Hebrews 12

We should have higher views of Christ and of his religion if we could enter more fully into the conflicts of those who have suffered for his sake; if we could trace the growth of Christian martyrdom from its first fainting origin, when the shuddering soul dreaded the hour of coming trial, through the hours, days, weeks, and months of prayer and meditation, up to the critical moment when all was surrendered and all ventured for Christ; if we could comprehend the resignation, the peace, and the victorious confidence of the instant when the soul reached its highest joy in dissolution, and just hovering between time and eternity, forgot its pangs in the visions of God. Oh, what are gibbets, fires, wild beasts, or inquisitorial racks to one who already feels his union with Christ, and knows that death is swallowed up in victory! J. W. A.

39,40. The things promised they did not receive. This refers to the personal Messiah then actually come. This was the main point of difference between them and us (he would say); they had the promise of a Messiah to come, but not the Messiah himself. We have had the very Christ in person; some of us now living have seen him with our eyes, and our own hands have “handled the Word of Life.” This better thing God has provided for us, that they, apart from us, should not reach the complete consummation of their hopes. The argument is: If they, having only the promise, not the reality, of an incarnate Messiah visible to their eye of sense, yet walked by faith, leaving such a record of moral heroism as we see, how much more should we, with the living Messiah still fresh in the recollection of many, maintain an unfaltering faith, and stand firm against the fiercest shocks of persecution! H. C.

There are many dark seasons in God’s providential dealings with us in which we can see no way of escape nor find any source of comfort but the testimony of God. God’s friends are not distinguished in this world by any exemption from trying providences. They shall be known by what is far more noble and advantageous, namely, by patience, obedience, submission and divine support under them. Moreover, as we profess to be friends of God, and to trust the salvation of our souls with all our concerns in his hands, he sees it proper to bring us into such circumstances as shall try us, and show whether we confide in him or not. A. Fuller.—Is the faith, in the possession of which we exult, thus verified? Is ours the life of cross-bearing and watchfulness and prayerfulness? If not, is it a life of discipleship to Christ—is it the race of faith, swift, direct, and onward? and shall it win at last the crown of the triumphant believer? W. R. W.

1. WHEREFORE seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with 2 patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and 3 is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. For consider him that endured such 4 contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Ye 5 have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against sin. And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of 6 the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: for whom the Lord loveth he chasten- 7 eth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth 8 with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be 9 without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Fur- 10 thermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them rever- ence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of Spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that

11 we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteous-ness unto them which are exercised thereby. Wherefore lift up the hands which hang down, and the feeble knees; and make straight paths for your feet, lest that which is lame be turned out of the way; but let it rather be healed.

We never feel Christ to be a reality until we feel him to be a necessity. Therefore, God makes us feel that necessity. He tries us here, and he tries us there. He sends upon us the chastisements which he knows we shall feel most sensitively. He pursues us when we would fain flee from his hand; and, if need be, he shakes to pieces the whole framework of our plans of life, by which we have been struggling to build together the service of God and the service of self, till at last he makes us feel that Christ is all that is left to us. When we discover that, and go to Christ, conscious of our beggary in respect of everything else, we go, not expecting much, perhaps not asking much. There may be hours of prostration when we ask only for rest; we pray for the cessation of suffering; we seek repose from conflict with ourselves, and with God’s providence. But God gives us more. He is more generous than we have dared to believe. He gives us joy, he gives us liberty, he gives us victory, he gives us a sense of self-conquest and of union with himself in an eternal friendship. On the basis of that single experience of Christ as a reality, because a necessity, there rises an experience of blessedness in communion with God which prayer expresses like a revelation. Such devotion is a jubilant psalm. A. P.

1-11. An exhortation, mixed with reproof, on looking back at all these witnesses, and also at Jesus, who had gone through suffering to glory, not to faint in the conflict with sin; nor to forget the law of our Father, who visits us with chastisement that we may bring forth the fruits of righteousness. This exhortation was begun at 10 : 19, and broken off by the insertion of all those examples of the nature and triumphs of faith. It has acquired new strength by the interruption, and is now pressed directly home upon the reader. A.

1. We are urged forward in the Christian race, not by the fancy that we are surrounded by a throng of spectators, that we and our doings are the center of all eyes, that we draw upon ourselves the gaze of the universe, but by the elevating and exciting reality that we have about us a great cloud of witnesses, in the recorded or attested examples of the good of every age, who testify to the power of faith, who show by their lives what this divine principle can achieve, and especially that we have before us the faithful and true witness, the one perfect exemplar of faith. W. H. G.—The Christian man’s life is like a race. The length of the way of the race is the man’s lifetime; the actions and passages of a man’s life are the steps of the race; our high calling is our starting and on-holding in the race; the prize we run for is holiness and eternal blessedness. There is one that sets the race, even God, who calls and starts all the runners by the voice of his word: he goes on beside them, and exhorts them to run this or that way as may best further them in the race, while he bids them mend their pace; and if they fall behind he encourages, as a friend that stirs up one whom he would fain have winning the race.

Every direction from the word is an encouragement in the race. Every action or word is a step of this race: words spoken to edification are steps; words of thy calling leveled at the mark are steps; for a man may speak of worldly purposes with a heavenly mind, and do worldly actions leveled by a spiritual rule. Albeit God ordains to run this Christian race, yet he ordains every man to continue in his calling, for every point of a man’s service done as service to God shall promote him in his race. D. D.

Lay aside. For every new step that we win in the Christian course there must have been the laying aside of something. For every progress in knowledge, there must have been a sacrifice and martyrdom of our own indolence, of our own pride, of our own blindness of heart, of our own perverseness of will, wavering hearts that are drawn away from God by the sweetness of this world. For every progress in strenuous work for God, there must have been a slaying of the selfishness which urges us to work in our own strength and for our own sake.

Every weight and sin. All sin is according to this passage a besetting sin. It is the characteristic of every kind of transgression, that it circles us round about, that it is always lying in wait and lurking for us. But there is something else to be put aside as well as sin. There is “every weight” as well as every transgression—two distinct things, meant to be distinguished. The putting away of both of them is equally needful for the race. The figure is plain enough. We as racers must throw aside the garment that wraps us round—that is to say, “the sin that easily besets us”; and then, besides that, we must lay aside everything else which weights us for the race—that is to say, certain habits or tendencies within us. The distinction is important. Sin is sin in whatever degree it is done; but weights may be weights when they are in excess, and helps, not hindrances, when they are in moderation. What are the things which may thus become weights? Everything. It is an awful and mysterious power, that which we all possess, of perverting the highest endowments, whether of soul or of circumstances, which God has given us, into the occasions for faltering and falling back in the divine life. Because we cleave to them too much, because we cleave to them not only in a wrong degree but in a wrong manner (for that is the deepest part of the fault), we may make them all hindrances. A. M.

2. Looking unto Jesus.** As the example and company of the saints in suffering is very considerable, so that of Christ is more than any other, yea, than all the rest together. Therefore the apostle, having represented the former at large, ends in this as the top of all. There is a race set before us; it is to be run, run with patience and without fainting. He tells us of a cloud of witnesses; a cloud made up of instances of believers suffering before us; and the heat of the day wherein we run is somewhat cooled, even by that cloud compassing us. But the main strength of their comfort here lies in looking to Jesus, eying of his sufferings and their issue. The true life of Christians is to eye Christ in every step of his life, looking to him as their pattern both in doing and in suffering, and drawing power from him for going through both, being without him able for nothing. L.—If you would lay aside every weight, you must look to Christ and let his love flow into your soul. Then self-denial will not be self-denial. It will be blessing and joy, sweet and easy. Just as the old leaves drop naturally from the tree when the new buds of spring begin to put themselves out, let the new affection come and dwell in thy heart and expel the old. “Lay aside every weight”—“looking unto Jesus.” Then, too, you will find that the sacrifice and maiming of the old man has been the perfecting of the man. You will find that whatever you give up for Christ you get back from Christ, better, more beautiful, more blessed, a joy and a possession for ever. A. M.

The less that is said about faith—the mere act we mean—and the more that is said about its object, the Saviour, the better. There is a discoursing about the mere belief, and an exhorting to the mere belief, the only effect of which is to leave the impression on the mind that it is some “great thing” which people have to do in order to their acceptance with God. Whereas, saying as little as the Bible says about the act and the duty, and all about Jesus himself, his cross and his crown, faith, through the Spirit’s use of this, will spring up as a thing of course. Rev. J. Purves.—It is not well to be often talking about yourself, looking at yourself, making a merit of magnifying your own faults and sins, especially your want of religious enjoyment. Think less of what you have done and more of what Christ has done. Study his life and follow his example by living, not for yourself, but for others; trying every day, and every hour of every day, to do something that shall be like what Christ would do if he were in your house and heart. You will very soon find that the sense of unrest will vanish in the pursuit of the good and useful. Prime.

Look unto Jesus, and not to what we do for him. Too much taken up with our work, we may forget our Master; it is possible to have the hand full and the heart empty. Taken up with our Master, we can not forget our work; if the heart is filled with his love, how can the hands not be active in his service? Unto Jesus, and not to the apparent success of our efforts. It is of our work he will require an account, and not of our success; why then take thought about it before the time? It is for us to sow the seed, it is for God to gather the fruit; if not to-day, it will be to-morrow; if not by us, it will be by others. Even when success is granted us, it is always dangerous to let our eyes rest upon it complacently—on the one hand, we are tempted to attribute something of it to ourselves; on the other hand, we thus accustom ourselves to give way to relaxing our zeal when we fail to perceive its effects, that is, at the very time when we ought to redouble our energy. To look to success is to walk by sight; to look to Jesus, and to persevere in following and serving him in spite of all discouragements, is to walk by faith. “Thy work shall be rewarded,” saith Jehovah. Monod.

The upward looking unto Jesus is our sufficient resource in the trying of faith and fortitude, whatever the cause or force of the trial. The heavens are never closed to the trusting, uplooking soul. Jesus ever stands to behold the peril and to interpose for deliverance or support. So, also, the uplooking unto Jesus naturally excites the sensitive heart to some joyous, hopeful expression, of adoring praise or gratitude, of trusting affection or high, pure aspiration. And the sustaining privilege of self-commitment to Christ in dying is ours. It rests upon the sure word of promise: I will come again and receive you unto myself. As he can and does supply all known living needs, so he can and will give needful grace for the deeper, untried experience of dying. For, as we see him in Stephen’s vision, so is he evermore: TRUE GOD AND TRUE MAN, with love, sympathy, and might adequate for all possible demands of human experience. Lying, then, and dying, should we not, shall we not be habitually availed of this glad, all-inclusive privilege of looking away from self, upward unto Jesus? B.

Despising the shame. Poverty was his fee, and the only recompense of all his cures; he despised a kingship, and regarded not their hosannas. He embraced “a cross,” and declined “not the shame.” “Endured the cross, and is set down at the right hand of the throne.” In the whole narrative of our Saviour’s life no passage is related of him as low or weak but it is immediately seconded by another high and miraculous. No sooner was Christ humbled to a manger but the contempt of the place was taken off with the glory of the attendance in the ministration of angels. His fasting and temptation were attended with another service of angels; his baptism with a glorious recognition by a voice from heaven. When he seemed to be overpowered at his apprehension, he exerted his might in causing his armed adversaries to fall backward, and in healing Malchus’s ear with a touch. When he underwent the lash and infamy of crucifixion, then did the universal frame of nature give testimony to his divinity—the whole creation seemed to sympathize with his passion. And when, afterward, he seemed to be in the very dominion of death, he quickly confuted the dishonor of the grave by an astonishing resurrection, and proved the divinity of his person in an equally miraculous ascension. R. S.

And as there was a joy set before Jesus, for which he endured the cross, despising the shame, so there is a glorious recompense of reward attached to our sacrifices and labors of love. We can never be other than unprofitable servants; but God, in infinite goodness, measures the expressions of his favor by the intensity with which we have manifested the spirit of allegiance to him. All he asks is that the heart should be in the service; and any effort that really proceeds from love to his name and charity to the race will never be overlooked nor forgotten. The act must proceed from love, be a cheerful and voluntary expression of love, and vindicate its own sincerity by its cost to the flesh. When these conditions meet, there is a reward which becomes the more glorious the less we feel it to be deserved—a reward compared with which the poor satisfaction we obtain in the carnal indulgences which we spare in refusing to make sacrifices deserves not to be named. This reward is twofold—it is the reward of success here and of glory hereafter. J. H. T.

3. Endured such contradiction.** In the passion of Jesus, it must be enough that I look on the travail of a divine feeling, and behold the spectacle of God in sacrifice. This I see and nothing less. He is visibly not a man. His character is not of this world. I feel a divinity in him. And when I stand by his cross, when I look on that strong passion and shudder with the shuddering earth, and darken with the darkening sun, enough that I can say, My Lord and my God! Enough that I can see the heart of God, and, in all this wondrous passion, know him as enduring the contradiction of sinners. He that endures me so, subdues me, and I yield. H. B.

Lest ye be wearied. If He had been “wearied,” and left but one thing undone! If he had shrunk and failed, what sensation in heaven—hell—earth! Let his followers, when tempted to shrink from service and to say it is too much, go and look at Him! He is the grand transcendent example, to show that a good work must be gone through with. “He that endureth to the end shall be saved.” J. F.

Since whatsoever befalls us of suffering or ill is, however it comes, the will of God to us, what then should we do when it comes? Surely forget as far as we may all besides, and go up in thought to the Eternal Throne, and behold the heavens opened and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, thence looking down upon us, allotting to us our trials, even through the wrong tempess of men; thence passing down his strength to us to bear them; thence preparing us for the place in heaven which he ascended on high to prepare for us. Oh, how do all the ills of life fade into nothing; how glad may any trial be, though painful to flesh and blood; how should we greet as goods the evils of life; how would its sadness become gladness, its thorns a crown, if we but see in them the eternal hand of God, molding us by them for everlasting glory; refining away through outward ills our own inward evils; chastening us that we might not perish, checking us that we might not go astray; recalling us when astray; alluring us by his goodness; and then again weaning us from the world by its very unrest and suffering, that in him we might find everlasting rest and peace! Pusey.

5. If God were to exempt his friends from trial, he would take away one of the most effective means of their training, and one of the most striking ways in which they can prove their likeness to Christ. The righteous is more excellent than his neighbor, but it is not seen in his being saved from suffering; it is in the way in which he meets it. A merely worldly spirit is ready in severe affliction to fall into one of two extremes: either to cast the trial aside in levity and to dissipate thought by some engrossing preoccupation, or to sink into despondency and consider all as lost. The spirit of the Christian, which is also that of the true man, is described by the apostle: “not to despise the chastening of the Lord, nor to faint when we are rebuked of him.” A spirit of hopeful patience is that which most of all marks a Christian man in trial, as of one who knows that there is a purpose in God’s providence, if he could discover it, and that, where he can not, it will come out some day, filled with wisdom and kindness. Ker.—Conscious of it or not, agencies are at work in us to make ready, if we only will, for the entrance of the Lord of the heart into his home and dwelling-place there. Having created us for Christian service, as the true end and real glory of our being, our Father takes pains to fit and to fashion us for that destiny, with all its honor and all its joy. By secret influences, untraceable as the wind that bloweth where it listeth, silently pressing on the springs of feeling and principle within us; by hours of uneasiness not explained; by sharp twinges of conscience; by open providences, prosperous or painful; by letting us have what we want, to encourage or to shame us; by taking away what we love too well, or love falsely, that we may become wise, and strong, and pure in our grief—this process of personal preparation is in continual operation. F. D. H.

Those occurrences which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret and dissembled favors of his affection. It is a singular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly and without passion the works of God; and so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscall those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logic so to argue the proceedings of God as to distinguish even his judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus our offenses being mortal and deserving death, if the goodness of God be content to pass them over with a loss, misfortune, or disease, what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments, rather than admire the scepter of his mercies! Therefore to adore, honor, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation of our nature, states, and conditions. Browne.

6. It is not correction, but the hand of God in it and with it, which makes us happy. A cross without a Christ never made any man better, but with Christ all are made better by the cross. As a good heart takes notice of the least comfort, so it will take notice of the least cross. Caryl.—His justice might, but his love will not, let us do as we will. It follows us in our waywardness, and when by tenderness it can not, with the rod it procures our return. It is not our happiness as we choose it, depending on things lower than ourselves, but our happiness as wrought in us, and outstarting in the growth of life, which he is concerned to secure for us. We have virtues and graces to form and establish, and He tries them, and puts force on them to give them strength. H. H.

God’s children are like stars, that shine brightest in the darkest night; like grapes, that come not to the proof till they come to the press; like trees, that drive down their roots farther and grasp the earth tighter by reason of the storm; like vines, that grow the better for bleeding; like juniper, that smells sweetest in the fire; like the pomander, which becomes more fragrant for chafing; like the palm-tree, which proves the better for preserving; like the chamomile, which spreads the more as you tread upon it. An.

7. Know that thy sin, after thou hast received the Spirit of adoption to cry unto God, “Father, Father,” is counted the transgression of a child, not of a slave; and that all that happeneth to thee for that transgression is but the chastisement of a father: “And what son is he whom the father chasteneth not?” Bun.—The art of tasting what is sweet in the will of God, even when that will involves what is in itself bitter, is what we are intended to learn. When one learns to suffer in this childlike spirit, a multitude of moral lessons open to him. Then one need not wait for extraordinary seasons of affliction. Each little daily sorrow, every misunderstanding we experience on the part of our fellow-men, every little disappointed hope, every cross, every care, if only viewed in this light, becomes a great lesson to every Christian soul: he must not bear it as a servant, he must bear it as a son! A. T.

8. Woe, woe to that soul that God will not spend a rod upon! This is the saddest stroke of all, when God refuses to strike at all. “Nothing,” said one, “seems more unhappy to me than he to whom no adversity has happened.” Brooks.

10. They chastened. They were in the habit of chastening us during the brief days of childhood as it seemed best to their judgment; to meet their responsibilities wisely as they might be able, though imperfectly. But, on the other hand, the Great Father chastens only for our profit—with never a mistake of judgment, and never the least deviation from this most benevolent purpose—our highest spiritual profit—that we may share his own perfect holiness. H. C.—Whoever well considers the state of the world and human experience can not but conclude that God is more concerned to make man holy than happy; for many are able to rest in their sorrows for the sake of their use and end, but no one finds rest in unholy delights. In sinful pleasure, God follows man with a scourge; in sorrow, with balm. Pulsford.

How great a word is that (spoken in reference to our present state)—to make us partakers of his holiness! It is instanced as an effect and argument of love. And sure the love of God can not be more directly expressed than in his first intending to make a poor soul like him, while he loves it with compassion, and then imprinting and perfecting that likeness that he may love it with eternal delight. Love is here the first and the last, the beginning and end in all this business. Howe.—If we duly considered what it is to be partakers of God’s holiness, and that every event that befalls us is appointed by his wisdom to promote this end, could we even wish one providential event to be other than it is? To be a partaker of the holiness of God is the highest point of exaltation—imagination can ascend no higher. If we are partakers of God’s holiness, we shall also be partakers of God’s happiness. For holiness and happiness are one. God would unite them here, and by his providential appointments would perfect that union for its final consummation in the heavens. N. W. T.

11. God’s chastisements lead men to conformity to the will of God (which is righteousness); and this effect of suffering is full of peace. There can be no peace like that which follows upon the submission of the soul to the chastisement of our heavenly Father, if we receive it as inflicted by infinite wisdom and perfect love. C.—For the present, grievous. In particular cases of suffering we have to fall back on some reserved fund of faith accumulated in calmer moments. God will not be angry if you fail to see just in that bewildered paroxysm of grief how it is well for you to be so stricken. Yet you can say to yourself, even then, in the midst of your tears, “It is well; somehow it is well; it must be wise, and right, and merciful.” That will be both the trial and the triumph of faith. F. D. H.—Seek not altogether to dry up the stream of sorrow, but to bound it, and keep it within its banks. Religion doth not destroy the life of nature, but adds to it a life more excellent; yea, it doth not only permit but requires some feeling of afflictions. L.

Afterward peaceable fruit. “Peaceable fruit” is none other than peaceful—peace-bearing, that which brings the deep, rich peace of a subdued, penitent, humbled, chastened soul. This is the fruit of righteousness in the sense of rightness—the spirit that is right before God. H. C.—The chastening yieldeth the “peaceable”—that is, peace, happiness, and life-bringing—“fruit of righteousness to them that are exercised thereby.” Righteousness, in the measure attainable here below, becomes the inestimable result which it produces; and now—thus may we well complete the declaration of our text—now there is no more cause for sorrow, but only for pure joy. Faith still tastes joy; how strange it sounds even under the sufferings of earth! and many a one has known more quiet gladness in the house of mourning than the worldling at the most sumptuous feast. Yet, especially afterward, often here below, from the seed of tears is produced the most glorious harvest of joy. Van O.

Trial brings us into a mood more receptive of blessing: it makes our spirits tender; it softens our hearts; it makes our consciences alive; it empties us of adverse influences; it makes us willing to receive and to learn; it breaks our stubborn wills; it makes us prize the word; it shuts out the world; it bids us look up, and turns our hope to the Lord’s great coming. Bonar.—Prayer does not directly take away a trial or its pain, but it preserves the strength of the whole spiritual fiber, so that the trial does not pass into temptation to sin. A sorrow comes upon you. Omit prayer, and you fall out of God’s testing into the devil’s temptation; you get angry, hard of heart, reckless. But meet the trial with prayer, cast your care on God, and the paralyzing, embittering effects of pain and sorrow pass away, a stream of sanctifying and softening thought pours into the soul, and that which might have wrought your fall but works in you the peaceable fruit of righteousness. You pass from bitterness into endurance, from endurance into battle, and from battle to victory, till at last the trial dignifies and blesses your life. S. A. B.

12. The sons and daughters of his afflicting, who come bending unto him, are the privileged spirits who take their sufferings as love-tokens that he remembers them still, has not left them to their folly, but means by all means to number them with his saints in glory everlasting. No Scripture teaches us that this casing and lightening of the Christian life shall be completed at once. The learners in that often sad but blessed school, even though sitting solitary, with pale faces, nerveless limbs, and tears in their eyes, will find “rest” flowing in, not in violent floods, but as the dawn trembles into the sky, by gradual and almost imperceptible increments and risings of the light. Gradually but steadily, a tranquil faith sets up its unseen pillars of power beneath and within those hanging heads and feeble knees, till the whole body of character is built up, by this edifying submission, a spiritual house. Gradually but steadily, the blood streams back into the veins; and it is not nature’s blood, but is redder and richer and sweeter blood than that, as if the very sweetness and life of the “precious blood” were in it, out of the heart of Jesus, King at once and Lamb, who is the life of every Christian that lives. F. D. H.

13. The conclusion of the whole matter is simply this: God has made us for himself; made us, that is, to be like himself, to share his perfect blessedness and peace. By smiles or frowns, by prosperity and adversity, he compels us to look up to him; to rise to the height of our nature; to place our treasure and affections beyond the reach of change; to value most that which is worth most and lasts the longest; to find a deeper peace than we sought, and a more perfect happiness. Cox. —Hence God’s personal providence with us is continually pushing us on, loosening our feet, changing the scene, displacing one or another scheme, or vision, or staff, or companion. He does it for what he would make of us—better men—and for the far-sighted love wherewith he loves us. He does it because he will not let our feet cleave to the dust, our hearts grow thin and weak, our faith dwindle and die out; the dropping of every such dear delusion liberates our real life, increases our durable riches, replenishes our strength, sets us forward, lifts us up. F. D. H.

14. Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord: 15 looking diligently lest any man fail of the grace of God; lest any root of bitterness spring- 16 ing up trouble you, and thereby many be defiled; lest there be any fornicator, or profane 17 person, as Esau, who for one morsel of meat sold his birthright. For ye know how that afterward, when he would have inherited the blessing, he was rejected: for he found no place of repentance, though he sought it carefully with tears. 18 For ye are not come unto the mount that might be touched, and that burned with fire, 19 nor unto blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words; which voice they that heard intreated that the word should not be spoken to 20 them any more: (for they could not endure that which was commanded, And if so much 21 as a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned, or thrust through with a dart: and so ter- 22 rible was the sight, that Moses said, I exceedingly fear and quake:) but ye are come unto mount Sion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innu- 23 merable company of angels, to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, 24 and to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speak- eth better things than that of Abel. 25 See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh 26 from heaven: whose voice then shook the earth: but now he hath promised, saying, Yet 27 once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven. And this word, Yet once more, signifieth the removing of those things that are shaken, as of things that are made, that 28 those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with 29 reverence and godly fear: for our God is a consuming fire.

Is it not true that every man that rejects Christ does in simple verity reject him, and not merely neglect him; that there is always an effort, that there is a struggle, feeble perhaps but real, which ends in the turning away? It is not that you stand there, and simply let him go past. That were bad enough; but it is more than that. It is that you turn your back upon him! It is not that his hand is laid on yours, and yours remains dead and cold, and does not open to clasp it; but it is that his hand being laid on yours, you clench yours the tighter, and will not have it. And so every man that ever rejects Christ does these things thereby—wounds his own conscience, hardens his own heart, makes himself a worse man. The message of love can never come into a human soul, and pass away from it unreceived, without leaving that spirit worse, with all its lowest characteristics strengthened, and all its best ones depressed, by the fact of rejection. If there were no judgment at all, the natural result of the simple rejection of the gospel is that, bit by bit, all the lingering remains of nobleness that hover about the man, like scent about a broken vase, shall pass away; and that, step by step, through the simple process of saying, “I will not have Christ to rule over me,” the whole being shall degenerate, until the soul is lost by its own want of faith. Unbelief is its own judgment; unbelief is its own condemnation; unbelief, as sin, is punished, like all other sins, by the perpetuation of deeper and darker forms of itself. A. M.

14. Perseverance includes not only continuance in well-doing, but fervor and progress toward perfection. There are two fixed states. The blessed spirits above are arrived to the height of holiness. The devil and lost spirits are sunk to the lowest extremity of sin. But in the middle state here grace in the saints is a rising, growing light; and sin in the wicked increases every day, like poison in a serpent, that becomes more deadly by his age. We are enjoined not to remain in our first imperfections, but to “follow holiness” to the utmost issue of our lives, to its entire consummation. For this end all the dispensations of Providence must be improved, whether prosperous or afflicting. And the ordinances of the gospel were appointed that in the use of them we may be “changed into the divine image from glory to glory.” Bates.—Christ’s blood was shed that we might be purified. The Holy Ghost dwells in men that they may be sanctified. The Scriptures are given that we may cleanse our way by taking heed to it according to God’s word. The ordinances of the Supper and Baptism, and the rest of the holy Sabbath, are appointed to promote our purity; angels minister to us that we may be holy; and we are cast into the furnace of affliction that we may be refined; we are chastened that we may be partakers of God’s holiness—that indispensable qualification for heaven. R. T.

Holiness is not to be confounded with virtue. Nor is any disparagement cast upon virtue by affirming this distinction. They are names of two things, not one and the same. They do not express the same quality in character. They are fed from different fountains—virtue from moral principle, holiness from communion with God in Christ. Holiness requires virtue, for no man can be holy without being virtuous. But holiness is the essential root; virtue the essential fruit. And holiness never was obtained by a few desultory snatches of sober reflection hastily dismissed—a few vague impressions in churches or cemeteries. It must be treated like an interest, a pursuit, a profession. It is the great livelihood of your heart, the vocation of your soul. It must be begun, followed, and never ended. Resolve, deliberation, continuous effort, are its motor powers. All your members are its flexible instruments. The Bible is its text-book. Morning, evening, noon, all the circling hours, are its periods of exercise. Prayer is its rehearsal. God answering is its teacher. Christ is its pattern. Special, express, intentional, must the striving after holiness be in order to secure it. “God hath called us to holiness.” F. D. H.—The man who is not holy does not do “about right”; he wrongs himself and his God and his fellow beings. All his works possess the character of himself, as streams partake the qualities of the fountain—or fruit that of the tree. If a man is not holy, his doings are not holy; and the more he does the more he is undone. R. T.—Seeing then there is no other way to happiness but by holiness, no assurance of the love of God without it, take the apostle’s advice, study it, seek it, follow earnestly after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord. L.

15. “Lest any fail of the grace of God”: that one stroke of the pen sketches to us the figure of a man with whom, after a spring of awakened spiritual life, and after a summer which promised abundant fruit, a season of standing still has intervened, followed immediately by declension, the end of which can not be calculated. With all respect for genuine progress in the sphere of intellectual and social life, we should willfully close our eyes if we denied that the danger of declension in a moral, religious, Christian sense, perhaps never was so great as now. “The grace of God”: what is become of it in the inner life of so many who yet call themselves Christians? And even where it is known and treasured, how frequently does it seem as if all within and around us had conspired against our spiritual growth, both in the knowledge and grace of Christ! Van O.

16. The birthright which the profane Esau rejected, and which the supple Jacob acquired, was the investiture of the first-born with all the patriarchal privileges, magisterial and priestly, which death conveyed from father to son. B. M. P.—Esau came from the hunting-field worn and hungry; the only means of procuring the tempting mess of his brother’s pottage was the sacrifice of his father’s blessing, which in those ages carried with it a substantial advantage; but that birthright could be enjoyed only after years—the pottage was present, near, and certain; therefore he sacrificed a future and higher blessing for a present and lower pleasure. For this reason Esau is the Bible type of worldliness. F. W. R.—In saying that Esau sought repentance with tears, the writer obviously means that he sought to reverse the consequences of his fault, and obtain the blessing. If we refer to Genesis, we find that it was, in fact, Jacob’s blessing which Esau sought with tears. C.

18-24. In the course of his exhortation, the writer recurs to the contrast between the old and new dispensations, and in a very grand passage likens it to the difference between Mount Sinai and Mount Zion. The former was earthly, a mount that might be touched, and that was enveloped in the terrors of the law. The latter is the citadel of the Son of David, and is connected with the heavenly kingdom. Sinai is on the way to Jerusalem, no doubt, but far from it. Zion is at Jerusalem, the city of peace. At that “city of the living God” we are come to “myriads of angels in full assembly.” The law was given at Sinai “by a disposition of angels”; but the tribes entered not into the company of those heavenly messengers, who brought no comfort to the people who were under the law, but rather increased the terror. Now all is changed under grace, and the worshiping Church is surrounded by the convocation of angels in their myriads, who add their chorus to the song of the redeemed. D. F.—There are the choirs of angels; there the fellowship of the heavenly citizens; there the sweet festival of those who come home from the dreary toils of this pilgrimage; there are the far-seeing choirs of prophets; there the company of apostles; there the victorious host of innumerable martyrs, the more grievous their afflictions here, the fuller their gladness there; there the steadfast confessors, comforted by the enjoyment of their reward. Then let faith grow warm toward that which it has believed; let our desires burn for our home above. Gregory the Great.

18,19. In that momentous day when all Israel were come to it, marshaled in the great plain of Er Rahah, which stretched away to the north from its base, and stood there in front of its vast wall of rugged rock and frowning precipice, it burned with fire enwrapped in blackness and darkness and tempest—as if a thousand thunder-clouds were condensed into one, and that one begirt this awful mountain in its folds—the terrible blackness broken only by the flashes of lightning; and the perpetual roar of the tempest only by the more terrific trumpet-blast and the more awful voice of the Almighty, pronouncing the words of his fiery law. Dr. E. Robinson, standing on the spot, wrote: “Here lay the plain where the whole congregation might be assembled; here was the mount that could be approached and touched, if not forbidden; and here the mountain brow, where alone the lightnings and the thick cloud would be visible and the thunders and the voice of the trump be heard, when the Lord came down in the sight of all the people upon Mount Sinai. I know not when I have felt a thrill of stronger emotion than when, in first crossing the plain, the dark precipices of Horeb rising in solemn grandeur before us, we became aware of the entire adaptedness of the scene to the purposes for which it was chosen.” H. C.

20. “For they could not endure that which was commanded.” This sentence belongs to and completes that which goes before, and should be followed with a period. Then begins the parenthesis, which also should be closed with a period (at the end of verse 21). B.

23. The spirits of just men made perfect.** The soul’s recovery implies its admission into the society of all which is noble and good; for “the saints on earth and all the dead but one communion make.” It is not only encompassed by a great cloud of witnesses, it is itself one of these witnesses. It has become a part of the great commonwealth of the living and the blessed dead. When it partakes of the spirit of angels, it shares in their sweet ministries of grace, and will triumph evermore in their blissful society. It is drawn upward, not alone by its own impulses, or by the power of its redeemer’s arm, but by the consciousness of its glorious companionship, by the encouraging voices which greet the still struggling spirit. B. B. E.—The present life of departed saints is fuller and nobler than that which they possessed on earth. They are even now, whatever be the details of their condition, “the spirits of just men made perfect.” As yet the body is not glorified, but the spirits of the perfected righteous are now parts of that lofty society whose head is Christ, whose members are the angels of God, the saints on earth and the equally conscious redeemed who “sleep in Jesus.” A. M.—Their number is daily increasing. Day by day unbroken columns are passing through the golden gates of the city, and God’s elect are gathering from the four winds of heaven. There are no dead saints; all are alive unto God, and “we live together with them. N. M.—More than eighteen hundred years have passed since the Epistle to the Hebrews was written; and how many thousands of just men and women, pure, noble, tender, wise, beneficent, have graced the earth since then, and left their mark upon mankind, and helped forward the hallowing of our heavenly Father’s name, the coming of his kingdom, the doing of his will on earth as it is done in heaven; and helped, therefore, to abolish the superstition, the misrule, the vice, and, therefore, the misery of this struggling, moaning world. Yes, many a holy soul, many a useful soul, many a saint who is now at God’s right hand, has lived and worked, and been a blessing, himself blest, of whom the world, and even the Church, has never heard, who will never be seen or known again till the day in which the Lord counteth up his jewels. C. K.

Of the future recognition of our Christian friends, it is almost as unreasonable to ask for proofs as for the probable recognition of friends in a different part of the country, after having been separated one from another during a brief interval of time. What! shall memory be obliterated, and shall we forget our own past histories, and therefore lose the sense of our personal identity, and be ignorant of all we have been and done as sinners, and of all we have received and done as redeemed men? or, knowing all this, shall we be prevented from communicating our histories to others? Shall beloved friends be there whom we have known and loved in Christ here; with whom we have held holy communion; with whom we have labored and prayed for the advancement of Christ’s kingdom, and with whom we have eagerly watched for his second coming—and shall we be unable throughout eternity either to discover their existence or associate with them in the New Jerusalem? Oh! what is there in the whole word of God, what argument derived from our experience of the blessings of Christian fellowship, what in the character of God or his dealings with man, what in his promises of things to come laid up for those who love him, that could have suggested such strange, unworthy, false, and dreary thoughts of the union, or rather disunion, of friends in their Father’s home? Tell me not that special affection to Christian brethren, from whatever causes it may arise, is inconsistent with unfeigned love to all, and with absorbing love to Jesus. It is not so here, and never can be so from the nature of holy love, and was not so in Christ’s own case when he, the Perfect One, lived among us.

24. To Jesus.** “I will take you to myself” is the blessed promise. “We shall see him as he is” is the longed-for vision. “We shall be like him” is the hoped-for perfection. To know, to love, to be in all things like Jesus, and to hold communion with him for ever, what “an exceeding weight of glory”! Jesus will never be separated personally from his people; nor can they ever possibly separate their character, their joy, or their safety from his atoning death for them on earth, or from his constant life for them in heaven. It is the Lamb who shall lead them to living fountains of waters. N. M.—The Mediator of the New Covenant. He who before all ages proceeded as the only-begotten from the Father, was born of Mary in the end of times. This is he who was foretold by patriarchs, proclaimed by prophets, heralded by angels, accepted by apostles. Rejoice, therefore, and exult, thou Gentile world, now at length converted to thy God. For Israel, as we read, in fear and trembling marveled that Moses, the chief of the people, was talking alone with God, wrapt in the cloud and on the peak of a high mountain. But unto us has Christ with such vast graciousness bestowed himself as to speak to all and be seen by all. Whoever of the people drew near at that time to Mount Sinai, was punished with instant destruction; but whoever does not draw near to this Mountain, will die. Do thou, therefore, welcome the graciousness of the Eternal Majesty, for unto all the faithful Christ gives salvation. Maximus.

To the blood of sprinkling. Here is a sacrifice, a sin-offering, for the whole world; and a high priest, who is indeed a mediator, who, not in type or shadow, but in very truth and in his own right, stands in the place of man to God and of God to man, and who receives as a judge what he offered as an advocate. Would you be grateful to one who had ransomed you from slavery under a bitter foe, or who brought you out of captivity? Here is redemption from a far direr slavery, the slavery of sin unto death! And he who gave himself for the ransom has taken captivity captive. S. T. C.—Speaketh better things. The blood of Christ proclaims pardon and peace; the blood of Abel cried to God from the ground (Gen. 4 : 10) for the infliction of punishment upon the murderer. Such is the contrast between the former and latter dispensation. There all is awful, terrible, and threatening; here all is alluring, gracious, and animating. Who now can adhere to the former and reverence the latter? Such is the nature of the argument presented. M. S.

25. How escape.** Surely were God but for one moment to let this world hear the weeping and wailing of the lost, that sound, more terrible than Egypt’s midnight cry, would rouse the student at his books, arrest the foot of the dancer in the ball, stop armies in the very fury of the fight, and, calling a sleeping world from their beds, would bend the most stubborn knees, and extort from all the one loud cry, “Lord, save me, or I perish!” Still it is not terror which is the mighty power of God. This terror is not only subordinate to love, but subservient to it. As the skillful painter fills the background of his picture with his darker colors, God puts in the smoke of torment and the black clouds of Sinai, to give brighter prominence to Jesus, the cross of Calvary, and his love to the chief of sinners. T. G.—The wrath-principle and justice have the same place under Christianity that they had before. One of the things most needed in the recovery of men to God is this very thing—a more decisive manifestation of the wrath-principle and justice of God. Intimidation is a first means of grace. No bad mind is arrested by love and beauty till such time as it is balked in evil and put on ways of thoughtfulness. And nothing will be so effectual for this as a distinct apprehension of the wrath to come. Then, when it is brought to a condition of thoughtfulness by the apprehension of damage and loss, the vehemence of God and his judgment starts a correspondent moral vehemence in its own self-condemnations, when it is ready to be melted by the compassions and won by the beauty of the cross that is born of God. H. B.—To such as answer to his heavenly call, God shows himself to them only as a loving father, who would be loved by them and love them for ever. But to those who

answer not to it, and, far more, who dare to abuse it—to all such God is still a consuming fire, and their most merciful Saviour himself a judge to try their very hearts and reins. In short, the gospel is to them, not salvation, but condemnation. It does not do away, but doubles their guilt, and therefore brings upon them, and will bring through all eternity, a double measure of punishment. T. A.