SERMON VI.

THE HIGH PRIEST.

HEB. VII. 26.

For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens.

When believers get to heaven, much of their happiness will arise from views of Christ which they will wonder they did not more fully possess on earth. Their most ravishing views will be those of his priestly office. Any being, (had wisdom so appointed,) might have instructed the world as a prophet, and perhaps governed it as a king; but to bring a guilty race to God by sacrifice and intercession, this is the mystery into which the angels desire to look. A cordial belief of this is the principal attribute of saving faith.

Probably the priesthood of Christ is not sufficiently dwelt upon in the contemplations of christians or in the preaching of ministers. Some are always poring upon divine government; others,

upon the general grace of God to men, without considering the medium through which it comes. But the priesthood of Christ is so much the pivot on which the whole system of christianity turns, that it ought to hold a conspicuous place in the religion of the Church. Great stress is laid upon it in the writings of the apostles. At every turn they introduce it as the only basis of the christian's hope. This is the case especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews. This Epistle was addressed to the Israelites who were strongly attached to the law of Moses, and was designed to remove that attachment by showing them that the rites connected with the Levitical priesthood were only types of what Christ was to perform in his pontifical character. Thus these types not only prefigured to the Jews a Saviour to come, but are made to assist the weak apprehensions of Christians to the end of the world, and serve as steps by which they may climb to see the high and transcendent mysteries of the atonement. In this Epistle the most remarkable and instructive types are pressed into the service of the christian church, and are employed to illustrate a point so difficult of apprehension as the office work of our great high priest.

Aaron was the high priest of one nation; Christ is the high priest of a world. It belonged to the Jewish high priest to instruct the people; and Christ, as a prophet, instructs the world. It belonged to the Jewish high priest to rule over the house of God; and Christ is exalted to dominion over the church and over the universe. The names of the

twelve tribes were engraven on the stones of the ephod and borne upon the shoulders of the high priest; and Christ supports his people with a strength that never tires. But the more appropriate business of the Jewish high priest was to appease the wrath of God by sacrifice and intercession. Let us trace a little more particularly the resemblance between the type and the antitype in this and other respects.

1. It was a circumstance of vital importance that the Jewish high priest was not self-appointed, but ordained of God. "No man taketh this honor unto himself, but he that is called of God as was Aaron. So also Christ glorified not himself to be made a high priest, but he that said unto him, Thou art my Son, to-day have I begotten thee. As he saith also in another place, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec." As the Jewish high priest was divinely appointed, it happened of course that when he offered sacrifice and intercession for the people, God accepted the offering, and in his providence treated the people like a Father. This was the sure effect of his being ordained of God. But this circumstance gives still greater confidence in the case of Christ; "inasmuch as not without an oath he was made priest. For those priests were made without an oath, but this with an oath, by him that said unto him, The Lord swore and will not repent, Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchisedec." By a similar oath God has confirmed the promise to the church. "For when God made promise to Abraham, [of the blessings which VOL. II.

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should come to the world through his Seed,] because he could swear by no greater he swore by himself; that by two immutable things in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us."

The appointment of Christ to the priestly office was then God's own act, confirmed by an oath. We may therefore be assured that it will answer the purpose, and that his offering as a priest will certainly be accepted in behalf of all who believe. If we cannot see the ends which are answered by this substitution, we may rest assured that God had fully weighed every circumstance before he ordained his Son to the office and swore to accept his offering. If we cannot apprehend, can we not believe God? 2. The Jewish high priest was not of a foreign world or nation, but a brother of the same flesh and blood with those for whom he mediated. And he could have compassion on the ignorant and on them that" were "out of the way, for that he himself also" was "compassed with infirmity." And Christ, that he might suffer in the nature that had sinned, and that he might know by experience how to sympathize with us in all our trials, "took not on him the nature of angels, but-the seed of Abraham." "Forasmuch-as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver them.-In all things it behooved him to be made like unto his brethren, that he might