21 - Heb_9:1-5
CHAPTER X X I.
WORSHIP IN SPIRIT AND TRUTH.
(Introductory Remarks.) THE nature of spiritual worship, even after it has been revealed in Scripture, is very rarely understood.
Apart from revelation, we do not find anywhere traces of spiritual worship. "Think of the religions of antiquity. Where do we seek and find the sanctuary of true, deep, manifold, and eloquent prayer? where the language and grammar, where the scale of all notes of supplication, typical for all humanity and all the ages? where, except in the assemblies of the worshippers of Jehovah, in the courts of that service which knew no image of the Unseen, in that temple where God, in His sublime, spiritual presence and reality, transcends all human thought, who for centuries since, and through all coming ages, fills and guides the hearts of all believers."* Only Israel and the Church possess the knowledge of God; the most cultivated and learned nations were not able to rise to a pure, spiritual, and exalted conception of divinity. And the spirituality, as well as the exclusiveness of true worship, Jewish and Christian, have at first a repulsive effect on the natural man. The Greeks and Romans were not merely astonished at, but felt irritated by the worship of Christians, who without image and altar, without priests and vestments, appeared to them to be ἄθϵοι, men without gods, influenced by what they deemed a strange superstition, the mysterious power of which they could not comprehend, when they saw how it enabled Christians to rejoice in suffering, and to meet with calm courage and hopefulness the tortures of death. It was enigmatic, and the absence of all visible symbol, of all idols and altars, still more bewildered them. When they beheld how faith in the unseen Lord was a real and mighty power in the hearts and lives of men and women, filling them with earnestness, zeal, hope, and joy, how it lifted them above the sinful pleasures of the world, the love of money, the fever of ambition, the frivolity and emptiness of a selfish life, how it enabled them to bear calmly and patiently the trials, and sufferings, and persecutions which they had to endure, and to face the cruel and excruciating death to which they were condemned, not merely with equanimity, but with the fortitude of heroes, and the radiant joy of virgins going forth to meet the Bridegroom - their astonishment was boundless. They called it a mania, a demoniac possession, a mysterious moral epidemic, which had broken out and threatened to undermine the commonwealth. Of truth, of a real, living, and loving God, they knew nothing. They felt annoyed, that the small and insignificant Jewish nation would not adopt their gods and customs, would keep aloof from their temples, feasts, and banquets. It is narrated, that when Pompey had conquered Jerusalem, and without reverence penetrated into the interior of the temple, he proceeded into the holy of holies. There, a feeling of awe seized him, and he left all things untouched. Since that time, the Roman author says, it is known that the Jews worship something empty and vague, that cannot be seen. While the Greeks, proud of their culture and intelligence, looked down in contempt upon all other nations, and also upon Israel, the Romans, proud of their power, judged of the gods of nations by the amount of victories achieved under their protection. You may know, remarks Cicero, what is the power of the Jews and their God, by the circumstance that their land has been subjugated and divided. (*Nitzsch.)
Having no knowledge of objective truth, regarding all religions as equally legitimate expressions of national traditions, sentiments, and modes of thought, they were quite willing to worship, in whatever country they happened to be, according to the prevailing usage. To add Christ also to the number of their gods and heroes would have been quite in accordance with their thought. Hence they could not understand the nature of that faith and worship which had for its object the true and living, the only God, and which could not be added to or mingled with any other faith and worship. Israel and the Church claim to possess the truth, to know, love, and serve the only true and living God. Therefore they must be hated by all who do not submit themselves to the heavenly revelation. Philosophers of every age, both before and since the advent, can tolerate every system of moral and spiritual thought and worship. They can find something good, noble, and elevating in every religion; but they cannot tolerate the one only God-revealed truth in Christ Jesus.* The adoption of the Christian name and of Christian terminology is very superficial. Only a short time may be required to complete that process of development, or rather chemical separation, which is at present dividing true spiritual Christians, who believe God’s word, and the world, who reject the counsel of God, in His incarnate Son and His cross. And again it will be seen, that of a truth against God’s holy child Jesus, Pontius Pilate and the heathen and unbelieving Jews have risen, denying God and His Anointed; for Christ is against the world, and the world against Christ. Modern Paganism (often using Christian terminology) only conceals this fact. Jesus claims to be the truth, absolute, exhaustive, ultimate; He claims to be, not one of many ways, not the best of all ways, but the way - the only, exclusive, divine way of access unto the light, love, and life of God. If He was not exclusive, He would be like the others, only giving guesses at truth, and not its revelation; He cannot but assert His absolute and exclusive Mediatorship. It is this exclusiveness of Jesus (like the absolute and jealous denunciation of Jehovah against all idolatry) which is met by the bitter, though often latent and unconscious, enmity of the world. He that is not for Jesus is against Him. All they that attempt, without Him, to enter into the fold are thieves and robbers. Jesus is the truth, and in Him alone we draw near to the Father. [*Man delights in the activity of his mental faculties, in fearless and free speculation, making his own mind the idol, even in inquiring after God and His service. Lessing said, "Did the Almighty, holding in His right hand truth, and in His left search after truth, deign to proffer me the one I might prefer, in all humility, but without hesitation, I could request search after truth." This is the very opposite spirit of the Jewish and Christian.God hath spoken. (Hebrews 1:1-3.)]
Apart from Revelation, men have not the idea of God as Lord, Spirit, Father. And even after the light of Scripture has appeared, God is to many only an abstract word, by which they designate a complex of perfections, rather than a real living, loving, ever-present Lord, to whom we speak and of whom we ask the blessings we need. How different from this vague life and colourless abstraction, without will and love, this incomprehensible All and Nothing is the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. To Him we can pray. Without revelation prayer is regarded not so much as asking God in order to receive from Him, but as an exercise of mind which elevates, ennobles, and comforts. It is a monologue. Worship is viewed as a representation of our ideas of divine attributes and perfections, not the recognition of God, as through revelation we know Him in His relation to us.
See how God reveals to the poor sin-convinced soul - to the humblest, the most ignorant, the most guilty - what the wise and righteous of the world can neither discover nor attain. A sinful, thoughtless, frivolous woman, living in the darkness of an ungodly life, and belonging to a race possessing only dim and imperfect knowledge of divine truth, had been drawn into conversation by a mysterious stranger, who beginning with the lowly request of a favour had brought before her in words (whose meaning she scarcely comprehended, but which roused deep longings within her soul), the misery and emptiness of the world, the existence and blessedness of a higher spiritual and divine life; and He who at first spoke as a weary traveler had gradually presented Himself as the mysterious Mediator and Dispenser of a divine and transcendent gift. But the heart and the conscience, the deepest centre of her being, had not been touched yet. Jesus then reveals Himself as the Searcher of Hearts, the Lord and Judge, who knoweth secret things. He brings before her the guilty past. The arrow is sent forth by a strong yet gentle hand; its purpose is to wound and to heal. The woman exclaims: I perceive thou art a prophet; that is, a seer, a messenger of God, one entrusted with a divine message. Brought thus unto the presence of God, realizing God, as only the sin-convinced conscience and heart do, she immediately wishes to please, worship, serve that Supreme Lord. The question she now addresses to the Saviour is not a skilful evasion of a painful and humiliating subject; it proceeds from the depths of a wounded heart; it is the question of repentance and profound desire after God. If God is He must be worshipped. Hitherto theological disputes had no interest for her, but now she thirsts after God, the living God, and longs to come unto Him in true worship.
It was to this poor and sinful Samaritan woman that Jesus explained, in that solemn, lonely hour, the profound truths of spiritual worship. He reminds her, first of all, that the question of worship is not to be decided by man, but by God. Human thought, sentiment, traditions, cannot have authority in this highest and most sacred matter. The Samaritans, as all other nations left to themselves, have no knowledge of worship, because they know not God. True worship can only be found on the territory of revelation. In Israel God had revealed Himself, and His revelation of Himself was as the God of salvation. Because salvation is of the Jews, with them also was found true worship. True, it was for a long time under a limited, preparatory, symbolical dispensation, but at the same time real and spiritual, and the germ of the universal and free worship which has been brought in through the fulfillment in Christ Jesus.
Spirituality is not an inherent subjective quality, it is the reflection of the person worshipped; as the God so the worshipper. The words of the Saviour, "Ye worship ye know not what," have a far more extensive application than to Samaritans. The most cultivated and refined men cannot, by their reason, intuition, or learning, find God; and their conception of the supreme, ethereal and ideal as it may be, is not spiritual but carnal. But Israel knew Jehovah as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; as the God who had appeared unto their fathers with condescending, familiar, loving favour, guiding and comforting, blessing and helping, the God who had chosen them, and who had redeemed them out of Egypt to be His peculiar people, and to show forth His praise. They were called to the knowledge and service of God, that through them light and salvation should be brought to all Gentiles, even to the uttermost ends of the earth. And we await still the fulfillment of the immutable promises connected with the Abrahamic covenant when, from Israel as a centre, the light of God’s salvation shall shine forth unto all nations, and all the ends of the earth shall worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. The dispensation of the law came in as an intermediate and preparatory one. One great object was to show forth by types the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, and the character of true worship. There are only two chapters of Scripture to narrate the creation of the world; but no fewer than sixteen chapters of the inspired record are devoted to the description of the tabernacle. It has been remarked, that God took only six days in the work of creation, but spent forty days with Moses in directing him to make the tabernacle. The work of grace is more glorious than the work of creation. Three times the book of Exodus gives a full account of all the parts of the tabernacle. First, when the command is given to build it; then again, when its preparation is narrated; and a third time, after it was actually erected. For the tabernacle shows forth the redemption in Christ; and the whole world was created that the glory of God should be manifested in Christ and the Church. And Scripture, by thus attaching a far greater importance to the description of the tabernacle than to the narrative of the world’s creation, teaches us to contemplate the things that are unseen, to fix our thoughts and affections on the eternal and heavenly world, to lift our eyes to those heights whence descend the light and love of our blessed God.
Scripture teaches us that the tabernacle was built according to the divine revelation given unto Moses. It was according to the pattern of heavenly things beheld by him on the mount. The idea of the structure in its grand outlines, as well as the arrangements of the detail, were not of human origin. They are not to be traced to the ingenuity of Moses, or to the model of heathen sanctuaries. All things were of God, everywhere the Holy Ghost did symbolize. The tabernacle was to the believing Israelite full of symbols, showing the grace of their Redeemer God, and shadowing forth the manifold mercy of God, who forgives and sanctifies His people, who brings them into His presence, bestows upon them His blessing, and enables them to worship and serve Him with thankful and rejoicing hearts. And to us who read these chapters in the light of fulfillment, they are full of gospel instruction and comfort; unfolding the varied treasures of grace, the many aspects of Christ and His work, and of the experience of His saints.*[*We find here, to use Owen’s words, such an evidence of divine wisdom and goodness, as gives them beauty, desirableness, and usefulness, unto their proper end. There is that in them, which unto an enlightened mind will distinguish them forever from the most plausible inventions of men, advanced in the imitation of them. Only a diligent inquiry into them is expected from us. (Psalms 111:2-3.) When men have slight considerations of any of God’s institutions, when they come unto them without a sense that there is divine wisdom in them, that which becomes him from whom they are, it is no wonder if their glory be hid from them. But when we diligently and humbly inquire into any of the ways of God, to find out the characters of His divine excellencies that are upon them, we shall obtain a satisfying view of His glory. (Hosea 6:3.)] The people offered with exceeding liberality and willingness of heart all the material needed for the building, and the skill and genius of enlightened workmen prepared the various portions of the structure and the vessels. Thus according to the condescending wisdom and goodness of God, the affections and energies of His people were enlisted, and they were workers together with Him of whom and by whom are all things. When afterwards the temple was built, and the tabernacle of the wilderness was changed into a permanent and stationary house on Mount Zion, the palace of the great King, whose chosen city is Jerusalem, the affection and reverence of the nation clung to it with great intensity. From the very excess of superstition and formalism into which this feeling degenerated, we can infer its original strength. And indeed, though we find in David and Solomon the most spiritual and elevated conceptions of the divine omnipresence, and of the true nature of prayer and sacrifice; though in all the prophetic writings we meet with constant warnings against a merely outward service, and a constant reference to inward purity and to the adoration and obedience of the heart, yet the temple, where God revealed His presence and His glory, where His beautiful ordinances were observed, and the most solemn transactions took place between Jehovah and His people through the appointed mediation of priests and high priest, was necessarily most sacred and endeared to every true Israelite. How touching is the description in the book of Ezra of the laying of the foundation at the rebuilding of the temple: "But many of the priests and Levites and chief of the fathers, who were ancient men, that had seen the first house, when the foundation of this house was laid before their eyes, wept with a loud voice; and many shouted aloud for joy: so that the people could not discern the noise of the shout of joy from the noise of the weeping of the people: for the people shouted with a loud shout, and the noise was heard afar off." The position of Israel at the time of our Lord was one of great solemnity. It was the most solemn crisis in Israel’s history. The Lord whom they sought (some really, and others only in profession) came suddenly to His temple. Jesus came as a minister of the circumcision to fulfill the promises made unto the fathers. He came first as a prophet, preaching repentance; for the kingdom of God was at hand. He came to gather them. He was the last as well as the greatest messenger sent unto Jerusalem. But they did not reverence the Son. They understood not the time of their visitation. Jesus with tears predicted judgment on the beloved city, the city of the great King. "For the days shall come upon thee, that thine enemies shall cast a trench about thee, and compass thee round, and keep thee in on every side, and shall lay thee even with the ground, and thy children within thee; and they shall not leave in thee one stone upon another: because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation." And of the temple He said, "There shall not be left here one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down." But between the announcement and the execution of the judgment forty years intervened. The Lord is slow to anger; He is long-suffering, and gracious. He delays judgment to gather in a remnant, and to show to the whole world the righteousness and the mercifulness of all His dealings. How important and solemn, how wide-reaching in their influence, are these forty years of the patience of God, of the further probation of Israel! Israel had hated Jesus "without cause," and with cruel hands nailed Him to the accursed tree; yet Jesus on the cross prayed, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Israel had committed the great and culminating sin; they had rejected the Lord of glory, the Son of the Most High, yet God hath not cast away His people. The gifts and callings of God are without repentance, and the everlasting covenant shall yet be made with them, when everlasting joy and glory shall be given unto the children of Abraham. And as a pledge of this ultimate favour, in answer to the prayer of the dying Saviour, and through the preaching of the apostle Peter, three thousand were converted on the day of Pentecost, and many thousands (tens of thousands) were added unto the number of disciples. The apostle Peter preached to the men of Israel. He addressed the whole nation, delivering unto them as a nation the message that God had sent Jesus unto them first. He called upon them to turn unto the Lord, in order that the fullness of divine blessing might come upon them according to the promise. In the same patriotic spirit as the prophets, with the most tender regard for the national privileges and customs, the apostles addressed themselves unto the nation, preaching the first and second advent of Israel’s Messiah and King. The apostle of the Gentiles also came as a Jew to the Jews, as under the law to those who were under the law, and in all his addresses to his people breathes the same fervent national consciousness; he declared the hope of the promise made of God unto the fathers.
But, alas! the nation resisted the counsel of God, and took no heed to the voice of the Holy Ghost, speaking to them with such clearness and love through the apostles. They counted themselves unworthy of eternal life. God, in the abundance of His love and wisdom, made Israel’s unbelief the occasion of sending the gospel to the Gentiles. Still the period of mercy to Israel was prolonged. The testimony was still sent to them. The doctrine of the Church, as the body, consisting of both Jews and Gentiles, was now fully revealed; the apostle Peter, who opened the door to the Gentiles in the baptism of Cornelius, and the apostle Paul, who was specially led to the uncircumcision; the Council of Jerusalem, with reference to the relation of the Gentiles to the law of Moses; and finally, the full and explicit teaching of the Pauline Epistles; - all this unveiled what had been hitherto hid, the intermediate position of the Church, when Israel as a nation was to be set aside. From the very commencement, in the parables and warnings of the Saviour, in the experience of Peter and John after Pentecost, in. the first persecution of the saints, in the martyrdom of Stephen, in the opposition against the apostle Paul, the dark clouds were gathering, and the wrath to the uttermost was approaching.
Meanwhile, it was most difficult for many Jewish Christians to understand the true character of the transition period, and to enter into the spirit of the new era, which in reality had already commenced, though not actually and formally. If it is difficult at present for the Church to remember that they have not taken the place of Israel, if, as the apostle anticipated, the Church in many ages has become ignorant of the "mystery," that all Israel shall be saved, that Jesus shall reign as king over His chosen people, when all the blessings promised to Abraham and through all the prophets will be fulfilled, can we wonder that the Hebrews could not readily understand the character of the Church dispensation, while they were still, and with apostolic sanction, observing the law of Moses?
We learn from the book of Acts, and this very epistle, how much the believing Jews suffered from their countrymen. Their goods were confiscated; they had to suffer imprisonment; some were put to death; they were banished from what was most sacred and precious to them. Israel, as a nation, would not submit to the righteousness of God. They became obdurate in self-conceit, self-righteousness, and formalism. They rested with a false security in their mechanical obedience of legal enactments, and in the possession of the temple services. They were without fear, while the terrible judgment was approaching. Destruction came suddenly, unexpectedly. Even to the last moment the inhabitants of Jerusalem expected divine deliverance. They had not heard the loving voice of Him who said, "Ye daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me;" they understood not the fearful words which they had uttered, when they cried: "His blood be upon us, and upon our children." This is, indeed, the tragedy of history. It is most melancholy to notice the enthusiasm, the intense and tenacious trust, which moved them to resist the invincible might of Rome. They could not believe that God would give up His beloved city, and the place of His sanctuary. They hoped and trusted against all hope. But the hour of God’s righteous judgment had come. Jerusalem was destroyed; their house was left unto them desolate.*(*The character of Roman conquest and rule is most graphically symbolized in the prophetic vision (Dan. 2) "Strong as iron: forasmuch as iron breaketh in pieces and subdueth all things." The Greco-Macedonian monarchy was characterized by the presence of poetical and ideal conceptions; but in Rome we see an embodiment of force. State policy, and the cold haughtiness of violence and power, must have been very hard to bear. No wonder Tacitus speaks of the hostile hatred (hostile odium) of the Jews against the Romans, who regarded them with great indignation and contempt, because the Jewish God could not be conquered as the other gods. This small nation would not yield to Roman idolatry. In the whole of Asia, as Caligula complained, there was not a single temple, a single city or province of the empire, which had refused to admit his statue, and to honour him as a divinity, except in Judaea. The last struggles of Jerusalem show a most extraordinary strength and energy. Never was conflict so unequal, as the Emperor Titus points out to the two captive leaders of the Jews (according to Josephus, whose want of patriotism and Jewish spirit is very melancholy), when neither the Germans, so renowned for their physical vigour, nor Britannia, guarded by the ocean, nor Carthage, with all its courage, and with all the skill of its generals, could successfully resist the power of Rome. He did not know of their trust in Jehovah, and in His word, which, notwithstanding their grievous apostasy, and amidst fearful perversions and fanatic zeal, still lodged in their hearts. Hence their unparalleled sufferings, and the agonizing grief with which the destruction of the beloved city and the temple filled their hearts, could not extinguish the hope of a future restoration and glory. Rabbi Akiba was walking with some friends about Jerusalem. They saw nothing butdebris, and caves of wild beasts. A fox was bounding past them. The friends of Akiba are grieved; he himself laughs. How can you laugh when unclean animals inhabit the sacred soil! This is why I laugh; as sure as the word is fulfilled, uttered by Jeremiah (Jeremiah 26:18): "Zion shall be plowed like a field, and Jerusalem shall become heaps, and the mountain of the house as the high places of a forest," that which was spoken of by the prophet Zechariah will also come to pass.Zechariah 8:4: "Thus saith the Lord of hosts; There shall yet old men and old women dwell in the streets of Jerusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age." The destruction of Jerusalem is not like the fall of Troy, of Babylon, of Carthage. Even while the divine judgment is on Israel, and Jerusalem is trodden down of the Gentiles, the Scripture entrusted to their guardianship, and the gospel which first was preached among them, goes forth among all nations, gaining the affection and prayers of multitudes for their conversion and restoration, while under the special care of God they are preserved until the appointed time of her favour is come, and God shall visit and rebuild her in great mercy. But the judgment is yet awaiting Rome, who passed unrighteous sentence against that Just and Holy One, and delivered Him up to be crucified, who destroyed the holy city, and scattered the chosen people, who for many centuries shed the blood of the martyrs, and who is still the centre of the most God-dishonouring perversion of His truth.)
Extremely solemn and awful is this catastrophe as the end of centuries of the most marvellous revelations and dealings of divine love, wisdom, and power. God, who revealed His truth by His Spirit to His chosen saints among Jews and Gentiles, has manifested to the whole world His counsel by the solemn judgment which descended on Jerusalem. Amid all the vicissitudes and struggles of the covenant-people, the sanctuary and the Levitical service continued; only once it had been interrupted during the Babylonian captivity. During the centuries that Israel had to live under the Roman yoke, though no Son of David sat upon the throne, the temple stood in glory, and Israel rejoiced in the beauty of its stones and in the splendour of its services. But since the rejection of Jesus, no human power has been able to restore this visible sanctuary and the sacrifices and priestly ordinances. God had spoken to His people by the voice of apostles. At last He spoke by the voice of Judgment. The destruction of the temple and the removal of the whole Levitical dispensation teaches, by actual historical demonstration, truth which the epistles set forth doctrinally. It is an anachronism to speak now of priests in the sense of sacerdotal mediators. It is an anachronism to speak of symbolic worship, of ordinances, which are figures and shadows of spiritual realities. The Levitical dispensation was given only to Israel, and to Israel only, for a certain period of their history. Since the destruction of Jerusalem, Israel is without high priest, without sacrifice, without temple. God Himself has removed the shadow, because the substance is come. God Himself has by severe judgment taken away the earthly, elementary, and fragmentary, that Israel may turn to the heavenly, eternal, and perfect. But unto the Gentiles God never gave an Aaronic priesthood, an earthly tabernacle, a symbolical service. From the very commencement He taught them, as Jesus taught the woman of Samaria, that now all places are alike sacred, that the element in which God is worshipped is spirit and truth, that believers are children who call upon the Father, that they are a royal priesthood, who through Jesus are brought nigh unto God, who enter into the holy of holies which is above.*(*While the temple stood, Jesus and the apostles honoured the temple. The Lord said unto the leper, "Show thyself unto the priest." He and His apostles went daily into the temple. After His resurrection, and while the gospel was being preached unto Israel, the temple services and ordinances may have been blessed to souls, as images and prophecies of the heavenly realities. But any imitation of the Levitical dispensation in the present day must needs be contrary to God’s mind, and obscure the clear revelation in Christ Jesus. The expression "priest," in the sense of
How difficult is it to rise from the spirit of Paganism to the clear and bright atmosphere of the gospel! How much inclined are men to welcome everything which does not reveal to them their true condition, and bring them into the very presence of God. Priesthood, vestments, consecrated buildings, symbols, and observances - all place Christ at a great distance, and cover the true, sinful, and guilty state of the heart which has not been brought nigh by the blood of Christ. Look again at the woman of Samaria. Ignorant, guilty, degraded as she was, Jesus brought her at once into the presence of the living, loving Redeemer-God. He revealed unto her the fullness of divine love. He revealed Himself as the giver of the living water. As a free gift He declared to her salvation. The sinner believes, and as a child He is brought by Jesus unto the Father. High above all space, high above all created heavens, before the very throne of God, is the sanctuary in which we worship. Jesus presents us to the Father. We are beloved children, clothed with white robes, the garments of salvation and the robes of righteousness, we are priests unto God.
There is one expression in the teaching on worship, which the Lord gave unto the woman of Samaria, which in its simplicity and height exceeds the teaching of our epistle. Jesus said, "The Father seeketh such to worship Him." The doctrine of adoption or sonship is rather implied1 than developed in this epistle. In it God is never called our Father,2 or the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our epistle rather prepares for the higher and yet simpler view, which presents to us God as our Father in Christ Jesus, and believers as His adopted and beloved children. In this present dispensation the Father seeketh worshippers, and it is in children that He seeketh worshippers. Now we understand the full meaning of Christ’s blessed and sweet word: After this manner shall ye pray, "Our Father, which art in heaven;" for the Holy Ghost, whom the ascended Saviour hath sent into our hearts, teaches and enables us to cry, in the Spirit of adoption, Abba! The shadow has vanished; unto us the true light shineth; but Israel is still in darkness, and the world without the knowledge of God. But the day is approaching when Israel shall seek the Lord and their King David; when the idols shall be utterly abolished, and the Lord alone be exalted. Meanwhile, let us, who are gathered out of the world, and who invoke the Name of the revealed Lord, worship in Spirit, having no confidence in the flesh, but rejoicing in Christ Jesus. (1Hebrews 2:11.2Hebrews 12:9is no exception. Only one who fully saw the doctrine of adoption could have written this epistle; for although from the aim and scope of the epistle it does not move, as it were, in this highest plane, yet is all the teaching harmonious with the full New Testament doctrine.)