to the end of His pure, His sinless history in the flesh He obeys the law of humiliation, enduring temptations, persecutions, conflicts at every turn. The bitter antagonism of Satan to Jesus Christ shows Satan's antagonism to every person, every ordinance, every institution, every word that in principle and aim is Christlike.'

The victory which Jesus Christ achieved when He rose from the dead prophesies the final deliverance of man and of nature, and the total overthrow of the kingdom of darkness.

6. The sublime and peerless teaching of our Lord and His apostles is the expression in words of the substantive truth which in the form of reality moves before the eye of Christian faith. The reality is the infinite fulness of the concrete revelation, the immeasurable length and breadth, depth and height of the new creation in the personal Word, of which the spoken word is the partial expression. Through prophetic words we discern and study the Prophet, who, because He is what man never became, because He lived a life such as no man had ever realized, spake as man had never spoken, and wrought out a work on behalf of God, of man, of the universal order of things such as no man ever accomplished. The fundamental truth, which Jesus Christ is, the Church learned in the first instance, not from the written word, but from Jesus Christ Himself in the Holy Spirit. By the same Holy Spirit the Church now learns from Christ through the written word.

'John xv. 20-25.

§ 278.

As the only High Priest, Jesus Christ is the atonement. Making God and man one in His person and mediatorial life, He offers Himself a sacrifice, an expiatory sacrifice for sin on the cross. His death is the completing epoch of that spotless offering of Himself for the redemption of our race which He made by coming through conception and birth into this world lying under God's curse, and by living a life of faultless obedience through the entire history of man from His infancy to the cross under the condemnation of the law.

1. In Christ, the only High Priest, the two factors of the idea of priesthood are united. Priest and victim, the offerer and the offering are correlative and equal. As in all pagan sacrifices, so in the sacrifices authorized by the ceremonial law, these complemental moments are of differ ent dignity and stand asunder. Victim and priest come together externally; they do not constitute a unity.

Hence no Jewish priest is an ideal priest. In and through the Jewish priest God and man do not become. one, either metaphysically or ethically. So also we have to regard the sacrifice offered by the Jewish priest. No Jewish sacrifice is really a propitiation.' The victim neither bears the wrath of God against sin, nor expiates man's guilt. "In those sacrifices there is a remembrance made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Every priest standeth day by day ministering and offering

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*

1 According to Lev. xvii. 11, the blood upon the altar makes an atonement for the soul. Ebrard observes that it was shed, not as the instru ment of complete vicarious propitiation, but as an exhibition of the postulate of vicarious propitiation. Cf. Alford on Heb. x. 4.

oftentimes the same sacrifices, the which can never take away sins." "There was an arraignment of sins," says Chrysostom, "not a release from sins. Types contain the figure only, not the power." Jesus Christ is both sacrifice and priest in one person. Being the victim, He is offered. 'Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many. ." Being the priest, He offers the sacrifice. The offering and the offerer are identical, identical in will and in fact. "Now once at the end of the ages hath He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself." The dignity and worth of the sacrifice are equal to the dignity and worth of the priest.

12

2. The priesthood of Christ is unchangeable. Quickened in the Spirit when He had offered Himself on the cross, and triumphing over death through the resurrection, the atoning virtue of His sacrifice is perpetual and absolute. "They indeed have been made priests many in number, because that by death they are hindered from continuing; but He, because He abideth forever, hath His priesthood unchangeable." He has a priesthood that does not pass from Himself to another person. "For Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like in pattern to the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear before the face of God for us." Christ ever liveth; therefore His priesthood has not passed from Himself to another, and because the priesthood is ever His own, the atoning virtue of His self-sacrifice continues to be ever the same. "He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down on the right hand of God." The one

1Heb. x. 3, 4, II.

Heb. vii. 23, 24.

Heb. x. 12.

"The sacrifice of the mass is inconsistent with sitting

sacrifice He offered is of force always to put away sin. Inasmuch as the atonement is Himself, the atonement is eternal. The office of priest He fulfils in heaven, where the office has absolute virtue.

3. Christ ever liveth to make intercession for them that draw near unto God through Him. His intercession is the perfected atonement. Human nature purified in Him, redeemed, victorious, glorified, is at one with God, at one essentially and ethically: essentially, for the life of man having in Christ transcended the fallen world is active in complete union and communion with the life of God, the love of God to man being absolutely satisfied and the apti tude of man for God being fulfilled; at one with God ethically, for having forever expiated the guilt of sin the Son of Man has no conscience of conflict with evil or deficiency of holy character, He being at peace with God by the free activity of His will. The unity of essence is complete in the character of ethical or self-determined harmony.

The intercession obtains at the right hand of God. This High Priest who offered Himself on the cross, dying unto sin once, is now clothed with God's absolute authority; and He is thus clothed with divine majesty, not merely because He is the true God, but, being the true God, because He lives His divine life in the humanity in which He offered Himself a propitiatory sacrifice for sin

at God's right hand: for Christ's sacrifice is neither continued nor repeated in the mass. The apostle not only urges the identity, but also the word once, concerning Christ's sacrifice, in antithesis to the Levitical sacrifices, often offered, although they were the same. A sacrifice which is often repeated, although it be the same, does not satisfy God." -Bengel.

on the cross. The propitiation continues, continues in heaven eternally; for the incarnate Son, once crucified but now glorified, ever liveth, the Mediator between God and regenerate men. The propitiation so being made true and real, it has force unchangeably throughout all the ages of time and in eternity.

One with God, He, the atonement, is also one with us, His members. Living the infinite life of God, He also lives in heaven the finite life of man. Though dwelling in the glory of the Father He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities.1 "He can sympathize, for He was both tempted without sin, yet truly tempted." Like the High Priest and the priestly sacrifice, the intercession in heaven is a perpetual divine-human intercession.

2

4. The incarnate Son, ever living the life of Mediator, constitutes in heaven the throne of grace. To this throne men by faith may draw near with boldness that they 'may receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of need. Not on earth in 'a holy place made with hands,' but there, in heaven,' in the Holy of Holies, is the final mercy-seat' for all the nations. Thence proceed by the Spirit eternal life, forgiveness of sins and the peace of God.'

2 Heb. iv. 16; Eph. iii. 12.

Heb. ix. 5, 24.

1 Heb. iv. 15. "If we seek salvation, we are taught by the name of JESUS, that it is in Him; if we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in His unction; strength, in His dominion; purity, in His conception; indulgence discovers itself in His nativity, by which He was made to resemble us in all things, that He might learn to condole with us; if we seek redemption, it will be found in His passion; absolution, in His condemnation; remission of the curse, in His cross; satisfaction, in His sacrifice; purification, in His blood; reconciliation, in His descent into hell; mortification of the flesh, in His sepulchre; newness of life and