that which had been placed there by
God could not be removed by man. And yet man, in a
certain sense, had to do with the removal. In the
type, indeed, it was not so; but in the antitype it
was. For no hand of man rent the veil; yet it was
man's hand that nailed the Son of God to the cross; it
was man that slew Him. And yet again, on the other
hand, it was God that smote Him,--just as it was the
hand of God that rent the veil from top to bottom. "It
pleased the Lord to bruise Him and to put Him to
grief" (Isa 53:10). The bruising of His heel was the
doing of the serpent and his seed, yet it was also the
doing of the Lord.
 There was the unbroken body, and the broken body
of the Lord. The veil pointed to the former. It was
the symbol of the unbroken body, the unwounded flesh
of the Surety. It was connected with incarnation, not
with crucifixion,--with life, not with death. We learn
from it that mere incarnation can do nothing for the
sinner. He needs far more than that,--something
different from the mere assumption of our humanity.
The veil said, that body must be broken before the
sinner can come as a worshipper into the place where
Jehovah dwells. The Christ of God must not merely take
flesh and blood; He must take mortal flesh and die.
Sacrifice alone can bring us nigh to God, and keep us
secure and blessed in His presence. We are saved by a
dying Christ.
 The veil was, as we have said before, to the
holy of holies what the sword of fire was to the
garden of the Lord. Both of them kept watch at the
gate of the divine presence-chamber. The flaming sword
turned every way; that is, it threw around the garden
a girdle or belt of divine fire from the shekinah
glory, threatening death to all who should seek
entrance into the holiest, and yet (by leaving
Paradise unscathed upon the earth) revealing God's
gracious purpose of preserving it for the re-entrance
of banished man, or rather of preparing for him a home
more glorious than the Paradise which he had lost.
 Both the veil and the flame said, "We guard the
palace of the Great King, that no sinner may enter."
Yet they said also, the King is within, He has not
forsaken man or man's world; you shall one day have
unhindered access to Him; but for wise and vast
reasons, to be shown in due time, you cannot enter
yet. Something must be done to make your entrance a
safe thing for yourself and a righteous thing for God.
 That veil then, unrent as it was, proclaimed the
glad tidings; though it could not, so long as it was
unrent, reveal the whole grace, or at least the way in
which grace is to reach the sinner. That grace can
flow out only by means of death. It is death that
opens the pent-up fulness of love, and sends out the
life contained in the "spring shut up, the fountain
sealed." It is the rod of the substitute, the cross of
the sin-bearer that smites the rock, that the waters
may gush forth.
 The antitype of the unrent veil might be said to
have been held before Israel's eyes from the time that
the Son of God took our flesh. It is the unrent veil
that we find at Bethlehem; it is the unrent veil that
we find at Nazareth, and all the life long of the
Christ of God. The miracles of grace wrought during
His ministry were like the waving of the folds of that
veil before men's eyes, and letting some of the rays
of the inner majesty shine through. So were His words
of grace from day to day. Men were compelled to look
and to admire. "They wondered at the gracious words
proceeding out of His mouth" (Luke 4:22, literally,
"at the words of the grace proceeding out of His
mouth"); "Never man spake like this man" (John 7:46);
"He hath done all things well" (Mark 7:37); what were
these things but the expressions of admiration at the
unrent veil. It was so beautiful, so perfect! Men
gazed at it and wondered. It was marvellously
attractive; and it was meant to be so.
 Hence many were drawn to the person of Christ by
His attractive grace without fully understanding
either His fulness or their own great need. What they
saw in a living Christ won their hearts; they
acknowledged Him as the Saviour without fully
understanding how He was to be such. The disciples
would not admit any necessity for His dying. The
unrent veil seemed to them enough. "That be far from
Thee, Lord," were the words of Peter, repudiating the
very idea of His Lord's death. He was content with a
living Saviour. Death seemed altogether inconsistent
with the character of Messiah.
 Let us mark the scene just referred to, and
understand its meaning. "From that time forth began
Jesus to show unto His disciples, how that He must go
to Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and
chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised
again the third day" (Matt 16:21). It was as if
standing in front of the holy of holies, and pointing
to the veil, He was saying to them, That veil must be
rent! "Then Peter took Him, and began to rebuke him,
saying, Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be
unto Thee" (v 22). What was this but saying, Lord,
that is impossible; that veil must not and cannot be
rent! "But He turned and said unto Peter, Get thee
behind me, Satan; thou art an offence unto me; for
thou savourest not the things that be of God, but
those that be of men" (v 23). It was as if He had
said, Peter, thou art speaking like Satan, and for
Satan; he knows that unless the heel of the woman's
seed be bruised, his head cannot be bruised; he knows
that unless that veil be rent, thou canst not go in to
God; and he speaks through thee, if it were possible,
to prevent the rending; the veil must be rent; if I
die not, thou canst not live; if I die not, I need not
have come into the world at all.[11]
 If one might, by a figure, speak of the veil as
living and sentient, might we not say that it dreaded
the rending. What was the meaning of Christ's words,
"Now is my soul sorrowful"? Was it not the expression
of dread as to the rending? And still more, what was
the meaning of the Gethsemane cry, "Father, if it be
Thy will, let this cup pass from me"? Was it not the
same? And yet there was the desire for its being rent,
the longing for the consummation. "I have a baptism to
be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be
accomplished" (Luke 12:50).
 "A body hast thou prepared me" (Heb 10:5). That
body was truly human as we have seen, and yet it was
prepared by the Holy Ghost. "The Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall
overshadow thee; therefore also,[12] that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
God" (Luke 1:35). This body, thus divinely prepared
out of human materials, was altogether wonderful.
There had been none like it from the first: nor was
there to be any such after it,--so perfect, yet so
thoroughly human; so stainless, yet so sensitive to
all the sinless infirmities of man. In this respect it
differed from the body of the first Adam, which was
perfect, no doubt, but not in sympathy with us. The
kind of perfection in the first Adam unfitted him to
sympathise with us, or to be tempted like as we are.
The nature of Christ's perfection fitted Him most
fully for sympathising with us, and for being tempted,
like as we are, yet without sin.
 The colour and texture of the temple-veil seem
all to have reference to the flesh or body; blue, and
purple, and scarlet, and fine-twined linen. Jeremiah's
description of the Nazarites may help us to see this:
"Her Nazarites were purer than snow, they were whiter
than milk; they were more ruddy in body than rubies;
their polishing was of sapphire" (Lam 4:7, or "their
veining was the sapphire's," as Blayney renders it).
The bride in the Song of Solomon thus also speaks of
the bridegroom, "My beloved is white and ruddy, the
chiefest among ten thousand" (Song of Sol 5:10).
 All this corporeal perfection and beauty were
produced by the Holy Ghost. Never had His hand brought
forth such material perfection as in the body of the
Christ of God. It was "without spot and blemish,"
worthy of Him out of whose eternal purpose it came
forth; worthy of Him who so cunningly had wrought it
as the perfection of divine workmanship; worthy of Him
in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead
bodily.[13]
 
 

CHAPTER 5.

THE RENDING OF THE VEIL.
 

The symbolic veil was rent: and at the same moment the
true veil was also rent. It is this that we have now
to consider.
 The following are the words of the evangelist:
"Behold the veil of the temple was rent in twain from
the top to the bottom" (Matt 27:51). In considering
them we must endeavour to realise the scene of which
this is a part. The passage transports us to
Jerusalem; it sets us down upon Moriah; it takes us
into the old temple at the hour of evening sacrifice,
when the sun, though far down the heavens, is still
sending its rays right over turret and pinnacle, on to
the grey slopes of Olivet, where thousands, gathered
for the great Paschal Sacrifice, are wandering; it
shows us the holy chambers with their varied furniture
of marble and cedar and gold; it brings us into the
midst of the ministering priests, all robed for
service. Then suddenly, as through the opened sky, it
lifts us up and carries us from the earthly into the
heavenly places, from the mortal into the immortal
Jerusalem, of which it is written by one who had gazed
upon them both, "I saw no temple therein, for the Lord
God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple of it."
 For we must take the earthly and the heavenly
together, as body and soul. The terrestrial sun and
the sun of righteousness must mingle their radiance,
and each unfold the other. The waters of the nether
and the upper springs must flow together. The Church
must be seen in Israel, and Israel in the Church;
Christ in the altar, and the altar in Christ; Christ
in the lamb, and the lamb in Christ; Christ in the
mercy-seat, and the mercy-seat in Christ; Christ in
the shekinah-glory, and the shekinah-glory in Him, who
is the brightness of Jehovah's glory. We must not
separate the shadow from the substance, the material
from the spiritual, the visible form the invisible
glory. What God hath joined together, let no man put
asunder.
 Even the old Jew, if a believing man, like
Simeon, saw these two things together, though in a way
and order and proportion considerably different from
what our faith now realises. To him there was the
vision of the heavenly through the earthly; to us
there is the vision of the earthly through the
heavenly. He, standing on the outside, saw the glory
through the veil, as one in a valley sees the sunshine
through clouds; we, placed in the inside, see the veil
through the glory, as one far up the mountain sees the
clouds beneath through the sunshine. Formerly it was
the earthly that revealed the heavenly, now it is the
heavenly that illuminates the earthly. Standing beside
the brazen serpent, Moses might see afar off Messiah
the Healer of the nations; standing, or rather I
should say sitting, by faith beside this same Messiah
in the heavenly places, we see the brazen serpent afar
off. From the rock of Horeb, the elders of Israel
might look up and catch afar off some glimpses of the
water of life flowing from the rock of ages; we, close
by the heavenly fountain, proceeding out of the throne
of God and of the Lamb, look down and recognise the
old desert rock, with its gushing stream. Taking in
his hand the desert manna, Israel could look up to the
true bread above; we, taking into our hands the bread
of God, look downward on the desert manna, not needing
now with Israel to ask, "What is it?"
 But let us look at
 The rending of the veil. This was a new thing in
its history, and quite a thing fitted to make Israel
gaze and wonder, and ask, what meaneth this? Is
Jehovah about to forsake His dwelling?

 1. It was rent, not consumed by fire. For not
its mere removal, still less its entire destruction,
was to be signified; but its being transformed from
being a barrier into a gate of entrance. Through it
the way into the holiest was to pass; the new and
living way; over a pavement sprinkled with blood.

 2. It was rent while the temple stood. Had the
earthquake which rent the rocks and opened graves,
struck down the temple or shattered its walls, men
might have said that it was this that rent the veil.
But now was it made manifest that it was no earthly
hand, nor natural convulsion, that was thus throwing
open the mercy-seat, and making its long-barred
chamber as entirely accessible as the wide court
without, which all might enter, and where all might
worship.

 3. It was rent in twain. It did not fall to
pieces, nor was it torn in pieces. The rent was a
clean and straight one, made by some invisible hand;
and the exact division into two parts might well
figure the separation of Christ's soul and body, while
each part remained connected with the temple, as both
body and soul remained in union with the Godhead; as
well as resemble the throwing open of the great
folding door between earth and heaven, and the
complete restoration of the fellowship between God and
man.

 4. It was rent from the top to the bottom. Not
from side to side, nor from the bottom to the top:
which might have been man's doing; but from the top to
the bottom, showing that the power which rent it was
from above, not from beneath; that the rending was not
of man but of God. It was man, no doubt, that dealt
the blow of death to the Son of God, but, "it pleased
the Lord to bruise him; He hath put him to grief."
Beginning with the roof and ending with the floor, the
rest was complete; for God, out of His own heaven, had
done it. And as from roof to floor there remained not
one fragment of the old veil; so from heaven to earth,
from the throne of God, down to the dwelling of man,
there exists not one remnant nor particle of a barrier
between the sinner and God. He who openeth and no man
shutteth has, with His own hand, and in His own
boundless love, thrown wide open to the chief of
sinners, the innermost recesses of His own glorious
heaven! Let us go in: let us draw near.

 5. It was rent in the presence of the priests.
They were in the holy place, outside the veil, of
course, officiating, lighting the lamps, or placing
incense on the golden altar, or ordering the shewbread
on the golden table. They saw the solemn rending of
the veil, and were no doubt overwhelmed with
amazement; ready to flee out of the place, or to cover
their eyes lest they should see the hidden glories of
that awful chamber which only one was permitted to
behold. "Woe is me, for I am undone; I am a man of
unclean lips, and I dwell among a people of unclean
lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of
Hosts" (Isa 6:5). They were witnesses of what was
done. They had not done it themselves; they felt that
no mortal hand had done it; and what could they say
but that God Himself had thrown open His gates, that
they might enter in to precincts from which they had
been so long debarred.

 6. It was rent that it might disclose the mercy-
seat, and the cherubim, and the glory. These were no
longer to be hidden, and known only as the mysterious
occupants of a chamber from which they might not go
out, and into which no man might enter. It was no
longer profanity to handle the uncovered vessels of
the inner shrine; to gaze upon the golden floor and
walls all stained with sacrificial blood; nay, to go
up to the mercy-seat and sit down beneath the very
shadow of the glory. Formerly it was blasphemy even to
speak of entering in; now the invitation seemed all at
once to go forth, "Let us come boldly to the throne of
grace." The safest, as well as the most blessed place,
is beneath the shadow of the glory.

 7. It was rent at the time of the evening
sacrifice. About three o'clock, when the sun began to
go down, the lamb was slain, and laid upon the brazen
altar. Just at the moment when its blood was shed, and
the smoke arose from the fire that was consuming it,
the veil was rent in twain. There was an unseen link
between the altar and the veil, between the sacrifice
and the rending, between the bloodshedding and the
removal of the barrier. It was blood that had done the
work. It was blood that had rent the veil and thrown
open the mercy-seat: the blood of "the Lamb, without
blemish, and without spot."
 8. It was rent at the moment when the Son of God
died on the cross. His death, then, had done it! Nay,
more, that rending and that death were one thing; the
one a symbol, the other a reality; but both containing
one lesson, that LIFE was the screen which stood
between us and God, and death the removal of the
screen; that it was His death that made His
incarnation available for sinners; that it was from
the cross of Golgotha that the cradle of Bethlehem
derived all its value and its virtue; that the rock of
ages, like the rock of Rephidim, must be smitten
before it can become a fountain of living waters. That
death was like the touching of the electric wire
between Calvary and Moriah, setting loose suddenly the
divine power that for a thousand years had been lying
in wait to rend the veil and cast down the barrier. It
was from the cross that the power emanated which rent
the veil. From that place of weakness and shame and
agony, came forth the omnipotent command, "Lift up
your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye
everlasting doors." The "It is finished" upon Golgotha
was the appointed signal, and the instantaneous
response was the rending of the veil. Little did the
Jew think, when nailing the Son of the carpenter to
the tree, that it was these pierced hands that were to
rend the veil, and that it was their being thus
pierced that fitted them for this mysterious work.
Little did he suppose, when erecting a cross for the
Nazarene, that that cross was to be the lever by which
both his temple and city were to be razed to their
foundations. Yet so it was. It was the cross of Christ
that rent the veil; overthrew the cold statutes of
symbolic service; consecrated the new and living way
into the holiest; supplanted the ritualistic with the
real and the true; and substituted for lifeless
performances the living worship of the living God.
 9. When the veil was rent, the cherubim which
were embroidered on it were rent with it. And as these
cherubim symbolised the Church of the redeemed, there
was thus signified our identification with Christ in
His death. We were nailed with Him to the cross; we
were crucified with Him; with Him we died, and were
buried, and rose again. In that rent veil we have the
temple-symbol of the apostle's doctrine, concerning
oneness with Christ in life and death,-- "I am
crucified with Christ." And in realising the cross and
the veil, let us realise these words of solemn
meaning, "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with
Christ in God."
 The broken body and shed blood of the Lord had
at length opened the sinner's way into the holiest.
And these were the tokens not merely of grace, but of
righteousness. That rending was no act either of mere
power or of mere grace. Righteousness had done it.
Righteousness had rolled away the stone. Righteousness
had burst the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the
bars of iron. It was a righteous removal of the
barrier; it was a righteous entrance that had been
secured for the unrighteous; it was a righteous
welcome for the chief of sinners that was now
proclaimed.
 Long had the blood of bulls and goats striven to
rend the veil, but in vain. Long had they knocked at
the awful gate, demanding entrance for the sinner;
long had they striven to quench the flaming sword, and
unclasp the fiery belt that girdled paradise; long had
they demanded entrance for the sinner, but in vain.
But now the better blood has come; it knocks but once,
and the gate flies open; it but once touches the sword
of fire, and it is quenched. Not a moment is lost. The
fulness of the time has come. God delays not, but
unbars the door at once. He throws open His mercy-seat
to the sinner, and makes haste to receive the banished
one; more glad even than the wanderer himself that the
distance, and the exclusion, and the terror are at an
end for ever.
 O wondrous power of the cross of Christ! To
exalt the low, and to abase the high; to cast down and
to build up; to unlink and to link; to save and to
destroy; to kill and to make alive; to shut out and to
let in; to curse and to bless. O wondrous virtue of
the saving cross, which saves in crucifying, and
crucifies in saving! For four thousand years has
paradise been closed, but Thou hast opened it. For
ages and generations the presence of God has been
denied to the sinner, but Thou hast given entrance,--
and that not timid, and uncertain, and costly, and
hazardous; but bold, and blessed, and safe, and free.
 The veil, then, has been rent in twain from the
top to the bottom. The way is open, the blood is
sprinkled, the mercy-seat is accessible to all, and
the voice of the High Priest, seated on that mercy-
seat, summons us to enter, and to enter without fear.
Having, then, boldness to enter into the holiest by
the blood of Jesus,--by a new and living way which He
hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to
say, His flesh, and having an High Priest over the
house of God, let us draw near with a true heart, in
the full assurance of faith. The message is, Go in, go
in. Let us respond to the message, and at once draw
near. To stand afar off, or even upon the threshhold,
is to deny and dishonour the provision made for our
entrance, as well as to incur the awful peril of
remaining outside the one place of safety or
blessedness. To enter in is our only security and our
only joy. But we must go in in a spirit and attitude
becoming the provision made for us. If that provision
has been insufficient, we must come hesitatingly,
doubtingly, as men who can only venture on an
uncertain hope of being welcomed. If the veil be not
wholly rent, if the blood be not thoroughly sprinkled,
or be in itself insufficient, if the mercy-seat be not
wholly what its name implies,--a seat of mercy, a
throne of grace; if the High Priest be not
sufficiently compassionate and loving, or if there be
not sufficient evidence that these things are so, the
sinner may come doubtingly and uncertainly; but if the
veil be fully rent, and the blood be of divine value
and potency, and the mercy-seat be really the place of
grace, and the High Priest full of love to the sinner,
then every shadow of a reason for doubt is swept
utterly away. Not to come with the boldness is the
sin. Not to come in the full assurance of faith is the
presumption. To draw near with an "evil conscience" is
to declare our belief that the blood of the Lamb is
not of itself enough to give the sinner a good
conscience and a fearless access.
 "May I then draw near as I am, in virtue of the
efficacy of the sprinkled blood?" Most certainly. In
what other way or character do you propose to come?
And may I be bold at once? Most certainly. For if not
at once, then when and how? Let boldness come when it
may, it will come to you from the sight of the blood
upon the floor and mercy-seat, and from nothing else.
It is bold coming that honours the blood. It is bold
coming that glorifies the love of God and the grace of
His throne. "Come boldly!" this is the message to the
sinner. Come boldly now! Come in the full assurance of
faith, not supposing it possible that that God who has
provided such a mercy-seat can do anything but welcome
you; that such a mercy-seat can be anything to you but
the place of pardon, or that the gospel out of which
every sinner that has believed it has extracted peace,
can contain anything but peace to you.
 The rent veil is liberty of access. Will you
linger still? The sprinkled blood is boldness,--
boldness for the sinner, for any sinner, for every
sinner. Will you still hesitate, tampering and
dallying with uncertainty and doubt, and an evil
conscience? Oh, take that blood for what it is and
gives, and go in. Take that rent veil for what it
indicates, and go in. This only will make you a
peaceful, happy, holy man. This only will enable you
to work for God on earth, unfettered and unburdened;
all over joyful, all over loving, and all over free.
This will make your religion not that of one who has
everything yet to settle between himself and God, and
whose labours, and duties, and devotions are all
undergone for the purpose of working out that
momentous adjustment before life shall close, but the
religion of one who, having at the very outset, and
simply in believing, settled every question between
himself and God over the blood of the Lamb, is serving
the blessed One who has loved him and bought him, with
all the undivided energy of his liberated and happy
soul.
 For every sinner, without exception, that veil
has a voice, that blood a voice, that mercy-seat a
voice. They say, "Come in." They say, "Be reconciled
to God." They say, "Draw near." They say, "Seek the
Lord while He may be found." To the wandering
prodigal, the lover of pleasure, the drinker of
earth's maddening cup, the dreamer of earth's vain
dreams,--they say, there is bread enough in your
Father's house, and love enough in your Father's
heart, and to spare,--return, return. To each banished
child of Adam, exiles from the paradise which their
first father lost, these symbols, with united voice,
proclaim the extinction of the fiery sword, the re-
opening of the long-barred gate, with a free and
abundant re-entrance, or rather, entrance into a more
glorious paradise, a paradise that was never lost.
 But if all these voices die away unheeded,--if
you will not avail yourself, O man, of that rent veil,
that open gate,--what remains but the eternal
exclusion, the hopeless exile, the outer darkness,
where there is the weeping and wailing and gnashing of
teeth? Instead of the rent veil, there shall be drawn
the dark curtain, never to be removed or rent, which
shall shut you out from God, and from paradise, and
from the New Jerusalem for ever. Instead of the mercy-
seat, there comes the throne of judgment; and instead
of the gracious High Priest, there comes the avenging
Judge. Yes, the Lord Jesus Christ is coming, and with
His awful advent ends all thy hope. He is coming; and
He may be nearer than you think. In an hour when you
are not aware He will come. When you are saying peace
and safety, He will come. When you are dreaming of
earth's long, calm, summer days, He will come. Lose no
time. Trifle no more with eternity; it is too long and
too great to be trifled with. Make haste! Get these
affections disengaged from a present evil world. Get
these sins of thine buried in the grave of Christ. Get
that soul of thine wrapped up, all over, in the
perfection of the perfect One, in the righteousness of
the righteous One. Then all is well, all is well. But
till then thou hast not so much as one true hope for
eternity or for time.
 

CHAPTER 6.

THE REMOVAL OF THE FIRST SACRIFICE AND THE
ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SECOND.
 

The temple was not overthrown till about forty years
after the Son of God died on the cross. The type was
preserved for a season, that the antitype might be
more fully understood. The shadow and the substance
were thus for forty years exhibited together. The
temple still, in its rites, proclaimed what the
apostles preached. Every part of it spoke aloud and
said, "Look on me, and look away from me; look to Him
of whom I have been bearing witness for these many
ages; behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin
of the world."
 But in God's sight the first sacrifice was
finished when Jesus died. Then the purpose for which
the blood had been shed day by day was accomplished.
 Thus the apostle writes, "He taketh away the
first that He may establish the second" (Heb 10:9).
 To a Jew this language must have sounded
strange, if not profane; quite as much so as did the
words, "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will
raise it up." A first and second what? Does he rightly
hear the words?
 Is it a second temple, a second altar, a second
priesthood; the first being set aside? That cannot be!
Israel's service is divine; it is one and unchanging.
Messiah, when He comes, will confirm, not destroy it.
Israel's service is a first without a second. A second
is an impossibility, a blasphemy.
 Yet the apostle, a Jew, writing to Jews,
announces this incredible thing! He announces it as an
indisputable certainty; and he expects to be believed.
Had he announced a second sun or a second universe,
rising out of the extinction of the first, he would
not have been reckoned so outrageous in his statement
as in declaring the abolition of Israel's present
service, and the substitution of one more perfect, and
no less divine.

 1. But what is this first? Speaking generally,
it means the old temple and tabernacle service; the
old covenant made with Israel in the desert, from
Mount Sinai. But the special thing in this service to
which he points is the sacrifice or sacrifices; the
blood of bullocks and of goats, the morning and
evening sacrifice of the lamb for the daily burnt-
offering, in which all the other sacrifices were wrapt
up,--which was the very heart and soul of all the
worship carried on in that sanctuary.

 2. By whom was this "first" taken away? By Him
who set it up, and upheld it for so many ages; "He
taketh away the first." He, the Lord God of Israel,
the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. It was not man
who destroyed it, even as it was not man who
established it. Long before the city was overthrown
and the temple perished, the sacrifice had come to an
end, the temple service had run its course.

 3. When was it taken away? On that afternoon of
the passover when the Son of God died upon the cross;
that awful hour when the sun was darkened, and the
earth shook, and the rocks were rent. Then, at
eventide, at three o'clock, the last Jewish sacrifice
was laid upon the brazen altar. In God's reckoning
that was really the last. No doubt, for years after
this sacrifices continued to be offered up; but these
could no longer be said to be of divine appointment.
The number of burnt-offerings according to God's
purpose was now complete; their end had been served;
they passed away. From the day that Solomon laid the
first lamb on the temple altar; from the day that
Moses laid the first on the tabernacle altar; from the
day that Adam laid his first upon the altar at the
gate of Paradise, how many tens of thousands had been
offered! But now God's great purpose with them is
served. All is done. The last of the long series has
been laid upon the altar.

 4. How was this first taken away? Simply by
setting another in its place; making it give way to
something better. Not by violence, or fire, or the
sword of man. The altar sent up its last blaze that
evening as brightly as ever. The blaze sank down, and
all has since been dark. The great end was served; the
great lesson taught; the great truth written down for
man. Then and thus the fire ceased to burn, and the
blood to flow. No more of such fire or such blood was
needed. The first was taken away without the noise of
axes or hammers, because its work was done.

 5. For what end did He take away the first? That
He might establish the second. The first seemed
steadfast; Israel reckoned on it standing for ever; it
had stood for many an age. Yet it gives way, and
another comes: one meant to be more abiding than the
first; one sacrifice, once for all; yet that sacrifice
eternal; the same in its results on the worshipper as
if it were offered up every day for ever; the basis
and seal of the everlasting covenant. It was to make
room for this glorious second that the first was taken
away; this glorious second through which eternal
redemption was accomplished for us.
 Besides, it had come to be necessary, on other
grounds, that the first should be taken away. It was
beginning to defeat the very ends for which it was set
up. Men were getting to look upon it as a real thing
in itself; and to believe in it instead of believing
in Him to whom it pointed. It was becoming an object
of worship and of trust, as if it were the true
propitiation; as if the blood of beasts could pacify
the conscience, or reconcile God, or put away sin. It
was becoming an idol; a substitute for the living God,
and for His Christ, instead of showing the way of true
approach and acceptable worship. As men in our day
make an idol of their own faith, and believe in it
instead of believing in the Son of God, so did the
Jews of other days make the sacrifice their
confidence, their resting-place, their Messiah. And as
Hezekiah broke in pieces the brazen serpent when
Israel began to worship it, so did God abolish the
sacrifice.
 That sacrifice was not in itself a real thing,
nor did it accomplish anything real. It was but a
picture, a statue, a shadow, a messenger,--no more. It
was but the sketch or outline of the living thing that
was to come; and to mistake it for that living thing
itself was to be deluded with the subtlest of all
errors, and the most perilous of all idolatries. And
what can be more dangerous for a soul than to mistake
the unreal for the real; to dote upon the picture, and
lose sight of the glorious Being represented? Ah, we
do not thus deceive ourselves in earthly things! No
man mistakes the picture of gold for gold itself, or
the portrait of a loved face for the very face itself.
Yet do we daily see how men are content with religious
unrealities; the unrealities of a barren creed, or of
a hollow form; the unrealities of doubt and
uncertainty in the relationship between them and God.
We find how many of those called religious men are
satisfied with something far short of a living Christ,
and a full assurance and a joyful hope.
 Nay, they make this unreality of theirs an idol,
a god; not venturing to step beyond it, not caring to
part with it. They have become so familiar with it,
that though it does not fill their soul, it soothes
their uneasiness; it gratifies the religious element
in their natural man; it pleases their self-
righteousness, for it is something of their own; and
it saves them from the dreaded necessity of coming
into direct contact with the real, the living Christ,
of being brought face to face with God Himself.
 Thus it comes to pass that a man's religion is
often a barrier between his soul and God; the unreal
is the substitute for the real; so that a man, having
found the former, is content, and goes no farther;
nay, counts it presumption, profanity to do so. To be
told that the world, with its gay beauty and seducing
smiles, comes between us and God, surprises no man;
but to learn that the temple with its sacrifices, the
Church with its religious services, does so, may
startle some, nay, may exasperate them, as it did the
Jews, to be told that their multiplied sacrifices and
prayers were but multiplied barriers between them and
God: not channels of communication, nor means of
intercourse. The Jewish altar stood between the Jew
and God; and that which was simply set as the ladder
up to something higher became a resting-place. All the
more, because it looked so real to the eye; while that
to which it pointed was invisible, and therefore to
sense unreal. But real as it looked, it was cold and
unsatisfying. It was a real lamb, and a real altar of
solid stone and brass; it was real blood and fire and
smoke; and to take away these might seem to take away
all that was substantial. But, after all, these were
the unrealities. They could accomplish nothing for the
filling of the heart, or the pacifying of the
conscience, or the healing of the soul's deep wounds.
Yet they pointed to the real; and their very unreality
was meant to keep man from making them his home, or
his religion, or his god. Men might admire the holy
symbols and majestic ritual; but the true use of such
admiration was to lead them to reason thus, If the
unreal be so attractive, what will the real be; if the
shadow thus soothes and pleases, what will not the
divine substance do; if the picture of Messiah, thus
sketched in these ceremonies, be so fair and goodly,
how much fairer and goodlier will be the living Christ
Himself; if the porch of the temple, or the steps
leading to that temple, be so excellent, what must the
inner sanctuary be; and who would stand ths, all a
lifetime, shivering in the cold without, when the
whole interior, with all its warmth and splendour and
life and vastness was thrown open, and every man
invited to enter and partake the gladness?
 Thus the "taking away of the first" was not the
mere removal of what had done its work and become
useless; but the abolition of that which had become an
idol; a barrier between the Jew and God; quite as much
as if the brazen altar had in the process of time
become so enlarged as to block up the entrance into
the holy place or the holiest of all. We read in
Jewish history that once and again, during the
seventeen sieges of Jerusalem, the gate of the temple
was blocked up by the dead bodies of the worshippers.
So did the access into the true tabernacle, not made
with hands, become blocked up by the very sacrifices
that were intended to point to the open door; and so
in our day (long after that altar has been overturned
and the fire quenched), is entrance into the holiest
blocked up by our dead prayers, our dead works, our
dead praises, our dead sacraments, our dead worship,
our dead religion, quite as effectually as by our
total want of these. A lesson hard for man to learn,
especially in days when religion is fashionable and
forms are exalted above measure. Greatly is that text
needed amongst us, "If the blood of bulls and of goats
and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean,
sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much
more shall the blood of Christ purge your conscience
from dead works to serve the living God?" (Heb 9:14).
 It is then through the "second," not the
"first," that the conscience is purged and the man
made an acceptable worshipper, capable of doing good
works and doing them in the spirit of liberty and
fearless gladness. It is with the second, not the
first, that the sinner has to do in drawing near to
God; and it is the second, not the first, that God has
regard to in receiving the sinner, and receiving him
on the footing of one whose sins and iniquities are
remembered no more.
 How wide the difference, how great the contrast
between the first and the second! The first drew the
veil and shut out the sinner from the holiest; the
second rent it and bid him enter. The first filled the
sinner's soul with dread, even in looking on the
holiest of all from without; the second emboldened him
to draw near and go up to the mercy-seat. The first
made it death to cross the threshold of that inner
shrine, where the symbol of the glory dwelt; the
second made it life to go into the very presence of
God, and provided the new and living way. The first
gave no certainty of acceptance and laid the
foundation for no permanent assurance; the second
said, "Let us draw near with a true heart in the full
assurance of faith"; "let us come boldly to the throne
of grace." The first was never finished, even after
many ages; the second was finished at once. The first
was earthly, the second heavenly. The first was
temporal, the second eternal. The first was unreal,
the second real. The first pacified no conscience; the
second did this at once, purging it effectually, so
that the worshippers once purged had no more
conscience of sins. The first was but the blood of one
of Israel's lambs; the second the blood of the Lamb
without blemish and without spot,--the precious blood
of Christ!
 Still there was much about that "first" to
interest, to solemnise, to gladden. It was old and
venerable, a true relic of antiquity, such as no
modern Church can boast of. It was not one death, but
many thousand deaths; not one victim, but ten thousand
victims; each of them fulfilling a certain end, yet
all of them unavailing for the great end,--complete
remission of sin and the providing for the worshipper,
a perfect conscience and reconciliation with the Holy
One of Israel.
 And that last Jewish sacrifice, at the hour of
the crucifixion, which ended the "first" and began the
"second"; was there not something specially solemn
about it? Was there not something peculiar about it as
the last? Like the last cedar of Lebanon, the last
olive of Palestine, the last pillar of a falling
temple that has stood for ages, the last
representative of an ancient race, it could not but
have something sacred, something noble about it.
 An unbelieving Jew, worshipping in the temple,
at the time would see nothing remarkable about it,
save the unaccountable darkness which had for three
hours covered Jerusalem, and the fearful earthquake,
and the mysterious rending of the veil, the tidings of
which would immediately spread both in the temple and
the city. What can all this mean, he might say; but he
knew not what they meant; nor that this was the last
sacrifice, according to the purpose of the God of
Israel. Not connecting the first with the second, nor
the earthly with the heavenly, he would soon forget
the darkness, and the earthquake, and the torn veil,
coming next morning at nine o'clock to assist in the
celebration of the morning-sacrifice. For the great
break in the sacrifices was an invisible thing to him.
To heaven it was visible, to angels it was visible, to
faith it was visible; but not to unbelief. And
unbelief would go on from day to day doting on the old
sacrifice and admiring the old altar; till the Roman
torch set fire to the goodly cedar of the holy places,
and the Roman battle-axe shivered the altar in pieces,
and brought to the ground porch, and tower, and wall,-
-gate and bar, in one irrecoverable ruin; not one
stone left upon another.
 But how would a believing Jew view this last
sacrifice? With mingled feelings in many ways; for as
yet his eyes were but half opened; and though he might
in a measure understand the first, he could not fully
see the second, nor the first in connection with the
second. It would still be to him sacred and venerable;
though now he saw it, like the picture of a dissolving
view, passing away and being replaced by another. Holy
histories of his nation and precious recollections of
his own experience would come up into view. From that
sacrifice he had learned the way of forgiveness,
perhaps from childhood. Often had the sight of it
poured in happy thoughts and told him of the love of a
redeeming God. Often had he stood at that altar with
his little ones, and taught them from it the way of
salvation through blood. Often had he seen the fire
blazing and the smoke ascending, and the blood
flowing, and he had mused over all these in connection
with the first promise of Messiah's bruised heel, and
the later prophecies of His pouring out His soul unto
death. But now he was startled. That darkness, that
earthquake, that rent veil; and in connection with all
this, the scene in Golgotha now going on, seemed to
say that sacrifice has done its work and must pass
away. That has come at last which he had been long
looking for; the better Lamb, the richer blood, the
more perfect sacrifice. Now he sees the full meaning
of the burnt-offering; now his faith lays its hand on
the head of the true sacrifice; now he knows what John
meant when he said, "Behold the Lamb of God"; and he
can say with Simeon, "Lord, now lettest Thou thy
servant depart in peace; for mine eyes have seen Thy
salvation."
 And with what thoughts must the Son of God have
seen from the cross the smoke of that last burnt-
offering ascending? For it was at the ninth hour, our
three o'clock, when the evening lamb was laid on the
altar, that Jesus "cried with a loud voice, Eloi,
Eloi, lama sabachthani?" Yes, when the Son of God, the
true Sin-bearer, was uttering these words, Israel's
last sacrifice was offered. It is finished, was the
voice from the altar; it is finished was the voice
from the cross. Now the last type is done; and Jesus
sees it (for the altar-smoke would be quite visible
from Golgotha); Israel's long lesson of ages has been
taught; the type and Antitype have been brought face
to face. How often had Jesus seen the morning and
evening lamb offered up; and in gazing on it realised
his own sin-bearing work. Now he sees all
accomplished; sin borne, peace made, God propitiated;
and in testimony of this the last burnt-sacrifice
offered up. All is done. He sees of the travail of His
soul and is satisfied. He can now tell Jew and Gentile
that atonement has been made by the better blood. Life
has been given for life; a divine life for a human. He
can say, Look no longer on yon altar; its work is
done. Look to me, of whom it spoke during so many
ages; look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of
the earth.
 And how does the Father view that last
sacrifice? For four thousand years it had been the
witness to the sin-bearing work of the coming Messiah.
The Father had set it there to bear testimony to the
propitiation of His Son. It said to Israel, and it
said to the world before the days of Israel, The seed
of the woman is to be man's deliverer. He is coming!
He is coming to bear sin; to be wounded for our
transgressions and bruised for our iniquities; to take
the chastisement of our peace upon Him, and to heal us
by His stripes. For ages that was the voice that came
from the altar. It was the Father's voice foretelling
the advent of His beloved Son. And now that voice from
the altar is to die away. The testimony is to cease;
for He to whom it was given is come. The ages of delay
are over; the day of expectation has come to an end.
The purpose of Jehovah is now consummated. The Father
now delights in the accomplishment of His eternal
design. Now grace and righteousness are one. So long
as one burnt-offering remained unpresented, there was
something awanting; something unfinished. But now the
last of the long series has arrived. The type is
perfected, the last stone has been laid; the last
touch has been given to the picture; the last stroke
of the chisel has fallen upon the statue. The
imperfect has ended in the perfect, the unreal in the
real; the first has become the last and the last
first. Now divine love can take its unimpeded way; no
drag, no uncertainty, no imperfection now. Grace and
righteousness have become one. The Father's testimony
to the finished work of His Son now goes forth to the
ends of the earth. That last sacrifice on Israel's
altar was the signal for the forthgoing of the world-
wide message of pardon,--righteous pardon,--to the
guiltiest, the saddest and the neediest of the sons of
men.
 And how is this last sacrifice viewed by the
Church of God? Not with regret, nor with
disappointment at the thought that there is no such
altar now; but with rejoicing that the work has been
at length consummated, and that there is no necessity
for the repetition of the sacrifice. Whilst to a
believing Jew there was satisfaction in each recurring
sacrifice day by day, there could not but be a feeling
of uneasiness at that very repetition. If the
sacrifice is sufficient, why repeat it? Or will the
multiplication of imperfections produce perfection? If
insufficient, what is there to look to for the
pacification of the conscience? But the termination of
the series was an unspeakable relief. It was the
winding up of a work which had been going on for four
thousand years. Now, then, God is satisfied. Now there
is the certainty of remission. Now the conscience is
purged. Now the soul is at rest. And thus that last
burnt-offering gave to the Church the assurance that
the reconciliation was accomplished. No more offering
for sin! No more blood! the foundation is now secure.
On it she stands, in it she rejoices. The "good
conscience" is now secured. Fear and shame in drawing
near to God are at an end for ever. There is nothing
but boldness now; for by one offering He hath
perfected for ever them that are sanctified. Not by
the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood,
He hath entered in once into the holy place, having
obtained eternal redemption for us. By this blood He
hath reconciled us to Himself. By this blood He daily
cements the reconciliation, and keeps our souls in
peace. By this blood He washes off the ever-recurring
sins that would come between us and God, purging our
consciences from dead works to serve the living God
(Heb 9:12,13).
 Round the old altar on Moriah one nation
gathered, for the worship of Jehovah, during a few
earthly ages; but round the new altar is gathered the
great multitude that no man can number, out of every
nation and people; for we have an altar, whereof they
have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle. The
first has been taken away, but the second has been set
up, to stand for ever. Here we worship now; here shall
be the eternal worship; the Lamb slain is the centre
of worship for the universe of God, whether on earth,
or in heaven, or throughout the wide regions which the
creating Word has filled with suns and stars. On this
divine altar shall all creaturehood lay its
everlasting praise. From this altar shall ascend the
never-ending son. This altar shall be the great centre
of unity between the multitudinous parts or units of
universal being. Here heaven and earth shall meet;
here redeemed men and angels shall hold fellowship;
here the principalities and powers in heavenly places
shall learn the wisdom of God; here shall be found the
stability, not of manhood only, but of creaturehood as
well, the divine security against a second fall,
against any future failure of creation, against any
future curse, against the possibility of evil or
weakness or decay. He has taken away the first, but He
has established the second; and with that He has
linked the establishment of all that is good and holy
and blessed in His universe for evermore.
 From this "second" also there goes forth the
message of reconciliation; the announcement that peace
has been made through the blood of the cross; the
entreaty on the part of God, that each distant one
would draw near, each wanderer re-enter his Father's
house. To every one that is afar off, this great
propitiation speaks, and says, RETURN! It bids you
welcome, with all your worthlessness and unfitness,
pointing to the ever-open door, and assuring you of
reception, and pardon, and free love, without delay,
without condition, and without upbraiding. From this
centre the good news of God's free love to the
unrighteous are going forth. In the simple reception
of these by the sinner there is everlasting life; but
in the non-reception of them there is eternal death;
for that blood condemns as well as justifies. It
speaks peace, but it speak trouble and anguish. It
contains life, but it also contains death. It
introduces into heaven, but it casts down to hell. He
who receives it is washed, and sanctified, and
justified; he who rejects it is undone,--doomed to
bear his own guilt, without reprieve, for ever. For
you, or against you, through eternity that blood must
be.
 There has been a first, there is a second, but
there shall be no third! The first could not suffice,
either for salvation or for destruction; it did not
save those who used it, nor did it ruin those who used
it not, or who used it amiss. The second sufficed for
both. It is able to save and to destroy, to forgive
and to condemn. No third is needed, no third is
possible. The second is established for ever. It is
eternal. It is an everlasting sacrifice. It is an
eternal ransom, an eternal redemption, an eternal
salvation, an everlasting covenant, and an everlasting
gospel. Its accompaniments and issues are everlasting
life, everlasting habitations, everlasting
consolation, an everlasting kingdom, an eternal
inheritance, an eternal weight of glory, a house not
made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Yes; this
second is established, and shall stand for ever. He
who accepts it becomes, like it, established, and
shall stand for ever; for it has the power of
imparting its stability to every one who receives
God's testimony concerning it. This is "the living
stone, disallowed indeed of men, but chosen of God,
and precious; to which coming we, as living stones,
are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to
offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God by
Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 2:4,5).
 There shall be no third! This is the security
and the joy of all who receive it. He who has taken
away the first has established the second. Heaven and
earth may pass away, but it must remain; and with it
remains our reconciliation, our sonship, our royalty,
and our eternal weight of glory. Were it possible that
this second altar could be overthrown, or crumble down
through age; this second blood, and second covenant,
and second priesthood become inefficacious or
obsolete, then should our future be shaded with
uncertainty. But all these being divine are eternal;
and in their eternity is wrapt up that of every one
who is now by faith partakers of them; in their
eternity is wrapt up that of the inheritance, the
city, and the kingdom, which become the possession of
every one whom the blood has washed and reconciled.
 For the cross is never old. The wood, and nails,
and inscription have indeed perished long ago; but the
cross in which Paul gloried stands for ever. That
cross is the axle of the universe, and cannot snap
asunder. That cross is the foundation on which the
universe rests, and cannot give way. The cross of
Golgotha is, in this sense, everlasting; and each one
who glories in it becomes partaker of its immortality.
In itself blood is the symbol of death; in connection
with the cross of Christ, it is the emblem and the
pledge of life. It is by blood that all that is
feeble, and corruptible, and unclean is purged out of
creaturehood. It is by blood that this race of ours is
preserved against the possibility of a second fall,
and this earth against the contingency of a second
curse. It is by blood that the Church of God has won
her victory, and been made without spot, or wrinkle,
or any such thing. It is the blood that has given such
resplendent glory to the New Jerusalem, and made its
light so pure, for "THE LAMB is the light thereof."
 And yet is it not on this very blood that the
spirit of the age is pouring its contempt, as if it
were the great disfiguration of Christianity,
requiring to be explained and spiritualised, before it
can be admitted to have any connection with a divine
religion? Is it not against this blood that the tide
of modern progress is advancing, to wash out every
trace and stain of it? It is against the blood that
unbelief is now specially declaring war, little
supposing, in its blindness, what would be the
consequences of success in this warfare. Take away
that blood, and the security of the universe is gone.
Take away the blood, and the gate of the glorious city
closes against the sinner; nay, that city itself, with
all its beauty, and purity, and splendour, passes away
like a vision of the night, each stone of it vanishing
into nothingness, and its light becoming darkness.
 
 

CHAPTER 7.

MESSIAH WITHIN THE VEIL.
 
 

We spoke of Messiah longing for the time when the veil
should be rent, and when, through Himself, there
should be unobstructed access to the innermost shrine
of God. "How am I straitened till it be accomplished."
We spoke also of His dreading this rending, this
death,--so that "with strong crying and tears He
prayed to Him who was able to save Him from death"
(Heb 5:7).
 Let us now see Him looking beyond the veil,
surveying the glory, and anticipating His own entrance
into it, as our forerunner, the first fruits of them
that slept, the first-begotten of the dead. "For the
joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the
shame, and is now set down at the right hand of God"
(Heb 12:2). That to which He looked forward was not so
much the rending of the veil, as the result of that
rending,--both for Himself and for His Church, His
body, the redeemed from among men.
 The veil was rent; rent "once for all"; rent for
ever. Yet there was a sense in which it was to be
restored, though after another fashion than before.
Messiah could not be "holden" by death, because He was
the Holy One, who could not see corruption. Death must
be annulled. The broken body must be made whole;
resurrection must come forth out of death; and that
resurrection was to be life, and glory, and
blessedness. Through the rent veil of His own flesh,
He was (if we may so use the figure) to enter into
"glory and honour, and immortality." Thus He speaks in
the sixteenth Psalm:--

"Therefore my heart is glad,
Yea, my glory rejoiceth:
My flesh also shall rest in hope.
For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;
Neither wilt thou suffer thine
Holy One to see corruption.
Thou wilt show me the path of life:
In thy presence is fulness of joy;
At thy right hand are pleasures for evermore."

Let us dwell upon these verses in connection with
Messiah's entrance within the veil.
 The speaker in this Psalm is undoubtedly Christ.
This we learn from Peter's sermon at Jerusalem (Acts
2:25). He is speaking to the Father, as His Father and
our Father. He speaks as the lowly, dependent son of
man; as one who needed help and looked to the Father
for it; as one who trusted in the Lord and walked by
faith, not by sight; as one who realised the Father's
love, anticipated the joy set before Him, and had
respect to the recompense of the reward.
 He speaks, moreover, as one who saw death before
Him,-- "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell"; and
looking into the dark grave, on the edge of which He
was standing, just about to plunge into it, He casts
His eye upwards and pleads, with strong crying and
tears, for resurrection, and joy, and glory,-- "Thou
wilt show me the path of life." For the words of the
Psalm are the united utterances of confidence,
expectation, and prayer; not unlike those of Paul, "I
am now ready to be offered, and the time of my
departure is at hand; henceforth there is laid up for
me a crown of righteousness."
 He speaks too as one who was bearing our curse;
as one who was made sin for us; and to whom everything
connected with sin and its penalty was infinitely
terrible; not the less terrible, but the more, because
the sin and the penalty were not His own, but ours.
The death which now confronted Him was one of the
ingredients of the fearful cup, against which He
prayed in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from me"; for
we read that, "in the days of His flesh He made
supplication, with strong crying and tears, unto Him
that was able to save Him from death." In this Psalm,
indeed, we do not hear these strong cryings and tears,
which the valley of the Kedron then heard. All is
calm; the bitterness of death is past; the power of
the king of terrors seems broken; the gloom of the
grave is lost in the anticipated brightness of the
resurrection light and glory. But still the scene is
similar; though in the Psalm the light predominates
over the darkness, and there is not the agony, nor the
bloody sweat, nor the exceeding sorrow. It is our
Surety looking the king of terrors in the face;
contemplating the shadows of the three days and nights
in the heat of the earth; surveying Joseph's tomb, and
while accepting that as His prison-house for a season,
anticipating the deliverance by the Father's power,
and rejoicing in the prospect of the everlasting
gladness.
 The first thing that occupies His thoughts is
resurrection. The path of death is before Him; and He
asks that He may know the path of life;--the way out
of the tomb as well as the way into it. Death is to
Him an enemy; an enemy from which as the Prince of
life His holy soul would recoil even more than we. The
grave is to Him a prison-house, gloomy as Jeremiah's
low dungeon or Joseph's pit, not the less gloomy
because He approaches it as a conqueror, as bringing
life and immortality to light, as the resurrection and
the life. Into that prison-house He must descend; for
though rich He has stooped to be poor; and this is the
extremity of his poverty, the lowest depth of His low
estate,--even the surrender of that, for which even
the richest on earth will part with everything,--life
itself. But out of that dungeon He cries to be
brought; and for this rescue He puts Himself entirely
into the Father's hands, "Thou wilt show me the path
of life."
 Very blessed and glorious did resurrection seem
in the eyes of the Prince of life, of Him who is the
resurrection and the life. Infinitely hateful did
death and the grave appear to Him who was the
Conqueror of death, the Spoiler of the grave. He had
undertaken to die, for as the second Adam He came to
undergo the penalty of the first, "dust thou art and
unto dust shalt thou return"; yet not the less bitter
was the cup, not the less gloomy was the valley of the
shadow of death; not the less welcome was the thought
of resurrection.
 The next thing which fills His thoughts is the
presence of God,--that glorious presence which He had
left when He "came down from heaven." His thoughts are
of the Father's face, the Father's house, the Father's
presence. Earth to Him was so different from heaven.
He had not yet come to the "Why hast Thou forsaken
me?" but He felt the difference between this earth and
the heaven He had quitted. There was no such
"presence" here. All was sin, evil, hatred, darkness;
the presence of evil men and mocking devils; not the
presence of God. God seemed far away. This world
seemed empty and dreary. He called to mind the home,
and the love, and the holiness He had left; and He
longed for a return to these. "Thy presence!" What a
meaning in these words, coming from the lips of the
lonely Son of God in His desolation and friendlessness
and exile here. "Thy presence!" How full of
recollection would they be to Him as He uttered them;
and how intensely would that recollection stimulate
the anticipation and the hope!
 Of this same Messiah, the speaker in the psalm,
we read afterwards, "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; the
same was in the beginning with God" (John 1:1); and
elsewhere He speaks thus of Himself: "Jehovah
possessed me in the beginning of His way, before His
works of old; I was set up from everlasting, from the
beginning, or ever the earth was...I was by Him, as
one brought up with Him, and I was daily His delight,
rejoicing always before Him" (Prov 8:22,30); and
again, He, in the days of His flesh, thus prayed: "O
Father, glorify Thou me with Thine own self, with the
glory which I had with Thee before the world was"
(John 17:5). Thus we see that the "presence" or "face"
of God had been His special and eternal portion. His
past eternity was associated entirely with this
glorious presence. No wonder then that in the day of
His deepest weakness,--when the last enemy confronted
Him with his hideous presence, He should recall the
Father's presence; anticipating the day of restoration
to that presence, and repossession of the glory which
He had before the world was.
 "Thy presence," said the only-begotten of the
Father looking up into the Father's face! He speaks as
the sin-bearer, on whom the chastisement of our sins
was laid, and between whom and heaven these sins had
drawn a veil; He speaks as an exile, far from home,
weary, troubled, exceeding sorrowful even unto death;
He speaks as a Son feeling the bitterness of
separation from His Father's presence, and of distance
from His Father's house; He speaks as one longing for
home and kindred, and the unimpeded outflowings of
paternal love. "Thy presence," says the Man of sorrows
looking round on an evil world;--oh, that I were
there! "Thy presence," says the forsaken Son of man,
for "lover and friend hast Thou put far from me, and
mine acquaintance into darkness";--oh, that I were
there! "Thy presence," not this waste howling
wilderness, this region of pain, and disease, and sin,
and death, and tombs. "Thy presence," not these
temptations, these devils, these enemies, these false
friends; not this blasphemy, this reproach, this
scorn, this betrayal, this denial, this buffeting,
this scourging, this spitting, this mockery! "Thy
presence,"--oh, that I were there; nevertheless, not
my will but Thine be done.
 Only through death can He reach life, for He is
burdened with our sin and our death; and death is to
Him the path of life. He must go through the veil to
enter into the presence of God. Only through the
grave,--the stronghold of death, and of him who has
the power of death,--can He ascend into the presence
of God; and therefore, when about to enter the dark
valley, He commits Himself to the Father's guidance,
to the keeping of Him who said, "Behold my servant
whom I uphold," the keeping of which He himself, by
the mouth of David, had spoken: "Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear
no evil, for Thou art with me, Thy rod and Thy staff
they comfort me." Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth,
Capernaum, Gethsemane, Golgotha,--these were all but
stages in His way up to "the presence"--the presence
of the Father; and it is when approaching the last of
these, with the consciousness of His nearness to that
presence, only one more dark passage to wind through,
that He gives utterance to this psalm,--His psalm in
prospect of resurrection and glory,-- "I have set the
Lord always before me; because He is at my right hand,
I shall not be moved: therefore my heart is glad and
my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope;
for Thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt
Thou suffer Thine holy One to see corruption; Thou
wilt show me the path of life: in Thy presence is
fulness of joy; at Thy right hand there are pleasures
for evermore."
 Connected with this "presence," this glory
within the veil, he speaks of "fulness of joy." On
earth, in the day of His banishment here, He found
want, not fulness. He was poor and needy; no house, no
table, no chamber, no pillow of His own. His was the
extremity of human poverty; though rich He had become
poor; he was hungry, thirsty, weary, with no place to
lay His head. Though He knew no sin, He tasted the
sinner's portion of want and sorrow. He was in the far
country, the land of the mighty famine; and looking
upwards to the happy heaven which He had left, He
could say, "How many servants in my Father's house
have bread and to spare, and I perish with hunger."
Drinking also of the sinner's deep cup of wrath, He
was the man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. It
was as such that He looked up so often as we find Him
in the Gospels doing, and as we find Him in this
Psalm, with wistful eye reminding Himself of the joy
He had left, and anticipating the augmented joy that
was so soon to be His when, having traversed this vale
of tears, and passed through the gates of death, He
was to re-ascend to His Father, and re-enter the
courts of glory and joy. "Fulness of joy" is His
prospect; fulness of joy in the presence of God.
Concerning this going to the Father He spoke to His
disciples; and then added, "These things have I spoken
unto you that my joy might remain in you, and that
your joy might be full." It is of this same full joy
that He speaks in our psalm; a joy which was to be the
fulness of all joy; a joy which was to be His
recompense for the earthly sorrow of His sin-bearing
life and death; a joy which He was to share with His
redeemed, and on which they too should enter, when
they, like Him, had triumphed over death, and been
caught up into the clouds to meet Him in the air; a
joy which would be to them, in that wondrous day,
infinitely more than a compensation for earthly
tribulation; even as one of themselves has written,
"Our present light affliction, which is but for a
moment, worketh for us a far more eceeding and eternal
weight of glory."
 This was "the joy set before Him," because of
which He endured the cross; and here He calls it
FULNESS OF JOY. That which He calls fulness must be
so; for He knows what joy is, and what its fulness is;
just as He knew what sorrow was and its fulness. The
amount of joy sufficient to fill a soul like His must
be infinite; it must be joy unspeakable and full of
glory. The amount of joy reckoned by the Father
sufficient as the reward of the sorrow of such a Son,
must be infinite indeed. What then must that be which
Messiah reckons the fulness of joy. What a day was
that for Him when, death and sorrow ended, He entered
on life and gladness! And what a day will that be, yet
in store for Him and for His saints, when we, as His
joint-heirs, shall enter on all that life and
gladness; the day of His glorious coming, when that
shall be fulfilled which is written, "Come forth, O ye
daughters of Jerusalem, and behold King Solomon with
the crown wherewith his mother crowned him, in the day
of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of
his heart."
 Besides the "presence" or "face" of God within
the veil, Messiah sees the right hand; the place of
honour and power and favour,--the right hand of the
throne of the majesty in the heavens; and at that
right hand there are pleasures for evermore; eternal
enjoyments, such as eye hath not seen, nor ear heard.
For all the things on which Messiah's soul rests are
everlasting; the life, the fulness, the joy, the
presence, the pleasures,--all eternal! No wonder,
then, that He who knows what eternity is,--an eternity
of glory and gladness,--should feel that "the
sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be
compared with the glory that shall be revealed"; and
should, when going up to the cross, and down into the
grave, say with calm but happy confidence, "Thou wilt
show me the path of life, in Thy presence is fulness
of joy, at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore."
Most mysterious are such words as these from the lips
of Him who is the resurrection and the life; and yet
it is just because they come from Him,--from this
Prince of Life,--that they are so assuring, so
comforting to us. His oneness with us, and our oneness
with Him, account for all the mystery. His oneness
with us, as our substitute and sinbearer, the endurer
of our curse and cross and death, accounts for all
that is mysterious in this Psalm. Our oneness with Him
clears up all that is wonderful in such words as "I am
the resurrection and the life, he that believeth on
me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Blessed,
thrice-blessed oneness,--mutual oneness; He one with
us, we one with Him, in life, in death, in burial, in
resurrection, and in glory. Now we can take up His
words as truly meant for us, "Thou wilt show us the
path of life"; for in believing God's testimony to the
Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth, we have become one
with Him!
 In all this we have,

 1. Messiah's estimate of death. He abhors it. It
is His enemy as well as ours. He came to conquer it,
to destroy it for ever. He conquers it by being
conquered by it; He slays it by allowing Himself to be
slain by it. He crucifies it, kills it, buries it for
ever. Death is swallowed up in victory. "O death," He
says, "I will be thy plague; O grave, I will be thy
destruction."

 2. Messiah's estimate of resurrection. He longs
for it; both on His own account and His people's. It
is the consummation of that which He calls life. It is
the second life, more glorious than the first; the
opposite extreme of being to that which is called "the
second death." The Son of God came into the world as
the Prince of Life; He came not merely that He might
die, but that He might live; and that all who identify
themselves with Him by the acceptance of the divine
testimony concerning His life and death and
resurrection, might not only have life, but might have
it more abundantly. Resurrection is our hope, even as
it was His; the first, the better resurrection; and as
we toil onwards in our pilgrimage, burdened with the
mortality of this vile body, and seeing death on every
side of us, we take up Messiah's words of hope and
gladness, "Thou wilt show me the path of life."

 3. Messiah's estimate of joy. He recognises it
as a thing greatly to be desired, not despised; as the
true and healthy, or, as men say, the "normal"
condition of creaturehood. God Himself is the blessed
one; and He formed His creatures to be sharers of His
blessedness. Heaven is full of joy; and all its
dwellers are vessels of gladness. Earth was not made
for sorrow, but for joy; and, before long, that song
shall be sung over the new creation, "Let the heavens
rejoice, and let the earth be glad." For this day of
joy Christ longed, anticipating it as the consummation
of all that He had come to do. As the eternal Word
which was with the Father, He knew what joy was; as
the Man of sorrows, He knew what sorrow was. He was in
the true condition and circumstances to take the
proper estimate of joy. And here He tells us what that
estimate was. He longed to be done with sorrow, which
was as the shadow of hell; He "desired with desire" to
enter into the joy set before Him, the joy of life,
the joy of resurrection, the joy of God's presence and
right hand for ever. Let our eye, like His, be fixed
on that coming gladness,--that sunrise of eternity for
which the Church is waiting and creation groans. That
hope will cheer, will nerve, will liberate, will heal,
will animate, will purify; will do miracles for us. As
yet, the joy has not arrived. It doth not yet appear
what we shall be. Not now; not here; not on this side
of the grave! But the promise of its possession, and
the assurance that when it does arrive, it will be
great enough and long enough to make up for all trial
and all delay, are sufficient to keep us ever looking,
waiting, watching. Resurrection is coming, with all
its light and joy; and then comes the world's second
dawn, and the Church's long-expected dayspring; the
cessation of creation's groans, the times of the
restitution of all things; the new heavens and the new
earth wherein dwelleth righteousness.

 4. Messiah's estimate of the Father's love. It
is this love that is His portion; it is in this love
that He abides and rejoices; for it is He who says,
"Thy loving kindness is better than life." No one knew
so well as He did the glorious truth, "God is love;
and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God
in him." The Father's love! Here His soul found its
resting-place, in the midst of human hatred and
reproach. The Father's love! It was with this that He
comforted Himself, and with this it was that He
comforted His Church, saying, "As the Father hath
loved me, so have I loved you"; "Thou hast loved them
as thou hast loved me"; "Thou lovedst me before the
foundation of the world"; "that the love wherewith
Thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them." Is
that love to us what it was to Him? It was His rest,
is it ours? It was into this hidden chamber, this holy
of holies, that He retired, when the world's storms
beat upon Him; is it in this that we take refuge in
our evil days? It was sufficient for His infinitely
capacious soul; it may well suffice for ours. Is,
then, His estimate of the Father's love our estimate?
Is this love our gladness? Is its sunshine the
brightness of our daily life? And with simple
confidence in it, like Messiah's, do we look into and
look through the future, however dark, saying, "Thou
wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence is
fulness of joy, and at Thy right hand are pleasures
for evermore?"
 On all that light, and joy, and fulness, and
love, Messiah has now entered. For eighteen hundred
years He has been in that presence, and at that right
hand, which He longed for; and though yet greater
things are in store for Him in the day of His promised
advent, yet He has now for ages been done with sorrow
and death, with reproach and hatred. He has entered on
His rest; He has passed into life; His blessedness is
now without a shadow. And is not this a thought full
of joy to us? He whom we love is happy! No second
Gethsemane nor Golgotha for Him. Whatever may befall
us, whatever of tribulation we may have yet to pass
through, He is blessed; it is all well with Him. He
has trodden the path of life; He has entered into that
presence which He longed for; He has sat down at that
right hand where there are pleasures for evermore. Is
this not a joyful thought to us here, even in the
midst of our weakness and sorrow? And was it not to
this He referred when He said, "If ye loved me, ye
would rejoice, because I said I go unto the Father"?
and was it not with forgetfulness of this that He
reproached His disciples, "Now I go my way to Him that
sent me, and none of you asketh me, whither goest
Thou? but because I have said these things unto you,
sorrow hath filled your heart."
 Should we not rejoice in His joy? Should not the
thought of His happiness be a continual source of
consolation to us? Amid the dreariness of the desert,
it was a cheering thought to Israel that there was
such a region as Canaan, over which the barrenness of
the waste howling wilderness had no power. Amid the
griefs and cares of earth, it is a blessed thought to
us that there is such a place as heaven, to which the
storm reaches not, and where there has never been
known, neither shall be, one cloud, one pain, one sin.
So amid the troubles of our own troubled spirits, or
the sorrows of those about us, it is a happy thought
that there is one heart, once full of grief, that now
grieves no more; one eye that often wept, which now
weeps no more; and that this blessed One is none other
than our beloved Lord,--once the Man of sorrows. He
who loved us, He whom, not having seen, we love, is
now for ever blessed; He has entered that presence
where there is fulness of joy; He has taken His seat
at that right hand, where there are pleasures for
evermore.
 Does not this comfort and gladden us? What He
now is, and what we so soon shall be,--this gives
vigour and consolation. It lifts us almost
unconsciously into a calmer region, and gives us to
breathe the very air of the kingdom. It purifies, too,
and strengthens; it makes us forget the things which
are behind, and reach forward to what lies before.
 The prospect of resurrection and glory sustained
the soul of our Surety here. This was the joy set
before Him. Let us set it before ourselves, that we
may not be moved. We have much to do both with the
future and the past. In that future lies our
inheritance, and we cannot but be seeking to pierce
the veil that hides it. But in the past we find our
resting-place. Christ has ascended on high, leading
captivity captive; he has ascended to His Father and
our Father, to His God and our God. The work is done.
The blood is shed. The fire has consumed the
sacrifice. It is finished! This is the testimony which
we bring from God, in the belief of which we are
saved. It needs no second sacrifice; no repetition of
the great burnt-offering. That which saves the sinner
is done. Another has done it all. Messiah has done it
all; and our gospel is not a command to do, but simply
to take what another has done. He who ceases from His
own labours, and enters on these labours of another,
has taken possession of all to which these labours
entitled Him, who so performed them, even the Messiah
of Israel, the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.
 
 

CHAPTER 8.

THE BLOOD WITHIN THE VEIL.
 
 

The day of atonement brought the three courts of the
tabernacle into one. On that day the high priest
passed from the outmost to the innermost; implying
that he had equally to do with all the holy places,
and that they whom he represented had also to do with
these.
 He carried the incense from the golden altar
into the holiest; and he carried the blood from the
brazen altar into the same. It was one blood, one
incense, one priest for all the three.
 The blood, which was sprinkled on the mercy-
seat, was from without. The sacrifice was not slain in
the inner courts, but in the outer. It was blood from
without that was carried in the priestly basin within
the veil, sprinkling the veil, the floor, the ark, the
mercy-seat, and the feet of the cherubim as they stood
upon the golden covering. In being carried within, it
lost none of its expiating virtue and value: nay, it
seemed to acquire more virtue and more value as it lay
upon the furniture of the holy of holies.
 Its efficacy, when thus brought within the veil,
was enhanced; and it did not the less speak to those
without because itself was within. It had come from
without, and its voice spoke to those who were
without. It spoke but from one small point, yet it
goes beyond the tabernacle, beyond Israel, beyond
Palestine, to the men of every kindred and nation, and
tongue and people. It contained a world-wide message,
so that each one hearing of that atoning blood might
at once say, Then God is summoning me back to Himself;
He is saying to me, "be thou reconciled to me"; He is
sending to me, from the altar and the mercy-seat, an
invitation of mingled righteousness and grace.
 This propitiation rests on substitution. In all
these symbolical transactions we have one vast
thought,--the transference of guilt from one to
another, legally and judicially; the presentation of
one death for another, as perfectly valid for all ends
of justice, and quite as suitable before God as the
judge, to meet every governmental claim as the direct
infliction of the appointed penalty on the actual
transgressor.
 There are two things which the whole Levitical
service assumes, and without which it is simple
mockery of man, that Sin is reality, and that
Substitution is righteousness.

 1. Sin is a real thing. Men do not think so,
even when with their lips they utter the word. It is
but a shadow to them, a mere name, no more.
 Sin is a sore evil. It is not felt to be so, yet
it is not the less truly such. It is not hated, it is
not shunned as an evil,--an evil whose greatness no
one can measure or tell. When men speak of it they do
so as painters speak of shade in a scene or picture;
as rather a needful thing, nay, a thing of beauty in
its own way. They have no due sense or estimate of it
at all. It is not to them what it is to God. It is not
by any means in their books what it is in the book of
God.
 Yet, right views of sin are the key to the
Bible, the key to the history of the world, and the
key to God's purposes concerning it. He who does not
know what sin is cannot understand the Bible. It must
be a dark and strange book to him. He cannot solve the
difficulties of the world's history. All is perplexed
and contradictory. He cannot enter into God's purposes
respecting it either in curse or in blessing, either
in condemnation or redemption. Sin is not misfortune,
but guilt; not disease, but crime; not an evil, but
the evil, the evil of evils, the root of all evils;
terrible in itself as fraught with all that we call
"moral evil," and terrible in its judicial effects as
necessarily and inexorably bound up with irresistible
and irreversible condemnation.
 In spite of all the divine teaching, both in
God's book and in the world's history, man refuses to
believe that sin is what God has proclaimed it, and
what its own development, in the annals of the ages,
has shown that it really is.
 The first and fundamental lesson of the
Levitical service is the infinite evil of sin.
Sacrifice is God's declaration of His estimate of SIN.
Strike this thought out of it, and sacrifice is simple
barbarism,--a coarse emblem of the vengeance of a
Jupiter, or a Moloch, or a Baal upon helpless
creaturehood.

 2. Substitution is righteousness.--I do not
argue this question; I merely indicate that scripture
assumes this.
 Often has the doctrine of substitution been evil
spoken of as a slander against God's free love. It has
been called a commercial transaction, a bargain
inconsistent with true generosity, a money-payment of
so much love for so much suffering. Philosophy,
falsely so called, has frequently, by such
representations, striven to write down a truth for
which it could not find a niche in its speculations,
and of which the philosopher himself had never felt
His need. With any book less buoyant than the Bible to
float it up, this doctrine must long before this have
been submerged under the weight of ridicule, which the
wisdom of this world has brought to bear upon it.
 But it has been seen that the Bible and the
truth of substitution cannot be sundered. They must
sink or float together. The great philosophic puzzle
with many, who were not prepared to cast off the
Scriptures, was how to disentangle the two, so as to
strike out the doctrine and yet preserve the old Book.
 This difficulty has been felt all the more,
because in the Bible itself there are no indications
of any misgivings as to the doctrine, no explanations
meant to smooth angularities and make the doctrine
less philosophically objectionable. As if unconscious
of the force of any such objection, it makes use of
figures, once and again, which are directly taken from
the commercial transactions of life. Even if what is
branded as the mercantile theology could be proved
untrue, it is certainly very like what we find in the
Bible; nor can one help feeling that if the above
theology be untrue, it is rather strange that the
Bible should lay itself so open to the suspicion of
favouring it. For, after all, the strongest statements
and most obnoxious figures are those of that Book
itself. Eliminate these and we are ready to hear how
philosophy can argue. We do not say "explain them," we
say "eliminate them"; for our difficulty lies in the
simple existence of such passages. Why are they there,
if substitution and transference be not true? They are
stumbling-blocks and snares. Let these passages
themselves bear the blame, if blame there is. It is
idle to revile a doctrine, yet leave the figures, from
which it is drawn, untouched and uncondemned.
 Substitution may be philosophical or
unphilosophical, defensible or indefensible; still it
is imbedded in the Bible; specially in the sacrificial
books and sacerdotal ordinances. Its writers may be
credited or discredited; but no one can deny that
substitution was an article of their creed, and that
they meant to teach this doctrine if they meant
anything at all. We might as well affirm that Moses
did not mean to teach creation in Genesis, or Israel's
deliverance in Exodus, as that he did not profess to
promulgate Substitution in Leviticus. Substitution is
in that book beyond all question; along with that book
let it stand or fall.
 There is then substitution revealed to us beyond
mistake in Scripture; revealed in connection with
Israel's worship, Israel's tabernacle, and Israel's
Messiah. The special thing in that service, in that
sanctuary, and in that Deliverer, with which
substitution is connected, is THE BLOOD. Hence it is
with blood that we find atonement, expiation, and
propitiation connected. For the blood is the life; and
it is the substitution of one life for another that
accomplishes these results, and brings with it these
blessings to the guilty.
 Let me take two passages, one from the Old
Testament, the other from the New, in illustration of
what the blood is affirmed to be and to do. I give but
a brief sketch of what I suppose they include; but it
will suffice to show what Scripture teaches on the
subject.
 The first is Zechariah 9:11, "As for thee also,
BY THE BLOOD OF THY COVENANT I have sent forth thy
prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water." Blood
here is declared to be the cause of deliverance,--the
blood of the covenant; as if without this covenanted
blood-shedding there could be no setting free of the
prisoner. The blood goes in, the prisoner comes out.
The blood touches his chain, and it falls off. The
blood drops on the prison-bar, and the gate flies
open. It is blood that does it all; blood whose virtue
is recognised by God; blood whose effects and results
are embraced in the everlasting covenant; the covenant
of peace, the covenant of deliverance, the covenant of
liberty, the covenant of life. But let us look more
closely at the language of the prophet.
 The words "as for thee also," or "thou also,"
are the very words of our Lord, when weeping over
Jerusalem; "Even thou," thou, the guiltiest of the
guilty, the most undeserving and unloveable of all.
Thus our text starts with a declaration of the great
love of God,--Messiah's love to Israel,-- "Yea, He
loved the people." "God is love," runs through this
whole passage; and "where sin abounded grace did much
more abound."
 To this passage the apostle seems to refer in
Hebrews 13:20, as to the bringing up Christ from the
dead by the blood of the everlasting covenant. The
prophet's words were fulfilled in Christ's
resurrection, as Hosea's (11:1) were in his return
from Egypt. (See also Psalm 18 and 40)
 The words of Zechariah shall yet be fulfilled in
Israel. The day of deliverance for the beloved nation
is surely coming. She shall know the power of the
covenant-blood to protect, to deliver, to save, to
bless. It is not simply "blood" expiating sin in
general, but "covenant-blood," linking that expiation
specially to Israel, and Israel to it. It is passover-
blood, bringing out of Egypt. Passing over this,
however, let us take up the words in their widest
sense. Let us see what the covenant-blood can do, not
for Israel only, but for us.
 The blood finds us "prisoners," captives,
"lawful captives," exiles. It finds us righteously
condemned, sold to our enemies, under wrath. Let us
see what it does for us.

 1. It removes the necessity for imprisonment.
Such a necessity did exist. Law must take its course.
Its claims must be satisfied. No leaving the prison
till the uttermost farthing has been paid. The blood
has made the satisfaction. It has met the claim. It
has provided for the payment of the penalty. The
necessity for the imprisonment no longer exists. The
law consents.

 2. It makes it right for God to deliver.
Deliverance must be the work of righteousness, not of
Almightiness alone. It was righteousness that sent the
sinner to prison, and barred the door against all
exit. It is righteousness that must bring him forth;
and this righteousness is secured by the blood of the
covenant. It is now as unrighteous to detain the
captive, as before it would have been unrighteous to
bring him forth.

 3. It opens the prison-door. That door is
locked, and barred, and guarded. No skill can open it,
no force can unbar it, no money can bribe its guards.
It cannot be opened by the earthquake, or the fire, or
the lightning. Only righteousness can open it; and
that prison-opening righteousness comes through the
blood of the covenant; the great blood-shedding makes
the prison-gates fly open; it rolls away the stone.

 4. It makes it safe for the prisoner to come
forth. For the avenger stands without, on the watch.
He has a right to be there. He has a right to seize
the prisoner, and to take vengeance. But the blood
stays all this. The covenant-blood conducts the
prisoner forth, and the sight of it bids the avenger
flee. That avenger was the executioner of guilt, and
the guilt is gone. The blood has removed that which
gave him power. He sees the blood, and withdraws his
hand.

 5. It reconciles to God. It is the blood of
propitiation, the blood of atonement. It makes up the
variance between the sinner and God. It removes the
ground of distance and dispeace. It brings nigh those
that were afar off, by making distance no longer a
righteous necessity, and nearness a thing of which the
law approves, and in which God delights. It is
reconciling blood.

 6. It redeems. "Thou hast redeemed us to God by
Thy blood." It is the ransom or purchase-money. It was
necessary that the sinner, sold and imprisoned, should
be bought back again at a price such as would satisfy
law and justice. And the blood has been found to be
ample payment,--the very ransom needed by those whom
death had made captive.

 7. It cleanses. We are washed from our sins in
this covenant-blood; our robes are washed white in the
blood of the Lamb. All that sin had done this blood
undoes. All its pollution this blood washes away. It
is purifying blood; and, as such, it fits for worship,
for drawing near to God.

 8. It pacifies. It comes into contact with the
sinner's conscience, and removes the sense of guilt,--
takes away the terror. The soul is at peace, and is
kept in peace by this blood. "He has made peace by the
blood of His cross."
 Let these things suffice to show the power of
the covenant-blood. Such it was, such it is, such it
will be.
 It is as efficacious as ever. It has lost none
of its power. Age does not change it, nor repeated use
weaken its efficacy. It can still do all it once did
for the sinner. Its potency is divine.
 It is as sufficient, as suitable, as free, as
near as ever. He whose blood it is comes up to each of
us, and presents it to us in all its fulness and
power. Take it as it is presented, and all the
benefits of this covenant-blood forthwith become
yours; and though you may be the unworthiest of the
unworthy, you are reckoned by God clean every whit; a
forgiven sinner, a delivered prisoner, a saved man.
 The second passage to which I would refer is
Hebrews 10:19:-- "Having therefore, brethren, boldness
to enter into the holiest (or literally 'the holies'
'or holy places') by the blood of Jesus; by a new and
living way which He hath consecrated for us, through
the veil, that is to say his flesh; and having an High
Priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a
true heart, in full assurance of faith, having our
hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our
bodies washed with pure water."
 As in the former passage, so in this, it is only
a brief sketch that I can here give; not attempting to
expound the words or illustrate the argument, but to
bring out the emboldening of which the apostle speaks
in connection with the blood. Deliverance by the blood
was the idea of the former passage; boldness by the
blood is the idea of this. The boldness comes to us
from what that blood reveals to us of God, and of the
way in which He has met the sinner and provided for
his entrance into the sanctuary as a worshipper.
 It is not so much doctrine that the apostle
delivers to us in his Epistles, as "the fulness of
Christ," that fulness as supplying the sinner's wants
and as bringing him into that relationship to God,
which God's purpose of redemption designed, and which
was needful for the sinner's blessedness.
 God's full provision in Christ for us as sinners
is continually brought before us; and we are invited
to avail ourselves of it. The provision for the
removal of wrath, for pardon, for reconciliation, for
service, is fully detailed, that we may know the
"manifold grace of God" and "the unsearchable riches
of Christ." For instance:--
 In the Epistle to the Romans we have the
provision in Christ fitting us for work:--viz., that
righteousness of God which delivers us from
condemnation and sets us free to serve or work for Him
who hath delivered us: and in the last chapter of that
epistle we have the list of a noble band of apostolic
workers.
 In the Epistle to the Ephesians we have the
provision for conflict:--viz, the being filled with
the Spirit and His gifts, that we may wrestle against
principalities and powers. The armour and weapons for
the warfare are described in the concluding chapter.
 In the Epistle to the Hebrews we have the
provision for worship. For God is seeking worshippers,
and He has made provision for making such. It is to
worship that He calls us in this epistle; and He
points to that which enables us to become acceptable
worshippers:--to that which, so soon as it is
understood and believed, turns the chief of sinners
and the farthest off of prodigals into an acceptable
and happy worshipper.
 He assumes that "boldness" or "confidence" is
essential to this: and this boldness has been
provided. There is, 1. the open door of the sanctuary;
2. liberty to enter;
3. boldness in drawing near to God; 4. access to all
the courts; for the expression is not simply "the
holiest" but "the holy places"; as if we had the
fullest right to every part of the sanctuary, the full
range of the holy places.
 This boldness is the opposite of dread, and
darkness, and suspicion, and uncertainty. It is not
merely the reversal of Adam's flying from God into the
trees of the garden, but it is the entire removal of
all sense of danger, or fear of unacceptableness,--
nay, it is the importation of childlike and
unhesitating confidence, in virtue of which we go in
without trembling and without blushing; for God's
provision is so ample that in going into His courts
and going up to His throne we are neither afraid nor
ashamed. All that would have produced such feelings
has been taken away. This boldness is effected,

 1. By something without us. It is not anything
within us,--our evidences, or experiences, or
feelings; not even our regeneration, and our being
conscious of the Spirit's work in us. It is entirely
by something without us,--the blood of Jesus.

 2. By something in the heavens. It is into the
heaven of heavens that we are to enter in worshipping
God; and that which gives us boldness in entering
there, must be something which has been presented
there, as the apostle says,-- "the heavenly things
themselves by better sacrifices than these." The blood
was shed on earth, but presented in heaven; Christ
entered in with His own blood.

 3. By something about which there can be no
mistake. The question as to the existence of the blood
or its being presented in heaven, is settled once for
all on the authority of God. We need not reason about
it. God has told us that it has been done. As to our
own feelings there may be many mistakes; but as to the
presentation of the blood, there can be no doubt and
no mistake. It is a certainty; and on that certainty
we rest.

 4. By something which shows that the ground of
dread is removed. The dread arose from the thought, 1.
I am guilty; 2. God must be my enemy; 3. I dare not
come near him; 4. He must condemn me. The blood of
Jesus meets these causes of terror, and shows the
provision which God has made for the removal of them
all. The sight of the blood dispels my terror and
relieves my conscience, and says, Be of good cheer.
For it shows the penalty paid by a substitute,--the
full penalty; a divine life given in room of a human
life, the wages of sin paid by the death of a divine
substitute.

 5. By something which God has accepted. God has
accepted the blood! He raised Him whose blood it is;
and this was acceptance. He set Him on His throne at
His right hand. This is acceptance. He presents him as
the Lamb slain. This is acceptance. He has testified
to His acceptance of it. It is blood which God has
accepted for that pardon and cleansing and reconciling
that we preach; blood by which law is magnified and
righteousness exalted.

 6. By something which glorifies God. That blood-
shedding glorifies Him. The sinner's admission and
entrance glorifies Him,--glorifies Him more than his
exclusion and banishment and death. The blood by which
God is thus glorified in receiving the sinner, must
give boldness. I am going in to glorify God; and my
going in will glorify Him, in consequence of that
blood,--this cannot but embolden me.

 7. By something which tells that God wants my
worship. God came down seeking worshippers. He wants
your worship,--this is His message. That tabernacle
says He wants you as a worshipper. That laver, blood,
incense, mercy-seat, all say He wants you as a
worshipper. He is in earnest in seeking you to worship
Him. He wants you to come in and serve in His courts,-
-as a priest!
 We go in through the open gate, the rent veil:
by the new and living way, the blood-dropped pavement.
Personally we are sprinkled from an evil conscience;
i.e., at the altar; our bodies are washed, i.e., at
the laver. Thus there are such things as the
following, resulting from all this.

 1. Liberty of conscience. I mean liberty of
conscience before God. A "good conscience" comes to us
through the blood upon the mercy-seat. A conscience
void of offence before men we may have in other ways,
but only in this can all have a conscience void of
offence before the Searcher of hearts. It is the blood
which purges the conscience from dead works, as did
the water mixed with the ashes of the red heifer
cleanse the Israelite who had touched a dead body. By
the blood the "true heart" comes.

 2. Confident approach to God. Instead of flying
from God, we turn to Him. Instead of trembling as we
cross the threshold of His sanctuary, we lift up our
heads like those who know that only here are they on
secure ground,--like the flying manslayer entering the
gate of the Refuge City. The blood removes the dread,
and makes us feel safe even under the holy light of
the glory. We are protected by the blood; we are
comforted by the blood: for this blood casteth out all
fear.

 3. Happy intercourse. A sinner's fellowship with
God must be carried on through the blood. That blood
was meant to remove everything that would have
hindered communion; or that would have kept God at a
distance from the sinner, and the sinner at a distance
from God. But it is not merely that we are brought
nigh by the blood of Christ; we are brought nigh in
the fulness of a tranquil spirit, which feels that it
can now unbosom itself to God, in the certainty of
confiding love. Fear has been supplanted by joy. The
intercourse is the intercourse of trusting happy
hearts, pouring out their love into each other; and
the Spirit bears witness to the blood in this respect,
by imparting the childlike frame, and teaching us to
cry Abba Father.

 4. Spiritual service. There seems nothing
spiritual in the blood; and yet without the blood
spiritual service is an impossibility. Abel's
sacrifice seemed a more carnal thing than Cain's
offering of the choicest fruits of Eden, yet it was in
Abel's that God recognised the spirituality and the
acceptable service. It is the blood which divests us
of that externalism which cleaves to the service of
the sinner,--which strips us of a hollow ritualism;
which turns death into life, hollowness into
substance, and unreality into truth. Spiritual service
has ever been connected with the blood-shedding of
atonement, which by its appeal to the inner man, draws
out the whole spiritual being in happy obedience and
willing devoted service.
 5. Holy worship. Holiness is not associated with
darkness, or gorgeous rites, or glittering robes, or
fragrant incense, or swelling music, or a magnificent
temple, or an unnumbered multitude. All these may be
unholy things, hateful to God. There may be the
absence of all these, and yet there may be holy
worship: the worship of holy lips; the worship of holy
hands; the worship of holy knees; the worship of a
holy soul. It is the blood that consecrates; whether
it be man or place, whether it be voice or soul. That
which is presented to God must have passed through the
blood, else it is unholy, however imposing and
splendid. If it has come through the blood, it is
holy, however small and mean and poor. All worship is
unclean save that which has been sanctified by the
blood. All holy worship begins with the blood, and is
carried on by means of the blood. We go within the
rent veil to worship, not without blood. For it is the
blood which sprinkled on the worshipper makes him
first, and then his worship, acceptable. This is
"entire consecration."
 

CHAPTER 9.

GOD SEEKING WORSHIPPERS.
 
 

For ages before God sought a temple, He had been
seeking worshippers. He could do without the former,
but not without the latter.
 His first sanctuary was but a tent; and three
thousand years had elapsed before He said, Build me a
house wherein I may dwell. Yet all this time He was
seeking for worshippers amongst the sons of men. By
man's sin God had lost the worship of earth, and He
had set Himself to regain it.

 1. He wants LOVE. Being the infinitely loveable
God, He asks love from man--from every man; love
according to His worth and beauty.

 2. He claims OBEDIENCE. For His will is the
fountainhead of all law; and He expects that this will
of His should be in all things conformed to.

 3. He expects SERVICE. The willing and living
service of man's whole being is what He claims and
desires,--the service of body, soul, and spirit.

 4. He asks for WORSHIP. He does not stand in
need of human praise or prayer; yet He asks for these,
He delights in these, He wants the inner praise of the
silent heart. He wants the uttered praise of the
fervent lip and tongue. He desires the solitary praise
of the closet; and still more the loud harmony of the
great congregation; for "the Lord loveth the gates of
Zion more than all the dwellings of Jacob," (Psa
87:2). True praise is a "speaking well of God", (1
Peter 1:3), speaking of Him in psalms and hymns and
spiritual songs, according to His excellency. "Bless
the Lord, O my soul" (Psa 103:1), "Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (Eph 1:3).
 It was of "worship" that the Lord spoke so much
to the woman of Sychar. To Nicodemus He said nothing
of this; nor indeed to any others. It was in regard to
"worship" that the Samaritans had gone so far astray,
therefore He speaks specially of this,--even to this
poor profligate. He spoke to her of "the Father," and
of "the worship of the Father" (John 4:21); reminding
her that God was a spirit and that "they who worship
Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth." And then
He adds these memorable words, "the Father seeketh
such to worship Him."
 It was of the difference between outward and
inward religion, between the real and the unreal,
between the acceptable and the unacceptable, that He
spoke to the woman. Samaria and Jerusalem, Gerizzim
and Moriah, these were but external things. There was
no religious virtue connected with them; God is not
the God of the outward, but of the inward; not the God
of places, but of living creatures; not the God of
cities and mountains, but the God of hearts and souls.
No rites, however numerous or gorgeous or beautiful,
can be a substitute for the life and the spirit. The
question is not intellectual, or aesthetic, or
pictorial, but spiritual; not as to what gratifies our
eye or ear, our sense of the great or the tasteful,
but what is acceptable to God and according to His
instructions.
 Where am I to worship God? man asks; but he
answers it in his own way; as all false religions, and
indeed some true ones, have done. On certain sacred
spots, he says, where some man of God has lived, where
some martyr's blood has been shed, where the footsteps
of good men are recorded to have been, which have been
consecrated by certain priestly rites,--there and
there only must men worship God. God's answer to the
question, Where am I to worship God? is, EVERYWHERE:
on sea and land, vale or hill, desert or garden, city
or village or moor,--anywhere and everywhere. For
certain purposes God set apart Sinai for a season, and
then Moriah; but not to the exclusion of other places.
And even these consecrations are at an end. Sinai is
but the old red granite hill,--no more,--where now no
man worships. Moriah is but the old limestone
platform, now desecrated by false worship. "Woman,
believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in
this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the
Father" (John 4:21).
 When am I to worship God? man asks; but he
answers it in his own way also. Only at certain times,
he says,--certain hours, and certain days, fixed and
arranged by priestly authority, or ecclesiastical law,
or traditional rule. God's answer is, "at all times
and seasons": pray without ceasing. The naming of
certain hours and days is necessary for the gathering
together of the worshippers; but worship is to be
perpetual, without restriction of times. All hours are
holy; all days are holy, in so far as worship is
concerned; only one day having been specially
appointed of God, and that not for restriction but for
order.
 How am I to worship God? man asks; and he has
answered it also in his own way. In the gorgeous
temple, in the pillared cathedral, with incense, and
vestments, and forms, and ceremonies, and processions,
and postures, he says.[14] But these performances are
the will-worship of self-righteousness, not the
obedient service of men worshipping God in ways of His
own ordination. Man cannot teach man how to worship
God. When he tries it he utterly fails. He distorts
worship; he misrepresents God, and he indulges his own
sensuous or self-righteous tastes. His "dim religious
light" is but a reflection of his own gloomy spirit,
and an ignorant misrepresentation of Him "who is
light, and in whom is no darkness at all." God's
answer to man's question is given in the Lord's words,
"they that worship Him must worship Him in spirit and
in truth." The vestments may or may not be comely;
that matters not. The music may or may not be fine:
the knees may or may not be bent; the hands may or may
not be clasped; the place of worship may or may not be
a cathedral, or a consecrated fabric. These are
immaterial things; adjuncts of religion, not its
essence. The true worship is that of the inner man;
and all things else are of little moment. As it is
with love so it is with worship. The heart is
everything. God can do without the bended knee, but
not without the broken heart.
 It is of the Father that Christ is here
speaking;--of Him whose name is not only God but
Father,[15] the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ. As the fountainhead of all being in heaven and
in earth, the paternal Creator, the Father of spirits,
the great Father-spirit, the God of the spirits of all
flesh, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, yet
who visiteth earth in His fatherly love,--as such He
is here spoken of by our Lord. He is a spirit, yet He
is no vague or cold abstraction, no mere assemblage of
what we call attributes, but full of life and love;
with the heart of a Father, with the pity and power
and care of a Father, and also with all a Father's
resources and rights. Though we have broken off from
that Father and gone into the far country, that does
not change His paternal nature, though it alters our
relationship to Him and the treatment we are to
receive at His hands. He made the fatherly heart of
man, and He did so after the likeness of His own. That
fatherly heart yearns over His wandered family; "His
tender mercies are over all His works."
 It is as Father that he is seeking worshippers,
and seeking them here on earth among the fallen sons
of men.
 He seeketh! That word means more than it seems.
He is in search of something; of something which He
has lost; of something which He counts precious; of
something which He cannot afford to lose. Great as He
is, there are many things which He cannot think of
letting go. His very greatness makes Him needy for it
makes Him understand the value, not only of every soul
which He has formed, but of every atom of dust which
He has created. When He misses any part of His
creation He goes or sends in search of it; He will not
part with it. Men of common souls, when they lose
anything, are apt to say, Let it go, I can do without
it. Men of great minds, when they lose anything, say,
I must have it back again, I cannot afford to lose it.
Much more is this true of the infinite Jehovah. It is
His greatness that makes Him so susceptible of loss.
Others may overlook the lost thing. He cannot. He must
go in quest of it.
 It is the same kind of seeking and searching as
the prophet Ezekiel, speaking in the name of Jehovah,
declares,-- "I will search and seek," (34:11); and to
which our Lord so often refers, when He represents
Himself as "seeking the lost" (Luke 19:10); it may be
the lost sheep, or the lost piece of silver, or the
lost son.
 We must not dilute these expressions, and say
that they simply imply that God is willing to have us
back again if we will come; that He is willing to take
us as worshippers if we will come. All that comes very
far short of the meaning. And though we may say, what
can the infinite Jehovah be in want of; what can He
need, to whom belongs not only the heaven of heavens
but the whole universe;--still we must see how anxious
He is to show us His unutterable earnestness in
seeking and in searching.
 Such is the attitude of God! He bends down from
His eternal throne to seek; as if the want of
something here on earth, on this old sinful earth,
would be a grievous and irreparable loss. What value
does He attach to us and to our worship!
 Yes, the Father seeketh worshippers! He is in
search of many things of which sin has robbed Him;
affection, homage, allegiance, reverence, obedience;
but worship,--the worship of man, and of man's earth,
He is specially seeking and claiming. He so created
this world, that from it there should arise, without
ceasing, wide as the universal air, that fragrance of
holy worship, from the creatures which He had made and
placed upon its surface. The command is not merely,
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart,"
but "thou shalt worship the Lord thy God and Him only
shalt thou serve." Over this broken command He mourns;
"it grieves Him at His heart"; and He seeks to have it
restored in man. He loves worship from human hearts
and lips, and He will not be satisfied without it. It
might seem a small thing to lose the worship of a
creature's heart, here on this low and evil earth. Can
He not let it go? It will only be the worse for the
creature, not for Him, who has the worship of heaven,
and of ten thousand times ten thousand angels. No; He
cannot lose that worship. It is precious to Him. He
must have it back.
 O man, God speaks to you and says, "Worship me."
He comes up to each sinner upon earth and says,
"Worship me." If He does so, He must care for you and
He must care for your worship. It is not a matter of
indifference to Him whether you worship Him or not. It
concerns Him, and it concerns you. Perhaps the thought
comes up within you, what does God care for my
worship? I may praise, or I may not, what does He
care? I may sing, or I may blaspheme, what does it
matter to Him? He cares much. It concerns Him deeply.
He is thoroughly in earnest when He asks you to
worship Him. He wants these lips of yours, that tongue
of yours, that heart of yours. He wants them all for
Himself. Will you give Him what He wants?
 You say He has enough of praise in heaven, what
can he want on earth? He has angels in myriads to
praise Him, does He really desire my voice? Will He be
grieved if I refuse it? Yes, He desires your voice,
and He will be grieved if you withhold it. He has many
a nobler tongue than yours, but still He wants yours.
He has many a sweeter voice than yours, still He is
bent on having that poor sinful voice. Oh come and
worship me, He says.
 This answers the question so often put by the
inquiring, What warrant have I for coming to God. God
wants you. Is not that enough? What more would you
have? He wants you to draw near. He has no pleasure in
your distance. He wants you to praise Him, to worship
Him. He is seeking your worship. Do you mean to ask,
What warrant have I for worshipping God? Rather should
you ask, What warrant have I for refusing to worship
Him? Is it possible that you can think yourself at
liberty not to worship Him; nay, think that you are
not under any obligation to worship Him, until you can
ascertain your election, or feel within you some
special change which you can consider God's call to
worship Him?
 His search for worshippers is a world-wide one.
It goes over the whole earth; and His call on men to
worship is equally universal. He made man to worship
and to love; can He ever forego such claims, or can
man ever be in a position in which that claim ceases,
or that obligation is cancelled? Can his sinfulness or
unworthiness exempt him from the duty, or make it
unwarrantable in him to come and worship Jehovah?
 Let us hear how He speaks to the sons of men,
Jew and Gentile:--

"Make a joyful noise unto God, all ye lands!
Sing forth the honour of His name,
Make His praise glorious." (Psa 66:1)

 Again He speaks,--

"O sing unto the Lord a new song;
Sing unto the Lord, all the earth!
Sing unto the Lord,
Bless His name!
Show forth His salvation from day to day." (Psa 96:1)

 Again He speaks,--

"Praise ye the Lord!
For it is good to sing praises unto our God;
For it is pleasant;
Yea, praise is comely." (Psa 147:1)

 Nay, He calls on all nature to praise Him. He
claims the homage of the inanimate creation.

"Let the heavens rejoice,
And let the earth be glad;
Let the sea roar, and the fulness thereof.
Let the field be joyful, and all that is therein;
Then shall the trees of the wood rejoice
Before the Lord." (Psa 96:11-13)

 Thus is God seeking for worshippers here on
earth. And what is His gospel but the proclamation of
His gracious search for worshippers? He sends out His
glad tidings of great joy, that He may draw men to
Himself and make them worshippers of His own glorious
self.
 The shepherd loses one of his flock; and he
misses it. The shepherd misses the sheep more than the
sheep misses the shepherd. The sheep is too precious
to be lost. It must be sought for and found; whatever
toil or peril may be in the way. Even life itself is
not to be grudged in behalf of the lost one, "The good
Shepherd giveth His life for the sheep," as if the
life of the sheep were more valuable than that of the
Shepherd.
 The woman loses one of her ten silver pieces,
she cannot afford to lose it. She must have it back
again. She seeks till she find it. It does not miss
her, but she misses it. She seeks and finds!
 The father loses his son; and is troubled. The
son may not miss the father, but the father misses the
son; nor can he rest till he has taken him in his arms
again, and set him down at his table with gladness and
feasting.
 But the passage we are considering brings before
us something beyond all this. It is not the shepherd
seeking his sheep, nor the woman her silver, nor the
father his son; it is Jehovah seeking worshippers! and
He is in earnest. He wants to be worshipped by the
sons of Adam. He desires the worship of earth no less
than that of heaven. He has the praise of angels, but
He must have that of men. Such is the value He sets
upon us, and such is His love?
 But it is spiritual worship, and spiritual
worshippers that He is seeking: "The Father seeketh
such to worship Him." The outward man is nothing, it
is the inner man He is in quest of. The worship must
come, not from the walls of the temple, but from the
innermost shrine. It must be something pervading the
man's whole being, and coming up from the depths of
the soul; otherwise, it is but as sounding brass or a
tinkling cymbal. Forms, sounds, gestures, dresses,
ornaments, are not worship. They are but
 "Mouth-honour breath,
Which the poor heart would fain deny, but dare not."

 Instead of constituting worship, these outward
things are often but excuses for refusing the inward
service. Man pleases himself with a sensuous and
theatrical externalism, because he hates the spiritual
and the true. God says, "Give me thine heart." Man
says, "No; but I will give you my voice." God says,
"Give me thy soul." Man says, "No; but I will give
Thee my knee and my bended body." But it will not do.
"God is a spirit, and they that worship Him must
worship Him in spirit and in truth."
 But what provision has God made for all this? It
is not enough to say to us, "Be worshippers,"--this
might be said to the unsinning, and they would at once
comply. "Let all the angels of God worship Him." But
say this to a sinner, and he will ask, "How can I, a
man of unclean lips and unclean heart, approach the
infinitely holy One? It would not be safe in me to
come, nor would it be right in God to allow me to
approach." There must be provision for this;--
something which will satisfy the sinner's conscience,
remove the sinner's dread, win the sinner's
confidence, on the one hand, and satisfy God,
vindicate righteousness, magnify holiness, on the
other.
 For this there is the twofold provision of the
blood and the Spirit. The blood satisfies God's
righteousness and the sinner's conscience. The Holy
Spirit renews the man, so as to draw out his heart in
worship. It is the blood that propitiates, and it is
the Spirit that transforms. God presents this blood
freely to the sinner; God proclaims His desire to give
this Spirit freely.
 "May I use this blood?" perhaps one says. Use
it! Certainly. Thou fool, why shouldst thou ask such a
question? Use it! Yes; for thou must either use it, or
trample on it. Which of these wilt thou do?
 "May I expect the Spirit?" some one may say.
Expect Him! What! art thou more willing to have the
Spirit than God is to give Him? Art thou so willing,
and God so unwilling? Thou fool, who has persuaded
thee to believe such a lie?
 God has come to thee, O man! saying, "I want
thee for a worshipper": wilt thou become one?
Remember, thou must either be a worshipper or a
blasphemer; which wilt thou be?
 
 

CHAPTER 10.

GOD SEEKING TEMPLES.
 

God began with seeking worshippers, but he goes on to
seek temples; or rather, in the sense which we are now
to consider, in seeking worshippers he was seeking
temples; and in preparing worshippers, he was
preparing temples.
 The Church is the great temple. Each saint is a
temple. In His Church, and in each member of that
Church, Jehovah dwells. "Ye are builded together for
AN HABITATION OF GOD through the Spirit" (Eph 2:22).
 Man was made for God to dwell in. Man thrust God
out of His dwelling-place, and left Him homeless;
without a habitation on earth. The universe was His;
every star was His; every mountain was His: but none
of these did He count fit to be His habitation. Only
in the human heart would He be satisfied to dwell.
 Man thrust out God from His dwelling, but God
would not be thus driven away. He must return; and He
must return in a way which would make it impossible
that He should ever be thrust out again; and He must
return in a way such as will show not only the
hatefulness of man's sin in thrusting Him out, but the
largeness of His own grace, and the perfection of His
righteousness.
 Jehovah is bent upon returning to His old
dwelling-place. He might have created others, and
dwelt in them. But He has purposed not to part with
His old ones. It is as if He could not afford to lose
these, or could not bear the thought of casting them
away. "I will return," He says. He casts a wistful eye
upon the ruins of His beloved dwelling-place, and He
resolves to return and rebuild, and re-inhabit.[16]
 When the Son of God was here, He had no place to
lay His head. He was a homeless man in the midst of
earth's many homes. But still He did come, seeking a
home, both for Himself and for the Father. The home
that He sought was the human heart; and He came with
this message from the Father,-- "I will dwell in
them." To this closed heart He comes, in loving
earnestness, seeking entrance, that He may find for
Himself and for the Father a home. Thus He speaks:
"Behold, I stand at the door and knock: if any man
hear my voice and open the door, I will come in unto
him, and will sup with him, and he with me" (Rev
3:20); and again He speaks, "We will come unto him,
and make our abode with him" (John 14:23). So that
this is our message to the sons of men,--the Father
wants your heart for His dwelling,--the Son wants your
heart for His dwelling.
 But it is for more than dwelling that God is
seeking. It is for a temple. To dwell in us, in any
sense, would be infinite honour and blessedness. But
to take us for His temples, to make us His Holy of
Holies, His shrine of worship, His place of praise,
His very heaven of heavens, is something beyond all
this. Yet it is temples that God is now seeking among
the sons of men; not marble shrines, nor golden
altars, with fire, and blood, and incense, and
gorgeous adornings; but the spirit of man, the broken
and the contrite heart.
 The Church is God's temple. "In whom ALL THE
BUILDING, fitly framed together, groweth into AN HOLY
TEMPLE in the Lord" (Eph 2:21). Each saint is God's
temple. "Ye are the temple of God" (1 Cor 3:16). Our
body is God's temple. "Know ye not that your body is
the temple of the Holy Ghost" (1 Cor 6:19).[17]
 God is seeking temples on earth,--living
temples, constructed of living stones, founded on the
one living stone,-- "built up a spiritual house" (1
Peter 2:5).
 Of this temple God is Himself the Architect, and
the Holy Spirit is the BUILDER. It is constructed
after the pattern of heavenly things, according to the
great eternal plan, which the purpose of the God, only
wise, had designed for the manifestation of His own
glory. As both the Architect and Builder are divine,
we may be sure that the plan will be perfect, and that
it will be carried out in all its details without
failure, and without mistake. It will be beauty,
completeness, and perfection throughout,--a glorious
Church, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing; in
size, in symmetry, in ornament, in majesty, in
stability, altogether faultless,--the mightiest and
the fairest of all the works of Jehovah's hands.
 In another sense, hereafter, when all things are
made new, "the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb" are the
temple (Rev 21:22). But we also are the temple; both
now and hereafter. Both things are true. He in us, and
we in Him. We are God's temple, and He is ours for
ever.
 The foundation is Christ Himself (1 Cor 3:11;
Isa 28:16; 1 Peter 2:4-6). He is the rock on which we
are builded; He is no less the foundation-stone which
bears up the building, and knits its walls together.
In the eternal plan of the divine Architect, this
foundation-stone is grandly prominent,--the chief part
of God's eternal purpose; framed by God; laid by God
in the fulness of time; laid in Zion; laid once for
all: a sure foundation, a tried stone; one, without a
rival and without a second. It was this stone, laid by
God, which the apostle (if we may carry out the figure
which he uses in connection with his own ministry)
carried about with him from place to place, when he
went through the gentile world founding churches.
"According to the grace of God which is given unto me,
as a wise master-builder, I have laid THE
FOUNDATION...For other foundation can no man lay than
that is laid, which is Jesus Christ" (1 Cor 3:10,11).
On this foundation each soul rests. From the first
saint, downward to the last, it has been and it shall
be so. There is but one foundation for Old Testament
saints as well as for new. On this, too, the Church of
God rests; the one Church from the beginning, the one
body, the one temple, filled with the one Spirit, for
the worship of the one Jehovah. Not two foundations,
nor two temples, nor two bodies, nor two Churches; but
ONE, only one, made up of the redeemed from among men,
bought with the one blood, justified with the one
righteousness, saved by the one cross, expectants of
the one promise, and heirs of the one glory.
 The stones are the saints, (1 Peter 2:5) "Unto
whom coming as unto a living stone, ye also as lively
(living) stones, are built up a spiritual house." Of
the quarrying, the hewing, the polishing, the
building, of these living stones I cannot here write.
But each has a history of his own. Though dug out of
one rock, hewn, polished and fitted in by one Spirit,
yet each has come to be what he is by means of a
different process, some longer, some shorter, some
gentler, some rougher. But on the one foundation, they
are all placed by the one hand, one upon the other, in
goodly order, according to the one eternal plan in
Christ Jesus our Lord; forming the one glorious temple
for Jehovah's worship and habitation. Many stones, one
temple; many members, one family; many branches, one
vine; many crumbs, one loaf. They are "BUILDED
TOGETHER for an habitation of God through the Spirit."
The "unity of the faith," (Eph 4:13), from the
beginning is the pledge of the unity of the temple;
and as this faith has been one since the day of the
announcement of the woman's seed, so has this temple
been; the multitude of stones not marring but
enhancing the unity. The "unity of the Spirit," too,
(Eph 4:3), is both the pattern and the pledge of the
temple's unity. It has been one spirit and one temple
from the beginning; not two spirits and two temples,
but only one. "There is one body and one spirit, even
as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one
Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of
all, who is above all, and through all, and in you
all." Thus all the "building fitly framed together
groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord" (Eph 2:21).
God is now seeking these stones for His temple among
the lost sons of Adam. Worthless and unfit in
themselves for use in any divine building, they are
sought out and prepared by the great Builder for their
place in the eternal building. Yes, God is in search
of these stones now; just as He has been these many
ages, since Adam, and Abel, and Seth, and Enoch, and
Noah, were sought out nd fitted in to form the
glorious line or row of stones lying immediately above
the foundation-stone. God is coming up to each son of
man, degraded as he may be, an outcast, and saying,
"Wilt thou not become a stone in my temple? I seek
thee: wilt thou prefer thy degradation, and reject the
honour which I present to thee."
 The temple is holy (1 Cor 3:17; Psa 93:5). It is
set apart for God; it is to be used for sacred
purposes; it is pure in all its parts; its vessels,
its walls, its gates, its furniture. It is not yet
perfect, but it shall one day be so. Into it nothing
that defileth shall enter. And even now God, the
inhabitant of the temple, is seeking holiness of all
who belong to it. "Be ye holy, for I am holy."
 Let us dread the defilement of His temple; for
it is written, "If any man defile the temple of God,
him shall God destroy" (1 Cor 3:17). For God will not
be mocked, nor allow His throne to be polluted. Yet do
we not defile it by sin, by worldliness, by vanity, by
formality, by profanity, by our unfragrant incense,
our impure praises and prayers?
 Let us rejoice in the honour of being living
temples, living stones, consecrated to the service of
the living God. Let us walk worthy of the honour,--the
honour of being filled with God, penetrated by His
light, perfumed by His sweetness, gladdened by His
love, and glorified by His majestic presence and
indwelling fulness.

CHAPTER 11.

GOD SEEKING PRIESTS.
 
 

If God has a temple, He must have priests; else were
there no song, no service, no worship.  In His eternal
plan, priesthood is provided for; a priesthood not of
angels but of redeemed men; of those who seemed the
least likely to fulfil such an office in such a
temple.
 It is a "holy priesthood" that he has provided
(1 Peter 2:5). It is a "royal priesthood" (1 Peter
2:9); for He has made us kings and priests. It is a
heavenly priesthood like that of His own Son.
 As such we minister at God's altar, we tread His
courts, we eat His shew-bread, we kindle and trim His
lamps, we offer His sacrifices, we burn His holy
incense.
 God is seeking priests among the sons of men. A
human priesthood is one of the essential parts of His
eternal plan. To rule creation by man is His design;
to carry on the worship of creation by man is no less
part of His design.
 He is now in search of priests; and He has sent
His Son to prepare such for His temple. In order to
their being such, He must redeem them; He must
reconcile them; He must cleanse them; He must clothe
them with the garments of glory and of beauty. All
this He does. "The Son of man came to seek and to save
that which was lost."
 The embassy of peace which is going forth from
the cross is an embassy in quest of priests. His
ambassadors of peace beseech men to be reconciled to
God in order to their becoming priests. God Himself in
His glorious gospel comes up to the sinner and asks
him to become a priest to Him.
 And what does this priesthood mean? What does it
embrace? Let us consider this.
 Priesthood is the appointed link between heaven
and earth; the channel of intercourse between the
sinner and God. God and man can only come together on
the ground of mediatory priesthood. Such a priesthood,
in so far as expiation is concerned, is in the hands
of the Son of God alone; in so far as it is to be the
medium of communication between Creator and creature,
is also in the hands of redeemed men,--of the Church
of God.
 Sin had broken up all direct or open
intercourse, as we have seen; and the veil declared
this. All access to God was to be debarred till a new
medium should be provided, such as should secure the
ends of righteousness; such as should make it
honourable for the Holy One to receive the
unrighteous; and such as should make it safe for the
unholy to stand in the presence of the Holy.
 Priesthood is the link between the sinner and
God, between earth and heaven,--earth, where all is
vile; heaven, where all is pure. Without priesthood,
God and we are at awful and unremoveable distance from
each other. Without priesthood, there can be no
transference of guilt, no remission of sin, no
reconciliation to God, no restoration either to
fellowship or blessing. Priesthood involves and
accomplishes all these, because it is through it that
the substitution of life for life is effected. It is
the conducting medium through whose agency the
exchange is brought about between the sinner and the
Surety. In nothing less than this does its purpose
terminate, and wherein it falls short of this, it is
but a pretext or a name. If priesthood be not the
living link between God and the sinner, it is nothing.
 All this was exhibited in symbolic rite under
the former law. It was through priesthood that all
intercourse with God was carried on. It was the priest
that led the sinner into God's presence, that
presented his offering, that transacted the business
between him and God, and that received the blessing
from God to bestow upon the sinner. God set up the
Aaronic priesthood on very purpose to exhibit this; to
let men know what His idea of priesthood was, and what
He intended a priest to be.
 True, this ancient priesthood had only to do
with the flesh; it pertained but to the outward person
of the sinner, and the mere visible courts of God. It
could not reach the inner man; it could not take hold
of the conscience; it could not lead the worshipper
into the true presence of the invisible Jehovah. It
fell short of these ends, and thus far was defective.
Still, it did fully accomplish its end as a medium of
communication, in so far as the outward man and the
material courts were concerned. It was complete
according to its nature; and in so far as it went, it
established intercourse between the sinner and God.
 In so doing, it brought out most fully God's
idea of priesthood, as if to prevent the possibility
of any mistake upon the point. It showed God's
ultimate design in regard to this; His intention of
bringing in a perfect priesthood in His own time and
way. His object was not to show men how to construct
and set up a priesthood of their own, but to tell them
what He Himself meant to do, so as to hinder their
attempting such a thing. His object was to teach them
the true meaning of priesthood, in order that when He
brought in His own High Priest, they might fully
understand the nature of His work, and the end to be
accomplished. It was a new and a great idea that He
sought to teach them, an idea which would never have
occurred to themselves; an idea which it required long
time to unfold to them; an idea most needful for them
fully to grasp, as upon it depended the new
relationship which grace was to introduce between them
and God.
 But then when the old priestly ritual had thus
served its ends, it was of no more use. It behoved to
be taken down, as being more likely to hinder than
help forward the sinner's intercourse with God, as
being certain to confuse and perplex, and lead to
innumerable mistakes in the great question of approach
and acceptance. It was not to be imitated, for any
imitation would but mislead men from the true
priesthood. It was not to be set up in another form,
for every part of it was merged, and, as it were,
dissolved irrecoverably in the priesthood of the Son
of God. The High Priest of good things to come had
absorbed it all into Himself, so that any attempt to
reconstruct it in any form is undoing what God has
done; restoring what He Himself has taken to pieces;
committing sacrilege with His holy vessels; nay,
profaning with irreverent touch what He has removed
out of sight, and forbidden to be handled or used.
 So far, then, is the old ritual from being a
model or example for us now, that it forbids the
attempt to imitate its rites. Its very nature, so
purely symbolic and prospective, forbids such an
attempt. Its abolition still more strongly prohibits
this. For that abolition is God's proclamation that
its ends are served, and its time accomplished. But
specially its abolition, through fulfilment in the
person of Messiah, declares this. Before it was cast
away, everything in it that was of value was gathered
out of it, and perpetuated in Him. Every truth that it
contained was taken from it, and embodied in Him. It
did not pass away simply because its time had come,
but because the need for it had ceased; it had been
superseded by something infinitely more glorious in
its nature, and more suitable to the sinner. Who
thinks of preserving the sand when the gold that it
contained has been extracted? or who misses the
beacon-light when the sun has risen?
 The coming of the Son of God, the Great High
Priest, thus involves the abolition of priesthood in
the old sense, for He has taken it wholly upon
Himself: it is now centred in Him. All the ends of
priesthood are fully met by Him. There is not one
thing which we need either as sinners or as
worshippers which we have not in Him. So that the
question arises, What end can it serve to set up
another priesthood apart from His? Has He left
anything incomplete which ought to be completed by us?
Has He left any of the distance unremoved between us
and God? Has He left the work of atonement, and
mediation, and intercession, in such a state of
imperfection, that we require a new priestly order to
perfect it? If not, then is it not strange profanity,
as well as perversity in man, to insist upon setting
up what is so wholly unnecessary, and what cannot but
cast dishonour upon the divine priesthood of Messiah
as being imperfect in itself, and as having failed in
its ends?
 In the present age, then, there are none on
earth exercising priestly functions. There is
ministry, but not priesthood. The apostles were not
priests. They never claimed the office, and never
sought to exercise it in the Church. Nor did they
enjoin their successors to claim it, nor give them the
slightest hint that, as ministers, they were priests.
They taught them that priesthood had passed away; that
the priestly raiment had been rent in pieces; that
there was no longer any temple, or altar, or sacrifice
needed upon earth under this dispensation. The epistle
to the Hebrews gives the lie to all priestly
pretensions, and the epistles to Timothy and Titus
show how totally different ministry is from
priesthood.
 Yet we read of the "royal priesthood" (1 Peter
2:9); we read of "kings and priests"; we read of those
who claimed to themselves the priestly name even here.
But these were not apostles, nor prophets, nor
evangelists, but simply saints. As saints, they were
priests. As one with the Great High Priest, they were
entitled to this name. As those who were called to
share with Him the future honours of the throne and
altar, they are the "royal priesthood." Other priests
upon earth there are none. Usurpers of the name and
office there are many. Of true, God-chosen priests,
there are none save these.
 Their priesthood is still in abeyance, so far as
the actual exercise of it is concerned. They are
priest-elect; but, at present, no more. Their title
they have received, when brought into the Holy of
Holies by the blood of Christ; but on the active
functions of priesthood they have not entered. It doth
not yet appear what they shall be. They wear no royal
crown; they are clothed with no priestly raiments;
their garments for "glory and for beauty" are still in
reserve among the things that are "reserved in heaven,
ready to be revealed in the last time." Both their
inheritance and their priesthood are as yet only
things of faith; they are not to be entered on till
their Lord returns; they are priests in disguise, and
no man owns their claim. Yet it is a sure claim; it is
a Divine claim; it is a claim which will before long
be vindicated. The day of the MANIFESTATION of those
priests is not far off. And for this they wait,
carefully abstaining from usurping honours and
dignities which God has not yet put upon them.
 The High Priest whom they own is now within the
veil; and till He come forth, they repudiate all
priestly pretensions, knowing that at present all
sacerdotal office, and authority, and glory, are
centred in Him alone. To attempt to exercise these
would be to rob Him of His prerogative, to forestall
God's purpose, and to defeat the end of the present
dispensation.
 Their priesthood is after the order of
Melchizedek. The King of Salem and priest of the Most
High God is he whom they point to as their type. Their
great Head is the true Melchizedek; and they, under
Him, can claim the office, and name, and dignity.
Melchizedek's unknown and mysterious parentage is
theirs, for the world knows them not, neither what nor
whence they are. Melchizedek's city was Salem; theirs
is the New Jerusalem, that cometh down out of heaven
from God. His dwelling was in a city without a temple,
and He exercised His priesthood without a temple; so
their abode is to be in that city of which it is said,
"I saw no temple therein, for the Lord God Almighty
and the Lamb are the temple of it." Distinct from
Abraham, and greater than he, though of the same
common family of man, was Melchizedek; so they, "the
church of the first-born," distinct from Israel, and
greater than they, yet still partakers of a common
nature, are to inherit a kingdom more glorious and
heavenly than what shall ever belong to the sons of
Abraham according to the flesh.
 It is in the age to come that they are to
exercise their royal priesthood. They are the kings,
while the dwellers on earth are the subjects. They are
priests, and, as such, carry on the intercourse
between earth and heaven.
 For priesthood is not merely for reconciliation,
but for carrying on intercourse after reconciliation
has been effected. It is not merely for securing
pardon, but for forming the medium of communication
between the pardoner and the pardoned. Thus priesthood
may exist after all sin has passed away, and the curse
has been taken from sky and earth, and all things have
been made new.
 For this end shall priesthood exist in the
eternal kingdom, both in the person of Christ Himself,
and of His saints. A link is needed between the upper
and the lower creation; between heaven and earth;
between the visible and the invisible; between the
Creator and the created. That link shall be the
priesthood of Christ and His redeemed. They shall be
the channels of communication between God and His
universe. They shall be the leaders of creation's song
of praise; from all regions of the mighty universe
gathering together the multitudinous praises, and
presenting them in their golden censers before
Jehovah's throne. Through them worship shall be
carried on, and all allegiance presented, and prayer
sent up from the unnumbered orbs of space, the far-
extending dominions of the King of kings.
 Whether the kingly or priestly offices are to be
conjoined in each saint, as in Christ Himself, or
whether some are to be priests and some kings, we know
not. The separation of the offices is quite compatible
with the truth as the Church forming the Melchizedek
priesthood: for the reference may be to the Church as
a body, and not to each individual. And is it not
something of this kind that is suggested to us by the
four living ones and the four-and-twenty elders in the
Revelation? Do not the former look like priests, and
do not the latter look like kings?
 Yet it matters not. In either way, the dignity
is the same to the Church; in either way will the
"royal priesthood" exercise their office under Him who
is the Great Priest and King.
 Our priesthood, then, is an eternal one. There
will be room for it, and need for it hereafter, though
the evils which just now specially call for its
exercise shall then have passed away. We greatly
narrow the range of priesthood when we confine it to
the times and the places where sin is to be found.
Such, no doubt, is its present sphere of exercise; and
it is well, indeed, for us that it is so. Did it not
extend to this, where should we be? Were it not now
ordained specially for the alienated and the guilty,
to restore the lost friendship, and refasten the
broken link between them and God, what would become of
us? But having accomplished this, must it cease? Has
it no other region within which it can exercise
itself? Has it not a wider range of function, to
which, throughout eternity, it will extend, in the
carrying out of God's wondrous purposes? And just as
the humanity of Christ is the great bond of connection
between the Divine and the human, the great basis on
which the universe is to be established immovably for
ever, and secured against a second fall, so the
priesthood of Christ, exercised in that humanity,
shall be the great medium of communication, in all
praise, and prayer, and service, and worship of every
kind; between heaven and earth; between the Creator
and the creature; between the King Eternal, Immortal,
and Invisible, and the beings whom He has made for His
glory, in all places of His dominion, whether in the
heaven of heavens, or in the earth below, or
throughout the measureless regions of the starry
universe.
 

CHAPTER 12.

GOD SEEKING KINGS.
 
 

One great part of God's eternal purpose in creation
was to rule His universe by a MAN. "Unto the angels
hath He not put in subjection the world to come,
whereof we speak; but one in a certain place
testifieth, What is MAN, that Thou art mindful of him,
or the SON OF MAN that Thou visitest him?" (Heb
2:5,6).
 To Adam therefore He said, "have dominion," or
"rule." After the words of blessing, conveying
fruitfulness to man, "be fruitful and multiply," there
are three words added, conveying earth over to man as
his possession and his kingdom, so that he might
exercise authority in it by "divine right." 1.
Replenish or fill. 2. Subdue. 3. Rule.
 Adam's unfaithfulness, by which dominion was
forfeited, did not make the great purpose of none
effect. That purpose has stood and shall stand for
ever. Instead of the first Adam God brings in the
"last Adam," the "second Man," the Lord from heaven,
as His King, and He introduces His offspring as kings
under Him, to fill, subdue, and rule the earth.
 He has found His King, and has put all things
under His feet: placing on His head the many crowns,
and setting Him on the throne of universal dominion,--
though as yet we see not all things actually put under
Him. He says, "Yet have I set my King upon my holy
hill of Zion": and He gives Him the heathen for His
inheritance and the uttermost ends of the earth for
His possession. He is the great Melchizedec,--the
priestly King,--into whose hands all things have been
put.
 But under Him, or associated with Him, are other
kings. These are the redeemed from among men,--the
chosen according to the good pleasure of His will: by
nature, sons of the first Adam, but created anew and
made sons of the second.
 From the ranks of fallen men God is selecting
His kings. He has sent His Son to deliver them from
their death and curse. He has sent His Spirit to
quicken them and to transform them, not merely into
obedient loving subjects, but into kings, heirs of the
great throne. "Instead of thy fathers shall be thy
children, whom thou mayest make PRINCES in all the
earth" (Psa 45:16).
 These kings, though by nature mortal men, become
heirs of immortality, and at the resurrection of the
just, put on all that is to fit them for their
everlasting reign. Everything connected with them is
of God.

 1. God elects them. It is by His will that they
are what they are. He finds the race of Adam in the
horrible pit, and out of that ruined mass He chooses
some,--not only to salvation but to glory and
dominion. These kings are the chosen of God.

 2. He redeems them. They are found in the low
dungeon, captives and prisoners in the hands of the
great oppressor. God sends redemption to them,--
redemption through Him who takes their captivity upon
Him, that they may be set free; who enters their
prison-house, and takes their bonds upon Him that they
may be unbound. In Him they have redemption through
His blood.

 3. He consecrates them. Their consecration is by
blood. It is the blood of the covenant that sets them
apart for their future work and honour. Sprinkled with
the precious blood they are "sanctified" for
dominion;--for that holy royalty to which they have
been chosen.

 4. He anoints them. With that same anointing
with which Christ was anointed, they are anointed
too,--anointed for royal rule,--priestly-royal rule.
The Holy Spirit, dwelling in them, as in their Head,
coming down on them, as on their Head, fits them for
the exercise of dominion. The wisdom needed for
government is a holy wisdom, and this holy wisdom they
receive by means of the unction from the Holy One.

 5. He crowns them. They are, as yet, only kings-
elect. Their coronation-day is yet to come. Yet the
crown is already theirs by right; and He who chose
them to the throne will before long put the crown upon
their head.
 Not out of the ranks of angels is He seeking
kings. This would not suit His purpose, nor magnify
the riches of His grace. Fallen man must furnish Him
with the rulers of His universe. Human hands must
wield the sceptre, and human heads must wear the
crown.
 To this honour He is calling us. He is sending
out His ambassadors for this end; and the gospel with
which they are intrusted is the glad tidings of a
kingdom. And this in a double sense. There is a
kingdom into which they are to enter and be partakers
of its glory: and yet, in the same kingdom, they are
to be God's anointed kings. It is a kingdom doubly
theirs. They not only "see the kingdom of God" (John
3:3); they not only "enter into the kingdom of God";
but they occupy its thrones. "The kingdom, and the
dominion, and the greatness of the kingdom, under the
whole heaven, is given to the people of the saints of
the Most High, and they possess the kingdom" (Dan
7:22,27). "I appoint unto you a kingdom," says our
Lord, "that ye may sit on thrones" (Luke 22:28). "To
him that overcometh will I give to sit on my throne,
even as I also overcame and am set down with my Father
on His throne" (Rev 3:21). Hence they sing the song,
"Thou art worthy, for Thou hast redeemed us by thy
blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and people,
and nation; and hast made us unto our God kings and
priests: and we shall reign on the earth" (Rev 5:9).
Not to be reigned over, but to reign, is the honour to
which they are called. "They shall REIGN for ever and
ever" (Rev 22:5).
 O sons of men! This is the honour to which God
is calling you. It is for the end of making you His
kings that He is seeking you. To deliver you from
wrath is the beginning of His purpose concerning you;
to set you on His throne is the end. Nothing short of
this. Think what the riches of His grace must be, and
His kindness towards us in Christ Jesus our Lord!
Where sin has abounded grace has abounded more. Herein
is love! Behold what manner of love the Father has
bestowed on us, that we should not only be called sons
but kings; that we should not only be lifted to a
place in His family, but to a seat upon His throne! To
make us in any way or in any sense partakers of His
glory and sharers in His dominion is much but to make
us "heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ," is
unspeakably more. A throne such as man can give and
take away seems to many a worthy object of ambition;
how much more the kingdom which God gives, the kingdom
which cannot be moved.
 And if any one asks, How may I share this
royalty and win this crown? we answer in the well-
known words, "As many as received Him, to them gave He
power (right) to become the sons of God"; for what is
true of the sonship is true of the kingship too. We
obtain it by receiving the Son of God. He that takes
Christ receives a kingdom, and becomes a king. His
connection with the King of kings is His security for
a throne. Oneness with Christ gives him the royal
inheritance. To be washed in His blood, to be clothed
with His raiment, to be quickened with His life, to be
gladdened with His love, to be crowned with His
crown,--these are some of the steps of honour, up
which He leads those who believe in His name.
 For it is a throne that cannot be bought. It is
THE GIFT of "the King eternal, immortal, and
invisible"; and He giveth it to whomsoever He will.
The invitation which the Son of God gives to us in His
gospel is an invitation to a throne and crown. He
holds it up and bids us look at it. He holds it out
and bids us take it.
 I know not if all this were ever better
described than by John Bunyan, in the beginning of the
"Pilgrim's Progress," in the dialogue between
Christian and Pliable:--